Alternatives to grind?

[Crimson Kaim]

So, I am not asking for current alternatives, but more for future ones. Like, will there ever be a mechanic or a way of earning money that equals not time=Xcr ?

For example:

Trading. Best example. You clalculate your progress in cr/hour. This is, in my opinion, the greates that could ever happen to a simulation game. Pure grinding, nothing else, it is not even trading, it is called grinding. This is a task for a bot or something similar.
Or exploring. Also a good one. You will not really look exactly what you are scanning, you just scan. Amount of systems scanned (ofcourse there are some differences between planet types and stuff, but these are minor differences) equals amount of credits earned.

Combat isn't really an option, aside from the Lugh community goal. This was fairly lucrative but unfortunately, the one and only combat community goal.

Missions ... 15k cr for a fight mission, 200k for a conda mission ... ha-haha-hahahaha.


Now this came up in my head:

For the exploration part: (also inside civilisation) you can jump to signal sources, right? Usually you find normal things like gold, military plans, waste, etc. But how about a really rare artefact? You either sell it for a huge amount of credits or you use it to craft a really powerful engine/weapon/shield/FSD/etc.
Or on a boutny hunt mission, you will find suddenly, that your contact NPC is a hunted one, you decide to shoot it down and you may get some iformations from his ship whic htells you in which system a treasure is located. Find it, and you shall get rich (ofcourse protected by pirates and stuff).

Basically something that gives alternatives to this extremely boring cr/time formular. Depth!.

Thoguhts?

 

[Midian27]

So you want to be rewarded for minimal effort? No, I don't think we need that.

 

[AndyC77]

Playing games and "grind" should not be linked. I never experience this so called "grind" and I never will because playing games is about fun and "grind" is not fun.therefore there must be a fault with the game or the game player. I have never found it to be a "grind" I wouldn't want to ruin the game that way.

 

[willowfan]

The game is only a grind if you make it one.

Me I play to have fun, I couldn't give a flying fig what my CR/h ratio is or whatever

 

[Whiterose]

Its only a grind if you make it a grind. Exploring for example, switch on Radio Sidewinder, a glass of you particular poison, set your route and chill.

 

[el_bloom]

Its only a grind if you make it a grind. Exploring for example, switch on Radio Sidewinder, a glass of you particular poison, set your route and chill.

This.
You can at anytime stop playing this shell of a game. Don´t make the grind, just do it like me, let it go peacefully....

 

[kirkkh]

So you want to be rewarded for minimal effort? No, I don't think we need that.

I like how you analogize grinding and "effort."

 

[RuleV]

You will not really look exactly what you are scanning, you just scan.

I look, that's the point of doing it for me, the credits are a bonus.

The problem is seeing credits as the purpose of playing. I see playing itself as the purpose and credits are just something that happen to come along as I play.

 

[babelfisch]

Alternatives to grind? Simple. Dont grind.

I wiped my savegame and already got a nice d rated cobra without grinding anything, just doing missions. Sure, you will not get an anaconda, but you dont need it anyways since the cobra is up to every task. Conflict zones, smuggling, trading, exploring, kill missions - it's all possible and beeing an underdog makes the game finally dangerous!

 

[Kubold]

Well... I would love to see missions that are not a sad joke. They put absolutely no effort in designing missions or in mission rewards:

"Bring us 2 Gold" - reward 7,000
"Kill 7 ships" - reward 15,000
"Kill Anaconda" - reward 140,000

Who the hell "designs" these missions? Someones mom, between doing groceries?... Did Frontier's creative director say "we need missions, you got 15 seconds to design them! 14... 13... 12...".

Now imagine, if they actually had 15 minutes (!) to design a mission, instead of 15 seconds. This would be a proper mission:

1. Commander, we got really bizzarre readings from the new outpost we're building. All our ships are out, we need you to go there and check what's up. Reward 25,000
2. You arrive, station seems dead. Inactive, dead (but undamaged) ships float near it. Lot's of cargo canisters floats around (you can scoop them just as well - extra profit). after a minute a Federal ASP spawns and says "I'm the other guy they sent, because you didn't answer for 3 weeks". You say "whaaaa...??". He says: "there must be some time-space anomaly here, FSDs don't work! Your's too? S*it. Let's search the station..."
3. You dock to the dead station, you find the crew's logs. Apparently they found a strange meteorite within a normal flight range. Started minig it, the mining-ship reported he found something... and that's the end of the log. You and your buddy NPC have no choice to go check the meteor. Btw, if you want you can just steal 400,000cr from the station... nobody watches...
4. And so on... until the resolution, which would be a great battle or great discovery. If you complete the mission you end up having a greater Rank and earning like 3,000,000 or a free Vulture or something.

I would LOVE to see missions like that. And notice, they don't require any new assets. It's all doable using the current game mechanics. And the grind? WHAT GRIND? Just epic space adventures, like in Event Horizon or Space Odyssey. And if you want to put on your favorite podcast, grab a beer and do some space trucking - sure. It's still there, noone is taking it away.

 

[Flappers]

This.
You can at anytime stop playing this shell of a game. Don´t make the grind, just do it like me, let it go peacefully....

So if you don't play the game anymore, why are you here on the forums?

OT: You only grind if your intention is to grind. You can play this game without having the target of getting absolutely everything in this game.
It's the problem with newer generations of games, people just fail to grasp the concept of enjoying an experience. There always has to be the "must get everything in the game to finish" mentality.

 

[KillingTime]

I was in a RES for an hour or so and made about 3 million quite easily last night.

Just do what you enjoy, there's really not much you can do with the bigger ships that you can't with the smaller ones

 

[FuzzySpider]

Thoguhts?

Don't focus on the money so much. There is something of a grind to the cobra, but once you've got that you essentially have a ship that can do anything and is fun to play. Just play, do missions, trade with it, bounty hunt, explore, and just travel the known universe in open and chat to the other cmdrs you meet.

Don't watch the money (just do the odd bit of trading/bounty hunting/whategver) and it will pile up, just have the fun. And when played like this the game is very fun.

 

[kirkkh]

Elite dangerous is all about that bass.

 

[flynnmichael81]

I've never found Elite a grind. As soon as I'm bored with one thing I go off and do another. Sometimes what I'm doing makes me money and other time it loses me it. I'm in no rush to leave my python for anything bigger, although I am tempted to sidegrade to a FDL.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Alternatives to grind? Simple. Dont grind.

I wiped my savegame and already got a nice d rated cobra without grinding anything, just doing missions. Sure, you will not get an anaconda, but you dont need it anyways since the cobra is up to every task. Conflict zones, smuggling, trading, exploring, kill missions - it's all possible and beeing an underdog makes the game finally dangerous!

Now I like this. This is where I enjoyed Elite but as soon as I sat in a good outfitted Viper, Elite god very very dry. It suffers in depth in the medium - upper grinding levels.
"It's only a grind if you make it so." Well, I want to fight, but I need good equipment for that, and I need 17 mio cr for a military armor on my dropship. That's just as much as a dropship costs.

I am not asking for a cr boost kit or something, more like something that gives you credits independent from the time you spend in. You could either earn more or less credits than this liniar trading stuff.
This shall not give you like 50 mio cr for one artefact or somethign similar. maybe like 5 million after, let's say, 2 weeks of playing 2 hours a day. You find them randomly.

Or atleast missions that give a worthable pay. Who of you guys piloting a Viper/Cobra or better accept combat missions for 15k cr? I didn't even do them when I was a sidewinder. These missions are ridiculous nonsense. I don't even bother looking at the mission board because I know there is no mission that gives me 500k cr or more.

It is a beginning to add missions for higher grind-progress levels. Maybe kill 3 NPC anacondas at once for 1 million cr?

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Elite dangerous is all about that bass.

View attachment 26467

Basically what it is, yes.

Elite : Space Trucking Simulator 2015

 

[moofburger]

There's already an alternative to grind designed right into this game....


... stay poor!

 

[Epicurean Dream]

I look, that's the point of doing it for me, the credits are a bonus.

The problem is seeing credits as the purpose of playing. I see playing itself as the purpose and credits are just something that happen to come along as I play.

Neither of these should be considered the correct way of playing a game.

Credits should be a means to an end. Currently there is no 'end' for the means to be justified. The means should not be considered the end because the means that is also the end then becomes meaningless.

Even worse is considering "just playing" to be the end. A game that you play is required to have some form of progressive content, some structure for you to become invested in. In this respect, the flight mechanics, the combat and the trading e.t.c. are only an investment for a very small amount of time. Because none of them ultimately lead to any functional progress other than the circular credits>ship>credits loop, all 'ends' quickly become devoid of any reason for personal investment. Simply, there is no substance and adequate meaningful progress in ED to keep the majority of players that have been playing for longer than a week or two, invested enough to keep playing.

No matter which way you look at it, this is a massively problematic and indefensible design flaw in ED. "Use your imagination" is an extremely bad justification for this void in place of what should be meaningful content.

You might as well put a box on the floor and sit in it and pretend you're Han Solo. Or open a dictionary and "imagine" the story among the words. It is the same argument. A game is supposed to keep you entertained with adequate content and unfolding player<->gameplay feedback as time goes on. Elite doesn't do this. Every game out there has this as it's central concept. I don't know what ED is trying to prove but side stepping fundamental design considerations as a means to be 'different' is both massively missing the point of what makes games worth playing and incredibly stifling to it's own potential.

"Having to use your imagination" is not, and should never be considered, a design choice. It is at best a feeble justification at covering up a lack of meaningful gameplay. There is a reason we don't like the idea of having to use our imaginations in todays world, because the literal reason we approach mediums such as computer games, simulated inside virtual instances on complex computer systems, as that we no longer have to use our imaginations. To argue that playing is the only point that ED requires is, to me, grasping at straws, and really missing the point. ED is the only game I have ever come across that "having to use your imagination" is a central concept of enjoying the game, especially considering it is an online computer game released in 2015. If that doesn't speak loudly enough for it's self and get this point through to those of you defending it, then nothing will.

 

[CptPaul]

The game is only a grind if you make it one.

Me I play to have fun, I couldn't give a flying fig what my CR/h ratio is or whatever

yeah USE YOUR IMAGINATION

 

[Jorlin]

If there is no "trading grind" neccessary, there will be no traders in open, the already non existing foodchain crushed entirely.