Fortunately I've been able to progress, in my own fashion, without becoming embittered and continue to generate my own entertainment in the game.
Same with DayZ. Or EvE. Or any Paradox game. And good luck running a proper trade empire in X4 without using online tutorials, guides and tips. Any game with any level of complexity will always have the community spend thousands upon thousands upon many more thousands of hours of documentation, tools, and apps. Its not an indictment of the game, it doesn't mean the 'devs are lazy', it just means there is a healthy community actively supporting a game they enjoy.
Sane and mentally healthy people, yes. Others will continue to play because they promised themselves this would be their Forever Game that would finally make them happy. Others even go so far as to hang around half a decade after uninstalling out of sheer bitterness. Some will quite literally never mentally get over not liking a game as much as they had hoped.
I never needed extensive guides or 3rd party apps for any Paradox game nor X games. It's all explained in the game. Mostly. And what isn't can easily been looked up in a Steam guide. I never played a game that relied heavily on 3rd party apps.
Item 1 I Sola Prospect Brestla.Explain to me how you find, without using a third party tool, a particular class of module that you need for your ship if the station you're at isn't selling it? Or build reliable trade routes? Or learn which specific activities provide which specific G5 mats?
This is a bit rhetorical - again, been playing since beta, so I already know the answer to these, and the plain truth of it is, it involves a lot of trial and error. There is definitely a subset of player for whom that kind of thing has real appeal, and I'm not knocking it, per se.
But there's a word for something that requires the dedicated expenditure of time, energy, and experimentation to achieve.
That word is "difficult."
Really? Discord, Ventrilo or equivalent? The specific "gameplay" might not require it but group play has often made it necessary or required it. Some games now offer ingame voice chat but a discord server is still often preferable.
Yes, voice chat is exception. I was thinking about information apps mostly.
I don't know, Discord, Ventrilo is all about communication with other players not using it as a reference to see where you might find items for trading or specific services.
All the time. coordinating player efforts, asking for help, and information. And its pretty key for group play. Its a 3rd party app that you run while playing the game.
I always look at it this way... someone had to come first and write the "guides" to begin with... That means they had to figure it all out without additional info.
Else they just want everything to be changed to suit their personal needs, as if the entire world revolved around their lives.
Yes, it's always better to discover a game yourself. It's basically the point of playing. It's just when players can't find trade routes that are decent nor the mats they require for the mandatory engineering upgrades, they look for help. And that streamlines the gameplay to City17-style Combine daily routine job.
You make a good point here. I never felt that need in relation to ship builds (well, except when planning them with Coriolis), but when it comes to engineering materials, especially in Odyssey, game UI is of no help. I would even call it a mess. I'm baffled how it was left in such a state.
I feel like it's something you have to look at on a case by case basis. Like, it's better to have the best accessibility tools available for a game in that game as part of its design. But fan communities play a vital role in smoothing over the experience for newer players and extending a game's longevity.
I think the issue in the case of ED is the lack of proper documentation*...I mean there is documentation, but it is neither proper nor does it have the depth that the game requires...
