I am arguing in good faith, because I belive that the grind is a mindset, and if one modifies their mindset, it improves their gaming experience. And I am not exactly saying there is no grind at all; I am saying the grind is what you make of it. Of course there is loads of possibility to grind, but there is no obligation to do it unless you want to for one reason or another.edit: Btw, your claims that there is no grind at all in the game are at least as hyperbolic.
But thanks for admitting you're not arguing in good faith. Arguments are irrelevant, you will continue your "fight".
A message to Frontier From D2EA
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What if there's some dumb combination of mods that makes the oppressor actually own like the shotgun slugshot with the right combination of mods and some repeated enter-exiting your ship/SRV?And seriously.... I run into modified G3 stuff all the time. You don't need to G5 a store bought G3 Oppressor to know it is a paintball gun. And if you take a G3 Intimidator into a settlement you know using a G5 one will be a slaughter fest. And yes, I sold some stuff at a loss to clean up my inventory. Nobody cares, we're all billionaires, or bound to be.
What if there's some combination of mods that makes you walk faster or jump higher?
I actually had to do side by side comparisons with jump assist on various suits to see if a G1 vs G5 had a different jetpack jump strenght, I obviously didn't try all the suits with that one because of the mod permanence.
Figuring out these things in other games could be a fun and rewarding, playful, process - in Elite for foot mods it's just frustrating also in part because the mods themselves just aren't that fun. For spaceships you can mess around in EDSY or Coriolis for hours theory crafting builds.
Not exactly a grind, go play Everquest for a few weeks and come back (thank me later).
O7
Interesting about the New Launcher, I noticed a comment in that thread that an influencer or maybe just a frequent forum member speculated that the new launcher was evidence of a planned game sunset, in that the stream-lined launcher was bulit around obfuscating access to content/options.
I didn't want to derail that support/feedback thread but for me it is the opposite, to me it is evidence of the theory that the plan is still on track for more DLCs rather than continue to update either Odyssey or the base Codebase4.0. The streamlined interface with a graphical element to represent different game "versions" seems like a way to more easily visualise multiple DLC content like an app store.
It may have just been something that was planned solely for Odyssey but got de-prioritised while the DLC was patched, but the timing of it seems more intriguing to me, would they have bothered with it 2 years later once they had decided Odyssey was in a better shape but that they were going to spin a slow moving Narrative of free content to a terminal sunset of the game? I don't buy that even as a relatively small slice of development, the company has a big priority development schedule for other titles in 2023 so it would suggest there was something more important behind it.
I didn't want to derail that support/feedback thread but for me it is the opposite, to me it is evidence of the theory that the plan is still on track for more DLCs rather than continue to update either Odyssey or the base Codebase4.0. The streamlined interface with a graphical element to represent different game "versions" seems like a way to more easily visualise multiple DLC content like an app store.
It may have just been something that was planned solely for Odyssey but got de-prioritised while the DLC was patched, but the timing of it seems more intriguing to me, would they have bothered with it 2 years later once they had decided Odyssey was in a better shape but that they were going to spin a slow moving Narrative of free content to a terminal sunset of the game? I don't buy that even as a relatively small slice of development, the company has a big priority development schedule for other titles in 2023 so it would suggest there was something more important behind it.
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Frankly, I would not assume that the suit grade has any influence on how mods behave. The suit and mod descriptions don't give any reason to believe so. Did you find anything (genuine question). I certainly didn't find it any different when I took my Mav from G3 to G5 with jump assist already on.
Also, I don't think an exploit like the shotgun slug should be part of the discussion. Personally, I expect it to be patched out at one time or another.
On that I agree; having something to theorycraft on personal equipment would be fun. On the other hand there seems no need for it, as suit and weapon engineering and modding don't seem to interact, so there aren't too many variables. All you need is basically the Odyssey Materials Helper to make a list what loadouts you want to make.
I've gotten bored with Elite a number of times during my many (since 2017 I think) years playing it, which caused me to seek out a variety of "mistresses" (Space Engineers, X4 Foundations, etc), but I only recently "divorced" the game. For me, it wasn't boredom that caused me to uninstall Elite for good and become a proper ex-boyfriend, it was the Legacy / Live split, especially once Live because a mandatory install. I was actually having a bit of fun in Horizons 3.8 back when the galaxies were united, especially the last couple of CGs before Horizons 3.8 was abandoned in this regard (I quite enjoyed my new Diamondback Scout outfitted with special CG rewarded Guardian weapons).
Getting bored with a game doesn't make one an "ex-boyfriend" of the likes we see in the comment sections of popular YouTube celebrities. I got bored with Skyrim before completing every side-quest and exploring every cave, and yet I have nothing but positive things to say about that game all these years later. While I have positive things to say about certain eras in Elite Dangerous' development, the game and company behind it have overall left a sour taste in my mouth. That isn't a symptom of boredom. And I've been on this forum long enough to know that a lot of people have divorced Elite because of reasons other than boredom, often because Frontier breaks something that was working just fine, change something from better to worse, completely abandon key features of the game (remember the Galnet blackout for an entire year?), or otherwise degraded the game rather than improve it, at least in the opinions of those who quit Elite.
Speaking of Skyrim, out of curiosity I just compared Skyrim reviews to Odyssey reviews, focusing on recent reviews only. Skyrim reviews remain overwhelmingly positive, whereas Odyssey reviews are now mixed, with a number of very recent negative reviews. I'm sorry, but you can't attribute that to "they got bored after 5000 hours".
Version management was always a mess with FD. ED was ED. Then you got a DLC Horizon. Then Horizon became a new game. Then ED stopped existing and became Horizons. Do you have an idea what this does to your purchase history and consistency of purchase? It pretty much effs it up.
There is no streamlining with ED - just utter obfuscation.
The Deus Ex 2 has something similar. Basegame was retired and rereleased. New version was temporarily available with boss fight redo. Now if I wanted to update my version, I'd have to buy the same fricken game again.
That's how you legally defraud your customers and screw them over. Rebrand, rerelease, repackage. Becomes real hard to deliver a proof of purchase for these whack-a-mole releases.
My immediate thought was the old 'apples compared to oranges line' but upon a second thought, it's not a bad comparison to use at all, kudos.
Edit: and to finish my thought before I hit send ......
The D2EA message is just another call in a long history of calls. Fair enough but until FDev take the decision to reply, it's a road going nowhere again and 28 pages of forum posts later, we all just end up in the same place. I'll head back to my Viper and scan another cabbage maybe next time I feel the urge to ...LOL
There's a comment on the actual video by @prism6 which in part reads ".......There are hundreds of billions of procedurally generated star systems to explore... and roughly 30 kinds of fauna to find. Your local garden centre has a better selection..... "
Indeed!
S!
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my response was opposing the idea that simply playing too long is why players become disenchanted with the game. being bored is just one reason and it doesn't take years of playing to get there.
and related to some earlier posts, the grind in elite is not a state of mind. grindy game mechanics are objectively defined and exist as grind whether you participate in them in marathon engagements or in bits here and there. what is a state of mind is if you are negatively impacted by those grind mechanics.
the issue players have with elite when it comes to grind is that the game loops stop there. there is no higher level action you can take that leverages something other than time sinks repeating an infinitely available fairly easy task for the bulk of the game play options available.
trading high profit vs beginner? the only difference is scale
mining high profit vs beginner. the only difference is scale
bounty hunting high profit vs beginner. this too is basically scale.
exploration high profit vs beginner. the only difference is time spent (scale of time).
there's nothing for players to progress to besides doing the thing that beginners are doing in the game but more of it.
this failure of fdev's design is at the heart of what many issues lead to player disenchantment... bugs that break or significantly change the game aside. well this and totally ignoring in game third party content by not having it incorporated in game... which forces players to go or be outside the game to play the game in a more enjoyable way.
i guess we can chalk it up to design decisions made by people who were inexperienced with games like this or maybe their vision required them to cater to players who suck at games but are retired so they can sit on it all day?
Catchable butterflies and fish jumping in the water. Skyrim batted the homerun on the first steps down the road to Whiterun. First impressions are always the strongest.
My first impression in ED: Trying for an hour to land a ship because the tutorial omitted telling us that direction on the landing pad was a thing.
I made this video, basically only jump assist matters (the one clip in the video indicating otherwise is maybe mislabeled) and it works by increasing the tank which could also change how refill rate affects height gain (if it doesn't change refill rate too)
It might be worth re-running the test with various framerates too to see if that changes the jetpack fill rate.
I think it's worth testing stuff that has a 1% chance of working or doing anything interesting, it's just that if it requires an hour of travel even after you have all the mats to get the mods installed is just plain discouraging and (unintentionally) hostile game design.
There might still be cool stuff people might want to try like a double silenced rocket launcher for Revenants or something, but you have to be extremely determined to try something like that. A lot of the criticism about the mods being not varied enough or boring/useless is also tied to this -- most players will only be able to engineer one set of gear after year(s) of playing so they only get to try out that one set of mods. The other mods might not be entirely useless, but they're definitely useless enough to not be worth the effort to even experiment with.
I will readily confess that I think that these videos are pretty pointless, especially this late in the game. I also would take someone like Burr, who AFAIK still loyally plays Elite, more seriously than those who have clearly walked away from Elite except for these occasional click-grab videos.
As for the length of this thread, it would have faded away on day one had everyone taken the following advice:
Ironically it's been these very people that have fanned the flames for dozens of pages. The only reason I entered the fray is because someone said "ex-boyfriend" three times in a row
People are more likely to walk away from the game after having enough and then maybe make those videos later after playing other games.
The opposite would be easy to deride too - they only make Elite content so they don't know about other games and how Elite compares to them.
of course everyone can have an opinion or a suggestion. there are however some... circumstances that can affect how that message is received.
if its coming from a semi-clickbaity, little narcissistic, zealous influencer who presents himself as THE voice of the community... meh
for that video he earned some points but lost more.
This is a problem especially with modern (~post-2010) high-graphics games.
EDO has about 100 types of plants (if you don't include recolours) many of which have several model variants for stages in growth or lifecycle. So that's several hundred models to make, texture, normal map, LODs, etc. just for the "nowhere near enough" experience it provides.
In a low-graphics game, it'd be a fuzzy shrub sprite or maybe a green cuboid with some texturing, and your mind fills in the details: your scanner says this is a Arctostaphylos and the last one using this sprite was a Photinia, well, at this level of graphics you're not going to be able to tell the difference, they're both green with pointy leaves. A basic text recombination engine similar to 1984 Elite's planet description generator could give you millions of unique plants to go with each basic model, and the models are way quicker to make up so you can have more of them too.
In Elite Dangerous, the plants are modelled sufficiently clearly that the distinction between those two types of plant would be pretty obvious. So every plant needs a unique model. "Procedural Generation" doesn't really help with that - it can only recombine things which already exist, so you now need to do even more work than with the static approach - rather than making models, you need to make model components that are resilient to rescaling, rotating, reflecting, joining together in unpredictable fashions, etc. without getting the plant equivalent of blue star cubes all over the place.
There isn't yet a way to make an infinite number of high quality 3-D models cheaply. So the options for exploration games are:
- low graphics (ideally, text mode)
- low scope (so you run out of space to explore before you run out of unique content to put in it, more budget can stretch this further but into the hundreds or thousands, not millions)
- high repetition (the ED and NMS approach, which also applies of course to the planets and stars in those hundreds of billions of systems just as much as it applies to the plants)
Added that unlike NMS, EDs approach to the models is some sort of biological plausibility ie ones found up on high mountains are shrubberies and possibly a link with chemical composition of atmosphere etc which adds further to the burden. I had hoped in the dev diaries running up to Odyssey launch in that they had developed some sort of clever pro-gen genetics engine that could generate an infinite variety from template models like a mash up of their work on Planet Zoo and the new Planet Tech. These sorts of massive games do need something like an AI model generator because the hand-craft development costs are too high.
The re-coloring/texturing thing was a step in the right direction and going hard on that one with multiple patterns and combinations of patterns that actually look different could've achieved it. For scientifically grounded plants like the Elite stuff is just varying the colors/patterns could be more believable than generating more random wild shapes/sizes of stuff like NMS.
I'd say Elite actually has enough variety in plants and more wouldn't help, it's just that they're boring and not really worth re-visiting after scanning and taking/showing off some screenshots. There's no interaction unlike the horizons stuff (jump in a geyser, burn to death in a vent, get some mats from a fumarole/horizons bio signal, do some stuff to get a NSP trait scan). Ticking a box is just too one-dimensional and Odyssey in general usually doesn't look good enough to inspire awe like space exploration does.
Mandatory wall of text warning. Also somewhat of a general comment.
Now, I’m not gonna defend some of the wording used in the video(who doesn’t fall into the trap of thinking they’re speaking for ‘the people’ even once?), but I don’t think it’s just supposed to be pure clickbait.
Does the title seem as such? Sure, but I also know that Astro/D2EA does still play and/or stream the game now and then, and it certainly doesn’t seem like he is doing it ‘just for the clicks’. I would also consider announcing a major BGS operation for his in-game faction as anything but ‘Game he no longer plays or has an actual interest in’.
It also is worth keeping in mind that ‘negativity’ generally seems to attract people’s attention more than voicing positive thoughts, even if they are just as well-meant or prevalent.
Though I have to admit, I also find certain suggestions on his channel slightly questionable sometimes. See an AX Krait build with Azimuth’s modified plasma chargers for the station AX CZs, using only one module reinforcement because ‘You can dock to repair at will’.
Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_hhKHMK-F-k
Which I disagree with, because of the way Thargoids just absolutely wreck anything that they hit, Thargon missiles especially. And I’ve seen him fly a shieldless Chieftain with only one mod reinforcement… it was not pretty, as soon as there was anything other than a Cyclops present.
I don’t count the ‘money maker’ videos and whatnot as ‘clickbaity content’ or whatever - as sad as it might be to say it, people that play games(the casuals in particular) have less and less patience for stuff. And there’s also a difference between grind grind, some of which Elite certainly has purely through how long it takes to do some things, and perceived grind, which is what those activities in those guides usually are. And yet, I see people asking for exactly that kind of stuff to bypass Elite’s progress barriers*.
Tangent aside - digging through detailed video information to check whether it is monetized seems extremely petty and like you’re on a path against the guy. Especially if you just did it for a single one, which he might have forgotten to toggle it off for - he announced two days prior to the upload of that video that he’d be going on vacation, so it was almost certainly pre-uploaded and set to publish at a later date.
Even leaving that aside, he has made it abundantly clear that he considers the channel as more of a hobby than anything, and the Patreon venue, while certainly advertised, is still entirely voluntary in nature.
He also already works full time(a fact that he has openly disclosed himself, so don’t even go there), but what’s the issue with wanting some extra revenue on the side, especially if people are willingly providing their money? And enough to dispense YT ad revenue entirely, assuming that the active monetization on this one video was not intentional. (You didn’t confuse it with eligible for monetization, right?)
Also also, I highly doubt he’s on the same level as what I hear of, say, Yamiks, for whom people say he’s just full of salt(albeit, some of it may just be satire for the sake of entertainment).
But I won’t go into his channel in extensive detail because it is not a subject I have enough information to speak on. Something that I think is entirely reasonable, and would be good to keep in mind for a subject such as this**.
*I don’t personally follow those guides any further, in favor of stuff that I find more fun. EG if I go mining I’d now rather find cores to crack open, even if it is not “the money maker” that following a map of high-yield painite or platinum asteroids is. Surface mining also sucks, by the way. It’s not even a relaxing kind of boring.
Now, I’m not gonna defend some of the wording used in the video(who doesn’t fall into the trap of thinking they’re speaking for ‘the people’ even once?), but I don’t think it’s just supposed to be pure clickbait.
Does the title seem as such? Sure, but I also know that Astro/D2EA does still play and/or stream the game now and then, and it certainly doesn’t seem like he is doing it ‘just for the clicks’. I would also consider announcing a major BGS operation for his in-game faction as anything but ‘Game he no longer plays or has an actual interest in’.
It also is worth keeping in mind that ‘negativity’ generally seems to attract people’s attention more than voicing positive thoughts, even if they are just as well-meant or prevalent.
Though I have to admit, I also find certain suggestions on his channel slightly questionable sometimes. See an AX Krait build with Azimuth’s modified plasma chargers for the station AX CZs, using only one module reinforcement because ‘You can dock to repair at will’.
Which I disagree with, because of the way Thargoids just absolutely wreck anything that they hit, Thargon missiles especially. And I’ve seen him fly a shieldless Chieftain with only one mod reinforcement… it was not pretty, as soon as there was anything other than a Cyclops present.
I don’t count the ‘money maker’ videos and whatnot as ‘clickbaity content’ or whatever - as sad as it might be to say it, people that play games(the casuals in particular) have less and less patience for stuff. And there’s also a difference between grind grind, some of which Elite certainly has purely through how long it takes to do some things, and perceived grind, which is what those activities in those guides usually are. And yet, I see people asking for exactly that kind of stuff to bypass Elite’s progress barriers*.
Tangent aside - digging through detailed video information to check whether it is monetized seems extremely petty and like you’re on a path against the guy. Especially if you just did it for a single one, which he might have forgotten to toggle it off for - he announced two days prior to the upload of that video that he’d be going on vacation, so it was almost certainly pre-uploaded and set to publish at a later date.
Even leaving that aside, he has made it abundantly clear that he considers the channel as more of a hobby than anything, and the Patreon venue, while certainly advertised, is still entirely voluntary in nature.
He also already works full time(a fact that he has openly disclosed himself, so don’t even go there), but what’s the issue with wanting some extra revenue on the side, especially if people are willingly providing their money? And enough to dispense YT ad revenue entirely, assuming that the active monetization on this one video was not intentional. (You didn’t confuse it with eligible for monetization, right?)
Also also, I highly doubt he’s on the same level as what I hear of, say, Yamiks, for whom people say he’s just full of salt(albeit, some of it may just be satire for the sake of entertainment).
But I won’t go into his channel in extensive detail because it is not a subject I have enough information to speak on. Something that I think is entirely reasonable, and would be good to keep in mind for a subject such as this**.
*I don’t personally follow those guides any further, in favor of stuff that I find more fun. EG if I go mining I’d now rather find cores to crack open, even if it is not “the money maker” that following a map of high-yield painite or platinum asteroids is. Surface mining also sucks, by the way. It’s not even a relaxing kind of boring.
**I’m partly saying that cause I relatively recently had the experience of a few people trying to dump all over my RP for Elite in a (discord) server, purely because it didn’t match their preconceived notions and gatekeeping… but they didn’t even bother to engage with any of its material or try to understand its nuances. I’ve kept things more distant and reserved toward them since.
So you think I'm petty. Fine, I can live with that. You were the one who brought up the topic of him "turning off ads" as some kind of argument as if that raised his credibility, and I just pointed out that that claim doesn't have a leg to stand on. I'm fine with monetization, and I don't care enough about D2EA or any other content creator "to go after them" as you make it seem. But if guys like D2EA build up a public vanity project and start to speak "for the community", they are subject to some scrutiny, and what they do and say needs to be evaluated in the context of their public representation.
Even if he works full time and claims it is only "a hobby", his channel still is a business. He still monetizes, he still advertises for very expensive sticks and gamer gear, and he still sells merchandise. There is nothing wrong with that, but that forms the context of what he says and how he says it.
You pointed it out yourself; he doesn't really have a clue about some (maybe even a lot of) areas of ship building, but he still puts up build guides. He is always the first to put out a grind or farming guide for everything before we even know if the stuff is worth farming. Why? He does it, because he wants to stay relevant to his audience. And he puts out opinion pieces because of the relevancy he assumes he has.
Again, nothing wrong with that. But as the audience, be aware that he's not mother Theresa, and as a community member, be aware that he speaks for his own bubble at best. He has done some very good work for the community like some of the online tools he put up on his CMDR's toolbox. If it was just a hobby, maybe he should stick to stuff like that. But that will not be enough to sustain a 100k sub Youtube channel, I am afraid.
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Its all about discovery, you dont need folks to tell you how to build ships, experiment, die, rebuild, survive
It doesn't make sense though. A galaxy with billions (trillions?) of people, and they haven't figured out that sharing information is a good idea? Especially when they don't all get infinite lives
The equivalent of the internet would be full of advice on how to survive and combat the Thargoid threat. Pilots' magazines would be full of stories about how this or that ship was able to stay alive. Every ship outfitter would be offering standard anti-goid refits, "guaranteed" to keep you alive.
And while I appreciate there's an argument for the value of discovery in a game - not everyone wants to risk large chunks of their previous investments on bad experiments.
The high time investment of engineering in general does indeed tend to prohibit any urge to experiment. If you choose a bad modification, you've just cost yourself many hours of time investment in just the gathering, let alone the period of figuring out if it's any good - which might also end up costing credits. I find it completely understandable that players end up writing guides for other players to spare others the pain.
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