Well, I think there are two distinct complaintst: how long it takes and how much randomness is involved. One is being solved, the other not. I can see why some people want Engineers to be fast (espescially PvP people, who just want to get to the new meta ASAP and get on with it), but it doesnt mean that the other idea (having a ship that slowly evolved with you) isnt valid as well. Espescially for new/casual players the slowly evolving thing is IMHO more interesting gameplay. You just play the game, and sometimes you buy a new module or upgrade an existing one in your Han Solo experience. Its just a completely different goal from "gotta grind to get that 1% extra [whatever] to compete with [insert meta]."
The epic fail of Beyond
- Thread starter Marcus Tullius
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Well, I think there are two distinct complaintst: how long it takes and how much randomness is involved. One is being solved, the other not. I can see why some people want Engineers to be fast (espescially PvP people, who just want to get to the new meta ASAP and get on with it), but it doesnt mean that the other idea (having a ship that slowly evolved with you) isnt valid as well. Espescially for new/casual players the slowly evolving thing is IMHO more interesting gameplay. You just play the game, and sometimes you buy a new module or upgrade an existing one in your Han Solo experience. Its just a completely different goal from "gotta grind to get that 1% extra [whatever] to compete with [insert meta]."
Yes, there is a more narrowly-defined RNG output (but the RNG is not gone entirely). However, the price you pay for that is a dramatically increased grind. I don't think some players fully realize the impact of having the material storage expanded to 100 mats of each type. They wouldn't be doing that if the grind wasn't massive. Not to mention that most of the grades currently use different mats for each grade with little overlap. It will be around 10X more work to collect all of those mats then it currently is to just focus on grade 5 mats with the current system.
There's also the issue that the current RNG-based system is still predictable on average in terms of average results over time. It does require a basic understanding of statistics but it is very easy to determine the chance of getting a better mod and then simply deciding if the average number of rolls is worthwhile for any given player. Like I said, it's like someone gambling with a single roll and getting upset that they didn't "win" as opposed to making a decision based on an actual understanding of the statistics involved.
The secondary mods are absolutely a massive change. You might not use them yourself for much but there are many builds that the secondary effects are essential for. I don't generally participate in PVP (unless I have no choice because I'm being ganked) and I still find the secondary effects very important for creating a PVE build that works the way I want it to. There might only be a small proportion of players who truly use the current Engineering system to its full potential, i.e., by using secondary effects to create unique weapon builds, but those players will likely find the limitations of the new Engineering system very disappointing in addition to being a much longer grind per module.
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I agree.
I can't even begin to understand what the dev's "perspective" might be.
A bunch of people are complaining about how tedious it is to collect mat's in order to carry out upgrades.
The dev's eventually decide to address these complaints by proposing to modify the system so that materials can be obtained more easily. Yay!
They then propose changing the system so that modules can be upgraded more reliably. Double-Yay!
They then, apparently, decide that'll make things too easy so they propose introducing an entirely new grind which, ultimately, is likely to make things worse than it already is. Boo!
This is utterly incoherent behaviour.
It's lurching from one extreme to the other and back again without even attempting to find a moderate middle-ground or attempting to actually improve anything in the process.
So no, I don't understand that "perspective" at all.
Let's face it, there's already enough god-rolled combat ships, exploration ships and trade ships in the game to ensure that the rest of us will never achieve parity.
Seems, to me, that the dev's should be trying to reduce that imbalance rather than magnify it.
Fact that Engineers were wrongly designed from start does not justify to approach them 'ohh we already this up so why we do care anymore'.
No one designs systems that way.
Also I think I will believe FD that those with super uber ships are a bit more of rarity than actual common place.
Anyway, as I pointed out, if you see G5 as your only goal, yes, new system will be worse for you personally. Can't deny that.
Nope. Cannot agree with OP that Beyond has failed, before we even get the first patch.
Lets at least see how FDev do in Q1 (quality and speed of delivery), which should give an indicator of how Q2 and *cough* beyond will go.
Although I don't wish to be flippant and meme-ish, I am with Ripley... Nuke the engineers from orbit; delete all grandfather rolls; start again with engineering being flavoursome sidegrades, and very limited upgrades.
[video=youtube;aCbfMkh940Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q[/video]
* this is from someone with a decent number of very good G5 rolls.
Lets at least see how FDev do in Q1 (quality and speed of delivery), which should give an indicator of how Q2 and *cough* beyond will go.
Although I don't wish to be flippant and meme-ish, I am with Ripley... Nuke the engineers from orbit; delete all grandfather rolls; start again with engineering being flavoursome sidegrades, and very limited upgrades.
[video=youtube;aCbfMkh940Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q[/video]
* this is from someone with a decent number of very good G5 rolls.
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It's a fundamentally pointless exercise though.
Firstly, it's simply an unrealistic expectation.
Nobody who wants a G5 FSD is going to think "Oh, I really want a G5 FSD but because progression I'll just make do with a G3 FSD for a few months, until I realise I have enough mat's for the G5 FSD I really want".
People are ALWAYS going to decide what they want (which, if we're honest, is usually likely to be the best thing that's available) and then make the effort required to get it.
Secondly, it's double-dipping the same mechanic.
We already have specific grades of mod' which cater to different levels of commitment.
Any yahoo can stumble around on a planet surface for half an hour and come away with the mat's to make a G1 or G2 mod'.
If you want G5 mod's you have to make a committed effort to obtain the required mat's.
You then go to an engineer and get a super-duper mod'.
You put in a small amount of effort and get a modest upgrade. You put in a lot of effort and get an exceptional upgrade.
There is no need to penalise people twice for putting in the effort required to obtain G5 upgrades - firstly by asking them to collect obscure mat's and then by grinding too.
In a nutshell, people are always going to do whatever they need to do in order to obtain the stuff they want so why hinder that process?
But it is a bit hypocritical though, isn't it? Some people will do everything to get what they want, so why then they do that and then complain?
It is almost like...I don't know...don't want to 'own' their own approach to the game and want to complain about devs not giving them a hand instead.
The way all other MMOs handle this, is to make the new modules be such that they're always better than the old ones - essentially, you introduce G6 rolls. That way no-one feels unfairly treated, and anyone who cares will use the new system so they can get better modules. Yes that way lies power creep, but it's the price one has to pay for getting the design wrong in the first place. It's incentive to the dev to get it right next time, else suffer from inflation. What FDev is doing is fundamentally saying that people who grinded for hours are too big to fail - they did their time so they deserve their OP modules and everyone else (even people who might also have wanted to uber grind, but who came along later) should just chill out and accept it. That's called favoritism, and it's unsurprising that people are upset about it.
Well, I can't say I'd be happy with that but I could, at least, understand the motivation for it.
What baffles me about this current plan is the whole "People have complained so we'll make it easier but then we'll make it harder again in a different way" thing.
That's just bonkers.
I really feel like there should be a massive poster on FDev's wall which says something like "If you're designing something that relies on the RNG, ask yourself if there's another way!"
As far as I'm concerned, ideally there should be absolutely NO reliance on the RNG to locate mat's.
Everybody should be able to know where they can be found reliably.
With that in place, the trick would be to come up with ways to obtain them that reflects their value or usefulness.
Maybe you can only find exquisite focus crystals lying around in remote systems which require a neutron boost to gain access to them?
Perhaps some rare elements can only be found on planets near the galactic core, or on the outer fringes of the galaxy?
Maybe various alloys can only be obtained by attacking the factories that produce them and stealing them during combat?
Make it so that everybody can locate mat's easily and it's the difficulty of obtaining them which reflects their value.
That would be the best way to fix engineers IMHO - remove RNG from the crafting process and make getting materials a relevant skill-based process. The mats you need to mod your cannons can only be obtained from a destroyed high level NPC; those to uber tune your FSD can only be found in PoIs that are just 1 or 2 ls away from neutron stars. Once you've proved your mettle, you can take those mats to an engineer and they will give you a deterministic effect. That way you've really earned that extra 50% jump range or that extra 100% damage, and aren't just proving how much you're willing to grind for. It also naturally adds the variety that FDev are using RNG for, because not everyone is willing or able to take out that Deadly anaconda or survive those neutron star PoIs. If you see someone who's got their ship completely jacked, it's because they have proved they are worthy of flying such a ship (as opposed to someone who can stomach shooting rocks in their SRV and relogging for weeks on end).
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I don't see anything hypocritical about wanting to do something and complaining because it's tedious or frustrating.
Please explain this hypocrisy.
Exactly. [up]
I might not have been entirely clear in my previous post although you seem to understand.
The point is, that it should be the effort required to obtain a mat' which is the "work" and the mod' you get should be the "payout".
You do something that takes a lot of effort and/or ability and you get a superb mod as a result.
The actual requirements can then be "tuned" to suit the level of the upgrade you obtain.
Fight a couple of sidey's and you might get the stuff you need for a G2 MC upgrade.
Fight a wing of Elite Anacondas and FGSs and you get the mat's for a G5 upgrade.
No grind or time-sink required.
Precisely this. I don't care if I need to go through all the ranks. It gives me a few extra goals in the game. And most of the time, if I am to get G5 materials then I will get most of the other grade materials at the same time.
I can think of a much better system, but that would be a complete re-right, so it won't happen.
I would be very disapointed if the squadron mega ship was ONLY available as a multiplayer tool. There are a lot of players that would love to have one of their own.....and be able to hire NPC's for the roles. Or just simply have one as their own personal mobile base of operations
Although this might work in some games (Battlefield tends to do this for weapon unlocks) it would be a terrible idea for Elite for various reasons. First, most game "accomplishments" are just made up by devs who never have to actually achieve them themselves and can often be unrealistic or even entirely unobtainable due to game limitations. Considering how out of touch the Elite devs are with how the game is actually played I don't see them being able to design appropriate "challenges" for us. Second, Elite is a game that has basically zero actual challenge due to the way it is designed. The devs have entirely replaced the idea of challenge with a massive and nearly endless grind. You can be an "Elite" pilot by killing 8000 Sidewinders. You can be an "Elite" trader by shipping 1 billion credits worth of biowaste. You can be an "Elite" explorer by scanning thousands of systems with nothing more interesting than endless ice moons. You can become an "Admiral" or "King" by delivering thousands of data packets between stations. The game quite simply is not designed to "challenge" us, it's designed to wear us down with a nearly insurmountable grind. Unfortunately this is exactly what we're getting more of with the Engineering rework. More grind, less challenge and less variety in Engineering outcomes.
Well said, Challenge needs to be re-implemented. Cmdrs are getting Elite rank far too easily in my honest opinion. There is no challenge in endlessly board flipping passenger missions in Parutis etc with a large ship full of economy passenger cabins and doing your 200mil trip to which has also netted you an Elite rank in Trade. Something has gone very badly wrong in my honest opinion.
To be perfectly fair though, that is how the original 1984 Elite worked - to get to any given rank you had to destroy a specific number of NPC ships (NPCs didn't have rank, difficulty was based entirely on the type of ship the NPC was flying - there was no such thing as a Deadly sidey or a Mostly Harmless anaconda. Your Elite rank was just shorthand for your number of kills). So I can see why the game still works that way. HOWEVER, that was the mechanic on a game that ran on an 8 bit PC with 48KB of RAM and a cassette tape recorder. I think it's not unreasonable to ask that the modern version of the game be based on skill rather than repetition.
Yep.
I'd like to feel like the only thing preventing me from accomplishing something is my own lack of ability and not the fact that I lacked the willpower to wait for something to happen or, at worst, was simply unlucky.
It wouldn't be easy to make this happen but most of the tools to achieve it are already in the game.
It just needs for some smart people to spend some time sitting around and brainstorm a whole bunch of suitable challenges.
And then, if necessary, tweak the difficulty of them so that the level of challenge reflects the level of the reward.
Fundamentally, everybody should know, for sure, where they can find any mat' that they want.
The only obstacle in their way should be whether or not they can successfully collect them.
Get that right and you wouldn't need contrived time-sinks to prolong gameplay or "band-aid" solutions like material brokers.
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