Has E:D been "parked" by FD, is it in what developers call maintenance mode?
- Thread starter Strangepork
- Start date
Material traders makes it easy to do whatever you enjoy to get mats and then trade for what you need.
Last time i redid my whole fleet i did it wholly by visiting material/data traders.
I don't know what you've been playing, but I've very recently been playing NMS quite a bit. While my hat is totally off for their commitment to maintain and improve the game, and the pace they release upgrades at, it has (and keeps introducing) more bugs than a Thargoid convention. I think they greatly outperform FDev in development speed, but I personally would prefer fewer releases with higher quality.
Agree 110%. Personally, I couldn't care less about Space Legs. Even atmospheric landings could wait, if we got fixes, balancing and more filling & topping while waiting!
At a 6:1 trading ratio, you need to find some very quick and fun method to acquire mats in order to be really fine with that. Also, if you enjoy combat for instance, the variation of mats you get from missions is fairly limited, and it is a pretty tedious process to stop combat and scoop mats.
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Its basically stuff that i had acquired over time doing missions and other stuff. So it was a side benefit of doing other things. The 6:1 ratio wasn't even an issue as i had so much random stuff that i didn't need.
The material traders really are a godsend. I remember the previous time i redid my whole fleet (before traders) and it took a couple of weeks to gather everything i needed, and i still didn't quite G5 everything because it was just a pain looking for the final components.
im not saying NMS is perfect or even similar to Elite. however they don’t tend to leave major bugs and design flaws in the game for YEARS.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
The classic old fashion way to retain players is usually to just build a decent game overall (no game is perfect) where players have fun and want to go back and play more of. Grindy or not, micro-transactions or not. Grind is a basic and possibly unavoidable element in most progression based games, the challenge is to make it palatable enough within the rest of the features in the game. Grind alone can not sustain good results such as Elite's. I know this may be shocking news but somehow I suspect that that classic old fashion scenario is what may just be happening here.
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Pretty much this.
I see the no man's sky Godwin's law has been dropped. Thanks @LeoBartlet85 for tuning me onto this 
Grind itself is a neutral concept: it can be good or bad as long as it is fun or boring.
If it weren't for the huge reward in mining (again: was it intended? I would dare to say yes) how many trade a-->b do you need to get 5 bilion?
Or massacre missions?
It just the same path: do and repeat. Over and over and over.
And the unkeep cost of a Fc what is if not a way to keep the player just to show the increased log in to the shareholder in the report?
Did you forget how many blueprint you need (before the patch) to get a Guardian equipment?
All of this to me it's just pure grind with no fun.
Just curios - but not that much - about odyssey but after 5 years the pattern is clear: I expect repetitve task and little more.
And I am glad I don't support Fd anymore.
So yes, in a certain way, Ed is in full maintenance mode.
And not from today.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
That is precisely what I meant. The player concurrency figures history in Elite after all this time suggest its grind has been integrated to an overall decent and reasonably successful game. I can understand it is not fun for you anymore, that is fine, especially after hundreds or thousands of hours.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
I call it some of the best content in the game. Guardian sites are fun, I run them repeatedly with new players when I get nothing but the fun of running the site again.
That's what I'm pointing to though. I find that activity rewarding in its own right. Others just want the unlocks with a button or something.
Then you have engineering, where unlocking them, and I've unlocked them all, takes exposure to several kinds of game play. It's fun. Materials can be obtained as you go or you can get specific ones at certain locations and there are traders, so engineering is fun for me and has lots of ways to get the stuff.
However you collect as you play and you have the option to focus on specific stuff. Still people fuss.
My question to them is what part of the game do you enjoy? If all the game activities are "grind" what do to want? And the answer I get is usually they want some tailored plot ala Mass Effect. This isn't that kind of game.
I beg to differ....
Salami fiasco
Gnosisgate/Cone Sector fiasco
"reprioritized" Fleet Carriers (twice!)
atmospheric worlds
ice planets
VR mode for Playstation
oh yeah....and OFFLINE MODE - which was promised during kickstarter and then not delivered. If that's not an outright lie and you try to spin that any differently what what NMS did you're just an Elite Fanboy and I'm wasting my time trying to have a conversation with you. DFev could take a runny bean-fueled bowel movement on your head and you'd immediately start praising them for doing such a wonderful thing.
Hyperbole level, politician.
Mat traders are a cheap band aid to the broken mess that is engineers. It fixes no underlying problem. The universal fix to the crap balance is to roll the bloody dice until you finished unlocking thebpowercreep or incur brain damage from zhe mundane and stupid repetitive time-killers to do so.
ED never needed engineers. It was just dumped for compulsive gaming exploitation.
yeah I get carried away sometimes, but certainly a plain old morning post-coffee dump is not out of the question
