Choose Your Starting Level?

[Arwkin]

Steal ships and later abandon them... ? Sounds like Grand Theft Spaceship to me. Having an expensive ship from the start with no skills probably wouldn't work out too well for most gamers. There have been studies that show when you give a poor person a winning lottery ticket, they don't use the money wisely and end up broke again. If implemented, I think your suggestion would have similar results.

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[Roger Wilco Jr]

What about if people find combat hard? Should we give them indestructible ships and one hit one kill weapons?

Not at all. Not the same thing, imho.


I think there are two big (non-technical) complaints about the game from many new players. One is that there is nothing to do and the other is that it's too hard to make credits. I don't understand either of those as I played several hours every day for over a year, I found plenty to do, and it kept getting easier and easier to make credits - and not just because of increased rank. When I started, I don't remember a lot of missions I could take in a Sidey. I usually just made maybe a few hundred credits per trade. And bounty hunting paid a few hundred credits, up to a couple thousand, per kill. So while learning the game, it was a slow and satisfying, though not necessarily hard, experience.

Then bounty hunters complained that traders who had worked their way up to larger ships could make money a lot faster than them. So FD rebalanced bounty hunting with payouts increased 100 to 1000 fold! And then people complained that you couldn't make money trading in small ships so missions were rebalanced so they had much larger payouts. Okay, I may have made some of that up, but I'm still sure it is a lot easier to make credits these days than at release - too easy, imho.

Anyway, it seems that everybody that replied prefers the hard way, but one or two still thought it was too hard to make credits when they started, or maybe missions or bounty hunting is bugged and don't pay enough even now. And then there are those that only have one hour per week to play and they complain that it takes too long to progress (duh). I even saw on the Oculus forum a player that gave ED 1-star, but if he could buy credits then he would have given it 5-stars! I was hoping ship transfers would use players, either delivering my ship to me, or taxiing my butt to my ship, but who would do it these days if it didn't pay millions?

I saw on the main forums a poll about how many credits/hr you should make (in a decent ship) and most wanted 5-15 million, with a small percentage wanting 100 million or more, and an equally small percentage wanting 1 million or less. That pretty much seems to match the game as it stands now, at least for trading, depending on the cargo hold size. And with about 20-25% wanting the average reduced, and about 20-25% wanting the average increased, how do you please everybody?

I suppose people that want a lower average can slow play and avoid high paying missions. But what about those that want to make credits a lot faster? All they can do is just stick with the game, even if they aren't enjoying it. And if FD keeps making it easier to make credits, then that is going to tend to ruin the game for me (when I restart). I'd rather they make making credits more realistic. A mission to deliver some data shouldn't pay out more than many beginner spaceships. Killing one pirate shouldn't pay out enough for a Cobra. Flying someone around for an hour shouldn't pay out enough for an Asp Explorer. Imho, the big payouts should be reserved for large cargo hold trading, and maybe very long and difficult missions. And if you don't want to wait that long, or work your way up, then just start wherever it makes you happy (although I feel you are just cheating yourself).


P.S. Obviously I don't have anything better to do while I'm patiently waiting for Season 3 to be released (and the new TV season and football season to end).

P.P.S. Another idea - maybe for role play purposes you want have been born in the hanger tunnels and start with nothing, or maybe were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and inherited the family yacht and fortune, or maybe somewhere in between. That may be a valid reason to allow people to choose their starting level.

[Relix Typhon]

P.P.S. Another idea - maybe for role play purposes you want have been born in the hanger tunnels and start with nothing, or maybe were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and inherited the family yacht and fortune, or maybe somewhere in between. That may be a valid reason to allow people to choose their starting level.

This could work. To balance it out, your (rich) families name could be muck around the galaxy and you would have to work hard to get your rep up for example.

[Falcon_D]

Started in a Sidey and loved "levelling-up". Went from Sidey to Adder and worked for the Cobra. Didn't know how to properly play the game at the start. My 1st Mission, I got promptly blown up by a Master (or Elite I forget) authority Python. I was wondering how the hell is this Mission labelled harmless when the opponents are so OP. The game didn't really pick up for me until I got my Cobra MkIII. Then I went "wow" and bought a HOTAS. After which I found out about the Python. That was/is my "end-game" ship.

My RP story is that I was an average Joe. Not too bad in school, good grades, 2 degrees, from a good family (not rich but one of those middle class families,) and working at a reasonable paying job which I was qualified for but always felt that there was something missing in my life. Walked by a dinky Pilot's Federation office one day and decided to sign up. They trained me and gave me a used Sidey. Never looked back.

Don't think I would have been playing long if I could choose to go straight for any ship. In fact that's one of my biggest gripes with SC. I'm used to RPGs and all that levelling up thing. Although I agree that Elite is not so much about the levelling. I fly around in my Python 90% of the time, although I have the other ships.

[Dave Sewell]

"If FD is so worried about people thinking the game is too hard to learn and they'll leave if they can't easily get a lot of credits and into bigger ships quickly, then why not just let people choose their own starting level? They could pick any ship, equip it however they want (minus RNGineer upgrades)"

OR....leave it how it is and all the Ritalin addicted attention defeciet pre-teens will stay away from the game and we can have more fun.

Seriously? why not apply this to everything? Don't like getting shot in COD?...then start with everything!!! Don't like loosing in FIFA..then start with the cup! Don't like being beat in Forza?...then win every time with full access to all the best cars and upgrades!


I take it this wasn't a serious suggestion?

Anyone who does not have the patience to play the game as intended, or the intellect to pick up the basics has no place playing it. There are other games out there for these people, compromising this one to suit them is a very poor idea. I put the hours in, admittedly I was a pad-crasher for a very long time before I got to grips with docking, and then got killed more times than I can count learning how to handle myself in a fight..it's part of the game...we STRIVE to become Elite, we don't get it handed to us on a silver plate.