I believe this is what they call, playing the game.
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I believe this is what they call, playing the game.
And the problem is?
Both average and best possible results are always higher with L4 than L3 - that's what makes it a higher level.
If you got an excellent L3 upgrade maybe you should be happy with that?
Seems people expect all the positives and none of the negatives - but unfortunately the universe doesn't care for their entitlement.
Even if you don't have all the best possible improvements to all your ships, you can still have fun playing the game.
I wasn't clear in my post so I edited it. I meant the same chance of having a useless upgrade roll, or a net neutral/net negative RNG roll. I know I have to do it for each upgrade on each ship. This is not an encouraging or enjoyable mechanic. Maybe it is for others, who knows. And it'll be different for each module; but for an exploration ship, the extra range is critical and to have a mediocre range increase for nearly the maximum penalty is useless.
Gods yes I love your post. Module storage would certainly be nice, though I would prefer the RNG be taken out of the actual crafting process.
I just joined the forums, so I don't think I can rep yet (or I'm a idiot and haven't found the button yet) but when I can, I will come back and give due rep, good sir.
I just joined the forums, so I don't think I can rep yet (or I'm a idiot and haven't found the button yet) but when I can, I will come back and give due rep, good sir.
As I'm slowly working my way along obtaining the engineers I spotted a potential flaw in the design of how the levelling works. In terms of game mechanics it makes sense, but could well be a serious flaw in the design.
This is going to be a long post, something which I don't apologise for as too often we don't actually take the time to fully read or consider what people are saying. But if reading something for more than about 10 minutes offends, thento you
As you know, you need to craft(or in a few cases) do other stuff to gain rep and here's the rub. Each time you find a new engineer who will craft a higher grade mod you need to start again from scratch.
E.g To get access to level 5 thrusters I need to
With Elivira
Craft ~4 lots of Lv1 mods
Craft ~4 lots of Lv2 mods
Craft 2-3 lots of Lvl 3 mods(I never got the access until I was 50% of the way past lvl 3)
With Marco
Craft ~4 lots of Lv1 mods
Craft ~4 lots of Lv2 mods
Craft 2-3 lots of Lvl 3 mods(I never got the access until I was 50% of the way past lvl 3)
With Palin
Craft ~4 lots of Lv1 mods
Craft ~4 lots of Lv2 mods
Craft 2-3 lots of Lvl 3 mods(I never got the access until I was 50% of the way past lvl 3)
Craft ~4 lots of Lv4 mods
Finally Craft Lvl 5 mod.
So that's a total of about 37 mods to get to palin.
With me so far?
Ok. Now.. In each of those 37 times I am faced with a choice. Do I overwrite what I did before just to upgrade a level? The only way around this is to buy or use a spare ship and risk the module swap roulette in swapping it out with all the messing about that entails
Now this thread isn't about the time it will take to get those 37 mods, but about the logical absurdity of the levelling and total necessity for storage. Without storage the levelling system starts to break down, and eventually collapses unless the player is willing to risk wasting their time by wiping out a previous mod in favour of supposedly a better one.
If you look at the stats for say a level 3 to a level 4 you'll notice it is entirely possible to end up with a worse level 4 than you had as a level 3. In terms of people thinking "was this time well spent" I question how many would say "sure it is, I might have got a worse module to fly around in, but at least I have 32 more to go.."
And now for a video break
https://youtu.be/0V5eq4IQ6Go?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5DZUWTC25vSZbJ6OCk1XB1p
By using RNG to determine crafting, you don't solve balance issues you make them more complex as quite simply you have the delta of randomness to contend with rather than absolutes.
(TLDR)
Without module storage, the levelling system necessitates either the play risking what they had in the hope they get something better, or juggle ships around to act as a safety net.
The route causes of this issue are mainly two fold. First different levels of module have stats overlap and secondly the whole way the RNG works
Now, much has been written about the RNG and I think most of it is based on a misunderstanding of what the crafting RNG system is and say the random nature of NPC appearances. Random NPC appearances are transitory, they come and go with very little impact to the player in the long term. The Crafting system has permanence. it affects the player for so long as they wish it.
Quite simply, they are two different things.
The engineers RNG mechanic is known as operant conditioning and is widely seen to be a bad thing in game design. Not only does it ultimately prove to be uninvolving and unrewarding it also manipulates the player into continuing to perform an action they would other wise get bored of? Do you want to be manipulated like that? I don't
To further explain what I mean please take a few minutes to watch the video, put together by professional game designers.
https://youtu.be/tWtvrPTbQ_c
I've also seen the term 'minmax' thrown around like it's some sort of criminal act. We all minmax in our play. be it from choosing the fastest route over economical, using pips in combat all the way to planning our ship builds to achieve what we want it to.
There is nothing wrong with minmaxing in itself. It's often the attitudes that go along with it that is. Baby. bathwater.. everywhere..
There is also fear of 'the meta' well what we have seen is a delaying of the inevitable for perhaps 3 months. Meta's exist in very game no matter what. So is the sacrifice in game design worth delaying the inevitable meta for?
One of the ways I've seen the current implementation justified is by "Elite is on a 10 year plan, it's not done yet"
And you know what? That's amazing, that's wonderful the developers have a long term plan.. BUT should'nt each step on the way to that 10 year play be compelling, well thought out and well good enough to stand on it's own two feet without relying on 'jam tomorrow?'
Now another reason I've seen defending the use of RNG on RNG is that engineering is not an exact, replicable science and that examples have been cited from car tuning to over clocking CPU's. Now in real life this is totally true.
However. this being a game we need to see how the game treats this real life fact.
We are told engineers are these on the fringes of tech geeks who's work cannot be replicated or predicted and that the RNG mechanic mimics real life.
Except... When you lose your ship the insurance companies engineers will replace your supposedly unpredictable or unable to copy module exactly as it was.. The only way to explain this contradiction is to give the reason "Well game play"
TLDR
The way the crafting system works necessitates use of storage(either by buying a spare ship or by having it in game ) OR forcing the player to risk what they have for what they might get.
If we can use gameplay to justify RNG, we can also use gameplay as a reason to provide the player with alternate more compelling methods of obtaining what they want
In my experience the crafting mechanic is uninvolving. my ability as a player has no bearing on the result... I feel disconnected from the whole process and that the game has taken over. Surely not a good thing
Getting a little philosophical for a moment. Our spare time is precious, we never get it back and surely the point of a game is to allow us to use that precious time as pleasurably as possible
I'm no games designer, but I would ask you to watch the below and ask yourself what sort of progression system would you wanted to have had. What we have now or something outlined below
https://youtu.be/S5camMoNw-o
Thanks for talking the time to read and watch
REP, because this can't be said enough
Elite's biggest problem, unfortunately, is a 'strange' game design. I am not expert, but if majority of players agree on that - we are right. Game design decisions, not a single one, but multiple ones during the game life so far raise a lot of questions.
Powerplay ... well, I won't even start. Let's just hope this 10-artist hit-parade with 10 songs that move up a down a little and have no meaning will change someday. At least, maybe we'll have a new artist about a year+ after ... Well, anyway
Now Engineers which I've spent a ridiculous time in. Despite the fact the whole thing is obviously beneficial, fun in a way (it's like a personal story of unlocking those guys and getting better upgrades), but at the same time there are 3 major flaws:
STORAGE
I can't understand how they've decided to release it without a storage. If that was intentional or they 'didn't think' about it it's just poor planning. People have to fly now with a single 'multi'-ship full of crap. I can't take my FDL or FAS anymore - combat ships do not have cargo and hours of hard work gaining materials you won't just throw away.
MATERIALS RARE AND UNPREDICTABLE SPAWN
Quite a lot discussed here and that is obviously a flaw. A major flaw. I'd watch Sandy with sadistic pleasure while he'd be driving SRV for hours trying to find that piece of Polonium.
RANDOM ON A FINAL ROLL
It's brutal - to receive a negative effect on much desired upgrade. Besides that majestic 6% chance is just .... pure gold. Materials and RNG are two ends of the stick that are HARD, with no CONTROL to players. You can make one end HARD, but not two of them.
All of that will be tweaked, of course. They'll raise up a spawn rates a little. And a special effect chance. But in general nothing will change as with Powerplay. We'll just get 10 merits per ship instead of 1.
I wonder if person(s) designing this stuff for Elite plays other games?
I wonder if they play a lot of them?
I wonder if they play Elite at all?
Personally, Passengers is the most amazing thing I am waiting from this game. However, knowing how things are done prior to this point, I am in big concern.
Powerplay ... well, I won't even start. Let's just hope this 10-artist hit-parade with 10 songs that move up a down a little and have no meaning will change someday. At least, maybe we'll have a new artist about a year+ after ... Well, anyway
Now Engineers which I've spent a ridiculous time in. Despite the fact the whole thing is obviously beneficial, fun in a way (it's like a personal story of unlocking those guys and getting better upgrades), but at the same time there are 3 major flaws:
STORAGE
I can't understand how they've decided to release it without a storage. If that was intentional or they 'didn't think' about it it's just poor planning. People have to fly now with a single 'multi'-ship full of crap. I can't take my FDL or FAS anymore - combat ships do not have cargo and hours of hard work gaining materials you won't just throw away.
MATERIALS RARE AND UNPREDICTABLE SPAWN
Quite a lot discussed here and that is obviously a flaw. A major flaw. I'd watch Sandy with sadistic pleasure while he'd be driving SRV for hours trying to find that piece of Polonium.
RANDOM ON A FINAL ROLL
It's brutal - to receive a negative effect on much desired upgrade. Besides that majestic 6% chance is just .... pure gold. Materials and RNG are two ends of the stick that are HARD, with no CONTROL to players. You can make one end HARD, but not two of them.
All of that will be tweaked, of course. They'll raise up a spawn rates a little. And a special effect chance. But in general nothing will change as with Powerplay. We'll just get 10 merits per ship instead of 1.
I wonder if person(s) designing this stuff for Elite plays other games?
I wonder if they play a lot of them?
I wonder if they play Elite at all?
Personally, Passengers is the most amazing thing I am waiting from this game. However, knowing how things are done prior to this point, I am in big concern.
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Actually for me they don't raise a lot of questions. Only one: why does Frontier always priorize milestones over quality? I mean, a lot of things look like "we had ideas to do something cool, but ran out of time, so we instead..." And since the Engineer Beta it's not just suspicion any more. Unfortunately the Beta forum is closed now, so i can't link towards this, but Michael Brookes there stated openly that they had a much more interesting and fun concept for Engineers, with missions and stuff. Unfortunately it turned out to be work, so they had to switch to the much easier and simpler solution we got instead.
So it's quite obvious, they had a more interesting and more fun concept at hand, but somebody rather wanted to hurry Engineers out of the door. That also explains why a lot of bugs which were reported in beta 1 and beta 2 still are in the game... (not to speak of stuff which was found during beta 3/4/5) the current bug section has almost no entry which i didn't also see in the beta bugs section.
So my call to Frontier would really be: give managers another incentive than "you get money if the expansion is shipped at this and that date". Focus on quality. We waited for 20 years for this game. We are ready and eager to wait longer for expansions if we get quality instead.
As bonus, quality might even help sales. I have several friends latently interested in this game, but every time i try to advertise this game, they ask some details, game mechanics, group missions, etc... and if i now tell them "no, group missions are still not here, but we have more grind now", this won't really help me persuade them to buy the game. I would love to fly with them, but i would have to lie about the state of the game and the quality of it's expansions to persuade them to buy it. That's not a viable strategy for me and i wouldn't be surprised if repeated bad reviews of hurried expansions also keep many other customers away.
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From what I can tell it's down to a few things; their iterative development cycle (Get a minimum viable product out, get feedback and improve) another is that they want to keep pushing forward or they'd never get things to a 'finished' state. I recall back in beta during one of the interviews it was stated that basically at some point you just need to set a date and ship the product otherwise you'll forever tinker with it. Of course sales and marketing come into play too.
I really wish that they did spend a few more weeks with each beta though as the damage early shipping does to the games reputation is worse than a few weeks of delay. With a project this big of course there will always be bugs but many patches seem to hit live with some pretty nasty ones.
I love this game (even some of the expansions - wings and Engineers were great additions, CQC and PowerPlay terrible IMO) but most of my friends wont pick it up again. Sad really as many of them only played it for a few weeks at release but were so put off with the game being so bare bones then that they're not willing to try it now with the improvements that have been added since.
P.S. You can sort of do group missions now as the new mission system is synced with other players so if you're all docked and go to the mission board you can all take the same missions then do them together. I've been doing that with some friends since 2.1 and its pretty fun.
About the "tinkering forever": yes, a certain number of bugs is to be expected and i would not complain about that. But having a nice concept and then dropping for something inferior hurts. Michael Brookes in the beta forum gave us some hints on what they intentionally planed, had almost finished and then canned as they ran into some issue which would have taken a little longer to fix. The concept would have been vastly superior to what we got, i wish they'd have taken the extra month to complete it, instead of thrashing it and quickly hacking together what we now have.
I love flying in this game. That's why i am still around. The flying itself is awesome, and i also love the polish the graphics and some systems got this update.
But all the things they named expansions after, Wings, PowerPlay, CQC, Engineers, all of them are weakly implemented. And i very much have the feeling that for either of them there would've been better concepts around, but time ran short and they had to come up with something else in a hurry. I just really wish they'd not have dropped the better concepts for something which can be implemented quickly, but rather would've stuck to the original plan, took some more time and gave us the superior product.
And to be honest: for Wings things are slowly improving. Things are already much better than when they released it, but i still wish for some more stuff. Most importantly of course would be real group missions. The workaround you describe is allright, but it's no more than that. And another beauty aspect to improve wings would be to put a bit better inter-ship communication into the game when traveling. A first step would be to adjust nav-lock. Start the FDS when the locked ship is starting it, too, instead of waiting for the other ship to have jumped, then start the jump.
Doing that would be a minor thing, the game already now reports that the other ship is charging its engines, but it would make traveling in groups more convenient. Such small polish things go a long way.
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Yeah I heard something similar, hopefully it's just delayed for a later patch rather than scrapped entirely.
Same here
Agreed, this has been the case with the game since the outset. Good ideas but not enough time to see them through, at least not for the initial release. A lot of the games systems have improved but it's in little bits over time so has a lesser impact than when a new system is first added. I mean look at mining, took them ages to improve it but now it's vastly better than when it was first added. It's still not where they envisioned it would be but it's better. I just wish Exploring got some love, the base actions are still the same rushed system we got in beta and exploring is a key selling point of the game.
Yeah I thought that as well but then my wing mate raised a good observation with regards to this that I hadn't thought of. They dont start the wingmates charge up until you're in jump because up until the countdown you could cancel the jump causing your wingmates to jump while you stayed in the current system.
I also suspect it has something to do with instancing and the peer to peer networking, the staggered jump probably helps with setting that up.I'm on mobile and so I will forgo quoting. Someone said they release then go back and try to patch it up. And I think that's what they do: patch it up. But that fixes the cosmetic holes, not the underlying problems or shortcomings. They might be able to take a que from EvE's short development cycle. They used to do 2 a year and it was super inflexible. They changed it to every 2 months or so and now they can adapt and push changes whenever they need.
I think that would be great because then we're not waiting 4-6 months for a fix. They need to continue to develop their content ("Iteration" I think), to keep going at it until it's 90 or 95% of what they want. I feel like we keep getting 60% of the idea at launch and they eventually patch it up to 70-75%. But that's still quite lacking and it's quite disheartening to see so much of that. Their inability to finish up a project, expansion, or new content is just as much a turn-off for me as the actual unfinished content. Anybody else feel that way?
Also, better communication tends to lead to a more understanding and supportive community... It certainly won't hurt even if it takes a few hours a week.
I think that would be great because then we're not waiting 4-6 months for a fix. They need to continue to develop their content ("Iteration" I think), to keep going at it until it's 90 or 95% of what they want. I feel like we keep getting 60% of the idea at launch and they eventually patch it up to 70-75%. But that's still quite lacking and it's quite disheartening to see so much of that. Their inability to finish up a project, expansion, or new content is just as much a turn-off for me as the actual unfinished content. Anybody else feel that way?
Also, better communication tends to lead to a more understanding and supportive community... It certainly won't hurt even if it takes a few hours a week.
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Some RNG is not bad. Which ships show up in a system/res/nav is (most likely) down to RNG. But having to RNG our way through:
is just too many layers. One or two layers of RNG would be ok, but 4-6 is insane. Cumulative probabilities and all that. If I have a 1/100000 chance of getting the right ship/rock for the right mat for the right mod for the right effect... why should I even bother?
- Which ships/signal sources we encounter
- What they drop (though evidence is pointing towards archetypes or per-ship tables)
- Finding POIs on a planet
- What we get from those POIs
- The outcome of our crafting
- Getting a special (and which)
is just too many layers. One or two layers of RNG would be ok, but 4-6 is insane. Cumulative probabilities and all that. If I have a 1/100000 chance of getting the right ship/rock for the right mat for the right mod for the right effect... why should I even bother?
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Very good OP. Reasoned and well argued. I have come round to the thinking that there is too much RNG. Needs offsetting with Materials trading and storage, and quickly.
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^^ this. I agree totally with this and it is not making me angry, but sad.
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^^ this. I agree totally with this and it is not making me angry, but sad.
My view exactly.
All the updates so far left the taste of beeing unfinished, and instead of fixing them they add another. Digging more and more holes, and best they are doing is laying some flimsy wooden planks over them, so you are not falling headfirst into them.
The idea with the season passes and releases was nice, but they should have noticed last year that their plans were to optimistic and they just can not deliver 4 quality updates in a year.
Engineers was the first where I actively participated int eh Beta, and there it was also obvious.
The timeplan was heavily modified from what they sent out first.
On the original the first phase was about 2.5 weeks before going to mayhem. In real it was barely a few days before mayhem started.
If the first phase would have been as planned it would have been very obvious how tedious and not fun the material gathering is and how overpowered many mods are.. But so people just had time to buy the new modules and then mayhem started.
In Mayhem everyone stacked his ship full of level 5 mods with the best attributes and specials, so of course people had no real issue with the Ai apart from it running away, if you could blast them out of the sky with lvl 5 weapons and tank with shields that were 5-6 times better then normal.
And really the whole material part is just tacked on. They weigh nothing, have no cargo space and are not destroyed when you get killed. Explanation they are in teh escape pod. great I have room to stuff 200 material in there but obviously not the room for a backupdrive with my exploration data and bounty vouchers. it is totally strange and makes for a bad taste that 2 very similar things are handled different. Same is with the cargo insurance which has been promised for ages but is still not here.
Same with the crafting in every MMORPG when there is crafting there is a player market to sell unused items materials and recipies, here there is nothing in that regards.
Especially a materials market would make it much easier for all involved.
I stopped scooping up materials, it is just too boring and tiresome for me, spending 10 minutes after each fight trying to get these things into my ship.
As a livetime pass owner I would approve of a slower release circle with high quality expansions which add more then just a new grind level to the game, since they obviously are just unable to follow their own release shedules and it just puts a too big burden on the developers to deliver something at the given date without regards of its quality.
The game might be on a 10 year plan, but I can hardly see it survive the next 2 or 3 if the next expansions are as half finished as the ones before.
All the updates so far left the taste of beeing unfinished, and instead of fixing them they add another. Digging more and more holes, and best they are doing is laying some flimsy wooden planks over them, so you are not falling headfirst into them.
The idea with the season passes and releases was nice, but they should have noticed last year that their plans were to optimistic and they just can not deliver 4 quality updates in a year.
Engineers was the first where I actively participated int eh Beta, and there it was also obvious.
The timeplan was heavily modified from what they sent out first.
On the original the first phase was about 2.5 weeks before going to mayhem. In real it was barely a few days before mayhem started.
If the first phase would have been as planned it would have been very obvious how tedious and not fun the material gathering is and how overpowered many mods are.. But so people just had time to buy the new modules and then mayhem started.
In Mayhem everyone stacked his ship full of level 5 mods with the best attributes and specials, so of course people had no real issue with the Ai apart from it running away, if you could blast them out of the sky with lvl 5 weapons and tank with shields that were 5-6 times better then normal.
And really the whole material part is just tacked on. They weigh nothing, have no cargo space and are not destroyed when you get killed. Explanation they are in teh escape pod. great I have room to stuff 200 material in there but obviously not the room for a backupdrive with my exploration data and bounty vouchers. it is totally strange and makes for a bad taste that 2 very similar things are handled different. Same is with the cargo insurance which has been promised for ages but is still not here.
Same with the crafting in every MMORPG when there is crafting there is a player market to sell unused items materials and recipies, here there is nothing in that regards.
Especially a materials market would make it much easier for all involved.
I stopped scooping up materials, it is just too boring and tiresome for me, spending 10 minutes after each fight trying to get these things into my ship.
As a livetime pass owner I would approve of a slower release circle with high quality expansions which add more then just a new grind level to the game, since they obviously are just unable to follow their own release shedules and it just puts a too big burden on the developers to deliver something at the given date without regards of its quality.
The game might be on a 10 year plan, but I can hardly see it survive the next 2 or 3 if the next expansions are as half finished as the ones before.
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Sure. I am very certain, right after they reworked PowerPlay, they will take a look into the old concept for Engineers. Honestly, the best we can ever hope for on Engineers now is a pile of bandaids which just cover the worst shortcomings. My personal believe is that they by now are busy locating problems with the Guardian expansion, so they in July can discard the original concept and replace it with a tried-and-true grind mechanic.
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.Yeah I thought that as well but then my wing mate raised a good observation with regards to this that I hadn't thought of. They dont start the wingmates charge up until you're in jump because up until the countdown you could cancel the jump causing your wingmates to jump while you stayed in the current system.
Not a real problem. Just the same way as a ship already now sense a notification to all other ships in a wing that it charges the FDS, it can also send a "cancel FSD charge" message, which again is processed by all wing mates and they also stop the FSD charge. It really is that simple. Sure, lag at some time can result in an unsynchronized jump, but the same lag problem we already have in the current system, only with the difference who jumps and who gets lost.
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I feel the very same.
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Aye. I would celebrate if I'd ever read a newsletter saying something like "we don't want to hurry in new stuff, but rather go a little slower and focus on quality instead". But I doubt that'll ever happen.
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Of course. People right from the start told them that what they crated is a pure grind. They hated this feedback, so they decided to do something fishy, in the hopes that this would stop the complaints. Truth to be told, it helped to some degree, a large part of the beta "testers" then were busy showing off, how awesome stuff they created, instead of pointing out problems any more.
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Once again it turns out that smokescreening is not a viable long term strategy, which means I very much expect the same at the next beta.
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I fully agree and regret buying the lifetime pass. I was too optimistic and trusted them. I should've stuck to the base game, which actually was and still is good and which I still enjoy a lot., as long as I disregard all the low quality stuff they added later.
Fantastic initial post! I also loved the videos and really hope everyone on the design team at FD will spend a few minutes and watch them. Watching the skinner box video really hit home for me about how bad the material gathering in this update can be. In my case, I've spent a couple hours either running missions I didn't really need to do, or just reloading the mission board, over and over, because I can't get the *ONE* material I need to get the update I want. This is turning into pure frustration and is putting me off the game in a big way (and I've been playing casually, but continuously, since it released).
I'd personally prefer less frequent updates to the game if they were more fun and added more compelling game play, or quality of life features, rather than what we got with engineers. I've been writing software professionally for over 20 years, and I know how frustrating it can be to have to drop features, or compromise quality just to meet a deadline. Some people are upset that No Man's sky is being delayed, but I am strongly encouraged by this. I admire them for saying "you know what, this isn't good enough, and we need to make it better before we release it". I have high hopes that that game will turn out to be fun. Time will tell.
In FD's case, I'm not sure what they lose by waiting for an update to be ready before releasing it. They aren't following a monthly subscription model like a lot of games, so their income flows from a different source. I suppose someone there thinks it's better to say "hey look! We released *FOUR* updates this year" (Even though they may have all potentially been crap), rather than saying "take a look at how much fun our game is to play! Oh, and here's a couple of really cool, fun, well designed things we've added this year".
I'd personally prefer less frequent updates to the game if they were more fun and added more compelling game play, or quality of life features, rather than what we got with engineers. I've been writing software professionally for over 20 years, and I know how frustrating it can be to have to drop features, or compromise quality just to meet a deadline. Some people are upset that No Man's sky is being delayed, but I am strongly encouraged by this. I admire them for saying "you know what, this isn't good enough, and we need to make it better before we release it". I have high hopes that that game will turn out to be fun. Time will tell.
In FD's case, I'm not sure what they lose by waiting for an update to be ready before releasing it. They aren't following a monthly subscription model like a lot of games, so their income flows from a different source. I suppose someone there thinks it's better to say "hey look! We released *FOUR* updates this year" (Even though they may have all potentially been crap), rather than saying "take a look at how much fun our game is to play! Oh, and here's a couple of really cool, fun, well designed things we've added this year".
^^all of the above...
Had time this week to explore the new patch , invested 40+ hours this week (like driving the SRV around for 500km...gets me motion sickness after a while...) , fetching all the stuff i needed to get lvl 5 on Farseer unlocked and made one lvl 5 FSD on my Asp....i wanted to upgrade my Python , FdL and Conda too...but seriuously i cant be bothered anymore , just too much time investment needed for an RNG-Result...this is what drove me away last time , too much grinding needed to get somewhere in PP for at best mediocre weapons or other modules and "benefits".
Also being interdicted for my "tasty" cargo (4 commodities needed for the RNGneers worth less then 1000 Cr.) constantly is getting on my nerves...i wouldnt care if i had 50 tons of Gold , but seriously for freight worth less then 1000 credits? those must be really starving ELITE FdLs and Condas...
Next thing is the whole upgrades seem totally op , especially in the offensive and defensive department (im not minding getting better jumprange) , but like getting 60% more damage output or 50% better shields....POWER CREEP is that what this is called.... you will sooner or later be forced to get mods (pvp especially,but even against ai if they get those mods) to survive or even stand a chance....
I dont mind working for the upgrades , if it wasnt just grinding....but to drive around for hours (even if you know where to look or scanning Wakes like its a second job...)...i wouldnt even bother with half of the necessary activities...and dont come here and tell me to "just play the game" , because that will never net me the things i need for the next mod...im aiming for a goal , there should be a reasonable way to it and not just grind.
I mean things like Chemical Processors/Distilleries/Manipulators drop from mostly Haulers , what? am i suppossed to go pirate now , or hope for the RNG to drop me one in 100 "wanted" kills??? Seriously mission rewards ? waiting for the correct mission to give me the needed reward? Why not let me choose the Commodity or Material i want?
Enough for now... maybe ill touch this piece of software again after some fixes...