The game is not worth fixing

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
boppa_ said:
We can still hope, right!?
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Indeed, we can. I'm wondering what the next CG is going to be, with the happenings so far - and a needed 'fix' holding the release of Update 7 for a few days extra (rather than a patch) may well be hinting at 'exciting' things being imminent!

I'm holding off taking this and another of my accounts off for a jaunt into the black for another week or so, just in case ;)
 

Bottom Hat

Bottom Hat
Rat Catcher said:
Not this week... If it is ever likely I'd bet 'new' content will coincide with the launch of console versions - or when Frontier announce that consoles will not be receiving the DLC, either are possible.
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This is an interesting theory, one I might look to do some research in to, and hopefully I won't have to make up the results.

Do you think it's worth investigating?
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Terry Daniels said:
You know the settlements where you fight human NPCs, it'll be bug settlements where you fight bug NPCs...

'C'mon you apes, you want to live for ever? The only good bug is a dead bug!
I have only one rule - everybody fights, no one quits. Oorah! ' Rico.
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bug-bugs.gif
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Ian Phillips said:
Well thanks for your advice on how moderators should give your thread and wishes preferential treatment.
Just so you don't make the same mistake again here are a couple of things you should know:

1) Moderators that take part in a thread discussion may not perform any moderation actions on the thread, to avoid exactly the accusations you are making.
2) We don't need your advice on who to ban.
3) You would do yourself a great service by changing the tone of your posts. Treat this as a notification of intent.
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None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in this game with you...You're locked in this game with ME!
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Rat Catcher said:
Both of those are single player games, though, which is a pretty commpn comparison here - "single player game XXX does thing better than multiplayer ED: H/O" where a single player game has only, unsurprisingly, the actions of a single player to account for.

Not that I arguing totally in favour of that which Frontier chose to include in ED - much of what others have mentioned viable in other multiplayer games could make our own one a little more 'alaive', I'm sure!
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I'm not sure the fact people are comparing single and multiplayer games is necessarily relevant though.

Going back to my old favourite, calculating the price of smuggled goods correctly is an issue independent of whether a game is single player or not. Granted, the issue of sourcing the base price of goods from a remote system is a consideration, at least for that specific issue it's not relevant.

By way of reminder, the issue with smuggling is that Illegal goods incorrectly accrue the -25% price debuff usually applied to Stolen goods. This makes it nigh on impossible to turn a profit. Can you turn a profit? Yes, but it's in the order of less than 1k/tonne, but usually more like -2k/t loss (depending on the good). Before this bug was introduced, you could get 5k/t profit on particular low-volume goods, up to 10k/t profit.

In essence, this means, there's a logic statement somewhere that goes:
Sale price = ($basePrice + $demandEffect + ($isIllegal * $basePrice * 0.1) + ($isStolen * $basePrice * -0.25)) * ($statefulFactors)

... where either $isStolen isincorrectly set to True (1) before evaluation, or the logic is incorrect and the $isStolen condition is evaluating true because $isIllegal is true. Anything more complex than this is, well, unnecessarily complex and poorly implemented.

Either way, these are straightforward issues which simply shouldn't exist in a game as "substantial" as people make out it is. It's the sort of bug I'd expect to exist in an early access game, or one of these other indy, solo-experience games. That's the risk with big projects, bugs in fundamental mechanics are much further reaching and hold much more impact, and therefore it's even more important to get it right.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Viajero
Jmanis said:
Can you turn a profit? Yes, but it's in the order of less than 1k/tonne, but usually more like -2k/t loss (depending on the good). Before this bug was introduced, you could get 5k/t profit on particular low-volume goods, up to 10k/t profit.
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It´s been a while since I did some regular old trading runs. Do you think the smuggling extra effort and risk compared to regular trading reflect that 10K/t profit?
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Viajero said:
It´s been a while since I did some regular old trading runs. Do you think the smuggling extra effort and risk compared to regular trading reflect that 10K/t profit?
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First up, my bad, I didn't finish that sentence WRT 10k/t. I meant to say 10k/t "when relevant power effects are factored in."

Tangentially, I'm aware from a single post (from Bruce G, I believe) that the intent is to make smuggling materially different to normal trading, rather than just a mechanism that earns more,less or the same as normal trading.

I could segue into a whole discussion about the state of economic balance in the game (or complete lack thereof), but in lieu of that, 10k/t profit is, for the general situation in my area, one of the best trades possible, with the exception of Boom/Civil Lib Military Fabrics which is a highly temporal trade route.

However, my concern extends beyond just profits on this occasion as well. Making a profit is essential to making the negative influence/economic effect kick in when targeting a faction. A large variety of opportunities to cause negative economic and influence effects literally disappeared along with this break, because a vast majority of the trades which could have turned a profit, now turn a loss, rendering this simply no longer viable at all. In short, a common game loop I used frequently has now simply gone.

Among the litany of post-Odyssey threads spelling the doom for anarchy factions, issues like this should be an absolute top priority as one of the few mechanisms for actually hurting non-anarchy factions (and supporting anarchies indirectly or directly if in power).

Much the same can be said of Thargoid Tissue Sampling. Yet another thing I did quite frequently which is now, basically, broken.

In short: The fact the economy is totally unbalanced (and rebalancing it is difficult) is no reason not to fix basic mechanics which simply do not work.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Viajero
Jmanis said:
First up, my bad, I didn't finish that sentence WRT 10k/t. I meant to say 10k/t "when relevant power effects are factored in."

Tangentially, I'm aware from a single post (from Bruce G, I believe) that the intent is to make smuggling materially different to normal trading, rather than just a mechanism that earns more,less or the same as normal trading.

I could segue into a whole discussion about the state of economic balance in the game (or complete lack thereof), but in lieu of that, 10k/t profit is, for the general situation in my area, one of the best trades possible, with the exception of Boom/Civil Lib Military Fabrics which is a highly temporal trade route.

However, my concern extends beyond just profits on this occasion as well. Making a profit is essential to making the negative influence/economic effect kick in when targeting a faction. A large variety of opportunities to cause negative economic and influence effects literally disappeared along with this break, because a vast majority of the trades which could have turned a profit, now turn a loss, rendering this simply no longer viable at all. In short, a common game loop I used frequently has now simply gone.

Among the litany of post-Odyssey threads spelling the doom for anarchy factions, issues like this should be an absolute top priority as one of the few mechanisms for actually hurting non-anarchy factions (and supporting anarchies indirectly or directly if in power).

Much the same can be said of Thargoid Tissue Sampling. Yet another thing I did quite frequently which is now, basically, broken.

In short: The fact the economy is totally unbalanced (and rebalancing it is difficult) is no reason not to fix basic mechanics which simply do not work.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Leaving your last bit of BGS considerations aside for a moment (they are indeed valid aswell) I suspect game balance is the main issue here. At least until smuggling features get revamped somehow so to differentiate them enough with some serious risk attached that can not easily be circumvented, like notoriety or some such, or making smuggling runs somehow take longer to deliver thereby justifying the higher reward too. But if that 10K/profit was to make it back with the gameplay as is it would de facto become the meta for players doing trading. We players are all quite quick to catch on with the best profit avenues and I suspect that the current extra gameplay challenge of smuggling would really not be a challenge at all anymore.
 
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Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Jmanis said:
I'm not sure the fact people are comparing single and multiplayer games is necessarily relevant though.

Going back to my old favourite, calculating the price of smuggled goods correctly is an issue independent of whether a game is single player or not. Granted, the issue of sourcing the base price of goods from a remote system is a consideration, at least for that specific issue it's not relevant.

By way of reminder, the issue with smuggling is that Illegal goods incorrectly accrue the -25% price debuff usually applied to Stolen goods. This makes it nigh on impossible to turn a profit. Can you turn a profit? Yes, but it's in the order of less than 1k/tonne, but usually more like -2k/t loss (depending on the good). Before this bug was introduced, you could get 5k/t profit on particular low-volume goods, up to 10k/t profit.

In essence, this means, there's a logic statement somewhere that goes:
Sale price = ($basePrice + $demandEffect + ($isIllegal * $basePrice * 0.1) + ($isStolen * $basePrice * -0.25)) * ($statefulFactors)

... where either $isStolen isincorrectly set to True (1) before evaluation, or the logic is incorrect and the $isStolen condition is evaluating true because $isIllegal is true. Anything more complex than this is, well, unnecessarily complex and poorly implemented.

Either way, these are straightforward issues which simply shouldn't exist in a game as "substantial" as people make out it is. It's the sort of bug I'd expect to exist in an early access game, or one of these other indy, solo-experience games. That's the risk with big projects, bugs in fundamental mechanics are much further reaching and hold much more impact, and therefore it's even more important to get it right.
Click to expand...
You'd made a comparison between a SP game and alleged MMO - which I commented on.

The 'favourite gripe' above is another issue altogether.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Viajero said:
Fair enough. Leaving your last bit of BGS considerations aside for a moment (they are indeed valid aswell) I suspect game balance is the main issue here. At least until smuggling features get revamped somehow so to differentiate them enough with some serious risk attached that can not easily be circumvented, like notoriety or some such, or making smuggling runs somehow take longer to deliver thereby justifying the higher reward too. But if that 10K/profit was to make it back with the gameplay as is it would de facto become the meta for players doing trading. We players are all quite quick to catch on with the best profit avenues and I suspect that the current extra gameplay challenge of smuggling would really not be a challenge at all anymore.
Click to expand...
I disagree it's a matter of balance at all.

Standard trade can turn up to 35k/t profit, and there's numerous standard trade routes offering between 8-15k/t, and others between 15-35k/t profit

These include silver, gold even bauxite, but also others like military fabrics.

10k/t profit margins on BM trades rely on very specifi circumstances and, typically, can't turn out volume of trade, because they rely on goods like nerve agents and other low volume goods, and also reliant on specific power/ state and faction arrangements, just like many of the best standard commodity trades.

10k/t would be nothing new... but critically for the BGS the only way to achieve good profit trades while also delivering negative effects, with the sacrifice being that you could be doing better trades, in exchange for doing that negative impact.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Viajero
Jmanis said:
I disagree it's a matter of balance at all.

Standard trade can turn up to 35k/t profit, and there's numerous standard trade routes offering between 8-15k/t, and others between 15-35k/t profit

These include silver, gold even bauxite, but also others like military fabrics.

10k/t profit margins on BM trades rely on very specifi circumstances and, typically, can't turn out volume of trade, because they rely on goods like nerve agents and other low volume goods, and also reliant on specific power/ state and faction arrangements, just like many of the best standard commodity trades.

10k/t would be nothing new... but critically for the BGS the only way to achieve good profit trades while also delivering negative effects, with the sacrifice being that you could be doing better trades, in exchange for doing that negative impact.
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Only took 10k as a « good » profit because you stated it as so. It doesn’t change my argument though. Replace 10k in the post by any margin you think may be more competitive on average than your regular trade margins.
 

Sighman

Sighman
boppa_ said:
All of which detracts from the subject of the OP. Which I suspect is the motive.

I think what you're asking is a valid question. Where are the feature and content updates? The story being rolled out currently is all well and good but adds nothing (yet) to the game that doesn't already exist as a tried-tested-and-got-bored-of-it existing feature. Development are hamstrung to focussing on fixing Odyssey so that more people buy it. But at what point does it become 'fixed'?

Wishful thinking: maybe the update this week, seeing as it's coming to Horizons too, lays the groundwork for something new. A new weapon, ship, SRV, ** something...**
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Answered here (today) by Sally

Elite Dangerous Update 7 Progress

Are we there yet?... Are we there yet?.... Oh.... wait, it's only Tuesday. Oooops, too keen. Carry on everyone. p.s. Morning Sally. Keen as mustard at the crack of dawn, spectacular effort 🦢
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
 

[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_

[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_
Sighman said:
Answered here (today) by Sally

Elite Dangerous Update 7 Progress

Are we there yet?... Are we there yet?.... Oh.... wait, it's only Tuesday. Oooops, too keen. Carry on everyone. p.s. Morning Sally. Keen as mustard at the crack of dawn, spectacular effort 🦢
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
Click to expand...

Thanks, I hadn't seen that. I wouldn't really take it as an answer though, really just re-affirming the assertion that 'Fix' comes before and at the expense of 'Add'.

o7
 
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