Despite Enginner 'improvements', unlocking engineers is still a pain...

[CMDR Pugwash]

There is tedium built into every gaming achievement. The only commodity a gamer has to offer is time. The fact that it does take time/effort is part of what separates an average player, from the more dedicated one. Getting "Raid Gear" in other games = tedium.

Now, that unlocking Engineers involves a time wall is not inherently a bad thing. Acknowledging that the effort for each engineer is not Hard, certainly is a rebut to the OP's issues. It may take time, as it should, but it isn't hard to do, sounds like a reasonable recipe for a game mechanic.

Wasn't always the case. Games used to be fun.

 

[Drelthar]

If the engineers unlocks were linked to their actual upgrades, it wouldn't be so bad.

I'm aware it sort of is in some cases.

But... yeah, I find it slightly odd that a guy who specialises in thrusters, wants you to hyper space 5000ly.

If he was the only dude giving out G5 FSD upgrades, SURE! that'd made sense.

Equally, if he required you to reach some speed or other, or complete a cool race or something, to unlock his thruster upgrades, that'd also make sense.

I think it'd just be better if he did modifcations linked to Thargoids though, and his unlock was related to thargoids (which SOME of it is, the sensor fragments)

This is one example, there are others though.

There are also examples which seem to make some sense as well.

 

[Mohrgan]

Wasn't always the case. Games used to be fun.

Rose colored glasses. Even UO had massive amounts of tedium. Early WoW and Everquest were the definition of tedium, I haven't been involved for many years, but I don;t expect mush has changed. If you are talking about Mario Bro's, or some console game like that, it is not a fair comparison.

 

[Sylveria]

Rose colored glasses. Even UO had massive amounts of tedium. Early WoW and Everquest were the definition of tedium, I haven't been involved for many years, but I don;t expect mush has changed. If you are talking about Mario Bro's, or some console game like that, it is not a fair comparison.

Lest we forget. At one point we had 1200 baud modems connecting to BBS services and MUDs.

The Interwebz was a fantasy back then.

I still remember, and I remind myself when I find myself being "impatient" over little things... just as kids these days can't seem to get on without an iPad or game console.

Humility really would serve some well.

 

[Mohrgan]

What you're talking about points to very different conceptions about what we call "immersion". To some it's the empty places we've had to fill with our imagination, the modern gamer usually consider exactly the opposite where no active part is involved anymore (e.g. VR, higher resolution etc.). ED still keeps a lot of this old school stuff alive but also sometimes feels like sitting between the chairs and can't decide in what direction to go.

That indecision is in the players, not the game, nor FD. It's the competing expectations of players with differing visions of what E|D is supposed to be. Plus, I am not sure where this "It has to be one thing or another" point comes from. E|D is what it is, and that's how it should be. There is no reason E|D can't straddle a few fences, or even put up some new ones. Leave the rhetoric of people with an agenda what it is: Opinion. Even the Game Masters who make videos, and write articles, are just peddling their own opinions. FD's opinion seems to be: "In a galaxy of 400 million star systems, there is room enough for everyone.".

 

[Ethaidan]

There is tedium built into every gaming achievement.

I'd go one step further... tedium is part of our daily existence, and different people have different expectations and tedium thresholds for so many things.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

Rose colored glasses. Even UO had massive amounts of tedium. Early WoW and Everquest were the definition of tedium, I haven't been involved for many years, but I don;t expect mush has changed. If you are talking about Mario Bro's, or some console game like that, it is not a fair comparison.

You're right, not all of them were fun. The trick is for the developer to make you feel that everything you are doing is real and has a purpose. When they don't make sense, it just doesn't work. Although that does depend on the genre. Tetris was silly but addictive. It wasn't pretending to be anything else though.

So it comes down to Operation Flashpoint (good) for example versus anything repetitive (bad)... All a matter of opinion of course.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

The only Engineer that was a total pain in the backside, and still is, is the one that requires an Elite rank to gain access to. Lol
Which I still haven't got. Probably because I use an NPC SLF pilot all the time. Damn thieves!

I used to think the Qwent, and his pesky Modular Terminals was a pain, but if you have friends, he's not.

Palin is only a pain if you don't like exploration.

I will admit, some of the Engineers unlock requirements, and what they offer as upgrades, don't really line up.

I mean, Palin requires 5,000ly. But offers a primarily combat related upgrade, Dirty Drives 4&5...

It would have made more sense to lock the Farseer, and FSD range 4&5 behind 5,000ly, and Palin behind something else. Or something like that.
But I guess the idea was to get you to try other things.... ?


CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[Mohrgan]

You're right, not all of them were fun. The trick is for the developer to make you feel that everything you are doing is real and has a purpose. When they don't make sense, it just doesn't work. Although that does depend on the genre. Tetris was silly but addictive. It wasn't pretending to be anything else though.

So it comes down to Operation Flashpoint (good) versus anything repetitive (bad)... All a matter of opinion of course.

And, no one put any expectations on Tetris, other than being Tetris. We should try that some with Elite: Dangerous. E|D is only pretending to be one thing or another, because of players not accepting what it is in reality. Those games I pointed out weren't obscure titles with small followings. All three of those games had/have huge followings. It would be hard not to point to being fun, as one of the attractions. Even during the period when those games were their most tedious, their customer base was growing.

It isn't fair to associate tasks with tedium, because you don't agree with them, or understand them, or even accept them. Does it make sense, that in order to get that Golden Scepter, you have to collect 25 bear skins? You have to be willing to allow for some 'suspended reality' to enjoy, or at least not be annoyed by reaching achievements in a Video Game.

 

[Oopsie Daisy]

After the much lauded (by FD at least) so-called improvements to RNGineers in Beta 3.0, the fact is that FD have failed miserably to address one of the most negative aspects of engineers; that being the fact that some engineers are locked behind other engineers and then require a ridiculous amount of 'hoop-jumping' in order to access their services.

Whilst appreciating the fact that Sandro and his team have to account to shareholders for the number of hours players are logged-in, it is a disgrace that the above engineers merry-go-round has not only not been addressed, but also the fact that it appears not even to have been considered in Beyond. In fact, it has not been mentioned in any streams or posts by FD.

Going back as far as 2016, one of the biggest complaints about engineers was the fact that to unlock them was - and still is - a real pain, and continues to be so. And before the white knights and good old Max Factor - whose posts can sometimes be informative and whose opinions I respect - start to tell me, "You don't have to engineer if you don't want to...", let me just say that without engineered modules, most of the ships in ED will get blown out of space much sooner than later; something of which new players become aware very quickly.

I fell into the trap of engineers early on but have never progressed beyond G3 Dirty Drives or a G1 power plant and G5 FSD, etc, simply because to unlock Palin or the others seems to me to be a pointless time-sink and very disrespectful of the limited time in which I have to play and enjoy ED.

The fact that this aspect of engineers had not been improved in Beyond (instead we have material brokers with exorbitant exchange rates) is imo a disrespectful slant on those of us who have spent more than a thousand hours in game but who still have the integrity to avoid being forced by FD into certain activities in which we have no desire to participate.

As always, 'Sandro's law' says, "Play the game your way, blaze your own trail...as long as it is the way and the trail of which we approve and which we sanction."

Your thoughts please..even white knights!

So true. I STILL don't have them all unlocked (I hate engineers-the-game-mechanic so much).

I have over 900 hours in-game and yet unlocking all of the engineers has not magically happened all on its own. What does that say about the so-called "organic game-play" "argument"?

 

[Allan Joule]

Maybe we need to understand what a "challenge" is in a game. For some people it might consist of a high requirement for hand/eye coordination. For others it might be tedium.

Personally I feel that tedium is a challenge in itself. I have been to Sag-A and Colonia and facing the tedium and working through it provided me with the sense that I had met and overcome a challenge.

The real issue is that everyone wants to pick their own particular challenge and that is not how real life works and it is not how most games work either.

 

[Genus]

Your thoughts please..

Another bungled feature. By all accounts ever-so-slightly improved at the second attempt in all the wrong places, which seems to give some justification to believe it was always brilliant.

I've unlocked most, stopped at the mining and the last three on the bottom row in INARA. For reasons that, mining is just so fabulous I simply could not bear to do anymore of it, and the others are just as pointless. The Marco Polo transition to Palin pretty much sums Engineers up for me.

FSD, Dirty Drives and some weapons. The shield upgrades are still universally over rated and I've heard Weps have been all but killed for Engineers 2?

Situation normal.....

Just ignore it like most people do with Multi-Crew and Powerplay.

 

[Genus]

But I guess the idea was to get you to try other things.... ?

Based on the assumption there were ideas involved at the time.

 

[crushdepth]

I'm pretty sure that I've said EXACTLY the same thing before...
The idea behind the Engineers WASN'T that they're a race...to max out all your important modules/slots/weapons to G5 as quickly as possible...but they were to be acquired gradually, organically through regular gameplay...I don't think the intention was ever to see g5 modules across the board become the standard "meta"
(You can argue that Frontier being Strategy/Worldbuilding/Space Flight Game designers...DIDN'T fully understand the stats based min/max mentality of MMO players being more familiar with regular gameplayers...but that's another story)
The argument you don't NEED them is a valid one...there are no Gameplay activities locked away UNLESS you've got ENgineer modules...and arguable VERY few if ANY NPCs that can't be defeated without Engineering...even for those that are tricky to "bite-off" without upgrading past regular A Grade modules...it doesn't seem unreasonable that some encounters will simply be TOO TOUGH and you have to evade...unless you GENUINELY believe you should be the BEST pilot in the TOUGHEST ship in the whole Universe...
PVP is a slightly different story...but if thats your bag unfortunately "they broke it" (with ridiculous stat chasing) so "they'll have to live with it...

The idea behind engineers wasn't that they're supposed to be fun...

FTFY

 

[Dbrn47]

It may take time, as it should, but it isn't hard to do, sounds like a reasonable recipe for a game mechanic.

Is it not reasonable to ask that it's not mind numbingly simple to the point of just shuttling things around at an arbitrarily small rate or just heading out in one direction?

Is it not reasonable for it to be a bit more complex and engaging than it is?

I think it's reasonable.

Again, many people seem to be missing the point, it's not that there is work or how much of the work there is, it's about the work itself. Apparently making things engaging or not feel grindy is an art form since the whole of Elite seems to be about distilling things down to the most common and boring denominator. Making something simple and then drowning it in RNG, pure time sinks, travel or fed ex does not make for compelling game mechanics.

Perhaps I can't speak for others, but the complaint for me doesn't come down to wanting less, it's down to wanting more. I'm asking for the game design to evolve past the 80s and 90s. If you need an example, Sleutelbos covered something quite simply a few pages back, very simple ideas that may be harder to implement but it's better than what we have.

 

[Flin]

My basic criticism on this is the lack of options. There should be 2 or more options to unlock.

Example:
There is only one Engineer for G5 Thrusters. At some point, Palin's monopoly on G5 Thrusters should end.

And if don't want to travel 5,000ly, how about this..

Not too hard to program, but doesn't look like a priority.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

So true. I STILL don't have them all unlocked (I hate engineers-the-game-mechanic so much).

I have over 900 hours in-game and yet unlocking all of the engineers has not magically happened all on its own. What does that say about the so-called "organic game-play" "argument"?

Sounds like you are doing it right then. I have not unlocked them all and I have been here from the very beginning. But I am not in some race to unlock them. Most I have unlocked by playing normally. The only one I didn't was the mining unlock. I gave mining a go. I found it dull and boring (others enjoy it), so I am glad I will never do it again.

But I do agree that some of the unlocks are silly. Why does one need dangerous or above in combat, but she only specialises in scanners.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

And, no one put any expectations on Tetris, other than being Tetris. We should try that some with Elite: Dangerous. E|D is only pretending to be one thing or another, because of players not accepting what it is in reality. Those games I pointed out weren't obscure titles with small followings. All three of those games had/have huge followings. It would be hard not to point to being fun, as one of the attractions. Even during the period when those games were their most tedious, their customer base was growing.

It isn't fair to associate tasks with tedium, because you don't agree with them, or understand them, or even accept them. Does it make sense, that in order to get that Golden Scepter, you have to collect 25 bear skins? You have to be willing to allow for some 'suspended reality' to enjoy, or at least not be annoyed by reaching achievements in a Video Game.

I was thinking about this and have decided that the difference between tedium and fun (for me a anyway) is strategy. A task can itself be repetitive but if it's action is part of a manoeuvre or operation that is working to some plan to outwit someone or something then it becomes fun. It's the overall strategy that is fun not the task. Making your ship go faster does not count as a strategy.

It's interesting that you mentioned Golden Scepters and bear skins because it is evident that they have simply copied the whole mechanism from the Dungeons & Dragons genre which just does not belong in a Sci-fi game. I'm a sci-fi fan. Sure I enjoyed Fantasy as a child but now I love Sci-Fi.

That's it in a nutshell for me Fantasy vSci-Fi.

 

[willisit]

I have just Lori to open (I left combat until later on) and I've really enjoyed working through the Engineers. Sure, the stuff they engineer may not, quite, coincide with the requests, but that really never entered my mind. I loved the initial nerves of setting off on a 5k/10k trip, or building my first Type-9 miner.

Each one (and it's been said over and over) forces you to try something new; get out of your comfort zone. It's really clever.

Combat is a git to work through, no doubt - hell, even certain developers have said it's too hard, but it is what it is, so I shall continue take my Corvette in to battle...

 

[galahad2069]

Palin, Quent and that painite loving miner gal are major PITA to unlock, other engineers are OKish.