[Spoiler] IMG quest, reward concerns.

[OneoftheLost]

If you have not done the IMG main quest, then please, by all means, find your way out, and then do so.

OK. Now that some of you are still around, I'd like to voice a concern I have with the main quest. Im not sure what Vice intended, but I'll highlight some things.

First, the IMG main quest has a few beginner missions, ranging from 'racing' to 'mining' to blowing up asteroids. Now, this is fine, I expected as much from a beginner quest. What I did NOT expect, was the ludicrous rewards. As a reward for doing these quests

[Seriousley, Spoilers.]

You will recieve coordinates to 3 crates with unlimited quantities of a weapon, tradeable item, and missles.

/Spoilers

The tradeable item and missles are no big deal, the 100k weapon on the other hand... I'm literally just flying back and forth between station and spot, and have made well upwards of 5mil in roughly 5 minutes.

Now, I'm not pointing out an exploit, but I would STRONGLY suggest that the players only be able to say... grab 3 of the weapons. I went from a raven frame to a Guardian in a matter of a couple minutes. If I knew where the higher end frames where, I would go buy one of those.

Its kinda turned me off to be honest. I LOVE slogging my way through the credit mill for better ships. Now, I could just NOT use the exploit, but I was curious as to other's thoughts on it, or if its even an exploit at all and something I should just keep to myself.

Also, on an unrelated subject, could someone explain the difference between Federation and Alliance frames? It looks like Federation frames have better stats all around for the same price. Are Alliance frames faster or something?

[Whytephyre]

LoL, 100k is not that much.... Fulcrum torpedos are worth like 2-7 mil

[OneoftheLost]

Oh. Ok. I was unsure if it was like... a balance thing, or what.

I have a lot to learn!

Thanks for the replies!

[BraveHart]

"Your going to be Glad to have the Credit's when you head towards the War Zones!! By then your going to really want to upgrade your ship and Guns 'n' Laser's"

[Marvin]

I sold just enough missiles to upgrade to where I could successfully do the first escort mission by myself. I did log the location, though, for any future emergency. My guess is Vice wanted to entice players to actually do the quest instead of jumping right into combat. After all, he went to a lot of trouble creating the scenario.

[49rTbird]

The quest give Pilots the training needed to learn how to handle their ships and their environment. You learn the limitations and rewards of the various missions so as to give each Pilot an idea of what they like and don't. At least thats my belief anyway.

[Maarschalk]

Yes, 100K is nothing.....LOL.....and I do not see it as an exploit.......and as others pointed out you have the options to choose how you want to play this game and learn what you like or dislike....:P:P:P:P

[funkylunk]

Hey guys. Long time lurker, first time poster. The I.M.G. questline...I receive the initial text telling me to proceed to the main trade station at New Hope. Once I arrive, nothing happens. I see the standard contracts available at the station. I've taken a few (deliver the satellite, clean the solar panels, etc.), completed them but no further guidance is given. I know i must be missing something. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

[Blackthorne]

They send you to the main trading CITY. That's on the surface (the green cross in brackets), so get down there to start the storyline.

-Blackthorne

[funkylunk]

Originally posted by Blackthorne
They send you to the main trading CITY. That's on the surface (the green cross in brackets), so get down there to start the storyline.

-Blackthorne

Yep, got that. I used the word "station" in my original post but I meant the main city on New hope. No joy though. I get a sneaky feeling I may have to delete all pilot profiles and start again. My original pilot profile went out and about thinking EL then came back for the IMG quest. I then created a new profile to start anew. No IMG quest update though. Could that be the answer?

PS. Fantastic game!

[Edited on 9-19-2010 by funkylunk]

[TGS]

As far as I can work out the IMG/Quest is merely a mechanism to point people in a sense of direction. And I say that the way I do because this game is truly directionless. You can go anywhere do anything from the moment you enter the game. If you wish to completely ignore the quest you can do so. If you choose to do the quest you get a few perks and the containers are most certainly one of them.

Giving you a way of making a few million within the first little while of playing is more about freedom than unfairness in my opinion. If your money is really tight for too long into the game you will feel limited and constricted. Not a good feeling in a space simulator of this size and depth. And yes if you avoid the quest and don't know the game/locations etc you might find yourself in that position and that's ok. But the means are certainly there and not even overly hard to achieve. Ultimately you can make billions perhaps even trillions in this game given enough time and effort. So a few hundred thousand isn't going to make or break your gaming experience.

That being said my "gripe" with this game since I initially got into EL was lack of true/proper money sinks. In a game of this size and scope for the sheer amount of money that you can make there don't really seem to be money sinks. Now for people that don't understand what I'm saying or getting at. This sort of game can easily get to the ridiculous silly point when you have so much money that basically you can buy anything and not make a dent. This game is good compared to others in that it scales to your wealth but at the end of the day there is little to spend money on in a proportionate comparison to your wealth. There is nothing "big" and "shiny" and potentially pointless that you can spend your money on to add flavor and fun to your game. Unless you go buying fulcrum's by the dozen and loosing them on pretty much anything that moves. That's really the only thing I could see being a money sink. I would love to see things that can be bought that are very expensive to buy AND maintain for even the wealthiest of players. Something that if you aren't making a considerable income you will eventually go broke if you continue to use/hold such an item or service. Perhaps elite crewmembers that charge 500k a cycle or a ship that is extremely expensive to repair and would take forever to repair conventionally (IE repair system/repair station). If money is a major object in the game then so to money should have a felt purpose both incoming and outgoing. Part of the disservice to money in this game is the save system and lack of risk. If you die you lose nothing because you revert back to a previous save. If you save often you can buy a bunch of things... have a fun time spend as much money as you want... blow yourself up and voila you've spent nothing. Anyway forgive the ranting I just think that money is devalued in the game and its such a massive part that it's a shame to have it devalued in such a way. // End rant.

[tha_rami]

Well, actually, TGS, that would be a very good reason to take out those crates. That way, you'd be spending money on fitting your ship longer than you do now, since you can pretty much upgrade to whatever after that quest. I pretty much felt the same as the OP.

Sure, billions is common in Evochron, but should we really be giving out hundreds of thousands of credits for the introductory missions?

[TGS]

Yes and no. Yes in that whether you make it because you were smart enough to do the quest and got handed a awesome tip... or you grinded out for hours and hours and found a mining sweet spot. Either way the same result happens. And I think your use of the term "introductory" is really a matter of opinion. I never did the beacon quest in EL because I had no reason to. It felt clunky and I hopped into multiplayer got handed like 50 million credits right from the get go and was given the location to riftspace and a mantis drive and the location to andromeda. So really there wasn't any incentive to do it and I'm thankful for that. It probably would have discouraged my experience in the game.

And no primarily because there is no decent money sink in this game as I previously stated. Once you get around the 50 million mark there's nothing in the game you can't buy short of the restricted items (aka military ships). And even then once you get your rank up you can buy them too.

Points are. 1. There is zero risk in this game, and from what I've determined in the past that is the general will of this games community take it or leave it 2. There are no decent money sinks. In any game where money is a major factor both single and multiplayer there need to be money sinks. Things that generally don't have a lot of value yet cost a ton. Or they have value but its entirely subjective value. IE I have 100 million credits so I wanna go splurge on valuable "paintings" that serve no purpose other than to flaunt around and I can place them in the universe to liven it up a bit. You know that sort of thing.

Originally posted by tha_rami
Well, actually, TGS, that would be a very good reason to take out those crates. That way, you'd be spending money on fitting your ship longer than you do now, since you can pretty much upgrade to whatever after that quest. I pretty much felt the same as the OP.

Sure, billions is common in Evochron, but should we really be giving out hundreds of thousands of credits for the introductory missions?

[Blackthorne]

Hands up, gentlemen...was there ever a sandbox game that couldn't be screwed over by an ambitious player to oblivion and back (pun probably intended). I think it's in the nature of a sandbox game that ressources like money or items become irrelevant after a (relatively short) time.

Once you get over a certain "critical mass", money quickly ceases to be an issue, be it in X or in Evochron or in GTA. Do I really *need* a 250-station-complex that produces pretty much the gross output of the rest of the universe? No. Do I need enough money to bomb a heavyily populated MP-server back into pristine conditions? Or do I really need the ability to buy more ammunition than I can fire in a week of realtime? Probably not.

But frankly, I don't mind.

Those games are about the journey and the things that happen to you on your way, they're less about clever resource management.

-Blackthorne

[TGS]

Blackthorne... if this were an MMO you'd change your tune a bit And that's I guess partly where the issue can arise. I gather a lot of people play this primarily for its multiplayer. Not necessarily MMO... but in many ways if this were to be a mainstream game it would be a MMO.

In an MMO when a person has more money than they know what to do with and nothing to spend it on... it can make the game stale and boring. So the drive for the developer is to provide more ways of spending and more ways of utilizing the resources you are obtaining. Evochron sort of does this in the form of things scaling to your wealth but things scaling to your wealth means that you've got a percentage increase happening based on your wealth but at the end of the day a 50% growth reduction is still just a reduction in growth it just limits your increase but doesn't stop it.

One thing I absolutely love about this game is that you can get things like crew members and even hangar storage that take money out on cycles. It means there's a constant outgoing and you essentially have to have a constant incoming to go with it. That is a great design. But where it ultimately fails is the "no risk" save system. I could buy up tons of fulcrums go around blowing things up have a jolly good time... then self-destruct and I've basically just had my free lunch. I've gone and had a lot of fun with no cost what so ever.

I imagine I've probably pissed people off on here with what I"m sure appears to be self-serving rants. But in reality my rants are probably a lot more community based than people realize. The impression I've been given in the time that I've been in this community is that Vice is an extremely player oriented developer who for the most part designs is games around the communities wishes. Now personally I think this is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that it's rare and something that puts a great emphasis of trust in him by the players. It's a curse in that things that may have seemed like a good idea or good decision at the time do not appear to come up for review later. Such as the "no risk" save system. Basically yes once upon a time it probably seemed like a good idea. Now not so much. With more and more focus being put on multiplayer the more and more the construct of money and pilot development gets negated with the mechanic of "no risk". This affects many aspects of the game ranging from the reputation system to the core monetary system to battles to pretty much every facet of the game. Let's face it... if you mess up in the game what incentive have you to save your failure? None. Heck if you get destroyed you don't even get an option. I guess the prime point that I have been hammering on for quite some time is that no matter what happens in this game both on multiplayer and on single player it can ALWAYS be undone with just a little bit of effort.

Say there was a forced-save on regular events. Say there was some form of penalty when you died for example coming back with a 99% damaged ship that needed repairing. Are you gonna really hate the game because you have to pay a bit of money that you can easily get ? I doubt it. Say someone decided to try to grief your reputation by being in a sector with you and killing a bunch of friendlies thus destroying your reputation. Well firstly you could easily get away from them secondly you can always undo it even in the single player game which would prevent anyone from stopping you. Thirdly the "group" system in this game isn't opt-in or even opt-out. If you're in the same sector you are effectively a group. I don't really understand that. It can't be that difficult of a thing to change and with the change you lose the ability to be openly griefed thus reducing or negating that particular risk.

Anyway I wouldn't be surprised if Vice banned me for my persistence in my rants but to be honest as much as I think once upon a time people were probably for the "no risk" system... I think perhaps the community might be ready to have a little bit of risk in the game. It could certainly spice things up and add a little bit of fun to the game. As long as it doesn't go too overboard.

[verbosity]

having played through the quests a couple of times I feel they are pretty balanced, yes you can upgrade your kit pretty easily when you find some crates, but you'll still have to get your skills up to speed, plus you'd still have to spend a fair amount of time getting your wealth up to the point where you can take advantage of the final 'reveal'.

The final reveal itself unlocks some good money making opportunities, but they are still not the best in the game, and you can use up huuge amounts of wealth quickly if you want to progress in certain directions.

Lastly, even when you have a good couple of bill under your belt you still need to keep an eye on your finances. Depending on what you are doing you can easily spend a couple of bill in a couple of hours, and in some cases your investment might be at risk if you don't keep up repayments ( in a matter of speaking ).

Lastly @TGS,
I wouldn't worry about your rants, you're giving a personal opinion, and usually backing it up with understandable reasons.

[TGS]

lol verb. I still love this game immensely. It provides almost everything I've ever wanted in a space flight sim game. Glad to see you back as well. I was wondering when I'd see you sneak in. Hope to fly with you soon.

Originally posted by verbosity
having played through the quests a couple of times I feel they are pretty balanced, yes you can upgrade your kit pretty easily when you find some crates, but you'll still have to get your skills up to speed, plus you'd still have to spend a fair amount of time getting your wealth up to the point where you can take advantage of the final 'reveal'.

The final reveal itself unlocks some good money making opportunities, but they are still not the best in the game, and you can use up huuge amounts of wealth quickly if you want to progress in certain directions.

Lastly, even when you have a good couple of bill under your belt you still need to keep an eye on your finances. Depending on what you are doing you can easily spend a couple of bill in a couple of hours, and in some cases your investment might be at risk if you don't keep up repayments ( in a matter of speaking ).

Lastly @TGS,
I wouldn't worry about your rants, you're giving a personal opinion, and usually backing it up with understandable reasons.

[Blackthorne]

Blackthorne... if this were an MMO you'd change your tune a bit

Yeah, in that case you'd get more of a "vitriolic rant" from me. Try this one:

I don't like MMOs. Mostly because the developers want monthly payments from me, or even worse, micropayments. And then we get into this ugly vicious circle of "geez, I really OUGHT to play this, since I already paid for the month".
Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt, handed over 12 billion ISK to my former clanmates and then deleted the character for good. Most MMOs are slightly more complex than your average game, but you can screw them pretty thoroughly, too, if you put some effort in it.
By the way, the average MMO mechanics get pretty stale pretty quickly - the art of making money from one is to keep the carrot ever so slightly out a players reach (Archievers), promise "balanced" PVP (that slightly favors a different class each time, to keep the Killer types chasing after the "flavor of the month" class). The Social type is a sucker for MMOs, anyways, and will stay as long as his money lasts and his buddies are still there. Well, then there's the Explorer types, who will stay as long as he has things to discover; they're difficult to cater to, and most of the time get ignored. If you're good, however, they'll be back for a few months after the next expansion.

Balance is a myth. All that keeps these things floating are different degrees of addiction. Fine, if you're into that thing, but I've grown tired of the treadmills quite some time ago. I also don't get much enjoyment out of slaughtering hapless newbies (not to mention I'm growing old, and my reflexes go slowly down the drain), so PVP is pretty much lost on me.

Inflation is mostly a problem if you really need to keep people addicted to your game and it's envy-based economy. It's not about the story. It's not about the worth of your money. Today, it's mostly about waving your "leet purplez" (or whatever passes as a status symbol in the game of your choice) into the faces of the have-nots.

***

You want is a way to establish rules in your sandbox, to improve your enjoyment of the game. Fine by me. Just keep those rules out of other people's sandboxes.

I don't see how the MS Flight Simulator could be improved by making people "earn" the right to fly a jet, and take it away from them if they crash it. A sandbox is mostly about trying batshit insane things, and see what'll happen.

You won't see me running around and telling people how to play their game. I'll tell them how to break it, though, if they ask nicely.

-Blackthorne

[TGS]

LOL

You want is a way to establish rules in your sandbox, to improve your enjoyment of the game. Fine by me. Just keep those rules out of other people's sandboxes.

This couldn't be further from the truth. You see the "rules" as you see it aren't actually rules. They're more or less mechanics. Mechanics that actually exist in just about every game to some degree or another. Games that give 100% reward with no loss grow tiresome quickly. And aside from you personally perhaps I imagine I'm not alone in this sentiment.

The problem is this game may be a sandbox to you. But the moment it goes multiplayer it is no longer "your" sandbox. And that I think is where it breaks down. In multiplayer you are no longer playing a sandbox you are playing a game with other people. And it still employs the ruleset of the sandbox. I too have had my share of MMO addictions and I dislike them for many of the same reasons that you do. But I also know what makes them successful and if you could apply what makes an MMO successful to a game like this. You're gonna end up with an EXTREMELY good game and dare I say the sales would start increasing at a very high rate.

And I'm not even saying go all MMO on Evochron's ass just move it away from sandbox and more towards an economical open-ended space game. At least in the multiplayer sense. It does many things right. ClientServer architecture. Expandability. And now with EM universe manipulation from the server stand point. This game has so much potential but as long as it still uses the mechanics and systems that it uses to emphasize single player IN multiplayer people who aren't long term fans probably won't stick around the game long. The play the single player and however many hours that involves. They get grossly obscene amounts of money. Nowhere to spend it. No risk to go with their reward. So they try multiplayer which gives them some more gameplay time than they realize that multiplayer is nothing more than single player with other players. And while this seems like an awesome concept it sort of negates a lot of the flavor the game has. The dynamic market the mission system the combat. Heck even the traveling is negated. How many people at one point or another have saved in Riftspace and simply don't save at all. Yet fly around in multiplayer doing whatever. They have access to all the major systems and don't even have to travel to get back there. All they have do to is die and revert the save.

And honestly not to fight with you but what exactly would it detract from you personally if there were more costs associated and say... forced saving to stop people doing things then reverting their save to avoid paying for what they've done.

Anyway I guess maybe I'm hoping for too much. I actually get the feeling I'm not the only one that feels this way but I am probably the only one voicing it so its probably a waste of time.

Edit: I just asked a friend about this because I was actually wanting some outside opinion on this and he actually brought up Diablo 2 as a good reference. In Diablo 2 you can play multiplayer with your single player character. However because the player ultimately controls the character they can cheat very easily. Make items as they choose. Change their money. Even place there character anywhere in the game world. Which is why most of the popularity of Diablo 2 came in the form of its "Closed Servers". Which I understand Vice does give the capacity for and I am very tempted to fire one up.

[Edited on 9-20-2010 by TGS]

[Maarschalk]

LOL....there are money sinks in this game when you are wealthy having billions of credits try buying Station Licences at a billion a pop you could spend all your money buying all the Stations in Evochron.....LOL..........:P:P:P:P

[TGS]

That's part of the scaling though. It really isn't a money sink seeing as how unless you go out of your way to spend... you'll never actually spend all your money that way. And station licences are one off's. Sure if you tried to buy licences for every station you might break the bank. But eventually even once you completed that... what else would ya spend on?

Originally posted by Maarschalk
LOL....there are money sinks in this game when you are wealthy having billions of credits try buying Station Licences at a billion a pop you could spend all your money buying all the Stations in Evochron.....LOL..........:P:P:P:P

[Whytephyre]

Some long posts... While i agree there needs to
be more stuff for me to spend my 250 mil on ingame, other thana reusable cloacking device & mantis drive (where are you sneaky devils).
But even those items wont decrease my sums much, especially since i am almost continually out to make more cash.

The point is there needs to be something to signify your vast wealth and success once you reach a certain point, like maybe being able to buy a carrier and order it to different coordinates so you & your fledt can reload & refuel on the fly...
Bill Gates has a mansion where the rooms change the paintings, tv channel, music, wall colors, & air temperature to his personal preference (it probably does other stuff & he probably has a yacht or somethig too im sure). It would be nice to build your own city & colonize a large hollow Steroid or remote planetoid or moon. In real life more money is more possibilities. Because a game exists within the artificial constraints of the program, but the possibilities of what to do with money in evochron are somewhat limited (once you have bought a constructor, stations are really cheap). I want my own stupid tricked out stuff, a proverbial space ferrarri, or mansion, or yacht, or what have you...

Anyway thats my 2 cents

[Edited on 9-21-2010 by Whytephyre]

[Edited on 9-21-2010 by Whytephyre]

[Marvin]

Man, you guys must be spending all your time in the war zones. Try building a string of stations from Sirius to Sol. That, my friends, is a money sink.

[TGS]

Exactly! You sir have the right idea. It doesn't matter what the money sinks are as long as they exist. Because at the end of the day the "drive" to play a game is really built in its longevity. And in the case of a game where money is the primary resource. It's longevity is tied to the money and what you can do with it. IE Spend it on random silly stuff!. If I wanna spend my money on a ship that goes ludicrous speed and goes plaid that's my choice!

Originally posted by Whytephyre
Some long posts... While i agree there needs to
be more stuff for me to spend my 250 mil on ingame, other thana reusable cloacking device & mantis drive (where are you sneaky devils).
But even those items wont decrease my sums much, especially since i am almost continually out to make more cash.

The point is there needs to be something to signify your vast wealth and success once you reach a certain point, like maybe being able to buy a carrier and order it to different coordinates so you & your fledt can reload & refuel on the fly...
Bill Gates has a mansion where the rooms change the paintings, tv channel, music, wall colors, & air temperature to his personal preference (it probably does other stuff & he probably has a yacht or somethig too im sure). It would be nice to build your own city & colonize a large hollow Steroid or remote planetoid or moon. In real life more money is more possibilities. Because a game exists within the artificial constraints of the program, but the possibilities of what to do with money in evochron are somewhat limited (once you have bought a constructor, stations are really cheap). I want my own stupid tricked out stuff, a proverbial space ferrarri, or mansion, or yacht, or what have you...

Anyway thats my 2 cents

[Edited on 9-21-2010 by Whytephyre]

[Edited on 9-21-2010 by Whytephyre]

[Whytephyre]

It's embarassing to have you're typo's get quoted LoL... I should just put in my signiture that most of my posts are done on a phone & i have stubby fingers

also i was sort of rambling, but the point being games will always have limits to what you can do (due to the inherent limitations of a computer program), so endless possibilities are generally not realistic. But we need more opporitunities & applications for our vast quantities of accumulated wealth.


[Edited on 9-21-2010 by Whytephyre]