When did FD giuve up on general game balancing

SurrenderOrHAHA

SurrenderOrHAHA
Ok, first of all, I play ED very irregularly these days. I was very active here during the beta etc.. In game I have 5 weeks game time and during this time ive done the initial trade grinding then exploration, then various missions... etc..
Never played Wings because Its an effort to coordinate play time with the few other grown ups with kids who also happen to play ED.

Anyway, the other day , a friend whos been along since the beginning but with very little gametime (Never got beyond a Cobra mkIII i.e. "noob") joined a Wing with some highly skilled friends.. Then in one evening he earned 10 million creds.
This of course came as a surprise to me. Not because I actually care how much creds other players have, but because of the impact on so many other aspects of the game.. I mean.. why the hell would he ever go asteroid mining for some pocket change, if he can tag a long a wing, do practically nothing and collect 10 mil in a couple hours of play? Hm...
This can't be an oversight by the dev team.. If they allow "noobs" to join a highly skilled Wings group and collect piles of cash there has to be a consious design decision behind it. "We want you to play wings and if you do, you will be so generously rtewarded that you wont do any othe rstuff in the game except tag along these Wings missions". Screw the man hours wasted on trying to add variation to the game by allowing players to earch cash ion more ways...

Maybe Im missing something here.. and yes, i havent logged in here a lot for the last 2 years.. but where does this leave us?
 

Muzz UK

Muzz UK
I reckon we just recreate one thread where you can all go and moan about stuff you don't like... or you can just go and play something else.
Tiresome!
 

Koen

Koen
SurrenderOrHAHA said:
When did FD give up on general game balancing?
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In my opinion: during Gamma in 2014 (remember luxury deliveries?).

But I do not consider this to be a problem. We as players can chose to slowly build up our credits, or to use the shortcuts.

I played for 3 years in a Cobra Mk.3 (my starter ship), never had over a million in credits. Then I went exploring and bought an Anaconda from the exploration data. Then I did passenger missions in late 2017 and became filthy rich in a couple of weeks.

It is all fine, as long as we enjoy it.
 
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Winterwalker

Winterwalker
It leaves quite a few people in quite a few big ships .. eventually realising that you can have at least as much fun, probably more, in a small one?

It's not a regular thing to go bankrupt in ED I think .. but it can happen if you have a bad run of rebuys or buy a ship you can't really afford yet (or can't afford to equip). Some of the high end Corvettes and so on do have rebuy costs of 50M+
 

operant

O
Worry not OP
Fiat currency is no longer the answer to everything.
Barter is back. Your friend still has all the engineer material grind ahead of him. So their 'enjoyment' as not been totally spoiled by the acquisition of quick money.
 

Garris

Garris
So noobs can get a 'conda. Go right to the paint shop, buy a kit, some paints and stickers before they get bored and quit. Double whammy for the game price. Its actually a great marketing strategy.
 

TheSynopticVision

T
I've never been a huge fan of the money trains, but I understand why many people want them.

The problem is: the game without money trains (as it should be the case) should offer engaging and different types of gameplay according to the kind of ship one owns. So, for ex: small-ship specific missions, "scouting" missions only doable on small ships, missions where being quick and nimble is essential, and so on. Conversely, once one reaches a big ship new gameplay opportunities should open: heavy escort missions, war scenarios... If this was the case, the idea of a slower progression would be much better received by the playerbase (players playing a game, let's not forget that), and the jump from Sidewinder to Cobra, from Cobra to Pyhon, and from Python to Anaconda would have a meaning and would change the nature of the game itself (as well as giving a reason to come back to a smaller ship once one has made it to a large one).

The reality is that we've got the exact same gameplay from Sidewinder to Corvette. The only difference is that a bigger ship will have larger cargo (more profit) and/or bigger firepower. So for most people the only way to do progress in the game is to get quickly to the ship that offers most gameplay opportunities/more hauling profit/more firepower/more jump range... I can't really blame them for wanting to do the same activity with the most performing ship.

The problem of balancing the economy should really be solved by giving meaningful gameplay at all scale of wealth. Alas, that'll never happen. So it would be wiser for Frontier to just ramp up those damn CG prizes, and turn them into legal money fountains.
 

RymdLazer

RymdLazer
Balancing belongs in competitive games. Anything "unbalanced" you can replicate if it suits your needs. There's no leaderboard, nothing to win, so who cares?
Do as thou wilt, chum.
 

AbsinthSvK

AbsinthSvK
actually , when you play open and die a lot. Money is crucial, when you dont do exploits extra money is always good.

And money grind is "barrier" to actually enjoy open play with griefers and such as.

Im still a fan of exploits. They are like game events which frontier never deliver.
 
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Jukelo

Jukelo
AbsinthSvK said:
actually , when you play open and die a lot. Money is crucial, when you dont do exploits extra money is always good.

And money grind is "barrier" to actually enjoy open play with griefers and such as.

Im still a fan of exploits. They are like game events which frontier never deliver.
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Been playing in Open for 2 years and a half now, been all over the place including the hot spots. I died once to another player, and it was due to greed and lack of experience.

As for the OP's question, around the later half of 2015 is when things started going downhill with regards to credits.
 
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Imo

Imo
The last thing I remember in terms of balancing in Elite Dangerous was that we were close to a nice balanced game in ED 2.1 when suddenly the Engineers appeared and everything went upside down. D:
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
People kept demanding it become easier to make credits. FD obliged them. Now credits are largely meaningless. GG community.
 

ShadowWolf Kell

ShadowWolf Kell
Winterwalker said:
It leaves quite a few people in quite a few big ships .. eventually realising that you can have at least as much fun, probably more, in a small one?

It's not a regular thing to go bankrupt in ED I think .. but it can happen if you have a bad run of rebuys or buy a ship you can't really afford yet (or can't afford to equip). Some of the high end Corvettes and so on do have rebuy costs of 50M+
Click to expand...

That's because they eventually learn the most fun ships to fly are the small and mediums. :)


I'd say things changed dramatically after the public open only triple elite contest. Even so, there was the luxuries issue, and inexhaustible trading spots that enabled you to make Elite in trading pretty quickly. Things kicked into overdrive with Power Play.

I can't help but laugh at the people who still do CGs for money. That's closer to the old grind now days than anything really. Especially the trade CGs. Even top 5, you can make more running off tourist missions in a few hours with minimal effort. I still see multi million tourist runs within 1500ly, often with stackable options to nearby systems. That's nothing in an AspX, Anaconda and now even a Python.
 
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Trollymctrollerson

T
The problem isn't the credits. The problem is that so much of the game is so ungodly boring that doing those activities for enjoyment rather than credits makes no sense to alot of players. Hopefully 3.3 addresses the tedium that so much of the game suffers from.
 
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