Here's some aspect of the game that i would tweak. Those are some observations I made in my first 2 months of playing this game :
1. Once i spawned near an outpost, hit the boost then out of nowhere a ship spawns right in front of me, I couldn't avoid it and killed it. I got a 7 days wanted bounty on my head. To avoid most of those accidents, if your hardpoints are down, you get no bounty on your head and you collect no bounties for collisions.
2. Make powerplay more intuitive, so if a trigger is met, from that moment forward until the end of the cycle, the merit rewards are cut in half for kills or deliveries. That way people will move on instead of pushing to 2000% when only 100% is needed.
3. If I kill an enemy agent in one of my fortified system I get no reward and only a very small bounty (around 400cr). This is not fair ...
4. So far i've seen only 1 or 2 ways in this game to earn maximum credits and I find the gameplay experience very unbalanced. For powerplay, you need undermining at 30 merits/kill, everything else is a waste of time. Even if you choose powerplay and you aim for rank 4, that 50 millions is still nothing compared to what you'll get if you invest all that time doing extraction sites. 99% of the missions and the majority of powerplay activities make you feel like a donkey chasing after a carrot on a stick, and that carrot is rotten by the way.
Those who choose to do missions, should earn the same credits/hour than those who choose to run extraction sites
Those who choose to haul stuff in powerplay, should earn the same amount of merits/hour than those who choose to undermine systems.
Also powerplay rewards should be balanced compared to other activities. Only once the game is balanced that there will be true diversity.
5. Powerplay merit points should degrade slower after the cycle, maybe 50% loss after a month !? I like the game but i also like other games. If the loss is too severe, i'll never progress and committing 100% of my free time to this game, just to get that rank 4, is unhealthy and very bad game design. What's the point of running after the carrot if you can't get it.
6. Exploring is a bit dull here's 3 things to improve it a little :
Add a jukebox into this game so we can play our own music. We were able to do it in Grand Theft auto San Andreas (2004), why not implement it in 2016 ?
Add way points to the galaxy map and the system map. I noticed each time I open the system map a query is made to the server to get the info, I suggest changing the system map to get a better understanding of where the suns, planets and moons are so we can plan the optimal path to scan them all. That way i'd open the system map only once instead of opening it 5 times...
As a new feature i would add a "caravan of miners" that would have a chance to spawn in unknown systems (maybe 33% chance to spawn). A mega huge ship would be the main mining vessel on which you can land and sell the stuff you mined. That way you can explore and mine in the unknown if you wish so and have a place where to sell your stuff at very good price. To make to make it work, I would also boost the jump range of the cargo ships (T6-T7-T9) so they can be better at exploring and come back faster to civilization.
7. Increase time to complete missions, nothing is more frustrating than hitting the jackpot on weekdays only to realize it's bedtime. At least 2 days to complete missions would be great.
8. Cargo ships like the keelback, T6 and T7 are too weak, it's the same mistake made in eve online or x3 terran conflict, they are paper thin. Why not make them very hard to kill ? When undermining in powerplay, I gank those ships with an ASP scout during the first half of the FSD cool down. Make them way more resilient.
9. When I started playing i thought i'd go for piracy but when I saw the risks i was taking and the loot that was dropping i changed my mind. Why not have the trader ships or civilian ships drop special items, make those items as rewarding as platinum and painite.
10. Extraction sites are my main source of income and also my main source of frustration. Right now there's a lot of CTD going on, mostly when security is involved. It doesn't only crash when engaging anacondas but pythons and cobras as well... Also several times I engaged a ship with the WANTED tag and I get a bounty on my head for shooting it, it gets worst when it dies... I hope it'll get fixed soon.
11. Since the last patch, we need heat sink to use shield cells, because the 2 are now linked together, we should have at least 10 charges of heat sink
12. I was disappointed to see that the auto-field maintenance didn't repair the canopy nor the hull, since i learned that fact, this item is now useless. Why not make it useful but increase the cost of charges ?
Thank you for reading and i hope the game gets better soon.
1. Once i spawned near an outpost, hit the boost then out of nowhere a ship spawns right in front of me, I couldn't avoid it and killed it. I got a 7 days wanted bounty on my head. To avoid most of those accidents, if your hardpoints are down, you get no bounty on your head and you collect no bounties for collisions.
2. Make powerplay more intuitive, so if a trigger is met, from that moment forward until the end of the cycle, the merit rewards are cut in half for kills or deliveries. That way people will move on instead of pushing to 2000% when only 100% is needed.
3. If I kill an enemy agent in one of my fortified system I get no reward and only a very small bounty (around 400cr). This is not fair ...
4. So far i've seen only 1 or 2 ways in this game to earn maximum credits and I find the gameplay experience very unbalanced. For powerplay, you need undermining at 30 merits/kill, everything else is a waste of time. Even if you choose powerplay and you aim for rank 4, that 50 millions is still nothing compared to what you'll get if you invest all that time doing extraction sites. 99% of the missions and the majority of powerplay activities make you feel like a donkey chasing after a carrot on a stick, and that carrot is rotten by the way.
Those who choose to do missions, should earn the same credits/hour than those who choose to run extraction sites
Those who choose to haul stuff in powerplay, should earn the same amount of merits/hour than those who choose to undermine systems.
Also powerplay rewards should be balanced compared to other activities. Only once the game is balanced that there will be true diversity.
5. Powerplay merit points should degrade slower after the cycle, maybe 50% loss after a month !? I like the game but i also like other games. If the loss is too severe, i'll never progress and committing 100% of my free time to this game, just to get that rank 4, is unhealthy and very bad game design. What's the point of running after the carrot if you can't get it.
6. Exploring is a bit dull here's 3 things to improve it a little :
Add a jukebox into this game so we can play our own music. We were able to do it in Grand Theft auto San Andreas (2004), why not implement it in 2016 ?
Add way points to the galaxy map and the system map. I noticed each time I open the system map a query is made to the server to get the info, I suggest changing the system map to get a better understanding of where the suns, planets and moons are so we can plan the optimal path to scan them all. That way i'd open the system map only once instead of opening it 5 times...
As a new feature i would add a "caravan of miners" that would have a chance to spawn in unknown systems (maybe 33% chance to spawn). A mega huge ship would be the main mining vessel on which you can land and sell the stuff you mined. That way you can explore and mine in the unknown if you wish so and have a place where to sell your stuff at very good price. To make to make it work, I would also boost the jump range of the cargo ships (T6-T7-T9) so they can be better at exploring and come back faster to civilization.
7. Increase time to complete missions, nothing is more frustrating than hitting the jackpot on weekdays only to realize it's bedtime. At least 2 days to complete missions would be great.
8. Cargo ships like the keelback, T6 and T7 are too weak, it's the same mistake made in eve online or x3 terran conflict, they are paper thin. Why not make them very hard to kill ? When undermining in powerplay, I gank those ships with an ASP scout during the first half of the FSD cool down. Make them way more resilient.
9. When I started playing i thought i'd go for piracy but when I saw the risks i was taking and the loot that was dropping i changed my mind. Why not have the trader ships or civilian ships drop special items, make those items as rewarding as platinum and painite.
10. Extraction sites are my main source of income and also my main source of frustration. Right now there's a lot of CTD going on, mostly when security is involved. It doesn't only crash when engaging anacondas but pythons and cobras as well... Also several times I engaged a ship with the WANTED tag and I get a bounty on my head for shooting it, it gets worst when it dies... I hope it'll get fixed soon.
11. Since the last patch, we need heat sink to use shield cells, because the 2 are now linked together, we should have at least 10 charges of heat sink
12. I was disappointed to see that the auto-field maintenance didn't repair the canopy nor the hull, since i learned that fact, this item is now useless. Why not make it useful but increase the cost of charges ?
Thank you for reading and i hope the game gets better soon.