I use the DBX just for quick 'Bubble Runs' (engineered it up to 52LY jump range, eventually....) as Greasetrap42 suggests, but Specdaddy is defo right-on about traipsing 100Ly (or more...) just for an experimental effect. However, i've gotton so tired of this back n forthing, just for an upgrade (and no thanx to the single-pin blueprint **** either) i'm going back to exploration, got an ASP that jumps a seriously good distance (yeah, yeah,...after being engineered to L5) for mid-range stuff, plus a Krait as a long-range alternative, depending on what I wanna do. Either way, i've just about had it with the entire engineer process/grind/repeat shtyk. Still, each to their own I guess, if it works for you, it works.
Make the engineering grind remotely palatable
- Thread starter sprecdaddy
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The only problem I see with engineering is that it is so ridiculously easy to get new ships that players are sunk by their own hubris.
If you like the actual game, and the possibility at your disposal since the very first Sidewinder or Viper or Cobra, there's never, ever, any grind at all.
A couple of weeks out in the black is enough to gather all the mats you need + half a billion credit.
If you like the actual game, and the possibility at your disposal since the very first Sidewinder or Viper or Cobra, there's never, ever, any grind at all.
A couple of weeks out in the black is enough to gather all the mats you need + half a billion credit.
That is an interesting argument for nerfing the credit fountains. Bravo!
Also, it would better direct players toward the real engaging content if it takes ages to get ships instead of disillusioning them with getting a Corvette or Cutter in the hope that would somehow be "end game" content. Or getting G5 outfit at all costs (specially at the cost of fun)That is an interesting argument for nerfing the credit fountains. Bravo!
Ship progression is (or should be) only a side effect of playing the game, just like credit or material grabbing.
I get that Frontier wants the player to choose their path, and if this path is climbing the dry ships ladder it is fine. But if they make it too easy to climb they expose themselves to criticism like "omg this game is so empty" or "it is so grindy" because Frontier encouraged that play-style by making it so reachable from the very start.
It should be hard enough to make it clear this not the game main content.
People will whine. They do already anyway. All the time. So better off making some stronger game-design choices.
Maybe even make people renounce some kind of ships for the choices they make.
Threads almost exactly like this have consistently appeared since the release of Engineering. It continues to baffle me that Fdev are so slow to change it. Doubly so that the same crowd of nay-sayers continue to swarm around these threads with platitudes of "just play without grinding" and "you don't need to Engineer at all", as if this integral part of the game is not in fact part of the game at all. It's all absurd.
There are mountains of feedback, ideas, suggestions, and user-created resources available to help enact changes and improvements, and as has been the case since Engineering's inception, it's down to Fdev to actually take action upon it.
There are mountains of feedback, ideas, suggestions, and user-created resources available to help enact changes and improvements, and as has been the case since Engineering's inception, it's down to Fdev to actually take action upon it.
I dont completely agree. Engineering is optional as playing the game is optional, in order to experinece the content of the game especially thargoids a certain level of engineering is required in order for it not to be overly frustrating.
Additionally exploration gameplay is not possible/enjoyable without engineering. Even buying the different modules for a new ship or delivering missions is frustrating without basic FSD engineering.
I agree with you that you can skip most of it for most engineers but at leasr farseer is required. I would not say Engineering is Optional so lightly and therefore justified to be ridiculously grindy.
The asyntotic nature of the RNG at the end of a G5 modification is VERY RAGE INDUCING and unnecessary
The issue is not quite engineering, imo, but the fact that Elite is a different kind of game and a lot of people do not get it.
They expect some kind of progression toward an end and rush raising ships levels. As it getting a G5 Corvette was the goal. And once they got through all the mind blowingly boring chores of gathering materials, grinding ranks & money they find that they are empty handed. Because the game is the same beginning to end.But it is their inner emptiness they meet, no the game, which is actually quite rich.
This is far from my specific complain.
I get what you are pointing at and partly agree. However there are a few things in the game (I love the game by the way) that are not immersive physics (sci-fy physics) wise and seem offtarget. I get that the grind might be a target of the devs for any reason, but the RNG on the engineering upgrades on G5 requiring almost the same amount of taps (and materials) for the first 90% than the last 10% is ridiculous (for practically 0 gain). It alwais occurs to me that while in the last 90% I click for the upgrade and alwais advances less than 5%. This is not needed for the game to be different, special, realistic, or any mechanic purpose. It is just there to enfuriate completionists.
I now just enhance all G5 with near 90% and leave it unless it requires low tear abundant materials. It does not bother me anymore but we need to agree it is a very poor pointless abusive development decision. It does not HELP or ENHANCE the game in any sense.
I agree.
Agree. I believe there are a couple mindsets that lead to the "grind frustration":
- New players that want to "win" very quickly, grind like crazy.
- Players that want to be "efficient" and look up youtube videos. These tend to be easiest mindless grind methods that aren't fun.
- Ship collectors. Players that rapidly buy ships and want them fully outfitted and engineered. Credits are easy, so the cycle of buying a new ship is much faster than engineering it.
- Singular activity focused players. They don't want to do any other activities.
- Players that just want things faster and easier to get the stuff to play with. They want a more arcade style game where they can just select gear from a menu.
Thing is, since the original release of Engineering, Frontier have:
- tripled material gains from each fragment collected
- added material traders to smooth out bad luck in distribution
- added moderately-reliable collection of many high-grade materials through the HGE signal sources, crystal shards sites, and other POIs
- reduced the cost of blueprints substantially (especially at the lower grades)
- significantly reduced the number of G5 materials required for both an optimal module and for a "you're not going to notice the difference in actual play" 98% optimal module
- extended the performance curves so that a G4 module under the current blueprints can outperform many legacy G5 modules
- removed the requirement to spend cargo-hold commodities for blueprints entirely (most of which were either mining-exclusive, mission-exclusive, or only available from a few stations hundreds of LY from the engineer)
- allowed remote engineering for non-experimental effects
- allowed experimental effects to be bought at a fixed (and usually fairly cheap) price rather than either being entirely random or costing two levels of engineer rep
- made engineer rep improve the amount of improvement you get per material cost, and added various ways to fast-track rep without spending materials to most engineers
- increased the collection rates of high-end raw materials from meteorites
- removed the possibility for unlucky negative secondary effects to wreck an otherwise good module roll
- removed the possibility for spending materials to result in no improvement at all to the module
- provided other non-Engineering sources for some enhanced modules
In the original 2.1 release you could quite easily spend twenty times as long per module getting it to a comparable spec.
As a result of all these changes ... the number of threads complaining about "the engineering grind" has not noticeably changed.
So why should Frontier believe that any further reduction in the time costs of engineering would make a difference either?
If Elite was about spaceships, there would be 10x more ships and a clear bias toward the need to upgrade/own different ships.
There's nothing of that sort, because Elite is about space, not particularly ships which are only a medium by which we experience the galaxy.
As is the SRV or space-suits. Nobody would call Elite a space-suit game, right?
There's nothing of that sort, because Elite is about space, not particularly ships which are only a medium by which we experience the galaxy.
As is the SRV or space-suits. Nobody would call Elite a space-suit game, right?
This
Kids today
People that complain about engineering forgot or never got to experiment how bad [*] was engineering back then - there is only several things that i really miss from the old engineering days:
- experimentals for certain blueprints that currently dont have any, for example Stripped Down or Flow Control for Sensors Engineering blueprints (they used to exist in legacy blueprints)
- and experimental to increase the minimum mass for Shields (there were legacy blueprints that did exactly this, allowing Cutters to equip size 5 prismatics or normal shields)
*[although i will concede that it was bad only in terms of grinding, but not in terms of variety and/or unicity of results - but then again, i'm more happier with the current "safe" engineering than i could have ever be with the gambling machine that was the old engineering]
"Play without grinding" isn't a platitude. It's the only rational way to play any computer game.
Once I read about a Chinese jail where the guards forced the prisoners to play WoW all night instead of sleeping, to gain gold for selling. Those guys could complain about grind. For anyone in an ordinary gaming situation it's just self-inflicted.
I've never seen one complaint of being 'empty handed' once Engineering is finished. What I have seen is a lot of disgust after experiencing it - which is in alignment with my own experience.
Blaming the players for 'not getting it' is just silly. Either the experience is enjoyable, or it isn't. The most common answer since the start of Engineering has consistently been "no, it isn't enjoyable".
That's not owing to some kind of widespread "inner emptiness" that somehow only players of this game happen to experience.
Because quite clearly, none of these implemented changes are addressing the core issues brought up about Engineering.
Do they mitigate some of the issues brought on by it? Yes. Is it measurably better than it was before? Also yes. Yet is the experience any more enjoyable? Not really.
It's still a slog for the sake of being a slog. It's still significantly affected by RNG. It's still an extreme power creep over vanilla ship capabilities. It's still primarily determined by willingness to relog frequently and read/use third party utilities.
The fact that it was so much worse in its original iteration does not negate the fact that there is massive room for improvement, change, and reimagining.
So the way you play is the only rational way that anybody else in the entire galaxy can play a game, and anybody that happens to play differently is basically a Chinese sweat shop prisoner. Okay, dude.
Sure, but that's also true of many other features of the game which haven't already had four large-scale rewrites.
At this stage I'd rather they put the time into fleshing out passenger missions, or cleaning up a lot of Odyssey's rough edges / integration issues, or doing something with rares to make them relevant again, or setting up some way for systems to gain semi-persistent development/regression via the BGS, or even a Powerplay rewrite, than into Engineering Version 6 in the hope that this time it'll convince the people who didn't like the first five versions.