No-one is forcing anyone to read what people say or read. Or are you instead happy to tell people to shut up when you don't like something?
This.
It's good to have no "player agencies" that decide which of the functionalities implemented in the game will be supported by participating or not participating in them. if the designers spend 1000 hours on functionality that the agency decides not to support, then a very large amount of money just went down the drain.
Exactly.
Currently we have:
-random pirates which just want to steal your stuff
-regular beacons
-comp beacons
-4 different RES types
-various signal sources (example convoys, fire weapons, pirate activity), with various threat level
-missions, also, with various threat
-3 types of CZs
I don't understand logic "if ya want deadly combat go to AX or to one place (in game which provide more than 10 combat scenario types).
Average joe can stick to low RES or low rank missions.
Situation, where challenge can be found in only one specific place is failure of threat level grades.
Of course, I seen arguments "butbubut combat isnt mandatory, I don't want more challenge".
And they have right.
They can stick to trade without missions, they can trade fish, they can hunt pirates around regular beacons
Of course, it isn't everything.
Difficulty level of interdiction is #2 issue. It is way to easy, pirates can have even 100% G5 engineering, still no problem at all, if they cannot interdict you, as long as you use controller by hand, not foot. High rank pirates could be more efficient in it (hell, maybe threat level of random pirates could be connected with value of your cargo hold, risk & reward, trade valuable stuff? So prepare for true pirates).
#3 issue is NPC AI.
On cryddit posts like "combat difficult, I HAVE TO make 100% engineering for it" are something normal, but yesterday on my alt I took elite rank solo assasination (so against deadly pirate in vette). I was in totally unengineered krait II.
Aaaand....I killed this pirate, without loosing shields. So yeah, "engineering mandatory"
But...how? It is pretty simple. This npc was braindead. Vette has 7 hardpoints, but smh this stupid pirate used only 2 huge plasmas. When he started using whole firepower? When his plasma balls finally landed on my ship. But thanks to some evasion it happened when pirate had 20% hull.
I killed target of "elite" mission without any engineering because npc was to stupid to use all weapons.
Yes, I've never taken part in Powerplay, ever
The tragedy of ED is that its really fun when you start out, but once you get to about G3 / medium ships the game kind of falls away for aspects like combat. Ironically FD almost got it right with first iterations of a lot of stuff, mainly larger NPC wings and random ships. Just by adding engineering to some, randomising the loadouts / ship types you'd make the game instantly better since you can't anticipate the ships you face (unlike now).Exactly.
Currently we have:
-random pirates which just want to steal your stuff
-regular beacons
-comp beacons
-4 different RES types
-various signal sources (example convoys, fire weapons, pirate activity), with various threat level
-missions, also, with various threat
-3 types of CZs
I don't understand logic "if ya want deadly combat go to AX or to one place (in game which provide more than 10 combat scenario types).
Average joe can stick to low RES or low rank missions.
Situation, where challenge can be found in only one specific place is failure of threat level grades.
Of course, I seen arguments "butbubut combat isnt mandatory, I don't want more challenge".
And they have right.
They can stick to trade without missions, they can trade fish, they can hunt pirates around regular beacons
Of course, it isn't everything.
Difficulty level of interdiction is #2 issue. It is way to easy, pirates can have even 100% G5 engineering, still no problem at all, if they cannot interdict you, as long as you use controller by hand, not foot. High rank pirates could be more efficient in it (hell, maybe threat level of random pirates could be connected with value of your cargo hold, risk & reward, trade valuable stuff? So prepare for true pirates).
#3 issue is NPC AI.
On cryddit posts like "combat difficult, I HAVE TO make 100% engineering for it" are something normal, but yesterday on my alt I took elite rank solo assasination (so against deadly pirate in vette). I was in totally unengineered krait II.
Aaaand....I killed this pirate, without loosing shields. So yeah, "engineering mandatory"
But...how? It is pretty simple. This npc was braindead. Vette has 7 hardpoints, but smh this stupid pirate used only 2 huge plasmas. When he started using whole firepower? When his plasma balls finally landed on my ship. But thanks to some evasion it happened when pirate had 20% hull.
I killed target of "elite" mission without any engineering because npc was to stupid to use all weapons.
Interdictions are funny ones, because IMO its partly a consequence of station drop zones being too small and NAVs being vestigial and that NPCs only really have SC to jump on you. Its almost as if ED is fighting itself, with the 'old' general A to B stuff fading out while everything is sliced up into (admittedly interesting at times) POIs.
My push back against this is that nothing forces people to build G5 "god" battleships. At the risk of beating my very old drum, my favorite combat ship is a shieldless Cobra, and my favorite pirate ship a shieldless Dolphin. To this day, no game compares with Elite when flying my Cobra into combat to defend an installation, all in glorious VR. What got old to me is the "arcade nature" of these game loops. I'm not talking about flight model or combat, but the "Space Invaders" spawning infinite enemies at clockwork intervals mechanism. I much prefer the depth of that other game that is both tactical and strategic in NPC deployments and battles.
Not that I don't see your point. I enjoy winging up with other CMDRs in a HazRes, unless they are flying G5 Corvettes, in which case I'm like, "Can you let me get a shot in before you instantly melt and destroy every NPC here?" There should be NPC equivalents to these G5 "god ships" that all players (except me) own by week three of Elite, to give those folks something to do. Just leave us "no man should be a god" pilots some mortal NPCs to fight, that's all. Let all the god ships duke it out in the SuicideSquadRes.
For me its like: well, I've done all this work to unlock it all, why is nothing in the human bubble to challenge that? Mission / circumstance permitting having random engineered NPCs in wings would be exactly whats needed because the game is then scaling to meet you (or at least trying to). For example- imagine at notoriety 10 bounty hunters dispatched are like the Magnificent 7, with a randomised large engineered wing that can appear anywhere and at any time, or you have pirate kill missions above the top difficulty where you have no idea what you face- you are then keeping the game fresh rather than reinforcing the stacking of weaker NPCs.
My only concern is that Frontier's answer to this in the past has been introducing bullet-sponge NPCs, where it takes forever to destroy despite emptying endless MC4 rounds into them. This isn't more challenging, it's more boring, and it's the chief reason I don't like CZs (at least as a solo pilot). Compare and contrast to X4, where the challenge comes from an enemy seeing that I'm a threat and sending an entire fleet after me, including dozens of fighters that I can easily best 1-v-1 but melt to like butter in a microwave when swarmed.
Ty for the Update... But some NEW ships would be nice. Haven't had a new ship since dec of 2018. Remember when new ships were introduced how excited the player base got? You cant tell me that the ship manufactures stopped designing ships. It would be like a car company stopping design for new cars. The car company would die.
Hence the randomisation factor- while the chance of getting a brick is there (like the mental tungsten Cobra Mk 4s) at the same time if the variation is enough most will be intersting but not poo outhouse material. Like say in an anarchy, having a roving gang thats small ships but all of them rock G5 weapons and engines.
Engineering did make C+P a bit of a joke- ATR helps a bit, but again its the random which is needed to keep people on their toes. Its easy to avoid ATR because they tell you when they are coming, and are very regimented. You instead could do a variation of this https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-npc-player-scan-spawns-an-atr-vessel.533172/ where killers are not given room to keep shields and have to either keep a low profile or be constantly moving.
Srsly, I have much more fun from combat on free epic alt, where I set my own, personal rule "no engineering".
In engineered, or even better- engineered big ship it is just "press button, move controller for 20 seconds".
Ineteresting.
So much interesting, that I'm doing it, when I cannot fall asleep
What simpl brings us to #4 issue.
Absurdly high engi benefits.
I seriously wish they never added engineering
Again, I'm pushing back against this, because without engineering I would not be flying a shieldless Cobra into intense combat situations. Unless you PvP, engineering is totally optional. There is nothing in the game forcing anyone to engineer anything AFAIK. Or, like me, you can choose to engineer in a way to make the game the perfect balance of challenge and fun.
Though I do dislike that Frontier's counter to engineered ships was to introduce bullet sponge NPCs made out of Vibranium... That has ruined a lot of potential gameplay for me personally. To your point, I seriously wish they never added the ability to stack HRPs, SBs, and SCBs in every nook and cranny possible, which IMO does more to throw the balance of combat than engineering does. These should be limited to military slots only.
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I think really FD had it right the first time with pre modded weapons floating about. If engineering was experimentals only (or that G5 was at G1 levels- i.e. mild) you would not have broken C+P, general balance or made various ships OP.
well...you both have good points.
Because stacking all possible reinforcements AND engineering them created absurdly tanky ships, example with 70% of all resists AND thousands hp
I'm fine with experimentals, or some light boosts.
But not with ability to create monsters with 3/4 times more hp.
Whilst I do agree that engineering has its place its implementation was poorly done, also seeing as quite a few of the old ED players only play in Legacy Pvp is more limited than in Odyssey
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I see engineering as a good idea, but very poorly implemented. The enormous number of hours you need to have materials forces you to quit your job, your partner or become a monk who only sticks to the seat for a thousand hours and never sees the light of day.
The time I need to buy a telescopic sight for my weapon is ridiculous in a supposedly technological future.
Is it bank holidays in the UK at the moment?
No, bank holiday was yesterday.