Postby eckso » Thu Nov 24, 2016 3:50 pm
Here are my experiences as a new player, having starting in mid September. This is mostly anecdotal food for thought, with a mild conclusion at the end.
So I'm more or less a newbie who is struggling with credits. My assets are around 60,000,000, growing in a very slow creep. Things are somewhat better now, in that with my Asp Explorer, I have much more freedom to explore the various aspects of the game, but credits are still a real problem. In my experience, at my current progression, playing the game properly won't yield multiple millions per hour. Only optimized farming with the assistance of third-party tools, or gaming the game, will allow for that in any reasonable amount of time.
Even with eddb, et al, it will be a long while before I'll be able to afford a Fer-de-Lance or, my dream, an Anaconda; because during the the time I'm able to play the game, I can actually play the game, or I can try to make more money to buy those ships. The two are mutually exclusive, imo:
Making significant amounts of money is unfun downtime. It's something I do while watching streams or Netflix because otherwise it would be intolerable. There are fun activities that generate money, but not significant amounts of money, in the multiples of millions - at least, not in my stage of the game. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
Here is my progression from the beginning up to now.
1. Data and delivery missions. Eventually I made enough to buy a Cobra, and sourcing missions became somewhat profitable - relatively speaking. Still, this took weeks. When missions were broken in 2.2, I had no choice but to find another way to make money. Hereabout I had saved enough for a Cobra.
2. So I did some research and learned about rare trading and the Lave loop. I finally started making real money - again, relatively speaking - but boy was that tedious. Luckily, it was only a week or two before I could afford a T6.
3. Armed with the T6, I researched trade loops with eddb, and started doing Imperial Slave runs. After another week or two, I earned enough for an Asp Explorer.
4. So now I have an Asp Explorer. I can enjoy most of what the game has to offer, except larger ships. It's very unlikely that I'll be able to afford those anytime soon (months) without a generous donation. Commodity trading is still the most reliable legitimate way I've found to generate credits, and is still mind-numbingly boring. So again, do I want to have fun, or do I want to make money?
5. A lot of my early November was spent experimenting with different ways to make money with my Asp, and optimizing the ways I already knew. So the goal here is to find a fast, reliable way to make money - not for its own sake, but so I give more of my time to not finding money. I want to be able to say, "Oh, my funds have dipped. Guess I'd better go do [revenue-generating activity] for an hour or five so I can play in peace for the next few days." But I've pretty much hit a wall. Slave trading and bounty hunting are the best I can do, and bounty hunting isn't predictable. The amount of money I can reliably make per hour is basically a function of my cargo capacity, and maybe my FSD mod level.
6. For the moment, the money making is on hold while I spend more time exploring the game. The problem is still there, but I'm tired of working. It's time to have some fun.
Aside:
When I say "legitimate" ways of making money, I mean ways of generating credits that do not game the game - like stacking skimmer missions or whatever. To me, those violate the spirit of the game. At the same time, it's very necessary for anyone who wants to progress, but doesn't have 8 hours per day to dump into the game.
There's one aspect of my story that might be notable:
In my early game, I stopped doing missions and started researching trading and mining only after missions were nerfed in 2.2. You could read that as: I stopped doing the easy stuff, stopped reaching for the low-hanging fruit, only after that fruit was taken away.
Which is why I wasn't utterly horrified when the missions were nerfed. It motivated me to go do research, which led me to eddb, Inara, the ED forums - to the community at large - which has been a great experience. And it forced me to learn that there are in fact much more effective ways to generate income in a predictable way.
But take the story of my friend, on the other hand. I bought him ED so I'd have someone to play with, and it's been nothing but pain for him. He doesn't want to come home from work and have to study in order to succeed at a game. When missions were nerfed, he was utterly lost, and ready to quit. If I hadn't told him about the Lave loop, he wouldn't have found it. If I hadn't taught him about commodity trading, he wouldn't have bothered to learn. If I hadn't dumped 10,000,000 in commodities for him, he wouldn't own an Asp Explorer. He doesn't enjoy spending hours researching, like I did, like many of us do. And he enjoys playing other games, which further diminishes his time for ED. Maybe this says that ED isn't the game for him; or maybe it says something about how ED treats new players who aren't willing to invest their lives in the game.
Final consideration, a reflection on my first weeks with the game:
In the early game, I think it should be difficult to make money so that new players advance slowly, giving them time to learn the very complex game mecahnics. There's so much to learn - not least of which is how to fly a damn space ship! - that it shouldn't be rushed. The later game would be wasted on anyone who didn't have the experience of a gentle introduction in early game. You can't learn algebra before learning arithmetic. I wouldn't have known what to do with an Anaconda in my first weeks with the game.
But for my part, while I believe I'm past the "early game" stage, it will nonetheless be months before I get to fly an Anaconda. That's a tough pill to swallow. Again, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I've optimized my money-making as best I know how.
Conclusion:
The amount of money one can legitimately generate should better scale with one's progress in the game.