Can I get a vote for frazzles?
Why FDev.. just why make this game so tedious on purpose?
- Thread starter Turric4n_ED
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Can I get a vote for frazzles?
The environment is beautiful, the sound design is spectacular, the flight mechanics are great, the srv is fun to drive, combat is engaging, exploration is a procgen slot machine, the voice acted narrative gems are awesome, the guardian station animations are sweet, core mining in particular is great (I'm sure I am leaving out so many more positives),
BUT
the progression mechanics around guardian module unlocks, engineer access, materials acquisition , ship unlocks, system permit unlocks, are a repetitive mess of fetch quests and redundant tasks.
If you get down to it, any game progression has a limited range of mechanics - but what distinguishes a positive experience from a boring repetitive one is the underlying character story or experience.
ED by design pulls the player out of the character experience and puts them into a person sitting at a computer experience in its treatment of grind. You know as a player you have to sit and run through message delivery mission quest over and over to to unlock that FAS. You are not focused on the text of the missions, the static portraits of the contacts ("Ooh I wet myself"), you simply stare at that bar and wait for the rank progression mission to pop. It's about what, 30 of these identical loops to get the Dropship?
The point is the game design understands that you do not care about the game experience, you care about the thing at the end of the tunnel, and you are going to burn x minutes looking at ARX ads.
It's probably not fair that this is a "sinister" design, but it is certainly not designed to be "fun".
When I think about "fun" grind experiences, in Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, Witcher, Dragon Age, even Cyberpunk for crafting and skill development purposes- there is this underlying story, variation in setting, a more personal presence of the character in the environment. It is often the case that these progression experiences give intermediate gear or skill, introduce NPCs, involve travel and exploration that advances a larger narrative.
So how can you make a procgen universe more personal than a spreadsheet column result?
In my opinion, even though we all want our "own" experience of the environment, a series of chained missions for each unlock would insert the player in the game much more as a character than as a person at a computer. The current design funnels players into a redundant loop of exercises without story, better to have a series of varied activities with some sort of backstory.
It all takes work though, and as long as thousands of people are willing to hit that crystal forest, there is no pressure to change. I guess we are lucky there are folks like Exigeous and DTEA to ease our pain and show us the quick and easy path through the dark side.
BUT
the progression mechanics around guardian module unlocks, engineer access, materials acquisition , ship unlocks, system permit unlocks, are a repetitive mess of fetch quests and redundant tasks.
If you get down to it, any game progression has a limited range of mechanics - but what distinguishes a positive experience from a boring repetitive one is the underlying character story or experience.
ED by design pulls the player out of the character experience and puts them into a person sitting at a computer experience in its treatment of grind. You know as a player you have to sit and run through message delivery mission quest over and over to to unlock that FAS. You are not focused on the text of the missions, the static portraits of the contacts ("Ooh I wet myself"), you simply stare at that bar and wait for the rank progression mission to pop. It's about what, 30 of these identical loops to get the Dropship?
The point is the game design understands that you do not care about the game experience, you care about the thing at the end of the tunnel, and you are going to burn x minutes looking at ARX ads.
It's probably not fair that this is a "sinister" design, but it is certainly not designed to be "fun".
When I think about "fun" grind experiences, in Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, Witcher, Dragon Age, even Cyberpunk for crafting and skill development purposes- there is this underlying story, variation in setting, a more personal presence of the character in the environment. It is often the case that these progression experiences give intermediate gear or skill, introduce NPCs, involve travel and exploration that advances a larger narrative.
So how can you make a procgen universe more personal than a spreadsheet column result?
In my opinion, even though we all want our "own" experience of the environment, a series of chained missions for each unlock would insert the player in the game much more as a character than as a person at a computer. The current design funnels players into a redundant loop of exercises without story, better to have a series of varied activities with some sort of backstory.
It all takes work though, and as long as thousands of people are willing to hit that crystal forest, there is no pressure to change. I guess we are lucky there are folks like Exigeous and DTEA to ease our pain and show us the quick and easy path through the dark side.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
I agree the missions could be more engaging and I would love the follow on missions to have a.bit more flavour and feel linked to the previous one . Full on mass effect level story is not going to happen but I like to think there is a halfway house from what we have and full narration where.over time more and more mission templates could be added in to expand what we have.
ED:O I am really hoping will do something with the missions.
Ultimately anyone who really does not enjoy the "journey" now I doubt will ever enjoy it and they will for ever demand for the journey to be made shorter to get to what ever end game they want (often PvP capable vessels).
But for those who DO enjoy what we have BUT just see the potential for more I think ED:O could deliver.
Fingers.crossed.
ED:O I am really hoping will do something with the missions.
Ultimately anyone who really does not enjoy the "journey" now I doubt will ever enjoy it and they will for ever demand for the journey to be made shorter to get to what ever end game they want (often PvP capable vessels).
But for those who DO enjoy what we have BUT just see the potential for more I think ED:O could deliver.
Fingers.crossed.
This is not about shortening anything or getting to endgame. This game has no endgame in the traditional sense. This is about not making game mechanics deliberately drawn out so you sink time into instead of providing an actual experience.
Weirdly World of Warcraft is even shallower in its mission design. Kill x mobs, bring x units of stuff, deliver letter.. but it does not feel as shallow as elite. Wonder why that is.
I hope Odyssey will be good too, but i am hesistant to buy it. I can not even imagine what this game feels like on foot.
Pickled onion Monster Munch are acceptable.
Yes for both.
Walkers Cheese and onion are probably the best for me over all... But I like salt and vinegar but a special mention for prawn cocktail and worcestershire sauce.
Anyone remember scampi fries? I used to like them.
Back in the day there was the hedgehog flavour crisps. Honestly I can't remember the taste of them only the story (which may be urban legend but I don't want to google and find out it's a lie) but from .memory someone tried to sue the makers that it was just marketing and no one had an idea what hedgehog tasted like, but the case was thrown out because apparently a gypsy traveller who did actually eat hedgehogs had been used as a taster.
Anyone remember scampi fries? I used to like them.
Back in the day there was the hedgehog flavour crisps. Honestly I can't remember the taste of them only the story (which may be urban legend but I don't want to google and find out it's a lie) but from .memory someone tried to sue the makers that it was just marketing and no one had an idea what hedgehog tasted like, but the case was thrown out because apparently a gypsy traveller who did actually eat hedgehogs had been used as a taster.
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Yes for both.
Excellent - in which case, dear barman, send over a packet of each three ways, and a jug of beer!
This is an interesting point, because really early on, elite taught me that the second you hold onto the "goal" elite becomes a complete misery.
I thought this was a well accepted fact.. focus on the spaceship -> elite is amazing. Focus on the goal -> elite is (nerfed) soulcrushing torture.
I find this surprising because elites always been like this. The goals are such a false lead because once you've hit them they're completely empty. The only fun you make in the game is in the moment, and it has to go back there once your goal is over.. so the goals are just evil.
This thread seems to imply there are people who play elite goal oriented... how does that even work? You want to log off in frustration well before writing a forum post.
Its not positive, but frontier are just a bunch of kickstarter devs working on a (1.5 billion dollar) shoestring with this indie space game... you need to white knight them because they're so indie and can't be expected to and must be forgiven for not putting in real content. And that's always coming in the future because they're still working on it because its a kickstarter and they're indie. oh wait. I don't even know anymore.
EDIT: My favourite one from back then was "its not a grind, the content is supposed to last 10 years". Really we're still here?
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They tasted like a mix of beef and smoky bacon
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
In ED material traders fulfill a similar role helping you reduce your grind significantly if you wish. You do the things you enjoy more (or that feel less grindy), get mats out of that and then trade them for the ones you need.
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Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Not sure if serious, the topic of the launch trailer is a bit old though. And iirc even FDEV commented that the trailer was more of an evocative image of the game than actual gameplay copy paste. Much like many other cinematic trailers for other games out there that are not actual gameplay.
It often strikes me as odd the arguments focus exclusively on the launch trailer, and thereby intentionally or unintentionally generalizing on the whole, when Elite has had 6 years worth of trailers. And especially when the vast majority of those seem to actually reflect actual gameplay quite closely. Here is the list for reference:
1.1
Source: https://youtu.be/4uozVtIe-5w
1.2
Source: https://youtu.be/23GEX4pYL9w
1.3
Source: https://youtu.be/CWPhk5Gclbo
1.4
Source: https://youtu.be/wN9vdSmrY2o
2.0
Source: https://youtu.be/VKWIJ-H-WxI
2.1
Source: https://youtu.be/8rSC0lNuNyw
2.2
Source: https://youtu.be/iojsbuOzEuQ
2.3
Source: https://youtu.be/pgKsnyT7kiU
2.4
Source: https://youtu.be/jmVEYZnDZf8
3.0
Source: https://youtu.be/qMzbaYNEXeI
3.1
Source: https://youtu.be/xsY7I9uNN-o
3.2
Source: https://youtu.be/FKHzzxHWJps
3.3
Source: https://youtu.be/qNL8Agx151o
Fleet Carriers
Source: https://youtu.be/Ej84WHfZbPU
Etc
1.2
1.3
1.4
2.0
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
3.0
3.1
3.2
3.3
Fleet Carriers
Etc
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He is talking about player to player transfer. A thing a game about trading and simulation lacks for no reason at all. This is actually the one thing i would have thought is most mandatory to implement in such a game.
The problem with player-trading is, that it eventually can be used to pay real money for ingame convinience, which is not a bad thing per se if enough people are willing to pay for that service and the market is not flooded by materials thus going into inflation. With the current consumption of materials this will obviously happen since there are no real money drains. For example path of exile has the intriguing system of using the currency also as item enhancers, so there is a constant need to get them out of the system. Gold on the other hand will just amass more and more without a way to drain. Carriers are a step in the right direction for this setup, but not without player trading. Right now carriers only fulfill the role of forcing a "daily login". Which is bad imo.
Also before someone says that it would then be so much easier for people to progress and skip right to the endgame, remember that most of you also said that there is no endgame and you do not need the hightech stuff.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Fully aware. One of the topics here was options to reduce your grind. And for that you do not need player to player transfer. In order for the existing tools help you reduce your grind significantly the game material traders fulfil that job quite nicely in an equivalent way to player markets in other games.
Actually i do not think the ingame market does a very good job at it. It basically devolves to farming the highest material, which coincidently is what i did in the OP, then trading it down instead of a naturally stocking up on all the materials at the same time while playing the game in the "regular" way.
So the current marketplace just boils it down to a single focused grind instead of a spread out activity sheet where you basically ignore 80%. This is not a good way to handle a core mechanic.
---
Now when i think about it, the main issue comes from the game not giving you any progression naturally at all while playing. You really need a lot of these materials to engineer a ship and there is barely anything coming from missions, or the wrong ones. So landing on a surface and prospecting is the only way to get it. And if you go down this line, you are not getting 2-3 chunks, you will fill your tank up. Which is a rather boring activity for most people. I think it would help a lot if missions could substitute as an equally valid income of this stuff.
So the current marketplace just boils it down to a single focused grind instead of a spread out activity sheet where you basically ignore 80%. This is not a good way to handle a core mechanic.
---
Now when i think about it, the main issue comes from the game not giving you any progression naturally at all while playing. You really need a lot of these materials to engineer a ship and there is barely anything coming from missions, or the wrong ones. So landing on a surface and prospecting is the only way to get it. And if you go down this line, you are not getting 2-3 chunks, you will fill your tank up. Which is a rather boring activity for most people. I think it would help a lot if missions could substitute as an equally valid income of this stuff.
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Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
There is no difference in essence with player markets when it comes to the actual item trade though. The material traders do exactly what other player markets do, except that the currency required are mats themselves instead of "gold".Player markets allow players to focus on the activities they like the most, or that feel less grindy for them, and with the gold achieved there they trade for the materials they need in player markets. In Elite the system is exactly the same except instead of "gold" you achieve other mats and use those as a currency to trade. No more no less.
Now, by all means feel free to still think that player markets or material traders are not enough or do not do a very good job at reducing the grind for you (they do for me), but those are some of the tried and tested methods the industry has been using for eons to help alleviate the grind feeling in games.
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Player markets allow players to focus on the activities they like the most, of feel less grindy for them, and with the gold achieved there they trade for the materials they need in player markets. In Elite the system is exactly the same except instead of "gold" you amass other mats and use those as a currency to trade. No more no less.
Now, by all means feel free to still think that player markets or material traders are not enough or do not do a very good job at reducing the grind for you, but those are some of the tried and tested methods the industry has been using for eons to help alleviate the grind feeling in games.
Read my edit above.
This is simply not the case. You can not focus on the stuff that you like while ignoring the pieces that you do not like. You still need to do everything. But from everything just the most advanced.
You need to mine shards, trade down.
You need to scan HGE, trade down.
You need to scan Jameson, trade down.
You need to scan Wakes, trade down. (This one is the most lose though, since you can just scan random ships and amass data)
The market is not eliminating one of those things. It is just reducing it to be efficient. Efficient is still a chore when you do not like a particular activity. There are after all three types of different markets.
I would offer you this Datamined Wake Exception for an Yttrium. Because i have an abundance of them but rarely land on planets.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
I do not think we are discussing here a solution for completely eliminating the grind feeling. That is probably not very realistic in games that are precisely based in time progression such as Elite. And in such games there will always be certain activities that someone does not like. But in that regard material traders do in fact a very significant job in allowing you to focus in areas that are more fun for you or at least in reducing significantly the time you need to spend in the areas you like the least.
What remains after that then is just the personal perception of "fun" and tolerance for the grind. But the tools Elite has at your disposal to minimise that grind are available like in many other time progression based games.
Why has no-one mentioned Marmite crisps yet?
I trade all materials in all directions - particularly Manufactured - as I collect so many whilst playing... I get the impression that trader exchange rates are to improve in Odyssey from one of the streams..
Wouldn't the game be richer with actual player interaction instead of an empty npc world where everything is generated the same?