So about that focused feedback thing...

[-VR- Max Factor]

I like the new engineering system, I really do. But, if you read through the focused feedback forum, there is one point that comes up fairly often: The ways to gather mats! Nobody is interested to sit in super cruise for an hour and wait for a USS to pop up...because it's tedious and boring.

So...are there going to be any changes to that? If collecting all the needed stuff is interesting, engaging, funny, challenging,... the exact way, how the engineering system works would be secondary.
Just my humble opinion.

For those that grind out materials for upgrade there will be little to no extra grind. Just grind out your G5 materials as usual and you will get most of the other materials as you grind out your G5 mats. For the few that are tough to get, a simple trip to the materials broker will fix that.

As to how we get materials in USS's, I am hoping that will be changing in the Q4 update with the new scanning, mining and exploration update. But the good thng with the current way and the 100 limit per material is that you don't need to throw the ones you find away anymore, and if you find some rare ones that you don't need, you can potentially break them down and use them to create other rares. I will need to rewatch that bit as I was giving my son a bath.

 

[Roland Deschain]

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.

Do you have any ideas/suggestions?

 

[babelfisch]

Do you have any ideas/suggestions?

No, but I am not the one demanding that Frontier needs to change something when I don't even know what I want specifically
Well one of them would be a codex system that helps us tracking down specific materials withouth the use of 3rd party tools. But AFAIK this is planned for a later update anyway.

 

[Stealthie]

This will be affected by the material traders. You no longer only find things by farming, you can now trade up on materials to remove those roadblocks caused by RNG having an off day like in the old system.

Thus making 95% of all the current methods of gathering materials redundant in favour of establishing a "meta" for finding every mat' that can be traded for the mat's you actually want.

"There's a whole bunch of stuff in this game which you'll never use cos there's an easier way of achieving the same thing instead"

That's some revolutionary gameplay, right there. [where is it]

 

[Roland Deschain]

Please stick to the topic of new improvised ways to the material gathering.

No, but I am not the one demanding that Frontier needs to change something when I don't even know what I want specifically
Well one of them would be a codex system that helps us tracking down specific materials withouth the use of 3rd party tools. But AFAIK this is planned for a later update anyway.

That is actually a very good idea!
Here is another one:
High amounts of certain mats in particular anarchy systems. Maybe you need to bring some commodities to get them making those places a new playground for (legit) pirates? Or you have to pirate them yourself from npc stations or npc groups. This could be made very hard, maybe even to a point where you need to have a wing.
Anywho, just throwing around ideas...please do the same, even if they are not fleshed out!

 

[Sir.Tj]

Just to make things crystal clear for a min.

Any attacks on Employees direct or indirect will not be tolerated on the forum.

The Team at Frontier who make the game is exactly that a team, and as such singling out people to attack is way out of order and will be dealt with accordingly.

Constructive criticism of the game is fine, it's how the game is made better.

Please remember to be polite and civil as if the person was sitting in front of you.

 

[B1rdy]

You don't understand. I didn't ask you to highlight the issue, I asked you to provide solutions for it.

No, you just asked for constructive criticism, which doesn't need to provide a solution. And frankly we are the customers, we aren't the ones expected to find solutions. And if we do, just look at the FF forums, the impact seems to be minor.

 

[Arguendo]

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.

If you watch the stream again, you will see that the materials are put into blocks of 5 from G1 to G5. You can only trade up or down in that block. How they sort the blocks is a little bit unclear, but one block contained five alloys. So basically that will be the "alloy group" and you can trade within that group. I expect the same to be true for Firmware for data for example.
So, you can't trade any manufactured item for another as far as I understood it, only within a set block of 5 materials.

 

[babelfisch]

No, you just asked for constructive criticism, which doesn't need to provide a solution. And frankly we are the customers, we aren't the ones expected to find solutions. And if we do, just look at the FF forums, the impact seems to be minor.

Ah I see, now you play the "we are the customers" card... In that case I play the "if you are just the customer than shut up and buy whatever they give you or leave" card. That's not my favourite approach, I would like to have a good discussion about ways to improve the game instead. But you really leave me no choice with that attitude.


PS
I didn't ask for constructive criticism I specifically asked for constructive suggestions. You missed the constructive AND the suggestions part.

Please stick to the topic of new improvised ways to the material gathering.



That is actually a very good idea!
Here is another one:
High amounts of certain mats in particular anarchy systems. Maybe you need to bring some commodities to get them making those places a new playground for (legit) pirates? Or you have to pirate them yourself from npc stations or npc groups. This could be made very hard, maybe even to a point where you need to have a wing.
Anywho, just throwing around ideas...please do the same, even if they are not fleshed out!

Something like that would be nice indeed, but AFAIK this is already in game with certain mats floating around at specific locations.
I agree that the concept needs to be expanded though.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Ah I see, now you play the "we are the customers" card... In that case I play the "if you are just the customer than shut up and buy whatever they give you or leave" card. That's not my favourite approach, I would like to have a good discussion about ways to improve the game instead. But you really leave me no choice with that attitude.


PS
I didn't ask for constructive criticism I specifically asked for constructive suggestions. You missed the constructive AND the suggestions part.


Something like that would be nice indeed, but AFAIK this is already in game with certain mats floating around at specific locations.
I agree that the concept needs to be expanded though.

If you want to see suggestions you can always look at the focussed feedback threads where suggestions have been made exhaustively. There is no need to reinvent all that feedback here for just your convenience.

 

[Komemiute]

Something like that would be nice indeed, but AFAIK this is already in game with certain mats floating around at specific locations.
I agree that the concept needs to be expanded though.

Yeah, but they want it differently, duh! You know? At least... three times more fun!
/sarcasm

 

[babelfisch]

If you want to see suggestions you can always look at the focussed feedback threads where suggestions have been made exhaustively. There is no need to reinvent all that feedback here for just your convenience.

Most of that feedback was completely useless, I read it.

 

[c00ky1970]

I think if they add a way that you can look at the system map and like they show on the landable planets what the materials are there, it also shows what the drop types are for rings as well as what USS types are available.

Ideally if this is then filterable, you can look for Degraded Emissions systems across the galaxy map, maybe they even show a %age spawn rate, so you look for systems with higher spawning rates?

Maybe this could be an option that is displayed if you honk a system with advanced discovery scanner.

Another thing is that some people have picked up on the need to pin engineer blueprints as this may sway the drop tables for resources towards what you want, this might need verification in Beta, but that would help reduce time to success?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Most of that feedback was completely useless, I read it.

Maybe we shouldn't expect average players to come up with the holy grail of game development, then. The best they can do is telling what they like and what they don't.

 

[B1rdy]

PS
I didn't ask for constructive criticism I specifically asked for constructive suggestions.

You actually did. Shame on me.

Maybe we shouldn't expect average players to come up with the holy grail of game development, then. The best they can do is telling what they like and what they don't.

That is how it is supposed to work. How would you process 1000s of in-depth design proposals.

 

[Roland Deschain]

Yeah, but they want it differently, duh! You know? At least... three times more fun!
/sarcasm

I see you are interested in a constructive discussion...

It has been a while since I did my engineering, but the way I remember it, that there where certain places mats where to find, but it always ended up in either scanning something, or blowing up defenseless traders in anarchy sectors - apart from the already mentioned ways such as waiting in SC and driving the SRV on barren planets. The most fun I got were the once, where you had to go to a HazRes and fight...

If we take for example killing traders: this is neither difficult and for me it doesn't really fit into the roleplaying aspect (I'm one of the good guys normally[yesnod]).
What I had in mind was more something like:
A mafia group is transferring some of their stolen goods from A to B. They can be found in a convoy of a T9 protected by 4 Anacondas and a few small ships. System Authority gives all their stolen Mats to the one who can bring them back the stolen commodities - Mats in this case are known and rare.

 

[Blackcompany]

No, you just asked for constructive criticism, which doesn't need to provide a solution. And frankly we are the customers, we aren't the ones expected to find solutions. And if we do, just look at the FF forums, the impact seems to be minor.

Minor is being generous.

That forum was nothing more than visual lip service to "listening to our players." Nothing more. It changed not one thing. And we are left with a rework that is every bit as tedious, time wasting and awful as the current version. So bad in fact there is literally no point in spending the dev time to implement it, since it doesnt actually improve anything.

 

[Julio Montega]

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.

Hmm they didn't really prepare a full showcase of the trading mats stuff,
i give it that.
Needs clarification.

 

[babelfisch]

Maybe we shouldn't expect average players to come up with the holy grail of game development, then. The best they can do is telling what they like and what they don't.

Exactly!

 

[B1rdy]

Exactly!

So you can be actually more constructive by only telling what you like and what you don't.