Your prediction is about eleven hours late. They halted merits from rares, escape pods, and settlement data this morning.
We are play game, not played by game.
- Thread starter LBV 2012-26
- Start date
It's what you make it. You can mine for an hour. You can trade for an hour. Most of all you can definitely explore for an hour. With a podcast on if you like.
The only thing that's slightly annoying if you are completely casual is the 24 hour limit on missions, because it means unless you play the SAME hour every day, you'll time out for no good reason occasionally. (Accept a bunch of missions 6-7pm Thursday, go system-hop to find the canisters. Now you used up your hour. So if you're going to use another half an hour to drop everything off and pick up the rewards, it better not be at 8pm Friday night)
I have heard about this, I think it was likely because of folk using fleet carriers to load up because you can use the storage on them to get the rare goods to restock without needing to do the traveling. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that if and when they are restored we can still make good merits by trading in them normally.
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I really want to know what fdev want to do
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You can get combat elite by going afk in a mildly engineered type-9 with lots of turrets in a high-res while rotating slightly with 1 unit gold in your cargo.
One of the most profitable activities is expansion trading which can be done while half afk with supercruise assist and a docking computer. I make half a bil an hour doing this while I work if I get lucky on rolling trading missions when i work on my other monitor.
This seems pretty casual. You just need to work from home for it because the game demands constant attention and input.
Needing to perpetually make mindless input isn't hardcore. I just need to align the supercruise and get within 7.5km of the station and request docking permission then slow down.
This isn't a very hardcore experience I just need to exist to make these two inputs constantly and I make half a billion an hour.
It's a grindy experience.
I am not saying that progession in Elite is perfect and should not change.
I am playing the game since 2014. With a lot of breaks, but I guess I played it for ~1000 hours. I am still not Elite in anything. I don't own a fleet carrier. I got a handful of Engineered ships and some spare cash. Like 100 million. So far I didn't kill a single Thargoid and didn't unlock a Guardian Module. I have never been to Sag A. I don't own a single PP module. I am just doing what is fun to me. Some mercenary work, bounty hunting, a little trade here and there. I do not think that even just one minute I spend in game would have been more enjoyable if unlocking stuff required less grind. The game does not get better by adding more stuff that you can unlock faster. In fact, most things you can get in the game are ultimately pointless. What matters is that you are having fun playing.
As I said in the beginning, it's very likely that some better balance and faster progression makes sense in certain areas. I doubt it's going to make the game more enjoyable though.
I am playing the game since 2014. With a lot of breaks, but I guess I played it for ~1000 hours. I am still not Elite in anything. I don't own a fleet carrier. I got a handful of Engineered ships and some spare cash. Like 100 million. So far I didn't kill a single Thargoid and didn't unlock a Guardian Module. I have never been to Sag A. I don't own a single PP module. I am just doing what is fun to me. Some mercenary work, bounty hunting, a little trade here and there. I do not think that even just one minute I spend in game would have been more enjoyable if unlocking stuff required less grind. The game does not get better by adding more stuff that you can unlock faster. In fact, most things you can get in the game are ultimately pointless. What matters is that you are having fun playing.
As I said in the beginning, it's very likely that some better balance and faster progression makes sense in certain areas. I doubt it's going to make the game more enjoyable though.
I agree with you, viewing the game as a canvas for my own thoughts and adventures; All the things that you can do in game are like a tool box with which you can sculpt amusement. I guess this is just as possible with friends in group or open play too, I've not tried that, but I don't see why not.
I've been massively distracted from my actual game by the open games nature and its ganking, thus PvP, but the underlying canvas is still there; PvP takes a massive amount of dedication.
Some people do play 'number goes up' and seem to enjoy it (or enjoy hating it). You can see them an player meets - they often ask the devs 'So how many credits do you have? I have 500 BILLION' and look surprised when the devs don't care.
I think +100% boni to bounty hunting or exploration data are still quite attractive to a lot of players. Of course casual players won't see anything close to those rewards for months/years as things currently stand.I wonder how much action PP would even get if the modules weren't a thing.
I assume most players are in it for their own benefit, not to actually participate in PP - which is why there is such a big outcry about the rank grind atm.
Outside of the couple of betas they were available for everyone, I've never used the Power Play modules and, despite having to face foes equipped with them quite regularly (as a PvP tolerant, often PvP centric, player), have never seen them as incentive enough to have my CMDR compromise his standards and pledge to any power.
They have utility, but they aren't mandatory (the experience accrued from playing the game is far more of a deciding factor, even in direct PvP than the subtle advantages of PP modules) and getting hung up on acquiring them is evidently leading to frustration for you.
Ganking happens in Deciat and at community events if you play in open. Outside of those two environments, In hundreds of hours of trading in open, I've been attacked once, and that was when many many more people were playing. The map is too big for gankers to effectively hunt it haphazardly, and these are typically immediate-gratification players who want the excitement of combat or nothing. They hang out in Deciat, where newbies flock after unlocking their first engineer, so they can slaughter inexperienced players in unengineered ships. Then they grow up and prowl CGs looking for more challenging victims. Then they either fall in with the venerable PVP community and find a way to organize their gameplay, or they declare having reached "endgame" on a game that doesn't have one and go play something else, maybe popping in once in a while to troll old haunts. And, of course, ganking can be avoided altogether by playing in Solo. It's a threat easily managed without having to immediately shield everything with prismatics (which won't prevent ganking anyway).
Perhaps because I'm on fiber my ping gets me instanced with other players, I do see a lot of people in game. Your experience may differ from mine?
I'm looking to understand what happens and learn to negate it as much as possible, when it is unwanted, and to partake in PvP when I do have reasonable odds and the opponent seems like they would be fun to spar with.
Addendum: Well that would mean that they are not ganking I suppose, by the definition of the term
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I see other players occasionally, but they don't fight me; I don't fight them. There are a handful of regularly trafficked systems; you must have found some. I did neglect mentioning several areas of greater concentration just because seeing players there doesn't equal getting ganked. Shinrarta Dezhra, of course. Robigo, Ceos and Sothis. The Colonia region was a little more densely populated by players last I was there (that's the one place I was ganked while trading in open). All engineer systems (Deciat is the only one I have been ganked in, although one guy did ping the shields of one of my Anacondas with a pair of small rails while I was pulling out of Black Hide once. I don't count that as an attempted gank because he had no chance of taking me down with his attack and I just ignored him and went on my way). Now, power stronghold systems and some of the systems that sell rares. The various systems for grinding mats. I see players in these frequently, but I've never been attacked outside the circumstances I mentioned before. Things like Robigo runs and mat grinding need to be done solo anyway just for the availability of docking and the materials being ground.I've got a very fast fibre connection and quite a powerful machine, I'm always instanced with other players, perhaps your experience is very different from mine?
I'm looking to understand what happens and learn to negate it as much as possible, and to partake in PvP when I do have reasonable odds and the opponent seems like they would be fun to spar with.
Addendum: Well that would mean that they are not ganking I suppose, by the definition of the term
In ordinary trade in the open bubble, I see players at a rate I would estimate at once every twelve hours or so, but they aren't gankers. But for trade I don't frequent the high traffic areas because they suck for trade--lower supplies, lower demands, worse corresponding prices. There's no point mining those systems. There's no point exploring them. The only reason to be in them in open is to find other players to fight, really, so unless one is looking for a fight or doesn't know that Deciat is gank alley, one very rarely finds combat. If you're getting ganked every time you try to play casually, I would suggest finding different systems to play casually in.
Elite's a great game for retirees like me, though!
Oh, my home system is right next to Shinrata and there is a lot of traffic here as it is also a material serving station. I'm not griping about ganking, I used to until I learned a little more about it, I'd like for it to not be a thing, but human nature.
Monkeys will be monkeys...
So I figured it might be fun to try to learn to swat gankers, whilst enjoying some fun combat with those who partake in PvP and have a notion of fair play, decent behaviour. I'm a relatively new pilot though, and it's a very steep learning curve, and I'm really barely getting started.
I feel the same was as the OP about some aspects of this game but mainly FC upkeep. I may have an hour or two a week and it's like a 2nd job to come home and grind for the upkeep for a few weeks so I can play a couple days without worrying. I understand the ideology and even having some sort of upkeep, but I have been playing since the beginning of Horizons and am nowhere near a rich player due to the time I can afford to put into this game.
I only play 2 games and have pretty much since the Horizons era launched. Splitting up 4 hours of gametime on the weekends is tough. I know the game is not just "for me" so I take that into consideration, but sometimes it's stressful and games shouldn't be that way. I try to take time away or decide to quit and that makes it even harder to come back to the game. I have shut down my FC willingly a few times now and bought it back. Any type of relief from the upkeep would help even if it was a PP perk. Week free or something. Anyway, done whining. Carry on commanders. o7
I only play 2 games and have pretty much since the Horizons era launched. Splitting up 4 hours of gametime on the weekends is tough. I know the game is not just "for me" so I take that into consideration, but sometimes it's stressful and games shouldn't be that way. I try to take time away or decide to quit and that makes it even harder to come back to the game. I have shut down my FC willingly a few times now and bought it back. Any type of relief from the upkeep would help even if it was a PP perk. Week free or something. Anyway, done whining. Carry on commanders. o7
Elite combat might be more pay-to-win than any other game I've played, not overtly within-game, but because fighting without flight assist is quite difficult without analog control. I'm not sure if a casual KBM player can ever hope to do much good against a practiced HOTAS or HOSAS player. (Granted, I say this having never tried sticks, based solely on how difficult I personally find 6DOF flight to be with KBM). The learning curve is definitely steep, and if I really wanted to compete in PVP, the first thing I would do is find myself a planetary ring and start circling and shooting asteroids with flight assist off until I got good at controlling the ship without flight assist. I think that's probably more important than prismatics, but my opinion is inexpert, because that has never been how I have wanted to spend my time (and/or money).
I keep thinking about letting my carrier go. If I'm playing Elite regularly, I can handle the upkeep, but when I had to wait through most of the Thargoid war for FDEV to get around to fixing Engineering and was unwilling to grind anymore until they did, It drained all my savings and required me to come back and trade enough to save my carrier once in a while when I wasn't enjoying playing. The small conveniences it offers are balanced against a massive expense. I'm holding on to it until I see what the base building/colonizing mechanics will be, and then I'll decide if it's worth hanging on to anymore. It may well not be.
You've already described them as meager rewards, and I can't disagree. If they were easier to get, there is even less reason to do PP than there is currently. What PP needs is additional rewards for the time and effort spent in PP. Perhaps access to previous CG rewards that people missed out on.