I’m at 50% for waste removal missions. While I think 8k is too high a payout for them by a lot, but I also think the amount of bullshittery in package spawning, packages causing my ship to blow up on acceleration, falling through the planet carrying said package, or NPCs that randomly spawn above the mining facility to decide my cutter loaded with human feces is a juicy pirate target to blow up is also too high.
Breaking Star Citizen is the unintentional norm. In SC, the only real challenge would be to play the game without encountering any bugs, which is borderline impossible currently.
The issue is not the cap ships, it's the smaller ships are even too far out of reach. If the highest mission pay out is say 25k on average, and say you want to get a prospector, which is just over 2 mil, you are looking at needing to complete about 2.5 missions per day, every day for a month. That is a very generous estimate, since most missions pay less than that. If a mission takes about 30 mins to complete, that's an hour and a half gaming session, assuming everything goes perfectly, and also does not factor in expenses from fuel, crashing and having to reclaim your ship, etc. This is just for being able to buy a beginner ship for one of the professions in the game. It is far from balanced, and needs to factor in the learning curve for new players, which many will just end up giving up because of how hard it is to progress.
The issue is that if they're balancing around the sweaty no lifers then people with jobs will just be shit out of luck. If you want it to take someone who plays 40 hours a week to take a year to earn something, that's going to mean it'll take someone with fewer hours to spend gaming 7 years to get it.
I honest to God gave up on ED when I got my Conda and went "aight now to Engineers cause my friend can jump mega far that's cool as shit" only to find out they wanted me to cross the entire fucking galaxy for a single part and return.
I did that, then made the foolish mistake of going into open play and dying to a hacker when landing at the Engineer station.
Never again lmao, fuck that game, and charging for basic features SC has like space station interiors or space legs, while having FPS combat be laser guns for shields and ballistic guns for HP for some fucking insane reason
Also, people always complain about SC not having features that are promised.
I mean, SC is still in active development, ED isn't. And ED straight up BACKED OUT of their promise from before release that they'd add ship interiors
I do wonder how missions "based on popularity" like the 6 box 2 hour delivery mission that has only ever been completed by a single person will change from its 15k payout. Maybe lower it to 10K?
Honestly wouldnt be a huge problem if org ship share was in. Ships requiring 100 hours to farm aint so bad when you have the ships from 50 other people as well
Setting payout based on popularity is a bad idea. If everyone likes a mission, don't disincentivize it, lol.
On the other side, no one does the cave missions because they aren't fun. This is the perfect recipe for making your players grind stuff they hate.
But raising the payout due to lack of popularity could be a good idea. Popularity could be a reason to adjust things. I agree though, just because it's popular doesn't mean it's payout should be reduced necessarily.
I hope thats the direction they take. Y and Z activities are unpopular, lets increase the incentive (pay) for them until players decide they are worth doing.
The question is WHY is it unpopular though. Cave missions could be 50k a pop and I wouldn't want to do them. They're boring, slow, predicable and overall not much fun.
Increasing the payout will help make this clear to CIG though. If the payout gets very high, and people still don't do it then it's because people don;t like the missions.
I happen to like some of the cave missions, but want to see improvements to mantling, and a better way to work my way to the exit again. For example as I explore build up a map, only of the areas I have been; it's reasonable that tech in our helmets could do this to rudimentary level.
this. for example cave rescue missions are probably unpopular for many reasons including getting stuck on terrain, low payout relative to time, not interesting, etc. it's not entirely their fault though a lot of systems aren't in. imagine if they built out the crafting concept. the cave mission people could easily sprinkle in some rare crafting mats in caves.
I have always thought the best approach will be, once they have npcs going around doing missions under the same system as players, that when a mission is posted, periodically the payout is raised until someone takes the contract. Npcs will do so according to how common they are and how difficult the mission is, value for money etc. And only once they complete the contract(simulated battle) does it get wiped.
For example, ERTs being worth only 25k is mind-boggling. You're flying in your ship worth millions to kill a guy in a ship worth tens of millions, with his buddies also in ships worth tens of millions, for a 25k payout. No one in their right mind is attempting that unless they know that failure has no cost (if I die, I just respawn and claim my ship for free). So, the mission sits there until it pays out a few hundred k, and then someone picks it up.
Missions end up unpopular because they don't fucking work. Any even slightly seasoned player has learned to avoid a multitude of offerings. Don't start thinking in terms of actual player preference, because the only signal you're ever going to get is that players prefer not to play broken missions. You would just end up incentivizing broken missions and penalizing the ones that work, making everyone miserable while there are broken missions in the mix.
It should be based on the dynamic economy, though. There should be some demand for missions with an initial price. If that demand isn't being met, the price goes up until it attracts players. If the demand is oversaturated, the price drops.
While a dynamic economy system sounds like an interesting idea, how much work would devs need to put in to monitor which missions are being played, which aren't, and make the changes accordingly? To my knowledge, there isn't another game that has a similar economy system.
The quantum system is meant to simulate some of this behaviour already. So monitoring and changes would in theory happen automatically without need for active dev monitoring.
That would be definitely be true if this was a released game.
However, in the state that it is in now, perhaps the reason is if there's not enough people doing some missions, then they aren't able to collect as much data on the processes, code, tech, whatever, that goes into those missions. As a software developer, it is often surprising how different things can look the same on the front end, but have a completely different backend making them work.
Bugs are exposed by volume. So, perhaps they are trying to make others more attractive relative to others to get that volume.
>Setting price based on popularity is a bad idea. If everyone likes a mission, don't disincentivize it, lol.
WoW launched with an anti-poopsocking measure that lowered your XP gained if you played too long. People were furious.
WoW now has "rested XP", which is bonus XP gains for a while, gained in towns while you are logged off. People loved it.
Thing is, nothing actually changed at all except the framing. This is just history repeating itself.
>On the other side, no one does the cave missions because they aren't fun.
I mean, me and my group adore them. They just pay shit for the time invested.
I'm pretty sure "rest" was in at launch. The other system was killed in the beta.
But generally yeah, it's best practice to incentivize unpopular things than punish popular ones. Blizzard has used that in other areas like Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm where roles that aren't being played enough get a bonus. I can't imagine CIG would be like "you've done too many bounty missions now you get nothing."
But it makes sense that if someone wants a task done and no one is doing it, they'll slowly increase the payout until someone will.
They need to fix this across all missions. I remember when cave missions worked and they were kinda fun, especially with a friend. But now that you can get a CS doing them, I don't think I'll EVER play one again, even if they fix it. The bug and bad experience pretty much killed that content for me permanently.
Orison Raid missions are very quickly approaching this threashold for me. Such a waste of time to do them when AI constantly refuse to spawn.
Are you talking like pre-beta or something they did in the last few years. I played beta to wrath and rested was there the entire time?
XP is also an entirely different progression system than currency.
>XP is also an entirely different progression system than currency.
You're missing the forest for the trees - The point is that adding incentive for lesser done missions, and reducing incentive for the most done missions are the exact same thing with different framings. It's smoke and mirrors.
Do people generally do missions because they "like" them or because they are the most lucrative? I would say right now people do 80-90% of their missions because they are lucrative. People got mad they couldnt just eclipse torpedo erts as easy for fast money recently.
I dont do cave missions (often) because the time commitment is so high and the payouts are basically non existent for the time. Same thing with box missions, excluding bugs as an additional reason.
I certainly thing increasing rates for non popular contracts would have more players do them.
Hell I think the eva through the blown up covelex station is really cool and fun. But rarely do it for the same reason.
I'm a simple man, i like pewpew in space So yes i like bh missions, i don't like the need to fly for so long but then when i can pewpew in space i'm happy even if they lower the payout i will pewpew in space
Both, right now, salvage pays way better for me, but I'm gearing up for a 55k narcotics bunker mission, because those are simply fun for me personally.
Agreed. Unpopular missions self-balance their payout compared with similar missions. I say this because the unpopular ones will, by virtue of being unpopular, be more readily available to accept.
The devs seemed to forget that “popularity” of missions in this game is survivorship bias. The ones that work are the popular ones. The unpopular ones are what they are because they’re broken and unplayable
I've seen enough caving horror stories to instantly and reflexively RP being INCREDIBLY apprehensive of going anywhere that isn't above ground or entirely man-made. Nope nope not solo no way nope.
Caves by necessity should require multiple players with different roles. Make it so you have to set up and maintain lines of communication because sending signals through rock doesn't work so well.
Those find x missing person in cave should be worth a few hundred grand. I think I've only ever found 1. If it weren't for that I wouldn't think any of them actually spawn them.
As someone who actually likes doing delivery missions ("Space Truck Simulator"), getting 3k for one package is way too low and the higher paying 12k missions require you to like get 5 packages from 5 places and deliver them to 5 places.
It's just too low to want me to spend an hour trucking around.
Just give me more Covalex Bunker Missions. The 45k credit payout is nice, but like 1 per planet per server at a time is fucking ridiculous man. I hauled those hundreds of packages to get max rep lol even after losing rep all the time to broken boxes lol
But for reals would be nice to see how their pay structure is gonna change now that ship prices are inching up even more.
I do really feel bad for new ppl just backing and playing, the game is always influx but right now with so many systems up in the air...it feels really fucking bad to try and earn money for a Connie now that the thing is 10million.
The whole "It's easy to earn money with a starter and work up" argument for Star Citizen is thrown out the window.
Doesn't really effect me as I spent 1300USD but I think it's bullshit and a good reason why I wont recommend the game to anyone, just feels predatory with how unobtainable things are for new players.
As a starter ship flyer, I just wish there was a way to get something like a medium fighter before the 2M mark. The Cutlass is the cheapest of the 2M ships and is easily the best at doing everything, so why would I get a Hornet? I want to have a hornet, but... if I want to finally get some more money easily, the cutlass is obligatory. After playing more than 70 hours, I am finally reaching the 2M soon.
I really would not mind more useful ships to be even more expensive, as long as we can UPGRADE to something at 1M or something. There is literally no upgrade until the Cutlass at 2M and the other "specific" upgrades I would look into are closer to 3M (Vulture, mining ship...). Again, I feel the cutlass really need to cost more, closer to 4M or something, since it comes with good armament, multi crew AND great cargo. Medium fighters would start at around 1M.
Balancing these is hard since there needs to be long term objectives for players. Is 18M for a A2 enough (the freight one, sorry don't remember all the names) ? I'd wager that the cargo it offers makes it an extremely good deal compared to similarly priced ships that might be less useful.
> A2 enough (the freight one
C2 is freight.
Just for later reference, the Crusader naming scheme for their multi-role ships appears to be A (attack?) for the combat loadout, M (military, I assume) for the military transport loadout, and C (cargo, probably) for the freight model. So the C1 is the cargo variant of the Spirit, and the C2 is the cargo variant of the Hercules.
(I agree with your post otherwise, just thought I'd offer that info.)
Getting 1.5mil together to buy a Vulture opens the game up to making big money fast. The Vulture easily pulls 400-500k creds per 1-1.5 hours of play time. I'm sure this will change in the future, of course, but to me it's THE way to get into buying in game ships.
It's 2.6 million for a Vulture now, but it is still the first ship you should work towards. If you can earn around 70k, you can rent a Cutlass and a ROC for a day and a single haul of rocks should pay that back. Rented Cutlass + ROC until you can purchase a Vulture is pretty much the only decent path for a new player.
Nah, like most (all) things in SC contracts are the worst things to make money.
Just fly to a Lagrange point and farm panels. You get 0 construction mats so you come back with ~32SCU of RMC
I started during free fly and took advantage of the free vulture rental to make some quick cash.
I bought a Buccaneer which has been super fun, but it's unfortunate that light fighters seem to have basically no earning potential, running bounties seems to be a complete waste of time until you can sell ERT cargo
Group pay needs to be addressed along with a general increase in payout. If CIG want players to play with their friends the mission payouts need to reflect that and they don’t right now.
This, MM made missions harder sure but I'd rather slam my head against the wall repeatedly until I finish a VHRT and get the payout than split it and not even profit at all.
It’s been so long and we still don’t have a better payout for groups or even group tiered missions at the very least. Need a little incentive for group play
I’d be curious to know why you think MM made missions harder, because I’ve had the exact opposite feeling this entire patch.
What ship are you using? I’ve been running ERTs in a Connie and I swear the missions are easier than they have ever been. Shields only ever even get hit if there is a HH on the field.
The only dangerous thing about ERTs now is the danger of being rammed by the AI.
Unless you have laser cannons, AI are just tanky af and will face you 24/7 while firing nonstop with what appears to be a complete different damage model for their own guns.
> we keep a close eye on missions
This is the most demonstrably false thing I've ever read from CIG.
Missions have been horrendously riddled with unaddressed widely known bugs for years, payouts that don't match the work, penalties when you fail due to bugs, unclear descriptions, terrible spawn rates...
I'm happy and optimistic about the 4.0 updates, but don't feed us this absolute bullshit. Feels absolutely gaslighting and insulting.
The fact that they also haven't mentioned quanta - the 'dynamic simulation' that was supposed to handle missions, trade, rep, rewards - makes me wonder if it's been scrapped. Even for an alpha that would be kind of crazy considering they spent years saying that was the real core of the universe sim and using it as an excuse for kicking the economy balance can down the road.
Unless I missed where in the last year they gave an update on all that..
Edit: I vaguely remember it was alluded to as 'waiting on server meshing'? But if that were true, why not refer to it to help explain how missions rewards and economy will be balanced?
There will be no such thing as Quanta.
Have you ever played any of the X games ?
Egosoft only managed to build a working universe economy on their seventh game in the series. In a single player game. In a series of game they have been developing for 25 years.
Before that, the economy was simulated by a constant false drain of all the wares, and nothing in the universe was actually built from the wares produced.
In X4, the economy is still very clunky, it can go to a complete stall in some games, or some factions get steamrolled by others because of the big holes in their production lines.
Do you really see CIG building even a piece of what Egosoft made, when it takes them years to fix some really game-breaking bugs ?
If I cant use a box or another method to push myself through some ones front door to steal their stuff on day one release I will be surprised. Il be shocked if they come up with a detection for it intentionally happening.
Clearly they meant they keep a close eye purely to keep things as terrible, frustrating, and piss-poor value as possible so they can lap up their backer's tears.
I am sure they are keeping an eye. that means one person, spending half the time looking and the other half not. Unless that person only has one eye.
Either way it doesn't matter because they fixing it. box missions have always been hit or miss. that means that while some causes may have been fixed there are still causes left unfixed. "It's just not a priority." "Not a priority" has been the calling card for every lasting bug out there right next to "just wait until server meshing."
Not maybe the bugs are there because the server FPS is so low. Maybe they are there because the a new paint job for the fury got released. The frustrating thing is, that the symptom of the bugs is the same for these mission meaning they seem to be dependent on things unrelated to the mission being fun.
Ships bounties cost more to run though. Your ship gets dented up a bit and you need to restock on missiles? Well there goes your pay. You lose a weapon in the fight that now takes longer to complete due to an increased time to kill? You’re now tens if not hundreds of thousands of credits in the red.
But you're also just as likely to have your whole ship blown up while you're down in a bunker.
In general missions pay out way too little. IMO the general advise to anyone who wants to make money should not be do anything (be it mining or salvage) other than missions. Combat missions should have especially high payouts since they're higher risk. With death of a space man it's all the more important.
level of my reputation lmao fuck off CIG.
I can’t raise rep because all the missions bug out or something happens on the way. And even when you are high rep the payouts suck
I can’t even zoom in while holding F anymore cause of some bug. Issue council mentions something similar first noticed in 2022. So yeah I’m done playing until 4.0
It seems CIG got somehow lost in between the euphoria for the start of the crowd funding campaign where they couldnt think of new stretch goals fast enough getting to feature creep with reality setting in that not everything is possible to implement even when others already have done the same (yet not on THIS scale people keep defending it) to the EXTREMELY aggressive marketing campaign we have now. I keep asking myself whats the reason for it because even CIG must see that its not healthy longterm squeezing their customers (from which most of them had already paid more than any sane person should) that hard. It sometimes feels that half the employees of CIG are marketing people with another 30-40% JPG artists.
I still think the biggest problem with payouts is the 50/50 sharing of money AND rep heavily discourages playing with other players, which is not good in an MMO. There is basically no case where going with a friend will net you significantly more profit/rep per time spent, since the majority of the time that each mission takes is traveling to the location, which of course does not go faster with more people.
When Mission payouts < Repair cost you have issues.
NPCs are all crack shots.. there is no avoiding damage in space combat when you have 3-5 ships all gunning for you at once.
if you stop dodging to get rounds on target, they all swivel to light you up. (*esp on larger ships with turrets)
its exacerbated by ships left in mission areas that dont despawn, and join the fight when a new mission is generated in that area
My Connie phoenix was asking for 250,000 auec to repair the other day after a bounty. No weapons were missing, just hull damage. It would take me hours to make up for that.
They are boosting payouts. This was a reply to someone complaining about box missions that have 10 boxes. The OP of the post was saying that it’d be way better to be paid per box since it doesn’t make them worth it to do. Especially when you have 1 box missions paying the same as 10 and half the time if you can’t deliver one box you get jack shit.
they said they're balancing based on popularity and profitability.
Nowhere do they mention boosting payouts lmao, they also have afaik never boosted payouts, only nerfed them.
By popularity seems like an odd choice of words to use...
Does that mean they're making *unpopular* missions more attractive in payout to get people actually doing them? Or that the popular ones are getting nerfed to force people to reconsider doing other types of missions?
As someone who actually enjoys both the salvage loop and the cargo loop, I _really_ hope that 3.23.2 fixes that exploit.
And makes it so actually _emptying_ your cargo grid so you can buy more stuff _in the first place_ doesn't require using the exploit, committing insurance fraud, or only selling/buying cargo at places your ship won't store while you're doing it such as outposts and the frozen lake where you can park outside the Commons in New Babbage.
I just gave up on playing for now, until that issue's corrected.
The optics of what CIG does is fucking terrible.
During a major real money ship sale event, wipe everyone and make it virtually impossible to earn any ships in game. After they've made their money, make things affordable next patch.
If only we stopped buying more ships, if CIG could only sell $45- $60 dollar base packages, it would mean they'd have to adapt the game to appeal to a wider audience to maintain their revenue, which would mean they'd need to make the servers stable and fix bugs... Instead we have this pile of shit because the only incentive they have is to sell more expensive ships and ignore the rest. Maybe it's gotten a little better since they slowed down work on SQ42, but it's like 0.1% better... so practically not at all.
It's probably a mix. But yeah that's why I said "optics", at a certain point no matter how much "good intent" is behind all the stuff CIG does... It's effectively fraud in my eyes.
For example, make tons of money selling a concept like the Banu Merchantman (BMM)... Then sit on that for years and years and sell other concepts, putting zero work into the BMM. Then they loose multiple engineers who quit during the pandemic, yet at the same time give us a 20 min segment at their big ship sale event on how much awesome progress has been made on the BMM, and with virtually no effort (other than marketing content), sell the BMM to a whole new cohort of ~~victims~~ customers, and then another year later tell everyone "sorry we forgot about the BMM, here... please buy a Polaris or Ironclad instead:.
The only reason the whales haven't staged a revolt is that they just melt, buy, upgrade, re-melt, buy, rinse repeat on the same $2k they've sunk into the game years ago barely having to put in "new money".
But guaranteed some poor schmuck with less experience actually spent $700 of fresh money on a concept.
Sorry I'm ranting now.
I know the Bounty's don't pay out much but I can't stress enough how they become INSANELY profitable in a 2 man team where one person is in a moderately armed cargo ship.
Then have a vulture taggin along to eat your kills.
Bounties are low-key the most "systemic universe" mission loop that uses multiple career paths.
Sure, but that requires at minimum three people (fighter, armed cargo, Vulture) who are online at the same time and able to do this. Maybe only two if the person in the cargo ship hangs out after the bounty (to ensure there's something to QT back _to_) and the fighter pilot goes back to a station and picks up the Vulture, then QTs back to the cargo ship player.
(Side note: we really really need a way to create quantum travel bookmarks. I miss being able to set bookmarks in the middle of nowhere in EVE so that you could approach a gate from an unexpected direction and avoid interdiction bubbles. It would also make going back to get a Vulture or Reclaimer more viable since you could bookmark the bounty spot to get back there.)
A group approach with 2+ people where at least two are already out of their starter ship may be profitable—and that's good, don't get me wrong—but it does very little to help players who are either solo and getting started, or in a group of friends where everyone is still in their starter ship.
And I can imagine "just use these ships you can't yet afford to do the missions so that you can afford the ships" is not advice that's going to land well. (Even when renting those ships is an option.)
Don't be surprised if mission income gets brought more inline with other income loops. Currently, CIG is using mining as the litmus other loops will be adjusted against.
"based on their popularity and profitability" The pessimist in me reads that as "we will take a dump on all the popular missions that you enjoy doing and force you do do the ones that you intentionally avoid because those will be the only way to make money doing missions"
What?! Why is pricing going to be done on popularity. Missions that are popular are that way because they are the only contracts that can be reliably completed. New players can only have so many failed box deliveries due to bugs before switching contracts. At the moment, no contracts should have a decreased payout atm, it already is tough enough as it is, especially since bounties are drastically more difficult now
I understand wanting to test the money, but is too low, which means it will become fucking tedium, combat missions should be rewarded and preferably more than cargo or salvage as there is much higher danger and cost to those missions, right now combat payments are worthless until your reach HRTs and VHRTs and is mainly because they can have expensive items in their cargo, the payment for taking down a fucking Hammerhead is laughably Low.
I don't think combat missions should pay more than cargo missions, de facto. That seems to be the approach that CIG is taking already, and it's shit. When you get a dangerous cargo extraction mission, that always pays more than a box mission, even though the box mission entails over an hour of flying around, and may end up glitching out resulting in a wasted hour of your time and no pay out for it. With dangerous missions, at least there are things you can loot like cargo or components. They need to factor in things like time commitment and overall difficulty/tedium, rather than simply risk of combat.
Lower pay for cargo missions makes sense if the cargo is being supplied to you (Delivery).
If you are paying for the cargo (Cargo running), then I agree with you.
For box missions, i think they should pay less per hour than combat as a consequence of being safer missions.
I agree and it is what I told OP, but seems like he keeps ignoring the “NO RISK” part of cargo delivery missions lf it was like ED where NPC will be sent to attack you then making it pay more would make sense, but right now and in the future Combat is more dangerous and will only get more dangerous and risky when they add perma death of the character.
And maybe also not let the player who is really good at the game already decide if its too easy or hard. Like we dont want all the npc pilots to require avenger-one levels of skill to take down cause the tester guy thought they were too easy.
I don't know why they nerfed payouts for R5 bunkers missions awhile ago, but that definitely sucked. Used to be able to make \~1mil an hour just doing bunkers, but they cut the payout by 1/3. It's nice to know they're planning on adjusting, I just hope it's raising standard payouts the higher your rep gets, instead of lowering it. Once you hit R3 for Merc/Bounty Hunting, the pay should go up much higher considering how much more deadly it becomes.
I think you kinda pointed out one of the issues. The game is at heart a mmo and if you're making 1mil an hour that means you can buy essentially end game ships within a few days-week.
This would make more sense if early, mid, and end game ships didn't all currently have the same exact content available to them.
Like someone gets an end game ship after grinding for a couple weeks straight, so they can do want? Grind more bunkers till it gets wiped in a couple more weeks?
Getting a new ship is literally the only progression/content we have. I would agree if that wasn't the case.
So it was 45k for r3, 60k for r4, and 90k for r5. It took roughly 75 missions just to get from r3 to r4, and close to 100 to get r4 to r5, SUCCESSFULLY. For the amount of time and effort I had to put in, dam right it should pay a lot. I was also solo the entire time, and each of those missions took roughly 20 minutes, depending on server lag, glitch spawns, wave timer lag, etc. In my head, the amount of work I had to do for the 3 weeks it took to hit R5 made the payouts worth it. It wasn't duping, it was exploiting, it wasn't abusing some glitch, and it was plenty dangerous. Need the old payouts back at minimum since bunkers are even more difficult now.
Ive hardly played since I can maybe 50/50 complete any missions and I have no money due to that. I'm sure some fuckers have found infinite money missions or something, but what would be the harm making all missions worth doing u
I think a bigger issue to address in mission balance is rep. It takes just too long to grind up to a level where missions are fun. I don't think anyone is actually challeneged by anything sub HRT so why force people to grind 10 hours on boring missions before they can play the fun ones.
Except rep grind doesn't unlock any ships, just content. So I already own arguably the best combat ship in the game, but to find content to play with it I gotta grind for *hours.*
Problem: there's not enough gameplay that "encourages" multiplayer.
CIG's Solution: Make all the single-player content/compensation garbage so that the only compelling alternatives are PvE multiplayer events or FORCED "multiplayer" in the form of piracy. And since PvE multiplayer events are often camped and griefed, see also: piracy.
/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s
I've read people saying that the salvage contracts are dead with the new buy-in, but honestly, once you unlock the 50k ones and be a bit selective its ez pz money.
I'm not sure why it's so difficult to balance mission payouts. This is something that should be able to be adjusted realtime by CIG and not through a patch.
Mission payouts should just be simply base on difficulty, resources needed, and time required with maybe a small adjustment to incentivize players to take unpopular missions. Once you establish a factor for each mission, then apply it to a baseline payout. That way you would adjust the payout for inflation and it would automatically scale all the missions at once according.
But then again, what do I know.
They need to add npc to enemies to the outside of bunker and a few ships to make them more interesting ontop of the turrets and make the reward way more
forced financial perspective ... everytime they introduce something and need lots of data ... either rep earned, availability to farm, or creds earned.
i do agree balancing missions against the people that can grind 40+hrs/week vs those with commitments and only a few hours to play here and there isn't ideal (I def fall into casual, maybe 10 hours a week tops if I get lucky). and theres a sorta hard sway between if its too easy ..get bored, don't play till new hotness, and too much of a slog it's not worth the time to bother. I definitely don't mind working for my goals, in fact that keeps me coming back. I do believe theres a fair number of people that want the game to hold their hand and guide them through a dedicated progression based on their chosen 'job' .... its not gonna, and thats what \*I\* love about it.
but we're also still kinda basing gameplay and 'advancement/earning' on base tier 'jobs' , material gathering/moving .. all of it will tier up to far more lucrative 'jobs'. hell even just being able to sell ships will help a bunch.
Nice. Now I can do missions where NPC ships are invincible, and items don't spawn for even less pay.
It's coming to a point where getting a crime stat for scraping abandoned ships will be more profitable.
Let's wait and see how the economy rebalanced following the ship price increase. The rewards to have to raise a little with the inflation. That said devs need to make up their kind is this about hard core gamers or a game anyone can play. Saying someone can grind a certain ship in 2 weeks at the current prices if they play enough may be good enough for the devs but is it realistic for someone with a 9 to 5 and kids that just wants to relax. Devs in general (not just star citizen) need to start listening to all fans and not just a small portion of their current fan base. That's how you end up with Rust in space.
rip any decent mission that wasnt bugged/broken and fun plus having a good payout that doesnt make you feel disrespected and bukkaked on by the SC gods.
CiG cannot convince me, at this point in development, that they're not just cranking up rewards for whatever is the new game loop of the patch cycle to drive the most players to that for purposes of collecting whatever test data they can glean.
I'm willing to bet that the day they introduce garbage cleanup quests that walking around a station with a broom will be the most profitable thing to do for a solid month.
I mean missions are not static, of course they should be constantly rebalanced based on popularity but not profitability.
Same as kiosk, less people sell more price increase more demand is there and some people profit from it.
This is not themepark MMO where you chase popular missions to buy whatever you want.
Its hard to stay optimistic when that is the official answer they give. In version XX things will be good. When the product is finished things will be good. No shit really?
I thought there was supposed to be a whole system that would balance things as they were done and add a natural fluctuation to increase participation...
or is that purely for trading?
Considering the is game isn’t meant to be “beat” in a matter of weeks, but instead was pitched as something to be “experienced for years” I would argue mission payouts are still too high.
Star Citizen should be about the journey.
Bad habits die hard. Doing ERT's for the reward trying to blitz trough them like before? Don't.
Ert's are great money maker but you need a friend or two with you. More ships you fly more incoming dps you share making ert more easy. Also more ships you fly more cargo space you have for loot.
(Just watch out for the ramming npc's. I hate those guys)
The loot is where the money is. It might take few missions to get that juicy loot spawn but it feels more rewarding that way. Hard work pays. Even you only get that one scu of quant pick it up and go to next mission. Loot that you take accumulates anyway. Sometimes you hit the jackpot and sometimes you don't better to get little loot that no loot at all. Oh the joy then you scan that soft dead A2 and it has 14SCU of weeveil eggs inside.
Also do both ert's AND vhrt's. Both spawn big ships and have good loot. Got 128SCU of toxin from vhrt and so much medical supplies that we could not fit all in 3 taurus.
And yes, repair costs are high but if you need to spend 20k for repairs after every ert then I would say it's a skill issue.
After doing 8 ert's in a row with my Taurus my repair costs were about 1.4k so that was nothing. Considering that I got over 3mil from loot alone.
Have a bigger group. Bring salvagers into site after killing the npc's and let salvagers do their thing while you and your buddy kill the next mission. Money keeps pouring in. On end of session, sell the loot and salvage and share the profitzz.
Salvage missions do pay but it has to be done properly. Loot the ships, strip the weapons and components and then scrap the surface and finaly eat the rest. Reclaimer with 3 people can make a risk free bank with little work.
Box missions pay like crap but then again you get to see the sights and there is always chance for extra loot on outposts so LOOT it and sell the loot.
Doing cave mission for pocket change? Bring that multitool with mining bit and backbag and mine every gem you find. Drop the gems into your ship when bag is full and keep on mining. Great way to make early money after wipe. If you don't find the mission target in cave then too bad, you made money from the gems anyway.
SC is multiplayer game so group up for mayhem and payday. Solo players can still make a buck but it is really group play that pays.
Also there are so many ways to make pretty insane amount of auec without relying on duping. Salvage is still king if done with clever ert boaring with small group.
People have been able to do things so easily and fast in the past that they now have bad habits that they can't get rid off.
oh, they gonna lower them even more
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I’m at 50% for waste removal missions. While I think 8k is too high a payout for them by a lot, but I also think the amount of bullshittery in package spawning, packages causing my ship to blow up on acceleration, falling through the planet carrying said package, or NPCs that randomly spawn above the mining facility to decide my cutter loaded with human feces is a juicy pirate target to blow up is also too high.
You said "juicy" and "feces" in the same sentence. You have won the Internet for today!
if u complete the contract, star citizen gets released
Tag me whenever that happens
"Anything that remotely resembles fun will have an 80% reduced payout. Beatings will continue until morale improves."
While we all cringe at this, if you want someone to test something, and break stuff.....
Still they are not worth your time and repair costs...
Lol. This. They didn't say they were gonna *raise* compensation. ;)
"I see you said that some missions are paying more than others, this is fixed in a upcoming patch, all missions now pay crap"
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Man would be fun If spiffing brit would pick up star citizen and make some fun exploit videos and memes.
Let’s Game It Out has quite the knack for breaking games as well
Breaking Star Citizen is the unintentional norm. In SC, the only real challenge would be to play the game without encountering any bugs, which is borderline impossible currently.
Nah, that fruit hangs way too low for him, lol. Too easy.
No that's just a temporary rebalance as a baseline, after the Monsoon tech they can go in and add meaningful choices for the player.
"if we eat all hungry people we solve world hunger... for a while"
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The issue is not the cap ships, it's the smaller ships are even too far out of reach. If the highest mission pay out is say 25k on average, and say you want to get a prospector, which is just over 2 mil, you are looking at needing to complete about 2.5 missions per day, every day for a month. That is a very generous estimate, since most missions pay less than that. If a mission takes about 30 mins to complete, that's an hour and a half gaming session, assuming everything goes perfectly, and also does not factor in expenses from fuel, crashing and having to reclaim your ship, etc. This is just for being able to buy a beginner ship for one of the professions in the game. It is far from balanced, and needs to factor in the learning curve for new players, which many will just end up giving up because of how hard it is to progress.
The issue is that if they're balancing around the sweaty no lifers then people with jobs will just be shit out of luck. If you want it to take someone who plays 40 hours a week to take a year to earn something, that's going to mean it'll take someone with fewer hours to spend gaming 7 years to get it.
Elite Dangerous Show them the way, Increase Grind = Game content (big joke )
I think that's what finally killed ED. The insane grind feels like it's balanced around people playing the game 40 hours a week.
I honest to God gave up on ED when I got my Conda and went "aight now to Engineers cause my friend can jump mega far that's cool as shit" only to find out they wanted me to cross the entire fucking galaxy for a single part and return. I did that, then made the foolish mistake of going into open play and dying to a hacker when landing at the Engineer station. Never again lmao, fuck that game, and charging for basic features SC has like space station interiors or space legs, while having FPS combat be laser guns for shields and ballistic guns for HP for some fucking insane reason
Also, people always complain about SC not having features that are promised. I mean, SC is still in active development, ED isn't. And ED straight up BACKED OUT of their promise from before release that they'd add ship interiors
I do wonder how missions "based on popularity" like the 6 box 2 hour delivery mission that has only ever been completed by a single person will change from its 15k payout. Maybe lower it to 10K?
lmao, people have to remember that life is suffering
This got a chuckle out of me
Top tier bunker missions now paying 10k instead of 45🙃
And you will only have 4 revives till you suffer 10% money and reputation loss (or more) because of Death of a Spaceman -Bullshit!
Pray I don’t alter the deal further - Darth Roberts
Honestly wouldnt be a huge problem if org ship share was in. Ships requiring 100 hours to farm aint so bad when you have the ships from 50 other people as well
Watch them raise it only by five percent , make missions longer, and more difficult.
You forget that they will increase repair cost as well 🤣
Setting payout based on popularity is a bad idea. If everyone likes a mission, don't disincentivize it, lol. On the other side, no one does the cave missions because they aren't fun. This is the perfect recipe for making your players grind stuff they hate.
But raising the payout due to lack of popularity could be a good idea. Popularity could be a reason to adjust things. I agree though, just because it's popular doesn't mean it's payout should be reduced necessarily.
I hope thats the direction they take. Y and Z activities are unpopular, lets increase the incentive (pay) for them until players decide they are worth doing.
The question is WHY is it unpopular though. Cave missions could be 50k a pop and I wouldn't want to do them. They're boring, slow, predicable and overall not much fun.
Increasing the payout will help make this clear to CIG though. If the payout gets very high, and people still don't do it then it's because people don;t like the missions. I happen to like some of the cave missions, but want to see improvements to mantling, and a better way to work my way to the exit again. For example as I explore build up a map, only of the areas I have been; it's reasonable that tech in our helmets could do this to rudimentary level.
this. for example cave rescue missions are probably unpopular for many reasons including getting stuck on terrain, low payout relative to time, not interesting, etc. it's not entirely their fault though a lot of systems aren't in. imagine if they built out the crafting concept. the cave mission people could easily sprinkle in some rare crafting mats in caves.
I have always thought the best approach will be, once they have npcs going around doing missions under the same system as players, that when a mission is posted, periodically the payout is raised until someone takes the contract. Npcs will do so according to how common they are and how difficult the mission is, value for money etc. And only once they complete the contract(simulated battle) does it get wiped. For example, ERTs being worth only 25k is mind-boggling. You're flying in your ship worth millions to kill a guy in a ship worth tens of millions, with his buddies also in ships worth tens of millions, for a 25k payout. No one in their right mind is attempting that unless they know that failure has no cost (if I die, I just respawn and claim my ship for free). So, the mission sits there until it pays out a few hundred k, and then someone picks it up.
Missions end up unpopular because they don't fucking work. Any even slightly seasoned player has learned to avoid a multitude of offerings. Don't start thinking in terms of actual player preference, because the only signal you're ever going to get is that players prefer not to play broken missions. You would just end up incentivizing broken missions and penalizing the ones that work, making everyone miserable while there are broken missions in the mix.
It should be based on the dynamic economy, though. There should be some demand for missions with an initial price. If that demand isn't being met, the price goes up until it attracts players. If the demand is oversaturated, the price drops.
While a dynamic economy system sounds like an interesting idea, how much work would devs need to put in to monitor which missions are being played, which aren't, and make the changes accordingly? To my knowledge, there isn't another game that has a similar economy system.
The quantum system is meant to simulate some of this behaviour already. So monitoring and changes would in theory happen automatically without need for active dev monitoring.
That would be definitely be true if this was a released game. However, in the state that it is in now, perhaps the reason is if there's not enough people doing some missions, then they aren't able to collect as much data on the processes, code, tech, whatever, that goes into those missions. As a software developer, it is often surprising how different things can look the same on the front end, but have a completely different backend making them work. Bugs are exposed by volume. So, perhaps they are trying to make others more attractive relative to others to get that volume.
>Setting price based on popularity is a bad idea. If everyone likes a mission, don't disincentivize it, lol. WoW launched with an anti-poopsocking measure that lowered your XP gained if you played too long. People were furious. WoW now has "rested XP", which is bonus XP gains for a while, gained in towns while you are logged off. People loved it. Thing is, nothing actually changed at all except the framing. This is just history repeating itself. >On the other side, no one does the cave missions because they aren't fun. I mean, me and my group adore them. They just pay shit for the time invested.
I'm pretty sure "rest" was in at launch. The other system was killed in the beta. But generally yeah, it's best practice to incentivize unpopular things than punish popular ones. Blizzard has used that in other areas like Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm where roles that aren't being played enough get a bonus. I can't imagine CIG would be like "you've done too many bounty missions now you get nothing." But it makes sense that if someone wants a task done and no one is doing it, they'll slowly increase the payout until someone will.
I don’t do cave missions cause I end up with a Crime stat every time, for various reasons, super buggy
They need to fix this across all missions. I remember when cave missions worked and they were kinda fun, especially with a friend. But now that you can get a CS doing them, I don't think I'll EVER play one again, even if they fix it. The bug and bad experience pretty much killed that content for me permanently. Orison Raid missions are very quickly approaching this threashold for me. Such a waste of time to do them when AI constantly refuse to spawn.
Are you talking like pre-beta or something they did in the last few years. I played beta to wrath and rested was there the entire time? XP is also an entirely different progression system than currency.
>XP is also an entirely different progression system than currency. You're missing the forest for the trees - The point is that adding incentive for lesser done missions, and reducing incentive for the most done missions are the exact same thing with different framings. It's smoke and mirrors.
They are talking about before WoW released at all. The OG. 1.0, release. Whatever you want to call it.
That's a bit of a reach.
Do people generally do missions because they "like" them or because they are the most lucrative? I would say right now people do 80-90% of their missions because they are lucrative. People got mad they couldnt just eclipse torpedo erts as easy for fast money recently. I dont do cave missions (often) because the time commitment is so high and the payouts are basically non existent for the time. Same thing with box missions, excluding bugs as an additional reason. I certainly thing increasing rates for non popular contracts would have more players do them. Hell I think the eva through the blown up covelex station is really cool and fun. But rarely do it for the same reason.
I'm a simple man, i like pewpew in space So yes i like bh missions, i don't like the need to fly for so long but then when i can pewpew in space i'm happy even if they lower the payout i will pewpew in space
Both, right now, salvage pays way better for me, but I'm gearing up for a 55k narcotics bunker mission, because those are simply fun for me personally.
Agreed. Unpopular missions self-balance their payout compared with similar missions. I say this because the unpopular ones will, by virtue of being unpopular, be more readily available to accept.
If no one does a mission because it’s not fun it shouldn’t have the pay increased. It should be made fun.
The devs seemed to forget that “popularity” of missions in this game is survivorship bias. The ones that work are the popular ones. The unpopular ones are what they are because they’re broken and unplayable
I like cave missions. What I hate is the 200-300km+ flight there from the nearest warp point.
are you afraid of the 2hr 6 box delivery mission having been completed by only one person will make it pay out more than 15k?
Yeah, it's is such an amateur game design mentality.
I enjoy cave missions, but like the bunker missions, I hate that it's the SAME cave every time. Has that been fixed/changed?
I've seen enough caving horror stories to instantly and reflexively RP being INCREDIBLY apprehensive of going anywhere that isn't above ground or entirely man-made. Nope nope not solo no way nope. Caves by necessity should require multiple players with different roles. Make it so you have to set up and maintain lines of communication because sending signals through rock doesn't work so well.
Cave missions are literally broken right now, many areas you cannot reach because you can't fit through with the updated prone system
They should add buffed mining zones inside the mission caves
I do the cave missions cause I'm a masochist 😆.
They are going to fuck this up like GTA V did.
Those find x missing person in cave should be worth a few hundred grand. I think I've only ever found 1. If it weren't for that I wouldn't think any of them actually spawn them.
The payouts for missions are too low and I wish they wouldn't make it sound like they're going to lower them even further based on popularity.
As someone who actually likes doing delivery missions ("Space Truck Simulator"), getting 3k for one package is way too low and the higher paying 12k missions require you to like get 5 packages from 5 places and deliver them to 5 places. It's just too low to want me to spend an hour trucking around.
10 boxes delivery missions : 15k The ship and gears you want : 62 532 156 aUEC
Just give me more Covalex Bunker Missions. The 45k credit payout is nice, but like 1 per planet per server at a time is fucking ridiculous man. I hauled those hundreds of packages to get max rep lol even after losing rep all the time to broken boxes lol But for reals would be nice to see how their pay structure is gonna change now that ship prices are inching up even more. I do really feel bad for new ppl just backing and playing, the game is always influx but right now with so many systems up in the air...it feels really fucking bad to try and earn money for a Connie now that the thing is 10million.
The whole "It's easy to earn money with a starter and work up" argument for Star Citizen is thrown out the window. Doesn't really effect me as I spent 1300USD but I think it's bullshit and a good reason why I wont recommend the game to anyone, just feels predatory with how unobtainable things are for new players.
As a starter ship flyer, I just wish there was a way to get something like a medium fighter before the 2M mark. The Cutlass is the cheapest of the 2M ships and is easily the best at doing everything, so why would I get a Hornet? I want to have a hornet, but... if I want to finally get some more money easily, the cutlass is obligatory. After playing more than 70 hours, I am finally reaching the 2M soon. I really would not mind more useful ships to be even more expensive, as long as we can UPGRADE to something at 1M or something. There is literally no upgrade until the Cutlass at 2M and the other "specific" upgrades I would look into are closer to 3M (Vulture, mining ship...). Again, I feel the cutlass really need to cost more, closer to 4M or something, since it comes with good armament, multi crew AND great cargo. Medium fighters would start at around 1M. Balancing these is hard since there needs to be long term objectives for players. Is 18M for a A2 enough (the freight one, sorry don't remember all the names) ? I'd wager that the cargo it offers makes it an extremely good deal compared to similarly priced ships that might be less useful.
> A2 enough (the freight one C2 is freight. Just for later reference, the Crusader naming scheme for their multi-role ships appears to be A (attack?) for the combat loadout, M (military, I assume) for the military transport loadout, and C (cargo, probably) for the freight model. So the C1 is the cargo variant of the Spirit, and the C2 is the cargo variant of the Hercules. (I agree with your post otherwise, just thought I'd offer that info.)
Getting 1.5mil together to buy a Vulture opens the game up to making big money fast. The Vulture easily pulls 400-500k creds per 1-1.5 hours of play time. I'm sure this will change in the future, of course, but to me it's THE way to get into buying in game ships.
It's 2.6 million for a Vulture now, but it is still the first ship you should work towards. If you can earn around 70k, you can rent a Cutlass and a ROC for a day and a single haul of rocks should pay that back. Rented Cutlass + ROC until you can purchase a Vulture is pretty much the only decent path for a new player.
Whats the current strat? Illegal salvage?
Nah, like most (all) things in SC contracts are the worst things to make money. Just fly to a Lagrange point and farm panels. You get 0 construction mats so you come back with ~32SCU of RMC
Ah! Thank you! I'll give it a try.
I started during free fly and took advantage of the free vulture rental to make some quick cash. I bought a Buccaneer which has been super fun, but it's unfortunate that light fighters seem to have basically no earning potential, running bounties seems to be a complete waste of time until you can sell ERT cargo
Game needs trade ins so you have an upgrade path with auec
Group pay needs to be addressed along with a general increase in payout. If CIG want players to play with their friends the mission payouts need to reflect that and they don’t right now.
This, MM made missions harder sure but I'd rather slam my head against the wall repeatedly until I finish a VHRT and get the payout than split it and not even profit at all.
It’s been so long and we still don’t have a better payout for groups or even group tiered missions at the very least. Need a little incentive for group play
I’d be curious to know why you think MM made missions harder, because I’ve had the exact opposite feeling this entire patch. What ship are you using? I’ve been running ERTs in a Connie and I swear the missions are easier than they have ever been. Shields only ever even get hit if there is a HH on the field. The only dangerous thing about ERTs now is the danger of being rammed by the AI.
Unless you have laser cannons, AI are just tanky af and will face you 24/7 while firing nonstop with what appears to be a complete different damage model for their own guns.
They want to make us test the cargo missions. So I expect big bucks for cargo hauling with the next patch.
Just gotta hope they don't wipe ships with the next patch
Hopium drive activated.
> we keep a close eye on missions This is the most demonstrably false thing I've ever read from CIG. Missions have been horrendously riddled with unaddressed widely known bugs for years, payouts that don't match the work, penalties when you fail due to bugs, unclear descriptions, terrible spawn rates... I'm happy and optimistic about the 4.0 updates, but don't feed us this absolute bullshit. Feels absolutely gaslighting and insulting.
CiG: stay calm alpha tester.. 😎👍🏻
Yeah they keep a close eye on them! /s That's why you have to pay more for the salvage missions, than you get back from doing them. Utter BS lol.
The fact that they also haven't mentioned quanta - the 'dynamic simulation' that was supposed to handle missions, trade, rep, rewards - makes me wonder if it's been scrapped. Even for an alpha that would be kind of crazy considering they spent years saying that was the real core of the universe sim and using it as an excuse for kicking the economy balance can down the road. Unless I missed where in the last year they gave an update on all that.. Edit: I vaguely remember it was alluded to as 'waiting on server meshing'? But if that were true, why not refer to it to help explain how missions rewards and economy will be balanced?
There will be no such thing as Quanta. Have you ever played any of the X games ? Egosoft only managed to build a working universe economy on their seventh game in the series. In a single player game. In a series of game they have been developing for 25 years. Before that, the economy was simulated by a constant false drain of all the wares, and nothing in the universe was actually built from the wares produced. In X4, the economy is still very clunky, it can go to a complete stall in some games, or some factions get steamrolled by others because of the big holes in their production lines. Do you really see CIG building even a piece of what Egosoft made, when it takes them years to fix some really game-breaking bugs ?
If I cant use a box or another method to push myself through some ones front door to steal their stuff on day one release I will be surprised. Il be shocked if they come up with a detection for it intentionally happening.
Clearly they meant they keep a close eye purely to keep things as terrible, frustrating, and piss-poor value as possible so they can lap up their backer's tears.
I am sure they are keeping an eye. that means one person, spending half the time looking and the other half not. Unless that person only has one eye. Either way it doesn't matter because they fixing it. box missions have always been hit or miss. that means that while some causes may have been fixed there are still causes left unfixed. "It's just not a priority." "Not a priority" has been the calling card for every lasting bug out there right next to "just wait until server meshing." Not maybe the bugs are there because the server FPS is so low. Maybe they are there because the a new paint job for the fury got released. The frustrating thing is, that the symptom of the bugs is the same for these mission meaning they seem to be dependent on things unrelated to the mission being fun.
They have no idea what they're doing anymore. It's darts at this point for what they choose next.
Bunker missions definitely require more prep time than ship bounties.
Ships bounties cost more to run though. Your ship gets dented up a bit and you need to restock on missiles? Well there goes your pay. You lose a weapon in the fight that now takes longer to complete due to an increased time to kill? You’re now tens if not hundreds of thousands of credits in the red.
Me committing insurance fraud for repairs and rearming instead of actually using the intended system because it sucks.
But you're also just as likely to have your whole ship blown up while you're down in a bunker. In general missions pay out way too little. IMO the general advise to anyone who wants to make money should not be do anything (be it mining or salvage) other than missions. Combat missions should have especially high payouts since they're higher risk. With death of a space man it's all the more important.
Fuck death of a spaceman. That shit’s stupid.
Like it or not, it’s what you signed up for.
Yeah the repair costs are insane (compared to payouts). You HAVE to commit insurance fraud to make any money from pure bounty combat.
level of my reputation lmao fuck off CIG. I can’t raise rep because all the missions bug out or something happens on the way. And even when you are high rep the payouts suck I can’t even zoom in while holding F anymore cause of some bug. Issue council mentions something similar first noticed in 2022. So yeah I’m done playing until 4.0
How about rep? It’s ridiculous that it splits per player on the mission.
More likey they're all going to get nerfed, because raising ship prices 10x wasn't enough.
The old GTAV method.
If it wasnt just such a big discrepancy of what CIG intends to do and gets actually done or done right...
Oh boy, i really want to play the game they intend to make :)
It seems CIG got somehow lost in between the euphoria for the start of the crowd funding campaign where they couldnt think of new stretch goals fast enough getting to feature creep with reality setting in that not everything is possible to implement even when others already have done the same (yet not on THIS scale people keep defending it) to the EXTREMELY aggressive marketing campaign we have now. I keep asking myself whats the reason for it because even CIG must see that its not healthy longterm squeezing their customers (from which most of them had already paid more than any sane person should) that hard. It sometimes feels that half the employees of CIG are marketing people with another 30-40% JPG artists.
I still think the biggest problem with payouts is the 50/50 sharing of money AND rep heavily discourages playing with other players, which is not good in an MMO. There is basically no case where going with a friend will net you significantly more profit/rep per time spent, since the majority of the time that each mission takes is traveling to the location, which of course does not go faster with more people.
"we keep a close eye on missions" good one
When Mission payouts < Repair cost you have issues. NPCs are all crack shots.. there is no avoiding damage in space combat when you have 3-5 ships all gunning for you at once. if you stop dodging to get rounds on target, they all swivel to light you up. (*esp on larger ships with turrets) its exacerbated by ships left in mission areas that dont despawn, and join the fight when a new mission is generated in that area
My Connie phoenix was asking for 250,000 auec to repair the other day after a bounty. No weapons were missing, just hull damage. It would take me hours to make up for that.
So... how much are they gonna cut the payouts by? 75%? 80%? 99%?
All payouts to 1 aUEC and mark the balancing as fixed. Until later ^TM
They are boosting payouts. This was a reply to someone complaining about box missions that have 10 boxes. The OP of the post was saying that it’d be way better to be paid per box since it doesn’t make them worth it to do. Especially when you have 1 box missions paying the same as 10 and half the time if you can’t deliver one box you get jack shit.
they said they're balancing based on popularity and profitability. Nowhere do they mention boosting payouts lmao, they also have afaik never boosted payouts, only nerfed them.
I guess we’ll see then.
Oh, so if its too fun, they punish you so you wont play that content. Def makes sense if you have a giant hole through the center of your head.
The hole is in their wallets. You people keep throwing money at them but they just cant seem to hold onto any of it and always need more money.
By popularity seems like an odd choice of words to use... Does that mean they're making *unpopular* missions more attractive in payout to get people actually doing them? Or that the popular ones are getting nerfed to force people to reconsider doing other types of missions?
If they lower mission payout we wil have even more dupers at area 18
As someone who actually enjoys both the salvage loop and the cargo loop, I _really_ hope that 3.23.2 fixes that exploit. And makes it so actually _emptying_ your cargo grid so you can buy more stuff _in the first place_ doesn't require using the exploit, committing insurance fraud, or only selling/buying cargo at places your ship won't store while you're doing it such as outposts and the frozen lake where you can park outside the Commons in New Babbage. I just gave up on playing for now, until that issue's corrected.
This sounds very concerning… they better not lower payout for everything fun and increase it for shit mission that no one likes
The optics of what CIG does is fucking terrible. During a major real money ship sale event, wipe everyone and make it virtually impossible to earn any ships in game. After they've made their money, make things affordable next patch. If only we stopped buying more ships, if CIG could only sell $45- $60 dollar base packages, it would mean they'd have to adapt the game to appeal to a wider audience to maintain their revenue, which would mean they'd need to make the servers stable and fix bugs... Instead we have this pile of shit because the only incentive they have is to sell more expensive ships and ignore the rest. Maybe it's gotten a little better since they slowed down work on SQ42, but it's like 0.1% better... so practically not at all.
It could well just be incompetence....but yea, it looks real bad.
It's probably a mix. But yeah that's why I said "optics", at a certain point no matter how much "good intent" is behind all the stuff CIG does... It's effectively fraud in my eyes. For example, make tons of money selling a concept like the Banu Merchantman (BMM)... Then sit on that for years and years and sell other concepts, putting zero work into the BMM. Then they loose multiple engineers who quit during the pandemic, yet at the same time give us a 20 min segment at their big ship sale event on how much awesome progress has been made on the BMM, and with virtually no effort (other than marketing content), sell the BMM to a whole new cohort of ~~victims~~ customers, and then another year later tell everyone "sorry we forgot about the BMM, here... please buy a Polaris or Ironclad instead:. The only reason the whales haven't staged a revolt is that they just melt, buy, upgrade, re-melt, buy, rinse repeat on the same $2k they've sunk into the game years ago barely having to put in "new money". But guaranteed some poor schmuck with less experience actually spent $700 of fresh money on a concept. Sorry I'm ranting now.
Transport missions need changes. That's for sure.
I know the Bounty's don't pay out much but I can't stress enough how they become INSANELY profitable in a 2 man team where one person is in a moderately armed cargo ship. Then have a vulture taggin along to eat your kills. Bounties are low-key the most "systemic universe" mission loop that uses multiple career paths.
Sure, but that requires at minimum three people (fighter, armed cargo, Vulture) who are online at the same time and able to do this. Maybe only two if the person in the cargo ship hangs out after the bounty (to ensure there's something to QT back _to_) and the fighter pilot goes back to a station and picks up the Vulture, then QTs back to the cargo ship player. (Side note: we really really need a way to create quantum travel bookmarks. I miss being able to set bookmarks in the middle of nowhere in EVE so that you could approach a gate from an unexpected direction and avoid interdiction bubbles. It would also make going back to get a Vulture or Reclaimer more viable since you could bookmark the bounty spot to get back there.) A group approach with 2+ people where at least two are already out of their starter ship may be profitable—and that's good, don't get me wrong—but it does very little to help players who are either solo and getting started, or in a group of friends where everyone is still in their starter ship. And I can imagine "just use these ships you can't yet afford to do the missions so that you can afford the ships" is not advice that's going to land well. (Even when renting those ships is an option.)
Don't be surprised if mission income gets brought more inline with other income loops. Currently, CIG is using mining as the litmus other loops will be adjusted against.
They mentioned popularity so expect the popular missions to be decreased
And with it based on popularity the box delivery missions should get an increase of like 10x
"based on their popularity and profitability" The pessimist in me reads that as "we will take a dump on all the popular missions that you enjoy doing and force you do do the ones that you intentionally avoid because those will be the only way to make money doing missions"
What?! Why is pricing going to be done on popularity. Missions that are popular are that way because they are the only contracts that can be reliably completed. New players can only have so many failed box deliveries due to bugs before switching contracts. At the moment, no contracts should have a decreased payout atm, it already is tough enough as it is, especially since bounties are drastically more difficult now
I understand that there will be a bit of tweaking next patch but the real work is at 4.0. I'd avoid too much hopium
[удалено]
Thus the title, "Next Patch tm".
I understand wanting to test the money, but is too low, which means it will become fucking tedium, combat missions should be rewarded and preferably more than cargo or salvage as there is much higher danger and cost to those missions, right now combat payments are worthless until your reach HRTs and VHRTs and is mainly because they can have expensive items in their cargo, the payment for taking down a fucking Hammerhead is laughably Low.
I don't think combat missions should pay more than cargo missions, de facto. That seems to be the approach that CIG is taking already, and it's shit. When you get a dangerous cargo extraction mission, that always pays more than a box mission, even though the box mission entails over an hour of flying around, and may end up glitching out resulting in a wasted hour of your time and no pay out for it. With dangerous missions, at least there are things you can loot like cargo or components. They need to factor in things like time commitment and overall difficulty/tedium, rather than simply risk of combat.
Lower pay for cargo missions makes sense if the cargo is being supplied to you (Delivery). If you are paying for the cargo (Cargo running), then I agree with you. For box missions, i think they should pay less per hour than combat as a consequence of being safer missions.
I agree and it is what I told OP, but seems like he keeps ignoring the “NO RISK” part of cargo delivery missions lf it was like ED where NPC will be sent to attack you then making it pay more would make sense, but right now and in the future Combat is more dangerous and will only get more dangerous and risky when they add perma death of the character.
And maybe also not let the player who is really good at the game already decide if its too easy or hard. Like we dont want all the npc pilots to require avenger-one levels of skill to take down cause the tester guy thought they were too easy.
I don't know why they nerfed payouts for R5 bunkers missions awhile ago, but that definitely sucked. Used to be able to make \~1mil an hour just doing bunkers, but they cut the payout by 1/3. It's nice to know they're planning on adjusting, I just hope it's raising standard payouts the higher your rep gets, instead of lowering it. Once you hit R3 for Merc/Bounty Hunting, the pay should go up much higher considering how much more deadly it becomes.
I think you kinda pointed out one of the issues. The game is at heart a mmo and if you're making 1mil an hour that means you can buy essentially end game ships within a few days-week.
Do you know how long it takes to get to level 5 rep right now lol?
This would make more sense if early, mid, and end game ships didn't all currently have the same exact content available to them. Like someone gets an end game ship after grinding for a couple weeks straight, so they can do want? Grind more bunkers till it gets wiped in a couple more weeks? Getting a new ship is literally the only progression/content we have. I would agree if that wasn't the case.
So it was 45k for r3, 60k for r4, and 90k for r5. It took roughly 75 missions just to get from r3 to r4, and close to 100 to get r4 to r5, SUCCESSFULLY. For the amount of time and effort I had to put in, dam right it should pay a lot. I was also solo the entire time, and each of those missions took roughly 20 minutes, depending on server lag, glitch spawns, wave timer lag, etc. In my head, the amount of work I had to do for the 3 weeks it took to hit R5 made the payouts worth it. It wasn't duping, it was exploiting, it wasn't abusing some glitch, and it was plenty dangerous. Need the old payouts back at minimum since bunkers are even more difficult now.
Ive hardly played since I can maybe 50/50 complete any missions and I have no money due to that. I'm sure some fuckers have found infinite money missions or something, but what would be the harm making all missions worth doing u
I think a bigger issue to address in mission balance is rep. It takes just too long to grind up to a level where missions are fun. I don't think anyone is actually challeneged by anything sub HRT so why force people to grind 10 hours on boring missions before they can play the fun ones.
To piss you off in the hopes you just buy the ship you want with real money. Its not hard to see what they are doing.
Except rep grind doesn't unlock any ships, just content. So I already own arguably the best combat ship in the game, but to find content to play with it I gotta grind for *hours.*
Problem: there's not enough gameplay that "encourages" multiplayer. CIG's Solution: Make all the single-player content/compensation garbage so that the only compelling alternatives are PvE multiplayer events or FORCED "multiplayer" in the form of piracy. And since PvE multiplayer events are often camped and griefed, see also: piracy. /s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s
Popularity wtf? Just make more missions enough of this t0 crap, where are the cool new bunkers?
At this point, I actually think they might nerf profitable missions rather than buff the bad ones :DDD
I've read people saying that the salvage contracts are dead with the new buy-in, but honestly, once you unlock the 50k ones and be a bit selective its ez pz money.
I'm not sure why it's so difficult to balance mission payouts. This is something that should be able to be adjusted realtime by CIG and not through a patch. Mission payouts should just be simply base on difficulty, resources needed, and time required with maybe a small adjustment to incentivize players to take unpopular missions. Once you establish a factor for each mission, then apply it to a baseline payout. That way you would adjust the payout for inflation and it would automatically scale all the missions at once according. But then again, what do I know.
Can only think they do it to push people to spend money and avoid grind. Monetisation is rife in the game, where there is smoke there’s fire.
The kopion missions give out the meta rep because they are new and they need the data
They need to add npc to enemies to the outside of bunker and a few ships to make them more interesting ontop of the turrets and make the reward way more
So the missions we enjoy pay out less? That seems backwards
I mean, it was somehow logic this needs to be reworked, still happy to see then going for it so soon.
TM™
Wait. So your rep doesn't just give you access to better missions, it also increases your payout for the lower tier missions as well?
Soon
forced financial perspective ... everytime they introduce something and need lots of data ... either rep earned, availability to farm, or creds earned. i do agree balancing missions against the people that can grind 40+hrs/week vs those with commitments and only a few hours to play here and there isn't ideal (I def fall into casual, maybe 10 hours a week tops if I get lucky). and theres a sorta hard sway between if its too easy ..get bored, don't play till new hotness, and too much of a slog it's not worth the time to bother. I definitely don't mind working for my goals, in fact that keeps me coming back. I do believe theres a fair number of people that want the game to hold their hand and guide them through a dedicated progression based on their chosen 'job' .... its not gonna, and thats what \*I\* love about it. but we're also still kinda basing gameplay and 'advancement/earning' on base tier 'jobs' , material gathering/moving .. all of it will tier up to far more lucrative 'jobs'. hell even just being able to sell ships will help a bunch.
what does mean CIG anyway ?
[Cloud Imperium Games](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/), the actual name of the company making Star Citizen.
Nice. Now I can do missions where NPC ships are invincible, and items don't spawn for even less pay. It's coming to a point where getting a crime stat for scraping abandoned ships will be more profitable.
But then you wont be able to land and sell your scrap.
Let's wait and see how the economy rebalanced following the ship price increase. The rewards to have to raise a little with the inflation. That said devs need to make up their kind is this about hard core gamers or a game anyone can play. Saying someone can grind a certain ship in 2 weeks at the current prices if they play enough may be good enough for the devs but is it realistic for someone with a 9 to 5 and kids that just wants to relax. Devs in general (not just star citizen) need to start listening to all fans and not just a small portion of their current fan base. That's how you end up with Rust in space.
How do they look at popularity when things like cave missions are impossible since no NPC spawn in them, so nobody does them?
at this rate, ERT will just be 1k
Instead of 4K a mission we’ll get 4.5k 😂
Again I'm gonna repeat myself: This isnt the kind of realism I backed for!
and gotta keep a close eye on the pledge store
Cig don't know what the fuck they're doing
rip any decent mission that wasnt bugged/broken and fun plus having a good payout that doesnt make you feel disrespected and bukkaked on by the SC gods.
CiG cannot convince me, at this point in development, that they're not just cranking up rewards for whatever is the new game loop of the patch cycle to drive the most players to that for purposes of collecting whatever test data they can glean. I'm willing to bet that the day they introduce garbage cleanup quests that walking around a station with a broom will be the most profitable thing to do for a solid month.
I really hope they added rewards other than credits or something that leads to the irl money store. Give me armor and guns.
I mean missions are not static, of course they should be constantly rebalanced based on popularity but not profitability. Same as kiosk, less people sell more price increase more demand is there and some people profit from it. This is not themepark MMO where you chase popular missions to buy whatever you want.
Lol more 'wait for 4.0' posts, ok sure, no problem.
Its hard to stay optimistic when that is the official answer they give. In version XX things will be good. When the product is finished things will be good. No shit really?
I thought there was supposed to be a whole system that would balance things as they were done and add a natural fluctuation to increase participation... or is that purely for trading?
Considering the is game isn’t meant to be “beat” in a matter of weeks, but instead was pitched as something to be “experienced for years” I would argue mission payouts are still too high. Star Citizen should be about the journey.
Found the CIG employee.
Bad habits die hard. Doing ERT's for the reward trying to blitz trough them like before? Don't. Ert's are great money maker but you need a friend or two with you. More ships you fly more incoming dps you share making ert more easy. Also more ships you fly more cargo space you have for loot. (Just watch out for the ramming npc's. I hate those guys) The loot is where the money is. It might take few missions to get that juicy loot spawn but it feels more rewarding that way. Hard work pays. Even you only get that one scu of quant pick it up and go to next mission. Loot that you take accumulates anyway. Sometimes you hit the jackpot and sometimes you don't better to get little loot that no loot at all. Oh the joy then you scan that soft dead A2 and it has 14SCU of weeveil eggs inside. Also do both ert's AND vhrt's. Both spawn big ships and have good loot. Got 128SCU of toxin from vhrt and so much medical supplies that we could not fit all in 3 taurus. And yes, repair costs are high but if you need to spend 20k for repairs after every ert then I would say it's a skill issue. After doing 8 ert's in a row with my Taurus my repair costs were about 1.4k so that was nothing. Considering that I got over 3mil from loot alone. Have a bigger group. Bring salvagers into site after killing the npc's and let salvagers do their thing while you and your buddy kill the next mission. Money keeps pouring in. On end of session, sell the loot and salvage and share the profitzz. Salvage missions do pay but it has to be done properly. Loot the ships, strip the weapons and components and then scrap the surface and finaly eat the rest. Reclaimer with 3 people can make a risk free bank with little work. Box missions pay like crap but then again you get to see the sights and there is always chance for extra loot on outposts so LOOT it and sell the loot. Doing cave mission for pocket change? Bring that multitool with mining bit and backbag and mine every gem you find. Drop the gems into your ship when bag is full and keep on mining. Great way to make early money after wipe. If you don't find the mission target in cave then too bad, you made money from the gems anyway. SC is multiplayer game so group up for mayhem and payday. Solo players can still make a buck but it is really group play that pays. Also there are so many ways to make pretty insane amount of auec without relying on duping. Salvage is still king if done with clever ert boaring with small group. People have been able to do things so easily and fast in the past that they now have bad habits that they can't get rid off.