What's your beef with this sublime game?

[Awesumnus Maximus]

My biggest grief is how much Engineering threw combat balance way out of wack. Now we've got frigates turning like fighters with nearly 4 times the original effective health pools.

Damn I wish they commited to making it side grades only like they promised.

Also damn there are a lot of terrible ships in this game, I'd love to fly what I want without feeling like I'm shooting myself in the foot.

I haven't flown a frigate in a couple of years, but I've recently (today) flown a Krait and it's nothing like a fighter. I'm pretty sure frigates don't turn like fighters.
All due respect and all that, but in my experience this is just wrong.
No offense intended.

 

[Awesumnus Maximus]

...that said, I can't help but think that the small ships should have more agility advantage over the big three.
Or something.
I'm not an expert at trying to balance games.

 

[Kastor]

I haven't flown a frigate in a couple of years, but I've recently (today) flown a Krait and it's nothing like a fighter. I'm pretty sure frigates don't turn like fighters.
All due respect and all that, but in my experience this is just wrong.
No offense intended.

A drive engineered Annaconda has a simlar pitch rate to a per-engineered Viper. That is a verifiable fact. That's ignoring the additional pitch rate gained from a higher boost up-time. caused by distributor engineering.

Granted, there's no way you can make one turn like a engineered fighter.

 

[skananote]

...that said, I can't help but think that the small ships should have more agility advantage over the big three.
Or something.
I'm not an expert at trying to balance games.

I have to say those small ships are already better. I fly Cobra MK3 exclusively. Not interested in huge, clunky pile of scrap. But some improvements could be made for sure...

 

[Kastor]

...that said, I can't help but think that the small ships should have more agility advantage over the big three.
Or something.
I'm not an expert at trying to balance games.

It's not actually a mobility edge they necessarily need. I did a in depth review of this a while back. I could point you at the thread but I fear it might be out of date. The TLDR is:
The Imperial Courier is really good. It's not as powerful as the bigger combat vessels but it can certainly hold it's own against them. But all of the other light fighters with class 2 thrusters: Eagle, Viper 3, I-Eagle, are all strictly worse by a significant margin. They all have far worse shields and only slight advantages in speed or turn rate (but not both) over the i-courier.

Similarly: The Vulture is a great heavier fighter that can hold it's own, but the Viper 4 and DBS are not very good. (granted the DBS is a combat/explorer rather than a pure fighter so maybe it gets a pass?)

If these under performing fighters were buffed just a bit so they were near their better performing brothers in the same weight class they'd feel pretty good to fly and fight with.

 

[Awesumnus Maximus]

Ah. A man(?) after my own heart. But I just can't get past how wide set the small hardpoints are on the Cobra. If it wasn't for that I'd never use another ship.

 

[Awesumnus Maximus]

It's not actually a mobility edge they necessarily need. I did a in depth review of this a while back. I could point you at the thread but I fear it might be out of date. The TLDR is:
The Imperial Courier is really good. It's not as powerful as the bigger combat vessels but it can certainly hold it's own against them. But all of the other light fighters with class 2 thrusters: Eagle, Viper 3, I-Eagle, are all strictly worse by a significant margin. They all have far worse shields and only slight advantages in speed or turn rate (but not both) over the i-courier.

Similarly: The Vulture is a great heavier fighter that can hold it's own, but the Viper 4 and DBS are not very good. (granted the DBS is a combat/explorer rather than a pure fighter so maybe it gets a pass?)

If these under performing fighters we're buffed just a bit so they were near their better performing brothers in the same weight class they'd feel pretty good to fly and fight with.

Totally agree.
...and the courier is phenomenal.
I'm just on a pacifier kick at the moment, so it's out of sight out of mind at the mo.

 

[VirtueXOI]

My biggest beef with FDev these days is their lackluster approach to fixing bugs. Sure, they have recently started some long overdue balancing and of course most of the team has been working on Odyssey the last couple of years but it has been like this since well before that. Features and bugs are only ever worked on until they reach a "good enough for rock'n'roll" state. To be fair this isn't unique to either FDev, ED or even the games industry but more a bad aspect of commercial software development in general. A good friend of mine already left ED precisely because of all the unfinished and unfixed bits and pieces but compared to the enormous uptick in player numbers over the last couple of months that's but a drop in a bucket of recurrent spending.

This is what i think too , ED is not a game atm , it's a product of a company and every effort put into it is looked by the money side. Sadly this is why we got half backed feature everywhere. Look at FC so much room for improvement and balance , but they left it like this , because they do not love ht egame , they love th emoney and developing new featur / fixinfg bug dont bring people/money. but recent CG /galnets does (just for odysee release to be good imo ).

This is quite sad , but this is how ou society works in general. The value of a thing is determined by the money it can bring and sometimes , it's really not for the better.

 

[Paul Thomason]

The only random nature for engineers is the amount that the progress bar increases by (which I agree, is irritating and should be improved).

Surface scanning isn't random at all. It makes sense, too - you are firing probes at a planet and need to work out the best pattern to get full coverage.

Yes you're right about surface scanning. I've just figured out the small dash on the lengthening line seems to always correspond to the equator regardless of the diameter of the planet and that really helps to gauge where to fire probes. The purpose of the concentric circles on the reticle still eludes me though. At the moment I'm convinced they're purely decorative. If so I'd rather they simply weren't there.

 

[Treya]

This is what i think too , ED is not a game atm , it's a product of a company and every effort put into it is looked by the money side. Sadly this is why we got half backed feature everywhere. Look at FC so much room for improvement and balance , but they left it like this , because they do not love ht egame , they love th emoney and developing new featur / fixinfg bug dont bring people/money. but recent CG /galnets does (just for odysee release to be good imo ).

This is quite sad , but this is how ou society works in general. The value of a thing is determined by the money it can bring and sometimes , it's really not for the better.

Indeed. The annual financial reports show that Elite, while occupying a niche in gaming, is still a massive cash cow for FDev. So from a management perspective things are looking good. The recent ramp up in GalNet, CGs, the Epic Deal etc will almost certainly pave the way for a successful Odyssey launch and another increase in recurrent spending. At the same time we will likely get another round in playing forum bingo on which bugs and broken features won't get fixed. Most developers are very passionate about their craft and the quality of their projects (and I firmly believe this to also be the case for EDs dev team) but to have an actual impact this passion has to be incorporated into the decision making, either by competition or voluntary.

Yes you're right about surface scanning. I've just figured out the small dash on the lengthening line seems to always correspond to the equator regardless of the diameter of the planet and that really helps to gauge where to fire probes. The purpose of the concentric circles on the reticle still eludes me though. At the moment I'm convinced they're purely decorative. If so I'd rather they simply weren't there.

That's precisely what that element is for. The challenge in using the DSS is optimization. The obvious one is the efficiency bonus, the other one is the time it takes. With proper positioning of ship and probe placement it is almost always possible to fully scan a body on the first go. On its own it might not be super engaging but imho it does tie in rather well with the challenge of optimizing the flight path through a system.

Indeed most of the game design in ED centers around optimization/efficiency and even though Exploration is usually more about the journey it too has this baked in at every step. Some of it is basic Cr/h (or AW/h for the current CG), some of it is navigational efficiency like route finding in sparse regions of the galaxy. It might not be for everyone but it certainly shows that the dev team has given it some thought. Now if only they wouldn't abandon features before they are fully fledged out... :|

One more thing regarding those of you missing puzzles/story elements: Have you considered finding Listening Posts? The most recent example was the Adamastor event but there are literally hundreds out there waiting to be found and they do come with puzzles and interesting places and stories. All that is needed is a Fuel Scoop and a keen eye and it has been my fallback activity for those times when I don't feel like doing the usual explo/combat/trading/mining loops.

 

[VR Golgot]

I’ll just pick one meaty one

Long input-free transits (and missions that spring them on you), are dire, IMO.

It’s only polite to suggest a 'horribly dev-intensive solution' at this point. So I’ll end on that

 

[Barking_Mad]

The 3rd person gunner view in multicrew. It hurts me just to think about it.

 

[Banger_uk]

The engineer is a grind. I first fought that combat was supposed to be a skill stock vs stock space ships, but since engineering it more like who has the better-graded powerup with the diffrent techo or the biggest ship.

I prefer the 1 vs 1 approach. that there even a small chance you can get on the rear of the enemy. but unfortunate that ED-devs decided to include engineer and FA on/off Crap that NPC seem to hover all around you like their boss with massive engineer weapons

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I don't like being a back seat driver, but my contribution to the engineering paradox would be a system using (weighted, counteracting) sliders for each aspect of the engineered module, with cost in materials and credits for the required mod.

Its kind of what i was hoping for with engineers initially. Much more downsides for each upside. So it would be much more balanced and be about fine turing, where every improvement would have a corresponding weakness. I think engineering doesn't go far enough with the downsides.

 

[TheSisko]

The Bugs.

Not Thargoids, but game bugs which appear to pop up, completely unrelated to the previous patch. They then tend to be unfixed for months on end despite the numerous support tickets logged.

Haulage mission payouts, Scan-Ram x2, Skimmer Rain-of-Death, NPCs with Terminator weaponry, Megaship Piracy, Backwards PWA etc - these have (or continue to) have an impact on Commander's desire to play the game their way.

 

[Bill Clement]

nah. You're being unreasonable. It sounds like you need to take a break. Yes the grind is tedious but you only do that if you get obssessive about getting that upgrade, or getting that magic token to get that upgrade. I just got the game again on Epic and have started a new career from scratch. I've been unlocking engineers and using an completely unengineered Vulture in a ring to unlock Blaster McQuinn. It's actually been really good and I've got into exploration first this time. Honest Cmdr. Take a break. Go play something else for a while and come back. It'll do you good and you'll appreciate it.

Wait, what? The solution to a problem is to not play?

Or are you saying the problem will disappear after I've not played for a set period of time? The component I need will just appear from out of thin air as soon as I log back in and all will be well?

I'm sticking with engineering being a massive pita, becoming more required with every update. It's a core component of the game, it sucks, it really needs rebalanced or whatever the cool kids call fixing something that's utterly broken these days.

As for 'getting obsessive'- I wanted to try some of the Thargoid content. Conventional weapons don't work- YOU NEED ENGINEERED WEAPONS. I couldn't care less about 'that upgrade', I want to play a particular part of the game and it's behind a grind wall. The random nature of magic tokens appearing means it's pot luck whether the grind takes minutes or months- in my case two months without getting sight of the magic token I need for anti alien weapons.

I have actually stopped playing, but if and when I do start again, I still won't have that magic token and I still won't be able to access the part of the game that I used to want to play.

I do not consider this situation to be remotely reasonable, and I don't think I'm the one 'being unreasonable'. Two months of activity in almost any other field can deliver life changing results- it's entirely possible to learn a new language or a musical instrument in that amount of time. Coming up with nothing but higher blood pressure is a sick joke!

It's not just me though. Listen to what Urbanski's got to say about it:

I personally dislike engineers and engineering in ED. The grind for materials is an utterly joyless, tedious, sadistic nightmare of RNG and pointless repetition.

There are a handful of materials that in 4 years I've yet to find during normal gameplay, some other materials are mathematically so rare you may as well be looking for rocking horse s***. That leaves us with material traders and their horrendous trading ratios.

I do however like the results of engineering so I put up with it to a certain extent. What this means for me is that I'm unwilling to buy any more ships even though there are a couple I'd like to add to my collection and that is simply down to engineering and not wanting to face that awful grind again.

And get this...the current iteration of engineers is so much better than it was...can you even imagine how bad it was when it first appeared? Grown men were crying, people found religion and one player even managed to crawl into his own left shoe just to escape the grind.

Mini-game, shmini game...they need to sort out the material gathering mechanic first. Or better yet redesign engineers from scratch...for the third time!

...
IF you dont like Engineers, just skip them - the only part of the gameplay where they are mandatory is the PVP, but even there, there are events and places where you can pop and ask for fight in non-engineered ships.

...

No, they're absolutely mandatory. Many missions can't be accomplished in an unengineered ship and the anti Thargoid weapons require 'engineering' to unlock.

It's entirely reasonable to have access requirements for unlocks. It's the way of video games.

But it's entirely unreasonable to have such an enormous amount of random grind to get those unlocks. This is a video game, not a job. Some players may have hundreds of hours to spare, most don't. As I stated above, I've wasted the last two months on attempting to get a hold of some anti Thargoid weapons. The component I'm missing might have dropped on the very first night, in which case the grind would have taken a couple of hours. It didn't, it hasn't and I'm so sick of it that I've disassembled my simpit. I may put it all back together when Odyssey drops, or I might not bother.

It's fair to say that's a pretty major beef with the game...

 

[Brrokk]

Wait, what? The solution to a problem is to not play?

Or are you saying the problem will disappear after I've not played for a set period of time? The component I need will just appear from out of thin air as soon as I log back in and all will be well?

I'm sticking with engineering being a massive pita, becoming more required with every update. It's a core component of the game, it sucks, it really needs rebalanced or whatever the cool kids call fixing something that's utterly broken these days.

As for 'getting obsessive'- I wanted to try some of the Thargoid content. Conventional weapons don't work- YOU NEED ENGINEERED WEAPONS. I couldn't care less about 'that upgrade', I want to play a particular part of the game and it's behind a grind wall. The random nature of magic tokens appearing means it's pot luck whether the grind takes minutes or months- in my case two months without getting sight of the magic token I need for anti alien weapons.

I have actually stopped playing, but if and when I do start again, I still won't have that magic token and I still won't be able to access the part of the game that I used to want to play.

I do not consider this situation to be remotely reasonable, and I don't think I'm the one 'being unreasonable'. Two months of activity in almost any other field can deliver life changing results- it's entirely possible to learn a new language or a musical instrument in that amount of time. Coming up with nothing but higher blood pressure is a sick joke!

It's not just me though. Listen to what Urbanski's got to say about it:






No, they're absolutely mandatory. Many missions can't be accomplished in an unengineered ship and the anti Thargoid weapons require 'engineering' to unlock.

It's entirely reasonable to have access requirements for unlocks. It's the way of video games.

But it's entirely unreasonable to have such an enormous amount of random grind to get those unlocks. This is a video game, not a job. Some players may have hundreds of hours to spare, most don't. As I stated above, I've wasted the last two months on attempting to get a hold of some anti Thargoid weapons. The component I'm missing might have dropped on the very first night, in which case the grind would have taken a couple of hours. It didn't, it hasn't and I'm so sick of it that I've disassembled my simpit. I may put it all back together when Odyssey drops, or I might not bother.

It's fair to say that's a pretty major beef with the game...

Er... The weapons you need to fight Thargoids cannot be engineered. Why do you think they have to be?

 

[Jazzy]

Sheesh, where to start......

• Imperial, Federation and Independent, I don't get how I can be an Admiral in Federal Navy, and same (what ever its called) in Empire. That is like being an Admiral in USA and Russian Navy at the same time..... Sure as **** not going to happen. Plus having that choice adds in more player competition. Something from the Alpha days I never understood.
• Exploration (New tools) absolutely stupid. What year is it again and everything is still manually operated... Not that we got a Space ship in the Year 3400, we have to act like Galileo still :/
• Balancing of payments........ Combat payout (this has just been fixed/tweaked finally after years!!), Exploration, mining etc. Never been in any type of competitive payouts, always one being the massive META. Yes its finally coming (Balancing) but its been a few years since the game has been out and the playerbase has been asking for over, over and over.
• Engineering, A great missed step here. It's just a time gated grind, It could of been such a better feature to tweak your ships. Now its just a level up system for your ships after an insanity grind.
• Carriers, another dull, boring money sink with very little purpose... Oh and the fuel grind is just "LOL".

These are my top few I can think of. I got my money out of Elite, Can not deny that. But right now the game can not entice me to return other than to drop in and say hello to a few friends I used to play with (real life friends). I would like a good reason to return, and at this time there isnt one. Elite is slowly becoming a missed opportunity in a few departments which is due to poor/lazy choices.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

My only complaint is console has been missing VR because reasons that seem more like excuse but now that next gen consoles void those 'reasons' they 'have no plans' to give a sh#!

 

[skananote]

But right now the game can not entice me to return other than to drop in and say hello to a few friends I used to play with (real life friends). I would like a good reason to return, and at this time there isnt one. Elite is slowly becoming a missed opportunity in a few departments which is due to poor/lazy choices.

Yup, can't argue with that. Few of my work colleagues used to play Elite. I did ask if they would come back and they said exactly the same thing. There is no reason to come back. I have a bit of a struggle to get back to paying after latest changes myself - stopped playing when things went pear shaped around mining. I had a nice game, things changed and now my game is broken... Not sure if I have enough steam to get back. INARA says that I will get my 5bln in the next three years. Not sure if I will even consider staying that long. And that is just BASIC FC w/o anything on it... Grind is just bit too much...