The background, if motivation and stories don't tickle you, then skip this section to the heart of the idea below.
A specific example of what I'm talking about, if specific examples don't have a place in your heart, keep on a scrollin!
This is the meat of the proposal, if you don't want to read this you should probably head back to the "I got instakilled"/"game is dying"/"pvp4ever" threads.
What I propose is that each recipe have multiple options for fulfillment. So instead of a class 4 only being able to be done with those 4 ingredients. It can be done with any combination of 3 of the 4 types of ingredients required to upgrade FSDs, namely: Wake scan component, chemical refinement material, raw element material, commodity. Each class of material would have at least 3 possible materials it could be filled with, except the commodity which would be the core component, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a unique part of each tier of blueprint, but I think all commodities should be available to purchase somewhere (I'm looking at you elusively ubiquitous modular terminals...). The lower tier the ingredient the more of it you have to use for higher grade upgrades because it isn't such a high grade material. This is a fairly common concept (5 pennies to a nickel, 5 nickels to a quarter, 4 quarters to a dollar...) So instead of looking like above, a class 4 upgrade might look like below.
-
Micro material:
5x Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes or 2x Anomalous FSD Telemetry or 1x Strange Wake Solutions
Micro material:
3x Chemical Distillery or 7x Chemical Processors or 1x Chemical Manipulators
Micro material:
2x Yttrium or 5x Selenium or 1x Polonium
Commodity:
1x Energy Grid Assembly
-
The player just checks the boxes next to the materials he wants to use and boom!
-
What this does is make it so that you can keep finding low grade components and not feel like it's futile, it remains rewarding. Finding a high grade component remains incredibly rewarding and loses that feeling of entitlement and subdued rage at all the time you had to spend getting it. You progress because of where you're looking, not because you got lucky in getting what you were looking for. Because each recipe has multiple fulfillment avenues, you have lots of options. Faster charge, increased range or shielded. all likely achievable because of the large combination of completion paths you can take to build them. The player is free to experiment, he's spoiled for choice. It also removes a lot of the stress of "I hope it's a really good roll, those are my only 2 polonium!" That way if you have tons of Chemical Processors but can't find Chemical Distilleries you are still making progress, which is what players are after and you've put that progress largely in the player's control.
-
In summary,
The problem is:
-Players don't feel like they are progressing because they keep finding materials they can't use and can't find materials they need to use, much of their inventory is useless for the thing they want to do putting high pressure for a good roll when they have the chance.
The above proposal makes it so:
-All grades of materials remain relevant and rewarding to find.
-Cross upgrading becomes much more possible because there are many more combinations you can use to upgrade things.
-Players get the freedom to try different modifications despite only finding 1 or 2 types of materials.
-Frustration at not finding those rare components is removed as players are still accruing enough low grade materials to make up the difference.
-Players are always progressing toward upgrades by finding the right types of materials, rather than stymied by not finding the precisely correct material.
-Less than ideal rolls don't sting because you have other avenues of making another attempt.
Anyway, just a thought. I can't presume to speak for the player base, this is just a proposal based on my observations.
There are other things you could do to make it more interesting based on the materials you use (see spoiler below).
Also, thanks to inara.cz for the blueprint info, great site.
I watched Obsidian Ants video today and I've been reading the forums all through the 2.1 launch and whatnot. People aren't satisfied and so they complain. I think it goes beyond a vocal few ranting on the forums (though there is plenty of that, to the detriment of reasonable people trying to make a case). So I've been trying to get at the core of the issue, why are players not feeling satisfied with loot and crafting?
-
I think the problem is that people don't feel like they are progressing meaningfully. You look and look and look for stuff and you can't find it, you find lots of X but you need Y even though you're looking in the right spot. You're blowing up trade ships but they won't drop Chemical Manipulators, you just keep getting Distilleries! That quickly becomes frustrating, you're stymied in your progress because of that one thing you can't find enough of and it happens over and over, every module, every engineer. Add on that a good class 4 is better than a bad class 5 despite the class 5 requiring much more effort to get the materials for and ....ugh.
-
Yesterday I got to and looked through Marco Quent's stuff,. I realized a couple things. I had the materials to do a grade three upgrade, all I had to do was unlock it! Huzzah. Then I realized that meant all the grade 1 and 2 upgrades and their materials were pretty much useless other than just getting to grade three...I also could only go down one upgrade path, the options for each upgrade are so rigid that you either have stuff to overcharge or to armor or to make it efficient...that wasn't a fun experience because all those upgrades became paywalls and pigeon holes. So I got to grade 3 and did my upgrade and then it didn't matter how many grade 1 and 2 blueprint components I had....I didn't like that feeling, it made all the effort in obtaining them so hollow and trivial, like a pointless rite of passage. Plus since I had unlocked him, I'd never upgrade another ship to power plant class 2, I have the class 3 recipe...so all that stuff I had quickly became pointless, and that didn't feel good.
-
The thing is, in the end, I'm fine with how it all works, but the way it is presented doesn't feel good and it obviously frustrates many players. The mechanic needs tweaking so that it is always rewarding to find a component, regardless of quality and the process of doing an upgrade is a matter of choice rather than permission. Lower tier upgrades should never outclass higher tier. That just needs to be changed. Effort needs to equal reward, it doesn't in life, but we play games to escape life so lets leave that out of this. To sum up.
-
My observance of the good about engineers and looting.
-They add life to the galaxy.
-They make our ships cooler.
-They make our ships unique-er.
-It's fun to get a good roll, really fun!
-They add a lot to do.
-It's fun to loot, it's fun to see ships explode and useful bits and pieces be left behind.
-
My observance of the bad part about engineers.
-Blueprints are very rigid, only one way to complete them.
-Most materials quickly become useless.
-Material inventories quickly build up and become difficult to track because of cluttered useless bits my limpets and scanners throw in there.
-Valuable materials are so rare it feels like I can't risk experimenting between dirty drives and clean drives because I've only got a few of material X or Y and I want to make it count.
-Common materials quickly become frustrating to find "dammit! More IRON! I have so much IRON! I just want some Chromium!" Finding common materials becomes a disappointment rather than a find that has value.
-Players feel like they need to grind to get somewhere.
-
I think the problem is that people don't feel like they are progressing meaningfully. You look and look and look for stuff and you can't find it, you find lots of X but you need Y even though you're looking in the right spot. You're blowing up trade ships but they won't drop Chemical Manipulators, you just keep getting Distilleries! That quickly becomes frustrating, you're stymied in your progress because of that one thing you can't find enough of and it happens over and over, every module, every engineer. Add on that a good class 4 is better than a bad class 5 despite the class 5 requiring much more effort to get the materials for and ....ugh.
-
Yesterday I got to and looked through Marco Quent's stuff,. I realized a couple things. I had the materials to do a grade three upgrade, all I had to do was unlock it! Huzzah. Then I realized that meant all the grade 1 and 2 upgrades and their materials were pretty much useless other than just getting to grade three...I also could only go down one upgrade path, the options for each upgrade are so rigid that you either have stuff to overcharge or to armor or to make it efficient...that wasn't a fun experience because all those upgrades became paywalls and pigeon holes. So I got to grade 3 and did my upgrade and then it didn't matter how many grade 1 and 2 blueprint components I had....I didn't like that feeling, it made all the effort in obtaining them so hollow and trivial, like a pointless rite of passage. Plus since I had unlocked him, I'd never upgrade another ship to power plant class 2, I have the class 3 recipe...so all that stuff I had quickly became pointless, and that didn't feel good.
-
The thing is, in the end, I'm fine with how it all works, but the way it is presented doesn't feel good and it obviously frustrates many players. The mechanic needs tweaking so that it is always rewarding to find a component, regardless of quality and the process of doing an upgrade is a matter of choice rather than permission. Lower tier upgrades should never outclass higher tier. That just needs to be changed. Effort needs to equal reward, it doesn't in life, but we play games to escape life so lets leave that out of this. To sum up.
-
My observance of the good about engineers and looting.
-They add life to the galaxy.
-They make our ships cooler.
-They make our ships unique-er.
-It's fun to get a good roll, really fun!
-They add a lot to do.
-It's fun to loot, it's fun to see ships explode and useful bits and pieces be left behind.
-
My observance of the bad part about engineers.
-Blueprints are very rigid, only one way to complete them.
-Most materials quickly become useless.
-Material inventories quickly build up and become difficult to track because of cluttered useless bits my limpets and scanners throw in there.
-Valuable materials are so rare it feels like I can't risk experimenting between dirty drives and clean drives because I've only got a few of material X or Y and I want to make it count.
-Common materials quickly become frustrating to find "dammit! More IRON! I have so much IRON! I just want some Chromium!" Finding common materials becomes a disappointment rather than a find that has value.
-Players feel like they need to grind to get somewhere.
A specific example of what I'm talking about, if specific examples don't have a place in your heart, keep on a scrollin!
How do we make take the bad things and turn them into good things? I'll try to show by example, below are 2 blueprints to upgrade FSDs, so as I am flying around I pin my class 3 upgrade and find lots of those for 2 reasons. 1. I am looking for them. 2: They are more common. So I get a bunch of them and then I do the upgrade and it comes out well and I still have a bunch so I look at the class 4 and the only thing that carries over is one of the hardest things to get, the Yttrium...so I sigh and head out to find some class 4 upgrade components while my inventory sits stocked full of class 1, 2 and 3 components, but what do I find? A few for class 4...but mostly lots of the class 1/2/3 stuff still, because it's more common, which just gets frustrating. Getting materials almost feels punitive and mocking!
-
The blueprint from a class 3:
Micro material:
2x Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes [High Wake Scanning]
Micro material:
3x Chemical Processors [Ship Salvage (Transport ships), Signal Source]
Micro material:
2x Selenium [Surface Prospecting, Mining]
Micro material:
1x Yttrium [Surface Prospecting]
Commodity:
1x Modular Terminals [Mission reward]
-
The recipe for a class 4:
Micro material:
2x Anomalous FSD Telemetry [High Wake Scanning]
Micro material:
3x Chemical Distillery [Ship Salvage (Transport ships)]
Micro material:
2x Yttrium [Surface Prospecting]
Commodity:
1x Energy Grid Assembly [Markets near Stafkarl (Industrial/Refinery)]
-
The blueprint from a class 3:
Micro material:
Micro material:
Micro material:
Micro material:
Commodity:
-
The recipe for a class 4:
Micro material:
Micro material:
Micro material:
Commodity:
This is the meat of the proposal, if you don't want to read this you should probably head back to the "I got instakilled"/"game is dying"/"pvp4ever" threads.
What I propose is that each recipe have multiple options for fulfillment. So instead of a class 4 only being able to be done with those 4 ingredients. It can be done with any combination of 3 of the 4 types of ingredients required to upgrade FSDs, namely: Wake scan component, chemical refinement material, raw element material, commodity. Each class of material would have at least 3 possible materials it could be filled with, except the commodity which would be the core component, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a unique part of each tier of blueprint, but I think all commodities should be available to purchase somewhere (I'm looking at you elusively ubiquitous modular terminals...). The lower tier the ingredient the more of it you have to use for higher grade upgrades because it isn't such a high grade material. This is a fairly common concept (5 pennies to a nickel, 5 nickels to a quarter, 4 quarters to a dollar...) So instead of looking like above, a class 4 upgrade might look like below.
-
Micro material:
5x Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes or 2x Anomalous FSD Telemetry or 1x Strange Wake Solutions
Micro material:
3x Chemical Distillery or 7x Chemical Processors or 1x Chemical Manipulators
Micro material:
2x Yttrium or 5x Selenium or 1x Polonium
Commodity:
1x Energy Grid Assembly
-
The player just checks the boxes next to the materials he wants to use and boom!
-
What this does is make it so that you can keep finding low grade components and not feel like it's futile, it remains rewarding. Finding a high grade component remains incredibly rewarding and loses that feeling of entitlement and subdued rage at all the time you had to spend getting it. You progress because of where you're looking, not because you got lucky in getting what you were looking for. Because each recipe has multiple fulfillment avenues, you have lots of options. Faster charge, increased range or shielded. all likely achievable because of the large combination of completion paths you can take to build them. The player is free to experiment, he's spoiled for choice. It also removes a lot of the stress of "I hope it's a really good roll, those are my only 2 polonium!" That way if you have tons of Chemical Processors but can't find Chemical Distilleries you are still making progress, which is what players are after and you've put that progress largely in the player's control.
-
In summary,
The problem is:
-Players don't feel like they are progressing because they keep finding materials they can't use and can't find materials they need to use, much of their inventory is useless for the thing they want to do putting high pressure for a good roll when they have the chance.
The above proposal makes it so:
-All grades of materials remain relevant and rewarding to find.
-Cross upgrading becomes much more possible because there are many more combinations you can use to upgrade things.
-Players get the freedom to try different modifications despite only finding 1 or 2 types of materials.
-Frustration at not finding those rare components is removed as players are still accruing enough low grade materials to make up the difference.
-Players are always progressing toward upgrades by finding the right types of materials, rather than stymied by not finding the precisely correct material.
-Less than ideal rolls don't sting because you have other avenues of making another attempt.
Anyway, just a thought. I can't presume to speak for the player base, this is just a proposal based on my observations.
There are other things you could do to make it more interesting based on the materials you use (see spoiler below).
Using high grade materials could push the odds toward a more optimized roll.
Using high grade materials could have a higher incidence of a special effect.
Using high grade materials could have a higher incidence of a special effect.
Also, thanks to inara.cz for the blueprint info, great site.
