Let's talk about materials.

[liveontimemitnoevil]

Feel free to discuss Odyssey materials, but I will not do so because the release is still in a large amount of flux. What I will say, however, is that I think the below points should similarly apply to Odyssey's material system.

Gathering materials in Elite is, to say the least, a grind—we all know this is the case. Even after 2500 hours of play, the grind for materials is absolutely my least favorite aspect of the game. It's so bad, in-fact, that I avoided engineers almost entirely because of it. When I finally did attempt to begin engineering things, I was appalled that even after all the time I collected what I noticed and wanted that I still fell completely flat and had nowhere near what was required to fully engineer a ship—let a lone a few parts. It blew my mind that this was the case, and I was (and still am) quite annoyed that I would have to grind for materials instead of just "playing the game" to get them. What I fail to understand is why Frontier Developments has yet to strictly address the issue that so many pilots have complained about since Engineers were released. Tweaks have of course been made, but no serious overhauls were really seen. Now, I know that many of us have spent countless hours engineering our ships to perfection, and some have spent insane amounts of time on this front—I respect that, and I am not trying to suggest that we did not earn our perfect ships. The current system, however, is very gate-keeping oriented. I don't mind the engineer gatekeeping (having to unlock engineers in some order). What I mind is the grind. What I mind is playing the game normally and yet still managing to have nothing and being forced to grind (which I did, and it was not fun at all).

I'd like to propose a few different overhauls, and I would ask all of you to comment and suggest your own systems and offer tweaks to each other. I believe that with the release of Odyssey, a serious overhaul to materials in general is greatly needed and long overdue.

I'm going to stress once more that these are different systems to overhaul material gathering, and I do not necessarily think they should be paired together. Any one of these has the potential to alleviate the grind.

1. Large increase to material drop amounts.
I'm not talking double, I'm talking 3-10x. It shouldn't be easy to engineer anything, but it shouldn't be so difficult that you have to work tirelessly to engineer a single ship to your heart's desire. Most (if not all) drops are 3 materials per object. I would like to see that change anywhere from 10-30 materials per object, with some variability depending on the quality of the source. For raw materials, for example, Low Reserve systems will typically give 10 materials per drop and Pristine Reserve systems will typically give closer to 30.

2. Large increase to drop rates.
Once more, I'm not talking double for the drop rates, I'm talking up to 10x. I understand that nodes are spread out to give the sense of exploration, and I appreciate that particular viewpoint. However, we all know the feeling of driving many kilometers past hundreds boring boulders to find that one precious pebble that will give us exactly what we...oh, it's just iron. Sure, some have mastered the art of the SRV scanner and know precisely what to look for to increase their chances of finding good materials. I do not think that the signals and how they are read needs to change. What I would like to see, however, is the material scanning range be decreased from several kilometers to only a few hundred meters for raw materials, but about 10x more materials spawn per area to offset the decreased scan range. This will prevent scan cluttering.

3. Large increase to material drop duration timers.
All object despawns in the game are too short in my opinion. I can see where in some cases, it will cause game lag, but I have never personally experienced any such lag even after 2,500 hours of gameplay. I understand caustic items degrading quickly, but most items are completely gone after 3-5 minutes. I've seen materials vanish within two minutes, and I believe there was a bug where it happened in less than one minute. Materials should last no less than ten minutes, and ideally up to thirty minutes and up to fifty kilometers from the nearest Commander. Why? Because it makes no sense to fly around in a conflict zone or Haz Res with a cargo scoop deployed because we have to collect materials quickly or else they blow up. It really doesn't make much sense besides "game stability." Especially given that each ship drops around 5 materials, and even that a skilled pilot can kill about 30-50 ships in a CZ before victory, that means no more than 250 or so materials will be floating around, spread out over the battlefield. These are the spoils of war that we want, but those credits are nice, too!

4. Large increase to the viability of "Scavenger" ship builds.
I admit, this one might need to be paired with 3 to be of much use, but perhaps not. Consider a ship built to scavenge. It flies across conflict zone and haz-res alike, picking up what is forgotten. I recently built such a ship, and to my great surprise, ships didn't drop anything unless I had participated in the battle. This makes me quite sad. Frontier Developments always touts the "Forge your own path" mantra, but when I really did try (and I admit I was quite proud of the ship I had built, the Quantum Fox Mk. V) I was met with an enormous blocker for her entire purpose. She is a scavenger with no purpose...a wanderer of the Black with nothing to offer. Now, this is just in a CZ; I've yet to test this in a Haz-res, but from what I've seen there should not be a problem. I'll update this post if it turns out to be otherwise. Naturally, USS and other sites still drop their materials, but I was quite a bit upset when I realized that ships in CZs didn't drop a thing. This goes against actuality; there are looters who actively looted battles in history while they were happening. They typically got high quality items as they were the first on the field. If ships do drop materials in CZs, I believe that they should lean towards higher quality ones, since it is "riskier" to scavenge in these places. Paired with 3, I think that this would be a really fun role to play, even if it is a bit "grindier" than 1 or 2.

So there you have it. Those are just a few different systems which I think will really help alleviate the grind, encourage newer players to engage in engineering, and allow veterans to engineer their fleet without spending too much time working outside of work. I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, and comments on what I and others have shared.

Fly safe out there, CMDR.
o7

CMDR Concomitant


TL;DR
Gathering materials is a long and disheartening grind.
These are each separate ideas and overhauls, probably not best to combine them:
1. Large increase to material drop amounts.
2. Large increase to drop rates.
3. Large increase to material drop duration timers.
4. Increase viability of a "scavenger" type ship build.

 

[CMDR Rabbit]

I'll play!

So, gonna go a different route, although i like your scavenger ship!

Anyway.

I've said it before, and i'll say it again here now.

Let us trade mats, any mats, between ourselves rather than just using material traders.

From a game play perspective it doesn't absolutely remove the grind, i'll admit, but would allow us to focus on those activities we enjoy more, and spend less time doing those that make our eyes roll with boredom.

Don't like hunting down HGEs? I do! And i'll totally trade you 15 proto-thingamgic-whoosamacallits for jumponium materials. Cuz shooting rocks is not where i wanna spend my time, but theres plenty of CMDRs out there who enjoy speeding around in an SRV and blowing up the countryside.

Mechanically i see it working like a locker and advertisement brokerage system. Definitely not fully formed and needs tweaking but something like this.

A trading board is placed in the overall UI , maybe only available at known material traders (they act as brokers, exchange banks, handwaving away the need to impose transfer times or explain how the stuff gets shipped around on a trade from an in-game point of view).

A UI allows you to create a post, you put int h material and quantity you're willing to trade, what you're willing to take in return (possibly say 1 - 3 options), and an expiry duration for the transaction.

The materials you put up for trade are then locked away from you in a bank - so you can't use them up in the time someone might be actively gathering your price.

Your offer is now visible on the trading board.

When another player takes the offer, it gets taken off the board, they can either
a) pay the requested trade items immediately (assuming they have them) or
b) have until the offer's expiry time to gather them.

Option b is there to prevent time wastage of the "see a thing on the boards, go get the stuff, come back and its gone".

If the offer expires without being taken, or satisfied, the mats revert to your possession.

There would probably have to be a limit on how many offers a player could stack for gathering to prevent a single player from simply pulling them all off the boards at once.

Exisiting material trader would continue to function as usual.

Obliviously i'm sure i've missed a bunch of potential issues i haven't though of.

 

[MrScar]

I read through your suggestions and I think those are all valid points.

From my perspective, the thing that would make most sense from a hypercapitalistic market of the year 3300 would be to simply integrate materials into the trade market.

It would create a supply and demand throughout the Bubble where materials are, theoretically, available everywhere to be bought for credits on the market. But some would be plentiful and some would suffer a constant deficit of them. Then you are able to trade both with NPC and PC characters. So simply put, it would work in a very similar way the current trading mechanic works.

This would solve the following problems:

1. Gathering and scavenging materials would actually encourage the players to engage into material gathering activities because:
a) They are too expensive to be bought on the market, so its better to gather them
b) You can sell the materials you don't need to buy those that you do need
c) Not every type of material could be considered legal in some systems (drugs for the Engineer for example?) so it also would provide additional fluff to smuggling.
d) It would create a more natural and more diverse market environment

2. Things would not be forced on you, and you would not waste time on grinding.
a) FDev said that adding ship interiors is "wasting players time" so sorry to say it, but grinding is time wasting as well. Especially when RNG items from the closet are involved.
b) Material gathering would start to make sense, and would abandon the absurd idea of forcing you to be a space thief/scavenger against your will
c) Those who prefer grinding and think that buying materials for cash is easy mode... well, they still can stick to grinding if they want to feel better thanks to it.


To sum up, it gives you options. And open world games should provide options and it is up to the CMDR how to apprach things. The current grinding materials mechanics would make sense if we would be playing a game, where space exploration only started to be a thing, and every part/material is worth more than gold. But Elite Dangerous is not Mad Max in Space, so the rule does not apply.

EDIT:

Option 3: Scavenging could become a totally new profession next to Merc/BH, Exploration and Trading by adding the following things:

1. Scavenging from abandoned settlments (we have that already)
2. Scav work from crash sites (we have that already)
3. Scavenging from abandoned orbital stations/outposts
4. Scavenging from in space wrecks

Those activities can be legal or illegal, depending on what the scavenging target is, and where is the target located. High sec, med sec, low sec, anarchy? the loot might be very lucrative but illegal and you can get jumped by Security forces or pirates, or even other scavengers.

It would provide an additional plethora of options on when and how to sell things.

just my 2 cents.

 

[CMDR Rabbit]

I read through your suggestions and I think those are all valid points.

From my perspective, the thing that would make most sense from a hypercapitalistic market of the year 3300 would be to simply integrate materials into the trade market.

It would create a supply and demand throughout the Bubble where materials are, theoretically, available everywhere to be bought for credits on the market. But some would be plentiful and some would suffer a constant deficit of them. Then you are able to trade both with NPC and PC characters. So simply put, it would work in a very similar way the current trading mechanic works.

This would solve the following problems:

1. Gathering and scavenging materials would actually encourage the players to engage into material gathering activities because:
a) They are too expensive to be bought on the market, so its better to gather them
b) You can sell the materials you don't need to buy those that you do need
c) Not every type of material could be considered legal in some systems (drugs for the Engineer for example?) so it also would provide additional fluff to smuggling.
d) It would create a more natural and more diverse market environment

2. Things would not be forced on you, and you would not waste time on grinding.
a) FDev said that adding ship interiors is "wasting players time" so sorry to say it, but grinding is time wasting as well
b) Material gathering would start to make sense, and would abandon the absurd idea of forcing you to be a space thief/scavenger against your will
c) Those who prefer grinding and think that buying materials for cash is easy mode... well, they still can stick to grinding if they want to feel better thanks to it.


To sum up, it gives you options. And open world games should provide options and it is up to the CMDR how to apprach things. The current grinding materials mechanics would make sense if we would be playing a game, where space exploration only started to be a thing, and every part/material is worth more than gold. But Elite Dangerous is not Mad Max in Space, so the rule does not apply.

I don't disagree, the problem though is your point 1a

When most (not me maybe, but many) CMDRs can make millions in an hour and billions over a couple of days, 1a becomes a moot point, nothing is ever too expensive on the market or it has to be SO expensive that it might as well not be there. Like fleet carrier expensive, for a few units of mats.

But otherwise, sure.

 

[MrScar]

I don't disagree, the problem though is your point 1a

When most (not me maybe, but many) CMDRs can make millions in an hour and billions over a couple of days, 1a becomes a moot point, nothing is ever too expensive on the market or it has to be SO expensive that it might as well not be there. Like fleet carrier expensive, for a few units of mats.

But otherwise, sure.

I totally agree. It would not be a problem if the credits earning thing would be rebalanced. Thats the reason why I think a more "natural" market and credits earning way would be an option. But yes, ship prices, module prices etc. would need some serious tweaking. The "hard earned cash" would get some real meaning, and would make you think twice on what to spend it. So suddenly the most lucrative activity, that is mining, is still the most lucrative one, but you dont do 1 billion per hour, but lets say 10mln per hour.

Im no Economy expert, smarter people can think about it and decide how much should particular items/ships cost. However and most importantly, I think it would not make the game easier. This thing works in other games, so i think it has also a pretty high probability of doing the trick in Elite aswell.

 

[liveontimemitnoevil]

Let us trade mats, any mats, between ourselves rather than just using material traders.

...

Mechanically i see it working like a locker and advertisement brokerage system. Definitely not fully formed and needs tweaking but something like this.

A trading board is placed in the overall UI , maybe only available at known material traders (they act as brokers, exchange banks, handwaving away the need to impose transfer times or explain how the stuff gets shipped around on a trade from an in-game point of view).

A UI allows you to create a post, you put int h material and quantity you're willing to trade, what you're willing to take in return (possibly say 1 - 3 options), and an expiry duration for the transaction.

The materials you put up for trade are then locked away from you in a bank - so you can't use them up in the time someone might be actively gathering your price.

Your offer is now visible on the trading board.

This is a good suggestion. You are correct that it does not remove the grind, and I also wonder how this would get abused by CMDRs looking to exploit rare materials. I could imagine a new CMDR who doesn't use 3rd party apps or check the forums, etc. being scammed into buying something for far more than it is worth. Still, that doesn't make your post invalid, as it gives more options than what we currently have.

The material trading makes no sense, really, as it really only makes sense to trade downwards. It doesn't feel like "trading" because I get a worse value every other way. It's things like this that have really annoyed me about the current engineering system...it's all rigged to force grinding for grade 5s. People go to places like Dav's Hope for a reason, and it's almost entirely due to the mechanics of material trading.

From my perspective, the thing that would make most sense from a hypercapitalistic market of the year 3300 would be to simply integrate materials into the trade market.

...


This would solve the following problems:

1. Gathering and scavenging materials would actually encourage the players to engage into material gathering activities because:
a) They are too expensive to be bought on the market, so its better to gather them

As was mentioned, it's doubtful that price would stop their purchase. On the flip side, though, it could give CMDRs a way to make additional money if they either don't care about engineering or already have a fully engineered ship. I think each grade of material should be something like 10x more valuable than the previous grade, so, for example:
Grade 1: 100 cr./ea., Grade 2: 1000 cr./ea., Grade 3: 10000 cr./ea., Grade 4: 100000 cr./ea., Grade 5 : 1 million each.
One million per grade 5 is a bit steep, sure, but it's also fairly reasonable considering that you're able to directly buy exactly how many you need. If this were to be implemented, it almost entirely renders the material traders useless. If they were to remain, their rates of exchange would need to be adjusted to 10x instead of the current values.

1.
b) You can sell the materials you don't need to buy those that you do need
c) Not every type of material could be considered legal in some systems (drugs for the Engineer for example?) so it also would provide additional fluff to smuggling.

That's interesting, though it would be a tremendous headache to try to keep track of this sort of thing when planning a trip. The major obstacle here is that materials are not cargo, and that is what is being scanned for.

Option 3: Scavenging could become a totally new profession next to Merc/BH, Exploration and Trading by adding the following things:

1. Scavenging from abandoned settlments (we have that already)
2. Scav work from crash sites (we have that already)
3. Scavenging from abandoned orbital stations/outposts
4. Scavenging from in space wrecks

Those activities can be legal or illegal, depending on what the scavenging target is, and where is the target located. High sec, med sec, low sec, anarchy? the loot might be very lucrative but illegal and you can get jumped by Security forces or pirates, or even other scavengers.

I love the idea of scavenging. It really makes me feel like I'm part of the galaxy, picking up pieces of the past. I 100% would love to see Frontier work on improving that area of gameplay, because currently it does not feel very present.

I don't disagree, the problem though is your point 1a

When most (not me maybe, but many) CMDRs can make millions in an hour and billions over a couple of days, 1a becomes a moot point, nothing is ever too expensive on the market or it has to be SO expensive that it might as well not be there. Like fleet carrier expensive, for a few units of mats.

But otherwise, sure.

Agreed, though it really could offer CMDRs a way of making money, too. At 1 million cr. per grade 5 material, that is about the mid-point of the LTD frenzy we saw not too long ago, so I'm sure it would encourage players to gather them.

 

[Emmil]

Feel free to discuss Odyssey materials, but I will not do so because the release is still in a large amount of flux. What I will say, however, is that I think the below points should similarly apply to Odyssey's material system.

Gathering materials in Elite is, to say the least, a grind—we all know this is the case. Even after 2500 hours of play, the grind for materials is absolutely my least favorite aspect of the game. It's so bad, in-fact, that I avoided engineers almost entirely because of it. When I finally did attempt to begin engineering things, I was appalled that even after all the time I collected what I noticed and wanted that I still fell completely flat and had nowhere near what was required to fully engineer a ship—let a lone a few parts. It blew my mind that this was the case, and I was (and still am) quite annoyed that I would have to grind for materials instead of just "playing the game" to get them. What I fail to understand is why Frontier Developments has yet to strictly address the issue that so many pilots have complained about since Engineers were released. Tweaks have of course been made, but no serious overhauls were really seen. Now, I know that many of us have spent countless hours engineering our ships to perfection, and some have spent insane amounts of time on this front—I respect that, and I am not trying to suggest that we did not earn our perfect ships. The current system, however, is very gate-keeping oriented. I don't mind the engineer gatekeeping (having to unlock engineers in some order). What I mind is the grind. What I mind is playing the game normally and yet still managing to have nothing and being forced to grind (which I did, and it was not fun at all).

I'd like to propose a few different overhauls, and I would ask all of you to comment and suggest your own systems and offer tweaks to each other. I believe that with the release of Odyssey, a serious overhaul to materials in general is greatly needed and long overdue.

I'm going to stress once more that these are different systems to overhaul material gathering, and I do not necessarily think they should be paired together. Any one of these has the potential to alleviate the grind.

1. Large increase to material drop amounts.
I'm not talking double, I'm talking 3-10x. It shouldn't be easy to engineer anything, but it shouldn't be so difficult that you have to work tirelessly to engineer a single ship to your heart's desire. Most (if not all) drops are 3 materials per object. I would like to see that change anywhere from 10-30 materials per object, with some variability depending on the quality of the source. For raw materials, for example, Low Reserve systems will typically give 10 materials per drop and Pristine Reserve systems will typically give closer to 30.

2. Large increase to drop rates.
Once more, I'm not talking double for the drop rates, I'm talking up to 10x. I understand that nodes are spread out to give the sense of exploration, and I appreciate that particular viewpoint. However, we all know the feeling of driving many kilometers past hundreds boring boulders to find that one precious pebble that will give us exactly what we...oh, it's just iron. Sure, some have mastered the art of the SRV scanner and know precisely what to look for to increase their chances of finding good materials. I do not think that the signals and how they are read needs to change. What I would like to see, however, is the material scanning range be decreased from several kilometers to only a few hundred meters for raw materials, but about 10x more materials spawn per area to offset the decreased scan range. This will prevent scan cluttering.

3. Large increase to material drop duration timers.
All object despawns in the game are too short in my opinion. I can see where in some cases, it will cause game lag, but I have never personally experienced any such lag even after 2,500 hours of gameplay. I understand caustic items degrading quickly, but most items are completely gone after 3-5 minutes. I've seen materials vanish within two minutes, and I believe there was a bug where it happened in less than one minute. Materials should last no less than ten minutes, and ideally up to thirty minutes and up to fifty kilometers from the nearest Commander. Why? Because it makes no sense to fly around in a conflict zone or Haz Res with a cargo scoop deployed because we have to collect materials quickly or else they blow up. It really doesn't make much sense besides "game stability." Especially given that each ship drops around 5 materials, and even that a skilled pilot can kill about 30-50 ships in a CZ before victory, that means no more than 250 or so materials will be floating around, spread out over the battlefield. These are the spoils of war that we want, but those credits are nice, too!

4. Large increase to the viability of "Scavenger" ship builds.
I admit, this one might need to be paired with 3 to be of much use, but perhaps not. Consider a ship built to scavenge. It flies across conflict zone and haz-res alike, picking up what is forgotten. I recently built such a ship, and to my great surprise, ships didn't drop anything unless I had participated in the battle. This makes me quite sad. Frontier Developments always touts the "Forge your own path" mantra, but when I really did try (and I admit I was quite proud of the ship I had built, the Quantum Fox Mk. V) I was met with an enormous blocker for her entire purpose. She is a scavenger with no purpose...a wanderer of the Black with nothing to offer. Now, this is just in a CZ; I've yet to test this in a Haz-res, but from what I've seen there should not be a problem. I'll update this post if it turns out to be otherwise. Naturally, USS and other sites still drop their materials, but I was quite a bit upset when I realized that ships in CZs didn't drop a thing. This goes against actuality; there are looters who actively looted battles in history while they were happening. They typically got high quality items as they were the first on the field. If ships do drop materials in CZs, I believe that they should lean towards higher quality ones, since it is "riskier" to scavenge in these places. Paired with 3, I think that this would be a really fun role to play, even if it is a bit "grindier" than 1 or 2.

So there you have it. Those are just a few different systems which I think will really help alleviate the grind, encourage newer players to engage in engineering, and allow veterans to engineer their fleet without spending too much time working outside of work. I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, and comments on what I and others have shared.

Fly safe out there, CMDR.
o7

CMDR Concomitant


TL;DR
Gathering materials is a long and disheartening grind.
These are each separate ideas and overhauls, probably not best to combine them:
1. Large increase to material drop amounts.
2. Large increase to drop rates.
3. Large increase to material drop duration timers.
4. Increase viability of a "scavenger" type ship build.

 

[liveontimemitnoevil]

Self-bump to see if there are more thoughts about this out there. o7

 

[SouthernGorilla]

I am diametrically opposed to the whole mechanic of gathering things for the engineers. As I've said elsewhere, it's like stopping at the store to buy ground beef on your way to McDonald's so they can make you a burger. It isn't about the grind for me, it's just that the whole thing is a stupid idea. It's a mechanic that works-ish for survival or fantasy games but has no place in a game set 1,000 years in the future in a "functioning" economy where money exists. It also ruins the sandbox nature of the game by requiring us to do things we don't necessarily want to do. If engineering just cost credits I could get those credits any way I chose. As is, if I want to engineer something I am forced to engage in activities I do not want to participate in.

Having said all that, I realize they will never do away with the Minecraft mechanics and let us just buy engineering. And I completely agree with all the points made in the OP. At least that would make the hunt for materials less of a chore. If I knew I could go out and get enough materials in one short trip to engineer a module or two I wouldn't mind it so much. As is, I am completely unmotivated to hunt for materials because they simply take too long to accumulate in any meaningful quantity.

 

[Ijaa]

TL;DR
Gathering materials is a long and disheartening grind.
These are each separate ideas and overhauls, probably not best to combine them:
1. Large increase to material drop amounts.
2. Large increase to drop rates.
3. Large increase to material drop duration timers.
4. Increase viability of a "scavenger" type ship build.

1. No. Too much of a nerf, engineering should be a work's reward.
2. No. Too much of a nerf, engineering should be a work's reward.

There's no point nerfing the actual engineering drop amounts and rates, they're plenty already and you have many ways to acquire more rare materials using traders.

3. This is a great idea. You should be able to gather materials as partial reward after blasting pirates of fighting a war. For now, either you fight or gather but not both.

4. Scavengers ships can already be used in USS. Making them really more useful is a good idea.

 

[liveontimemitnoevil]

...it's like stopping at the store to buy ground beef on your way to McDonald's so they can make you a burger.

That's a hilariously accurate analogy.

1. No. Too much of a nerf, engineering should be a work's reward.
2. No. Too much of a nerf, engineering should be a work's reward.

There's no point nerfing the actual engineering drop amounts and rates, they're plenty already and you have many ways to acquire more rare materials using traders.

3. This is a great idea. You should be able to gather materials as partial reward after blasting pirates of fighting a war. For now, either you fight or gather but not both.

4. Scavengers ships can already be used in USS. Making them really more useful is a good idea.

1 & 2: While I agree that it should take work and I should feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, it's just a bit overkill to have to spend so much time gathering materials to upgrade even a single ship to full spec. Even though traders can help, the trading really only goes top down. It doesn't make sense for me to trade upwards at all, and if I make a mistake, the reverse trade yields diminishing returns...shouldn't it be fair value always? Like if I trade down, then back up, then down again, I lose materials overall.

3. Hopefully we'll see this!

4. Exactly, though I'd love to be able to scavenge active CZ's without having to be a part of the fight.

Thanks for the thoughts