Incarnate wrote: Just a quick heads-up. I definitely support development in this "general" area (the thread as a whole, not calling out something specific here).

Yeah okay. At the end of this thread at some point you will get a Google spreadsheet with current combat rewards and proposed new combat rewards. Will you support tweaking the values to the revised values proposed in that spreadsheet if they have consensus and support by posters in the thread?

I ask because if your answer is no then we won't bother doing the heavy lifting. It's a few hours work collecting all the data and setting it out in a way that's easy for you to digest. As you can see from the thread, there is bi-partisan support for this type of change.

Also its an acceptable answer if you still require more clarification after the spreadsheet, we all appeciate the committment to quality you have. So if it's a case of working through how many credits per hour on average you can get, we will supply this information based on our real in-game experiences. We just want to be crystal clear here, if you will make the change we will do the work, otherwise I think the thread dies here.

That's not really how this works. You're welcome to provide thoughts and feedback and ideas, I am seeking input from the player base. Sometimes I use that input directly, like the recent Deneb threads were largely implemented exactly as Suggested.

But, there are no guarantees. It's my decision and responsibility, and I have more data and insight than you do.

This entire forum is about an opportunity to influence development. I appreciate this all takes time (certainly a lot of time on my part, engaging and soliciting feedback), but looking for some kind of "take it or leave it" committment here is the wrong expectation.

I am a game designer, I'm perfectly happy to design games in a vacuum, and tweak things based purely on analytics, like 99% of other game designers. I do this time-consuming, sometimes arduous outreach out of a desire to engage with the community. But it's never a requirement.

I am a game designer, I'm perfectly happy to design games in a vacuum, and tweak things based purely on analytics, like 99% of other game designers. I do this time-consuming, sometimes arduous outreach out of a desire to engage with the community. But it's never a requirement.

*pop* goes our sense of importance once again, lol. It's an easy trap to fall into for those of us with deep gameplay experience combined with a love of a good debate.

TRS's ask was a bit of an ultimatum, but I think it could have been rephrased to say: We are interested and open to compiling our unique gameplay data for you at our personal expense (of time) so long as we have affirmation that you will consider it. It's not a small task for us, and if the data is not likely to be taken into account, our time is not worth spent compiling it.

I don't think it's productive to demand a quid pro quo nor is it productive to diminish forum participation as nothing more than an "arduous" PR operation.

I think the re-phrasing of TRS's ask was helpful, but I don't think it was constructive to re-phrase Incarnate's message in a way that de-emphasized his point: Incarnate desires community engagement, despite the amount of extra time and effort it requires. There are many years' worth of examples of community input being incorporated into the game.

I don't think it's productive to demand a quid pro quo nor is it productive to diminish forum participation as nothing more than an "arduous" PR operation.

Yeah, I didn't say it was a PR operation. I said community engagement. That's a much broader concept, at least to my meaning. I think I've proven that I care what you guys say, and that I actively integrate things based on your feedback, for the last 18 years.

I think the fact that I'm "willing to consider" the information you provide is self-evident from the fact that I recently said so a bunch of different times. Plus the said 18 years of actually doing so.

I have always been clear that I'm the sole decision-maker when it comes to the development of the game. I've never supported any illusions that this was some kind of democracy, and our veteran users are well aware of that. I'm not saying anything new, here.

Ok cool.

I think there was just an elevated desire to make sure the data in question will catch your eye in a manner than is slightly more likely than normal, given the effort involved. Of course we all are aware that you make changes to the game sometimes according to players suggestions, but there are plenty of occasions where suggestions go unnoticed (from our perspective) and unimplemented as well.

Maybe that's just futile wishful thinking, but we are living in an attention economy so don't hold it against us for considering it in our judgement of whether or not the data collection is worthwhile.

Moving on -- lets' list combat scenarios, PvP and PvE. I'll start.

PvE
Clearing Hive Sectors (with missions)
Clearing Hive Sectors (without missions, but in mission sectors)
Clearing/engaging in non-queen Hive Sectors (without missions, but in non-mission sectors)
Clearing/engaging in dynamic queen Hive Sectors
Combat Practice Missions
Other Combat Missions (?)
Pirate (unrat) Engagement
Deneb Battles
Killing Trade Convoys
Killing Strike Force
Clearing border blockades

PvP
1v1 PvP, consensual
Solo pirating in greyspace
Solo pirating in nationspace
Group pirating / blockade in greyspace
Small Station Battles (4v4) with capships
Large Station Battles (8v8) with capships
Large Group Battles (10v10) without capships
Large Group Battles (10v10) with capships

"Killing Strike Force

Given that everybody has somebody somewhere that want them dead it makes sense that you could get paid for making anyone dead. Even the corporations that don't seem to piss anyone off, like Orion. It might be cool if you were TRI-KOS (-1000 only) with at least 1 nation bounty that you could get some kind of killing spree mission from the unrats to go after X faction and murder people.

"Clearing border blockades"

This is so obvious I'm surprised I haven't thought of it myself, or heard of it before. Serco/Itani should be willing to pay people to blast people blockading their space.

"Small Station Battles (4v4) with capships
Large Station Battles (8v8) with capships
Large Group Battles (10v10) without capships
Large Group Battles (10v10) with capships"

I don't see off hand how this would be executed. What's the justification for payment? Someone has to gain something to be willing to pay for it. I ain't against it, I just don't see the how and the why of it.

Hey now, 'demand' and 'ultimatum' are greenwall's words and not a fair characterisation of my post. Fully appreciate there may be a fine line between an ultimatum and pointing out the obvious next step.

I have been here for very close to 10 years I know the drill. My suggestions have been implemented before and we know there is no expectation that they are implemented. The opportunity to influence development has been long understood, valued etc.

However, you can't come in and say you support 'general development in the area', and gloss over that we are trying to construct a very specific suggestion. It is reasonable to put it to you plainly, in response to the comment you made, that the thread will die without an indication that you are looking for something as specific as we propose.

If you must have a more specific characterisation of my post, it is not greenwall's characterisation, it is this: Is it helpful if we construct the income values for each of the abovelisted combat scenarios, as well as land on a consensus for new values, or is it not? If it is not helpful, we would like to understand why it is not so we can explore something else.

In other words, it is not 'take it or leave it' - it's 'hold the phone, do you even need it'?

We now have a good start on the combat scenarios, so we just need to pull together some of the current values. and start discussing future values.

" We just want to be crystal clear here, if you will make the change we will do the work, otherwise I think the thread dies here."

Can we just move on from revisionism and have a meaningful and respectful conversation? Inc has already specifically stated that he is open to receiving suggestions and, honestly, he shouldn't even have to say it given 18 years of examples of being open to and implementing community feedback. Post the suggested values and let's mull them over.

We don't have the suggested values yet, there's more than one value set that feeds into the above scenarios. Like for example when you blow someone up there's a bounty placed on you but that bounty increases in increments.

The increments should be increased but its not 100% clear what the formula is for calculating them so more playtesting is required. It's going to take more time.

There is no revisionism required in the meantime. An ultimatum version of that sentence would be "....if you do not make the change we will not do the work [delete rest of sentence]". Like I said, walking the line between pointing out the obvious conclusion of the thread and an ultimatum, but on the side of the former. If I had not posted what I posted we would not be looking at a list of scenarios to get playtest values for right now. If you plan to moderate out the robustness of the discussion here you will also throw out the clash of ideas and thus the progress we are making in the wash.

"If you plan to moderate out the robustness of the discussion here you will also throw out the clash of ideas and thus the progress we are making in the wash."

I plan to call out the poor behavior that gets in the way of the robustness of the discussion and ideas. Stick to the ideas and stop making statements about the people.

Ok everyone has said their piece, for christ sake. Moving on...

I've taken some liberty to spec out the background activities (in eventual pursuit of a total cost) necessary to support the PvE scenarios I listed (which may or may not be a complete list)... feel free to expand or alter. I was too tired to do PvP. Note that some determination has to be made for skill level, I'm not sure how to go about that. For instance (generally speaking) a noob will fail more and lose more, but presumably will spend less on ships/weapons. Whereas an experience player will have less loss but spend more on ships/weapons.

PvE
Clearing Hive Sectors (with missions)
-Nation space noobs only have ship cost, greyspace noobs also have travel time, slightly elevated equipment cost (if they purchase from shops)
-Experienced players have little ship or weapons cost for non-Central activities, whether nation or grey. Central skirmish attempts have elevated risk of losing capship, depending on how many people involved. Minimal time needed to move assets into place.

Clearing Hive Sectors (without missions, but in mission sectors)
-Same as above, though noobs are not likely to engage in these sectors on purpose (or successfully) without taking the mission.

Clearing/engaging in non-queen Hive Sectors (without missions, but in non-mission sectors)
-Primarily a noob activity for combat practice (see below) or farming SSS.
-Equipment cost slightly higher on the noob side, whereas experienced players have little to no equipment cost.
-Minimal time needed to move assets into place.

Clearing/engaging in dynamic queen Hive Sectors
-I haven't done this since the aggro and AI had been tweaked...someone else can comment.

Combat Practice Missions
-Really only a noob endeavor, with moderate ship cost that decreases as time goes on.

Other Combat Missions (?)
-?

Pirate (unrat) Engagement
-I have no experience in this dept

Deneb Battles
-For noobs there is no reason to use weapons other than those are sold in Deneb or Geira, whose cost is covered by the mission if lost. So the only real cost for Deneb is time.
-For experienced players, 2/3 to 3/4 of the battles (medium, large, border battle) benefit from Avalon use. Avalons must be shipped in, for which there is either time or credit cost, and their losses are not accounted for by missions.

Killing Trade Convoys
-No prep needed really, unless it's taking down a convoy capship (which is pretty rare that people are interested in doing so). This activity mainly occurs in greyspace, due to the inconvenience of losing standing otherwise.

Killing Strike Force
-Done in corvus this activity requires no prep
-Done anywhere else is usually accidental

Clearing border blockades
-Depending on the size of the blockade and whether or not there is any enemy resistance, costs can vary.
-Nearby stations provide sufficient equipment, so cost is primarily ship loss that scales with experience level
-clearing blockades solo often requires a capship

Note that some determination has to be made for skill level, I'm not sure how to go about that. For instance (generally speaking) a noob will fail more and lose more, but presumably will spend less on ships/weapons.

Someone raised this before as an objection to the suggestion that ship prices should go up. The reasoning was that newer players should get to experiment a little.

I still think a ship price increase across the board makes sense, but maybe excentuating the costs that experienced players pay and making the price increase much less for newer player equipment is the most elegant approach. Otherwise we will start having to get licenses involved which as we both know has no correlation to pilot skill and caps out at around 15 for a vet anyway.

Interesting notes on the various areas that could involve more income.

I'm also in the process of adding more PvE content, and rare drops. This doesn't directly tie back to "income", in the form of payment by factions or missions for particular goals. But, it does bear on adding further value to player combat time, in terms of content resale in a potential player economy.

It could also be possible to structure early PvE combat missions around players going after hive sectors, wherein they would be compensated for their ship losses, similarly to Deneb. There would have to be some safeguards, like mission abort if they weren't in the correct sector, or left the system. But, otherwise it could be an interesting way to reduce the costs of newbie combat, and the related learning experience, while also creating an opportunity for Grouped PvE play (the mission could be structured more flexibly than existing group vs non-group missions, definitely something I'd like to see improve.. specifics are a bit beyond scope for this thread, but hopefully you get the idea).

I don't agree the specifics aren't beyond the scope of the thread - but I think that eliminating economic losses from death in combat is not the right answer. The losses should exist, but so should rewards if you are successful. This thread exists because there are currently insufficient rewards.

To be successful at creating an enjoyable overall experience for combatant players it is necessary to address some basic changes which underpin why the current state of the game leads to unenjoyable experiences over longer playing periods for combat pilots. They are forced to look elsewhere for sufficient credit generation.

Incarnate wrote: Interesting notes on the various areas that could involve more income.

They are interesting notes on many of the areas that should involve more income. The income you get currently is laughably bad. This week in VO I:

1. made a slight loss winning a large skirmish in Deneb in terms of costs (note that an ally points out this can be hard to do, but back in the day it was accepted practice that avalon use was required to win deneb in competitive scenarios);
2. made a significant loss on ships and reps destroying an Itani convoy in Ukari; and
3. killed a number of enemy combatants (Itani and those aligned with the Itani Nation), and made a loss on repairs and reloads for killing those pilots.

I have access to tens of billions of VO credits, so its like, just a drop in the ocean for me. But if I was a newer player with natural combat talent that doesn't have the history I have with the game I would feel like it is a joke to be a combat pilot in the game compared to a trader in terms of the credits you can make.

We can give you some really focused specifics in terms of spending scenarios and proposed purchasing scenarios if you want them, but honestly we need the guidance as to what kind of changes you are interested in making because of how broad the changes need to be and how many different approaches you could take to make the overall combat income experience sustainable.

I know you have already said "it doesn't work that way" - but it should. For example, should we focus on mission-based rewards, should we focus on value tweaks to existing rewards, should we focus on pvp-related changes - what's the order of development operations here? Each approach is a different fork in the road and requires players to put thinking caps on to actually get you the information (based on playtesting) that has a shot at lifting the quality of the overall experience.

I already answered that, in my first response:

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.

For instance, vague claims about generating a loss during combat are not meaningful, without assessing expenses. What ship configuration and cost should be used as the basis for needed income?

Obviously, perspectives on this stuff can vary, such as in the other thread, where "billions" were claimed to be needed, but only due to overly inflated player pricing on highly specialized content.

Anyway, this is basically the same conversation we had on the other thread, where I ask for a reasonable cost-based model.

If we have a reasonable model for Combat player needs, we can adjust any new or existing content to yield a reasonable return and profit.

This is a pretty simplistic situation to compare to "real" economics, but my approach is not unlike a nation re-assessing things after a major catastrophe, using the Consumer Price Index as a basis.

Anyway, that's why all the suggested activity types are "interesting", and useful, but we don't need to go too far into the weeds generating specific values and spreadsheets around them. That part is actually easy, once one has a model, and ongoing tweaking will be needed based on analytics, anyway.

The part where the player feedback is more useful is modeling the revenue per unit time. Much as on the Trading thread.

Anyway, that's why all the suggested activity types are "interesting", and useful, but we don't need to go too far into the weeds generating specific values and spreadsheets around them. That part is actually easy, once one has a model, and ongoing tweaking will be needed based on analytics, anyway.

How does one go about modeling revenue per unit of time in regards to combat without getting into specifics?

It seems to me the basic considerations for combat compensation should consider:

loss + time + risk + rewards

Such that success in combat gameplay eventually presents as profitable unto itself. Earlier in the game some reliance on trade / mining is acceptable, but a clearer and tangible path towards combat-only gameplay is the goal of this thread.

Whatever maximum profit can be made from trade should also be able to be made from combat for an equitable amount of time committed.

I feel like we're spending a lot of time arguing about what's in scope, rather than attacking the problem.

Inc laid out some ideas for ensuring early combat missions net a worthwhile profit, without having to state specific numbers.

TRS laid out some scenarios where he incurred a loss. I think it would be helpful to explore, in general terms, those losses. Then there could be discussion of how to offset (reasonable/typical) losses and to make a worthwhile profit. Again, in general terms. Inc had suggested valuable drops. I'll add that perhaps there could be auto-generated bounties for enemies of factions, combat pay based on kills and losses, or a military service stipend.

Aside from the current PvE rewards being too low or non-existant (i.e. in blockade killing), I think one big missing aspect is rewards for PvP outside of missions. It would be nice if:

-Enemy faction (determined by standing or some other new function) kills pay rewards to individual AS WELL AS guild.

-Sequences of certain kill types pay out extra bonuses (such as 5 kills within 5 minutes, 20 kills within 10 minutes, kills made where you are still alive below 1% armor, kills made from distance with certain weapons, etc...) with limits and checks in place for abuse.

-A pirate faction that you can join AFTER playing the game (i.e. not selectable in character setup), that pays it's own set of rewards for various PvP kills.

All with the goal of inspiring people to endeavor in PvP as a main playstyle instead of "wishing they could if only they could trade enough holodisks to support their activities".

When we founded RED we wanted to do exactly what greenwall outlined above on a guild level.

Our goal was to create a combat guild that bankrolled player wallets for combat while distributing the rewards based on whomever could generate the most PvP activity. We built a plugin facility that rewarded player kill streaks and shared the notifications across the group of players. We shifted guild politics to facilitate also by designating all non-serco players (which was most of the playerbase at the time) as designated targets - so hard-line nationalism.

We also had statistics and daily rewards which were gamified based on categories like most kills each day, most enemy combatant kills, most kills with certain weapons etc. Most serco players from those days know the names of these projects and myself and mr_spuck were the principal developers of each initiative.

Players loved the atmosphere and environment where victories in PvP were celebrated, but quickly lost interest when they had to go and engage in trade.

I found myself bankrolling most of the more significant player engagements (money for ships, advanced weapons) I did so with money that, well, was plainly exploited from overvalued gat and other weapon trade routes. etc. Greenwall will be able to tell you that on Itan's side they probably had a larger and older warchest than we did, but at the time more economy exploits were probably avaialble than ever before. Basically these are the things that people are complaining about in the other thread that had been taken away. We viewed exploting these features (arguably 'bugs') as the then 'metagame' and necessary in order to fund PvP activity that players enjoy but the game was not configured to reward.

How much money per hour is reasonable to make via PvP is irrelevant in this context. In the guild vs guild war we had going the aim was to decimate enemy ships (and therefore finances) while enriching ourselves as much as possible. Level the economic gap by being more successful in combat. This was impossible given the availability of easy gat-running etc.

To solve the player money issue on a larger scale basis, our plan was to tie in automated payments to the statistics which we had automated. So for example, a bot with access to our guild bank would pay pilots when they checked in with the bot at intervals and pay them based on the number of kill streaks or unique rewards they had accumulated since the last visit.

The trouble we had was that while we could easily program a system that did this, the way the plugin API is setup means that any server we build to centralise the data would trust each client to send through correct API calls. In plain language, this means any pilot could easily send fake kill data through their client to the server, which would then reward them for kills not performed.

We never solved this problem, and so the player reward market for PvP that we envisoned never eventuated. Years later, reflecting on the goals that we had at the time, it's apparent to me that the game was giving us this challenge because it was not designed correctly from an economic standpoint. This probably explains to traders why a combat pilot like myself would have any interest at all in changing the wider economy of the game.

It is quite literally necessary to remove easy trade in order to foster a rich market and value for player versus player content like we were aiming to do in 2013 when RED had a 20-30 person active player roster.

This ties back to the central problem I have with Guild Software's posture towards our suggestions on this topic. There is no hope of actually creating a wider guild vs guild conflict that has economic effect of the kind that we envisioned in RED if you aim to design fundamentally around providing a 'credits over time' system.

If both sides of the conflict are just earning 'credits over time' for participation in PvP without any sort of winners or losers, you lose the greater context and thus the meaning that each PvP engagement has within the broader conflict. We may as well play quake or some other non-mmo game where money is not an object in that case.

So yes, what Whistler says is true, we are discussing what is in scope, or more precisely what philosphy is important here more than 'attacking the problem'. But that's because Incarnate came in and basically reduced the problem to a one-liner.

If we go with Incarnate's problem, then its simple, in my experience players should make within the range of 5 - 30mil credits per hour for sustained combat activity for upper tier activities (i.e. lower tier is collectors, upper tier may be Arklans or more sophisticated bots or player opponents).

By contrast, if we go with Greenwall's or my model, we are looking in more detail at introducing new mechanics which provide players with credits if they are successful in PvP or combat interactions, but also carry a risk of loss if they are not.

Incarnate says words to the effect of "Greenwall's model is easy to implement, just tell us what the 'cost-based model' is". But as I have tried to convey with the above, the question really should be "tell us the scenarios when players should be paid and how much". The reason for this is that we will spend days debating between us what reasonable costs are operating under the subtext that if we succeed in convincing incarnate to accept an inflated costs model, he will go and implement higher combat rewards.

Wouldn't it be easier just to agree on a list of scenarios and corresponding rewards? You will get your arguments about costs inherently with this.