EDO Engineering feedback from a 5k hrs veteran player

[rootsrat]

Time for the usual wall of text feedback from yours truly, this time regarding EDO engineering (suits and weapons)

I have now spent A LOT of hours on this, learning the process, unlocking some Engineers and trying to gather materials to improve my gear. The approach was to use EDO Materials Helper app, create a loadout and then use that loadout to create the list of required materials.

Note 1 - This feedback is from a perspective of a veteran player with over 5k hours in game with a immersion and role-play approach to Elite.
Note 2 - I didn't have many of the materials collected for starters, as I spent the majority of time on exploration trip since Odyssey was released. (I rage quitted to SagA* basically, due to the terrible state it was released in).
Note 3 - All of the below is my personal, subjective opinion. It's OK to disagree with it

So I have started with this loadout:

• G3 Maverick suit with 2 mods
• G3 Karma AR50 with 2 mods
• G3 Tormentor with 1 mod

After Fargod only knows how many hours I now have:

• G4 Maverick + 3 mods
• G3 Karma + 2 mods
• G4 Torm + 3 mods

I didn't count my game time I spent to get here, but believe me it was A LOT of hours. Definitely Counted in 10s.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

My overall impression is that EDO engineering is an absolutely terrible, time consuming and effort requiring process, which kills a lot of joy that I used to have when playing Elite. It makes me go out of my character's role play to mindlessly grind stuff, not caring about my backstory or in-game consequences. It has become a box-ticking exercise to me. Due to the RNG nature and lack of solid in-game info about where exactly get the materials, the amount of time that would be required to gather the stuff to max out, or even 4G just 1 loadout by "just playing the game" and adventuring around the bubble is beyond ridiculous and terrible game design in my opinion. I honestly don't even think it's doable for a regular gamer in a reasonable amount of time.

My biggest surprise is the rather opposite direction that EDO engineering has taken compared to ship engineering. Most of the process is a 180 degrees turn. A few examples:

• Ship material sources are very clearly described in-game for every single mat. Literally none of the EDO materials has the info about where to get it from.
• There is a plethora of ways to gather different types of ship mats, allowing for variety gameplay. EDO material gathering is rather limited in its variety.
• Player can exchange any ship material for another one at Mat Traders. Bartender will only trade in a small portion of materials and the rest needs to be gathered.
• Ship mods can be swapped. EDO mods are permanent.

This whole process really works more as a deterrent to upgrading my gear and even playing the game at all, which is a shame, because I quite enjoy the actual gameplay. But when I think about how much time I need to spend doing the same missions over and over again, and visiting the same POI over and over again, I'd really just play something else.

Let's do some bullet points, I love me a good list. Remember this is just IMO.

THE GOOD

• Feeling of accomplishment when you finally gather enough mats to do ONE upgrade
• Ability for players to trade mats (but also see the bad)
• The involved gameplay is actually fun, even though a bit basic at times

THE BAD (roughly ordered from the worst offenders to the minor ones)

• The complete lack of information regarding sourcing the materials
• Permanent modifications on weapons and suits, absolutely discourages experimenting with different loadouts. This was a lot of fun for ship engineering.
• The drop rate of some materials is absolutely ridiculous
• Many bugs that make the process even more tedious, grindy and difficult
• Objectively forcing players to choose the criminal path, which allows for more efficient mats gathering
• Rather limited gameplay options to gather the materials, makes the gameplay very "samey"
• No in-game tools whatsoever to support player to player material trading
• Limited options for NPC material exchange

THE BUGS

• Unlocking some engineers doesn't work, require FDEV support intervention
• Unable to transfer ship after being in jail, requires tedious Horizons workaround
• Bad game performance in some places
• Mission items not spawning, requires relogging to main menu, sometimes multiple times before the mission item is finally spawned.

All of the above points combined make the EDO engineering process an extremely tedious, grindy and unpleasant experience that works as a deterrent to playing the game at all for me.


HOW TO IMPROVE THINGS?

• Provide in game info of where to acquire the materials
• Increase the drop rate for some of the materials OR lower the requirements
• Allow players to exchange mods on weapons and suits
• Fix the bugs

Longer terms actions could include new gameplay loops and in-game UI for player-to-player material exchange.


I've had some more things in mind to write, but I think this post is already long enough. Hopefully this is a helpful feedback for FDEV from a passionate, veteran player. Hoping to see some improvements sooner rather than later!

Be polite and play nicely when discussing. Please.

o7 Commanders!

 

[Ozric]

Very good and well thought out post.

The amount of time if took me to find 5 units of Push, even after looking online to find out the best places to look for it, made me sack the whole thing off entirely.

I just shop for pre engineered stuff because even if I don't find exactly what I want, there's still more chance of finding something good than finding the mats I need.

My only addition would be the massive lack of useful blueprints for the Artemis suit to help with scanning/sampling biologicals. And nothing that remotely helps the scanning process at all. Yet another part of Odyssey that's focused entirely on combat.

 

[Martin1970]

Just find Grade 3 stuff and never bother with upgrading. Have fun.

 

[rootsrat]

Just find Grade 3 stuff and never bother with upgrading. Have fun.

I'd rather have fun while upgrading my gear

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

#inb4 "the grind is in your mind"

From what I see it's just the pattern repeating itself over and over. Maybe next year they done a rework. 2 years later, just like they did with Horizons. I don't believe it is incompetence. This is planned annoyance. My guess is the OCD aspect still hooks many players. And I bet apologists are already preparing their responses on how you and me just play it wrong, is not the game for us and all that crap.

 

[rootsrat]

#inb4 "the grind is in your mind"

This is the difference between ship and foot engineering. Ship allows for enough variety not to make things grindy. You can turn it into a grind yourself, if you want to really speed things up.

In EDO the normal process is already very grindy and speeding it up makes it even worse + has bad in game consequences.

 

[zimms]

rootsrat, you're three days early for the big anniversary.

Would have been a great date to add Odyssey feedback as well.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

• Ship material sources are very clearly described in-game for every single mat. Literally none of the EDO materials has the info about where to get it from.
• There is a plethora of ways to gather different types of ship mats, allowing for variety gameplay. EDO material gathering is rather limited in its variety.
• Player can exchange any ship material for another one at Mat Traders. Bartender will only trade in a small portion of materials and the rest needs to be gathered.
• Ship mods can be swapped. EDO mods are permanent.

Yeah, you remember the 2.1 time? All this stuff wasn't initially in engineers. Clearly described in-game? My rear, it was trail and error. We didn't even have the FSS to scan if anything of interest would spawn down planet. You had to land and waste your time finding out that the planet probably didn't have the stuff you were looking for but it could just have been bad luck.
None of the plethora - if there was any - was described or explained. Needle in haystack with RNG on top.
No mat traders at all. Limited inventory and guesswork for 2 years of happy roulette spinning and you could turn up with a worse outcome you had. Respecting player time the hard way.
Ship mods can be swapped. Lol. My rear. Yeah, technically we could swap. But there was no storage. It just would be in some sort of server cache and if some routine decided to wipe it you would loose your "stored" stuff while parking it - the only way to "store" it was to install on another ship.

Know what? I think they just save on the penny with the storage. Cos is gonna be some server side data, no? So it's permanent stuff again, not because they don't respect player time so much, no, is just that crap is expensive. That's MP gaming for you. Gotta make the compromises if you really in to it. If not you had better picked a SP game, we all learn that lesson at some point.

 

[Andro]

It's worse once you realize that Odyssey almost revolves around gathering these mats to upgrade your suits and weapons, so you can gather mats better. With a combat zone or exobiology session on the side. As someone who has several G5 suits and weapons, I agree with you, it's pretty bad, and the systems feels like it was balanced mostly to pad play time. They could knock off several 0's at the end of certain material costs and it would still be bad. It feels like a huge regression from where Horizons engineering ended up, which actually isn't too bad now.

 

[metatheurgist]

• Objectively forcing players to choose the criminal path, which allows for more efficient mats gathering

This old erroneous chestnut. Youtube has a lot to answer for. Maybe Elon can buy it and "fix" it too.

 

[rootsrat]

• Objectively forcing players to choose the criminal path, which allows for more efficient mats gathering

This old erroneous chestnut. Youtube has a lot to answer for. Maybe Elon can buy it and "fix" it too.

I know you technically don't HAVE to. But it makes things much more efficient. In the grand scheme of thigs (considering how time consuming EDO engi is), it is the most efficient path I think, combined with relogging.

 

[Dragsham]

Powerlevelling the on foot engineering is possible. Even better than to do it organically.
I estimate if you did it organically it would take over 5000 years to g5 all 3 suits & 4 weps( inc 4 mods )
So yes Op I totally agree.
Relogging at various types of spawns where data drops is powerlevelling in my view. Utterly supported by fdev.
I've no idea why this is so.
I've unlocked all the engineers and g5 x4 mods all 3 suits to my tastes. And 3 weps too. L6, P15, SHOTGUN.
It took 3 weeks of back to back settlement sacking and relogging at rare spawns.
This sucks.! Truly
I'm glad I've got it behind me.

 

[Northpin]

So, My XB account was migrated sometime 3-4 days after the process was made available to the general public.

Since then (last time i played that toon was 24th of October - so about a full calendar month), i managed to:

• unlock all bubble engineers (except Uma)*
• get 4x G5 suits (1x Artemis with 4 mods, 2x Maverick with 5 mods each, 1 Dominator with 2 mods)
• get 6x G5 weapons (Tormentor, Executioner, P-15 each with 4 mods, Aphelion and AR-50 each with 3 mods, Zenith with no mods)

So, it is possible if you set some goals, focus play and you know what you're doing
It's the 3rd toon that i'm equipping

* (i basically stayed in a single area that was dominated by a player Anarchy faction - which is usually in negative states - and i mostly supported them by running tons and tons of restore missions for them while refraining to take any missions that required me to raze or shutdown any of their settlements. Next step is to move out of that area in a Sirius controlled zone to pick up and abandon restore missions for them - good source of Power Regulators while dropping rep with them to unlock Uma)

The amount of time if took me to find 5 units of Push, even after looking online to find out the best places to look for it, made me sack the whole thing off entirely.

oh come on!
Just pick any larceny mission that is sending you to get /hush/push/lazarus/synthetic patogen/ and you are sorted out in 15 minutes tops.

 

[Northpin]

• Objectively forcing players to choose the criminal path, which allows for more efficient mats gathering

This old erroneous chestnut. Youtube has a lot to answer for. Maybe Elon can buy it and "fix" it too.

I know you technically don't HAVE to. But it makes things much more efficient.

Nope, The most efficient way is to do restore missions and salvage missions (with the subsequent relogging in mission POIs to get MI and SDP)
It's way faster to power up and loot a settlement then to fight your way and then deal with bounties

 

[Dragsham]

@Northpin
So you've not sat behind a skimmer cold logged for mats risking the scavs? This is a very real workaround many do it inc myself.
It's wrong!
It's plain wrong

The alternative is 5000 years

 

[rootsrat]

Nope, The most efficient way is to do restore missions and salvage missions (with the subsequent relogging in mission POIs to get MI and SDP)
It's way faster to power up and loot a settlement then to fight your way and then deal with bounties

Fair enough, but it is still extremely repetitive grind with not much variety and a lot of relogging. Absolutely pointless from enjoyment point of view (subjective).

 

[Northpin]

@Northpin
So you've not sat behind a skimmer cold logged for mats risking the scavs?

Not on this account - weird enough in a full month i never found any POI with the skimmer - but yes, i did it some time ago on my other 2 accounts.

On this account i managed to get 5 SDP from running missions, and got the rest from the trader market

 

[Northpin]

Fair enough, but it is still extremely repetitive grind with not much variety and a lot of relogging. Absolutely pointless from enjoyment point of view (subjective).

They used to send me to about 5-6 different systems in that area
The layouts were varied enough and had the full range (military, agri, tourist, high tech, extraction and ind) of settlements
And i did picked a lot of missions not only restores - salvage, fetch/deliver, defense, assassination missions plus the mandatory thefts and heists for unlock while alternating with doing CZ for Hero.
Basically i picked any mission that offered good material rewards as long it didnt hit the local player anarchy faction that was ruling that area

It really didnt felt repetitive.
Especially not when considering that i did almost everything (except CZ ofc) in a G3 maverick using a g3 p15 and a g3 aphelion.

 

[Elpapo]

I think oddy "grind" is nowhere as bad when horizons was launched, especially if one wanted min-max a ship for PVP, back then.
But maybe because I was used to that (1000+ rolls to get single or two godrolls), oddy aint seem as bad. It felt much, much more quicker to obtain fully modded G5 weps and suits, using all tricks and tips to do that (reloggin,settlement speedruns, etc), comparing to effort needed to get that 142% DD drives when we had "casino" sliders.

Also, as I like "criminal" element of oddy gameplay, it suits my cmdr very well. Overall it was not that bad, atleast it given some goal to do at elite, wich took few months.
Now? I dont do much of oddy stuff anymore, cuz I have already all I needed, including surplus of mats if ever needed yet another aphelion or P15 or whatever.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think it took me about six months to engineer up my suits and a selection of weapons from G2 bought to G5 + mods - but that was very part-time, less than a mission a day, and focusing the mission choice around ones with a useful material reward. Once I'd got to G3 and could reliably fight scavengers it wasn't too bad.

Did very much help that I was in Colonia, so:
- I started out with the basic upgrades, rather than mods, which all have relatively easy requirements
- it was four months in before the engineers showed up locally, and they didn't have SDP-type requirements
- by then I had enough loose materials to apply a few mods immediately.

That plus not trying to get it done in any particular timescale did I think help a lot.

As with Horizons engineering it gets way more fun once you've built up a decent material stockpile so that you can at least part-build a new thing very quickly. The first time round is the most painful for both. Which is, definitely, not a good thing - but it makes it very hard to compare "Horizons Engineering with maxed out material reserves" and "Odyssey Engineering with virtually nothing" and know which bits are "Odyssey Engineering is bad" and which bits are "any Engineering without materials is bad"

To add to the things you liked - and things I think Odyssey engineering does rather better than Horizons engineering:

• All engineering materials are available as mission rewards, generally fairly quickly for the ones used for experimentals if you're able to do any mission type and aren't picky about which nearby faction it hurts.
• Outfitting / loadouts system means you don't need multiple identical "modules" in the same way that I have at least five basically identical 5A FSDs lying around
• Ability to buy pre-engineered modules which are "good enough" means there's less need to push everything and makes getting started easier.
• All upgrades are fixed price defined effect, no randomness
• There are very few (if any?) "junk" mods, whereas a lot of Horizons mods and experimentals are at best only useful in extremely niche cases.
• All the experimentals are relatively minor effects rather than massive power creep. Though the power range from G1 to G5 suits or weapons is still too wide to make interesting game balance practical.
• Rather better balancing of which engineers offer which experimentals; no engineers at all required for basic mods. Less of the "Marco Qwent" problem.

Thinking about the things you didn't like I'd agree with most of them - more in-game info on where to find materials, especially, since a lot of the out-of-game advice is actually wrong:

[*]Permanent modifications on weapons and suits, absolutely discourages experimenting with different loadouts. This was a lot of fun for ship engineering.

Countered to some extent by the "loadouts" system meaning that you can much more easily re-use items you already have, and to some extent by the experimentals being much weaker than their Horizons equivalents so it's not so crucial to have them at all, and to some extent by the availability of pre-engineered suits/weapons with mods so you can see the effect that way.

I still think it's a bad decision but I'd put it a lot lower down the list of problems than you did, because in the context of every other difference between Odyssey and Horizons loadouts+engineering it's not actually too big a problem: you'll probably want a silenced weapon, it doesn't matter so much what weapon that is, once you've got one that can go on any of your loadouts.

[*]Objectively forcing players to choose the criminal path, which allows for more efficient mats gathering

This is absolutely one of the best things about Odyssey for me - it actually has criminal activities be at least comparably efficient to the equivalent legal activities. I engineered my suits and weapons with no murder and minimal detected illegality (and no relogging either) - lots of missions to offline bases - but it would certainly have been faster if I'd also done the illegal options just because I'd have got the materials I was using mission rewards for much quicker.

The problem is that the C&P system is still stuck in the Horizons mode of "criminal activity is bad, the player should be punished". That needs replacing with a "Crime and Fun" system, which would benefit Horizons too, but Odyssey Engineering in isolation is right here, I think.

[*]Rather limited gameplay options to gather the materials, makes the gameplay very "samey"
[*]Limited options for NPC material exchange

All engineering materials (though not unlock materials) being available as mission rewards lets you in theory at least get any material from any task. I think this is more that all of Odyssey's missions are fairly similar whether or not you're using them for materials.

(Possible counterpoint, though not for me: lots of people seem to absolutely hate that Horizons material gathering requires doing a range of tasks, so "get all materials from this one thing" might be a positive for them)

[*]No in-game tools whatsoever to support player to player material trading
Subset of "no in-game comms tools suitable for communication with people you don't already know", really, but definitely true.


I'd also add:
* Far too many distinct types of Data materials (Goods and Assets are okay) - a problem shared with Manufactured and Data in Horizons engineering - leaving lots of materials with zero or one use.