You seriously need to make this game fun for beginners and fix the C&P crap.

[Rnin Quarksplitter]

I just spent an hour in Vadimo community group mission bounty hunting the very rare REZ zones in community group missions. For once the problem of getting a few credits (156,000 BH credits) in an hour of game play was going to net me 500,000 CR at 100%, at which point I usually quit the CG as a beginner because the payout rate is so low and the grinding is so HUGE...I can do better BH in a sidewinder at a local hi-REZ at 1.5 $M/hour of effort. If you can't make the rest of the game pay out more than 1.5 $M credits per hour you are going to lose me as a customer because you are not giving me any incentive to do the rest of the game. No incentive for multi-crew, pitiful payouts, no incentive for wing partners, pitiful payouts less than $1.5M/hour, no incentive to do mining, exploring, or missions or anything other than bounty hunting. Your game is not fun because the progression is not rewarding other forms of game play other than bounty hunting with higher payout rates than $1.5M per hour of effort.

I have played this game a total of 425 hours and it is not fun or enjoyable to me, in fact it is punishing, frustrating and leaving me thinking...do you not realize I am the customer? Do you not realize your C&P is ing me off as a beginner and making my gameplay more difficult as a beginner? Do you really think I enjoy having my ship blasted out of the sky for a 200 credit bounty because I nicked some NPC a-hole who got in the way of my firing line?
Go I really need to tell you over and over again that NPC's have shields like I do and my little burst mistake is not an intentional kill? It is a nuisance when 5 NPC all gang up on a BH target and you have to watch them more than you do your intended "wanted" NPC.

I just got a 200 CR bounty for a short burst at what looked like a wanted target swarming in a fur ball, and in that was 1 clean ship and 5 NPC security police and 1 wanted target and in the instant I saw red on wanted target I fired because the typical time for NPC swarms killing all the available targets is about 10 seconds and the target is destroyed without you getting a single shot in. The clean ship got in the line of fire and instantly claimed a 200 credit bounty as a "snowflake" offended that I hit his shields accidently. How is that fun? How is it fun to get a 200 CR bounty and instantly have every NPC ship turn on you and destroy you, all of your bounty credits accumulated over an hour gone with your ejection. How can you punish a beginner by sending his ship to a penitentiary with a 200CR bounty and a 60,000 CR ship rebuy cost, putting a beginning gamer with 0 notoriety (what the crap is that supposed to be for a beginner not playing pirate?) and 200 credit "wanted" crime (really stupid of you to punish a customer for your gaming arrogance and inability to not realize most beginners are not choosing to be criminals, but you treat them that way in your arrogance as a game developer thinking you have done something good and more challenging, when all you are doing is psssing off new customers who think your game sucks.

What is fun about paying a fine in a penitentiary?
What is fun about paying 60,000CR buyback for a lousy 200CR wanted crime that is unintentional?
What is fun about having to hop 5 jumps back to a CG starport with an Eagle and minimal fuel scoop?
What is fun about a CG that you can't earn more than 100% level of 500,000 CR in an hour of gameplay.
What is fun about a CG that makes you travel 161LY to pick up Kobe Beef, and 150LY to pick up Snake Gin, and 146 LY to pick up Dance Dust just to make 500,000 Cr in an hour of grinding travel repeating the same thing over and over...
What is fun about playing a game for 425 hours to accumulate 61 $M credits doing a variety of missions (mining, exploring, trading, hauling, boom deliveries that have no incentive at a payout rate of $143,000 CR/hour when you can make 1.5 million per hour of effort grinding to get 1.5 $M/hour staying in a sidewinder and flying at you local Hi-REZ until to have $100 million for a "decent" survivable ship you can take into a combat zone and survive the "mob" attacks without any flying skill reward or wing support?
What is fun about mining for a few thousand credits in an hour of work?
What is fun about exploring to make 10 $M credits in 25 hours for a payout of $400,000 CR per hour of jumping 460 light years out?
What is fun about a C&P system where you can't loiter, can't trespass, can't shoot at a station, penitentiary, NPC police, NPC ship or make a mistake that nets you a wanted bounty of 200-600 CR (that's the fine for doing any of the above if you feel like it) and then having your ship blown out of the air because you Frontier decide your game is more fun that way....

Guess what? Your game is not more fun that way. In fact your C&P system makes the game no fun at all for a beginner, where you seem to think customers are less important than your stupid "snowflake" ethics dreamed up by millennial beta males who thank all games are fun only if you can punish the customer fun having fun and playing a game.... In what universe do you believe that Elite Dangerous is more fun with your existing C&P system destroying a beginners pitiful and puny under-weaponed (1G) ships for a horrible and heinous $200 CR fine?

What is fun about that Frontier? What is fun in a game that punishes beginner customers CEO?

 

[Zenith]

425 hours played says you're not a beginner. I see your point about accessibility for new players though. I also agree the new C&P system is not fit for purpose as I have become more risk averse since 3.0 and simply don't bother with activities that will get me a bounty any more.
It makes the game that little less fun now.

 

[Ronzer]

So if it's to balance with other aspects of the game, then, it makes sense for them to lower payouts for bounty hunting, instead of increasing all other things to meet its high payout. This would give more appreciation for those CG's that do have huge payouts.

 

[Rnin Quarksplitter]

425 hours played says you're not a beginner. I see your point about accessibility for new players though. I also agree the new C&P system is not fit for purpose as I have become more risk averse since 3.0 and simply don't bother with activities that will get me a bounty any more.
It makes the game that little less fun now.

I really appreciate your support and comments... I actually felt I had played only 100 hours or max of 150 hours before I discovered the status of play statistics in Panel 4 showed 425 hours. My ability to survive a combat zone (Hi or Low) solo or take on assassination missions, skimmer missions or anything other than planetary site surveys or data intelligence collection in a Cobra MKIII or Eagle maxed with 1G weapons without engineering (even with former military pilot experience doing tactical and BCM/ACM combat maneuvers) tells me I am still a beginner. I can't survive more than a few minutes in a furball of 6-20 AI fighters outclassing my ship in weapons and shields, except to pick off stragglers on the fringes and use WWII tactics. To me the game went by very slowly cognitively which is all about the degree of grinding and mindless repetition. I keep a log in the only other game I play "Lord of the Rings" and have written books about it and why the game is fun and still popular after 9 years...they have a better gameplay strategy that is not as stressful or risk averse in seeking fun in rewards and progression. Yes version 3.0 and the unfair C&P for anyone not wanting to play the criminal side of the game is way too punitive for a simple and ridiculous 200CR warrant for trespassing or nicking someone's shields in a long range fur-ball. If missiles or bullets tracked like the real world only to a valid target, we would not hit another NPC craft that was not confirmed hostile with IFF (identify Friend or Foe) and ROE (Rules of Engagement). This is not a problem with skill, it is a problem with the C&P rules and ballistics of the game.

 

[Rnin Quarksplitter]

Agree that lowering payouts would be good for Frontier and the minor faction of game content controlling "elite" players with billions of credits who want to discourage anyone from getting a survivable ship in 100-150 hours. I still don't have a survivable ship in 425 hours of gameplay that feels like 100 hours because of the mindless grinding and repetition lowering my cognitive space-time and memory of the quality of the game. The problem is lowering payouts is not good for beginners or people like me who at 425 hours still don't have a survivable ship or weapons to make the game FUN. It is all about pleasing the customer and not about "balance". All missions and activities in the game should have roughly the same payout rate and incentives or no-one will play those parts of the game at all. That incentive should be above what a beginner can do with a sidewinder in a Hi-rez zone doing BH which is currently about 1.5 $M per hour of effort for me. All other parts of the game payout at rates around 150,000 to 250,000 $Credits / hour of time and effort. This is wrong and discourages fun, progression and any value in the game to do anything but seek the highest payout rate which is bounty hunting for a beginner. The game needs to give a beginner access to a survivable ship that allows the beginner to play in all aspects opf the game at the same death rate as any other gamer in any other ship. This is the balance in real warfare unless your ship is an F-15 and you are fighting a MIG-21(technical mis-match like in Elite Dangerous Vulture vs Eagle or Courier/Ananconda/Python/Dropship vs Cobra MKIII) or an F-35 against a SU-35 (36,39, 41) where the ship technology is about equal and the difference is in the skill of the pilot and his experience to survive. NO GAME is FUN unless you can survive at least 75% of the time in unmatched/assymetric technology combat. The payout rates for this survival need to be consistent with game progression and advancement, but equitable across all missions at whatever level of gameplay you are at (Beginner or Elite). The real problem with version 3.0 is the C&P should never kill a ship with a 200CR bounty or any notoriety lower than 0 or 1. They should just be "arrested" and fined like in the real world. In what universe do beta male milleniels or the Frontier CEO think a human gamer should be "killed" for getting a traffic ticket? How about fratricide in the US military for targeting and releasing a weapon on a "friendly", should the penalty for that be death for the combat pilot who makes a mistake because the technology failed him and the IFF was wrong?, or the controller made a mistake targeting and labeling a hostile?. This is why we have ROE and visual confirmation in real warfare, but even that does not result in 100% perfection, why is Elite C&P any different and so punitive for such tiny infractions? Because the progressive social justice warriors who code it want a totalitarian communism or socialism government where all individuality and freedom and democracy is oppressed and all infractions are punishable by death. Who wants a game or real society like that? Socio-paths do...

 

[Marra Morgan]

Welcome to 3304, where life is cheap and no-one gives a toot for your real-life analogies!

 

[Imo]

If you need help in Vladimo wing up with Imo!

 

[Ronzer]

I agree that you shouldnt be destroyed for minor indiscretions, but, over time, those announcement in a station like "loitering is a crime punishable by death" becomes a bit of an in joke.

 

[ZeroAi]

I just spent an hour in Vadimo community group mission bounty hunting the very rare REZ zones in community group missions. For once the problem of getting a few credits (156,000 BH credits) in an hour of game play was going to net me 500,000 CR at 100%, at which point I usually quit the CG as a beginner because the payout rate is so low and the grinding is so HUGE...I can do better BH in a sidewinder at a local hi-REZ at 1.5 $M/hour of effort. If you can't make the rest of the game pay out more than 1.5 $M credits per hour you are going to lose me as a customer because you are not giving me any incentive to do the rest of the game. No incentive for multi-crew, pitiful payouts, no incentive for wing partners, pitiful payouts less than $1.5M/hour, no incentive to do mining, exploring, or missions or anything other than bounty hunting. Your game is not fun because the progression is not rewarding other forms of game play other than bounty hunting with higher payout rates than $1.5M per hour of effort.

I have played this game a total of 425 hours and it is not fun or enjoyable to me, in fact it is punishing, frustrating and leaving me thinking...do you not realize I am the customer? Do you not realize your C&P is ing me off as a beginner and making my gameplay more difficult as a beginner? Do you really think I enjoy having my ship blasted out of the sky for a 200 credit bounty because I nicked some NPC a-hole who got in the way of my firing line?
Go I really need to tell you over and over again that NPC's have shields like I do and my little burst mistake is not an intentional kill? It is a nuisance when 5 NPC all gang up on a BH target and you have to watch them more than you do your intended "wanted" NPC.

I just got a 200 CR bounty for a short burst at what looked like a wanted target swarming in a fur ball, and in that was 1 clean ship and 5 NPC security police and 1 wanted target and in the instant I saw red on wanted target I fired because the typical time for NPC swarms killing all the available targets is about 10 seconds and the target is destroyed without you getting a single shot in. The clean ship got in the line of fire and instantly claimed a 200 credit bounty as a "snowflake" offended that I hit his shields accidently. How is that fun? How is it fun to get a 200 CR bounty and instantly have every NPC ship turn on you and destroy you, all of your bounty credits accumulated over an hour gone with your ejection. How can you punish a beginner by sending his ship to a penitentiary with a 200CR bounty and a 60,000 CR ship rebuy cost, putting a beginning gamer with 0 notoriety (what the crap is that supposed to be for a beginner not playing pirate?) and 200 credit "wanted" crime (really stupid of you to punish a customer for your gaming arrogance and inability to not realize most beginners are not choosing to be criminals, but you treat them that way in your arrogance as a game developer thinking you have done something good and more challenging, when all you are doing is psssing off new customers who think your game sucks.

What is fun about paying a fine in a penitentiary?
What is fun about paying 60,000CR buyback for a lousy 200CR wanted crime that is unintentional?
What is fun about having to hop 5 jumps back to a CG starport with an Eagle and minimal fuel scoop?
What is fun about a CG that you can't earn more than 100% level of 500,000 CR in an hour of gameplay.
What is fun about a CG that makes you travel 161LY to pick up Kobe Beef, and 150LY to pick up Snake Gin, and 146 LY to pick up Dance Dust just to make 500,000 Cr in an hour of grinding travel repeating the same thing over and over...
What is fun about playing a game for 425 hours to accumulate 61 $M credits doing a variety of missions (mining, exploring, trading, hauling, boom deliveries that have no incentive at a payout rate of $143,000 CR/hour when you can make 1.5 million per hour of effort grinding to get 1.5 $M/hour staying in a sidewinder and flying at you local Hi-REZ until to have $100 million for a "decent" survivable ship you can take into a combat zone and survive the "mob" attacks without any flying skill reward or wing support?
What is fun about mining for a few thousand credits in an hour of work?
What is fun about exploring to make 10 $M credits in 25 hours for a payout of $400,000 CR per hour of jumping 460 light years out?
What is fun about a C&P system where you can't loiter, can't trespass, can't shoot at a station, penitentiary, NPC police, NPC ship or make a mistake that nets you a wanted bounty of 200-600 CR (that's the fine for doing any of the above if you feel like it) and then having your ship blown out of the air because you Frontier decide your game is more fun that way....

Guess what? Your game is not more fun that way. In fact your C&P system makes the game no fun at all for a beginner, where you seem to think customers are less important than your stupid "snowflake" ethics dreamed up by millennial beta males who thank all games are fun only if you can punish the customer fun having fun and playing a game.... In what universe do you believe that Elite Dangerous is more fun with your existing C&P system destroying a beginners pitiful and puny under-weaponed (1G) ships for a horrible and heinous $200 CR fine?

What is fun about that Frontier? What is fun in a game that punishes beginner customers CEO?

You make some very good points.

FDev will need to make the game more accessible to new players if it wants substantial growth, however it's so far into development that I don't think it will happen.

If they interviewed me, here's what I'd say they should add for new palyers:

1) Fix the order of the tutorials and make sure they work on all platforms and are not too hard to complete. They should also reward players with some in-game loot for completing each one.

2) Provide a one minute video primer, aka "Welcome to the Galaxy and your new Ship," for new players to set the stage and telling them where they are, what ship they are in, about the initial optional mission, etc.

3) Provide optional in-game cut-scenes that are launchable from comm messages (like audio logs are) for each step of the initial data delivery mission. This is such a wasted opportunity to help new players out

4) Enable "Thrust Assist" by default - a feature that would automatically reduce your thrust to 75% when you're within 10 seconds of your plotted destination (eliminating the dreaded Elite Dangerous U-Turn of Shame which is a major reason for early abandonment of the game.)

5) Add "covas" audio tips when a new player tries something for the first time, like dropping into a RES or taking on a cargo mission, etc. Could also link to a more in-depth vid/tutorial.

 

[askavir]

Your entire post confuses fun with immaginary currency.

 

[FrogsFriend]

All I really get from that wall-of-text is that you've played the game for 425 hours, and have recently carelessly/accidentally killed an innocent pilot and failed to escape the consequences. Now you're lost your temper, out of all proportion to the event, and want to hurl abuse at others for your mistake.

 

[Teh Smoo]

The system treats intentional murder about the exact same way it does minor trespassing, or property damage on a random ball of rock.

If you grab someone out of supercruise and murder them, it makes sense for things to get aggressive.

But a minor derp and a touch of bounty? That's not worth the police ships time. If you stop and stow hardpoints, they should let you off with a fine. Trespassing while not being a threat to anyone, is not worth deadly force.

 

[Teh Smoo]

Indeed, this approach is totally out of it though a quite common misconception, even under some veterans. A teacher once told me an easy trick to figure out otherwise abstract coherences: Exaggerate your problem and see how it would work out. In this case the exaggeration would be to imagine to get everything for free. Honestly, would this still be fun for you? If credits are the only fun you can imagine, you'll bleed out in no time anyway, no matter how fast you'll get rich. You'll just bleed out faster. It wouldn't help to tell you what kind of fun the game is to me, as this is very individual and has a lot to do with personal preferences. You'll have to find your own way, no one can help you here. But credits alone will never do the trick for you nor are they a crucial requirement to enjoy the game.

Well, I Quinced while the Quincing was good. No regerts.

It just means that I have a big cushion, and don't have to worry about nickels and dimes, or sudden expenses. Dweller wants 500k? Another one wants 200 gold? No problem, just grab it, and make a mental note to make up the difference with combat sometime.

Because I'm certainly not going to make up the money driving my SRV. Or derping around, just chilling in places. Or taking dinky little missions because there's thousands of different factions, and they all need to be kissed up to for halfway decent missions.

 

[Nero Tacitus]

While I agree that the C&P patch has hurt the game as a whole, your rant about credits per hour etc just comes off as entitled. Credits are easier to make now than they were a year ago, and it was easier then than when the game released. This is how progression games work, you make a bit, then an amount, then a lot.

Sorry, but 90% of your feedback is just you blaming FDev for you mistakes, and your lack of understanding/creativity when it comes to earning. You can make plenty of money as a newcomer (a lot more than you used to), mistakes should cost you (otherwise, what's the point?) and FDev have put a lot of effort into making the game less punishing (like drastically increasing the amount of fire a target requires to flag you for assault). C&P bad, yes; but the rest is on you IMO.

 

[varonica]

The C&P crap was in response to murder hobos ganking new players because new players didn't find it fun at all that leaving the beginner station meant instant death at the hands of a uber engineered seal club.

Not sure what you point was.

 

[Marra Morgan]

The C&P crap was in response to murder hobos ganking new players because new players didn't find it fun at all that leaving the beginner station meant instant death at the hands of a uber engineered seal club.

Was it? I thought it was in response to NPC Police forces complaining about Pilot's Federation members flying engineered death machines about with precious little situational awareness and trigger discipline, whilst thinking that they were the legitimate authorities and not the amateur cowboys they really are.

It seems to be working a treat

 

[Para Handy]

................

.............

Yes the C&P needs fixing and the fine/bounty threshold for mis-hits needs sorting soon.

Here is a gift for you though - ¶ - enjoy, it will make your posts much less painful to the eye.


(Sorry for the tease.)

 

[Rnin Quarksplitter]

I agree with all of the well thought out replies and disagree with the ones not understanding what I was trying to tell Frontier to fix about the C&P. Yes I was upset with the tyranny of the consequences of a very small infraction and over-response by the C&P system. Deleting my rant.

V/R Rnin o7

 

[Misty_Dark]

The C&P crap was in response to murder hobos ganking new players because new players didn't find it fun at all that leaving the beginner station meant instant death at the hands of a uber engineered seal club.

Not sure what you point was.

No, C&P was meant to fix those issues, that is what Karma system, that we are still waiting for, is meant to fix, along with combat loggin and all other stuff players do behave badly and abusing game mechanics to avoid the punishment they should receive for their actions. And Karma as explained would not be a fast moving "on/off" thing like C&P is.....


C&P is more there to introduce a consequence to your actions.... but sadly, we have only had one real punishment for all infractions, "destruction" of your ship.... and if you manage to avoid this, you can pay extra at interstellar contacts, to make it go away.... Just listen to what the stations are repeating over and over what they will do if you break the rules to much... destroy your ship...


C&P is very black and white, with no other limits that wanted or not.... I have on purpose flown my own ship between a pirate and a clean shooter, and got hit multiple times on my shields and clean ship is still clean.... but if the situation would have been different, I shoot the clean ship because he flew into my beam lasers, I would be wanted on the spot. When your ship calls out is under attack, repeatedly, you are taking more than a few hits.

And many of the short comings of C&P system is the consistent lack of gradual responses... Why would a bounty hunter hunt you for that juicy 500 bounty? it will not even cover his costs of firing his Multi canons at you...



We have do not have any "road side stops" where you make amends directly to the authority ship and pay the 200 credits and all is forgiven until next time. We do not have any way to yield to authority ships at all. We cannot signal a white flag and power down and wait to be boarded, etc, etc. And this makes stuff like C&P a real pain for just about any player that makes a mistake. Because it is just black and white, either you are wanted and then there is just one response, or you are clean, and they "haven't found anything on you, YET", quite telling remark from authority ships after they have scanned you... And you have a 3rd option when being wanted, find interstellar person and pay extra to make it go away... all while being wanted...

 

[CMDR_Elver]

No, C&P was meant to fix those issues, that is what Karma system, that we are still waiting for, is meant to fix, along with combat loggin and all other stuff players do behave badly and abusing game mechanics to avoid the punishment they should receive for their actions. And Karma as explained would not be a fast moving "on/off" thing like C&P is.....


C&P is more there to introduce a consequence to your actions.... but sadly, we have only had one real punishment for all infractions, "destruction" of your ship.... and if you manage to avoid this, you can pay extra at interstellar contacts, to make it go away.... Just listen to what the stations are repeating over and over what they will do if you break the rules to much... destroy your ship...


C&P is very black and white, with no other limits that wanted or not.... I have on purpose flown my own ship between a pirate and a clean shooter, and got hit multiple times on my shields and clean ship is still clean.... but if the situation would have been different, I shoot the clean ship because he flew into my beam lasers, I would be wanted on the spot. When your ship calls out is under attack, repeatedly, you are taking more than a few hits.

And many of the short comings of C&P system is the consistent lack of gradual responses... Why would a bounty hunter hunt you for that juicy 500 bounty? it will not even cover his costs of firing his Multi canons at you...



We have do not have any "road side stops" where you make amends directly to the authority ship and pay the 200 credits and all is forgiven until next time. We do not have any way to yield to authority ships at all. We cannot signal a white flag and power down and wait to be boarded, etc, etc. And this makes stuff like C&P a real pain for just about any player that makes a mistake. Because it is just black and white, either you are wanted and then there is just one response, or you are clean, and they "haven't found anything on you, YET", quite telling remark from authority ships after they have scanned you... And you have a 3rd option when being wanted, find interstellar person and pay extra to make it go away... all while being wanted...

The karma system may be with us by the end of beyond but I don't hold out much hope for it if C&P is anything to go by. The vast majority of calls to reform C&P from the forums leading up to beyond, was regarding PvP or more specifically (griefing/ganking). Instead we got "hotships", which, did nothing to address this and furthermore started to unravel because it was bas on flawed logic, i.e. the crimes follow the ships.

What we should of had in my opinion is a Pilots Federation reputation/bounty/rebuy system for 3.0. Karma evokes something slightly different to me as it implies death and rebirth, which , should perhaps be fitting for things like combat logging and other cheatings or anti-social behaviour. I do not count griefing/ganking as "karma crime", because it PvP is part of the game, this could be dealt better with C&P & PF rep system, imho. Of course some players are going to want to shoot up other players for laughs but they could find themselves with big bounties on their head and increase rebuys. This would be governed by a PF rep system.

The OP does make a good point about getting ridiculous bounties for stray shots, these should just be fines and rep loss. If your wanted status was tied to your faction rep, i.e. if you were "hostile rep" = wanted =bounties on head to the equivalent to your ship value. This ties your actions to your criminal status and the means to get out of trouble with the law is in your own hands also.