Whenever you log and do "stuff".
That's playing. Whether you enjoy it or not is up to you.
That's playing. Whether you enjoy it or not is up to you.
I'm curious, what do you class as 'playing the game'
- Thread starter Saool
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well, it varies. the moment you have big ships and a host of modifications, although it doesn't mean you must have them, well, it's game content, right? it is an objective expected to be met, and there must be some rationale behind it. as i said, this scheme is common in games and there is nothing wrong with it. the problem might be the implementation.
you assumption is not bull. if you want to do open emergent pvp, grinding your teeth off is pretty much mandatory. that doesn't mean any other player couldn't have reasons to access that content, for whatever purpose. what are those reasons? dunno, maybe this thread will tell ...
but tell me, why are thargoids in the game? what for? apparently, so you can grind for anti xeno weapons. for the narrative! and i suspect the grind is as boring and mind-numbing as the rest. i don't know personally because i gave up on these silly mechanics a while ago already, i've come to terms with the fact that this game is an impressive artwork sandbox combined with astonishingly poor gameplay content. so, ironically, playing my way means actively avoiding most of the content frontier put out for the last two years. because it sucks to get at it. now that you ask, i'm also curious about how others address this. i suspect many, like me, just ignore all this stuff, but the vast majority just ... do the grind and complain (seemingly in vain)
Everything that can be done in the game after you hit start. There is no other discussion to be had about it. Playing the game is playing the game, regardless of you not liking what someone else is doing with their own time. It's designed as such and it isn't up to anyone else, aside from the developer telling you that you are cheating, to say whether what anyone else is doing qualifies as 'playing the game' or not. 'Intended gameplay' is up to development to address, not players.
To address specifics such as grinding... The game still has some grindy aspects, so grinding is playing the game. Whether or not anyone else wants to call it or grind is irrelevant, it's still playing the game. I feel that the game will always be grindy in those aspects, though Frontier can make those things more interesting so as to not have it feel grindy. Can take me all year to earn something for all I care, is it interesting or fun though? That's subjective and tolerances vary, thus arguments about it. I keep trying to explain to people that grindy doesn't necessarily mean unenjoyable, but that doesn't seem to catch anyone's eye. Just the same dreary ways of thinking, "Well, I enjoy it so you're wrong and should stop grinding, just play the game." I have been playing, otherwise I wouldn't have an opinion about it.
To address specifics such as grinding... The game still has some grindy aspects, so grinding is playing the game. Whether or not anyone else wants to call it or grind is irrelevant, it's still playing the game. I feel that the game will always be grindy in those aspects, though Frontier can make those things more interesting so as to not have it feel grindy. Can take me all year to earn something for all I care, is it interesting or fun though? That's subjective and tolerances vary, thus arguments about it. I keep trying to explain to people that grindy doesn't necessarily mean unenjoyable, but that doesn't seem to catch anyone's eye. Just the same dreary ways of thinking, "Well, I enjoy it so you're wrong and should stop grinding, just play the game." I have been playing, otherwise I wouldn't have an opinion about it.
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i suspect many, like me, just ignore all this stuff, but the vast majority just ... do the grind and complain (seemingly in vain)
I think it's mostly a difference in approach, take the engineers as an example of "grind".
The people moaning now about engineers seem to be trying to engineer their entire fleet to max today if not sooner because "FDEV made them". They moan constantly about how terrible it is that they've chosen to do this self inflicted thing. Once they do a ship they do the next once they do a module they do the next and so on and on and on. And here's the real nub of the issue, this is exactly what they did last time around before finishing all their ships then reverting immediately to complaining about lack of content without ever having enjoyed the game.
I engineer by upgrading the drive a bit playing the game and marveling at how much better it is for fighting or fleeing or flying like an idiot. Then I might do the distributer and again go back to just messing around pleasantly surprised at how much faster my stuff recharges. You get the picture, it'll be weeks before I even settle on a weapon loadout because I treat it like a game and actually enjoy each upgrade. If you just max out every ship without flying them you'll never even notice let alone appreciate the improvements. No wonder they're complaining they treat it like a job.
FDEV don't just ignore the players who turn everything into grind they mock them, hence the salt harvesting joke in the patch notes a while back.
I play the whole game, and all it's elements so as to not get bored.
The fact that you take your sweet time upgrading doesn't invalidate criticisms or complaints. Spacing your own gameplay out and taking your time doesn't make it less grindy. The difference between you and them is you savor every little thing, which has nothing to do with a game being a grind. I can savor every bit of Diablo 3, it's still a shallow grindy experience that manages to still be a fun hack n slash when I'm in the mood for it. I think that the implementation of the 3x material drops and material trader are proof of the idea that Engineers was a nasty, dull grind.
I think people need to start separating the valid critiques from laments of those who will never be happy, because there is certainly a difference between them. Have to stop thinking of the word 'grind' as some sort of curse word that should never be used toward your game of choice. Grind can certainly be fun and there are good games that are just as grindy or worse, it's just the fun overwhelms the grindy nature for most people.
A little bit of everything in small doses. Mining and exploring are relaxing. Shooting stuff and fighting ships is good fun. Occasionally trying out new builds of various ships and doing a few engineering upgrades. What I'm not doing is going out and trying to collect 50 DWEs in one session or trying to race through the ranks to get the biggest ship straight away because that's just too much focused effort and isn't enjoyable. Mixing it up a bit, stop exploring for a bit to go and collect materials from the surface, that kind of thing. I'm not really trying hard or trying to do anything in particular, just taking it as it comes. I'll build an anti large Thargoid ship one day and go and do the guardian mission at some point but I'm not in any kind of rush. I'll fly to some nebulas and go and see some black holes one day, they aren't going anywhere so no hurry.
i respect and understand your playstyle. not far from what i have always done. but i'm competitive in nature (mostly in games, funnily enough i am not at all irl). meaning i don't want to win, i want to compete, and i want to possibly do well, or try my best, that's all. thus the urge to get your gear to good condition is strong. problem is, the game has good core flying/combat mechanics, but engineers introduces way too much variation and opness. you don't only need to grind for your preferred ship and weapons, you have to grind for a lot of combinations to find out what's best for your style. unless you want to cookie cutter builds others came up with (dreaded 'metas'). that's really too much to ask for, so i ditched that. i'm not ruling out engineers forever, and i did have some fun with them, but engineers changed radically my approach to this game and i have them banned for the time being.
man, that's dangerous. actually, frontier is doing nothing new, they are merely following standard business practices (see links shared kindly by koyfeh a while ago: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...me-for-a-new-Elite-game?p=6553753#post6553753, specially the second one). they are just getting it horribly wrong. it's not only about you and me and 'our ways', a game needs an audience. time will tell.
When I turn the game on and log in to solo im playing the game.
I liked the old engineers, and I like the new ones even more. I haven't found either grindy at all except unlocking the trade one I'm not into that. Actually scratch that I stuck cargobays in my war-conda and melted loads of pirates for fun and space-cash as I lugged stuff about the place, make lemonade and all that. I think the maximum upgrade cap was a good idea because it stops perma-grinding for that extra 0.005% power.
Currently the whole forums having a bit of a meltdown because of change and the free new things needing hotfixing and the devs bouncing patches out like champions to fix it all.
So real issues are being washed away in the sea of tears from the posters who as you rightly said will simply never be happy.
Then your definition of grind just seems to fundamentally be different than what I'm talking about when I use it. I don't think of it as a purely negative "I don't enjoy this" term, since I can simply say I don't enjoy it (or just not play it). With the way I see grind, I can have sentences like, "Well, it's a bit of a grind, but I sure do have a lot of fun!" For things like driving around in the SRV, along with gathering materials with it, I just have words for that I can't use on this forum.
Yeah, I can see that. I've been dabbling with PVP recently (I don't inhale though) and my preferred medium ships with lightweight builds for maximum zoom plus firepower just can't cut the PVP mustard (my piloting probably doesn't help), you need to engineer maximum hit points into it, and I don't even switch out the default armour. Whenever I try without default armour I immediately notice the massive change in ship handling (and almost doubled rebuy). So PVP is probably just not for me as I can't be doing with all that armour engineering nonsense.
I don't think anything's doomed just yet, I've been saying that since 2014. The joke in the patch notes was just that a joke. I honestly can't see anyone being genuinely offended other than the sort of humorless types they were making the joke about, or the people skilled at feigning being offended.
I don't know much about warframe (I cant stand 3rd person) and those vids are over an hour combined which seems too grindy for me tonight, I'll get around to watching them at some point I have them bookmarked. I did read an article about it though, they dropped a random micro transaction because the whales were spanking it like idiots. Which is good of the devs, but I don't get the comparison as ED's store has no random whale hooks you know what you get and it's all just cosmetic.
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I'd say grind is repeatedly performing the same chore, like taking out the bins a purely negative thing. Except on clear starry nights.
Lol, what the internet needs is a single dictionary we all have to learn and work from to prevent these things happening.
'Playing the game' for me is performing the tasks I need to perform in order to achieve whatever goal I'm currently trying to achieve, whether it be simply completing a mission, advancing in rank or increasing my reputation with (and the influence of) a minor faction, acquiring the credits needed for a ship or gear purchase, completing a particular engineering project, or whatever else I may have decided to do.
There are most definitely times when some of those, the last one in particular, will involve what any gamer would describe as 'grind' and saying that a player 'chooses to do it' is somewhat disingenuous when the 'choice' being made isn't actually to do the activity in question for it's own sake, it is to attempt to access the game content which is gated behind the activity concerned.
In effect there is no meaningful choice whatsoever other than to completely disregard swathes of the game and I'm fairly sure that like most game developers, FDev don't actually want players to disregard chunks of the content that they have created.
So in short no, the grind is not entirely and exclusively 'in your mind'. In some cases it certainly is, in others it is not. The grind in some aspects of the game is entirely real and exists (as one example) because of the decision to gate access to certain materials behind the multi-layered RNG involved in searching for HGE USSs. 'Just don't do engineering then' is the answer of a fool for the reason given above, so I do hope you won't disappoint me by delivering it.
I'm completely sure that constructive feedback on which aspects of that (and any other) process players feel does create a grind cycle and how it may be addressed is of interest to FDev, so I sincerely hope that players carry on 'complaining' about it rather than convincing themselves that they're suffering from some kind of psychological problem which manifests itself as wanting the experience of engaging with all aspects of a computer game they play to be as, well... engaging as possible.
For me grind = repetitive and boring activities made necessary by poorly thought out game mechanics.
Many games have grind, all games have repetition. It's how that is presented in game play loops that's important. Unfortunately for me ED has a lot of grind and it seems to be getting worse, that or i'm finding the activities more and more repetitive & boring....it's probably a bit of both tbh.
FDev have mad a beautiful game, technically stunning with superb sound and graphics, and the flight mechanics are spot on. Unfortunately they're not great at creating a game to go inside the world which is a real shame.
Many games have grind, all games have repetition. It's how that is presented in game play loops that's important. Unfortunately for me ED has a lot of grind and it seems to be getting worse, that or i'm finding the activities more and more repetitive & boring....it's probably a bit of both tbh.
FDev have mad a beautiful game, technically stunning with superb sound and graphics, and the flight mechanics are spot on. Unfortunately they're not great at creating a game to go inside the world which is a real shame.
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You know, if only Frontier sold Rep packs on the forum... I'm just kidding, Frontier, don't you dare.