I dont get why everyone thinks Ellite is such a grind
- Thread starter DR Grandreefer
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Same 'ere.
Ditto for any offerings on "duh, missions!" board.
Or the bizarre, awkward "passenger lounge", with all its weird passenger's conditions and neuroses.
Or 'supercruise' AKA the up-a-bit, left-a-bit minigame, for people who like having stars, planets and stations repeatedly, unceremoniously, smashed in their faces. Not for me. I actually like the ceremony of physically flying, through space, in a controlled approach to my targets. But hey, horses for courses, right?
I also avoid combat - or rather, i let it avoid me, since that seems to be the default game design - since without freedom to control the ship it's nothing but pure irritance; protracted, ambling, robotic dreariness..
Mostly, i just slooowly roll and pitch, since that's all you can do - yawing is literally impossible without putting my foot through the monitor - so i just roll and pitch around a little, and maybe go through the docking ritual again, if i can even be bothered before logging out in disgust.
Grind is for RL, i play games for some light relief..
I have never enjoyed "grind" type play, never sat and swapped mission boards, and generally don't do anything that doesn't feel like actual gameplay.
The Thargoid content has not really been much of a grind, IMO. From how I've played it, rather good fun. The AX weapons were created by CGs, and are available at surface Military bases, costing nothing more than credits. I've collected Thargoid Tissue samples using a ship that was largely unengineered (just the FSD, and shield, IIRC).
And while the current Thargoid story progression is not as dramatic as many (myself included) had hoped, still I've been able find hours of fun play as the Thargoids attack and advance over the last few weeks. Again no grind here, and I've found my self quite nicely rewarded.
What I'm doing is running a dual front arrangement of my fleet, which I move to follow the Thargoid line of attack. My anti-Thargoid combat ship is on the front lines, taking down Thargoid Scouts in the systems likely to be attacked next week. This has been good fun, improves my aim, and actually helps to steer the course of the Thargoid story.
My second front is keeping my Type-9 back at a station which was attacked last week. These stations are filled with evacuees paying to be transported to the rescue ship. Plus both the wrecked station and the rescue ship are paying well for medicines and emergency supplies. At Spocs 253, both the rescue ship and an industrial station supplying cheap medicines (which sell at 4k+ profit per ton) are only 350Ls apart, no FSD jump required.
Rewards for this play?
My combat skills are definitely improved, getting loads of practice in both turning and energy fighting. The Thargoid Scouts are all Elite ranked, so I'm rapidly gaining Combat rank, too.
Each delivery of medicines to the rescue ships pays between 2 and 3 million credits, in my Type-9. Total cash earned so far (including some from Passenger Evacuation missions) is around 100 million credits.
And finally, an unexpected benefit. By cashing in the Passenger missions for (Rep+++) instead of credits, I've gone from a Federal Navy rank of Ensign, to Rear Admiral (which unlocked the Federal Corvette). Plus I still sometimes get paid nearly 1 million in credits for the 5 second trip between the wrecked station and the rescue ship, to drop them off (mission time bonuses and such).
These rewards will shortly be embodied in a new Federal Corvette to fight the Thargoids.
Watching the Thargoid attack story unfold on Galnet or the forums, it wasn't obvious this play could exist there. But once I got into it and developed a play strategy, for me it's been better than a CG.
That's beside the point, though, isn't it?
What you're doing is acknowledging that there IS stuff in ED that's a "grind" and you're choosing to avoid it.
That's fine as long as you're happy to forego the things the "grind" can provide but it doesn't mean the "grind" isn't actually there.
Here's the thing; people approach games differently. There is also variable time commitment per day/ week or whatever. This is okay. The fascination that everyone must play the same way, and invest the same amount of hours every day, is incredibly flawed and an entirely redundant consideration.
None of which has anything to do with how engaging a game is, or isn't. High time commitment, does not automatically make a great game. Just a very slow-paced one. Why, is sometimes just as important as what. There's a large amount of what, very little why.
Adding more why, does not fundimentally change the what; it does however impact pacing and experience and creates more engaging experiences. Something Frontier could well consider doing more of. The mechanics and structure for this is already in place.
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This is ultimately where we are; everyone claiming "there is no grind" either is ignoring the obvious repetition (such as engineering) or suffix "it's not a grind" with an entire aspect of the game they don't do (because that might be a grind). Which is, really, quite remarkable.
A few genuinely love running a lot of menial tasks; fair enough; there's a fair bit of that.
Repetition and grind is a well established thing, and is hardly weird for Frontier to do that. What I find confusing, is that folks are, genuinely and quite fervently arguing against adding more reason, more "why" for what happens. I'll never get why people want the game to remain a shell for endless-loops, and actually fight pretty hard to keep that stark repetition, contextless loops and somewhat barren engagement.
Purpose. Ambition. Neither of these things exist as triggers in elite (crazy ideas often born from immense frustration, shouldn't really be lauded as somehow the game being amazing); and almost everyone, eventually, works out this is missing. Some? Don't care. It fills in the copious time they have. But I'd argue a great many do. Because if you take a step back; it's not so much the mechanics people really complain about?
It's "why". Why are we doing almost anything, at this point? There is no why; only do. Elite has become Yoda; and in the confused rambling sense, not the crazy jedi kick your butt sense. Frontier have always been focused on the execution, rather than the experience. I don't really think this will change now, unless Frontier discover considerable motivation to do so. I want to play more of this game; I don't, because the repetition has become exhausting, and despite endless protestations, I will always have goals in any game I play. As does most everyone, to some degree.
Telling people to be aimless and have no goals, just so Elite isn't tiresome, is a truely crazy thing to tell people. Yet it happens, every day. I find that remarkable.
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A lot of people have stopped playing. I haven't uninstalled yet, hoping that the next update will show signs of life but not optimistic. You personally may enjoy the grind, but to say it's in people's head...well, google "Elite Dangerous", "review" and "boring" and see what you get.
Avoid grind doesn't mean having no goals, it means allowing yourself to be distracted and to do anything that seems fun/interesting at that moment whilst having long term and short term goals.
I wound up unlocking some guardian stuff just to see if was as bad as everyone said (it wasn't), I had fun got some funky stuff that's excellent against thargoids. I've found out by taking random missions I fancied whilst fighting thargoids that the shock cannon's are one of the most effective assassination weapons there are, you can spank out an amazing amount of damage as rapidly as you pull the trigger. No use for BH'ing as they have no ammo longevity but stonking a shields down corvette quickly with them is a blast. Now I'm at the BH'ing CG trying hybrid loadouts of guardian and standard weapons and my FDL has never been so much fun.
My current long term goal for all of the above is explorer elite, which can wait.
Maybe you just enjoy doing what other people consider a grind.
And? Does it prove my point wrong? I didn't realize I was exclusively talking to you. Fact is, many of these who have stopped playing (oh the drama, how long would you think does the average player stay at a given title?) are still here and "grind" the forums. So it's these players I'm talking about and who support my statement. Furthermore, if a single person could prove anything (read: not) I could mention that I'm playing ED for about 5 years now with a total of more than 6200 hours now, and that's not even a "record". If I would have perceived the whole journey as a grind you could certainly visit me now in a sanatorium. So you just could believe me on that?
I don't refuse that some if not many people perceive the game as a grind. But to say the game *is* a grind is totally ignoring the subjective nature of this word which isn't much more than just a personal thing, a mindset. I laugh at all these funny attempts to explain to me why the game is such a grind. Usually games are over for me after 3 month, a few CRPGs (singleplayer) aside. I've played a lot of MMOs but none came even close to the 5 years of Elite. Do you really think I'm a masochist? [wacky]
But I have to admit, I still have a life with a lot of outdoor activities. Maybe that's doing the trick...
You seem ... upset. Show us where the bad critics have hurt your confidence in one of your favourite activities. It always helps to talk about it.
Maybe I knew what I was buying and only do video game things for fun. Given I'm happy with the game which one of us has the better approach ?.
I don't see how that "proves" anything, beyond the fact that people enjoy the game enough to continue to advocate for improvements to the parts of the game they find to be tedious.
Let's face it, if we all permanently stopped doing things the that we found tedious, there'd be nobody actually playing the game any more.
And? Does it prove my point wrong? I didn't realize I was exclusively talking to you. Fact is, many of these who have stopped playing (oh the drama, how long would you think does the average player stay at a given title?) are still here and "grind" the forums. So it's these players I'm talking about and who support my statement. Furthermore, if a single person could prove anything (read: not) I could mention that I'm playing ED for about 5 years now with a total of more than 6200 hours now, and that's not even a "record". If I would have perceived the whole journey as a grind you could certainly visit me now in a sanatorium. So you just could believe me on that?
I don't refuse that some if not many people perceive the game as a grind. But to say the game *is* a grind is totally ignoring the subjective nature of this word which isn't much more than just a personal thing, a mindset. I laugh at all these funny attempts to explain to me why the game is such a grind. Usually games are over for me after 3 month, a few CRPGs (singleplayer) aside. I've played a lot of MMOs but none came even close to the 5 years of Elite. Do you really think I'm a masochist? [wacky]
But I have to admit, I still have a life with a lot of outdoor activities. Maybe that's doing the trick...
I think that most reasonable people would accept that the game is grindy. It's not 'subjective', it's obvious. If you enjoy that sort of thing great. It's not a crime.
Any game eventually gets boring. I see some people here are playing since the beginning. Logging some incredible time within the game. I've never heard of any other game lasting that long save for some persistent MMOs. People are grinding away apparently for thousands of hours? Every game runs it's course and ED is no exception. I've long thought that it's the core gameplay that needed the most work, especially the mission system/BGS and exploration. Perhaps Frontier will finally bring us some improvements that flesh out the core gameplay loops and really make the game engaging for the individual commander. Really the only breakthrough additions that genuinely have added more gameplay since launch are planetary landings and engineers(which in my opinion is a little meh).
Only time will tell, but playing one game for 3000 hrs+ is bound to make anyone a little jaded when the mechanics of the game are basically the same as upon release in 2014. Stuff like multicrew and PP are also barely fleshed out and need a ton of tweaking but I hope Frontier really does focus on the core game like they promised this year. BGS missions, exploration, and mining could all use some updating to help break up the perceived grind.
I'm hopping in and out of Elite while playing other games and that really helps keep things fresh. Log in, get a few things done here and there. I can't imagine playing the game for as long as some of ya'll though.
Only time will tell, but playing one game for 3000 hrs+ is bound to make anyone a little jaded when the mechanics of the game are basically the same as upon release in 2014. Stuff like multicrew and PP are also barely fleshed out and need a ton of tweaking but I hope Frontier really does focus on the core game like they promised this year. BGS missions, exploration, and mining could all use some updating to help break up the perceived grind.
I'm hopping in and out of Elite while playing other games and that really helps keep things fresh. Log in, get a few things done here and there. I can't imagine playing the game for as long as some of ya'll though.
For my part I quit about a year ago and just came back to kick the tires. Elite is a grind, but all games which are designed to have more than a few 10s of hours of entertainment are grinds The more hours of dedicated play the more of a grind it will probably be perceived to have. Nothing wrong with 'grind' in the game sense. The issue is when people are using 'grind' in the pejorative sense to mean 'pointless'.
For me ED became a grind and I quit. It was a grind because it was clear that FD was taking the lore, the story, the game bits they'd developed like BGS and PP and mashing it all together to make World Of EliteCraft. There was no real point in the game other than to get a new ship so you could do stuff to get a new ship faster. There are so many things they could have been doing with PowerPlay, the BGS, combat zones that could have been fun in their own right but everything was devolving into either new ship or new ways of getting bits to stick on new ship. It was like World of Warcraft in space for me.
That made playing the game a grind because it wasn't headed anywhere that I could see, I absolutely get that's not true of everyone. I've come back, mostly to poke around but I don't exactly see any plans on the horizon that isn't just more of the same which is a real shame.
For me ED became a grind and I quit. It was a grind because it was clear that FD was taking the lore, the story, the game bits they'd developed like BGS and PP and mashing it all together to make World Of EliteCraft. There was no real point in the game other than to get a new ship so you could do stuff to get a new ship faster. There are so many things they could have been doing with PowerPlay, the BGS, combat zones that could have been fun in their own right but everything was devolving into either new ship or new ways of getting bits to stick on new ship. It was like World of Warcraft in space for me.
That made playing the game a grind because it wasn't headed anywhere that I could see, I absolutely get that's not true of everyone. I've come back, mostly to poke around but I don't exactly see any plans on the horizon that isn't just more of the same which is a real shame.
The better approach is to do what you enjoy. If you like the "grind" in Elite, just do that, if not, there are hundreds of other awesome games out there.
I do what I enjoy. I facilitate this by researching video games before buying, and opting out of things in the game I don't enjoy like grind.
That's a good practice. Although I admit I enjoy sometimes some games with grinding, like Black Desert Online and Elite Dangerous.
I actually can't see that proof anywhere in your post.
Isn't your entire perception of surrounding world and self-awareness ultimately originating in your cognitive functions being sophisticated enough to acknowledge self-existence?
As in: everything you do and think originates in your head?
If "yes", then yup - grind is a misconception originating in player's heads. And so is the lack of grind.