If someone from Fdev streams themselves unlocking all the Guardian tech. I will eat my eye patch.

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Chuckle. You do like poking the bear.

Bear-Sad.jpg

Look at the poor little fella, if I hit it with my positivity stick long enough I can beat that frown upside down.
 
Rep for that it saved my bacon.

I know it's swimming against the current but I'm enjoying this guardian business, I might even unlock some more.

I'm glad of that, and sincerely hope you still enjoy it after getting the 40 or so blueprint fragments.

I personally massively enjoyed the new interaction, the first time, and even a couple of times after.

When I did it, the obelisks would also grant some blueprint fragments at random, so I managed to get enough for the Gauss Cannon (fixed) and have some left over module and weapon blueprint fragments.

I left, slightly annoyed, after getting enough for that one weapon though, as I became dissapointed with the way it is handled, and still feel it is a flawed design. The interaction itself is fine as a one or two time thing, and honestly, if it wasn't 1000 odd lightyears out from the bubble, it also wouldn't be as bad, especially if there was the odd mission to go there and get a few guardian materials for some scientists who contacted you via the inbox or something.

As it is, I have to specifically travel a good long distance, to perform one action multiple times, then travel back, which for me, isn't great.


I hope once you've unlocked a few more you still enjoy it.

A lot of people find it isn't very engaging the way it currently works.
 
So I timed myself last night. Doing one of the bases, killing everything and collecting most things, from in ship 500m above the site, to take off having completed was 16 mins. Gathering nothing and killing sentinels only when needed dropped this to 11. I've done it 15 times, so that's knowing the place pretty well. I'm not saying it can't be done faster, cos I'm sure it can, but that's about 4 hours of doing the same thing over and over to unlock three weapons.

I know I don't have to do them all together, making it about 2 hrs for the harder ones, but if I split them I've the extra jumps there and back, so no. It won't be more interesting if I don't do them all at once.
 
If Frontier won't do a livestream, perhaps Stigbob will. I want a camera pointing at him so I can see that smile on his face for the entire duration ;)

Sorry to disappoint you but I've nearly finished already, so it's too late for a livestream. I need another 3 weapon blueprints and I'm done with what I wanted to get. I may return to it at some point but I want to fire my shiny new toys at Thargoids first, the power plant will be easy if I decide to do that as it's only the 4 blueprints.
 
I'm glad of that, and sincerely hope you still enjoy it after getting the 40 or so blueprint fragments.

I personally massively enjoyed the new interaction, the first time, and even a couple of times after.

When I did it, the obelisks would also grant some blueprint fragments at random, so I managed to get enough for the Gauss Cannon (fixed) and have some left over module and weapon blueprint fragments.

I left, slightly annoyed, after getting enough for that one weapon though, as I became dissapointed with the way it is handled, and still feel it is a flawed design. The interaction itself is fine as a one or two time thing, and honestly, if it wasn't 1000 odd lightyears out from the bubble, it also wouldn't be as bad, especially if there was the odd mission to go there and get a few guardian materials for some scientists who contacted you via the inbox or something.

As it is, I have to specifically travel a good long distance, to perform one action multiple times, then travel back, which for me, isn't great.


I hope once you've unlocked a few more you still enjoy it.

A lot of people find it isn't very engaging the way it currently works.

Lots of things get samey after a while, that's why I tend to just muck around and do whatever I feel like. I find the lack of a plan suits me for this game.

A home station with different ships/modules in storage also means I can grab any old mission I like the look of on a whim.
 
So the gauntlet hasn't been picked up?

By me yes, by FDEV no.

Having conducted extensive in game research it's really not a big deal at all. Far easier than things like military rank or unlocking some engineers, and it's different therefore interesting as long as you don't decide to grind for it all at once (this applies to everything in the game). Take a spooky holiday in Velas Dark and come back with new stuff, what's not to like.

Even the negatrons have admitted it's only actually the data requirements of the guardian specific things that they think are a bit overly hard.

In conclusion : Shock cannon's are extremely funky, if you get on with it instead of moaning/refusing you can have nice things if you want.
 
Unfortunately stigbob's "extensive" research doesn't appear to have involved any realistic timings, and is premised by the notion that only one of these unlocks at the time is THE way to do it.

But that aside, timings alone are missing the point. The issue is not the absolute amount of time taken - I have no problem with that being longer - it's the fact that the task is the repetition of the same task. Doing it a couple of times is fun. Doing it repeatedly is not. Games are supposed to be fun. So I don't mind if the unlocks take longer, or if they are harder, if they are fun.

Why is this important? We'd all like the game to be fun, so more people play, so FDev make more money, which in turn leads them to commit more resources to Elite, and that benefits everyone.
 
Unfortunately stigbob's "extensive" research doesn't appear to have involved any realistic timings, and is premised by the notion that only one of these unlocks at the time is THE way to do it.

But that aside, timings alone are missing the point. The issue is not the absolute amount of time taken - I have no problem with that being longer - it's the fact that the task is the repetition of the same task. Doing it a couple of times is fun. Doing it repeatedly is not. Games are supposed to be fun. So I don't mind if the unlocks take longer, or if they are harder, if they are fun.

Why is this important? We'd all like the game to be fun, so more people play, so FDev make more money, which in turn leads them to commit more resources to Elite, and that benefits everyone.

Of course I have realistic timings and I am happy to explain in detail.

Human unlock of the shock cannon took one hour fifteen minutes from start to fitting the weapon (I know precisely as I did it whilst cooking a haggis to perfection, which was perfect), it would have been shorter if I hadn't taken the opportunity to max out mat storage on multiple other mats that were plentiful whilst looking for technetium but I was having fun driving so what the heck.

Gaurdian unlock, 25 minutes out to the sites included the time it took to refit my ship. Half an hours tourism just looking about going "OOOH" so we won't count that because you grinders don't smell the roses. 6-8 minutes per data thing, so that's less than an hour for something "hard" like the plasma charger if you do it by relogging, I added extra tourist time by pottering around between different sites and not relogging just because it's fun.

So 25 minutes travel time about an hour for enough stuff for even the "trickiest" of unlocks half that for the easy ones like power generator, and you get the rest of the bits just whilst activating pylons and fighting drones.

If it needs a balance pass I'd decrease the timer's as they are so long you can totally ignore it, provided you survey the site from the air and know where the bits are when you start.

Fighting guardian drones is fun, guardian weapons are fun visiting the structures is fun.
 
I was wondering if this thread was going to break the 1000 post mark ..get in there.

Sorry nothing more to add, havnt changed my mind doing the same thing over and over is still not fun even if you dont do it all in one sitting.
 
The concern has never been time investment; this is a diabolically poor argument given a great many have many hundreds or thousands of hours invested in elite.

It's the arbitrary repetition for undefined reasons with no apparent overarching design goal. Scan something 20 times. Why? Because they can. Because the players will do it. Regardless of how inane that task is. Because the developer has learnt that any number of commanders will pull the same damned lever endlessly, because they are told to.

Frontier does this, because they know we will do it anyway. When you have a player base that settles for mindless repetition, and will in fact heartily defend that? Why do anything else. You don't have to. Just add another lever. The monkey's will pull it again and again. And love you for it. There are a few people who say they never pull the lever in a concerted fashion. They do, even if they refuse to admit. We all do. To play the game, at all, is to pull the lever.

Frontier does this, because they know it works, and when you are on the clock with a huge amount to deliver and you do not have an inexhaustible supply of time and people? You do what Frontier does. It's as simple as that. And it works. Even when people moan and complain and protest. Eventually? The lever will be pulled. Frontier has an amazing game; that is very pretty, with just an endless supply of levers.

They've done well to have so many on board with that. But people, eventually, get tired of pulling levers. There's ample example of 'one lever too many'. And that's the bit that Frontier really struggle to comprehend even exists. The exhaustion. The dev-streams are wonderful. They're also a sh*tty presentation of the game because no-one else has that experience. None of us do.

Magic in a, or b, and show the mechanic and move on. It sets an incomprehensible tone to any player, because it's simply not a valid representation of the experience. And that's the point of the thread; Frontier has, honestly, lost track of the experience.

And arguably? doesn't even realise that's on show, every time the team cheats in x, or y, because time is short and we have to show the community the latest changes. It just reinforces the disconnect. Over, and over again. When you're building experience A, but present B, endlessly? Something has gone a bit wrong.
 
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The concern has never been time investment; this is a diabolically poor argument given a great many have many hundreds or thousands of hours invested in elite.

It's the arbitrary repetition for undefined reasons with no apparent designed reason. Scan something 20 times. Why? Because we can. Because we've learnt that any number of commanders will pull the same damned lever endlessly, because we tell them to.

Frontier does this, because they know we will do it anyway. When you have a player base that settles for mindless repetition, and will in fact heartily defend that? Why do anything else. You don't have to. Just add another lever. The monkey's will pull it again and again. And love you for it.

They do this, because they know it works, and when you are on the clock with a huge amount to deliver and you do not have an inexhaustible supply of time and people? You do what Frontier does. It's as simple as that.

As Long, as there are enough happy monkeys, nothing will be changed!;)
 
The concern has never been time investment; this is a diabolically poor argument given a great many have many hundreds or thousands of hours invested in elite.

It's the arbitrary repetition for undefined reasons with no apparent designed reason. Scan something 20 times. Why? Because we can. Because we've learnt that any number of commanders will pull the same damned lever endlessly, because we tell them to.

Frontier does this, because they know we will do it anyway. When you have a player base that settles for mindless repetition, and will in fact heartily defend that? Why do anything else. You don't have to. Just add another lever. The monkey's will pull it again and again. And love you for it.

They do this, because they know it works, and when you are on the clock with a huge amount to deliver and you do not have an inexhaustible supply of time and people? You do what Frontier does. It's as simple as that.

Anyone with thousands of hours already played isn't in a position to claim their time is valuable or they won't do stuff that would add a couple more.

All video games are timesinks.
 
The monkey's will pull it again and again. And love you for it. There are a few people who say they never pull the lever in a concerted fashion. They do, even if they refuse to admit. We all do.

i don't, and i'm not so sure about this particular lever. yes, players have bought en masse into the ranks and engineering crap but my impression is the thargoid zoo is faring considerably worse. i might be totally wrong, just a gut feeling from the amount of videos posted and the reactions to the topic on this forum. i also have a rough theory of why.

so it may be true that someone in frontier are scratching their heads while looking at the usage stats and patterns regarding bug modules. not to be too overly optimistic, this doesn't mean the next thing will be anything but another lever, just a different kind of it.
 
Anyone with thousands of hours already played isn't in a position to claim their time is valuable or they won't do stuff that would add a couple more.

All video games are timesinks.
"We've tortured you for a week solid now, so we don't imagine you'd mind if we tortured you for a few more hours."
The existence of a whole bunch of garbage is not good justification for producing more garbage.
 
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