FDev, please show a bit more respect for your players time.
- Thread starter Tanith Low
- Start date
I tried playing a bit in Beta and some time during this weekend. As far as I can say, I cannot see any viable option how to have let's say properly outfitted trading Cutter in couple of weeks. I would say that for trader, life is much harder now than it was back in let's say June 2015 . I did not died yet in 2.1, but insane amount of interdictions on normal trade routes makes trading really dificult, time consuming and of course much less profitable than in the past.
But it is a discussion for another thread.
I personally dont intend on doing the Engineers missions, If I dont get modded weapons I dont mind, If Modded NPC's want to one shot me then fair enough, Ill play until im back to a Sidewinder and then quit.
FD dont mind, they already have my money.
I do like the new Engineers bases tho, they are very pretty.
FD dont mind, they already have my money.
I do like the new Engineers bases tho, they are very pretty.
digitalscream
Banned
Bingo. It all goes back to the beta process; FD were so eager to get us "testing" the level 5 mods that they made the RNG trivial to game, so the problems it raises became a total non-issue...for the beta. They focused all their attention on the AI feedback but didn't give anybody a chance to say "Hang on a minute, the process of re-rolling 20 times for something vaguely resembling a decent modification is actually going to take me weeks!" and get a decent response.
From that perspective, it seems rather like they wanted feedback on some things (the AI, missions, NPC avatars) but the headline feature wasn't included in that list. In fact, the only response even slightly relating to the Engineers themselves appears to have been the removal of bi-weave shields because a few people said they seemed OP. If that's the case (ie if it's deliberate rather than an implementation bug, which isn't clear because they've refused to address the point so far) then it's a crazy reversal of the point people were trying to make - rather than reduce the shield enhancements available as mods, they simply got rid of something that people actively want and left them with no way to get similar functionality back via the new 2.1 features.
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The devs have introduced a system that will take weeks for the average player to even come close to maxing their ship out with unique and interesting configurations, and possibly months for the more hardcore players to outfit their fleet.
All the people on this thread complaining about the process, be it the RNG or the material gathering in the first place, are throwing a fit....because they couldn't fully level their ships over the weekend. This is an attitude that seems to run contrary to the well established spirit of ED--if you want the biggest and best, it's going to take a bit of time.
Honestly, between this topic and all of the soul wrenching anguish over the new NPC's, I think we're doomed if hostile aliens ever show up.
For me, aside from a few balance passes, I'd say Fdev knocked this one out of the park. My experience over the weekend exploring all the new content was simply incredible...even though I didn't fully mod my ship.
All the people on this thread complaining about the process, be it the RNG or the material gathering in the first place, are throwing a fit....because they couldn't fully level their ships over the weekend. This is an attitude that seems to run contrary to the well established spirit of ED--if you want the biggest and best, it's going to take a bit of time.
Honestly, between this topic and all of the soul wrenching anguish over the new NPC's, I think we're doomed if hostile aliens ever show up.
For me, aside from a few balance passes, I'd say Fdev knocked this one out of the park. My experience over the weekend exploring all the new content was simply incredible...even though I didn't fully mod my ship.
You're missing the point, buddy. No one, particularly the OP, is saying that things should be done in two days. The issue is this: RNG is a cheap way to force players to spend more time searching, in-game, for materials and upgrades, only to then kick them down the proverbial curb of disappointment when their roll for an upgrade is awful and they have to go out again to farm more stuff.
Let's take your comment about exploring all the content. Let's assume you liked all of it: and then the RNG gods decided that 40% of the engineer bases you saw you can't use; that only 20% of the UI enhancements apply to your installed client; that 50% of the performance enhancements (planet textures, witchspace, etc) apply to your installed client; etc, etc, etc. Now, if you wanted to re-roll your chances, you'd have to delete and re-install the game. Would you then still say Fdev knocked this one out of the park?
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I have a confession to make (aside from the fact that I do like 'all of it').
I didn't understand a word of that last paragraph. Are you talking about bugs forcing you to reinstall your client...or what? I couldn't decipher it.
Thiiiiiis is so true. But this is something that can be noticed since the Powerplay factions got really fast decaying merits, that are good only for hardcore gamers that invest a lot of time in the game, and penalizes the rest. So this is a trend in ED development that can be noticed for a long time.
I don't know if its good or bad, but in my case I don't even care about joining powerplay, or trying the engineers, since I know I can't invest a lot of time every week for them. And now with OP NPC's... time for a break.
This here is the other half of the problem: that ships now suddenly need "levelling up" in the first place. 1 1/2 years of fixed gear ceiling reachable for anyone, and suddenly we have to level up to keep pace with the new power creep.
That's your problem right here. You want the max. result and are not happy with a simple upgrade. If the result span is between 1-10% ( with linear progression ) you can get anything between 1 and 10%. Would you be happier if you got 5% every time?
I would be for implementing a bell curve instead of a linear progression (making it highly unlikely that you end up with a number near the lower OR higher end of the spectrum ) - yet that would mean its even worse for the I want the max. boost crowd....
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So you are still in a Sidewinder I guess? Because if not you already leveled up your ship multiple times. This also takes time. The modded gear is just as reachable as better ships/more expensive modules.
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His straw manning is very convoluted...
A secondary issue is that the longer time passes the worse the balance gets....
I've seen in some of the other threads that the SDC / CODE type members are already getting mods and upgrades..... the longer time passes the more people with limited game time are going to be at a disadvantage
Once the core PvP crowd get tooled up then its going to be extremely deadly for unmodded ships to take part in CG's in open (given you're always going to meet both good/bad types in / around CG's) .... granted not all PvP'ers play unfair, many do .... but certainly those who want to see the forums exploded with salt laden tears will be gearing up hard i'd imagine and blasting unprepared pilots and watching the aftermath.
I've seen in some of the other threads that the SDC / CODE type members are already getting mods and upgrades..... the longer time passes the more people with limited game time are going to be at a disadvantage
Once the core PvP crowd get tooled up then its going to be extremely deadly for unmodded ships to take part in CG's in open (given you're always going to meet both good/bad types in / around CG's) .... granted not all PvP'ers play unfair, many do .... but certainly those who want to see the forums exploded with salt laden tears will be gearing up hard i'd imagine and blasting unprepared pilots and watching the aftermath.
Really guys you all are too musch obssesed with RNG, it is just one more thing added to the game, NOT THE END GAME.
I only see here a bunch of people who want to reach rhe goal first, enjoy the trip for gosh sake.
I only see here a bunch of people who want to reach rhe goal first, enjoy the trip for gosh sake.
In beta we complained we wouldn't be able to test anything if we had to go material hunting the whole time. that's why they made it fish. They weren't covering anything up.
Well said. I spend roughly 20 hours on stream and off trying to get just the stuff required for the level 2 dirty engine upgrade. I could not get the mission only components to ever come up, and I found one of the legacy firmware. No offence FD, but for only the mid tier upgrade, 20 hours spent trying to find mats is absolutely insane.
I responded to another similar post just now and for some reason it was tossed when I tried to put it up. FD hates me today (lol).
I agree with this. I have Engineers and played Beta and I feel like this is a bad thing thing for the 1.6 players and the general balance of the game.
Also, I have several ships of different types in my fleet, I can no longer just go and fetch another ship and go do stuff, I have to seriously consider whether the ship I'm jumping into is worthy or not, even after taking it to Founder's. That means I'm off grinding for upgrades instead of doing what I want.
I dislike the RNG too. Really. This is a game based on science not on your luck with a slot machine. I would be in favor of ditching it, but I understand some folks love gambling so maybe make a couple things random and a couple things set (don't know really, just something else). Personally I want to know what I'm buying, even if not exactly then something closer to the actual outcome. I've pretty much been running upgrades then discarding them for the reputation since the outcomes have been nothing I'd run with in space and feel safe using (lol). The objective is to unlock the highest tiers of upgrades, thankfully you don't have to actually use the crappy lower-tier upgrades to advance to a higher tier, or, why bother. Maybe have an "upgrade ship" that you do the Engineer stuff with, when you unlock all the higher tiers then take your "usual" ships down for the upgrades. No way I'm going through all this on each individual ship I own, not enough time in a year to eek out fun doing that. I've only been in the Python since release, if I had to go through this for each ship I wouldn't bother.
Anyway, Engineers, I call it "pay-to-not-lose".
I don't understand the "Wasting Time" thing at all...or rather I do...isn't the whole point of Elite...a delicious diverting waste of time from every day life?
If you're not enjoying the journey...what pleasure will you have when you finally grind your way to whatever min/maxed Tier 5 upgrade you've aimed for?
What are you going to do with it?
If you're not enjoying flying/fighting/trading/salvaging/prospecting on route to that better ship/better module/better modification...will you really enjoy doing it anymore once you've acquired it!!!
Rep-ed, by the thread's title alone! Yes Elite has its brilliant aspects, but it also has its hair rasing design choices, which do little than to force players to spend unnecessary amounts of time, often due to RNG based designs.
To quote what I wrote on another forum though:
Thing is, in order to make the game world feel alive, some form of RNG has to be present. Ideally with biases, based on variables in the game world. System state, government, location in relation to stellar bodies. But if the dice decide between getting something worthwhile out of it or having wasted time, I would sometimes like to... strap the responsible game designer to a comfy chair and poke them with a soft cushion. For as long as the aggregated time of every single player whose time was wasted due to RNG. Same for pure time waster mechanics (donation grind anyone?). I feel that in case of Elite, the respective designer might not live long enough to see the end of it.
Instead, I would like RNG - wherever it is used - to present the player with nearly equally compelling outcomes. Take the RES "spawn table" of wanted ships. Currenly, some virtual dice decides whether you get ships that are worth a damn or whether you get hordes of Eagles and Sidewinders, which don't pay for . What do you as a player think? "Ohhh, all the high rank pirates are on vacation today. I'll just have to make do with not earning anything worthwhile while bounty hunting in this RES". Has anyone actually thought that? Or have people, once they learned how the game works, simply taken the FSD straight out of the RES just to drop back in moments later and see if the pirate lord's vacation has ended, so they can earn actual credits? Leaving slight issue of pirates with deathwishes seemingly being in abundance in E D's universe out of the equation for a moment, because the whole bounty grinding mechanic is absurd when one would take into account that humans lean towards self preservation.
How about rolling for the "flavor" of the spawned ships and giving each flavor a spawn table that leads to roughly equally worthwhile spawns? You're in an Empire system in war with a federation Faction? The spawned wanted ships are mostly Federation agents! And of course, they're using Dropships, FAS and Corvette's, rather than Clippers and Couriers. You're in some arbitrary High RES? Pirates belonging to a set of pirate factions, each with a bias towards certain ship types, a recognizable unique decal/paintjob, and a bias towards using Egineer'ed weapons with certain effects are spawned.
And voilá. RNG that makes the game world feel more alive and doesn't present you with the choice of getting what you want or having wasted your time.
TL;DR:
Yes to RNG! But please Frontier, sanitize your RNG based design choices before they're introduced to the game. Does the RNG decide between equally compelling paths in the game? Put it it! Does the RNG decide between a compelling option and the player having wasted (a substantial amount of) their time? Please, go back to the drawing board!
To quote what I wrote on another forum though:
Thing is, in order to make the game world feel alive, some form of RNG has to be present. Ideally with biases, based on variables in the game world. System state, government, location in relation to stellar bodies. But if the dice decide between getting something worthwhile out of it or having wasted time, I would sometimes like to... strap the responsible game designer to a comfy chair and poke them with a soft cushion. For as long as the aggregated time of every single player whose time was wasted due to RNG. Same for pure time waster mechanics (donation grind anyone?). I feel that in case of Elite, the respective designer might not live long enough to see the end of it.
Instead, I would like RNG - wherever it is used - to present the player with nearly equally compelling outcomes. Take the RES "spawn table" of wanted ships. Currenly, some virtual dice decides whether you get ships that are worth a damn or whether you get hordes of Eagles and Sidewinders, which don't pay for . What do you as a player think? "Ohhh, all the high rank pirates are on vacation today. I'll just have to make do with not earning anything worthwhile while bounty hunting in this RES". Has anyone actually thought that? Or have people, once they learned how the game works, simply taken the FSD straight out of the RES just to drop back in moments later and see if the pirate lord's vacation has ended, so they can earn actual credits? Leaving slight issue of pirates with deathwishes seemingly being in abundance in E D's universe out of the equation for a moment, because the whole bounty grinding mechanic is absurd when one would take into account that humans lean towards self preservation.
How about rolling for the "flavor" of the spawned ships and giving each flavor a spawn table that leads to roughly equally worthwhile spawns? You're in an Empire system in war with a federation Faction? The spawned wanted ships are mostly Federation agents! And of course, they're using Dropships, FAS and Corvette's, rather than Clippers and Couriers. You're in some arbitrary High RES? Pirates belonging to a set of pirate factions, each with a bias towards certain ship types, a recognizable unique decal/paintjob, and a bias towards using Egineer'ed weapons with certain effects are spawned.
And voilá. RNG that makes the game world feel more alive and doesn't present you with the choice of getting what you want or having wasted your time.
TL;DR:
Yes to RNG! But please Frontier, sanitize your RNG based design choices before they're introduced to the game. Does the RNG decide between equally compelling paths in the game? Put it it! Does the RNG decide between a compelling option and the player having wasted (a substantial amount of) their time? Please, go back to the drawing board!
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I think the point we're making - can certainly speak for myself...
Is that the journey through this 'content' known as Engineering isn't exactly a pleasent one
And the end-goal, should you make it through that journey isn't certain (rng/re-roll)
Given the amount of fish spent during beta to get 'good' rolls (most positive stats + experimental) would equate to hundreds of hours of forraging
Assuming since 'Winter is coming' we'll need all the shielding/weapons we can lay our hands on
Have some of this delicious rep. Great post and sums up my thoughts very well.
