What was that thing about twisting words? Yeah, you're good at it.
So about that focused feedback thing...
- Thread starter Roland Deschain
- Start date
What was that thing about twisting words? Yeah, you're good at it.
Material broker is imo just the cheapest way how to dealt with poorly chosen way how are some of micro-data/materials produced. FDev for sure can tweak amount of mats needed for crafting different one, but this is not (or imo should be not) a solution to original issue. The prime example of terrible data production can be seen the need to sit in supercruise and wait for HUSS spawn and then pray to RNG god for have there what you need (this all with knowledge where to look for proper mats type).
If you go from grade 1 to grade 5 or grade 4 to grade 5?
You can get many materials in different ways. In fact I almost own every material in the game without ever looking for it.
/tinfoil
Arguendo
Volunteer Moderator
Some of the G4 or G5 mats you don't find unless you are looking for them
And yeah, the example is done for a reason: To show that it's not as easy as "go farm nickel" and trade it to G5 mats.From what I saw on the livestream, the G5 OC MCs require 1 each of G3, G4 and G5 materials. That's 1548 G1 mats if you trade all the way from the bottom. If you start on all G3, it's only 43 if my math is correct, but good luck getting the 36 CIF to get one MEF
On the other hand, Modified Consumer Firmware and Security Firmware Patch are pretty common, so a bit of up- and down- trading of that junk should get as much CIF and MEF as you need.but good luck getting the 36 CIF to get one MEF
Arguendo
Volunteer Moderator
For sure, the droprate of each mat is a bit lopsided. Especially the CIF, as it's a Standard mat, which makes it harder to get as a mission reward if you're Elite or thereabouts [where is it]
Now, for the MCF I would really like to know where you found that those have a "pretty common" droprate! The only thing I haven't tried yet are the basescan missions. All other methods have pretty much been a bust for me!
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Ok, trying to get back to the original topic here:
This thread is not about how the material trader will work, or how long you will need to engineer your ship.
It is about the game mechanics to gather materials in general.
Yes you gather materials all the time simply by playing the game, but if you are on a dedicated gathering trip....well atm that's not much fun (at least that's what I think). It boils down to either waiting for USS to spawn, endless scanning of wakes at stations or driving on a barren planet hoping for mats to spawn or similar.
As for suggestions: How about dedicated material missions? How about well defended places (pirate bases or something) where the player knows mats are hoarded. How about...
I guess there are many possibilities, some better, some not so much.
This thread is not about how the material trader will work, or how long you will need to engineer your ship.
It is about the game mechanics to gather materials in general.
Yes you gather materials all the time simply by playing the game, but if you are on a dedicated gathering trip....well atm that's not much fun (at least that's what I think). It boils down to either waiting for USS to spawn, endless scanning of wakes at stations or driving on a barren planet hoping for mats to spawn or similar.
As for suggestions: How about dedicated material missions? How about well defended places (pirate bases or something) where the player knows mats are hoarded. How about...
I guess there are many possibilities, some better, some not so much.
I know a trolling master when I see one
! But I agree with op, I had times when I had to find grade 5 mats, the kind you only find in USS once in a hundred, in anarchy, indepednant systems I states of famine and alien invasion... finding the place is a mess, praying to RNG gods to get the right mat is worse. Broker or not, some of that is still there and it could be better. Having a mat auction house for players for example...Heh...am I the only one who sees the Material Trader as a means to work around a recurring bug?
Consider: we regularly encounter bugs which mean certain materials don't drop, particularly the higher-grade ones that can only come from missions. That wasn't necessarily a problem with the old Engineers, because it only stopped you getting specific individual mods; in the new "enforced progression" model, though, it can stop you getting anywhere past a certain point with a given mod on a given module. Looking at how long it took them to fix those bugs, this could be the case for weeks (if not months) at a time.
It's not a convenience thing for the players, its a convenience thing for the devs - those bugs can be de-prioritised now, because the Material Trader represents an easy workaround.
Consider: we regularly encounter bugs which mean certain materials don't drop, particularly the higher-grade ones that can only come from missions. That wasn't necessarily a problem with the old Engineers, because it only stopped you getting specific individual mods; in the new "enforced progression" model, though, it can stop you getting anywhere past a certain point with a given mod on a given module. Looking at how long it took them to fix those bugs, this could be the case for weeks (if not months) at a time.
It's not a convenience thing for the players, its a convenience thing for the devs - those bugs can be de-prioritised now, because the Material Trader represents an easy workaround.
I know a trolling master when I see one
I don't disagree with OP either, I just think it lacks some constructive suggestions. Saying "Frontier, make your game better" is easy, but it doesn't get us anywhere.
I kept trying to tell FD that the engineers wasn't actually that bad, if you fixed the materials gathering.
Only the secondaries and special effects needed looking at.
That said, I haven't tried the new system yet, so I don't know if it's good or bad.
I get what you are saying. Actually this thread was supposed to gather a few ideas especially for that ;-)
Nail on the head! This is the main thing that frustrates me about the engineering system. I don't mind putting in the time and effort, but it needs to be time well spent. Collecting materials should be fun, engaging, interesting and varied.
That said, I don't have any great ideas for what that could entail. Maybe collecting variations could include things like raiding planetary outposts for their material caches or hunting down and destroying special ships. Or tracking down secret stashes hidden in asteroid fields.
The problems with the whole material gathering process should be obvious to at least anyone, who is designing the game mechanics. It should be obvious to any game designer, that making a player just wait in order to progress (i.e. finding HGE) is a bad way of doing it.
I'm not exactly sure that's true. I just went back to look at the video, and what Sandy said was,
"you can't transfer any material for any other material. You need to stay within the same kind of section, so manufactured materials can only be converted into other manufactured materials."
As far as I know there will be 3 different material traders, manufactured, raw, and data. So I assume what he meant by this is that any manufactured material can be traded for any other, so indeed you should be able to trade heat vanes for chemical distilleries seeing as they're both manufactured materials. I think people were confused by the demonstration. But either way, we'll find out tomorrow.
You don't understand. I didn't ask you to highlight the issue, I asked you to provide solutions for it. Ideally something that doesn't take much effort, improves the game for everyone, is good enough so that nobody can complain, can be done quick so it will be ready for 3.0 in a few weeks, and doesn't harm any kitties.
There goes a bucketfull of good ideas.....