Bored in Space: 5K LY to unlock Palin

[DDastardly00]

Isnt it ridiculous? I dont know how anyone ever thought this was good or interesting gameplay. If you want to explore, great, but forcing players to do some artificial grind and calling it gameplay?
Stuff like this is why i have bought my last FD game or dlc. Elite was a great game right up untill they ed all over it with the engineers.
Blaze your own trail

That's a mischaracterization, FD isn't forcing players to do anything, it's entirely optional. Many people choose not to bother with Engineers at all and that is their choice.

Also, you could just go see Felicity Farseer, get up to Grade 3 dirty drives and call it a day if you don't want to deal with Palin's unlock requirements and yet still have access to the blueprint....

 

[Lightspeed]

Well you're doing all all that to reach that reward not to see what it's like to go 5000 light-years which is really just a repetitive jump function over and over and over until you're sick of doing it.

When we have all of the modules we want many of us rarely engage in that again.

But the point of all the engineer tasks is (as it appears to me) to take us out of our comfort zones and experience features of the game that we might otherwise dismiss.

It would be interesting to know with the Palin requirement how many players give up on exploration in disgust, compared with how many decide, hey this is awesome ... it's full of stars ... I'll do this again !

 

[Schmack]

Or it could be "prove to me that you are an explorer and worthy of this splendid addition to your ship."

One jump or 100 jumps what's the difference? It's the exact same mechanic. Now if he said go out and be the first 1st discoverer of some planet that would be different.

 

[Lightspeed]

One jump or 100 jumps what's the difference? It's the exact same mechanic. Now if he said go out and be the first 1st discoverer of some planet that would be different.

I agree it would be sensible to have a requirement to fetch something, either data from a scan, or something only obtainable at that distance, but he is effectively saying, "provide me with scan data obtained over a distance of 5000 lyrs." He doesn't say that exactly, but that is what you are doing, just that you get to keep the profits.

 

[Schmack]

But the point of all the engineer tasks is (as it appears to me) to take us out of our comfort zones and experience features of the game that we might otherwise dismiss.

Fighting five ships at once takes people out of their comfort zone sometimes. Landing on a planet to collect meta Alloys takes people out of their comfort zone. Those are engaging tasks. Repetitiveness is not a comfort zone issue. It's a boredom issue. I'm not out of my comfort zone to jump five thousand times. I'm out of my mind.

Bring me $100,000 worth of combat bonds but do it 400 times. That would not be a comfort zone issue. Maybe the first one hundred thousand would be.

It would be interesting to know with the Palin requirement how many players give up on exploration in disgust, compared with how many decide, hey this is awesome ... it's full of stars ... I'll do this again !

Sure forcing people to do things they don't like doing in order to try to coax them into the notion that your lazy gameplay mechanic is somehow fun is a great idea.

Maybe I should make my child sit in the closet and eat 500 tomatoes. That way they'll love tomatoes.

 

[Lightspeed]

I don't think you really appreciate exploration until you've covered about 5000 lyrs. That's probably why it was chosen. The first 5,000 lyrs are always the hardest .... after that it feels much easier and you settle into a pattern.

But if you perceive that "one jump or 100" are the same, I'm never going to persuade you. But, at the end of the day, as already said, nobody is forcing you to do this.

 

[Schmack]

I don't think you really appreciate exploration until you've covered about 5000 lyrs. That's probably why it was chosen. The first 5,000 lyrs are always the hardest .... after that it feels much easier and you settle into a pattern.

But if you perceive that "one jump or 100" are the same, I'm never going to persuade you. But, at the end of the day, as already said, nobody is forcing you to do this.

Well that's what locking content behind a grind wall is. They could always just offer you the option to go wherever you want and if that's what you want to do you can do it. You have the option before they blocked Palin behind the grind wall. Putting content behind that wall though in essence does force you to do it, just as much as you are forced to do anything in this game.

I don't need to be persuaded. I've been all over the galaxy. I actually like exploring. Jumping 5000 light-years is not exploring. It doesn't in any way represent exploring. If anything it will turn people off to the notion of exploration because they are jumping repetitively and not exploring anything.

Mining 500 tons of something means you have to go through all of the motions of mining including outfitting your ship. Jumping is just one button. You push that button you jump you land at a star...you push that button again you jump... you land at a star... over and over and over. No exploring.

 

[Lightspeed]

One jump or 100 jumps what's the difference? It's the exact same mechanic. Now if he said go out and be the first 1st discoverer of some planet that would be different.

You still get to be the first discover of a planet, in fact many planets. The only thing missing is Pailin asking you to do so. But I think it's inferred in the concept of travelling 5000 lyrs ... most players are intelligent enough to pick up on this.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Sure forcing people to do things they don't like doing in order to try to coax them into the notion that your lazy gameplay mechanic is somehow fun is a great idea.

I like exploration, so 5,000 LY wasn't a problem.

Mining 500t of whatever, with the prospect of more mining to come? Nope, not doing that. Likewise those Engineers wanting CZ bonds and combat rank - tedious and repetitive grind.

The whole 'try this, you might like it' concept of unlocking Engineers is ridiculous - I don't need parenting by a game.

 

[Lightspeed]

A lot of complainers forget that this is a space game ..... it has lots of space !

Obsidian Ant has been raving about Star Engine, and rightly so because it now includes the 'entire' Universe, though beyond the Milky Way (and even inside it) the presence of planets must be guess work. That has a button to press to take you to a location instantly. Anywhere in their universe.

Imagine if we had that in the game .... complaints about how shallow space travel is ... doesn't give the feeling of travelling through real space. Also, how shallow the requirements for engineers are ... why not have a button to press for an instant engineering mod?

It was the original intention of D Braben to simulate the Galaxy and give us a means of navigating it, yet experiencing the vastness of space within the restrictions of a game. There has to be a balance drawn somewhere.

But I feel it is reasonable to predict that we haven't seen the end of methods of travel and navigation that will bring the distant stars even closer in this game.

 

[aRJay]

One jump or 100 jumps what's the difference? It's the exact same mechanic. Now if he said go out and be the first 1st discoverer of some planet that would be different.

The trouble with that is that as more and more people go and explore the harder it gets to unlock the professor.

 

[aRJay]

Well that's what locking content behind a grind wall is. They could always just offer you the option to go wherever you want and if that's what you want to do you can do it. You have the option before they blocked Palin behind the grind wall. Putting content behind that wall though in essence does force you to do it, just as much as you are forced to do anything in this game.

….

It would only force you to do it if whatever is locked behind the grind wall, as you put it, is an essential in the game rather than just desirable.

I broke my Palin unlock trip up by exploring along the way and looking at the stars and nebulae, interest was added to the return trip by having to navigate around the blocked systems out there, but the big thing was to not force myself to a timescale to complete the trip.

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

It was the original intention of D Braben to simulate the Galaxy and give us a means of navigating it, yet experiencing the vastness of space within the restrictions of a game. There has to be a balance drawn somewhere.

I think Obsidian Ant's point, and I agree, is that you don't need time to make space seem vast. The numbers make it vast. You have billions of stars in the galaxy. That makes it vast.

If we're already traveling 50 light years in a few seconds, why does traveling 500 ly in a few seconds fundamentally change anything?

I love this game but I feel it's constantly punishing me by forcing me to do tedious things. My hope is to just push through and collect the key blueprints I need then I can finally play the game the way I want to play.

 

[Helvellyn]

The trouble with that is that as more and more people go and explore the harder it gets to unlock the professor.

Sure, it'll get harder but the drop-off rate in the number of explored systems declines signficantly with range - there will still be lots of unexplored systems less than 5000 light years for a long, long time (how many systems within 5000 ly?) I do like the idea that you actually have to discover something interesting to be recognised as an explorer.

 

[CMDR Mayhem]

I think everyone's definition of exploration seems to differ.
If I want to travel across the USA by car, from NY to LA. It will take alot longer then taking a flight. Now, are you deemed more so a explorer because you took the longer route and saw more? Or is the person who flew in a plane a explorer as well, it's just they wanted to get there faster?
Some people believe getting to location B from location A is exploration, regardless of how. While others believe the experience of a journey to a specific place is exploration.

 

[Riverside]

I think everyone's definition of exploration seems to differ.
If I want to travel across the USA by car, from NY to LA. It will take alot longer then taking a flight. Now, are you deemed more so a explorer because you took the longer route and saw more? Or is the person who flew in a plane a explorer as well, it's just they wanted to get there faster?
Some people believe getting to location B from location A is exploration, regardless of how. While others believe the experience of a journey to a specific place is exploration.

Substitute exploration for adventure & I'd say you make a good point

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

I think everyone's definition of exploration seems to differ.
If I want to travel across the USA by car, from NY to LA. It will take alot longer then taking a flight. Now, are you deemed more so a explorer because you took the longer route and saw more? Or is the person who flew in a plane a explorer as well, it's just they wanted to get there faster?
Some people believe getting to location B from location A is exploration, regardless of how. While others believe the experience of a journey to a specific place is exploration.

I agree that they are both explorers. But in real life there is some benefit to taking the long route. You'll experience all kinds of interesting things along the way. One flaw in Elite is that nothing happens along the way. There are no random encounters or not enough of them. I'm not going to run into a new species that just learned to leave their planet and communicate with them. I'm not going to encounter some mysterious sentient anomaly like in Star Trek.

 

[Hooplah]

A 5K passenger mission in an Orca with a fast fuel scoop took care of this requirement.
Netflix Star Trek TNG episodes were playing on the TV in the background.

 

[CMDR Mayhem]

For me, exploration is getting anywhere without a having a specific destination to end with. Because traveling from A to B is exactly that, traveling. The adventure is the experience of the journey, not the destination. If that makes any sense.

 

[Straha Yeagar]

Sure, it'll get harder but the drop-off rate in the number of explored systems declines signficantly with range - there will still be lots of unexplored systems less than 5000 light years for a long, long time (how many systems within 5000 ly?) I do like the idea that you actually have to discover something interesting to be recognised as an explorer.

A few days ago, I found an untagged system less than 700 ly from the bubble, so they are still around.