Beyond did literally nothing to help the grind.

You will remember this quote from elsewhere:

Beta server: A place where bugs are tested before being released to the live server.

You're right about the upward exchange rates for the brokers being utterly, laughably, risibly misjudged.

As for Sandy's comments, they did finally realise people were serious when they said material drops were way too low and increased them all to three times their original amounts so who knows, maybe there will actually be an outbreak of common sense in a while.

I distinctly remember Sandro saying in a livestream that the mats exchange rates will be reviewed, if necessary, at a later date, implying they wanted to see how the game was played by everyone else who didn't join the Beta first.
 
I should probably have realised from the thread title that there was no point in me giving an alternate point of view. I'll leave you to your pointless ranting.

Your alternate point of view seems to be 'everything is fine'. It's hardly the beginning of a nuanced debate.

Your definition of ranting seems to be quite individual too.

Edit: Sorry, I missed this gem:

I guess I just don't appreciate the volume of modding and the requirement to have it now that goes on. My moderate stance on things makes the Mat Traders seem like a boon. I can fill some holes, and upgrade my meager modules and be on my way. I wouldn't enjoy, nor allow myself to be driven to despair over something like 18 modules, let alone 18 just FSD's. It looks like I never expected the Mat Traders to alleviate obsessions.

You do realise that the 'obsession' you're talking about is merely engaging with the content of the game? Seriously mate, I've got coming up on 3,000 hours in it, it's not like I've spent every second I've played doing engineering. If you're personally fine with it, I'm happy for you but let's not start trying to portray me as some kind of fruitcake because I've engaged with a particular aspect of a computer game more than you have.

Also you can cut out ridiculous comments like me being 'in despair'. If you infer that from what I've posted here, I can only sympathise with the emotional knife edge upon which you live that must be informing your thinking.
 
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Really? I'm not consistently seeing Traders that I visited yesterday. [haha]

Well, given that my ships currently can't decide how many mat's I'll allowed to collect, I shouldn't be surprised by that.

Also, for the hell of it, here's a pic' I took earlier today while attempting to adjust the module priorities in my iCourier.
XWk6Jei.png

There's probably going to be overtime available for those who want it at FDev in the next few weeks.
 
I distinctly remember Sandro saying in a livestream that the mats exchange rates will be reviewed, if necessary, at a later date, implying they wanted to see how the game was played by everyone else who didn't join the Beta first.

I hope so and that would be an entirely reasonable approach.

High Grade sources do seem to be harder to find in 3.0. I've never had problems before but have had poor luck so far despite looking in what used to be the correct states & locations.

To be fair I can't say I think they're any 'easier' or 'harder' to find than in 2.4, leaving aside the fact that they're neither easy nor hard to begin with since that would imply some sort of skill test rather than flying around in the right place whilst the game plays craps for your spare time. That was my whole point really, they were a ball-ache in 2.4 and they're still a ball-ache now.

The changes to mission rewards are a positive one though. I saw several today giving enough modular terminals to unlock Quent as a single mission's reward, although I'm sure that will be smashed with the nerfhammer soon :D

Erm, not sure about that.

It seemed to be working like that for me for the first couple of days but now it seems to be working more usefully, by showing mat-traders that are (I assume) at any station I've visited at any time in the past.

I thought I'd bite the bullet and do a tour around all the MTs INARA was listing, just to get them to show up on my gal-map, and after I'd visited about a dozen I realised - the next day - that a whole heap of them are now showing up.

Course, I don't really see why they're not just a permanent feature on the map.
It seems needlessly sadistic to hide stuff like that from the player.

As with virtually everything else, I'm just using Inara. If I paid them a pound for every hour of my gaming time they've made more productive I'd probably just have to sign next month's wages over.

I'll check the map again, it definitely wasn't working like that the first time I checked though.
 
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Well, given that my ships currently can't decide how many mat's I'll allowed to collect, I shouldn't be surprised by that.

Also, for the hell of it, here's a pic' I took earlier today while attempting to adjust the module priorities in my iCourier.

There's probably going to be overtime available for those who want it at FDev in the next few weeks.

You'r implying they actually care enough to pay overtime for these bugs. I discovered and reported a bug that allowed players to bring their shields back online immediately after they went down, just by entering and exiting SC during beta and it made it to the live game. Granted, it's not that game breaking, but I could see how it could be useful for a SCB tank cutter who just lost their shields to lowwake out of a wing battle, turn around, drop back in at the outskirts and fire off some SCB and have a decent shield capacity restored in less time than it would take for their shields to start regenerating normally. Oh well.
 
High Grade sources do seem to be harder to find in 3.0. I've never had problems before but have had poor luck so far despite looking in what used to be the correct states & locations.

I wonder if this line from the patch notes has something to do with it:
Greetings Commanders,

Installations/POIs/USSs
  • Increased the spawn rate of High Grade Emissions USSs in shipping lanes and by planets

Maybe by increasing the spawn rates in shipping lanes and around planets (I haven't seen any of these personally yet) they broke the deep space spawns somewhat?
 
Oh, such special snowflakes gamers are these days. "The Grind" in Elite is laughable compared to other games out there. Anyone here want to grind for 1/13th of a weapon upgrade, in random public events that occur at random intervals, which will drop that item at a 1-2% rate (50-75 events per item drop was very common, sometimes RNG made you take up to 200 events)? Too bad you didn't play FFXIV during the original Atma weapon upgrade quest, that would have been just for you!
 
Anyone here want to grind for 1/13th of a weapon upgrade, in random public events that occur at random intervals, which will drop that item at a 1-2% rate (50-75 events per item drop was very common, sometimes RNG made you take up to 200 events)? Too bad you didn't play FFXIV during the original Atma weapon upgrade quest, that would have been just for you!

No I don't want to do that because I'm not an imbecile. Did you enjoy it?

By the way I'm 46 and spent the first 20 years or so of my gaming life playing games when they were sufficiently difficult that it was entirely commonplace to buy a new release without necessarily having any expectation that you would ever complete it. Don't talk to me about special snowflakes son.
 
No I don't want to do that because I'm not an imbecile. Did you enjoy it?

By the way I'm 46 and spent the first 20 years or so of my gaming life playing games when they were sufficiently difficult that it was entirely commonplace to buy a new release without necessarily having any expectation that you would ever complete it. Don't talk to me about special snowflakes son.

I enjoyed completing my weapon and was happy to have it done. If you didn't want the weapon, you could avoid the grind. Otherwise, get grinding those public events! So really there is nothing "imbecilic" about it as it was the ONLY path to one of the top weapons in the game at the time.

Oh 46? I'm 34, your point? The grind in Elite is very minimal to a lot of other games out there, yet people here make it out to be some horrid monstrosity which has no equal in the gaming world. *rolls eyes*

I do agree there needs to be a system to prevent complete RNG screwage (ie: hard caps on number of USSs before getting Pharmacutical Isolators or stuff like that). However complaints about things like the naval rank "grind" are stupid given it can be finished in less than 10h of work.
 
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FDEV dont want to "help the grind." Their game lacks content. Its been four years, and we have zero persistence. Zero consequences. And no meaningful interaction. And there has been no effort to change ANY of that. As in, they have not even TRIED.

Instead, they have try and mask the lack of content with grind. Their goal isnt to make their game more enjoyable. Its to make it more addictive, and prolong time spent playing it. Whether or not that time is enjoyable is not something about which they appear to care very much, if at all.
 
Oh, such special snowflakes gamers are these days. "The Grind" in Elite is laughable compared to other games out there. Anyone here want to grind for 1/13th of a weapon upgrade, in random public events that occur at random intervals, which will drop that item at a 1-2% rate (50-75 events per item drop was very common, sometimes RNG made you take up to 200 events)? Too bad you didn't play FFXIV during the original Atma weapon upgrade quest, that would have been just for you!

White Knight Playbook Page 5: When the utter garbage that is Elite's grind is mentioned, immediately begin to compare it with other games that are even more crap, and show even LESS respect for a players time, than Elite does, in a desperate attempt to make Elite look better.

We get it. There are games with worse grind. That fact does not make Elite GOOD. It just makes it a little less BAD. And just because you put up with even worse games, doesnt mean we should put up with a BAD one.

At some point, we would like FDEV to TRY and make the persistent, consequential SIMULATOR Braben continually promised. But as time goes by, and the excuses pile on, that seems progressively less likely.
 
And I'm 34, your point?

It's the words right after 'I'm 46'. Sorry, I tried to make it easy to follow. If you really need me to spell it out though, you're going on about 'gamers these days' in an attempt to diss someone who has literally been gaming since before you were born.

Glad you agree with the only point I actually made in this thread (and what the entire thread is about) though, perhaps a thread where people are moaning about naval ranks instead of critiquing a specific aspect of engineering might be a better place to make your point about that?

White Knight Playbook Page 5: When the utter garbage that is Elite's grind is mentioned, immediately begin to compare it with other games that are even more crap, and show even LESS respect for a players time, than Elite does, in a desperate attempt to make Elite look better.

We get it. There are games with worse grind. That fact does not make Elite GOOD. It just makes it a little less BAD. And just because you put up with even worse games, doesnt mean we should put up with a BAD one.

Indeed. It's like you admonishing me for punching you in the face and me replying that it's better than getting kicked in the balls for fifteen hours.
 
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I do agree there needs to be a system to prevent complete RNG screwage (ie: hard caps on number of USSs before getting Pharmacutical Isolators or stuff like that). However complaints about things like the naval rank "grind" are stupid given it can be finished in less than 10h of work.

Then we are in complete agreement as I have never complained about nave rank and was only campaigning about "rng screwage" as you say and how beyond doesn't address it. But you had to jump to conclusions when you saw the word grind.
 
The way I see the OP is that the problem is in the item generation tables. To simplify, we're looking for HGEs with proto alloys, but only finding the ones with proto heat radiators. And so the problem is that there are so specialized things you need to look for randomly... if there was a couple alloys swapped into the heat radiators (and vice versa), then when you find the wrong one, you might still be disappointed, but you're also making progress. And that changes things a lot in the experience... there is no grind when you're not making progress, it's just a lottery where you're waiting to win (and you might not). Grinding would be better... doing the same thing again and again and getting some progress each time.

That's why people look to lowering the exchange rates for up and cross grades at the material trader... that helps make things into a grind, because requiring less means that more often a drop gives you something that you can consider progress. But it's not really the only way to solve the problem. Personally, I think the biggest problem with the material traders is that they're a bandage on a system that has more fundamental problems... and the OP is an example of that. There are simply too many levels of materials and grades of modification for the system to work well... the RNG and item generation suffers because of that, and it's very easy to keep getting the wrong ones because there's so many types, and so first there's a bandage of increasing drops to sets of three and now another with the traders. But, if there was just chemical whatsits and heat thing-a-bobs without there being five different types masquerading as levels of them things would work better to begin with. But failing fixing the core issues, you need systems that guarantee the player gets some progress for an amount of time put in... better ways to get specific materials or just increased diversity in drops.

I too have spent an entire evening hunting a material and not finding any of it. It was a very common material though, and although the material traders would now solve my problem (in that I was getting lots of "grades" too good to use, because they're separate things), it doesn't address the actual problem... a material listed and intended to be very common was being dropped at a rate that made it rarer than very rare in drops with materials in its class. Which again comes back to my issue with material traders just being a bandage on the system... it allows for the hiding of a behaviour that's wrong to the point of buggy.
 
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