To Frontier: what are multicrew exploration rewards supposed to be?

marx

marx
Ever since it was implemented in the first beta of Chapter Four, multi-crew exploration never rewarded the crew's effort with anything. No credits, no rank progression. (Also no tags, but that is probably for the best.) To make sure, neither after the session, nor when the host sells the data. As such, with there being no rewards at all, nobody ever joins crew for exploration twice. So, what I'd like to ask Frontier, is this meant to be this way, or is it a bug?

I'm wondering because despite multi-crew exploration being stated as one of the goals of the Chapter Four exploration update, this has been present for eight months, with no official word on it. I reported it throughout versions in the old system, and also in the new one, where others have joined in as well. (See here.) With no action taken on it and no response whatsoever, I'm starting to think that this might not be a bug, but working as intended. However, the last official word we've heard on this was from this post by Will Flanagan, 2018. Sept 12: "This allows wings or commanders in multi-crew to engage in exploration together, each earning credits and exploration rank and making the process more efficient."
Does this still hold true, or did the design decision change later on?

I do hope it's a bug that will eventually be fixed, because I would like to host my ship for crew, but as there has been no word on this since 2018 November, it would be good to finally know if it is or isn't.
 

Crank Larson

Crank Larson
Multi-crew was never intended to bring in rewards for explorers (there isn't really any reasonable way such could be implemented - you can't share a first discovery, for example). The idea is that those who wanted to join someone on the far side of the galaxy to see whatever cool thing they've found are now able to. Not everything in E: D is about credits. At least, that was always my understanding.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
Crank Larson said:
Multi-crew was never intended to bring in rewards for explorers ..........
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Yet the Will remark quoted in the OP actually infers otherwise. I don't see how someone can earn explo credits when crewing as the commander's credits are only awarded on sale - so will the crew get a payout at that point or will they get it when they exit multi-crew even though the commander might never get to sell the data (death or whatever)?

On the other hand, with wings, I thought a wing-mate gets a proportion (or is it the full value) on selling their data but only for systems they were in when the scanning was done. Presumably the wingmate can get credits even if the scanning commander is unable to sell their data?

Clarification from F D would be welcome I think.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Presumably, the reward for MC'ing on an exploration ship is getting to see things thousands of Ly distant without having to make any effort to visit them.

Also, exactly what sort of "effort" does somebody MC'ing on an exploration ship make?

Is gazing idly out of a window something we now consider worthy of reward?
 

marx

marx
Whenever I told people who joined my ship that the game won't give them anything for helping me explore, they would all quit. There was just one player (out of 25 or so) who said he just wanted to take a look around for a few minutes anyway.
Can't say I blame them, of course.

Oh, and to clarify another thing for those who are unfamiliar with it: if a crew member uses the FSS / DSS to scan / map a body, it is the host that gets the rewards for this.

Imagine if the only reward for combat MC would be "well you got to hone your skills without having to travel here and risking your own ship", and all the rewards would go to the host.
 
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Hanerib

Hanerib
Where do you explore? Do you mind if your crewmate needs to go make coffee, listen to music, and have a nap during the mission? How do you feel about holographic smoking inside the cockpit?
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
DrewCarnegie said:
Can you give them control of the J button? Pressing that a few hundred times should be a reward in itself :ROFLMAO:
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I hear Nintendo have released a custom gamepad especially for exploration in ED.

NES%20one%20button%20controller.jpg
 

zimms

zimms
It's most likely not worth fixing at the moment and waste man hours on it. If 2020 really brings space legs I assume a lot of that would have to change anyway.
 

ThargoidLove

Banned
T
It's another FDev joke. I joined a multi crew the other day, the completed the mission or whatever, and I immediately got a 30m CR reward for doing absolutely nothing. Another example of FDev dumbing down the game for the casuals.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
Well, first they would need to remove speed/throttle limits on both the FSS, and the DSS to allow crew members to do something useful.

Then the commander can pilot and the crew can discover things.

The point was to allow these two modules to be used by crew members, and to share the rewards, Sandro said in a livestream something like

"We could never give multicrew rewards before, because we couldn't really see if you did anything - now we have these new systems that crew can use, we can reward them, as we know they were involved in the process, it's great!"

That's not a quote, but the general gist from memory.
 

Cervantes01

Cervantes01
Sadly multi crew is pew pew only, if you join a ship that's exploring you are just a passenger. You might see some interesting things so it's not all bad, just an undeveloped feature.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
Hehe, true....

I laughed when reading a related "Tip of the Day" the Game gives while loading.

Bored on long Exploration trips? Invite another CMDR into MultiCrew to share the experience...
(not kidding, it reads something like that... Share? Share what? Deal with a MultiCrew CMDR asking "what am I supposed to do now? what's in it for me to invest the time?")

MultiPew isn't called MultiPew for no reason.
PewPew only, everything else had no consideration when it was developed by the Intern who was in the wrong place during one of those infamous lunch breaks.

Nice idea, but unfortunately there wasn't a Game Designer on duty when it was implemented. Only the minimal, barebone mechanics as usual.
 

Hanerib

Hanerib
I was serious. Hanging around a few hours in Marx's spaceship would be really cool experience, considering how many times I've seen his name tagged across the galaxy. I tried all multicrew options today, including being tutored, but there were no ships available for anything. I don't use mic for comms, but if I did, you'd hear loud techno. I know all Raxxla stories too, way better than Codex. Is this retirement, wishing for passenger missions, where one self is the passenger.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
I wouldve assumed the reward is the experience. I'm sidetracking a lot at the moment... but going to hit up void hearts eventually... but whole point of going to them is not for credits. If i wanted exploration credits, I'd grab a cobra, throw on a dss and go map all the ELWs in agricultural economies in the bubble.
 

marx

marx
So there's actually some news on this. No, it's not that the community managers I've contacted in private have replied. However, I asked on the exploration subforum if anyone who was going to LaveCon could ask the devs about this there, and turns out Alec Turner managed to do so:

Alec Turner said:
Hey @marx, so I got to ask your question. I forget who, Adam Woods and Steve Kirby I think, but I chatted with everyone (they're all super people and very approachable) so it's become a blur.

Basically the problem was/is that it would be possible for people to earn multi-crew credits but doing absolutely nothing (i.e. join the multi-crew and then go off to work while the pilot scanned systems and handed in the data). Sorry if this doesn't answer your question well, not being especially familiar with multi-crew I wasn't sure how this compared with other multi-crew activities and couldn't really probe deeper. We did chat about the idea of registering the multi-crew members active use of exploration tools like the DSS and assigning a share of the profits based on that. As usual they're clearly interested in the feedback and very willing to give this more thought and add the request to their list but, as you can imagine, the list is LONG.
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There we have it then. This didn't occur to me, because I assumed that the game would register if a scan event is from a crew member and not yourself, but it looks like this might not be - guess I'll have to check the journals to see how it looks.

In the meantime, thanks again to Alec Turner!
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
marx said:
There we have it then. This didn't occur to me, because I assumed that the game would register if a scan event is from a crew member and not yourself, but it looks like this might not be - guess I'll have to check the journals to see how it looks.

In the meantime, thanks again to Alec Turner!
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Very strange considering one of the designers said one of the good things about the new exploration tools would be it allowing multicrew to track things and so make rewards for exploration in multicrew viable.
 
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