Hi Cmdrs! Here is my feedback from 2.1 which sadly has pushed me away. I believe this is not the desired outcome from releasing an update with new content and I have seen many with same feelings as me. This OP contains various opinions, feelings and wants. If you are that person that loves to predictably post 'Git Gud', 'Bye then' and 'Can I haz your stuff' this is not the thread for you and (asking nicely) please get lost. Nobody needs to read that recycled childish dribble in any discussion.
I'm taking a good break from Elite because frankly the latest update just didn't improve the game for me. This is coming from the guy that wanted everyone to cheer up and look past the bugs and shortcomings! It's becoming clear to me that in a want for the game to be amazing, I had become dependent on over looking the problems to enjoy the game. The recent update has made this too hard, I don't feel they have addressed existing issues and have ultimately added more to the list.
I was excited about the inclusion of crafting, new mission system, better AI and modified weapons but have been let down on all accounts. The release didn't go too smoothly for the players, resulting in a weekend slaughter of cmdrs costing the community collectively 100's of millions in credits. What a shock that was!
As far as I have seen the added engineers content is more of that G word. I have repeatedly seen people say that the engineers are crazy mavericks that shouldn't be focused on, that upgrading modules is not something to focus on, it's a background thing. Rather like a mini-game that you occasionally dabble in while playing the main game. Without paying too much attention to it, you will eventually have the parts accumulated to go grab a grade 3 upgrade on your FSD that improves jump range and it will just be a 'hmm.. that's convenient' moment.
Problems are that:
1, The whole point of 2.1 was the ENGINEERS. Clue is in the title. We didn't wait 5 months for something that we should mostly ignore, we want to completely explore the content that we paid and waited for.
2, When engineers originally dropped, 99% of NPCs had modified weapons or modules so actually the player needed to immediately jump on the upgrade task to remain at a more fair playing field.
3, We currently can't just slowly accumulate the required materials and commodities for 6 or 7 grade 5 upgrades over a period of 8 or 9 weeks because of the utter lack of a means of storing required commodities as and when we find them along with the limited amount of storage for 120 different collectible materials/data.
4, The other vital upgrade with 2.1 was the mission system, which rewards commodities for completing them. Is this so I can immediately sell them for some extra credits? What's the point in that, just increase the credit reward. No, the point was to give you a commodity you need for an upgrade, encouraging the player to do certain missions because of that particular commodity all the while pointing the player in the direction of getting an engineer mod. I cant just receive the commodity reward and then forget about it for a few weeks, because I'm stuck with this ton of something that I cant leave anywhere because of the storage problem. It encourages me to do something with it right now.
The mechanisms that were employed with 2.1 pretty much go against the idea that they shouldn't be focused on as it actively steers the player towards them in multiple ways. It would have been really nice if the focus had been something else entirely and then we found out 'hey, there are these guys and you can get some cool stuff now and again' but it wasn't like that. They were the whole focus and it turns out that engaging with them is not fun. Gathering the required materials and commodities is not fun. Just getting enough for a few re-rolls on something can take upwards of 10 hours. The idea of getting any decent results is pointless because it's too random.
My experience so far was upgrading some lasers, after 10 re-rolls the wheel of fortune landed on a blue segment and I won....NO EFFECT! [where is it] (It's another bug.. how did that not come up in testing?) I would have cared more if I intended to use the weapons but no, just grinding through mods to get friendly with the engineer...another un-fun activity. This really needed missions to get cosy with them, they could have been specific to their interests but what ever it just needed to be engaging and fun. Grind out 200 brandy or travel 5000LY from home just to meet them? Again, where is the fun for those that don't like exploration or trading?
The crafting didn't deliver for me, also the crafting screen is so out of place it is cringe worthy. That first time I asked the engineer to mod a pulse laser for me, those little pins bounced from left to right an the little wheel did it's spin, I laughed. Out loud. [haha] I was so just so confused at the choice to include that system which is so completely different from anything else. It has a really weird feeling of gambling. Which is completely unexpected in ED and after having spent 15 hours gathering materials getting slight downgrade just feels horrible. It didn't make me look forward to getting the upgrades instead I learned that it didn't feel very good. I didn't leave thinking great look what I can make instead I left thinking "gee, getting that will be stressful and I'm unlikely I get anything I want." A 'being lucky' reward system for the amount of hours put in for me is a massive turn off.
Imagine you complete a mission that takes about 10 hours or more and requires you to kill 50 ships. When you go to get your reward, the guy turns to you and says "ok, 50 ships dead? Great! Your prize is going to be some where between 200k credits and 15 million credits, I'm just going to pull this lever on this slot machine to find out what you get" CHACHUNG! BING, BING...BING "Sorry buddy, looks like your only getting 350k credits this time. Not happy? How about 50 more ships and you give it another go?That's what this feels like to me and it has no place in ED. Literally the strangest design choice I have seen in a real long time of gaming.
Then there is the new mission system to fill in for the place holder we had in 2.0 which had us doing a variety of things with a credit reward at the end. The new persistent faces for them is great, I really like that addition as it brings something really missing from the whole game, which is people. The mission branching is a little predictable but a nice addition, however I find they are quite buggy especially the updated time of 0.00 minutes, the needing free cargo space equivalent to the mission cargo just to hand it in and changing destination to somewhere ship can't land or to system in lockdown. But the missions them selves? Uhh, correct me if I am wrong but I have not actually seen a new mission that wasn't in 2.0 Not even one mission that is new and either makes use of the engineers or the new weapons or just something we haven't seen already? For me this just didn't deliver a new mission system, It's the same mission system as 2.0 but with predictable branching and new skin that still shows little progress bars going left or right.
I have tried doing missions with a wingman but for this nothing new either. We both took a mission to kill 6 skimmers, needing combined 12. The mission was to the same place so we can do it together. We get there, and the base only spawn 2 skimmers, that's it. We wait around a bit and no more skimmers spawn, sirens keep going but mission does not continue. We decide to log out to menu and back in to reset the instance. The base send another 2 skimmers. We think together but nothing other than both resetting the instance at the same time by exiting to menu and back in again gets the skimmers to spawn. Immersion was completely ruined. This led to us both deciding to abandon the mission. [down]
We took a mission to find escape pods, again this ended badly as while showing him how to pick up cargo I picked up his pods thinking 'its fine, I can just drop them again', we picked up each others pods and couldn't drop them, couldn't use them or sell them only solution was to self destruct SRV with them in the inventory. [down] From what we can tell, wings were just not considered when making these missions.
The lower ranked npc's have been tamed back again which I think was a smart move, but I am still running into high ranking npcs that insta'kill me immediately after interdiction. [knocked out] Npc pirates that interdict and go straight for the kill without asking for cargo, whose great idea was that? I forgave this when the AI felt like place holder moron but now the AI has been worked, they keep this in? Getting Ganked by NPC only leads to frustration in my opinion. I can understand serious danger coming if I put myself in it either on purpose or by accident, but if I am not looking for it at all it still finds me. This is not a fun mechanism for any casual player that is looking to chill out and make a bit of progress after they've been in a stressful office all day.[ugh] I can't imagine it will be any fun for returning players that were waiting for 2.1 or new players that have just bought the game.
This change was very sudden and although I welcome the improved capabilities of the AI, I would have expected a better distribution between safety and danger. At the moment it is very jarring with very unexpected deaths from smaller much cheaper ships. Even eagles fly circles around me and actually prove quite a challenge, taking my shields off everytime and only missiles make short work of them, fights otherwise can last about 5-10 minutes. It was great to have a fight that was challenging, I am happy with that. But from an eagle? Really? All I took away from this was that anything more than an eagle and I'm probably in serious trouble. If I was a noob [noob] I could understand that. It seems that to accomplish any task in the game now like smuggling, trading or collecting materials must be done in a combat fit ship as nothing else will survive. Congrats the game is now 'Dangerous' and living up to the name. This will be great for those who are in the top of the class for piloting, for the rest of us though I'm not convinced.
I see reports of the AI not obeying the laws of time, distance or fuel restrictions. Escaping after taking a beating and then interdicting again with full health less than 60 seconds later, Interdicting you the very split second you arrive at a system and even chasing you over multiple 30LY jumps in an Eagle. Have experienced myself entering a Threat 0 USS to find an enemy NPC 'waiting' for me when I arrive. Entered a threat 1 USS to find two cops and 2 pirates, not just completely ignoring each other but also flying in a formation! Within seconds the pirates are attacking and the cops start scanning me! I am trying to maneuver and defend against the pirates and the cops spend the first few minutes watching and scanning. It was a bit comical really but it just highlighted to me that all the improvements to the AI have only been in one thing > aggressive combat. If an NPC is not actively attacking me then its still as dumb as a door nail.
The planetary landings have gotten worse. On the ground the graphics are much improved, but any other part is worse, it looks like Plasticine the whole way down and it hangs for ages when transitioning to glide which it didn't before. The huge black bar that spans across your view when docking is just awful. There has to have been a really strong argument from the designer to add this in because I cant imagine everyone else in the FDev team also not questioning its presence.
I know I have whittled on for too long now, TLDR, I see too many bugs for a delayed release and the new content is not enjoyable or fun. Almost nothing of interest from the engineers them selves because it's all locked away from an RNG wall of no-fun and missions are slightly dressed up but exactly the same underneath. Ill see you all in 2.2 but I have learnt my lesson and will wait at least 4 weeks after it has dropped before I consider touching it because content is released before its ready. [down] [sour]
I'm taking a good break from Elite because frankly the latest update just didn't improve the game for me. This is coming from the guy that wanted everyone to cheer up and look past the bugs and shortcomings! It's becoming clear to me that in a want for the game to be amazing, I had become dependent on over looking the problems to enjoy the game. The recent update has made this too hard, I don't feel they have addressed existing issues and have ultimately added more to the list.
I was excited about the inclusion of crafting, new mission system, better AI and modified weapons but have been let down on all accounts. The release didn't go too smoothly for the players, resulting in a weekend slaughter of cmdrs costing the community collectively 100's of millions in credits. What a shock that was!
As far as I have seen the added engineers content is more of that G word. I have repeatedly seen people say that the engineers are crazy mavericks that shouldn't be focused on, that upgrading modules is not something to focus on, it's a background thing. Rather like a mini-game that you occasionally dabble in while playing the main game. Without paying too much attention to it, you will eventually have the parts accumulated to go grab a grade 3 upgrade on your FSD that improves jump range and it will just be a 'hmm.. that's convenient' moment.
Problems are that:
1, The whole point of 2.1 was the ENGINEERS. Clue is in the title. We didn't wait 5 months for something that we should mostly ignore, we want to completely explore the content that we paid and waited for.
2, When engineers originally dropped, 99% of NPCs had modified weapons or modules so actually the player needed to immediately jump on the upgrade task to remain at a more fair playing field.
3, We currently can't just slowly accumulate the required materials and commodities for 6 or 7 grade 5 upgrades over a period of 8 or 9 weeks because of the utter lack of a means of storing required commodities as and when we find them along with the limited amount of storage for 120 different collectible materials/data.
4, The other vital upgrade with 2.1 was the mission system, which rewards commodities for completing them. Is this so I can immediately sell them for some extra credits? What's the point in that, just increase the credit reward. No, the point was to give you a commodity you need for an upgrade, encouraging the player to do certain missions because of that particular commodity all the while pointing the player in the direction of getting an engineer mod. I cant just receive the commodity reward and then forget about it for a few weeks, because I'm stuck with this ton of something that I cant leave anywhere because of the storage problem. It encourages me to do something with it right now.
The mechanisms that were employed with 2.1 pretty much go against the idea that they shouldn't be focused on as it actively steers the player towards them in multiple ways. It would have been really nice if the focus had been something else entirely and then we found out 'hey, there are these guys and you can get some cool stuff now and again' but it wasn't like that. They were the whole focus and it turns out that engaging with them is not fun. Gathering the required materials and commodities is not fun. Just getting enough for a few re-rolls on something can take upwards of 10 hours. The idea of getting any decent results is pointless because it's too random.
My experience so far was upgrading some lasers, after 10 re-rolls the wheel of fortune landed on a blue segment and I won....NO EFFECT! [where is it] (It's another bug.. how did that not come up in testing?) I would have cared more if I intended to use the weapons but no, just grinding through mods to get friendly with the engineer...another un-fun activity. This really needed missions to get cosy with them, they could have been specific to their interests but what ever it just needed to be engaging and fun. Grind out 200 brandy or travel 5000LY from home just to meet them? Again, where is the fun for those that don't like exploration or trading?
The crafting didn't deliver for me, also the crafting screen is so out of place it is cringe worthy. That first time I asked the engineer to mod a pulse laser for me, those little pins bounced from left to right an the little wheel did it's spin, I laughed. Out loud. [haha] I was so just so confused at the choice to include that system which is so completely different from anything else. It has a really weird feeling of gambling. Which is completely unexpected in ED and after having spent 15 hours gathering materials getting slight downgrade just feels horrible. It didn't make me look forward to getting the upgrades instead I learned that it didn't feel very good. I didn't leave thinking great look what I can make instead I left thinking "gee, getting that will be stressful and I'm unlikely I get anything I want." A 'being lucky' reward system for the amount of hours put in for me is a massive turn off.
Imagine you complete a mission that takes about 10 hours or more and requires you to kill 50 ships. When you go to get your reward, the guy turns to you and says "ok, 50 ships dead? Great! Your prize is going to be some where between 200k credits and 15 million credits, I'm just going to pull this lever on this slot machine to find out what you get" CHACHUNG! BING, BING...BING "Sorry buddy, looks like your only getting 350k credits this time. Not happy? How about 50 more ships and you give it another go?That's what this feels like to me and it has no place in ED. Literally the strangest design choice I have seen in a real long time of gaming.
Then there is the new mission system to fill in for the place holder we had in 2.0 which had us doing a variety of things with a credit reward at the end. The new persistent faces for them is great, I really like that addition as it brings something really missing from the whole game, which is people. The mission branching is a little predictable but a nice addition, however I find they are quite buggy especially the updated time of 0.00 minutes, the needing free cargo space equivalent to the mission cargo just to hand it in and changing destination to somewhere ship can't land or to system in lockdown. But the missions them selves? Uhh, correct me if I am wrong but I have not actually seen a new mission that wasn't in 2.0 Not even one mission that is new and either makes use of the engineers or the new weapons or just something we haven't seen already? For me this just didn't deliver a new mission system, It's the same mission system as 2.0 but with predictable branching and new skin that still shows little progress bars going left or right.
I have tried doing missions with a wingman but for this nothing new either. We both took a mission to kill 6 skimmers, needing combined 12. The mission was to the same place so we can do it together. We get there, and the base only spawn 2 skimmers, that's it. We wait around a bit and no more skimmers spawn, sirens keep going but mission does not continue. We decide to log out to menu and back in to reset the instance. The base send another 2 skimmers. We think together but nothing other than both resetting the instance at the same time by exiting to menu and back in again gets the skimmers to spawn. Immersion was completely ruined. This led to us both deciding to abandon the mission. [down]
We took a mission to find escape pods, again this ended badly as while showing him how to pick up cargo I picked up his pods thinking 'its fine, I can just drop them again', we picked up each others pods and couldn't drop them, couldn't use them or sell them only solution was to self destruct SRV with them in the inventory. [down] From what we can tell, wings were just not considered when making these missions.
The lower ranked npc's have been tamed back again which I think was a smart move, but I am still running into high ranking npcs that insta'kill me immediately after interdiction. [knocked out] Npc pirates that interdict and go straight for the kill without asking for cargo, whose great idea was that? I forgave this when the AI felt like place holder moron but now the AI has been worked, they keep this in? Getting Ganked by NPC only leads to frustration in my opinion. I can understand serious danger coming if I put myself in it either on purpose or by accident, but if I am not looking for it at all it still finds me. This is not a fun mechanism for any casual player that is looking to chill out and make a bit of progress after they've been in a stressful office all day.[ugh] I can't imagine it will be any fun for returning players that were waiting for 2.1 or new players that have just bought the game.
This change was very sudden and although I welcome the improved capabilities of the AI, I would have expected a better distribution between safety and danger. At the moment it is very jarring with very unexpected deaths from smaller much cheaper ships. Even eagles fly circles around me and actually prove quite a challenge, taking my shields off everytime and only missiles make short work of them, fights otherwise can last about 5-10 minutes. It was great to have a fight that was challenging, I am happy with that. But from an eagle? Really? All I took away from this was that anything more than an eagle and I'm probably in serious trouble. If I was a noob [noob] I could understand that. It seems that to accomplish any task in the game now like smuggling, trading or collecting materials must be done in a combat fit ship as nothing else will survive. Congrats the game is now 'Dangerous' and living up to the name. This will be great for those who are in the top of the class for piloting, for the rest of us though I'm not convinced.
I see reports of the AI not obeying the laws of time, distance or fuel restrictions. Escaping after taking a beating and then interdicting again with full health less than 60 seconds later, Interdicting you the very split second you arrive at a system and even chasing you over multiple 30LY jumps in an Eagle. Have experienced myself entering a Threat 0 USS to find an enemy NPC 'waiting' for me when I arrive. Entered a threat 1 USS to find two cops and 2 pirates, not just completely ignoring each other but also flying in a formation! Within seconds the pirates are attacking and the cops start scanning me! I am trying to maneuver and defend against the pirates and the cops spend the first few minutes watching and scanning. It was a bit comical really but it just highlighted to me that all the improvements to the AI have only been in one thing > aggressive combat. If an NPC is not actively attacking me then its still as dumb as a door nail.
The planetary landings have gotten worse. On the ground the graphics are much improved, but any other part is worse, it looks like Plasticine the whole way down and it hangs for ages when transitioning to glide which it didn't before. The huge black bar that spans across your view when docking is just awful. There has to have been a really strong argument from the designer to add this in because I cant imagine everyone else in the FDev team also not questioning its presence.
I know I have whittled on for too long now, TLDR, I see too many bugs for a delayed release and the new content is not enjoyable or fun. Almost nothing of interest from the engineers them selves because it's all locked away from an RNG wall of no-fun and missions are slightly dressed up but exactly the same underneath. Ill see you all in 2.2 but I have learnt my lesson and will wait at least 4 weeks after it has dropped before I consider touching it because content is released before its ready. [down] [sour]
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