Feeling Dirty - Soiled my game experience - Guardian site reset grind

[Northpin]

Elite has never been a game that respects your time and that's what defines it.

Au contraire.
My combined 8000h over 3 accounts would tend to disagree - Lots of fun for a silly small amount of money payed
€20 at the movies gets me a 2-3 hour movie, a popcorn and a soda.
In ED, the same amount of money gave me 3000 hours of gametime in Elite on XB

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

@Northpin
The exception is not the rule, since ppl tend to bang on about it a lot.
You;'ve always liked your money too much and that's what drives you.
Not everyone plays as you do though.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

@yianniv
There is no issue between us.
The "exploit" thing came from another but don't worry about.
It's not a big deal.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

@Northpin
The exception is not the rule, since ppl tend to bang on about it a lot.
You;'ve always liked your money too much and that's what drives you.
Not everyone plays as you do though.

Well if you don't like your money you can always pass it this way.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

@Felix DiCestria
If money is all you care about, no princess for you.

 

[Shadowsnog]

@Felix DiCestria
If money is all you care about, no princess for you.

if money is all that you saw in that post you might want to ease on the bananas. so not to get... bananas

 

[Ydiss]

IMO, one of the greatest sins is letting relog exist at all.. Again IMO, it's a disservice to the players..

Now we could discuss the level of grind, but allowing the player to earn desired mats by relogging to desktop is IMO lame.

Edit: And to be honest the Guardian sites are some of the best in the game.. Also Guardian modules is a nice shortcut for those that don't want to do the normal engineering grind. Just don't do it all in a day or two relogging... At least IMO!

How do you remove relogging as a thing in a game that's built like this, though? Every location must have the capability to be reset so other players can enjoy it. Imagine if the game had only finite resources that were gone forever once consumed once.

The game is designed this way. They had to go out of their way to "break" this design with the badly implemented loot kill routine on reload. Which players work around by... flying up, SC, drop, return. It's still just us resetting content that must be resettable by design. It is this way because they've not designed respawn mechanics (which most MMO games use).

In any MMO, content must respawn. Elite just does it in an inconsistent and bad way and, because of the concept of instancing, it's done in a 1:1 way with commanders (inconsistently, of course). And so "relog" was/is the way to "respawn" content (instead of a per-commander timer, which would have been acceptable but cannot ever be enforced because we have open mode where the content must be respawned for other commanders to enjoy). Where relog has been "broken", apparently with intent (but that's never been confirmed by FD), we respawn said content by doing the silly SC dance instead.

The bad design I'm talking about though is the idea that we must await for "respawn" at all when asked to go to a location to complete a task (read, one task). It's like a quest to go kill a named boss 3.5 times. Why not just once? Why not make it so you need to kill three different named bosses in 3 different locations and then you're done? Elite gives you a quest to kill 3.5 named bosses but they can all be killed in one location so long as you force respawn it. You could, if you fancy it, not relog the guardian site. You can, instead, fly into SC, drop out, return (yay, much better). Or you can enforce "immershun" on yourself by taking even more time to travel to an alternative location entirely, just for those remaining tech components. Why wouldn't a properly designed mission that's unique to each guardian blueprint be more favourable? One that sends you to finite locations once per location to do a thing in order to be rewarded?

This kind of arbitrarily set bin-filling game play is not clever. No one will ever convince me it is and no amount of "you're doing it wrong" gymnastics will change that. I do it very efficiently. My alternative is to do it with less efficiency. How does that change my opinion that it's not well designed in the first place? And no amount of "you just want it served on a plate/the game is grindy so it takes longer" arguments will convince me it's well designed either. You can make a goal take as long as you choose without ever asking someone to repeat a single task over and over again. FD have just opted not to do that with their "gather x/50 for the win" system, which began with 3.0 and never changed. Guardian sites were a half-step in the right direction (as are Maelstroms; the thing I like the most about Maelstroms is you can get everything you need in one go, there's so much content there that you'll never run out and never need to relog/return to fill a bucket). It's still just a half-step though (we still have HGEs, which are the absolute example of Elite's bucket filling game play done badly, content that is mind-numbingly dull, where a huge portion of "players in the know" will exploit to relog it because the alternative is mind-numbingly dull and takes way longer).

 

[Scoob]

So I can't really relate to this thread at all. The Guardian ruins are my favorite areas of the game. I've probably been to most known active Guardian Ruins within 500ly of Sol just to experience all the different layouts. Both the gameplay and the environment/atmosphere are brilliant to me. Driving the SRV around the ruins is amazing, whoever designed these ruins appeared to have done so with stunt SRV driving in mind. While farming these sites I made it a point to try and make racetrack circuits around the ruins, trying challenges like completing the entire site without stopping until activating the Orb.

So yeah, I've got more Guardian doo-dads than I could ever use, not because I needed them, but because they were a byproduct of the most fun activity in the game to me.

Wish I could hire you to go get some materials and BP's for me! lol.

Maybe I should revisit the sites. When I was last there, which was cool initially, they were sooooo buggy that it became annoying. From getting stuck on seemingly nothing, to the aforementioned failures of things to progress as they should. What should have been quite fun, at least the first few times, turned into frustration as things simply did not work as they were supposed to. Doing all the work, then having to reset and start all over again was a pain.

 

[Ydiss]

Wish I could hire you to go get some materials and BP's for me! lol.

Maybe I should revisit the sites. When I was last there, which was cool initially, they were sooooo buggy that it became annoying. From getting stuck on seemingly nothing, to the aforementioned failures of things to progress as they should. What should have been quite fun, at least the first few times, turned into frustration as things simply did not work as they were supposed to. Doing all the work, then having to reset and start all over again was a pain.

The sites are neat. It was the first time FD built bespoke content designed in a smart way that wasn't just "kill 10 rats".

The problem is, they spoiled it a little by setting the bucket value for a couple materials too high to complete in one sit through. This needlessly forced repetition.

Similarly designed content (thargoid sites and maelstroms) also show FD can build amazing content. We still need to repeat some of it but at least it's interesting.

Funny how it's basically the alien content that does this and not anything else. What it does is show that it could be better. And I'll never go "nah, I'm satisfied, it never needs to change" because I know it can be better.

My hope is the system overhaul patch happens and eliminates most of these badly designed loops. It's a stretch but one I'm happy to campaign for anyway.

I mean, why else are we here? Just to all agree that the game never needs to change?

 

[Crank Larson]

And the "fix" for this "bad design"? Delete everything if you dare to relog, even if you crash or relog legitimately.

I'd argue that's an even worse design.

I don't like relogging much either, but there are some exceptions to this for me - one is guardian sites. I love the Guardian sites, and can spend hours there just going round shooting the sentinels (or ramming to death with my SRV depending what mood I am in). I'll relog to reset. I do collect the items (so usually every couple of resets I'll then go and drop stuff off at the carrier), though maxed out on materials a long time ago.

Another place where I enjoy relogging is Dav's Hope, because that is an excellent short circuit for SRV hooning.

 

[Fixitman]

@fixitmam
So, the bit about exploiting you memtioned before?
Doing it because you can then?
You didn't give a direct answer, after all...

You don't seem to understand what the word "Exploit" means. I've linked the google search result so you can look it up easily. I used it as a verb, so it's about efficiency, and nothing more.

Exploiting in this context isn't wrong just because you don't like it. It's only wrong if Frontier says so, and they stop what they don't like in ED.

 

[Ydiss]

I'd argue that's an even worse design.

I don't like relogging much either, but there are some exceptions to this for me - one is guardian sites. I love the Guardian sites, and can spend hours there just going round shooting the sentinels (or ramming to death with my SRV depending what mood I am in). I'll relog to reset. I do collect the items (so usually every couple of resets I'll then go and drop stuff off at the carrier), though maxed out on materials a long time ago.

Another place where I enjoy relogging is Dav's Hope, because that is an excellent short circuit for SRV hooning.

The way I see it, relogging isn't a problem in itself and it's just "manual respawn", which exists in a whole bunch of games (and in games where it doesn't, respawning occurs automatically after a variable period of time). Guardian sites are cool. They'd still be just as cool if you got everything you needed for one upgrade from one visit (and I am not saying everything needs just "one visit" to complete, I'm just saying one visit per location should be enough get "a thing", where multiple locations is fine). They'd also function more or less exactly as they do now if Elite actually had a respawn system where locations reset automatically after a set period of time (and by that, I mean for everyone in the instance).

That's not how the game works. If I enter a settlement and kill everyone, the settlement remains vacant so long as I remain there; if I keep my PC running, I can force the settlement to remain vacant for up to an entire week, until the server is restarted. It'll never reset for me or anyone else if I am in open, until we all leave. This is, I think, not great design. A settlement that is repopulated after a short period of time would be much better. It's just way, way easier for FD to have built it the way they have, knowing that instances don't remain up for very long during normal play and very few players end up in open instances with other players. It still isn't great though.

Relogging (or in the case of settlements, leaving and returning) is the game's respawn mechanic. Nothing more and nothing less. People here behave as though it's some sort of criminal offense to use it and some look at it with disdain whilst still trying to claim the stance that the game play that might drive players to use it is somehow perfect. It's unique to this game, I think; most other MMO style games just unashamedly respawn content right in front of your eyes, knowing that's just the accepted way to keep content available for lots of people at all times. My guess is quite a few players here don't play many other games and don't quite get just how mundane "relogging" is as a function of a game's design.

But I'll say this... in any MMO with respawning where you're forced to sit still in one location "farming" the same stuff repeatedly to achieve a goal... people don't much like it. And it's not the best way of doing content. I think players much prefer the concept of a single push-through (or dungeon-crawl, if you like RPG style games) to achieve a reward at the end, perhaps with multiple sub-missions/quests along the way to keep things interesting. These things can be repeatable and remain fun and not too grindy (and the more different types of these you have to do, the better). Even better... if you can make these "crawls" procedurally generated and different each time...

Elite could have done this in many scenarios that it currently has. By and large, FD opted not to. Instead, they opted for fixed design in a game hugely reliant on proc-gen (where proc-gen is basically only used in Stellar Forge and not much for the actual content itself). I think that's fine but it falls short when the content is stuff like High Grade Emissions.

 

[Fizzatron]

And yet it's there, all the same. Not a convincing argument for "good design".

And the "fix" for this "bad design"? Delete everything if you dare to relog, even if you crash or relog legitimately.

What can Frontier reasonably do about it? If Guardian sites were limited to be being raided just the once and then barren forever more - being that they are archaeological sites, then there would need to be hundreds of thousands of them to be able to satiate the demand and over time it would become impossible to collect the mats.

One possible solution would be if we came across a Guardian homeworld that was covered in ruins to the tune of providing billions of mats, but then, if mats do not replenish, it would still eventually become problematic to find spots that hadn't been already farmed. But if mats still replenished having a complex of ruins that you can drive/fly to in a short period of time could alleviate the need to relog to a large degree. So there's that.

Another way would be to have a cool down period between a farmed site being replenished that is tied to our character so switching modes does nothing. This option would likely not be embraced well with the current amount of sites and distance between them, so adding more to allow for those to get what they need in any given session would help resolve that, but that isn't a perfect solution either, depending on what would be considered to be a reasonable amount to get in one session, some would want it to be enough where they could do it once and never return.

On the face of it though, I agree that relogging isn't the perfect solution by far, I have done the relog thing, especially at Dav's Hope at one point. Though when it came to the Guardian sites, I found one that had multiple sites on the same planet, so rather than relog, I just did a circle round which effectively did the same thing and didn't take that much longer than a relog, but still, I'm returning to a farmed site to only see it replenished, which still isn't great if you think about how that reflects from a quasi persistent lore perspective.

Which brings me on to the final aspect of how the game is multiplayer and these sorts of things are standard for them, otherwise how do you ensure that all the playerbase has access to the prizes to be found at these sites? It wouldn't matter in a single player game, there would be enough sites to provide the mats to unlock whatever the player wants to and done. And maybe this is also an area that could be better understood, how one can't apply the mechanics of a single player game into an online multiplayer one.

In light of this, then maybe the answer is to make it so that Guardian sites act like the bioscans in the game, once you've cashed one in, that's it. So Frontier spawn enough sites to unlock all the items required, with flexibility of spawning more for future needs, but once you've farmed one it will be derelict from that point on. This could sort of work until you have a multiplayer scenario of someone who's already farmed a site returning with a player who hasn't. And also, then it becomes a matter of finding these sites, most go to a wiki to find one closest and then rinse and repeat, now should a player be expected to do a survey of certain areas of the galaxy to find their next site to get mats? It makes sense, but it would also be likely seen by some as just adding more grind.

My best answer would be a combination of understanding that the resetting of Guardian sites is a necessary component of the game but also providing enough sites, and relatively close enough, to allow for a player to gather the necessary mats for their purpose - within reason, without having to relog. And some would say that Frontier have already done that, it's just easier and quicker to relog, so that's the choice that players make instead.

 

[Fizzatron]

The way I see it, relogging isn't a problem in itself and it's just "manual respawn", which exists in a whole bunch of games (and in games where it doesn't, respawning occurs automatically after a variable period of time). Guardian sites are cool. They'd still be just as cool if you got everything you needed for one upgrade from one visit (and I am not saying everything needs just "one visit" to complete, I'm just saying one visit per location should be enough get "a thing", where multiple locations is fine). They'd also function more or less exactly as they do now if Elite actually had a respawn system where locations reset automatically after a set period of time (and by that, I mean for everyone in the instance).

That's not how the game works. If I enter a settlement and kill everyone, the settlement remains vacant so long as I remain there; if I keep my PC running, I can force the settlement to remain vacant for up to an entire week, until the server is restarted. It'll never reset for me or anyone else if I am in open, until we all leave. This is, I think, not great design. A settlement that is repopulated after a short period of time would be much better. It's just way, way easier for FD to have built it the way they have, knowing that instances don't remain up for very long during normal play and very few players end up in open instances with other players. It still isn't great though.

Relogging (or in the case of settlements, leaving and returning) is the game's respawn mechanic. Nothing more and nothing less. People here behave as though it's some sort of criminal offense to use it and some look at it with disdain whilst still trying to claim the stance that the game play that might drive players to use it is somehow perfect. It's unique to this game, I think; most other MMO style games just unashamedly respawn content right in front of your eyes, knowing that's just the accepted way to keep content available for lots of people at all times. My guess is quite a few players here don't play many other games and don't quite get just how mundane "relogging" is as a function of a game's design.

I think I just posted a variation of what you just posted just now though I hadn't seen it till after I had. But in essence I completely agree.

But I'll say this... in any MMO with respawning where you're forced to sit still in one location "farming" the same stuff repeatedly to achieve a goal... people don't much like it.

I think it has, shall we say, limited appeal. There are some who are fine and even enjoy that sort of thing, but generally I agree that it isn't looked at favourably. Maybe the answer, from a the perspective of being a multiplayer game, is to allow for the opportunity of those who don't mind farming being able to collect and sell/trade all the items to be found there, including mats/data. This way the rest of the players can go to a Guardian site, enjoy the experience of it without having to constantly return to rinse and repeat. Rather, they find someone with a fleet carrier that sells all the items they need and use credits instead?

And it's not the best way of doing content. I think players much prefer the concept of a single push-through (or dungeon-crawl, if you like RPG style games) to achieve a reward at the end, perhaps with multiple sub-missions/quests along the way to keep things interesting. These things can be repeatable and remain fun and not too grindy (and the more different types of these you have to do, the better). Even better... if you can make these "crawls" procedurally generated and different each time...

I like this idea, if there were enough locations to do this then it could be a reasonable solution, I think having a cool down period might even work in this situation to help players move on to another site rather than thinking that logging out and back in is still the way to go.

Elite could have done this in many scenarios that it currently has. By and large, FD opted not to. Instead, they opted for fixed design in a game hugely reliant on proc-gen (where proc-gen is basically only used in Stellar Forge and not much for the actual content itself). I think that's fine but it falls short when the content is stuff like High Grade Emissions.

Thus far Elite could have done a lot of things differently but there is still the possibility that things like this will get an overhaul, like mining did for instance. But that also falls under development resources and priorities. The current system is flawed but effectively workable, I would be happy to see tweaks to it to make it better but being that I reckon the greater playerbase has already done the Guardian farming, I think I'd prefer to see resources going into finding newer Guardian sites on atmospheric worlds or in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant.

 

[Frankymole]

Why would you even feel dirty? This is a commercial video game, where game mechanics are sometimes dictated by non-developers with specific objectives such as player metrics and engagement. If the guardian gameplay loop would have been designed for the player's experience alone, they could have just added some stashes with hundreds of mats each so that you could collect everything by exploring a single ruin just once. It's not designed that way, it's designed to keep you playing for a while longer, so I don't understand why you would feel ashamed about it.

It's not a work of art.
It's not a holy relic.
It's not a religious ritual.
It's just a video game.

I for one say, keep your mats, enjoy spending them - and if it makes you feel any better, just imagine you were not relogging, but your character was going back to your ship for a nap and some additional O2.

Frankly I find nothing more boring than relogging to respawn mats, so they are a fair reward to the OP for such dedication IMO.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I feel like I've soiled my experience and with this I feel like it's hard to log in suddenly.

The...the shame won't come off....

 

[Morbad]

Second time tonight i've seen ppl validating exploits while blaming FD for it when it takes a human to exploit it.

I don't think i've ever played a game that hasn't been exploitable in one way or another but it doesn't justify it.

A multiplayer game needs to be pretty much bulletproof (technically impossible to cheat), or at least have rigorous enforcement (putting the rules in writing and erasing accounts left and right for non-compliance), otherwise the only universally applicable set of rules includes all of the exploits.

Frontier has a buggy hackjob of a game with inconsistent and incoherent rules, plus virtually non-existent enforcement of those rules. As a partial workaround to this (which I feel is significantly worse than nothing) they've given clients in an MMO far too much power to tailor their experience, without allowing that experience to be divorced from others.

It's inevitable that some significant portion of players will never police themselves. Many will never even be able to cognitively separate the game from the metagame. Therefore the onus must be on Frontier to make their game as unbreakable as possible. Unfortunately, this is the most blatant area where they've abdicated their responsibilities.

The game works the way FDev wants it to work.

The game works the way FDev is content to allow it to work.

How reflective this is of how they currently want it to work is debatable, but it's definitely not how the game was envisioned or marketed.

I think there's a misunderstanding here. You seem to imply we're doing something wrong. You're even using the word "exploit". My friend, relogging is not an exploit. It's home improvement.

When it comes to gameplay, 'home improvement' and 'cheating via bug and/or oversight exploit' may as well be synonymous in multiplayer games.

How do you remove relogging as a thing in a game that's built like this, though?

Split areas into as few instances as technically possible and synchronize them as aggressively as technically possible, with as many changes as possible being as persistent as possible.

Every location must have the capability to be reset so other players can enjoy it.

Why? It's not like the galaxy isn't large or populous enough to survive the actual demographic and logistical effects of the cumulative efforts of a few tens of thousands of regular players.

If someone wants to see things as they were, they should be able to fire up a (largely static) single player version of the game and do as the please with it. Places like Dav's Hope should have been erased by CMDR traffic long ago. If I've heard of it, and it's some combination of vaguely acessable and less than well guarded, it should be thoroughly trashed by the time I can get my CMDR to it. Undermining player impact on the persistent multiplayer setting by erasing the bulk of those changes with the closure of an instance and the resulting lack of persistence is one of the game's greatest flaws, IMO.

Imagine if the game had only finite resources that were gone forever once consumed once.

Persistence, to the extent that if an area was not resupplied in game, via the same mechanisms that govern our CMDR's interactions with it, that it would never be resupplied, would be ideal. Falling that some simulated and plausible resupply rate would be acceptable.

What can Frontier reasonably do about it? If Guardian sites were limited to be being raided just the once and then barren forever more - being that they are archaeological sites, then there would need to be hundreds of thousands of them to be able to satiate the demand and over time it would become impossible to collect the mats.

A large number of sites is not at all implausible for a galaxy spanning civilization. Pickings becoming more scarce as time goes on is also eminently plausible.

What's ridiculous about the current system, even more so than the (from an in-game character's perspective) absurdly miraculous regeneration of sites, is that these original materials still need to be collected at all. How many samples of anything do you need to destructively test before you figure out how it works, assuming you've already learned enough to incorporate it into and mass produce hybrid technologies?

Guardian materials should be as worthless to 3308 Elite arms manufacturers as a 1940s-era American fission device is to the 21st century DPRK. They already know how to build them, they don't need the original...the fissile material might still have commodity value, but that doesn't need to come from anywhere in particular.

 

[Fizzatron]

If someone wants to see things as they were, they should be able to fire up a (largely static) single player version of the game and do as the please with it. Places like Dav's Hope should have been erased by CMDR traffic long ago. If I've heard of it, and it's some combination of vaguely acessable and less than well guarded, it should be thoroughly trashed by the time I can get my CMDR to it.

Do you really think that that should be ok in an online multiplayer game? I completely see where you're coming from but there has to be a balance between this absolute reality vs denying general experiences to players. It's why I suggested that if Frontier were to go down the route of Davs Hope / Guardian sites be a once and done scenario, they have to have that progression tracked via your playable character. However, I also posed the question as to how Frontier should deal with the very likely scenario that someone who's visited a Guardian Site accompanies someone who hasn't.

There are other issues in regards to spawning thousands and thousands of Guardian sites from a narrative perspective, if they're everywhere how come it took so long to find them? Someone might say that that is a greater consistency problem, along with expecting players to literally hit thousands of systems to try to find the one that hasn't been raided already.

Speaking of Dav's Hope, with material traders in the game now, I don't know that it is a necessary loop to do anymore.

Undermining player impact on the persistent multiplayer setting by erasing the bulk of those changes with the closure of an instance and the resulting lack of persistence is one of the game's greatest flaws, IMO.

Your phrasing reads to me like you're suggesting that this is just a Frontier / Elite Dangerous problem. What we're talking about here is far from unique to Frontier or Elite. That's not to say it makes it perfectly fine or that we're not specifically focusing on how to make Elite better in regards to the overall issue, but it's concurrently important that it be viewed in the greater focus as many classic/currently popular games do effectively the same thing.

Persistence, to the extent that if an area was not resupplied in game, via the same mechanisms that govern our CMDR's interactions with it, that it would never be resupplied, would be ideal. Falling that some simulated and plausible resupply rate would be acceptable.

I would suggest it's far from ideal from a game standpoint and letting everyone reasonably enjoy what's to offer. Though that isn't to say that having a limited source of any given material couldn't be a good reward for a special event or something either.

I would lean into the simulated/plausible resupply more, but it may really be missing the point overall too. Some people like farming materials, others do not, the balance of which probably falls more towards those who do not, so maybe the better answer is not make it one playstyle vs another but find a way to give the one who farms a way to supply those who do not wish to. The reward for the farmer are the credits/trades attained by their farming and the reward for the others is the convenience of not having to farm uniquely available materials.

A large number of sites is not at all implausible for a galaxy spanning civilization. Pickings becoming more scarce as time goes on is also eminently plausible.

This is true, and why I've suggested multiple times that there be massive junkyards in space and on planetary surfaces where there would be enough that relogging isn't necessary

What's ridiculous about the current system, even more so than the (from an in-game character's perspective) absurdly miraculous regeneration of sites, is that these original materials still need to be collected at all. How many samples of anything do you need to destructively test before you figure out how it works, assuming you've already learned enough to incorporate it into and mass produce hybrid technologies?

Again, I think it's taking the simulation aspect of the game too far. It really sounds like what you're suggesting here is some PES type situation that Star Citizen is currently struggling at implementing with them already having to walk it back to a large degree. There are many hand wave moments in all games, Star Citizen included, we have to suspend our disbelief to a degree to be able to engage with anything that relates to science/fantasy fiction as a whole genre, let alone a video game. I love Lord of the Rings, it's one of my favourite books of all time, but it's full of things that could be described as ridiculous if one wanted to do so. Does that make LOTR bad or the critic pendantic unimaginative? We all know what territory we're getting into when beginning to read LOTR, and it's the same for video games.

I would also suggest that the only true way for this to be logically consistent is to have character perma-death. How many people would want that to be implemented though?

That isn't to say that more persistence couldn't be a good thing, just not to the degree that you're suggesting, or that CIG are/were suggesting.

Guardian materials should be as worthless to 3308 Elite arms manufacturers as a 1940s-era American fission device is to the 21st century DPRK. They already know how to build them, they don't need the original...the fissile material might still have commodity value, but that doesn't need to come from anywhere in particular.

I disagree, I would suggest a better analogy would meteoric iron in the bronze age. The Guardians/Thargoids have tech that is far more advanced with materials that it's entirely plausible for 3308 tech to not be able to replicate, or be prohibitively complicated to produce, making sourcing prefabricated materials the best path to acquire such resources. Otherwise the suggestion would be Star Trek-like replicators, which is itself a very handwave solution in that series, like the teleport technology that is the basis for it.

However, when it comes to data/plans etc.. it could be argued that one use or multiple copies of the same data being a thing is redundant, and from the 'realistic' perspective, that could be true, though for the kind of data that is useful based on its contents that could vary from settlement to settlement, or that each scan provides a unique analytic that is encapsulated in a file is perfectly consistent. For the plans that really are just instructions to make stuff, I guess maybe they can viewed as acquiring a license to construct akin to the license you purchased to play the game.

One's perspective can easily used to help suspend belief to add immersion or constantly pick holes to ruin immersion. A varying dose of a suspension of belief is critical to bring to any work of fiction to life and Elite isn't Eastenders.

 

[Shadowsnog]

While i agree that policies and policing could be better
Fdev leaving its wallet open on the table doesnt give you the right to empty it.
You control the buttons you press.

 

[Morbad]

Do you really think that that should be ok in an online multiplayer game?

In anything that isn't supposed to be a theme park type game, yes.

There are other issues in regards to spawning thousands and thousands of Guardian sites from a narrative perspective, if they're everywhere how come it took so long to find them?

Distance and scale. The overwhelming majority of the Elite galaxy is still unexplored and even in reasonably well trafficked areas it should be easy to miss things until people know what to look for. Plenty of mystery left on real-world Earth, despite a hundred-billion anatomically modern humans having scoured it over the course of a quarter-million years.

Speaking of Dav's Hope, with material traders in the game now, I don't know that it is a necessary loop to do anymore.

It was never even a vaguely necessary loop.

Your phrasing reads to me like you're suggesting that this is just a Frontier / Elite Dangerous problem.

I'm not making any comparisons to other games here.

I would suggest it's far from ideal from a game standpoint and letting everyone reasonably enjoy what's to offer.

The lack of persistence subtracts far more content than it would add.

maybe the better answer is not make it one playstyle vs another but find a way to give the one who farms a way to supply those who do not wish to.

This is part and parcel of scarcity. Once scarcity is a thing, and metagame shortcuts around scarcity few and far between, arbitrary and heavy handed restrictions to fake it are no longer useful.

I disagree, I would suggest a better analogy would meteoric iron in the bronze age. The Guardians/Thargoids have tech that is far more advanced with materials that it's entirely plausible for 3308 tech to not be able to replicate, or be prohibitively complicated to produce, making sourcing prefabricated materials the best path to acquire such resources. Otherwise the suggestion would be Star Trek-like replicators, which is itself a very handwave solution in that series, like the teleport technology that is the basis for it.

The material properties of meteoric iron couldn't be duplicated in the bronze age because fires hot enough to smelt iron hadn't reliably been created yet and the scientific paradigms required to be able to explain and infer such things would take much longer.

In the case of Guardian tech, humanity in the Elite setting seems to be doing far more than just basic processing of Guardian components, unlike the case with ancient use of metoric iron, which could just be beaten into a more useful shape. Humanity in Elite is integrating Guardian tech into complex systems and synthesizing entire new applications. This suggests a significant level of understanding of the technology. Guardian tech doesn't appear anywhere near as mysterious to Elite's humans as metoric iron was to people thousands of years before a scientific method was codified. After all, most guardian tech only requires Guardian materials to unlock, and can be purchased or replaced cheaply, in quantity, for nothing more than credits.

From a narrative perspective, I'd argue that pitting humanity against any foe that requires an entirely new scientific paradigm to understand is folly. There is no way to depict such a confrontation that isn't either so one-sided as to present marginal gameplay opportunities or that doesn't sound completely ridiculous. And if it does fall within the scope of what we can investigate with our current paradigms, we'll achieve a working understanding of it extremely rapidly...especially given millions of samples to turn inside out and upside down.

One's perspective can easily used to help suspend belief to add immersion or constantly pick holes to ruin immersion. A varying dose of a suspension of belief is critical to bring to any work of fiction to life and Elite isn't Eastenders.

I go to great lengths to give Frontier the benefit of the doubt with their depictions in order to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

However, they aren't even meeting me a fraction of the way; their depictions are needlessly riddled with internal inconsistencies, logical contradictions, and sloppy plot holes that seriously detract from my ability to enjoy it over the long term. I can enjoy, or at least not be too offended by, absurdity for the length of a novel or a feature film, maybe even a few seasons of a television series, provided the rest is up to snuff. However, this is a game that is essentially supposed to be a Pilots' Federation CMDR simulator where my participation is much more interactive and much more protracted...and the ridiculousness of the setting's incoherence is far from the only problem.