"It's okay. We can still join MOBIUS."
Made me laugh... but it's so damn true!
Right... off to see Stalin :O
Made me laugh... but it's so damn true!
Right... off to see Stalin :O
Nobody was saying the destination doesn't matter. What I said was along the lines of 'have goals, there's nothing wrong with that but so many people rush to them without even trying to enjoy the trip and thus, they burn themselves out."
The same could be said for both your goal of a cutter and the goal of an FSD upgrade though. You know both need specific things, and the game lets you know what to do for the most part to get those upgrades. The placement of materials isn't really that random, as there are specific place to look for them which the game tells you.
For example, heat dissipation something or others are found in haulage ships and sometimes USS' like many other online games, you know who or where to find the materials from but at the same time a raid boss in other MMOs isn't going to drop what you want every time either. So its up to the person playing to decide whether they want to run that very same raid so many times in a row until potentially burning out and crying "it's so repetitive!" Or deciding to pace it and enjoy the game itself.
Unlike other games though, you don't NEED the most expensive ship or lvl 5 upgrades to be effective in whichever role you may choose. Can they provide some quality of life enhancements? Sure! Are they something extra to aspire for? Absolutely! Do you need them to stay competitive? Not really, no. Does one have to grind to get them? Not at all. You CAN, but all it takes is pinning a recipe, going about whatever you find fun in game and after a while, voila you've got the materials for that upgrade you've been drooling over. Progress can still easily be tracked, even for engineer upgrades.
As it stands now, yes the engineers involve RNG to get whatever side/upgrade you might want but the devs have stated that in the near future, you'll be as to trade reputation for choosing what effect you want. Honestly, knowing that the devs are indeed making a way to bypass the RNG entirely, this thread amounts to much adieu about nothing.
That being said though, my point still stands. There's much more to the game than just trying to win a rat race that only exists in your own head. Progress is easily made, even while just toodleing about and enjoying the trip.
That is only the half truth. There is a player base that prefer this kind of "fast" playstyle, yes. But I am pretty sure that there are a lot players out there (like me) they only wanted to be entertained on their way trough the game. And for me the most downside within ED at the moment is that work like in RL is no fun. And the game mechanics do the rest, at least till now.
More things to do ?
like what ?
killing ship in RES or CZ ? done that...
driving around in the SRV collecting materials ? done that...
missions to transport stuff from A to B, to find stuff, to kill X or Y ? done that...
mining ? done that...
don't get me wrong, I've liked some of it, and still will, but there is nothing new to do, just new "rewards" that you can't stock for when you'll need them...
When the game was released I knew that it would take me a lot of time to get an Anaconda, but I knew that I would get one in the end, just by playing the way I like I could get money, slower or faster. Took me more than one year, but I got it.
That's not possible ATM for the engineers upgrade, if I want one I have to grind it, I can't just hope to collect what needed for it at my pace, not until we get way to stock and exchange commodities and materials.
And you're right for Robigo, those who where saying "why do you care if we can exploit the game for easy money ?" were selfish, uninformed, or short sighted players who did not understood that a fracked economy force bad design decision in the long run.
They aren't doing anything of the sort. They are offering a way of bypassing one element of RNG, the spinning roulette wheel of special effects. That still leaves you with RNG in absolutely every facet of the material collection process, RNG in the primary stats of your modification, and RNG in the secondary stats. That is a LOT of RNG! And to add to that, you will reduce your reputation with the engineer if you utilise this method, requiring you to grind out more mods with more RNG generated loot if you wish to do the same thing again for another weapon.
Hate is a strong word. But I hate Engineers. I thought power play was bad enough. I am the most disappointed since the update last year when we got a new separate game called CQC. Power play, CQC and now engineer's. Failed Failed Failed Worse there is nothing in the pipeline this year that will make any difference.
Ok. Have you considered how the levels of upgrades scale with the RNG though? Yeah, forcing yourself to grind out a whole bunch of lvl 1 or 2 upgrades you might have to do it a hundred times to get what you want. That's because lvl 1 or lvl 2 upgrades have a much higher variation between positive and negative rolls. Once one gets up to higher levels, those roll become more and more positive, meaning you need far less attempts to get "good stats". The upgrades even tell you "mostly negative" or "mostly positive" before you even craft the upgrade. Sure you might get super lucky and get an awesome level one upgrade, just as you might get damned unlucky with a single roll for a level 5 upgrade but for the most part, the rolls scale pretty well to the level desired.
The people complaining about the RNG like the sky is falling are basically making a mole hill into a mountain. As has been said many times before, the RNG for the materials themselves isn't really that random. I wasn't denying that there isn't a slight aspect of randomness to what drops, but by and large, specific things, produce specific sets of materials. That's par for the course in any game that has loot. you know what you need, the game tells you what has the materials needed, but of course they aren't going to drop exactly what you need every single time you go looking for it. You might have to kill 2-5 combat ships to get one specific material but what MMO style game doesn't have even a slight amount of chance based loot drops. It's not like one needs to kill 1000 ships (if they're even shooting the right kind of ships in the first place) to get one material they need. Far from it.
As for having to 'grind' to get these things; I'll say it again, for the most part, any grinding is completely self inflicted. It's unnecessary. You can absolutely collect the materials you need, passively. Even the ones that are only rewarded from missions, though they might be a little less passive. Even then, fly around, doing whatever floats your boat and check the mission board every once in a while if there's a specific material you want. The missions tell you what commodities and materials they give you before even accepting them. If it isn't in an available mission, take off and play to have fun. Maybe it'll be there next time you land. I know for a fact that this can be done without incessant grinding, because I do it. Every time I play, and, as I mentioned before, I'm pretty casual with this game. It's all in the players perspective.
I guess what it all boils down to is this: if someone doesn't enjoy the game with a non-upgraded ship, do they really think just having a laser that shoots blue instead of red or thrusters that let them go a little bit faster really going to make much of a difference to them? Especially if they force themselves to grind needlessly to get their "goal"? I highly doubt it.
To quote a song: "life is an endless drive that we take alone. Might as well enjoy the ride, take the long way home."
That rings pretty true for elite.
More good points. The JOURNEY ITSELF NEEDS TO BE FUN - NOT REPETITIVE AND BORING. It needs to be CHALLENGING not TOO HARD. There needs to be times of challenge and times of running for your life and times when you are blasting everything out of th sky.
1) If you are going to make it a "grind" that takes a long time you need to make it extremely rewarding along the way. If you are making little to no progress (Like watching the old Everquest pixels bubble for XP go by after days of work) eventually people are going to give up.
2) Expand the reaches of the AI - make a LOT of dumb pilots and a lot less hard core pilots. Make sure difficulty and effort = higher reward. MUCH higher.
3) The feedback loop of risk/reward is the big issue. There were no rewards and there was SUPPOSED TO BE with "Looting and crafting" but they dropped the ball.
Ugh I'm gonna make a post about it..
Here is one good read.
http://www.hiwiller.com/2010/05/24/feedbackreinforcement-loops/
There it is again, that "play the game like you normally would and you'll get the stuff you need." I'm a bounty hunter. Am I ever on a planet surface, shooting rocks? No. I don't enjoy asteroid mining either. When I do what I like to do, I get the mats that drop from ships--and I got a Vulture-load of them, too. But I can't get the FSD or thruster upgrades I want without getting some mineral or a fraking Modular Terminal, which I haven't been able to score despite my best efforts. But I don't really have a problem with this. If I have to do something specific to get the required mats, so be it, but I won't enjoy things I don't find fun, though I will enjoy getting closer to my goal. When I have it all, I'll drop by the Engi and get what I wanted...maybe. So far, no, no I haven't. (assuming all mats are simple to locate--which they aren't, despite what Engi Defenders say)
After hours and hours of gathering these materials, I don't know if I'll get a workable upgrade or not, so no, progress isn't easily tracked. If upgrades were deterministic, I would go "I have ten units of X, and seven units of Y. I need twenty units of X and fifteen units of Y to get my FSD range to 15 LYs, so I need to get ten more X and eight more Y." But that isn't how it works. It's "I have all this X and Y, so I have 5 CHANCES to get my FSD range to 15 LYs." So whatever "progress" I make at gathering mats, it can all go down the drain as soon as I enter the Engi Workshop. Bam, lost all my mats, didn't get a workable upgrade, gotta start all over again. I have made no progress. Even if I get my FSD range to 14 LYs, that doesn't bring me any closer if my goal is 15.
And this really isn't an MMORPG. We may have already been grinding, but we weren't doing MMORPG grinding. Well...we are now, but I didn't think someone would use raid bosses to try and prove a point about ED and have it make sense. It wasn't that type of game before. When I worked for my Cutter, I knew damn well how much credits and rep I was getting. Wasn't worried about RNG drops.
Also, I do need these upgrades to stay competivive. Ever since 2.1, I've been getting my ass handed to me more in conflict zones and RES's. I haven't complained about it at all, because it's not an awful lot, and it's not because of the AI either--it's because the AI has shiny new weapons that drop my shields faster and inflict thermal damage. They have an advantage (Engi upgrades) that I don't. And because I refuse to spend any more time on this RNG crap, (crap that I don't enjoy doing and don't feel any progress with) all the AI have these advantages against me, and I'm playing the game less and less because of all the frustration.
It honestly seems to me that it's an attitude problem based off of self imposed limitations. None of it really needs to be a grind. You don't have to go down to a planet just to shoot rocks, as there's plenty to do and see on many planets. There's pirates, which can carry hefty bounties now. There's things maybe no one else has seen before, maybe you can be the first. There's tons of salvage to make a pretty penny from and bases that can challenge you as well as pay out in terms of credits and materials. Hell, maybe get some friends together and bomb around low-g planets in a race. While you're doing that, there's a pretty high chance you'll find some of the materials you need. All while doing other things that you may just enjoy instead of forcing yourself to grind.
As for needing upgrades to stay competitive, I've seen that that isn't really the case. Plenty of people, who don't have horizons make out just fine every day without needing upgrades at all. And, after all, knowing when to high tail it out when you're out matched or out gunned is half the battle, especially thanks to the vastly improved AI.
In regards to the variability of engineer upgrades, I thought I went over that pretty clearly in my last post (lvl 1,2 = mostly negative; lvl 3 = some positive, some negative, lvl 4,5 = mostly positive.). They scale pretty well according to level and the positives and negatives that the respective levels give.
Also, the raid boss example was just one that fit well with these circumstances. It doesn't matter if MMORPGs have the same little bits of randomness that elite has just adopted. Practically any game that has some form of looting and crafting has this randomness, whether it's elite, borderlands, the division, or world of Warcraft. RNG is indeed par for the course in terms of any looting type game. It's nothing new and it's not nearly as bad as people on these forums are making it out to be.
Even if you could get all these upgrades that you're yearning for, it won't make your ship a leet killer of the Galaxy. You may get some boosts, but they'll also be balanced with negatives. They won't magically make you better able to kill elite NPCs, that much is up to you and your own skills. As I said before, you really don't NEED these upgrades to stay competitive. Want, maybe. Need, not in the slightest.
As I stated in my last post, it's all in the perception of the player. By keeping yourself limited to only bounty hunting in combat zones and resource extraction sites, it's not the game that limiting you. It's your mindset. Branch out a little. Who knows, by picking fight near planets, maybe it'll improve your abilities in the CZs or RES' you've mentioned. You might even find it to be enjoyable, and as a bonus, I guarantee you'll come across some materials you may be searching for.
Also, please realize that my posts like this are in no way an attack or meant to be offensive. I just see that you're having trouble with part of the game you don't agree with. As such, I'm trying to show you what works (quite well) at keeping Elite interesting and fun for me, while still progressing. I guess it leaves you with a choice now.
Take what I've been saying as well meaning advise to help you enjoy the game better and Just try it.
Or disregard it completely and stay stuck in a frustrating rut that doesn't have to be there.
First of all, I know you're not attacking or anything, and if I was getting salty, it's just because I'm frustrated at my favorite game, and I apologize. We're just discussing our viewpoints on a cool game. No hate, mate.
Yeah saying I "needed them to be competive" was an overstatement--mostly it's just that I get so angry whenever I hear "Thermal weapons, taking heat damage" or anything of the sort. I've adapted to the AI having tweaked ships, so saying that was premature. Still irks me that I can't get those tweaks without hours of doing other things I don't like to do.
And I would never want a "leet killer of the Galaxy." I think alot of 2.1 defenders assume that those of use who don't like the system want a system that just gives us uber ships with no negatives--and while I've sure there are people who want that, we don't. We want control over the tweaks. We want to manually balance out the pros and cons. Like, say with a level one upgrade, your net gain has to be 0%. As in, if I increase my shield strength by 5%, I can increase it's power draw by 5% to balance the gain to 0%--alternatively, I can increase the mass by 3% and lower the integrity by 2% if I didn't want the power draw to change. Then, perhaps a level 2 module allows a net gain of 3%, so I can get my shield strength up by 5%, but only need to lower the integrity by 2% to get the net gain of 3%. These numbers are arbitrary, and are only used to illustrate the idea in a simple way. Also, since the outcome can be determined like this, the entire system can be balanced out by increasing the amount of materials needed for each upgrade--level one could be ten times what it is now, for all I care. Even if the mat gathering stayed RNG, it wouldn't be so bad since the slot machine was replaced by a legendary Engineer who knew what they were doing. Likewise, asking for specific special mods for weapons would take a good number of specific mats. This way, we're working towards our goal, (as opposed to just being handed it) and we won't feel screwed by the result of or work (something that hasn't been in Elite until now). And we wouldn't be getting uber ships, but tweaked ships.
I think this would open the door to actual experimentation, too. Wouldn't it be interesting to build an actual "glass cannon" ship? Like, your weapons are strong and the thrusters are fast, but the hull is paper thin? Or the other way around, and you're a tank that takes forever to go down but you're slower than a T9 and can't really dish it out. The current system doesn't encourage experimentation, it encourages you to take what you can get. Although this specific point can be solved with module storage...though that won't make it as fun, IMO.
And I don't think we can compare looting in this game with the games you mentioned, or really any other game with looting. In those, when you're looting, you're usually fighting something (which is the main point, unlike in ED which has several) and when you get the drop, bam, you have it. If you don't, then maybe it'll drop next time, you don't know, so when it does, you're like "Awesome!" Here, we have to do various activities to get mats that we may not want to do...like sitting outside of a station to scan wakes. I don't even see the point in wake scanners if you're not a pirate or assassin. But when we get those drops, we have to hope something else drops. If it doesn't, we have to go get the loot required for the actual loot again. And...again. This isn't a "bit" of randomness, but a load of it, in a game that to this point was pretty much "if you want this, do this, you'll get it" and not "if you want this, do this, you may get something like this."