+rep for crabs.
Why do the devs keep destroying every form of making income?
- Thread starter rupok
- Start date
+rep for crabs.
No, the problem is Frontier listening to idiotic commentary such as this which has lead to a complete gutting of mission value and enjoyment because a subset of the player base cannot simply allow others to play the game.
No, one has to pass judgement and explain there is only one correct method. And the truely, truely stupid thing is Frontier keep listening to this argument, despite knowing better. Despite knowing what the outcomes are. Despite surely absolutely and totally knowing exactly what these changes will do.
Because there is simply no excuse at this point, for them not to know.
It's just pathetic. And now? So is the mission system. I do not care if a player takes 12 months or 12 days to gain an anaconda or anything else for that matter. It's not relevant to my experience. Nor should it be. For some the destination is more important than the journey, just as the reverse is true.
And I am sick to death of crap being broken because of the same pious and religious approach to the game causing endless mechanics destruction.
Enough already. Do I sound frustrated and annoyed? You bet I am. I will call people on this daft double standard and selfish desire for impediment, any day of the week.
And I will hold Frontier accountable for continuing to blunder through these changes despite knowing full well what the outcomes are at this point.
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AWWWWW that wasn't a very nice tone. Do you happen to play in open under CMNDR CPTSIDDY? It's pretty obvious that you are just going to attack anyone that doesn't agree with them without any real meaningful arguments.
My actions in the bgs absolutely do effect other players. I as a lone wolf pilot have been able to send systems into lock down/war against player groups that I don't agree with for just one example.
On topic. Mission payouts do need to be brought in line like yesterday. Before 2.2 my home systems would give me roughly the same cr/hr for skimmer and hauling 100 ly missions. Now hauling covers operating costs and not much more than that. FD need to decide how fast they want players to progress then balance professions accordingly.
Then after being TOLD.
Then you give me this "aww DJ NOT NICE HERE" poo. Save it for someone who cares.
Your arguments are weak and venal. Your "lock-downs" are barely noticed by anyone, so keep telling yourself that it matters. I, for other hand have done stuff in MMO's, real proper MMO's that were noticed, In grop and solo. so i know what it feels like to have your ego stroked by having your master plan or good luck carrying you to notoriety of the community. In elite, best thing you can have is station named after you, Something that got done to me by goons on a slow day to annoy me.
Your argument might carry some weight when FD separates solo and open play in to different worlds.
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Ahh so it's about your ego, that makes sense. Have some rep for your ego.
Ego, or ego stroking is very big part of MMO's.
That is the core reason why cheaters, dupers and the sort are punished in proper MMO's and not here. There is also a reason why 1000h dull repetitive grind for the +1 Fire Sword of ego stroking is acceptable game mechanics in MMO but not in single player.
There is whole industries made for pleasing ones ego, never underestimate that.
Cannot rep you again. So here's a thumbs up instead. [up]
I don't think Frontier aren't being stupid, it just suits their agenda to not put in the work. Too busy making coaster games probably. Horizons IMO is turning out to be one the worse DLC experiences out there when you consider what it cost and what it's added so far.
I can't believe they had the bold faced cheek to charge as much as a full price game for it and then just not really bother.
I can't see the next season going down well except with the forum faithful if 2.3 and 2.4 aren't smash it out of the park awesome (and I mean awesome to most people, not the forum faithful awesome of a new bobblehead or something).
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I have been spending time increasing my rank for the Federation. Tired of doing mindless trading and in no mood for combat, I hopped in my Beluga and spent 4 hours going from system to system, chaining Federation passenger missions (direct transport missions only, no sight-seeing types). After 4 hours, I completed 19 missions and gained a total of 1,222,678cr (about 64,350cr per mission, average), and about 5 percentage points toward my next Federation rank (going for Vice Admiral). I am Elite rank in Trade and Exploration.
Now, I enjoyed myself (it was my form of relaxing from a stressful workday) but I can definitely see how that amount of work for such little gains could be extremely frustrating -- I was very surprised how little progress I made on almost all fronts. Here's to hoping the mission rewards get fixed soon. [where is it]
EDIT: I should add, the biggest payouts during that 4 hour session were actually from bounties I collected from two separate Elite Fer-De-Lance assassins who came for my passengers that I tricked into fighting me near a station (I would have been toast otherwise). About 250,000cr total.
Now, I enjoyed myself (it was my form of relaxing from a stressful workday) but I can definitely see how that amount of work for such little gains could be extremely frustrating -- I was very surprised how little progress I made on almost all fronts. Here's to hoping the mission rewards get fixed soon. [where is it]
EDIT: I should add, the biggest payouts during that 4 hour session were actually from bounties I collected from two separate Elite Fer-De-Lance assassins who came for my passengers that I tricked into fighting me near a station (I would have been toast otherwise). About 250,000cr total.
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I have probably played a grand total of 4 hours since 2.2 dropped, and have more than likely spent more time looking at this forum than in the game.
I didn't participate in the beta as I pay to play games, not to test them (for more money) for developers. Having played the release though I wasn't really impressed with the merger additions to the game.
I didn't fancy doing missions for peanuts or having to drive around in the incredibly fragile SRV. Grinding/refreshing mission boards for Engineering mats is not much fun.
I've been to Sag A and back and fallen half asleep while the route plotter calculated a 200LY course for 5 minutes at a time at the centre of the galaxy. Black holes are utterly underwhelming and all of space looks really rather samey after 25,000 LY.
Passenger missions sounded fun, until the reports of broken tourist sites and destinations changing came to light. Ever got on a plane and told the pilot you'd like to change the destination? Thought not.
The.story' leaves me behind as it seems to only be for the hardcore players. I wouldn't mind going to see some of the crash sites etc. but getting a ship to a specific planetary coordinate is for me possibly THE most frustrating element of the game.
In short, despite high hopes every new development seems to offer less and less. My initial enthusiasm that saw me buying a HOTAS for the first time in 20 years has well and truly ebbed away. In not sure who FD are making the game for but I don't feel like it's me.
As an aside I think the approach FD take is summed up by the mainly forgotten mess that is PP: It's not very well thought out and mistakes grind for fun. Gameplay is identical regardless of which faction you are with, or where in the galaxy you are located. You can't really accomplished much without the use of external websites and tools. The rewards vs the amout of time you have to put into it are pretty pathetic.
I didn't participate in the beta as I pay to play games, not to test them (for more money) for developers. Having played the release though I wasn't really impressed with the merger additions to the game.
I didn't fancy doing missions for peanuts or having to drive around in the incredibly fragile SRV. Grinding/refreshing mission boards for Engineering mats is not much fun.
I've been to Sag A and back and fallen half asleep while the route plotter calculated a 200LY course for 5 minutes at a time at the centre of the galaxy. Black holes are utterly underwhelming and all of space looks really rather samey after 25,000 LY.
Passenger missions sounded fun, until the reports of broken tourist sites and destinations changing came to light. Ever got on a plane and told the pilot you'd like to change the destination? Thought not.
The.story' leaves me behind as it seems to only be for the hardcore players. I wouldn't mind going to see some of the crash sites etc. but getting a ship to a specific planetary coordinate is for me possibly THE most frustrating element of the game.
In short, despite high hopes every new development seems to offer less and less. My initial enthusiasm that saw me buying a HOTAS for the first time in 20 years has well and truly ebbed away. In not sure who FD are making the game for but I don't feel like it's me.
As an aside I think the approach FD take is summed up by the mainly forgotten mess that is PP: It's not very well thought out and mistakes grind for fun. Gameplay is identical regardless of which faction you are with, or where in the galaxy you are located. You can't really accomplished much without the use of external websites and tools. The rewards vs the amout of time you have to put into it are pretty pathetic.
There are literally thousands of games that can be over in a few hours to a few hundred hours. The one thing I've always cherished the Elite games for is things take a (quasi) realistic amount of time and effort. It might be repetitive effort - but still some commitment. If everything is over too quick, without content being added fast enough, who will be playing still at the mid-point, let alone the end of the 10 year plan(*)? Is a difficult balancing act: Too slow - people can't progress and loose interest, too fast - people burn through the content and loose interest.
OK... that mini-rant aside...
Personally, saying 'it's crab mentality' is actually pretty far off the mark IMHO. My personal gripe about the mission rewards comes down simply to I can't see any economic reason why logically they would be so high? Why would someone pay 100x the price of a good to have it hauled 10ly, that they could source much more cheaply by buying their own bloomin' ship? Yes, it's a game, 'concessions to realism in the name of playability' 'n' all that, but in a series that prides itself on verisimilitude of it's galaxy simulation it's a bit off. High end ship and module prices could also come down a lot with lower mission (and bounty) rewards too. See? I'd be quite happy with people paying 15 million for an Anaconda, rather than 150 million, and 10 million for high-end modules. That's hardly 'I did it the hard way so you have to too' is it?
Personally, I'm very close to the "lose interest" point right now. And I'm not saying this in the "IM QUITTIN IF I DONT GET MY WAY" sense that's quite popular, I mean in the "There is literally nothing interesting left to do here" sense.
I keep coming back to the 3 ratings, and what it takes to do them.
Combat is fun, and your combat rank is prioritized when talking about pilots. There are lots of things tied into combat.. the BGS, and so on.
Trading... isn't really fun per se, but it's an excuse to putter around and see the sights, and (pre 2.x) be rewarded for your efforts.
Exploring is not at all fun, or even interesting. Literal hours of a naked jump-honk-jump-scoop-honk-jump loop. THIS IS GRIND. I've got other things I could be doing when watching Youtube on another monitor. There's the sights you see, but once you've seen one star system you've kinda seen them all. The system is rather limited in what it can generate.
Engineers is not fun. It would be fun if I were working towards a goal, rather than working towards a dice roll. The idea of spending X hours to have it end in meaninglessness through no fault of my own is not engaging gameplay.
The experience of piloting a ship around and doing "stuff" only goes so far.
This makes sense, but what I am absolutely terrified of is that we'll get another trademark Frontier Halfassed Fix (see also: current state of the mission system), and rather than having a holistic solution that fixes the problem, it'll be bandaided by yet another nerf.
And after that, there would be nothing left in the game that is simultaneously something I want to do, and rewards the time spent doing it. The only reason I'm so chained to skimmer runs right now is that they're the only thing that pays.
I keep coming back to the 3 ratings, and what it takes to do them.
Combat is fun, and your combat rank is prioritized when talking about pilots. There are lots of things tied into combat.. the BGS, and so on.
Trading... isn't really fun per se, but it's an excuse to putter around and see the sights, and (pre 2.x) be rewarded for your efforts.
Exploring is not at all fun, or even interesting. Literal hours of a naked jump-honk-jump-scoop-honk-jump loop. THIS IS GRIND. I've got other things I could be doing when watching Youtube on another monitor. There's the sights you see, but once you've seen one star system you've kinda seen them all. The system is rather limited in what it can generate.
Engineers is not fun. It would be fun if I were working towards a goal, rather than working towards a dice roll. The idea of spending X hours to have it end in meaninglessness through no fault of my own is not engaging gameplay.
The experience of piloting a ship around and doing "stuff" only goes so far.
High end ship and module prices could also come down a lot with lower mission (and bounty) rewards too. See? I'd be quite happy with people paying 15 million for an Anaconda, rather than 150 million, and 10 million for high-end modules. That's hardly 'I did it the hard way so you have to too' is it?
This makes sense, but what I am absolutely terrified of is that we'll get another trademark Frontier Halfassed Fix (see also: current state of the mission system), and rather than having a holistic solution that fixes the problem, it'll be bandaided by yet another nerf.
And after that, there would be nothing left in the game that is simultaneously something I want to do, and rewards the time spent doing it. The only reason I'm so chained to skimmer runs right now is that they're the only thing that pays.
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We need to get past these issues. It's not about making companies "rolling" in money more cash by having to have a smaller workforce. That model is best left to Star Wars et al, and best boycotting their ancillary products, T-Shirts et al, that give their product promotion for that standpoint.
To get past the big, heavy conglomerates, small independent bodies have to find inovative ways to get the job done. Beta testing with actual players yields good results, and many players enjoy it. It does provide some "early access" type of revenue, but that supports the development model. Not all capitalist ventures squeeze unfairly on the consumer. This is a way to balance out the books more, which benefits players, and get good feedback. They also run QA etc anyhow, so its not like its just making consumers do other people's jobs. We will not just find issues, but report back on mechanics and events that don't really benefit gameplay.
It's just worth not being TOO cynical about these things. As the big distributors and producers team up into huge heaving empires, its great to see those push their way through with big, bold development models that energise the games market.
Just want to point out that this is FAR less "grind" for materials these days, and lots of helpful hints. Many components you're actually told where they're sold, so it's much easier now. You may already know that and just still not be interested, but just for those reading, it's not like a few months back!
That's again, oddly cynical and not really what we're seeing. Game development of this scale isn't an exact science, it's not an easy science either. Nor can you expect massive changes quickly as each change goes through rigorous testing (and yes bugs still appear). You're best looking at how Elite has changed since last November. It has massively changed, not just in aesthetics (voices, effects, improved graphics), but content. Ignoring planet side, the way missions work, passengers, how we interact with factions, how we customise our ships, all add to the game. It is a very different game from what I originally played. I can't imagine it was as it was now. If you think of the complexity of those development structures, a year's time of work, building on a plan that will run for years, is pretty good.
And for those who complain they're getting bored - few games, especially space games that people play for 2 years straight.
That leaves me to the final point. Grind and nerfs.
I don't think this is just some knee-jerk reaction to whines. This is about balancing and trying to find the balance through community voices and long term goals. This is a long term project, and while there is always new content to come, that old content has to last out. How quickly people can "top end" their gameplay is a problem. Get people who can quickly make it to Corvette, there becomes a limit to what the mentality will do once it reaches it goal. Some will be happy and jaunt around in their best ship, others will feel there's no ladder left to climb and get bored. If missions become too giving, people top-end faster than the game can deliver new content. That's a real problem development wise. Likewise, if payments are too low, people get frustrated, either feeling lack of reward for work, or rebuy costs becoming hard to match. It's a constant balancing match.
I don't know what the answer is, but I suspect a lot of this isn't about apeasing whines, its about the struggle to find the right sort of revenue that balances out with the drive/thirst for content and the laddering of players to the Gold ship(s) at the top.
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I come from playing a lot of flight sims - quite often I was doing other things (like reading/watching TV) at the same time on long flights - so I might be a bit more immune.
One thing though, single player games/sims have pretty much always offered time acceleration as a feature - that was lost with the evil of multiplayer. I'll agree that 'honk and jump' exploration isn't great, but I don't agree that the system is limited in what it can generate, just that it's hampered by that 'realism' thing in what it does generate. For every '18 star, 100 body system, with three terraformables' system, there are 100 'M-class star with 9 icy body' systems out there. Blame our own galaxy (or Froniter's understanding of our own galaxy) for that.
I've eventually got into Engineers. Just by playing I'd easily collected 1000 materials and 500 data items, which gave me a large pool to play with to get what I wanted - I didn't feel that I'd ground... EXCEPT... I will say that shifting 50 tonnes off Lavian Brandy for a certain engineer was the most tedious couple of hours I've spent in any game I profess to like.
I'd suggest that ideally, that could have been the be-all and end-all of the game *IF* it wasn't so hampered by the simplicity of the systems bolted around flying. And I'm blaming multiplayer and the choice of p2p networking for a lot that.
And I've not touched skimmer missions, and essentially gone back to simple trading (not using 3rd part sites) and lurking in combat zones, for the opposite reason - everything else is too easy money.
I'll agree that everything about Elite feels a bit 'half-' at present (and any real depth is too difficult to do due to the multiplayer). Frontier claim to have multiple teams working on multiple projects - so is that 200 on Planet Coaster, and the 2 summer interns on E: D then?
[OK, that's churlish and unfair, I'm sure there are a few people left. Please can they have some more resources from the Planet Coaster kitty? Pretty please?]Actually, I'd pay someone at Frontier a lot of money just to add "if ( mission.commodityType == _T("Biowaste") ) { missionGenerator.scrapMissionOrPickSomeOtherGoodToHaul(); }" to the code...
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I have fun by making money, that's me playing the game and enjoying it
As I said, i gave up playing over a year or so ago, i was fed up constantly struggling for money to get the ship's I wanted and outfit them (I didn't know about the old cash grabs back then). I felt locked behind a time gate, i didn't have 6 hours a day to play.
I came back to the game around the sothis time and wow, money, i could finally buy things. Get an asp and explore, a conda and trade and kill things, it was great. I've played hundreds of percent more since then, that's me playing it my way. I even do power play now as i can afford to spend time doing stuff that doesn't pay money as i can catch up money elsewhere, or at least I could, not so much now.
I really don't like when people with three billion spare moan about new players making money quick, i also get irky when people say they've been playing since launch and only have a cobra, well, that's your choice, you could have had anything you want by now, so you opted not to, that's cool, but don't tell me that the way I want to play is wrong.
Peace and all.
More buff less nerf.
As I said, i gave up playing over a year or so ago, i was fed up constantly struggling for money to get the ship's I wanted and outfit them (I didn't know about the old cash grabs back then). I felt locked behind a time gate, i didn't have 6 hours a day to play.
I came back to the game around the sothis time and wow, money, i could finally buy things. Get an asp and explore, a conda and trade and kill things, it was great. I've played hundreds of percent more since then, that's me playing it my way. I even do power play now as i can afford to spend time doing stuff that doesn't pay money as i can catch up money elsewhere, or at least I could, not so much now.
I really don't like when people with three billion spare moan about new players making money quick, i also get irky when people say they've been playing since launch and only have a cobra, well, that's your choice, you could have had anything you want by now, so you opted not to, that's cool, but don't tell me that the way I want to play is wrong.
Peace and all.
More buff less nerf.
I'm inclined to agree, I think next year is going to be very important for this game.
The shame is FDev clearly have some cool ideas - Powerplay, Engineers and so on are great ideas, just not as well implemented as they could be.
I know for some "casuals" is a dirty word around here but they're the ones, if ED can get them on board, who will buy future expansions and keep this game alive. And as I said earlier, you don't need to keep people playing, you just need to keep them coming back.
Two points from me here, I've kinda head-canoned it that there's all sorts of politics going on between the minor factions. Faction x is paying me a premium to take something to faction y, maybe x owes y a favour and needs to make sure it gets done, maybe x is trying to buy infuence or alliance with y. That's just my personal head-canon hehe.
That said, and this is my second point, is the whole market board economy is kind of whack. I've said this either on Reddit or on here before that there's only really a handful of items that make a decent profit (and that traders are likely to buy and sell), the rest are poor to mediocre. No one would trade clothing at about 544 cr per ton over medical diagnostic equipment which offers near 5k cr per ton.
That's fine. if the game is sold and advertised as such.
It is not. In fact, the game isn't even marked as Early Access on Steam anymore, even though it is decidedly an early access level of quality. And being sold at full AAA-game level prices, and then some when the optional-but-not-really-because-the-game-is-balanced-around-them expansions are added.
Selling a game at $40US + DLC carries certain reasonable expectations.
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OP asks a good question. I'm guessing that they think if a player gets too much money bad things will happen?
Personally the answer alludes me. After coming back from a several month leave from the game due to the monotony, I found the new ways to make good money. Mostly the long distance trading. After actually getting comfortable with having a nice ship and enough for rebuys I am like a bird freed from it's cage. I can now do whatever I want in the game without concern. I am having much more fun now and have been for months.
So to answer your question, I have absolutely no clue why they seem to be holding players back from getting out of the cage if you will. None
I do have a feeling however that they may be thinking along the lines of agent Smith in the Matrix Trilogy where agent smith was disgusted by Neo taking away his purpose.
If it is something like this it is pretty negative and flawed.
Personally the answer alludes me. After coming back from a several month leave from the game due to the monotony, I found the new ways to make good money. Mostly the long distance trading. After actually getting comfortable with having a nice ship and enough for rebuys I am like a bird freed from it's cage. I can now do whatever I want in the game without concern. I am having much more fun now and have been for months.
So to answer your question, I have absolutely no clue why they seem to be holding players back from getting out of the cage if you will. None
I do have a feeling however that they may be thinking along the lines of agent Smith in the Matrix Trilogy where agent smith was disgusted by Neo taking away his purpose.
If it is something like this it is pretty negative and flawed.
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