The biggest issue in Elite Dangerous that no one really talks about - The Economy
- Thread starter Olivia Vespera
- Start date
Not that this is about the BGS economy but I am interested. Do you have a source for this? I imagine a lot of folks who run PMFs would be willing to trade low profit goods. we already do so during outbreaks.
Like most multiplayer activity in the game as of today. There is and always has been an element of trust. I shouldn't have to explain this. players who do BGS cooperatively inherently trust their accomplices. Same with powerplay. No screenshotting or log validation is free from tampering. From BGS to powerplay. The only activity that is free from that is wing bounty hunting and trading.
Not true. They may need larger quantities of credits, in the millions, but they also have relatively easier means of generating credits.
go to etn.io and look at the route from xuanduna:check ring to Yenistani Port. It's a loop trading route. a Cutter can earn over 19 million CR/hour... and this is just a regular trade route. I'm not bringing in Quince passenger missions into this.
As one accumulates more wealth at end game, credits do in fact become near meaningless. I myself have a billion CR in assets and a neat 100 mil in the bank. anyways what I said was that it approaches infinity. I'm not saying it does reach it. I still could use 300 million.
did you watch the design by landfill video in the OP? One doesn't have to improve the current environment bgs economy to produce a PDE. One just layers it on top of the current system much like all the other features we have(planetary landings, engineers, SLFs, passengers, holo-me) They're all largely independent of each other. Same can be said of a PDE.
Oo- Ad hominem really? Come on, I expect better quality comments than this. We're an engaged passionate community. If you have a good point to put forward, don't hamper it with fallacies.
[video=youtube;IVFK8sVdJNg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVFK8sVdJNg[/video]
Just to be clear, I'm not part of Teamsters. I've only ever been a client. I have never provided such a service to players using the PDE. I'm just a player who likes to see player driven initiatives flourish.You're right.. it's not all bad. The effect on BGS from largely all of them is peripheral. and... what I mean by the earlier comment you replied to but failed to say was this: Those things you want to see, can exist and doesn't preclude having a PDE layered on top of them.
We don't need to fix the economy, if we just create a new one over it based on a new currency independent from the old one. That's what engineer Commodities kinda do.
Alright! If you're not going to put in effort to understand what I'm trying to say in full, then, with no ill-will, I'm not going to put in effort to understand what you're trying to say.
I've presented everything in the OP. If you're going to cherry pick what you're going to respond to and ignore bits you can't be bothered to look at... then I don't feel like bending over backwards to say again what's already been introduced. No hard feelings there.
Have a good day ^^.
Last edited:
I am sorry to say that there is no reason for a credit transfer from player to player with the current state of the game. You can make millions of credits per hour legally and without much fuss, you can make more credits with the more notorious methods that some think border on exploits and you don't need credits for anything else than buying ships and equipment; or to fuel more credit making. There's no housing, no vanity items for credits, no upkeep and no other money sink where you think "Wow! I really need the credits for this!"
FD would have to invest huge amounts of developing time and resources to make a player transaction based system meaningful. I mean, why would I give a guy one million credits if he can make that much in half an hour with a wiped save?
A shift from a credit based system to a bartering system with commodities/materials was thought about and I still like the idea of a 'Settlers of Catan' style broker system where you trade, say, 12 Salvaged Alloys for 3 Imperial Shieldings. But again, this broker would most likely be on a personal level and not globally, where players could auction their stuff in a 'WTT materials on 4 for 1 basis'. There was also the idea of having 'auction houses' at each of the Powers' capital systems but again, FD would really need to feel like doing it with the pros clearly outweighing the cons.
And I can already see the Arsenic farmers on the horizon waiting to cash in.
Like I said, without a player driven manufacturing system in the back yard I just don't see it happen. And again, look at the way commodity trading has been handled almost without a change for the last 3 years. It's still in its infancy without any form of internal market diagnosis tool. Nearly all meaningful trading assistance is done via 3rd party tools and a lot of commodities that I presume never get traded in a lifetime, unless there are some serious 'event cards' like community goals specifically demanding them. It's all very screen saver style and painfully repetitive without any incentive to probe local markets (rare goods are an exception), because, well, there are none. It's all space Excel in a nutshell, devoid of colourful details and a bit of pixel life.
Sadly.
FD would have to invest huge amounts of developing time and resources to make a player transaction based system meaningful. I mean, why would I give a guy one million credits if he can make that much in half an hour with a wiped save?
A shift from a credit based system to a bartering system with commodities/materials was thought about and I still like the idea of a 'Settlers of Catan' style broker system where you trade, say, 12 Salvaged Alloys for 3 Imperial Shieldings. But again, this broker would most likely be on a personal level and not globally, where players could auction their stuff in a 'WTT materials on 4 for 1 basis'. There was also the idea of having 'auction houses' at each of the Powers' capital systems but again, FD would really need to feel like doing it with the pros clearly outweighing the cons.
And I can already see the Arsenic farmers on the horizon waiting to cash in.
Like I said, without a player driven manufacturing system in the back yard I just don't see it happen. And again, look at the way commodity trading has been handled almost without a change for the last 3 years. It's still in its infancy without any form of internal market diagnosis tool. Nearly all meaningful trading assistance is done via 3rd party tools and a lot of commodities that I presume never get traded in a lifetime, unless there are some serious 'event cards' like community goals specifically demanding them. It's all very screen saver style and painfully repetitive without any incentive to probe local markets (rare goods are an exception), because, well, there are none. It's all space Excel in a nutshell, devoid of colourful details and a bit of pixel life.
Sadly.
Last edited:
I'll see what I can dig up during my lunch break. V1 of the BGS economy debuted either in late Alpha or early Premium Beta, IIRC, and apparently past me didn't feel enough outrage over the nerf to create a book mark at the time. I just remember at the time being disappointed in Frontier for not sticking to their original plans, and caving in to the instant gratification crowd again. Especially since the Bubble at the time was rather small, which would've amplified the effects of player activities, with only the small number of systems we had access to at the time.
Curse you, past me! Didn't you know I might need that information at a latter date?
That's interesting. Even more so that they decided to scrap it instead of tweaking it.
Wouldn't the economy balance itself out given enough time?
I don't think games where you pilot your own ship is fun, hauling cargo on a constant basis.
It was boring in EVE and there you could go afk and watch tv, in ED you have to pay attention to every boring task.
Credits as EXP, I get the vibe as well but it also feels like the extreme implementation of materialism.
Is this about credits being too easy to earn to deter gold farmers or is it that there's not really anything to spend credits on, or something else?
The way I put it they're the same problem, one lead to the other.
That's really tragic, considering how revamping the economic model is something that I've been very vocal about on the forums ever since I joined them and it sounds like the system did half the stuff that I want to see on the economic side. It just depressing that they actually had a workable economic model, then got rid of it in favour of making the game more arcadey, completely forgetting that trading has always been the core mechanic of the entire franchise that has separated it from all the space combat games. The loss of a decent economic model has simultaneously removed pretty much all player influence on the economy, made 90% of the commodities a waste of space and isolated systems from each other (preventing emergent mechanics). They literally stripped the "simulator" out of "BackGround Simulator".
Well, after a fascinating trip down memory lane, I managed to narrow the nerf down to Premium Beta 2. Unfortunately, the patch notes mention only "various trading tweaks," without going into much detail. It's incredible to think that I've been playing this game for over three years now. It's depressing to think that I've been fighting a rear guard action against the instant gratification crowd equally as long.
If you're curious about some of the debates going on at the time, I would go to the "gamma" forum archives here. After Alpha, Frontier simply kept renaming the subforum, rather than creating a new one. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I agree. There's no reason for it because it's so easy to make credits. It's worthless. We need something a currency a little more valuable to support a PDE.
Perhaps it was a fluke, but Engineer Commodities were that valuable currency that made transactions meaningful. The only issue is that there isn't any commodity storage for engineer commodities. If engineer commodities were made valuable again to everyone by connecting them back to blueprints and they provided commodity storage which they said they are working on (long term), we could have that.
I think the advent of discord ensures that anyone can create a global presence in the community if they wish. it'll only be personal at first before word of mouth flies through the community.
That sounds like a cool idea. Don't know how that would work though.
XD to the second bit. That would be kinda fun.
I don't mind that we're using 3rd party tools. the 3rd party tools are awesome and their developers deserve credit. True about all the other commodities. There are a lot of options and would be interesting to see what Frontier would do with them.
I don't think about the economy at all. However, I do think about the bugs, the lack of real content, the repetition, the lack of audio dialogue, how stupid Power Play is, the oddly high number of planets that resemble Cheetos cheese balls, the fact that each instance is basically the same instance except for a few varibles, etc... but the economy? No... it is inconsequentential... compared to REAL issues.
Last edited:
When you first start E: D, credits mean a lot. In fact, for the first few months they are probably the most important thing in the game. But then you reach a point where you have all the ships you want (or at least enough to play with) and don't need to buy a lot other than insurance. Once you reach a certain point in the game, credits do essentially become meaningless. However, I don't see this as a reason to try and use them in more areas unnecessarily (that isn't to say I don't want to see more things that you can spend credits on, though).
E: D isn't an MMO like a lot of the fantasy ones where your only goal is to get your character as pumped up and powerful as possible. As such, I completely disagree that credits in E: D have any parallel to XP in other games. Just because someone has lots of credits, doesn't mean that credit sinks need to be made for them. I've no objection for additional content that costs credits, but I would object to the implementation of a system that was a constant drain on my credit balance. I'm pretty much self-sufficient (fuel scoops, synthesis, etc.), so only expect to spend credits on repair or purchases.
E: D are about to embark on QoL and core gameplay improvements (so they say ). I am more than happy to sit back and see what they come up with over the next few months. Some of the suggestions I've seen look interesting.
E: D isn't an MMO like a lot of the fantasy ones where your only goal is to get your character as pumped up and powerful as possible. As such, I completely disagree that credits in E: D have any parallel to XP in other games. Just because someone has lots of credits, doesn't mean that credit sinks need to be made for them. I've no objection for additional content that costs credits, but I would object to the implementation of a system that was a constant drain on my credit balance. I'm pretty much self-sufficient (fuel scoops, synthesis, etc.), so only expect to spend credits on repair or purchases.
E: D are about to embark on QoL and core gameplay improvements (so they say
). I am more than happy to sit back and see what they come up with over the next few months. Some of the suggestions I've seen look interesting.