So you want an I win button? You grinders who just want everything given to them practically overnight really get my goat! Take some advice, pal; quit grinding and just let it come to you organically.
Problem is, with the afromentioned Guardian missions in the OP there's no way to do it organically, It's just a grind, doing X n number of times to get Y is not good game design, in fact is atrocious and puts players away from doing the content, few will think "Yeah I accomplished X after long hard work", most will just say "Screw this, I'm going to do something else", If the puzzles were hella complicated and let's say to get your blueprints you have to complete let's say 3 very difficult puzzles on each ruin and when I mean difficult I mean difficult as hell, Water temple when you where 10 and playing Ocarina of Time level of Difficult, Darkwater Midir and Nameless King combined level of difficult, then most would have a sense of accomplishment.
I agree with you, in ED you can grind or you can do things organically, take rank for example, you can make Data deliveries ad infinitum between 2 systems to get the Corvette or Cutter, or you can just make your way around the bubble doing missions for different factions and try to influence the BGS into doing stuff like making a system have a famine and put another faction in power, you'll get your Vette and Cutter that way also.
With Guardian stuff there's no such opportunity, it's just mindless grind, the sad thing is these missions (and most story content) had a lot of potential, but someone on the dev team said "That's cool and all but you know what would be cooler? let's have players do 1 thing like automatons to get the reward", hell the missions could've been the first time we had "Bosses" on ED for example hear me out, here's how I would structure them, this comes from both an ED player and a gamer in general:
1- You get to the ruin, land your ship, and by some reason (let's call it Guardian technology disruption) your ship is now grounded until you complete the first puzzle, this get's you a special item that upgrades your ship's firmware to be compatible with guardian tech.
2- Now you get trapped and separated from your ship by some ruin mechanic for example, the ruin itself shifting and trapping your ship on a guardian "hangar", you need to solve another Contra level difficulty puzzle, now with some enemies, Skimmers, turrets, some new form of Guardian ground vehicles (this can be adapted into the general game, let's say SRVs start chasing you after you hack into a High sec settlement), solve the Puzzle and get to your ship, you now get a firmware update and the blueprint to use whatever module the ruin in question is supposed to give you access to
3-After you get to your ship the ruin "Comes alive" and you have to fight some sort of big Guardian Construct on par with a Medusa in some ruins, some deploy let's say 5 with Guardian ships if you started the ruin alone and 10 if you went with someone (the number would multiply by 5 for each player in your wing) equivalent to 1 to 2 levels of hability above your combat rank, if you are Elite, you add 2 A rated Anaconda level ships per player, other ruins swarm you bazillion of ship launched fighter type things, if you defeat the ruin's "boss" you get the materials required to build the modules you came to get and pay a metric ton of credits
There, now you have a fun and challenging "level" that would make you feel like you accomplished something, this missions wouldn't be for anyone but for the bravest most balls to the walls players out there, something the whole community would look forward to, to be among those brave or stupid enough to do a Guardian Ruin, hell I just gave you REAL endgame content, and something that would feel like advancing the ED storyline forward, something that would make players feel like they truly did something extraordinary, truly deserving of calling themselves an ELITE pilot
this system could be implemented with many mission or events, like let's say an upcoming update says "Thargoids in the bubble nowhere but Colonia and the black is safe now" implementing events like full scale invasions, 5 Medusas, 3 Basilisks, 3 Cyclops and 10 scouts trying to blow an Starport to kingdom come, make this community goals, if the CG fails then bye bye no more starport in the system, it get utterly destroyed and the ruins stay there forever as a reminder of the collective failure, for this to be a succesful mechanic of course if some of the more grindy bits of the game were tweaked, missions paying more, "Story" and "Sidestory" like missions giving you rewards to be able to combat these threats etc...
I bet by left nut something this could breathe much needed new life into the game, but until FDev realizes F2P like grind isn't good game design we cannot get nice things
