Before reading this thread, I'd ask that both CMDRs, Moderators and hopefully, Frontier dev have a watch of this video (though I suspect they already know most of what's covered)
Introduction
Elite: Dangerous has many issues but one of the biggest issues that isn't talked about is the Economy. Now I'm not talking about how commodities supply and demand in the commodities market only update once a day and isn't dynamic.
I'm talking about The Credit.
The Credit
Now a little definition before we start: the credit is a currency that we are paid in by mission givers. We pay for repar, rearmament, and refueling services.
We can use credits to buy and sell commodities. We use it to buy modules, pay for ship transfers as well as our fines. The one thing we cannot do is give currency to other players.
This is NOT the issue. In fact this restriction is a solution that serves a legitimate purpose.
The Issue
Was I was a young CMDR, I created a banking bot to do something that went around this restriction and provided a means to allow Commanders to give credits to each other.
It could have been used to pay CMDRs to do missions for them or their factions, help fight a war... or as a payout from a contest.
I made a forum post for it and hoped someone would take it upon themselves to set it up and we'd have a new age of player driven missions in a player driven economy.
However my reasoning was deeply flawed.
"Credits are as valuable as rocky ice worlds"
The original banking idea I had was based on the notion that credits were valuable. They are not.
That's no longer—or has never been—the case. Credits are as valuable as rocky ice worlds.
See the problem with what Frontier has with the credit value is due to three drivers:
Video break:
These two new types of currencies function in different ways.
For what it's worth, It worked!
Teamsters/The Cabin
For a time, the new much more valuable engineer commodities resulted in emergent player groups like Teamsters (now called The cabin) who provided a service, trading engineer commodities exorbitant amount of credits.
It was the beginning of a fledgling economy that was player run where the value of this new currency was entirely player driven, supply and demand.
But here's what happened not long after The Engineers were around. Engineer commodities were removed from engineer recipes.
Player Driven Economy Destroyed
Practically overnight, For the good of everyone, Frontier Destroyed the player driven economy in one fell swoop.
No longer are groups like teamsters able to benefit from providing a service to a large player base of CMDRs who engage with engineers.
They are now relegated to the less in demand (but still in demand) service of provide engineer commodities to unlock engineers like Marco Quent and Selene Jean. A limited and continuously dwindling group of players.
Teamsters is still operational and still providing their service but not as well as they used to.
Now there's no disagreements here. Engineering was a huge hassle for all of us. None of us want to see the return of engineer commodities to engineer recipes. However without a valuable currency tied to something the majority of the player base cares about, we can't support player run emergent intiatives like Teamsters. And emergent intiatives like teamsters are a good thing.
Credits are worthless. Materials aren't tradeable. Engineer Commodities are only in demand by a small subset of players once.
We have nothing that can fill the role of what Engineer Commodities used to do and this is the state we're left in.
Whether Frontier fixes credits such that it becomes valuable again to players, or introduces another currency that did what engineer commodities did, I don't care, but something needs to happen.
If we want player more player driven enterprises like Teamsters, then we need a robust player economy that relies on a strong currency.
Here are a few suggestions but don't take them as the end all:
Discuss.
TL;DR: Just watch the videos and you'll get the gist.
[video=youtube;sumZLwFXJqE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sumZLwFXJqE[/video]
Introduction
Elite: Dangerous has many issues but one of the biggest issues that isn't talked about is the Economy. Now I'm not talking about how commodities supply and demand in the commodities market only update once a day and isn't dynamic.
I'm talking about The Credit.
The Credit
Now a little definition before we start: the credit is a currency that we are paid in by mission givers. We pay for repar, rearmament, and refueling services.
We can use credits to buy and sell commodities. We use it to buy modules, pay for ship transfers as well as our fines. The one thing we cannot do is give currency to other players.
This is NOT the issue. In fact this restriction is a solution that serves a legitimate purpose.
The Issue
Was I was a young CMDR, I created a banking bot to do something that went around this restriction and provided a means to allow Commanders to give credits to each other.
It could have been used to pay CMDRs to do missions for them or their factions, help fight a war... or as a payout from a contest.
I made a forum post for it and hoped someone would take it upon themselves to set it up and we'd have a new age of player driven missions in a player driven economy.
However my reasoning was deeply flawed.
"Credits are as valuable as rocky ice worlds"
The original banking idea I had was based on the notion that credits were valuable. They are not.
That's no longer—or has never been—the case. Credits are as valuable as rocky ice worlds.
See the problem with what Frontier has with the credit value is due to three drivers:
- Credits are not tied to a finite source of wealth in the bubble. There will always be missions provided for the player to feel like their time is well spent so there's always more and more credits in the hands of players
- Ships get exponentially more expensive to purchase and outfit. The natural player progression up the ship ladder, reduces the value of the credit to players.
- Quince and others like it. Systems where it's possible to generate large amounts of credits quickly lower the value of credits. If you are able to generate credits quickly,
Video break:
[video=youtube;tL_bCwiUKNE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL_bCwiUKNE[/video]
Materials & Engineer CommoditiesThese two new types of currencies function in different ways.
- Materials being a currency that can't be exchanged with other players and isn't tied to the old currency and thus completely locks out Gold Farmers but makes it useless as a player usable currency
- Engineer Commodities being a currency that can't be bought from the Commodities Market and while can be traded amongst players, their uses are severely limited.
For what it's worth, It worked!
Teamsters/The Cabin
For a time, the new much more valuable engineer commodities resulted in emergent player groups like Teamsters (now called The cabin) who provided a service, trading engineer commodities exorbitant amount of credits.
It was the beginning of a fledgling economy that was player run where the value of this new currency was entirely player driven, supply and demand.
But here's what happened not long after The Engineers were around. Engineer commodities were removed from engineer recipes.
Player Driven Economy Destroyed
Practically overnight, For the good of everyone, Frontier Destroyed the player driven economy in one fell swoop.
No longer are groups like teamsters able to benefit from providing a service to a large player base of CMDRs who engage with engineers.
They are now relegated to the less in demand (but still in demand) service of provide engineer commodities to unlock engineers like Marco Quent and Selene Jean. A limited and continuously dwindling group of players.
Teamsters is still operational and still providing their service but not as well as they used to.
Now there's no disagreements here. Engineering was a huge hassle for all of us. None of us want to see the return of engineer commodities to engineer recipes. However without a valuable currency tied to something the majority of the player base cares about, we can't support player run emergent intiatives like Teamsters. And emergent intiatives like teamsters are a good thing.
Credits are worthless. Materials aren't tradeable. Engineer Commodities are only in demand by a small subset of players once.
We have nothing that can fill the role of what Engineer Commodities used to do and this is the state we're left in.
Whether Frontier fixes credits such that it becomes valuable again to players, or introduces another currency that did what engineer commodities did, I don't care, but something needs to happen.
If we want player more player driven enterprises like Teamsters, then we need a robust player economy that relies on a strong currency.
Here are a few suggestions but don't take them as the end all:
- Create more credit sinks. The more ships a player has, the more berthing fees they have to pay for each one.
- Add a credit component to G4 or higher engineer rolls. 100,000 CR-1,000,000 CR
- Reintroduce engineer commodities but make them not take up space in the cargo hold.
- Create a new currency that players can trade 100,000,000 CR for that can be used to buy cosmetics in the frontier store or sold for the same amount to other players.
TL;DR: Just watch the videos and you'll get the gist.
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