Grind - can we solve the problem?

[kofeyh]

Explaining things to me started to feel like a grind, I suspect. So I applaud you for choosing a different path and my apologies for wasting your time.

o7

You aren't wasting my time; we just fundimentally don't see the same thing. And this isn't about instant gratification, either. It's "am I doing a task, repeatedly, and gaining enjoyment, or is it simply doing something because it's a means to an end?" - that's really the question. And that question plagues game developers like nothing else.

This is the point a lot of people are making; shortcuts aren't valuable or useful, and folks aren't asking for them. That's not the point; it's that a number of the hurdles, are simply hurdles. Literally just hurdles. They have no intrinsic value other than to be a speed hump to drag on commanders time and energy.

To put it another way; how many speed humps have you seen, and then leapt of of the car to hug as a valuable part of your daily experience? I'd wager very few. They exist for a single purpose. There are a lot of speed humps in Elite.. sometimes, we do things because they just end up needing to be done; and not doing them means we can't progress from where we are, and end up stuck. The real trick, is to make a few less humps, and a few more diversions that are enjoyable (replace the hump, with a coffee shop; the latter is actually a far greater time-sink, but how many people grab a coffee every day?).

That's really the crux. Speed hump, or coffee shop; which do you think would be more engaging? Sure, people can zip past some of them, but almost certainly not all of them. So you end up with a bunch of people who invest silly amounts of time getting coffee and not even realising it's happening, without forcing them to traverse endless humps, where they begin to notice every single one of them, and lose track of why they are even there.

Frontier has tended to use speed humps, because they are quicker and easier than rolling out a coffee chain; this has freed time to add other content, but at the cost of the experience. It's a difficult thing to achieve well. Make sense?

--

So many people say "prove me wrong" or "change my mind" here, it's at times difficult to spot genuine interest, over the usual hand-waving. I didn't mean offence, commander. o7

 

[Chris Simon]

You aren't wasting my time; we just fundimentally don't see the same thing. And this isn't about instant gratification, either. It's "am I doing a task, repeatedly, and gaining enjoyment, or is it simply doing something because it's a means to an end?" - that's really the question. And that question plagues game developers like nothing else.

This is the point a lot of people are making; shortcuts aren't valuable or useful, and folks aren't asking for them. That's not the point; it's that a number of the hurdles, are simply hurdles. Literally just hurdles. They have no intrinsic value other than to be a speed hump to drag on commanders time and energy.

To put it another way; how many speed humps have you seen, and then leapt of of the car to hug as a valuable part of your daily experience? I'd wager very few. They exist for a single purpose. There are a lot of speed humps in Elite.. sometimes, we do things because they just end up needing to be done; and not doing them means we can't progress from where we are, and end up stuck. The real trick, is to make a few less humps, and a few more diversions that are enjoyable (replace the hump, with a coffee shop; the latter is actually a far greater time-sink, but how many people grab a coffee every day?).

That's really the crux. Speed hump, or coffee shop; which do you think would be more engaging?

--

So many people say "prove me wrong" or "change my mind" here, it's at times difficult to spot genuine interest, over the usual hand-waving. I didn't mean offence, commander. o7

Me neither. But this kind of answers OP's question. Can we solve the problem? Well, no. Frontier could. But we all would have to agree on what the problem is.
Solving your problems (inaccessibility and/or randomness of feature needed for your playstyle) won't solve mine (Thargoid and Guardian stuff crammed up my nose without deeper meaning orof incorporating it into MY playstyle) and vice versa.

 

[NW3]

With a game like ED, there will always be an easier and faster way to do something and people will just grind that out to get to their chosen goal and then most likely complain about it afterwards.

Exactly. It's the complaining part that I've gotten sick of.

- A simplified route through ship progression, so that players are able to experiment with the full range of available ships...

- Introduction of a new PvP mechanic to enable competition between players who are at a similar stage of the game, and who have similarly capable ships, so that PvP doesn't exclude casual or inexperienced players.

- Development of new or existing mechanics to provide more varied opportunities for in-game progression beyond just the the ability to get a better ship. (Making rank progression more meaningful and skill-based and then actually locking ranked missions to particular ranks would be a start). It would be particularly good to have the ability to buy / build structures / mining stations / planetary outposts, and for those to grow into a productive asset Base (and not just a hangar full of ships). It would also be good to see the development of NPC crew members play a more relevant part in the game. (Maybe you could build and train a wing that would be able to carry out tasks or wing up with you over time).

Those are some good suggestions, although I don't think it's feasible for FD to implement the last one. They don't seem to have a way for things to persist in-game. That is, they are part of the universe (like Guardian Ruins) or they are created on the fly, like USSes.

Grind is not an issue in any game, if the immersion and mechanics are fun.

Progression and Grind are the same thing, except one is fun and engaging, the other is repetitive and boring.

What FD failed to do was create progression, instead they created grind.

Good point. It doesn't matter if things are created via RNG, you just need a fun way to interact with those things, like a way to scan a planet and find the rich sources of arsenic, for example.

I don't think any dev team is capable of not making a game grindy. What some other dev teams are capable of is disguising it. Gonna repeat this until people are sick of hearing it but if the core gameplay was fun and engaging, not mindless wandering and waiting, people like myself would notice it myself. Things like waiting for a specific USS to appear could be cut down by having the Discovery scanners ping USS locations in a short radius around you. Its still RNG but the dice is in our hands.

Right, that would be a big improvement.

It's one step toward a game that gives us more to do than simply fly ships around. How about build some automated miners, then construct a landing pad, buy a ship, outfit it, hire a captain for it and he/she collects the ore and sells it at a station of your choosing, keeping a portion of the profits? Or delivers it to another mining or other operation of yours that requires certain materials to continue running?

Unfortunately, I don't think ED has the architectural foundation (program systems) to be able to do any of that in an engaging way.

It's choosing to ignore everything and focus only on the one repetitive thing that does it.

True. Many players repeat the 1 fastest (most boring) way to progress and then complain.

Congratulations: You have just discovered that people can force themselves to do unfun unenjoyable things in something called a "game". Now proceed to bash your head against the wall 100 times at the collective foolishness of the human race.

Ouch, my head hurts.

It's not the rate of progression that I have a problem with, it's the rate of progression combined with the dull mechanics behind the progression that make the game agonizing... It all comes down to the fact that the rewards systems in this game are very imbalanced in that some activities (usually the ones players enjoy) pay out very little in comparison to others that are dull and boring.

Right, there would be less complaining if it wasn't so dull.

 

[Franc Kaos]

The problem here is that Elite is incompatible with that idea. It is a game that basically consists of flying the ship through space, shooting stuff, hauling stuff and looking at stuff. So it all boils down to the question of whether you enjoy doing those four things (=fun gameplay) or not (=grind)
I really don't see any way of making flying through space more fun for people who don't enjoy flying through space. Do you?
There have been countless threads about this, but until people come with concrete ideas, simply stating that "mechanics are boring" (however it may be true) doesn't solve anything.

Yes, instant travel anywhere in the game with no hyperspace tunnel, no supercruise, no gliding down to planet surfaces, and no "loading screens". That would make them happy (until they start complaining about the menu grind) and would make me miserable.

That's why I posted a suggestion for "Elite Arcade", for the players who just want to turn ED into another PvP shoot'em up.

If only there were some middle ground...

So, we all love flying spaceships in a big old galaxy, everybody would probably agree with that, haters and white knights, so how could we realistically improve that game?

An orrery with semi persistent world state (USSs etc) whilst players are in the system
Drastically reduce Engineering buffs (preferably get rid of them)
Populate the game worlds with NPCs and ground vehicles with crowd programming ala Planet Coaster with better graphics
Proper Multicrew / Wings with decent networking code that allows the use of SRV, MC & Wings without ever dropping out (monthly sub?)
Build Powerplay into the BGS with more noticeable long term effects
Allow players to create ship paints and kits, to generate Galnet articles and build questlines (have it go thru a player based moderation forum before being put in game)
Up the Thargoid invasion to actual gameplay (defending stations, watching the situations change, seeing stations slowly being repaired - as advertised in the kickstarter)
Functioning economy also tied into the BGS - if a systems in famine show that somehow, higher pirate activity, wars that should go on for months, boom where they'll pay stupid prices for luxury items
More planet type landfalls, comets, gas giant surfing, animated planet textures (moving clouds), space anomalies
A starting point of choice, with consequences - you're either a citizen of the Empire, Federation or the Alliance (with the option of traitorously switching sides down the road) with a pirate faction you can also gravitate to (mostly living in anarchy systems), and naval progression with its own mission types and proper rewards for promotions

With a decent BGS showing a fluctuating and dynamic universe, Thargoid encroachment of our bubble and player created missions populating the galaxy and decent server tech that actually allows us to, y'know, play together, I reckon the above would still give us 1000s of hours of game play without unnecessary grind (some grind is inevitable - plus humans love repetitive actions if they're fun), and without us getting bored. Probably. Maybe.
Basically focus on improving the flying a spaceship in a big old galaxy part of the game.

EDIT: Improve the Flight Assist Off for those with HOTAS systems, or at least have a less twitchy flight mode, somewhere between the current two modes.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

That's a rather dismissive post and portrays that just because your content with how you play, everyone else should as well (or they shouldn't play the game at all).

Just look at the Guardian blueprint requirements to unlock the various weapons. Simply put, it requires relogging/instancing to repeat the exact same game mechanic over and over. What's the reason? Because they didn't want to make it too easy with just one blueprint? Why not just have more sentinels spawn?

I'm glad that you play the way you want to play, that's what I love about Elite, but being dismissive of players who want to see things improved for their own enjoyment of the game isn't constructive nor helpful. Especially when you take into consideration what I mentioned above about the Guardian blueprints.

Is it such a bad thing that people are looking/asking for more in-depth gameplay?

Ah, excuse me, but yes, there are certain activities that do push you to grind. Those areas do need looking at. Other areas are more organic so you can do them without grinding (as well as with grinding if you so choose).

However, I read OPs statement as a general comment about the overall state of the game, rather than making specific points about specific aspects of the game.

For sure, any activity which is needed to get something, which at the same time prevents you from doing other things is open to scrutiny in terms of grind. The guardian unlocks are a prime example of this. They take you out of the way and the relogging is practically a requirement. I'm not sure what FD were thinking there.

But in which case, people should make posts discussing those specific issues, as they can be talked about with a more focused discussion. General grind threads though are usually unproductive, because they generally just polarize into "don't grind" vs "rarrrgh, this game is only a grind" posts.

 

[kofeyh]

If only there were some middle ground...

I'm not sure if Frontier want engaging mechanics, or simply time consuming ones; this is perhaps the salient point people are grappling with. The developer has asked for feedback, and even though there was some cross purpose, some mechanics rose to the top as being fairly well agreed as workable (even by people on opposite extremes of game preference); this doesn't seem to have been on-boarded by the developer.

So we can ask them to add cool new things to do; but they seem more interested in adding speed humps.

edited.

 

[kofeyh]

But in which case, people should make posts discussing those specific issues, as they can be talked about with a more focused discussion. General grind threads though are usually unproductive, because they generally just polarize into "don't grind" vs "rarrrgh, this game is only a grind" posts.

Sure; let's use + to denote a general action, and a - to denote a requirement (that is a speed hump for the sake of it, which requires specific actions that can block progress):

+ naval progression; naturally accrues via missions and reputation
- progression mission; required, unavoidable, must be done to gain the next rank

+ engineering; naturally accrues via general play with drops in missions, USS, mining, shooting you name it
- engineer unlock; required task, unavoidable, must be done to gain access

That's two. Just two. There are more. The guardian tasks are another example; repeat a task, an arbitrary period of times. No in-game reason. Just go scan that beacon 24 times (or however many it is because the developer discovered that one per diem is definitely the best solution, over the original). Because. There is zero specific reason for this. It just is. And that is everywhere. It's the speed bumps. If something is reasonably enjoyable, people will repeat that almost endlessly, and will consume vast hours doing so; this just isn't enough for Frontier, who have added timers and speed bumps to most every action.

You can play this game for years, and you'll not have access entire portions of the experience unless you specifically action tasks that purely exist to act as a speed bump; multiple times. This is what becomes grind. Because people aren't scanning a beacon 24 times because they want to scan the beacon 24 times as that's incredibly immersive' it's because it's just become a means to an ends rather than actual intuitive and engaging mechanic.

Everyone has their limit; for some reason, Frontier has an absolute knack for finding just the right amount of repetition, to suck the life out of it; in a game that is otherwise outstanding.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Sure; let's use + to denote a general action, and a - to denote a requirement (that is a speed hump for the sake of it, which requires specific actions that can block progress)

+ naval progression; naturally accrues via missions and reputation
- progression mission; required, unavoidable, must be done to gain the next rank

+ engineering; naturally accrues via general play with
- engineer unlock; required task, unavoidable, must be done to gain access

That's two. Just two. There are more. The guardian tasks are another example; repeat a task, an arbitrary period of times. No in-game reason. Just go scan that beacon 24 times. Becase. There is zero specific reason for this. It just is. And it's everywhere.

You can play this game for years, and you'll not have access entire portions of the experience unless you specifically action tasks that purely exist to act as a speed bump. This is what becomes grind. Because people aren't scanning a beacon 24 times because they want to scan the beacon 24 times, it's because it's just become a means to an ends rather than actual intuitive and engaging mechanic.

Everyone has their limit; for some reason, Frontier has an absolute knack for finding just the right amount of repetition, to suck the life out of it; in a game that is otherwise outstanding.

Actually i'd disagree on the progression mission. As long as they are spawning (which is a frequent issue) you can still do other stuff and keep your rank going up behind the scenes, and you can always choose the rank up mission which fits your play style as they appear.

The Engineer unlock though i can agree on, although it depends very much on the player. For those who don't like mining, unlocking Selene must be a nightmare. By the time i got to Selene i had already qualified to meet her and just needed to spend about 40 mins mining (which i enjoy) to get her the painite.

 

[avow555]

Sure; let's use + to denote a general action, and a - to denote a requirement (that is a speed hump for the sake of it, which requires specific actions that can block progress)

+ naval progression; naturally accrues via missions and reputation
- progression mission; required, unavoidable, must be done to gain the next rank

+ engineering; naturally accrues via general play with
- engineer unlock; required task, unavoidable, must be done to gain access

That's two. Just two. There are more. The guardian tasks are another example; repeat a task, an arbitrary period of times. No in-game reason. Just go scan that beacon 24 times. Becase. There is zero specific reason for this. It just is. And it's everywhere.

You can play this game for years, and you'll not have access entire portions of the experience unless you specifically action tasks that purely exist to act as a speed bump. This is what becomes grind. Because people aren't scanning a beacon 24 times because they want to scan the beacon 24 times, it's because it's just become a means to an ends rather than actual intuitive and engaging mechanic.

Everyone has their limit; for some reason, Frontier has an absolute knack for finding just the right amount of repetition, to suck the life out of it; in a game that is otherwise outstanding.

Well said.

 

[Eriseley]

Sure; let's use + to denote a general action, and a - to denote a requirement (that is a speed hump for the sake of it, which requires specific actions that can block progress)

+ naval progression; naturally accrues via missions and reputation
- progression mission; required, unavoidable, must be done to gain the next rank

+ engineering; naturally accrues via general play with
- engineer unlock; required task, unavoidable, must be done to gain access

That's two. Just two. There are more. The guardian tasks are another example; repeat a task, an arbitrary period of times. No in-game reason. Just go scan that beacon 24 times. Becase. There is zero specific reason for this. It just is. And it's everywhere.

You can play this game for years, and you'll not have access entire portions of the experience unless you specifically action tasks that purely exist to act as a speed bump. This is what becomes grind. Because people aren't scanning a beacon 24 times because they want to scan the beacon 24 times, it's because it's just become a means to an ends rather than actual intuitive and engaging mechanic.

Everyone has their limit; for some reason, Frontier has an absolute knack for finding just the right amount of repetition, to suck the life out of it; in a game that is otherwise outstanding.

Hang up on the Navy thing though, the singular advancement mission, while required, is a speedbump to the grind to get navy rank. Sure you can organically gather it, but I've been playing for...4 years? Basically when the game came out of beta, and only just finished navy rank from normal missions.

What I'm saying is the Navy advancement mission is nothing compared to the fill bar from doing missions which you plussed.

 

[kofeyh]

Okay, so the naval thing touched a nerve. It was just an example; it's not so much the task, it's that specific tasks are required. Ostensibly, Frontier has gate-keeping actions that prevent progress without specific actions. It's very popular to suggest "you don't have to grind and do these things.." -- which is very true, however -- "all will come naturally over time" -- isn't.

Because you'll become stuck until you do those rank up missions; regardless of overall progress. I could try and clarify further, but I think I made my point.

Maybe I need more coffee to explain things in a way, that doesn't encourage semantics. My bad.

 

[Eriseley]

Okay, so the naval thing touched a nerve. It was just an example. You could easily flip the naval progression, actually. The plus is the single mission, the minus is the 1100 others; fair comment. Thanks for ignoring the rest of the comment, and the point, though.

Maybe I need more coffee to explain things in a way, that doesn't encourage semantics, over recognising the point. My bad.

No no, no nerve touched! Honest I just dropped in on this topic so not sure its history, I was just trying to understand. I agree there are grinds in the game. Indeed I think you have shown there are short-term ramming your head on the wall until you get the progression mission or finish the engineer entry exam, and then there is the long term rank grind or engineer module grind.

I feel like all of these things are INTENDED to be incidental to normal gameplay, but normal gameplay gets boring after a while and I think people then focus on a grind...so here we are.

Personally I would, hoping that the game supports it, try to hinge that grind on missions by offering better and more various missions. Even just making the half or so missions that seem pointless to engage in actually worth while would help. Mission development in general...that's what' I would do it the game system supports good mission development. I have a feeling it's more limited or they would already be doing that, though.

 

[znôrt]

Okay, so the naval thing touched a nerve. It was just an example. Ostensibly, Frontier has gate-keeping actions that prevent progress without specific actions. The choice of course is to not do those things. Which is an entirely valid decision. It will however have a consequence; a lack of access to game content for an indefinite period (ie until you action that hump).

Maybe I need more coffee to explain things in a way, that doesn't encourage semantics, over recognising the point. My bad.

imo you were talking about two different aspects that got mixed in the follow up: the point of bringing up the rank missions was that this is a deliberate action the player needs to seek and accomplish, and will never happen 'just playing around'. this is unrelated to the amount of repetition and effort required to get the opportunity to jump over that hurdle, which could happen.

 

[kofeyh]

imo you were talking about two different aspects that got mixed in the follow up: the point of bringing up the rank missions was that this is a deliberate action the player needs to seek and accomplish, and will never happen 'just playing around'. this is unrelated to the amount of repetition and effort required to get the opportunity to jump over that hurdle, which could happen.

Thank you. Yes.

I think as noted above, a lot of these actions maybe were intended be incidental, but for some reason have become core elements instead; engineering should have been an incidental. It's core now. 100% core. It's almost impossible to argue it isn't. Shoving two of the most capable ships possible, behind naval progress doesn't make them incidental, either.

Which means to get to a certain point, you have to action certain tasks. Which means you may end up focusing on, and grinding the actions out, just so you can continue to the goal you've obviously set. The longer this goes on though, the less I am convinced that this is all supposed to be incidental; regardless of whatever it once was.

And that doesn't really matter so much; if it's many and varied and people have eleventy different ways to achieve that progress and aren't forced to do specific tasks at specific times just because the developer thinks scanning the same something 24+ times is an amazing experience (for example).

A certain amount of very funnelled action; which will naturally become a grind for many, rather than perhaps some more variety, giving people multiple paths to the same point? Something like that.

Thanks for clarifying my point better than I did. Definitely need that coffee.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

imo you were talking about two different aspects that got mixed in the follow up: the point of bringing up the rank missions was that this is a deliberate action the player needs to seek and accomplish, and will never happen 'just playing around'. this is unrelated to the amount of repetition and effort required to get the opportunity to jump over that hurdle, which could happen.

I'm not sure how that can be so. So, let's say i'm a Fed guy, and i work out of Fed systems doing Fed stuff. Those are the conditions i would expect to be in place before anyone should be able to rank up as a Fed i would think.

So, i've got the required progression, and i dock, and i keep an eye open each time i dock for a rank up mission. It doesn't stop me progressing my naval rank, i can continue gaining rep for the next rank. So, if there is a rank up mission, i take a look and see if its something i want to do. Yes? Cool, take it, do it. No? Don't take it, take the next one.

Seems like its very organic to me.

Having said that, i did go back and reread the OPs post, and what distracted me was the title. What can we do about it? Well, the answer is, only in the way we can play. We can make all the suggestions we want to FD, but its been 3+ years now, and nothing has really changed in terms of the potential for grind.

So, OP said make suggestions, and that's fair enough, so i'll stop arguing the toss about what we have at the moment and stick to actual suggestions.

This then brings us back to the Guardian unlocks. I think we can all agree there is nothing organic about that. If it was possible to collect the stuff through regualar gameplay, then that would be fine. If it was possible to make a run out to the ruins and collect what was needed without relogging, then fine. If you had to visit 10 different sites and collect 10 different things and bring them back, that would be (in my books) fine. But the relogging i think kills it.

Therefore my suggestion here is FD review that mechanism.

 

[Stigbob]

You really are an arrogant jacka**.

You are the one who is seemingly unable to communicate idea's rather than getting personal.

Says there is no grind. Then says the engineers are a crazy grind but at least now it has an end. GG.

There's no grind for me, because I don't do it.

What I'm doing in that post is complimenting FDEV on coding in a hard upper engineering limit because some people simply lack the willpower to stop pushing their faces against the grindstone whilst complaining that their face hurts. That doesn't mean I grind, or even that the game itself is grindy it means FDEV had to stop it being possible for people to repeatedly perform same thing they didn't like and moan about it.

They've adapted to the counterproductive lack of self control in some players by stopping them from being able to do it. The in-game equivalent of a fireguard. Unfortunately those inclined to grinding will always find other ways to make the game unenjoyable for themselves. Which is why players like me frequently say the grind only exists inside peoples heads.

 

[kofeyh]

I'm not sure how that can be so. So, let's say i'm a Fed guy, and i work out of Fed systems doing Fed stuff. Those are the conditions i would expect to be in place before anyone should be able to rank up as a Fed i would think.

Except you don't have to aligned to any major power to gain the rank. Just do dirty work for their representatives. There's consistency of reason; then doing things for the sake of it. They aren't related. I don't want to argue this point though, because it's just going off on a tangent.

Ironically much of this is doing tasks without any consistency of reason. Hence the grind. Doing something because it has to be done, not because it's rewarding in of it's own right. That's hard to do, but I'd like Frontier to spend a little more time giving things purpose and reason, and a little less time inventing new and exciting ways for us to push the same button 900 times.

 

[kofeyh]

They've adapted to the counterproductive lack of self control in some players by stopping them from being able to do it.

This isn't a very sensible comment. It's inflammatory, borderline victim shaming, ignores the gambling reward associated with the old system (broken secondaries), and is also fairly ignorant of Elite's PEGI rating. This is not constructive.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Except you don't have to aligned to any major power to gain the rank. Just do dirty work for their representatives. There's consistency of reason; then doing things for the sake of it. They aren't related. I don't want to argue this point though, because it's just going off on a tangent.

Ironically much of this is doing tasks without any consistency of reason. Hence the grind. Doing something because it has to be done, not because it's rewarding in of it's own right. That's hard to do, but I'd like Frontier to spend a little more time giving things purpose and reason, and a little less time inventing new and exciting ways for us to push the same button 900 times.

I agree with you here regarding purpose and reasons. For me that is one of the core components that is missing from the game. Even simple mechclanics won't feel unrewarding if you felt like there was a purpose behind it. Not that I don't want more complex interactions though. But they can only be done through the BGS making it more visual orientated (and I don't mean bar graphs).

 

[Stigbob]

Ahh yes, victim blaming; it's all their fault, and the developer absolutely has no responsibility for what they are doing, despite having a very low PEGI rating. That's always a good way to take an initially great point, by then pouring petrol over it and lighting a match.

Anyone who qualifies for victim status, suffers or feels pain as a result of the way they play a video game (not harassment by other players, that's different) needs to take a long break or uninstall. It's pretty much proof positive of doing the optional entertainment thing wrong.

It doesn't matter what FDEV do, all the sensible tweaking balancing passes nerfs/buffs count for nothing if you repeatedly choose to do things you don't like you won't enjoy it.

Coffee's a nice drink, but if you gulp it down scalding hot you'll just hurt yourself.