Stigbob, frontier introduced a system that rewarded pulling a lever, by offering a broken secondary. The more you pull the lever, the better the chance of wining the 'secondary' lottery; creating huge disparities in ship and module potential in the process. Pretending this is somehow only the fault of commanders, or that they are weak willed or 'just playing victim' or some such, isn't sensible. Frontier did this on purpose. And then defended it.
Frontier made a an error of judgment. It was well intentioned. And they did a lot of work. But they made a mistake in the approach; and it created a very toxic situation. It took a lot of effort for them to recognise this. A huge amount of damage was done by that system. Fobbing it off as some sort of mentally deficient commander issue, is just, well I don't even know where to start. So I won't.
I respect your point of view; I do not remotely agree with the summation, or have any interest in the hill you might be trying to take, however.
I'm simply glad the developer saw some sense finally, and removed the hook (secondaries) and the gambling wheel, and brought in the more consistent system that arguably was all anybody ever really wanted in the first place.
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Bingo.
Holy god that's two people agreed with in one day. I must be ill.
Make it three.
Better context for action should be a priority for the devs. It alleviate a lot of problems with simple gameplay loops/missions.
Hell, the witcher 3 managed to make fetch quests interesting and immersive just with good naratives/context for action.
It's not a moral high ground thing, it's recognition that games work by providing a reward a kill, space-money, mats, permit, more rep whatever. If you over focus on one specific type of payout to the exclusion of all other things it's going to get old fast, even if you really enjoy doing that one thing. The payout itself will frequently be random, you can't control it but you can stack the odds in your favour as much as you can by going to the right type of system and having good rep with the locals. But the sheer number of times you do it is purely a personal choice, the odds always remain the same but any frustration you feel grows if you keep on at it. Without the dreaded RNG the whole game would be a lot more boring, FDEV have effectively limited engineer spanking by making that part of the game less exciting.
I think with the secondary's it was an inadvertent hook they didn't realize existed, similar to the random pet colours thing in Warframe where they found people were pounding money into it for no real reason other than it being a slot machine which some people just can't resist. Not so much a mistake as not anticipating a strange choice most people would never make.
Some people have poured their life savings into lottery tickets or one armed bandits, the cure for that isn't a gambling ban (admittedly that bits moral high ground).
It has probably already been said, but replacing the RNG of waiting for the right USS to come up would go a long way to improving things. A little mini game would be vastly preferable to sitting in supercruise for ages.
Sure; this doesn't require a lever that offers massive, game breaking advantage potential, the more you pull it, though. It never did. There are many ways the developer can achieve this, without pulling the roulette wheel out, and offering massive tactical advantage as the 'winning' number - all you have to do, is pull the lever. This wasn't accidental, mind. Need I remind you, those secondaries still exist in modules for as long as players retain them, and that could potentially be indefinitely.
That really doesn't have much to do with RNG or mechanics, per-se. It's a developer direction one. That's on Frontier, no less than the player. Trying to make this purely a player issue, I can't agree with; because ultimately we don't set the direction of the game, or what can be done. I think most people in the thread here aren't actually fundimentally against RNG and what not; just how extreme the developer can become. We just have to live with it, make the best of it, offer feedback in the hope of an improvement - or leave.
I personally think Frontier are trying very hard and have every chance of actually improving a lot of mechanics. But they have embraced repetition and RNG, to an almost unhealthy level and the resulting chaos as they start reworking it, is going to be a bit brutal imho. It's going to be a long (long) road for the developer. And the players, by extension.
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This +1. Or also making SS persistent and spawning 5-7 of them when entering SC.
But a search mechanic that tied with the new exploration mechanics would indeed be a neat improvement. Then just make SS like HGEs part of missions.
Boom, problem solved : several SS from the get go in SC means finding something interesting is easier, persistent allow you to check one then an other one. If some are hidden and a search mechanics is in place it can also slow for "secrets/ hints" SS used as entry points for missions/ loot staches/ lore / elite puzzles.
SS like HGEs used as locations for missions means no RNG waiting timer, instead pick the mission and locate the hidden SS (for example) recover advanced medicines from a medical ship's wreck along with PIs and maybe toss in some surprise looters sometimes for good measure.
Voila ! Material collection integrated in the missions and BGS. RNJesus crap is gone, replaced by a search via scan mechanic.
Damn. That would be neat.
When I'm after specific USS's I take a fighty ship with a bit of cargo space get into right type of system then just start dropping into any signal sources that appear. I play a mini game of claiming bounties scooping other mats/data/escape pods, and the frequent instance changes reset the RNG and I seem to get what I'm after faster. It's also fun.
Don't stare at the screen in supercruise waiting for just the one thing.
My first question would be: Why the frack am I sitting here repeatedly shooting bad guys anyway? lol
If an open world game sees players, in one tiny tiny corner doing nothing but shooting the same npc over and over and over and over..... then there's a design error there somewhere. Likely that one NPC has a 0.0001% higher drop rate on xyz than anything else maybe.. then as a developer I'd probably equal the drop rate across the board to prevent wasting the open world experience.
That's just me though... maybe it's a pretty corner [heart]
No my answer to grind is approach it in a way that is fun and isn't at all grindy.
I'm not implying that people should stop complaining I'm openly saying that people should whinge less and alter their approach, because what they are doing obviously isn't working for them. Hence all the whinging.
No I don't like grind, that's why I find alternative approaches to exactly the same things.
Getting personal won't alter the fact you insist on doing things you don't like then whine that you don't like doing the thing you insist on doing. Your fault your problem.
I agree with you. But having a better system with some semi-persistant USS's that have descriptive names, when you drop in on them you get a mission with good rewards and so on so they actually have some kind of purpose instead of just some ships sitting around for no reason waiting for your ship to arrive, and then throw in a few random ones as well for a bit of variety would be a much better and hopefully more fun.
Sounds like fun, the more the merrier.
A possible issue with persistent/semi-persistent USS's would be Dav's Hope syndrome where people just sit there logging in and out and turn it into just another boring grind for themselves.
For sanity sake put the traders and shipyards at the engineers.
Allow more pinned blueprints, explorer build and combatbuild.
On menu give better info on engineers, like Inara, list all the modules and grades the engineer covers
Allow more pinned blueprints, explorer build and combatbuild.
On menu give better info on engineers, like Inara, list all the modules and grades the engineer covers
I'm slowly getting rid of legacy mods even with amazing secondary's, under the new system the primaries are usually so much better it's a worthwhile trade. For example my low heat sturdy railguns now generate a little more heat than they used to but the weight penalty is something like half as much and they both have the same reload speed. So it's an overall upgrade, I can also switch the experimentals at will which is a huge improvement.
Glass half full, or half empty mines usually full. Or in the words of Bill Baily "is it used in a sacrificial context".
I tend to buy games for what they are after a bit of research and a demo wherever possible, rather than what they might become. I find it makes for happy gaming. Any improvements are just a bonus, never a vital must have.
Kickstarters are a gamble, I've been very lucky with the few I've backed and probably even luckier with the ones I avoided.
With ED I backed at gamma as soon as I logged out of the flyable demo.
If they were semi-persistant, once you have done the mission or whatever is needed to be done, then the USS disapears, so there could be no logging in and out to get stuff as the stuff would come from a mission. Once the mission is finished with the USS is gone.
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That's how Eve's USS equivalent works, and I had a lot of fun with it. Scanning stuff down and interacting with it was probably my favorite activity in the game... Which makes Elite's USS system all the more frustrating.
And it should be pointed out that non of these mechancis needed to be like this at all. PowerPlay could have been so much different - that is the definition of grindy. You could say "if you don't like it, don't play it" which would be a stupid thing to say - rather, make it an actual game.
Are there even a simple "escort ship from A to B" yet or any missions where you defend a space station?
None of the game mechanics had to be this way at all - FDev made them this way and they can be changed and revamped.
Also, think for a moment as to WHY after 4 years there's still no exploration content. Are FDev that unimaginative they can't think of anything to put in a 400 billion galaxy - it's almost a crime that given they made the game and touted the huge galaxy and then put nothing inside it. That doesn't even make sense to anyone with a hint of imagination.
I don't think it can be solved. Maybe before Engineers, there were good steps for missions and earnings in 2.0. But with the mat grind? Lol, no.