I like the Engineers premise. I like having unique places, with unique services. I like the idea of ship customization. This all seemed awesome on paper.
But I don't like casino slot machines. This is where a great idea turned crap. No matter how hard I try, I still can't comprehend how people could leave a feature discussion meeting about this having reached the conclusion that this was a good idea and that players would enjoy it. I simply can't. The casino implementation is
half the problem.
The other half of the problem is that some of the buffs are
far too extreme. They basically rendered the original ship stats and traits, which was what gave each ship its unique "personality", completely
irrelevant. Some buffs are so extreme, that they created a
balancing nightmare which is impossible to fix.
This feature should have been implemented with
player adjustable sliders. Sliders you push forward would push other sliders back.
All the balancing that would ever be needed was to decide which sliders would push what other sliders in the opposite direction. Done. Each would customize his ships in the manner they find most useful for what they plan doing.
This would have been
far simpler and
much more enjoyable than farming materials for hours and then throwing them away in slot machines until all the bananas aligned. And it would be
far less ridiculus too. It would mean that engineers actually were engineers, and you would no longer "gain rep" by consecutively asking them to work for free and repeatedly throwing their work in the can lol. It would actually
make sense, which seems the be the thing, "
making sense", that is somehow becoming forbidden in this game... "Logic is for nerds" is the new motto. So we get things like this.
But its funny how most of the game's problems and the most jarring gameplay elements emerge as the result of throwing logic away and going for "gamey" instead.
