Seeing as there is an uproar about a rake of recent nerfs seemingly put in place to make wing missions more desirable, that echoes the nerf virtually everything else got to make passenger missions more desirable, I was left wondering, do FDev really need to nerf the rewards from existing gameplay to make us play with the new shiny things they add? Or could they leave things alone and just add the new stuff with rewards that are in line with the other forms of gameplay?
Surely they dont need to nerf everything existing to promote the new stuff?
- Thread starter VR Jay Le Chardon
- Start date
When you can buy an A-rated Anaconda from one hour skimmer missions, I don't think the nerf aims at making other missions more desirable. That's just balancing. Now I agree some nerfs are discutable, but I don't believe any of them has "promotional" Goals.
What nerfs?
@777driver... All of them, starting at 2.4 with the major passenger exploit nerfs, then the AX nerfs, continuing on to the skimmer nerfs. The fact is there are very few missions on the board (and NONE in a system I'm not already allied with everyone) that I feel are worth my time. I find it harder and harder to log in each day.
The thing being that nerfing a mission type to the GROUND, is not a solution to a 1% circumstance that means that this type of mission can be picked up in a specific system, and due to peculiarities of the BGS/factions/location result in a reward that is not commensurate with the effort.
Why they could not isolate the algorithms that cause THOSE ANOMALIES, rather than consistently nerfing entire mission types, is honestly baffling. I guess it has something to do with the proc genning code being a bit of a black box with only certain parameters changeable.
Bottom line is the same as my first line. I cruised around Empire space trying to find a system that generated a) enough missions of approximate types that I like to do, b) were rewarded appropriately, and c) fitted a bunch of my own personal arbitrary criteria for picking a home system. I was planning on moving to Empire Space and setting up shop for the foreseeable future.
Suffice it to say, I flew back to Sol in disgust and went to bed. I don't know if I can do the data grind in 10 key empire systems like I did with key fed systems, I don't know if I have the willpower any more. This in turn makes me feel like I'm restricted to Fed space where I'm loved, because to go anywhere else is not rewarding and rarely interesting or fun. 400bn systems huh? How come I live in 10 of them?
Beyond better have some love for the missions board and BGS.
The thing being that nerfing a mission type to the GROUND, is not a solution to a 1% circumstance that means that this type of mission can be picked up in a specific system, and due to peculiarities of the BGS/factions/location result in a reward that is not commensurate with the effort.
Why they could not isolate the algorithms that cause THOSE ANOMALIES, rather than consistently nerfing entire mission types, is honestly baffling. I guess it has something to do with the proc genning code being a bit of a black box with only certain parameters changeable.
Bottom line is the same as my first line. I cruised around Empire space trying to find a system that generated a) enough missions of approximate types that I like to do, b) were rewarded appropriately, and c) fitted a bunch of my own personal arbitrary criteria for picking a home system. I was planning on moving to Empire Space and setting up shop for the foreseeable future.
Suffice it to say, I flew back to Sol in disgust and went to bed. I don't know if I can do the data grind in 10 key empire systems like I did with key fed systems, I don't know if I have the willpower any more. This in turn makes me feel like I'm restricted to Fed space where I'm loved, because to go anywhere else is not rewarding and rarely interesting or fun. 400bn systems huh? How come I live in 10 of them?
Beyond better have some love for the missions board and BGS.
I thought they were fixes to things that were not working properly. Is so, then that is not a nerf but a fix.
I would say it is strange that everyone's experience differs, however populated space does cover a huge amount of systems. Trading now averages 2 million a run on the low end, 70 mill on a 8 minute run if you know where to look. My assassination mission are paying around 2 mill a pop, heck I went mining a few weeks back and pulled in 18 million credits.
Never really bothered with Pax missions so can't comment on that. Even smuggling missions are paying 1.8 million for small amounts of cargo, my smuggling Chieftain with a small cargo bay pulls in around 2 mill per run, takes me under 10 mins.
Am agreement with those that say Wing missions should have a separate board, however making money in ED has never been easier, screw flying for an hour in SC to earn money.
I record all my trade and mission runs, every single one, hence why I can always post screenshots of the missions I carry out.
There is a definite difference between a fix and a nerf, these were nerfs, not fixes. Let me elaborate.
The problem: One particular system gave extraordinarily high rewards to skimmer missions to a particularly defenseless base. The fix would be to make sure that this situation can't happen. What in fact happened was a huge nerf. Funny thing, that's a very good example of a nerf NOT being a fix, but it's the least bothersome nerf of them all, imo. Far worse was the nerfing of passenger missions just because of long distance in-system runs, which again, could have been FIXED by adjusting the code that generates them, rather than an overhand swing with the nerf bat.
Making money in ED as a general rule has never been easier, I agree, however, the extreme peaks and troughs of earning expectations has spoiled us.
I don't want to go to Maia to get good delivery missions, they should be all over. My favorite activities (bounty hunting and assassinating) are the worst payers in the game, and not only that, focusing on assassinations as away of life actually HINDERS your combat rank progress!
Perhaps I'm jaded now. There's no way int he world I'm picking up black boxes or art for 1m. There's no way I'm doing a 4 stop sightseeing tour for 2-4m. There's no way I'm doing any delivery of anything for less than a few million. CNP means the occasional illegal mission I would do are off the board now. Bounty hunting and massacres have never been more ridiculous (although last night, I saw 4m for massacring 16 pirates which I thought wasn't too bad).
If there was parity between the professions and a decent variety of missions available, it wouldn't be an issue. But when I log in one day and find a total of 12 missions that I can do, and none of them that I want to do, all paying crap, on a board with 6 allied factions, I just want to play something else.
Or maybe they found out that they were paying far to much then what they were meant to and guess what, they fixed it. You are assuming it is a nerf and not a fix.
I don't assume anything, I defined VERY clearly what is a fix and what is a nerf and even cited using example relating to specific cases. No assumption required. These missions were nerfed, when they could have been 'fixed' instead.
I've eanred about 1bn since 2.4 launched doing random things in random places. I dock, take missions that look interesting or are aligned with what I feel like doing. If those missions send me to other starports, as they usually do, then I do the same thing there. I also spent between 2 & 3 months exploring. I also purchased and fully engineered a second Anaconda and a DBx.
Roughly 25% of that has been from exploration and the majority of the rest I from missions. 13% has gone to crew members.
I'm run zero passenger missions since 2.4, and didn't get on the shoot-skimmers-with-ship craze because I find it easier and more fun to use the SRV, and I was 26k ly away from any mission boards.
I'm sorry, but what were we talking about again?
Roughly 25% of that has been from exploration and the majority of the rest I from missions. 13% has gone to crew members.
I'm run zero passenger missions since 2.4, and didn't get on the shoot-skimmers-with-ship craze because I find it easier and more fun to use the SRV, and I was 26k ly away from any mission boards.
I'm sorry, but what were we talking about again?
Part of the issue that I see is that some activities fundamentally do not scale with your ship, so therefore they have to be balanced around a Sidewinder or a Cobra. A Cobra MkIII can do salvage missions just as well as a T10, but if they were balanced around making them a reasonable earner for a T10 then they would be utterly broken for Cobra pilots as they would have access to late game earning potential in an early ship. However, that 1M credit haul of black boxes would be an incredible earner for a Cobra as it would equal 10 reasonable trade runs.
verminstar
Banned
Just did some skimmer missions...they all completed at the same time by hitting the base just once, which incidentally was the very reason they originally nerfed them by removing them fer a couple weeks. So someone wanna tell me exactly what they did fer those couple weeks? Cos fixed, they aint...they actually no different to before they were fixed.
As fer promoting new stuff...what new stuff? Guardians? No really no joking here...what new stuff do they need promoting so badly they nerf everything? Then again, going by the first line, what nerfs haha
Its really not that funny when ye think about it...there are ways around the nerfs...adjustments that can be made to compensate, like board flipping half a dozen times instead of just twice or relogging on a planetary scan to load a new instance which saves going back into sc, or occasionally finding little quirks in the bgs like the previously mentioned fixed skimmer missions that are actually exactly the same...
Game is what it is...either ye adapt to it or cry about how unfair it is...personally I just adapt or as some like to call it, gaming the game...works fer me ^
As fer promoting new stuff...what new stuff? Guardians? No really no joking here...what new stuff do they need promoting so badly they nerf everything? Then again, going by the first line, what nerfs haha
Its really not that funny when ye think about it...there are ways around the nerfs...adjustments that can be made to compensate, like board flipping half a dozen times instead of just twice or relogging on a planetary scan to load a new instance which saves going back into sc, or occasionally finding little quirks in the bgs like the previously mentioned fixed skimmer missions that are actually exactly the same...
Game is what it is...either ye adapt to it or cry about how unfair it is...personally I just adapt or as some like to call it, gaming the game...works fer me ^
Skimmer missions were nerfed simply because of the off chance that you could get a really high paying one to a base with literally no security, not even a turret, just an endless stream of skimmers spawning.
The nerf to these took 2 forms. 1) Skimmers would no longer continue to spawn after each wave was destroyed UNLESS you were in the SRV. Fair enough in a way, why would a base continue printing resources that could not function as intended (skimmers can't reasonably attack ships, only SRVs), and 2, the payments were reduced (not dramatically, but enough) across the board, to reduce the amount of reward that could be gained, so that they didn't have to balance the payment based on the security of the base (in other words, so that if you get sent to a low security base, you can't get paid too much, ,with the result that the payment is not even remotely worth it if you go to a high sec base (the majority).
It has always been the case (as it should be), that skimmer kills satisfy 1 kill per mission, PER FACTION. So, if you have 2 missions for 6 skimmers from the same faction, you need to kill 12 at the target locatoin. If you have 6 from one faction and 6 from another, they will complete at the same time.
I do see where you are coming from, on the flip side you don't need to head there to make good money. Are you expecting everywhere in the bubble to offer the same kind of payouts? The game has always been about searching for good locations and making money on the current system state, some regions are better than others for a number of reasons.
Since day 1 I have always had a scout ship, use it to check out areas around the bubble or mini bubbles like Sothis/Maia and remote locations like Fehu, bring in my combat ships or freighters once I have found a good location. I never just sit in one area for months on end. Have always consistently made very good money, never used an exploit except for the Rare good's bug that lasted a week or so back in 2015, even then I made around 30 mill, highest wage back then was 700,000 credits for a fully loaded trade run, and trading was the highest earner back then.
Anyway as mentioned, I do think the whole wing mission system needs to be looked at. Can't really comment on payouts for Bounty hunting or assassination, I do it for fun, but they are incredibly easy, bounty hunting is just farming in your sleep, assassination missions are not really a challenge for anyone experienced unless you take the wing missions.
I play like you. I just can't find any good locatoins any more. No I don't expect them to be everywhere, but I do expect there to be some logic.
For example, I now know how to find good skimmer missions (one good way, possibly not the only way), filter for warring and civil war states and go to a system you like that is near to a cluster of systems in conflict. If you can get three warring factions inside 15ly, you'll get good varieties of skimmer missions). There should be some logic to deliveries too. For example, in a booming high tech system I should be able to easily find high value high tech deliveries, no? Anyway, you know what I mean, I know what you mean.
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verminstar
Banned
Ye know ye can still complete the mission in a ship right? Regardless...if its working as intended then thats cool, no skin off my nose still a very easy 6m fer 10 minutes work even though I lose the srv in the process. I adapted to that and carry two.
The likes of invading a base to scan fer the location of a target costs an srv too, most of the time which means if ye only carry a single srv, ye cant stack them. Well ye can but theres no point if ye lose the srv anyway.
Way I see it is that when the nerfs were coming thick and fast, the issue of board flipping and instance refreshing got worse to try and compensate...so really all thats happened is that one issue has been replace by a different issue and theres a daily salt mountain on the forums to wade through as a result. Its certainly a very different approach but however...Im happy enough because Ill just adapt either way ^