I dont get why everyone thinks Ellite is such a grind

[crushdepth]

I agree with you, if you don't like the game you should uninstall it immediately. Anything else means you are doing it wrong.

Good luck with your next purchase, perhaps a little reading prior to buying would be advantageous.

Or players can make their views known en masse and get the problem areas addressed. Which is what happened with engineers and what is happening with the Gaurdian grind.

Uninstalling coz you don't like it was the option we had when games came in shrink wrapped boxes and there was no way to communicate with devs.

This is the future people, lets use this internet thing to make the gaming world a better place.

 

[Stealthie]

2 weeks 4 days and 16 hours played. I have a Cutter and I expect her to be fully engineered by the end of tonight. Im still saying some players out there have the ability to make this game easy. Its about us working together to help the newer ones become more veteran to ever aspect of Elite...If they want to.

Are you, at some point, going to reveal HOW all this amazing stuff is possible without grind?

I mean, 2 weeks to unlock the Cutter is no big deal. I did it in 3 days.
There was a certain amount of grind involved though.

Spoiler

 

[Stigbob]

Or players can make their views known en masse and get the problem areas addressed. Which is what happened with engineers and what is happening with the Gaurdian grind.

I'm guessing as with engineering V1&2 I'll be happy before and after the guardian rebalance, the people who where unhappy before will probably continue to be.

Uninstalling coz you don't like it was the option we had when games came in shrink wrapped boxes and there was no way to communicate with devs.

Informed purchase decisions prevent it ever arising in the first place.

This is the future people, lets use this internet thing to make the gaming world a better place.

If more people were as positive as me about video games, we'd already be there.

 

[NeilF]

What is the issue about this grind, is that it consist of scarce amount of simple actions. Which you have to repeat over and over and over.

Yep - Consider over the past 3+ years how much development time has been spent on truly increasing the number of activities and most importantly their depth and how they can be layered on each other. The answer is precious little. With most development time seemingly going into shallow dead-end bolt-ons.

eg: Engineers simply rewards farming the same X year old gameplay with materials, to then enhance your ship with 2x the pewpew power (needlessly) to then go about the same X year old gameplay again. And let's not even start with how beneficial CQC, Generation Ships and Multicrew etc have been to the core game.


We will quite literally have waited four years since release by Q4 of this year to finally see FD commit some true effort at moving core gameplay forwards (exploration & mining), and we can but hope these efforts are going to finally add some worthwhile depth and variety.

Now what about piracy/criminality, bounty hunting, stealth, stateful NPCs and some actually interesting and involved combat scenarios comparable to even 20+year old space sims?

 

[uliando]

For once i'm not a person who enjoys counting grains of sand one by one for fun.

 

[DR Grandreefer]

Are you, at some point, going to reveal HOW all this amazing stuff is possible without grind?

I mean, 2 weeks to unlock the Cutter is no big deal. I did it in 3 days.
There was a certain amount of grind involved though.

You only need an inara account. All details are public to any one who has an account and wants to see all that I have done in under 3 weeks. I will admit that once I knew I had the rank for the Cutter I grinded out assassin missions...a crap load. Over like the past week. It was repeative and surprisely, with the targets having engineering now, not always easy. So yes a bit of a grind was there. But you must remember this is my second time through. If anyone would think everything, (engineering, reps an military ranks, money) Was too grindy then how did it all get done with so much ease. I see posts on the forums talking about no content and how it’s just such a problem to progress (most of these post took longer to write then It took me to make 100 million per account) and as I go through the paces with my second account I see that it’s easier now then it’s probably ever been. People need to stop crying. Everything in Elite has multiple ways to complete. You need to find one that is easiest for you. That’s not saying it’s going to be easy. Nothing worth while is. And if you don’t have s clue how to do something google something. Ask some friends. I dare say me having an almost fully engineered PvE Cutter in under a month might be too easy but the community veterans can help you figure that out. You only need to ask. I also keep seeing more and more tutorials go up for every aspect of Elite.

CMDR Exigeous - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Rwxz4318EEQGHz_z58nVA
Vindicater Jones - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5QlW7L8XZcVBmRvpScs8kA
L’Intouchable - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3VfulU2-GRR4Ed4aIYN51A

these guys all have great videos and show a lot of the stuff I and a lot of regular Elite players use.

 

[CMDR Robb Macruz]

Or, you know, maybe they're not actually grinding? Nothing in the game says you have to get X ship by such-a-time or that you have to unlock all the engineer stuff all at once. What keeps the game from being a grind is the ability to take these things at whatever pace you like. You don't have to collect all the MFU in one day. You can fly around doing a bit of everything or a whole lot of nothing and the game will progress in almost exactly the same way. It's not like you have to grind out a billion credits before the game gives you the next story-mission.

But hey, those who find the game is a grind and don't like it are more than welcome to go play something else. Personally, having played my share of very very grindy games, I find ED better than most. YMMV. Some people just lack imagination, I think....

Same as you aren't forced to complete dark souls with 40 str 40 dex 30 vit and 30 stam, yet the option to go do a naked soul level 1 run and the option to just level up need no grind or anything, just playing here in elite how much fun can you get out of a sidewinder when you start seeing missions to run 150 tons of cargo paying 3 million? or if you want to go against thargoids? how many options when "just playing the game in a non grindy way" do you have?

 

[znôrt]

wow, 450 posts. i wonder if op has understood by now why elite is a grind?

 

[Red Anders]

2 weeks 4 days and 16 hours played. I have a Cutter and I expect her to be fully engineered by the end of tonight.

2 weeks, 4 days and 16 hours works out at 10 months with an average playtime of 10 hours per week.

The actual average playtime will be considerably less than 10 hours a week. I already said that this is why it doesn't seem long to you. You play a lot compared to most people. The fact it's a relatively small portion of your own time in the game isn't any basis from which to judge other people's experience when you are a statistical outlier.

 

[mdmaniac44]

Same as you aren't forced to complete dark souls with 40 str 40 dex 30 vit and 30 stam, yet the option to go do a naked soul level 1 run and the option to just level up need no grind or anything, just playing here in elite how much fun can you get out of a sidewinder when you start seeing missions to run 150 tons of cargo paying 3 million? or if you want to go against thargoids? how many options when "just playing the game in a non grindy way" do you have?

My solution is to keep switching around what I'm doing. That way, I'm not "grinding" the same RES or Guardian site or Engineer or trade route. Instead of "I'm going to fully engineer X ship" my target has been to unlock a few engineers, see what I can do with what I have, and then go do something else. Right now, I'm back on Exploration - heading into a random nebula somewhere just because I can - which properly entails surface prospecting when I find a metal rich planet to play with, popping into USSs where I might find stuff and, obviously, scanning stuff. I'm not just grinding out Earth-like planet scans because that, by definition and experience, is a grind.

Look, if you want to achieve all your goals yesterday you'll have to grind things out. You want to fight thargoids, you're going to need AX weapons -- those are for sale, you just need credits. You don't have to grind to make credits. If you want Engineered stuff then you're going to have to fly around in your spaceship (in a spaceship flying game) to unlock them. You can make this relatively easy on yourself by using a Hauler taxi with 30+ ly range. Flying around and finding meta-alloys or Soonthil relics is part of the core game. It would be a grind if you had to bring Felicity Farseer 1,000 units of meta-alloys but she only wants 1.

To answer your other question: How much fun can you have in a Sidewinder? Plenty! Someone went across the Galaxy in one some time ago. You can earn money in one if you know how. You see missions to run 150t of cargo and you can ignore them or you can go buy a Type-6. You don't have to immediately buy an iClipper.

If I wanted to grind, I could. I could have spent much more playing time running trade between an Outbreak system and Medicine exporter. I was making about 7-8 mil per hour in a T7. I just wanted to pay off the truck before I went and did something else, though. And something else I did. I used that T7 to rescue passengers from a burning station. That was the most fun I've had in the game so far! Then I decided I should unlock an Engineer, so I did that. At no point in time have I felt as though the game was an unbearable grind. If something feels grindy, I just stop doing it and go do something else. I know I need materials for Engineers. I keep my eyes open for opportunities while I'm doing other stuff. I have collector limpets on my combat ships so I can pick up all that valuable material when they go pop. At some point, I'll go back to the Engineers and see what I have and what I need for further upgrades.

Elite: Dangerous is as fun as you make it. You've bought a sandbox to play in. Don't be that millenial who expects the folks selling you the sandbox to make your sandcastles for you.

 

[DR Grandreefer]

2 weeks, 4 days and 16 hours works out at 10 months with an average playtime of 10 hours per week.

The actual average playtime will be considerably less than 10 hours a week. I already said that this is why it doesn't seem long to you. You play a lot compared to most people. The fact it's a relatively small portion of your own time in the game isn't any basis from which to judge other people's experience when you are a statistical outlier.

At 10 hours a day thats only 44.5 days. Pretty consistent with all games. In fact if I bought a game and it lasted for less I would feel the price of that game would be wasted. Even at 5 hours a day you should take more then 90 days to complete it. We can do math but we should get the math right. But 10 months? That would be like 2.5 hours a day and I still think at that rate I would expect to take 10 months to beat any large game like Skyrim or Fallout it still pretty well matches up. I can’t think of large scale games to compare right now, there is a bunch, but I think you get where I’m going.

 

[kofeyh]

Elite: Dangerous is as fun as you make it. You've bought a sandbox to play in.

This would be true, if we could build sandcastles as we see fit; we cannot. It's not a sandbox in the strict sense, because Frontier decided only some of the sand can be changed. Most of it changes by itself.

Yes, the game is as fun as you can make it. But it's only as much fun as you can make it, because after the first dozen hours, you realise where the edges of the sandpit are, have bumped into virtually all the mechanics by that point, and you'll potentially need several hundred million for a better shovel.

No-one is asking for the game to build sandcastles anyway (even though, ironically, the BGS does this all the time) it's to offer reasons to build them, beyond requiring people endlessly even them.

 

[kofeyh]

At 10 hours a day that only 44.5 days. Pretty consistent with all games.

I'm going to go out on a limb and presume you believe everyone has 10 hours, every day, for games. I stream every day virtually, and still can't manage 10 hours a day because that's ends up being 6-or-7 am in the morning. Even if I start at 7PM my time, that's still 5am in the morning. 10 hours is a heck of an expectation, even for a weekend.

Because I have a job and commitments, outside of elite; so evenings and parts of the weekend are all I have; and all a considerable number of players will have. Before you glaze over and claim I am some irrelevant 'casual', I have around 2000+ hours invested in elite; have 3 accounts and even then, almost never managed 10 hours a day; even on weekends.

This automatically extends the time taken. Because of course it will. Quite a few people with relatively low hours per day, have still amassed thousands in game; it's just taken years to do.

Suggesting 10 hours a day, is pretty hilarious for a great many people.

 

[WR3ND]

This would be true, if we could build sandcastles as we see fit; we cannot. It's not a sandbox in the strict sense, because Frontier decided only some of the sand can be changed. Most of it changes by itself.

...

Yeah, I consider it a mostly free form and open ended game, but not really a sandbox one, like say, Minecraft or Space Engineers. You don't really change much at all in the game other than things like ship outfitting, which I see as more of a player gear thing, and some stuff with factions and the BGS. So, there are elements of a sandbox game here to an extent, but I wouldn't really qualify it as being one in general.

I'm fine with that though. I don't think every game needs to be a sandbox game. I think there might be some room for improvement though with things like the economy, values of exploration data at different locations for different types of bodies scanned with different mineral resources, and so on.

...

Anyway, more on topic, I don't mind so much the time it takes to do things in the game (I generally don't play this game as some sort of a race toward "end-game" content), I'd just prefer if certain aspects of it were more compelling and engaging instead of repetitive.

For me, exploration is alright (though I think it could be better), because the various types of systems and configurations out there as well as vantage points can help keep it interesting. On the other hand, I'm having a bit of a rough go with Engineering of late. Getting what I want to accomplish with them done is much, much more efficient if I focus on it instead of doubling back to do other things I enjoy more, but as such, it gets very monotonous to me.

Fully maxing out an Engineered ship is almost beyond my comprehension and I'm not sure it's something I'll ever be able to bring myself to do in the game. But hey, I'm getting a lot of other material drops on my way, so who knows?

 

[kofeyh]

In short, it's more efficient to focus on a task, than not; Frontier, and Elite by extension simultaneously assume you do not focus on a task, but design the mechanics to be most effective if you do. This extends through virtually every mechanic; it encourages compressed repetition, despite this being pretty hard going and not at all enjoyable.

This is equally where Frontier's disconnect is. Despite their mechanics almost fanatical approach to repetition, there's this belief apparently none of us focus on anything at all? Despite endless evidence to the contrary. It's really weird. Versions around 1.3-1.4 may have been bare as hell, from a mechanics standpoint; but the game simply did not get in the way, didn't overly care how you played, and wasn't overly obsessed about your bank account.

Frontier have added a huge amount of good; but the walls are there, and they are hard work if you tend to focus on goals. I still can't shake the notion Frontier doesn't quite understand that's a problem worth solving.

edited (sorry stigbob) because I want to retain a positive note.

--

Anyhoo - hope you find your mojo WR3ND; vulture is a fine ship - ignore the h8ers. And if a little company would help? I have a beginner account who needs some mats, so feel free to reach out to 'Cookie Clicker' in game (yes, I am a hilarious and also very stupid guy, love me).

 

[Stigbob]

Same as you aren't forced to complete dark souls with 40 str 40 dex 30 vit and 30 stam, yet the option to go do a naked soul level 1 run and the option to just level up need no grind or anything, just playing here in elite how much fun can you get out of a sidewinder when you start seeing missions to run 150 tons of cargo paying 3 million? or if you want to go against thargoids? how many options when "just playing the game in a non grindy way" do you have?

For thargoid scouts you just need any ship and some AX weps. Or guardian weps if you have them.

 

[mdmaniac44]

In short, it's more efficient to focus on a task, than not; Frontier, and Elite by extension simultaneously assume you do not focus on a task, but design the mechanics to be most effective if you do. This extends through virtually every mechanic; it encourages compressed repetition, despite this being pretty hard going and not at all enjoyable.

This is equally where Frontier's disconnect is. Despite their mechanics almost fanatical approach to repetition, there's this belief apparently none of us focus on anything at all? Despite endless evidence to the contrary. It's really weird. We've all seen Ed (lovely chap, I've met him and he's really cool) magic in stuff during a stream; because there's simply no time within the 1-2 hours they have, to do this the way every other player must. An experience is vastly different, when you short-circuit repetition barriers (that obviously have been added for some reason or other).

Credits probably weren't meant to be that much of a barrier (hence why the game is a huge time-and-credit sink) but has become one due to the plethora of (now very expensive) options and Frontier's somewhat militant approach to wealth creation (which has now been absorbed by a portion of the player base who also protest this, at great length). This creates a need for non-trivial cashflow - and the obvious conflict results; because a true sandbox would not give one proverbial if all you wanted is credits (neither should it's players) but boy do we know the answer to that one. Of course, the answer is "just don't do that?" but this is daft on the tail of "it's a sandbox, m8, it's up to you".

This is true, to an extent, for engineering as well; a value add and extension of capabilities, that's become a bit of a barrier. The game really shouldn't get in the way of folks who just want to focus on a goal (and should really facilitate that) just as it should for those who value the journey more. It does get in the way though. And sometimes delights unnecessarily in doing so. Which doesn't make it at all enjoyable.

Versions around 1.3-1.4 may have been bare as hell, from a mechanics standpoint; but the game simply did not get in the way, didn't overly care how you played, and wasn't overly obsessed about your bank account. My, have times changed.

--

Anyhoo - hope you find your mojo WR3ND; vulture is a fine ship - ignore the h8ers. And if a little company would help? I have a beginner account who needs some mats, so feel free to reach out to 'Cookie Clicker' in game (yes, I am a hilarious and also very stupid guy, love me).

The fact that the game mechanics "encourage" repetition does not mean that you HAVE to do things repetitively and thus feel like you're grinding. Which has been my point all along. Of course you *can* grind out your engineering or Guardian stuff or credits or ranks or whatever game mechanic you're looking to achieve. If you find it easier to focus on one thing and grind it into oblivion, great, that's your thing. People who are complaining about the level of grind in this game are making the game a grind for themselves because they feel as though that's what they're supposed to do.

As far as the game "getting in the way" of making credits... how so? I haven't run up against any particular barriers to making credits. Sure, the credit exploits get nerfed but that's part of the balance -- if you have a bunch of super-rich players then it's hard to have consequences to actions. Just like in real life, it ends up being one rule for us and another rule for the super-rich.

I agree that Engineering is somewhat of a barrier BUT... having started engineering, I'm seeing that it's just a matter of trading positives and negatives. Everything you do to your modules comes at a cost so it's just a matter of tuning them for the playstyle you want. Is it worth doing? Sure. Is it necessary? Not really. If you want to put duel beams on your Vulture, you need an engineered powerplant. Or you can not do that.

Anyway, this discussion is getting tiresome. I'm going to go and play because that's more fun!

 

[Muetdhiver]

IMO here is why :

It wants you to "play as you go/braze your own trail" but reward mindless repetition of tirvial tasks more than anything else in terms of ingame currencies (credits and materials)

ED rule of thumbs is : If it's highly challenging, it's low pay. If it requires time but present no challenge, it's high pay. Choosing to repeat the no challenge task for faster progression is grinding.

My definition of grind is : repetition a low challenge loop for an extrinsic reward (credits/materials). I prefer to be have a clear definition than a nebulous bag-it-all concept.

It makes the game a bit problematic : rewarding repetition of already mastered and often trivial content over exploration of higher difficulty ones is a nasty trap for progression driven players.
Which become unhappy pretty fast, after all, all other adventure games reward high difficult content with neat loot/rewards. Not ED though.
As such it's bad design and bad balancing in terms of invectives.

 

[DR Grandreefer]

I'm going to go out on a limb and presume you believe everyone has 10 hours, every day, for games. I stream every day virtually, and still can't manage 10 hours a day because that's ends up being 6-or-7 am in the morning. Even if I start at 7PM my time, that's still 5am in the morning. 10 hours is a heck of an expectation, even for a weekend.
Because I have a job and commitments, outside of elite; so evenings and parts of the weekend are all I have; and all a considerable number of players will have. Before you glaze over and claim I am some irrelevant 'casual', I have around 2000+ hours invested in elite; have 3 accounts and even then, almost never managed 10 hours a day; even on weekends.

This automatically extends the time taken. Because of course it will. Quite a few people with relatively low hours per day, have still amassed thousands in game; it's just taken years to do.

Suggesting 10 hours a day, is pretty hilarious for a great many people.

You quoted one small part. I broke it down more then that and you still assumed that I think everyone should be playing ten hours a day. I have already said many times that every hour I have mentioned in about 10 + posts on this feed alone is in game time. Yes, if you can only play 2 hours a day then it should take you some real life time to get through it all. A game is suppose to take some time. What do you think is a valid time for a playthrough of a game costing $60? And again I still think the repetitiveness and the progression complaining can still all be combated with just a bit more understanding. If something is too hard for you then figure out an easier way because nothing is hard in Elite. You are only making it hard for yourself. One thing I don’t get for the half of the people on this forum post that think they don’t have enough time to progress in Elite. How is it you have time to complain about the game that you don’t have the time to play?

 

[Muetdhiver]

... Yes, if you can only play 2 hours a day then it should take you some real life time to get through it all. A game is suppose to take some time...

Some other games like the Witcher have far more content to offer, yet can be played through in way less time than ED. Why ? Less downtime (glorified loading screens), and much higher content
density (you can get something significant done in 15min, not in ED tough. ED is 1.5h or do something else because you won't get anything done).

ED could definitly do with faster pacing and higher content density. At the moment the content density of ED is close to the stellar vacuum one and the pacing is akin to getting to alpha centauri with
chemical rockets.