Not to be misunderstood: i am not personally for or against 'the grind', i just find it very interesting when it is mentioned matter-of-factly in relation to game design.
This is due to it being clear that the current approach is very much
Closed System design, spending considerable time and effort to trying to mitigate Open System behaviours, through task base process.
For comparison Chess is a closed system. The whole point of chess is to out think your opponent, within the confines of that system. Limited number of pieces, each with their own special moves, with a limited number of moves possible. A lot of moves in terms of permutations when starting a game, yes...which dwindle as the game goes on. The aim is to control that decline, ending up in a wining position.
Now imagine going to play a second game of chess, to find that some of the pieces move differently, there is now a grey team and the board is different. This is what happens every time a nerf or a buff is made arbitrarily in ED.
It's still kind of chess, but it's something similar to "Chess". It's just no one found out until the pieces were laid out. This is not an evolution, it's just an uncontrolled closed system, which are not okay. You have to re-evaluate the techniques through which the Closed System is controlled if you do things this way, which FD do not. If the BGS for example does not behave as expected, they just change the database table entries that make it run arbitrarily, without really thinking about the ramifications.
Most Human vs Human (unless you're in school or jail) or Unrestricted PvE Environments are not a closed systems, they are examples of an
Open System. ED especially demonstrates this in Open Mode, as you introduce human behaviours. However, even Solo Mode should be treated as a Closed to Open System transition as the single player is not only acting within the wider environment, but it is the same environment that powers Open.
An open system by contrast adapts in line with internal and external factors, it is adaptive without the need for arbitrary intervention to make it run at the base level and should evolve over time off its own back (emergent ordered behaviour if you want to search for stuff). Stuff which acts upon and affects the system in place will not "break" the system if it is designed well, control factors sort themselves out and just need to be identified and monitored as evolution takes place,
not intervened upon. A myriad of other game factors should be considered robust enough to run unhindered and without the need to balance anything.
And it's not just you, it's several thousand other Commanders all doing different things, some activities completely unrestricted (no rules), all for different reasons....
one would hope.
Add to that, with a true ability to "blaze your own trail", "play your own way" etc...ED would become a
collection of Open Systems, all acting upon one another in sometimes random and unforeseen ways. A
Cybernetic System which brings with it a whole T-9 full of other issues. Or if I wanted to labour the point, a whole Squadron of the stuff.
Trying to manage it like a game of chess, as FD seem to do....is a dichotomy that is responsible for 95% of everything "debated" on these boards, and the approach will simply at some point...have to change.
Some people often say "grind is in the mind", but the fact is - game developers set out to intentionally create a game that is grind based, and as you pointed out developers actually discuss that in a matter of fact manner. Other Frontier developers have also discussed this on occasion. Bottom line grind
is a part of the game, that is a
fact, and it has intentionally been designed that way.
Opinion comes into play when discussing if that is a good or bad thing.
Until whether it is a good or a bad thing is decided by FD themselves, and they start either designing either for a Closed or Open system, not both...The Grind will essentially continue to be all the task based nonsense, that gets put in to mitigate the open system evolution and returns it to an uncontrolled closed system. So yes, addressing this at a high level might get the game to look something like it should by the end of Beyond, although will the expectation that if continuing with a Closed System approach, we will just get more Grind as other features are added.
If choosing an Open System design approach, many other things will have to be redone to bring the system capability of the ED Universe in line (the thing that maybe is proving to be the issue at HQ due to resources and know how), making it a lot of fun for everyone concerned.
If it's designed properly.
