They have done everything that they said the will. So please tell, what was missing from the horizons road map?
Why Frontier are wrong to keep nerfing high credit earning methods.
- Thread starter Zer0cool
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They have done everything that they said the will. So please tell, what was missing from the horizons road map?
There is no original remaining horizons content.
I'd like to take a few moments to thank everyone that complained about the skimmer missions, as I really enjoyed doing them, they were great fun and now have been removed from the game for the second time in the last two years and won't be back until God knows when. I didn't do any exploits, played the game as intended (i.e honestly) and as a result my fun has been nerfed because of the uproar in response to one or two cheaters who were lucky enough to find the one planet in a million where you could game the system.
All major changes in Beyond has been in books since launch of Horizons. As next update will take some serious time to develop (atmospheric planets initial launch most likely), so they got their internal todo with their own desired features. Sandro planned to do C&P revamp for long time. Sandro wanted to do PP revamp (not sure it will get prioritized though) for 2 years now.
Maybe ED does reflect reality after all. Hmmm.
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I do not agree with your definition. To me an exploit is simply taking advantage of some system or feature that clearly wasn't intended for some personal gain. In essence defeating the spirit of the game...
What I will say though (and have done for several yrs now) is ED lacks a risk reward system by which players can legitimately test their skill to make high profits at the risk of heavy losses.
Just had a look, not convinced, you would need to pull stats and provide more than "look at the data".
We spike every single weekend and drop every Monday.
And there is an overall push up due to the 3.0 release.
Just a rough look at your chart, Yamik posted on the 3rd, 3rd to 4th we saw ~9% increase.
But the weekend before, the same period Sat to Sun saw a +15% increase?
You make some very good points.
The only one I'll disagree with is that a lot of people flying without rebuy. I would say only the inexperience do that.
As a trader/hauler I look at it this way:
How many hours of playing (without exploits or using loopholes) should I have to spend playing the game to recoup the cost of my upgraded Anaconda?
20 hours? 40 hours? 100 hours? I would prefer 20 hours, and that would equate to 30-50 mill per hour.
Since it's such an awesome ship shouldn't I be able to make good money with it?
Like, better money than I could with a much smaller Python?
The answer should be yes, but currently it's no (assuming I'm not willing to sit in supercrsuie for an hour doing nothing.)
In fact, it's sad but I can make more money with a Python per hour than a conda.
This is because some of the highest paying trade/transport missions are to outposts.
And, it's also sad that new players in sidewiders are offered 2 and 4 ton missions that payout the same amount that experienced players get for 100-200 ton missions.
I truly hope FDev re-balances the game to make prices for hauling goods more linear so those of us with big ships can make big money.
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Fact you don't know FD fixed PayPal week ago indicates you really don't care or follow game news.
Almost none of these players use MT. They don't stick around. They even openly say so.
Why is that sad though?
You can literally go places the Conda can't, why shouldn't it be more profitable in certain situations.
Why does the biggest ship absolutely have to be the most profitable all the time under all circumstances, the Conda has value far beyond it's earning potential, not least of which being the most flexible "do everything" ship in the game.
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That's not quite true. If one or two 'cheaters' were doing it and kept it to themselves, none of this would have happened.
But when popular YouTubers advertise the fact on a video because clicks, views, subs and donations are more important to them, then thousands of people flock to these sites and flags get thrown up on Frontiers servers.
A lot of people don't seem to realise that these very skimmer missions with the same rewards were in 2.4 also. They've been around for a while.
But when 3.0 launched, certain people (who shall remain nameless) go off actively looking for expoits and ask others to help them find some so they can advertise them. I guess this one was found amongst that search and then they let the cat out of the bag and that killed your missions.
Specially with advices like: suicide your ship so you don't have to do the trip back to the station. That is a clear sign that the 'gameplay' is not that 'intended'..
"And, it's also sad that new players in sidewiders are offered 2 and 4 ton missions that payout the same amount that experienced players get for 100-200 ton missions."
Really? So new players in sidewinders are making 5-7million for single jump 6ly cargo runs now are they? Because that's what I get hauling 180-192 tons of gold/platinum/palladium in a couple of systems where I'm allied to the right factions - which is an easy 30-40million per hour. It's this kind of fallacious hyperbole that tends to undermine any discussions like this, as well as the credibility of the poster.
Really? So new players in sidewinders are making 5-7million for single jump 6ly cargo runs now are they? Because that's what I get hauling 180-192 tons of gold/platinum/palladium in a couple of systems where I'm allied to the right factions - which is an easy 30-40million per hour. It's this kind of fallacious hyperbole that tends to undermine any discussions like this, as well as the credibility of the poster.
Because that's perception players have gotten from other games with very on rails progression systems
And this have been major cause of pain and salt for years on Elite.
Well exactly. Frontier had to stop the bleeding, they just had to. I guess taking the missions offline was the quickest way to stop that while they take time for figure out how to cure it.
Perhaps it will also send them (Frontier) a message that the reason people feel the need to flock to these places (apart from the need of some for instant gratification and that feeling of entitlement) is because the Mission Board rewards scaling is a little out of whack. It doesn't need adjusting by much but, for example, I'm double Elite with my Explorer rank almost there for the triple. I'm Admiral and King ranked and sitting on a few billion. Why am I seeing mission offers for Boom Data with a reward of 66,000 credits ? I'd like to immerse myself in the missions and I don't need the extra cash but I also feel I want to get something back for my time investment. Immersion and excitement would cover that (such as long range smuggling - but Frontier nerfed that a while ago). But I'm not ferrying data from one system to another for that.
It's not even about the credits. Give me an exciting and challenging mission and I'd probably do it for free (well not really, but you know what I mean).
The reason I dont have challenging gameplay is because I'm rich and have big tricked out ships. I could jump in a Cobra and give myself a challenge but why is that put on me ? (Actually I could jump in a Cobra and spice things up a bit. Feeling vulnerable in the game does add that spark to it.)
- Mission Board payouts (credits) need better scaling based on the CMDR.
- Rep rewards should not go more than +++. Anything above that is too quick.
- Anarchy systems should not be nursery's that newbies can safely get through without a scratch.
- AI needs beefing up to rebalance the step up in engineering and then some. Base it on people's ranks and give me Elite ranked NPC Corvettes and Cutters in wings to battle with.
- Give me smuggling missions where pirates and feds are on my tail and one scan fails all my missions and I have to get into stations stealthily to avoid being killed.
- Make some Thargoid gameplay involuntary.
- Get serious with C&P. Right now it's a little soft from what I've experienced.
3.0 is one of the best updates to Elite since Horizons imo but it needs some tweaking and I'm cautiously optimistic that they might actually get it done soon. For my own longevity in the game, I hope so.
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Two issues being exploited in my mind
There was an issue where not enough skimmers would spawn at a base for you to complete the mission. I think FDev forgot to cap the number of refreshed skimmers to the max number ever available to one mission.
I watched one of the videos where the task was to destroy the skimmers at various locations but all against one faction. The missions did seem to be at several different planets in the system, but the kills were all granted from the one location.
My other two complaints... Board Hopping to refresh the missions and destroying your ship to maximise credits per hour.
There was an issue where not enough skimmers would spawn at a base for you to complete the mission. I think FDev forgot to cap the number of refreshed skimmers to the max number ever available to one mission.
I watched one of the videos where the task was to destroy the skimmers at various locations but all against one faction. The missions did seem to be at several different planets in the system, but the kills were all granted from the one location.
My other two complaints... Board Hopping to refresh the missions and destroying your ship to maximise credits per hour.
I do agree in most of the cases, but when you have 2B sitting there in your account, definitely getting paid more would not add anything to it. Whay would you do with 20B that you haven't done already?
Yep - not up to date on the Paypal fix. Glad you straightened me out on that.
But as for your claim that "none of these players us MT" you have NO evidence for that other than anecdotal comments on a forum. It would be possible dig up stats on player active player populations and related revenues for multiple MMOs if you'd like, but I'm pretty sure you have your mind made up.
More players = more revenue for MT. The industry is built on it. Are you seriously saying "keep the player base small" because dedicated grinders buy more than casuals? That's silly. It's a business, take your money from ALL customers. Ever been to Starbucks? Lots of regulars will sit and occupy a chair on a single coffee every day for hours. Some mom rushing her kids to school will drop 20$ because Suzy forgot her homework. You're Starbucks, you want everyone's money. Elitism does not mix well with a business.
I disagree, and here is why. First though I will say the skimmer stuff was just insane and way over the top. To people that are aware of how ED is, it was fairly obvious this was going to get nerfed, especially one it became "public knowledge" all over the forums.
But here is why not calling it an exploit is correct.
First off FDev made skimmers respawn like and in fact you didn't even need to fly away or re log. Just wait less than a min just sitting there and they respawned constantly for me. This was done because there were problems with skimmer missions be able to be completed easily.
It's always best to look at things like this from the point of view of a new(ish) player, and this is why.
If you start playing ED you first days you will learn mission boards offer many mission usually, and some systems have way more factions than others. And you can learn you can stack all missions to 20 at a time. Except those limited of course. And if you pick the right locations you can finish them all at once.
Then you'll probably learn at the same time, or quickly after depending on your style, that you can go to a nav beacon or res site for some combat and $$$$.
Then you'll at some point learn about wars and CZ's.
And once you learn about CZ's and Res sites and beacons, you'll learn you can just sit here all day and things will respawn. And if you're doing massacre missions you can just sit in this one spot, killing constantly, endlessly, respawning npc's to complete your missions. (And at times before, exactly the same way skimmers were done now), and the player learns that these are the mechanics of the game and how to do missions.
So by your definition someone who just picked up the game and found this by accident, after learning how every other mission works in this game, is an exploiter and cheater. Nope sorry that doesn't fly. And that is why FDev rarely if ever punishes the types of events.
And to be perfectly clear here there is no exploit, no breaking of the game, no making it do weird stuff. No once again, the algorithm FDev uses for the mission boards found a nice system tucked away with max # of factions, setup in a way to cause this mission to spawn, and in ungodly amounts. And on top of that it spawned ungodly reward levels too. It was a completely random, unintended side affect of their programming working exactly as they made it too. It just went over the top for FDev so they feel the need to change it.
This is why it was simply removed and will most likely come back either reward capped, or stackin capped just like massacres were changed. You know back when massacre missions were the go to stack for creds. Except those counted every kill for every missions. As far as I could the skimmer missions didn't work like this. You didn't go kill 5 skimmers and complete all the missions. That is why they had to be respawned so much.
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From Steam Chart:
Feb 25 peak users 8744
Feb 27 peak users 9731
March 4 peak users 14404
March 5 peak users after skimmer missions killed 10718
It is fair to say a bump in users occurred Feb 25-March 5.
It is fair to say that the greatest peak occurred when the gold rush was in full swing.
I do not have data on player distribution within the game environment, my hypothesis is that the extra load was in the gold rush region.
The difference between the Sunday and Monday evening populations is greater than a 20% bump (my estimate was conservative).
Both Sunday and Monday evenings are work/school nights, there should not be a substantial baseline difference in active populations at that time.
http://steamcharts.com/app/359320#1m
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