Engineers Lets talk about why rare commodities is probably not a good idea for engineer unlocks.

Possibly one of the biggest bugbears of the patch outside of the AI thing could be some of the hoops you have to jump through for engineer unlocks.

In particular it seems like rare commodities seems like a bad idea. I am jumping out on a limb here and drawing some conclusions that possibly you wanted to players to experience the breadth of the game here by your selection of requirements for unlocking all of them. Combat, trading, exploration, and mining. I get what I think you guys were going for there.


Where it falls flat is when you start the rare commodities unlocks. Instead of a engaging experience interacting with perhaps something you might not have done or something you are very familiar with you are sitting in a station waiting for an update to turn over so you can pick up a bit. At first I was getting two Karmitra Cigars during a boom state then that was over now I'm getting 1 every update, and well I started looking through missions while I waited. Nothing I needed or anything worth me leaving and losing out on being able to pick up one more cigar to hurry this along. Then I came up with the idea to instead bring my laptop to work tomorrow and knock out a few before work when I get there early, a few during lunch, then one on the way home and try and finish it up when I get home.

Could there possibly be a better way of doing this?

Sure you could instead just require 50 different rare commodities as a whole all together. That way players will get a chance to go and see a few different stations and stay busy and engaged while station hopping to get 50 rares in a relatively timely manner. Obviously you want the unlocks to have something to do with their character so specific ones could maybe count as 2.
 
"Then I came up with the idea to instead bring my laptop to work tomorrow and knock out a few before work when I get there early, a few during lunch, then one on the way home and try and finish it up when I get home."
While I'm sure that'd pass the time I'm sure it's frowned upon in many workplaces! 😉
Yeah not looking forward to the rare stuff. It comes to something when I find mining a more entertaining prospect! Only another 450 tons to go!
 
oh, c'mon stop whining already

Yes... I am currently WORKING (not fun) to get that 200 lavian brandy requirement fulfilled. Whining that it is a non-enjoyable gaming element is just whining, not valid criticism... right? The complaint people are raising is not that it is hard to fulfill some of the engineer requirements, but that it is boring and tedious to fulfill them. That is VALID criticism and it should be addressed.

CMDR Innocentius signing out.
 
Yes... I am currently WORKING (not fun) to get that 200 lavian brandy requirement fulfilled. Whining that it is a non-enjoyable gaming element is just whining, not valid criticism... right? The complaint people are raising is not that it is hard to fulfill some of the engineer requirements, but that it is boring and tedious to fulfill them. That is VALID criticism and it should be addressed.

CMDR Innocentius signing out.

Well I agree... I was helped by a full wing of sdc friends. Done it in an hour. <not needed> players alone are in real trouble
 
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Just bad scaling.

The xihe companions for example are fine.

edit: or there are events planned with high production rates as we've already seen before
 
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Asking for that one rare in large quantity is bad design. If the goal is to make player try the rare trading gameplay,
the run should include more than one good, and the total order should not require the players to to the loop more than
one or twice.

Good design would be more in the lines of :

50 tons of alcool rares (i.e. can deliver anything like : pearl whiskey + lavian brandy + the château thingy wine + Indy bourbon and such...)
 
Asking for that one rare in large quantity is bad design. If the goal is to make player try the rare trading gameplay,
the run should include more than one good, and the total order should not require the players to to the loop more than
one or twice.

Good design would be more in the lines of :

50 tons of alcool rares (i.e. can deliver anything like : pearl whiskey + lavian brandy + the château thingy wine + Indy bourbon and such...)

Yeah good idea actually
 
do we really need another thread??

the reason why it is a rare is to avoid doing it all in one single trade, is the same problem with 40 rates as 200 landmines. you want to do it, that is the problem. now if you could please stop spawning threads about these things and write your dislike list in a single post, that would be great.
 
do we really need another thread??

the reason why it is a rare is to avoid doing it all in one single trade, is the same problem with 40 rates as 200 landmines. you want to do it, that is the problem. now if you could please stop spawning threads about these things and write your dislike list in a single post, that would be great.

So your happy to do 100-200 trips to get 200 tons of lavian brandy ? You think it's good game design. Okay...
 
So your happy to do 100-200 trips to get 200 tons of lavian brandy ? You think it's good game design. Okay...

I think, doing randomly when I have a mission in a system close to lave, will eventually give the 200 required. I don't need to do it in one day, not to mention a single trip. You don't need either, you just want for convenience. Calling this bad design clearly shows much more about your design skills than FD's.
 
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Well I agree... I was helped by a full wing of sdc friends. Done it in an hour. <not needed> players alone are in real trouble

Well and lets be real, that is 1 hour x however many friends you've got when you help them out too ;) doing it in a group gets it done faster but your still taking a great deal of time when you equate it for all the players involved.

As to the actual question its simple, shipping a rare is just about the worst objective they could give because it isn't related to any of the professions, can't be completed in any other way and has a quite offensive frontal time gating feature built in. Even "bring 100T of legal rares" would be an improvement as you could pick them up while flying round, but as its currently implemented the only way to do it is to waste the amount of time it takes to move A to B.

It doesn't help when the engineer it unlocks is some randomly placed middle of the pack engineer (looking at you broo, learn how to tier 5)

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I think, doing randomly when I have a mission in a system close to lave, will eventually give the 200 required. I don't need to do it in one day, not to mention a single trip. You don't need either, you just want for convenience. Calling this bad design clearly shows much more about your design skills than FD's.

No it doesn't, if you think you'll complete this objective while doing something else i'll cya in 2 years or when they change it ;) you can intersperse it all you like your still hiding something boring into something else in the hope you eventually complete it. If you think this is good game design you know absolutely nothing about it, its about the worst solution available from the ones they could pick (modular terminals is a much better progressive goal) and I suspect was just done as a quick throw in with little thought associated.
 
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was thinking about a (perhaps) better way to do it

...perhaps a harder or more involved 'unlock' for each new engineer, or even for the first of each mod you attempt with each engineer, but make repeat attempts vastly cheaper

this way there is still a barrier to entry, still a lot of work to achieve access to each mod, maybe even a more involved quest than simply "collect 20 bear-asses" or "bring me a shrubbery", but the inane ongoing collection can be reduced
 
it doesn't matter. whatever they put to access the engineers will be seen as a barrier by those populating the recent posts page of the forum.
 
oh, c'mon stop whining already

Not whining. It only takes a day and I can get most of it done in down time. When I get home tonight I'll have the other two unlocked and be on my way to unlock armor and HRPS to finish off my light weight build.


I'm just pointing out that an unlock feature based off the state of a faction which is variable could possibly be a bad idea.

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Ring the alarms! A white knight has fallen! The end is neigh!

Not a white knight go read my history of posts, I have plenty of issues with the game. I just have MORE issues with idiots on the forums.
 
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I don't see how sitting at a station for hours refreshing the screen is either fun, interactive or engaging gameplay. Seems a bit lazy to me.
 
the problem with rares IMO is that you don't know where to get them. There's no ingame specific resource to find them (am I wrong) ? You can find meta alloys or thoses things looking at galnet. but these rare commodities just require forum help / exterior sites to locate them.

And that is not really immersive. I like handling things by my own knowledge. Of course, I can work the immersive way, and wait till I find soontil relics by myself. But that's not going to happen, I'd have better luck finding 25 polonium! Or I could just visit every system in the bubble... Nay...
 
Some of the rares unlocks might be a bit tedious if you focus only only doing that. But if you find a way to incorporate it into a trading loop, you can make some money at the same time. Or just do some other activity near the source and hoover up whatever is there when you dock until you have max allocation. Now you can swap cargo between ships you can even transfer into a long-range hauler to do the trip to the engineer and back to save a bit of time.

And it's a one-off cost, like getting a system permit.
 
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