This thread is for you.
Perhaps it's a generational thing. Back when I was a kid I didn't have a computer. Born with a plastic spoon in my mouth so to speak. Also, the internet barely existed. A friend of mine had rich parents and a computer that we used to view our first 'nature' pictures.. we printed them out in black in white, all pixelated, but it was awesome. I had books, and a television with an antenna on the roof and 6 channels to watch. We had a VHS and rented movies now and then. We built tree-houses, played pirates on DIY rafts on the canal, we made underground bunkers and lived in them. Entertainment was something we made for ourselves, by using our imagination and creativity.
Now to get to Elite: I never grind, I simply refuse to. When I have a goal to get some rank, or a certain ship, or unlock an engineer, I use my imagination to make it into an interesting multitasking adventure. I visit 20 different systems instead of going back and forth between the 2 most profitable ones. I see lots of cool things along the way, I interdict whatever is wanted, drop into signal sources to find interesting things, I find even more missions and things to do while working on my goal. Now, after about 1 and 3 quarter years i'm a billionare driving a federal corvette and several smaller ships. I've had fun doing all of that because I refused to grind, because grinding is what makes any game boring. I don't have the need to get that goal within a few days or a week. It will take me months to get there, but I know I'll be having fun doing it.
In other words. Please stop blaming the game developers for your lack of ability to imagine a better way to play this game. I've just told you how I avoid grinds.. try it and you'll see that the boredom will quickly end. If it's instant gratification you want, then this might not be the game for you. It's an immense sandbox game, and how you choose to play it will decide how your experience in the game will be. Try to use that dusty old brain.. I know we're all born with similar brains, capable of similar things.. just turn on that imagination button and see what opportunities you'll be able to create for yourself.
Thanks for your attention. I hope I didn't offend anyone. Just trying to be helpful toward my fellow commanders. o7 !
No offense taken but its defiantly not a generational thing at all. It is because the game is a grinding game plain and simple. The way you become successful in this game is no different than playing pacman. Getting the high score (Credits) are the only measure that you can have in order to show any impact in the game environment.
You have to do the same thing or same prescribed set of actions to be successful. Since the only reward for anything is in game credits or the possibility of an RNGed material, then it is only slightly better than getting a high score on Pacman. The rest of the benefits are non tangible and not measurable. You have no way of knowing if you are doing well or terrible. You have no sense of success or failure. You just are.
I played games since the time before there were video games. I also played video games since they were invented and purchasable outside of a University physics lab. I can tell you beyond a doubt that this game revolves solely around grinding. You gain infinitesimal gains over huge swaths of time only to get the Elite Dangerous version of a feeder pellet. (Credits).
Everything else that this game has is either player created/player driven and more importantly has no actual in game mechanic for it. Right now its a theme park pacman game.
What makes it fun and intriguing is the fact that it has the "potential" to be something groundbreaking and great. I play the game in preparation for all my hard work to pay off when there is actually anything in the game other than the base mechanics. Some people have hit the wall after 2.5 years of nothing but preparation and having no payoff or use for anything that you have accomplished. Hence the drastic rise of bored billionaire griefers and constant ultra negative forums.
Just dont try and oversell it. Perhaps the younger generation is quicker to call BullCrap on the development speed of the game and are less patient. That doesnt make them wrong, it just makes them less likely to stay around.
Mechanics wise this game is nothing but a grind, however this game isnt just about grinding. Exploration/Science is almost 100% upon the shoulders of the players. Certainly the most minor of mechanics have been added and no real tangible effort has been put in to make it better as of yet. But for now using your imagination is the only thing this game has as its sole vehicle for success. Can you imagine all the cool stuff out there? Sure you can, but will you ever find it? At this point and time the answer is, No. There is nothing to find. Sure there is stuff out there, but because of the scope it may as well not be. You will be spoon fed the content, or it will never be found with current mechanics.
So the people calling this game a grinding game and the people who are calling it something else are not wrong. It can be both, it just how you decide to measure success. All games have a condition to indicate success. The only mechanic in place to measure success in ED game right now is Credit grinding or Rep Grinding. Everything else is a personal self imposed non measurable type of success and has no impact on the game itself.
Good example is all of the work that Cannon put in working on the Aliens stuff. We spent 1.5 years starting with the UAs investigating out of game clues and puzzles, only to be give an in game CG in order to move the story along. There was no actual way a player could move the story forward at a normal pace. That was because the content was not in the game. All of the additional Ruin sites were given to us via CG and or Galnet article. Nothing that a player did moved the story.
I think that is what most people are not happy with and why they are boiling down the game to its most common denominator of grinding.
