What do Credits actually mean?

Ouberos

Ouberos
The current crop of Cr per hr threads has got me wondering about our humble currency. It's a sci-fi staple, to be sure but what does it mean? The Credit?

As far as I can tell the term has a Latin root refering to the trust held between two people when a deal has been made but not settled. The deal places one party in debt to the other while providing extra resource for the indebted to complete their task. The debt is then settled, transferring the Credit and any extra charges back to the Creditor. The trust is dissolved and everyone's a winner.

Is this how it works in the future? Is the Credit a measure of indebtedness? If so who is generating this exponential debt across the galaxy and what are they securing it against?

Or is the Credit simply a catch all name for a currency? Does this mean that some credits are worth more than others? Could that explain why some ships are reduced cost?

Perhaps, given the constant Grind we endure in the Elite universe the Credit is simply a unit of time encapsulated into a spendable form. Maybe this would explain the rush to stamp out exploits which transform the credit = hours into credits per hours?

Are there any accountants about that could help me understand?
 

Rob At Work

R
It's like a bitcoin. The reality is that it is totally worthless but if you can stir up enough emotion and somehow stimulate demand people will follow people and it becomes a bubble, which will pop in the end, but lets just see how big we can get it in the meantime - for the LOLZ..
 

JohnRoberts

JohnRoberts
In this context, Credit is the name of a currency. (I presume its the Pilots Federation currency, because its hard to believe that the Federation and Empire use the same one)

I dont think credits are supposed to directly reflect how many hours you spend in game. You're supposed to be able to earn more by trading smart, or taking on harder challenges. Its also the case that more expensive ships have better earning potential. Missions get nerfed because they are pay out dis-proportionally in regard to how long, how much skill, and how much risk is involved.
 

verminstar

Banned
verminstar
What do credits mean? Freedom to do what ye want in whatever ship ye want...not like theres a shortage of stuff to grind like mats, oh my the mats are just an epic in themselves and thats an entirely seperate issue from credits...credits are just another piece of the jigsaw and without them, it holds everything else up and costs time. Credits save time ergo they mean freedom to get moving on other things that no amount of money can buy ^
 

MadDogMurdock

MadDogMurdock
Currency is an act of faith.
It relies on all users believing that the piece of paper, plastic, metal, or just a number on the screen has an inherent shared value as a means of exchange.

The object itself is a piece of credit (of the nominal value printed on it) that the issuer of the currency owes you.

Originally, the coins had the inherent value of the metal they were made of and the ruler's face stamped on it was the guarantee that all the coins were made the same way with the proper materials and amounts.
Paper money replaced that with a guarantee that if you went to the central bank that they would swap that piece of paper for its notional value in precious metal (typically Gold).

Nowadays, there is absolutely nothing backing up a currency other than our shared faith in its nominal value and the government that produces it.
 
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Rob At Work

R
Interesting! So if you went to Bitcoin and cashed it in - all you would get is bits in return - BITS OF WHAT THOUGH?

A graphics card perhaps?
 

SunnyD

S
In the context of a video game, an in-game currency such as credits and their generation are considered a "gating factor" with the sole intention of preventing players from accessing some form of content before it is "intended".

Basically credits can be considered a metric the game developer set in place to determine whether a player is "ready" to acquire some piece of content, usually in the form of an item, gear, or in this case a ship. The definition of "ready" in the case of Elite Dangerous is that the player has spent time at lower levels of the game system understanding the basic mechanics of things like ship flight and combat mechanics, the mission system, NPC personalities and tactic and so on. This understanding is implied to be required as "content" skill requirements are intended to scale upwards as the player progresses, thereby needing better "gear" in order to remain competitive within the game.

The secondary purpose of a currency like credits is to allow for the player to feel a sense of accomplishment within the game for achieving certain goals, such as earning enough credits to purchase a better tier ship or appropriate upgrades to your existing ship. The reason for this is so that game developers can perpetuate the cycle of learn-earn-explore when it comes to content, which also eases the burden of creating unique content for a title at every point by allowing the same content to be used just at a slightly higher difficulty threshold.

So yeah, in-game currencies are really just a psychological thing game devs use to prolong existing content while making the player feel like they've accomplished something.
 
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Roybe

Roybe
Credits are rewards for playing. Pretty simple idea. Just like a job, you are rewarded for the time you spend out of your life, doing something that you would not normally do for free. Just like a job, we constantly check our comfort level doing that thing, against the time we could spend doing something else.


The interesting part of this is that each person has their own comfort level in what they are doing.

In games, there are 'punishments' and rewards. When these are severely out of balance...players either will not play (not enough pay for the 'job' at hand) or the credits are meaningless within the game...and no one pays attention to them.

Currently, the argument is that there is to much 'pain' and not enough reward. Look at it this way...if you are struggling to upgrade any ship...then the possibility of loss (rebuy cost) is problematic. If it is taking you hours to recoup that loss...then you are effectively locked out of playing risky content. It took you 15 hours to get that 300k in credits, why risk losing 5 hours with a combat death?

<shrug> in short, that is the problem. Everyone has ideas on how to fix these issues...some do not even think they are issues.....all I knpow is that I am glad that new players do not have to deal with the lack of credits that the people did from beta...and release times.
 

Barking_Mad

Barking_Mad
Along these lines.

>I only play this game every few months to get the easy money then complain and leave when it's over.
>I know, right? Me too!


>Some of us would love to play the game just having fun, even doing silly, dangerous things, but without the stressful aspect that you'll have to grind for a rebuy every time you blow up the ship. Not to mention even just getting and outfitting it can already take tens to hundreds of hours of stupid, mindless grind that many people just don't have the time to go through.


>Personally I'd be really happy with a "fully isolated" sandbox/cheat mode where you could only interact with other sandbox players and where you couldn't influence the "outside world" (so you couldn't contribute to CGs, powerplay, etc. - you could "attend", but it would have no effect).


>I'd love to be able to just jump in the game, try out different equips and play with them, but I have no interest grinding to accumulate all this stuff in the regular game.
Click to expand...

Whiners.
 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
Ouberos said:
The current crop of Cr per hr threads has got me wondering about our humble currency. It's a sci-fi staple, to be sure but what does it mean? The Credit?
...
Or is the Credit simply a catch all name for a currency? Does this mean that some credits are worth more than others? Could that explain why some ships are reduced cost?
...
Are there any accountants about that could help me understand?
Click to expand...

Not an accountant, but I am a sci-fi fan and an amateur money historian, so I can probably help.

Yes, the "credit" is one of those universal, catch-all sci-fi words that is used when one wishes to discuss a certian concept (in this case, money) without wishing to go into a lot of detail explaining exactly what the thing is. Just like everyone knows a "blaster" is a futuristic gun of some kind, without going inot the technical details of exactly how things work.

Now, for the history lesson.

Money has always been a compromise between convenience and security. Because, as a general rule, the more conveninet money becomes, the easier it becomes for someone to steal or counterfeit it.

Pre-monetary civilizations traded using barter. Barter is terribly inconvenient, but it's very secure: it's really easy to tell if the cow you're being given is a counterfeit, plus cows are rather awkward to steal.

Then they invented coins. Coins are much more convenient than cows, but they're relatively easy to lose, and a skilled craftsman can fake them. PLus, since every city issued their own coinage, a travelling merchant needed moneychangers to swap between the various coinages.

Then a couple of millennia later, banknotes came along. Much more convenient than lugging around a bagful of heavy coins, but less secure: there's theft and counterfeiting, plus they're less durable in the event of natural disaster (fire, flood, etc).

Then came electronic money - credit cards, debit cards, SVCs of various kinds (like Hong Kong's Oyster card). Much more convenient to use than lugging around a wallet full of cash, but it's even less secure: you can lose your PIN and lose access to your money, you can have the card stolen and your account drained to zero real quick, or hackers could even steal all your life savings without you even realising it had happened.

And so, to the future. This trend of increasing convenience and decreasing security cannot continue forever. I am assuming, from a sci-fi point of view, that electronic money was the nadir of insecurity: after this, people started demanding more and more security, without losing much of the convenience. And so we end up with a monetary system like that in the ED universe: it's clearly entirely cashless, non-physical in nature (there are no coins, banknotes or similar value-stated artifacts changing hands) yet there is clearly more security around it than around 21st century electronic money. You can't simply give money away, for example; all money has to be exchanged at a certified money-exchanging venue, and you as an individual can only deal with a large social/political entity, as represented by the minor faction system. Perhaps their is something analogous to the bitcoin-like blockchain security arrangement in place, that works invisibly in the background of every transaction.

Credits can be seen as a transference of ownership of debt - in much the same way as modern money is. Yet, the way they function in ED is much more like the traditional view, of money as a store of value.

Credits are universal, not under the control of any government. The lore explains the existence of the "Bank of Zaonce" as the galaxy's monopoly issuer of credits; it is their triangular logo that you see at the bottom of the transaction screen. There was some talk early in development of each of the superpowers getting their own currency (separate Fed, Imp and Alliance credits, with Galactic credits for the Indies) but this was deemed to add an unnecessary complication, so the idea was scrapped.

However, we now already have numerous "alternate currencies" in ED: mats. Like credits, they require time investment to earn. And now with the mats traders, we even have good old fashioned moneychangers, whose exchange rates would put the most extravagant exorbitant moneychangers in the ancient world to shame. So in that sense, ED has not one currency system, but dozens; the only thing that is missing is a conversion between the various mats and credits.
 

Yaffle

Volunteer Moderator
Yaffle
It is a means of exchange as all fiat currencies are, simply a method to reduce items to a common denominator for value.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Credits are ships, modules and rebuys. Fuel, repairs and munitions are negligible by comparison.

If you want to own 2 or 3 variations of each ship as I do, you will need a lot more credits than can be reasonably made without exploiting.
 

sollisb

Banned
S
Aashenfox said:
Credits are ships, modules and rebuys. Fuel, repairs and munitions are negligible by comparison.

If you want to own 2 or 3 variations of each ship as I do, you will need a lot more credits than can be reasonably made without exploiting.
Click to expand...

A decent Combat ready Cutter is going to run you 1.4bn or so credits.

Given you already have access to it, how long (in hours) should it take to actually be able to afford to buy it and kit it?

Now divide 1.4bn by your number and you get what credits you need to make per hour to achieve it.

And then ask yourself, if that time, is value per game time per your time? ie: Is it going to take you too much of your gaming time to achieve what you suppose is the best ship in the game.

Someone is ready to tell me at this point that they like to take it slow, and still others will want to tell me they like it faster. And there-in lies the problem for FDev. Creating a system that averages the income. After creating that average, you add in little incentives that help the player along, to keep them intersted, to keep them at the point of 'I'm nearly there'.

If at any time your player feels '&**&* this I'm getting nowhere' then there are 2 scenarios; 1. The game is too grindy, and 2. The player is expecting too much.

So, how do you know which is which? By interacting with your playerbase and averaging across the various play styles.

Credits allow you to buy ships and modules etc in E:D but they don't in any way infer ability or skill. But ships and modules so not reflect skill or ability either.. So it's a conundrum based on flaws. E:D is a freedom to do what you want etc, within the confines of the FDev universe.

The mistake is thinking that your method of accruing credits is the right way, or indeed, mine is the wrong way. because at the end of the day neither of us any better than the other. There is no 'Im a higher level than you' in Elite.

You can please some of the players some of the time, and sometimes please all the players at one time, but you'll never please all players all the time. Find your mean averages and go with that. if they're correct the majority of the player base will be happy.

<o
 
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