News Engineers Blueprints Materials Update

CMDR Ahab

CMDR Ahab
Brilliant update, thanks FD - seriously. :) Though to be honest only really cared about the painful rolls and mat finding for the FSD upgrades

One question though; what about the commodities which are no longer needed from a trade point of view? Can see all those thousands of tons of Magnetic Emitter Coils over near Leesti just sitting there all by their lonesome with no-one being interested in distributing them :(

Still would be useful to have some kind of data hub where you can view all those blueprints when you're not docked at an Engineers bases as well - kind of like the datapedia thing in Mass Effect if that makes any sense?
 

FutronBob

FutronBob
Wonderful changes, Frontier! The only thing I think we still need clarifying is whether or not commodities will still be part of these blueprints (here's hoping they are no longer required so I can dump all this junk I'm hauling around and get back to having fun in the game. :p)

Really looking forward to the coming weeks. Gamescon can't come soon enough!
 

Ozzie F Isaacs

Ozzie F Isaacs
DelayedReality said:
Brilliant update, thanks FD - seriously. :)
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Nah, a brilliant update would have made it so that finding the materials on a planets surface classed as exploration data that could be sold on to universal cartographic's for high payouts, then bought by other players. Adding further magic to the DSS is a bit lazy to be honest and makes it look F-Dev aren't interested in developing the explorer profession beyond jump, honk, point. That, and now I have had a proper look at the materials list it seems I can class 5 all my module just on the junk I have been picking up flying around doing missions, effectively removing several months worth of content. :(
 

Trader Pat

Trader Pat
Welcome changes, as the commodity components are squeezed out. Yeeaahh!!
Now what about the RNG **ck-fest? And the numerous little bugs still well alive?
I appreciate the add-ons, though they are more about features than real content. At one point FDev should think about taking a breather and lay out all the little buggy things and tackle them. Some are from 1.0x.... 'Nuff said.

Your RNGeage may vary !
 

V'larr

V'larr
"This point release is still being finalised and we’re hoping to give more details on the exact date in the next couple of weeks."

I was happy, and then I was sad....

At least it's good timing combined with this Jacques CG.

Fingers crossed that the barrier to entry is successfully lowered enough to make the RNG tolerable.
 

Rankaze

Rankaze
Zac Antonaci said:
Greetings Commanders.

You may remember recently that we shared some plans and changes that will be making their way to our next point release (2.1.05) as a direct response to your feedback, thank you again.

You can read the full post here. But as a reminder, the changes included are...

- Adjusting the way the surface scanner works to allow you to see what materials are available from any given planet. This should make locating materials far easier.
- Making a number of changes to the lowest level blueprints. This includes improving the positive effects of low level upgrade results as well as reducing the cost and simplifying the materials needed.
- Increasing the number of units you get for each instance of a material you find. This means instead of getting one unit of a material, you will get multiple units of that material. This will allow you to increase the number of attempts at each Engineer.
- Increasing the number of materials spawned when surface mining. Again, to make the process easier and the materials easier to gather.
- The likelihood of finding rare materials in these instances will also be increased, meaning it will be easier to use higher level blueprints.
- And we will be reviewing the balance and locations of non-planet salvage and reviewing the possible USS locations for each material

Ahead of this update we wanted to share the rebalancing that has been done to the materials required for blueprints to give you information ahead of time so that those of you searching for materials can factor this into your collecting and gameplay.

You can see a full list of the new blueprints requirements that will be added in the next point update (2.1.05) by downloading it from the link below.

http://hosting.zaonce.net/community/newsletter/blueprints_requirements.xls


This point release is still being finalised and we’re hoping to give more details on the exact date in the next couple of weeks. :D

Thanks again for your continued support and patience.

Fly safe Commanders.
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Ah, good. Some of the new details in this update greatly ease some of my remaining concerns.

Thank you.

EDIT: Wow. After looking at the new material requirements, I think this may be making it a bit too easy. Just the changes to materials drops would have been sufficient, I think.
 
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Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
Ozric said:
Wow that's a massive drop! It's certainly an impressive change.

It does bring up a couple of questions though. If you're going to really drop it to only 1 of each material/component required, is there really a need to increase the drop rate, drop chance and increased rare drop?

It sounds like you will end up with masses and masses of unused materials.

p.s I hope they're still rare
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Yes, sadly I fear they may have gone *way* overboard in trying to placate the grinders/complainers in these forums :(.

To be honest, simply applying more of a skill based element to finding materials, coupled with a slight increase of how many units of a material you get each time would have sufficed. Nerfing the materials required will just make engineer upgrades a "dime a dozen", sadly, & thus decrease the uniqueness of them.
 

Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
Well, I for one am *not* happy with these changes, as I feel it represents a major cave-in to the grindy "Instant Gratification" crowd. The top 2-3 changes listed, I believe, would have been sufficient to please the bulk of the community, but by massively dumbing down the requirements for the upgrades, I feel you will be removing the vast bulk of what made them special in the first place-especially in relation to levels 3-5.

It would have been far better, IMHO, to retain the existing material requirements-but make 1 or 2 material requirements flexible. Allowing the player to substitute them for rarer or more common materials, & have that substitution impact the result of the upgrade.

Oh well, now I feel far less inclined to make use of the Engineers now I know they're not really anything special anymore.
 

texasp8

texasp8
Thank you for the list

Hi FDev,

Regardless of how this update is viewed, by publishing the list in advance it clearly shows that you are trying to eliminate the scenario that someone could finish a mammoth material hunt the day before 2.1.0.5 drops, to find the next day that they need a whole new set of materials for the upgrades they were working towards. For thinking of that I say you should be applauded.
 
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JW667

JW667
Marc_Hicks said:
Oh well, now I feel far less inclined to make use of the Engineers now I know they're not really anything special anymore.
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Really? Because you're not special anymore? The effect of the upgrades are still in place are they not.

I think this will bring a lot of players back to the game like myself.
 

Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
JW667 said:
Really? Because you're not special anymore? The effect of the upgrades are still in place are they not.

I think this will bring a lot of players back to the game like myself.
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No, because the upgrades themselves, & the means of getting them, won't really be special anymore. Dumbing things down seems to be the common approach to forum whining these days.....rather than adding deeper game-play.
 

Moonax IRL

Moonax IRL
nathdixon92 said:
Elite: Dumbing Down
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Whatever about dumbing down, what was definitely stupid was releasing Eng. without the ability of commodity storage, I have been flying around with commodities that cannot be bought so I just got        off of it and put FD a side and picked up Naval action instead. Now they have took the easy option and left the commodities out. This shows FD are a bit haphazard, I hope they up their game a bit for the next expansions, also no mention of news of season 3 for Gamescom only info on what we already know about season 2 from last year.
FD, up the game a bit or else it will be a season every bloody 2 yrs.
 

V'larr

V'larr
Marc_Hicks said:
Yep, sadly its the AI thing all over again. A very vocal group who don't want the game to be remotely challenging are strong-arming FDev into dumbing down the game. :(
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You guys can't be serious.

Challenging? Nothing about a heavy-grind-gated RNG dice roll system is "challenge", that's just pure frustration.

Challenge and frustration are two separate things.

Far too often people confuse and replace "challenge" with "frustrating".

There's no rational argument for wanting more "challenge" and arguing against having things that make sense (like a use for Detailed Scanners beyond more credits for scanning things) and lowering the barrier to entry to the RNGineers content (though I'd have preferred removing the RNG element and leaving the grind alone).

Making the game elements visible, useful, and accessible =/= "dumbing down" the game.
 
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