Forums » Suggestions
Why should I *HAVE* to support my combat activities with trading, but not the other way around?
Off shoot of this thread
Built-in game combat scenarios need to pay more.
Off shoot of this thread
Built-in game combat scenarios need to pay more.
I'm not coming out against you suggestion Greenwall, but which combat scenarios specifically?
What I see as things that are doable, atleast in theory are:
1) Increase the payouts of the bounty system, or allow players to place bounties, this would probably be best done at the Corvus capitol (does it have a marshal?)
2) Weekly or Monthly /Duel payouts, with prizes for things like, Most duels won. Most duel points won (not precisely sure how that would work), Best weekly duel rating (separate from overall rating), and Most duels fought.
3) Some kind of 'rampage'/'killing spree' mission. Go kill X number of players/npc's/whatever, you have 30 minutes
4) Specific piracy missions. Corvus tells you they found out about X shipment going from here to there leaving at this time, go get the cargo.
5) General piracy missions. Axia/Valent hire you to steal and bring back cargo from the other.
6) Serco/Itani general bounties. The Serco government will pay you to just maraud about killing Itani pilots, with payouts being dependent on the target's combat level.
I do think I recall him asking for suggestions to be specific, single thread items 'I want this, precisely'. But until he tells me differently, I see no harm in a broad discussion designed to generate those narrow suggestions.
What I see as things that are doable, atleast in theory are:
1) Increase the payouts of the bounty system, or allow players to place bounties, this would probably be best done at the Corvus capitol (does it have a marshal?)
2) Weekly or Monthly /Duel payouts, with prizes for things like, Most duels won. Most duel points won (not precisely sure how that would work), Best weekly duel rating (separate from overall rating), and Most duels fought.
3) Some kind of 'rampage'/'killing spree' mission. Go kill X number of players/npc's/whatever, you have 30 minutes
4) Specific piracy missions. Corvus tells you they found out about X shipment going from here to there leaving at this time, go get the cargo.
5) General piracy missions. Axia/Valent hire you to steal and bring back cargo from the other.
6) Serco/Itani general bounties. The Serco government will pay you to just maraud about killing Itani pilots, with payouts being dependent on the target's combat level.
I do think I recall him asking for suggestions to be specific, single thread items 'I want this, precisely'. But until he tells me differently, I see no harm in a broad discussion designed to generate those narrow suggestions.
All good suggestions... my main sticking point is that the combat opportunities in game-provided scenarios don't pay enough to exclusively engage in them, particularly if you remove player-valuated earning opportunities from the equation.
In the early game I don't have a problem pushing a more interdisciplinary/interdependent style of play, where trade/mining/exploration/combat all must be somewhat explored to progress efficiently, but after, say, combat 5, one should be able to pursue a combat gamestyle exclusively and not be dependent on non-combat profiting as a means of supporting the combat gamestyle.
In the early game I don't have a problem pushing a more interdisciplinary/interdependent style of play, where trade/mining/exploration/combat all must be somewhat explored to progress efficiently, but after, say, combat 5, one should be able to pursue a combat gamestyle exclusively and not be dependent on non-combat profiting as a means of supporting the combat gamestyle.
In principle I agree with you.
A lot of the hive skirmishes are break even for a fairly skilled pilot
I doubt the deneb situation is all that much better.
I am sure there are other ones that could stand a bit of profit boost.
A lot of the hive skirmishes are break even for a fairly skilled pilot
I doubt the deneb situation is all that much better.
I am sure there are other ones that could stand a bit of profit boost.
I doubt the deneb situation is all that much better.
Deneb is fairy ok. 5k a kill. Plus a mission payout if your side wins. Plus you don't pay to replace your ship/addons if you die in the mission sector.
Deneb is fairy ok. 5k a kill. Plus a mission payout if your side wins. Plus you don't pay to replace your ship/addons if you die in the mission sector.
5k / kill plus a win bonus is not super great when looked at from a perspective of fully financing ones activities in VO by combat, unless that "win" bonus is massive.
It shouldn't be a question of JUST financing the ship costs (which Deneb *does* offset, player-bought items aside), but also financing other avenues, such as paying for services and goods.
It should be possible for a productive combat pilot to finance capital ship manufacture with as much reasonable commitment of time as it would take someone who profits off of station trade.
It shouldn't be a question of JUST financing the ship costs (which Deneb *does* offset, player-bought items aside), but also financing other avenues, such as paying for services and goods.
It should be possible for a productive combat pilot to finance capital ship manufacture with as much reasonable commitment of time as it would take someone who profits off of station trade.
I can agree with most of what has been suggested except when players get a big enough payout from shooting other players that are not combat effective (noobs). We don't need to encourage over killing the new players so that they rage quit, as so many have done over the years.
Increasing the pay for things like Hive Skirms, Deneb, Unrat Kills, ect are a great idea.
Increasing the pay for things like Hive Skirms, Deneb, Unrat Kills, ect are a great idea.
Thats exactly whats being debated here, NC
My quick notes:
LNH's summary is a good start. But we do need to get together some of the baseline values in a spreadsheet so we can propose alternatives that can be changed in the game database if devs accept the proposal.
Deneb is not sufficient pay at the moment, in Deneb's case, its military service so it should be quite well paid for the winning side each week.
General PvP is a special case that needs to be handled with care. I think significant changes are appropriate but they might be too developmentally intensive to be considered a 'quick win' at this stage.
Having thought it through, I think we need a mechanism to provide around 90% of the cost of the exploded ship and equipment to the killing player. To mitigate abuse, this would need to taper off after a certain number of kills, say 10 - 15 per 2-3 hours to ensure players couldn't farm alts. Being 90% of the the costs of the ship and equipment means new players are not likely to be of interest as the kill won't be worth as much.
For this PvP reward system to work, it has to make sense in the context of the game universe. So payments need to flow from a paticular in-game faction and reward players who are aligned with the faction and killing players who are aligned against it. Implementing this with the mission system may be possible in the short term, so we could start there, but I think to do the calculations we want that factor in ship cost, equipment cost and standing calculations with enemy faction, we will need a more robust system for this.
In order for it to work we should consider an across the board price increase for ships, by a significant percentage. If you can make money by blowing up enemy ships, you should have no trouble affording to pay a higher premium, and therefore being a successful hunter brings you an income that's comparable to spending the time trading, and being unsuccessful will net you a loss. This dichotomy highlights the current need for these changes. Currently, win or lose, your credit balance decreases the more time you spend fighting.
The other side of this is that it will bring a disincentive not to abritrarily kill players of your own nation who have good standing - something that's missing at the moment. You should receive no reward for doing so, and repeated kills of a faction's other privateers should result in reduced bounty when you go and kill your actual enemy targets.
LNH's summary is a good start. But we do need to get together some of the baseline values in a spreadsheet so we can propose alternatives that can be changed in the game database if devs accept the proposal.
Deneb is not sufficient pay at the moment, in Deneb's case, its military service so it should be quite well paid for the winning side each week.
General PvP is a special case that needs to be handled with care. I think significant changes are appropriate but they might be too developmentally intensive to be considered a 'quick win' at this stage.
Having thought it through, I think we need a mechanism to provide around 90% of the cost of the exploded ship and equipment to the killing player. To mitigate abuse, this would need to taper off after a certain number of kills, say 10 - 15 per 2-3 hours to ensure players couldn't farm alts. Being 90% of the the costs of the ship and equipment means new players are not likely to be of interest as the kill won't be worth as much.
For this PvP reward system to work, it has to make sense in the context of the game universe. So payments need to flow from a paticular in-game faction and reward players who are aligned with the faction and killing players who are aligned against it. Implementing this with the mission system may be possible in the short term, so we could start there, but I think to do the calculations we want that factor in ship cost, equipment cost and standing calculations with enemy faction, we will need a more robust system for this.
In order for it to work we should consider an across the board price increase for ships, by a significant percentage. If you can make money by blowing up enemy ships, you should have no trouble affording to pay a higher premium, and therefore being a successful hunter brings you an income that's comparable to spending the time trading, and being unsuccessful will net you a loss. This dichotomy highlights the current need for these changes. Currently, win or lose, your credit balance decreases the more time you spend fighting.
The other side of this is that it will bring a disincentive not to abritrarily kill players of your own nation who have good standing - something that's missing at the moment. You should receive no reward for doing so, and repeated kills of a faction's other privateers should result in reduced bounty when you go and kill your actual enemy targets.
I think rewarding general PVP is a bit ambitious, but ultimately worthwhile for sure. In the interim it might be easier to just boost up existing scenarios posed in the game, whether it's mission based activities, conquerable station battles or blockade sector battles (i.e. rewards for PvP kills in those exclusive sectors).
But if we get into general PVP rewards...
To mitigate abuse, this would need to taper off after a certain number of kills, say 10 - 15 per 2-3 hours to ensure players couldn't farm alts.
I think reducing the reward for higher amounts of kills is a bad idea and is counterproductive. In fact, an increasing reward makes more sense -- as it incentivizes a commitment to longer term gameplay ("just one more kill!"). Rather, simply cap the total payout for kills of the same player to a certain limited number per hour (say, 10). And I'm sure the devs can figure out some other method for preventing abuse of shooting ones own alts via IP monitoring, flagging of accounts that are reaping in too many rewards from noob kills, etc.
Re: faction-based rewards...
This would be fine so long as it was possible for some "grey space / pirate" faction to exist that rewarded the killing of all individuals, even if it might be at a lower rate than if you were, say, on Team Orion. However it might be implemented, it can't be a mission. I despise being locked out being able to join up with other people because I'm in some kind of ongoing mission. Then there is the question of how this might be dealt with in regards to monitored space.
But if we get into general PVP rewards...
To mitigate abuse, this would need to taper off after a certain number of kills, say 10 - 15 per 2-3 hours to ensure players couldn't farm alts.
I think reducing the reward for higher amounts of kills is a bad idea and is counterproductive. In fact, an increasing reward makes more sense -- as it incentivizes a commitment to longer term gameplay ("just one more kill!"). Rather, simply cap the total payout for kills of the same player to a certain limited number per hour (say, 10). And I'm sure the devs can figure out some other method for preventing abuse of shooting ones own alts via IP monitoring, flagging of accounts that are reaping in too many rewards from noob kills, etc.
Re: faction-based rewards...
This would be fine so long as it was possible for some "grey space / pirate" faction to exist that rewarded the killing of all individuals, even if it might be at a lower rate than if you were, say, on Team Orion. However it might be implemented, it can't be a mission. I despise being locked out being able to join up with other people because I'm in some kind of ongoing mission. Then there is the question of how this might be dealt with in regards to monitored space.
I think reducing the reward for higher amounts of kills is a bad idea and is counterproductive. In fact, an increasing reward makes more sense -- as it incentivizes a commitment to longer term gameplay ("just one more kill!"). Rather, simply cap the total payout for kills of the same player to a certain limited number per hour (say, 10). And I'm sure the devs can figure out some other method for preventing abuse of shooting ones own alts via IP monitoring, flagging of accounts that are reaping in too many rewards from noob kills, etc.
I mean it does make sense to have more rewards for more kills from an incentive perspective - but its also hard to balance with abuse. I didn't consider IP monitoring and flagging of accounts performing certain behavioural patterns because my experience with other games is that these are easy to circumvent. It's usually better to find an alternative gameplay scenario that makes the policing unnecessary. These have the advantage of being completely automated rather than requiring administrative action and an appeals process.
In the interim I agree we need to granularise a bit more around what existing rewards can be boosted. But this is not something you solve with forum discussions, we need to have the data all in one place and then simply make edits. The forum discussion should continue on the ideal model of combat rewards.
I think it also might help to spawn off a separate proposal/thread for ship price increases - we can all agree we should be paying more for ships across the board as long as a successful pilot can consider the purchase an investment in earnings from combat.
I mean it does make sense to have more rewards for more kills from an incentive perspective - but its also hard to balance with abuse. I didn't consider IP monitoring and flagging of accounts performing certain behavioural patterns because my experience with other games is that these are easy to circumvent. It's usually better to find an alternative gameplay scenario that makes the policing unnecessary. These have the advantage of being completely automated rather than requiring administrative action and an appeals process.
In the interim I agree we need to granularise a bit more around what existing rewards can be boosted. But this is not something you solve with forum discussions, we need to have the data all in one place and then simply make edits. The forum discussion should continue on the ideal model of combat rewards.
I think it also might help to spawn off a separate proposal/thread for ship price increases - we can all agree we should be paying more for ships across the board as long as a successful pilot can consider the purchase an investment in earnings from combat.
currently, ships and equipment aren't too costly to encourage experimentation and help pilots who aren't... actually any good at the game, like me. I understand why you want to increase the cost of ships across the board, but... please no? It also would make combat events harder to host, as pilots who are using the events as a learning platform will just avoid them to stay away from the suddenly more fervent skilled PvPers.
Nobody is suggesting that lower tier combat ships that allow new pilots to experiment shouldn't be extremely affordable. You will never have a suggestion from me to that effect. There should always be entry level warthogs, vultures that you're happy to lose but also teach you combat like the Vulture III etc.
But you can't tell me an increase in some of the current ship prices is going to be a barrier to experimentation - they are absurdly low right now.
But you can't tell me an increase in some of the current ship prices is going to be a barrier to experimentation - they are absurdly low right now.
Sorry, In order for it to work we should consider an across the board price increase for ships makes it sound like ALL ships need to become more costly to use, hence my tentative comment.
Yes, but as we covered off in the last thread, affordability is relative. We aren't here complaining that our cash stacks need to be higher for the sake of being higher. If you have an increase in combatant income, it should also be met with an increase in costs. Your concerns about lower entry level ships being affordable are valid but I think not unachievable notwithstanding the overall costs increase.
I am so supportive of new players getting into the combat system and not having to worry about economics of the game getting in their way. It's how I learned, and its how I trained a number of other pilots. Everyone who is in a combat guild in VO feels the same way - it's so important to have the learning curve right here.
I am so supportive of new players getting into the combat system and not having to worry about economics of the game getting in their way. It's how I learned, and its how I trained a number of other pilots. Everyone who is in a combat guild in VO feels the same way - it's so important to have the learning curve right here.
Tradervyx raised in the other thread that killing behemoth's with cargo shouldn't provide reward credits for the kill. I think its fair to say that there should be some sort of offset for the value of the cargo obtainable inside as against any PvP reward. The RP justification can be that the nation making the payment expects the cargo to be provided to them and will make payment upon delivery. If you then choose to sell the goods elsewhere - matter for you.
For general pvp perhaps a 1 cu token drop with a value that is based on the value of the destroyed ship and the dead players level might work.
For a level 1 driving an ec 89 the drop would be worth 0 while killing a level 15 in a valk would provide a substantial payout like 100 k or so. Drops would only occur once per day per player killed so multiple kills of the same player would not be rewarded.
Other adjustment might also be needed for other cargo dropped etc.
For a level 1 driving an ec 89 the drop would be worth 0 while killing a level 15 in a valk would provide a substantial payout like 100 k or so. Drops would only occur once per day per player killed so multiple kills of the same player would not be rewarded.
Other adjustment might also be needed for other cargo dropped etc.
Lol, still trying to force combatants to trade. Open your mind.
I dont know about the believability of a 1cu token drop. And it does add a level of frustration to the whole process for no apparent upside other than players can steal your reward which again, makes no sense if the player is being rewarded because of who they are and who they have destroyed.
So I'm skeptical about the token idea, but I think you're on the money payout calculation wise with the exception of the 'level' - I think you mean 'license' - and I don't see the value of including the licence system in the calcuation. It has no bearing on pilot skill, its loosely correlated to in-game time but not really. In the longer term, the license system may even be on the chopping block as far as I can remember from the discussions around the time of Kickstarter.
So I'm skeptical about the token idea, but I think you're on the money payout calculation wise with the exception of the 'level' - I think you mean 'license' - and I don't see the value of including the licence system in the calcuation. It has no bearing on pilot skill, its loosely correlated to in-game time but not really. In the longer term, the license system may even be on the chopping block as far as I can remember from the discussions around the time of Kickstarter.
Just a quick heads-up. I definitely support development in this "general" area (the thread as a whole, not calling out something specific here).
It's part of why we put in the time to build the Prediction Monitoring system, so there could be some relevance to Dueling and a related ladder and such, without people just egregiously cheating by inducing latency.
There are also changes in the pipe that bear on this, but nothing I'm going to discuss yet.
Although it does still boil down to the relevant goal of the other thread, which was "what's the defensible model for how much revenue one should be able to generate per unit time". Because that could be applied to anything, not just trading.
The PvE goals should also be remembered as potential sources of revenue, like the new rewards around "clearing" Hive sectors (currently, outside of Hive missions). FYI.
It's part of why we put in the time to build the Prediction Monitoring system, so there could be some relevance to Dueling and a related ladder and such, without people just egregiously cheating by inducing latency.
There are also changes in the pipe that bear on this, but nothing I'm going to discuss yet.
Although it does still boil down to the relevant goal of the other thread, which was "what's the defensible model for how much revenue one should be able to generate per unit time". Because that could be applied to anything, not just trading.
The PvE goals should also be remembered as potential sources of revenue, like the new rewards around "clearing" Hive sectors (currently, outside of Hive missions). FYI.