It isn't inherently boring fake newts, you just don't enjoy it because of some aspect of the way you go about achieving your in-game goals.
If you don't enjoy something, try approaching it in a different way. My end goal is not to get G5 ships, engineered ships just make it easier for me to achieve my goal (carry more cargo safely, jump further, end wars sooner etc).
What are your goals?
My end goal was to participate in challenging PvP and PvE combat and continue to engage with my favourite aspect of the game, which is the FA-off flight model. I have achieved this by engaging with Frontier's progression mechanics since pre-2.1, as I stated in a previous post. I have the luxury of a lot of free time and ample support from an experienced player group. To be absolutely clear - I am not the OP and I am not looking for help to play the game, believe me, I know how to play the game.
So what are the problems?
Many people, myself included, don't think it's desirable that Elite's progression mechanics don't involve any risk:reward ratio, and that engineering specifically gates combat-centric modules and upgrades behind hundreds of hours of non-combat, low-input, risk-free activities. Again, I perfectly understand that some people in Elite want to just float around in space and salvage things from USS - that's fine and dandy, it's an atmospheric game and there's room for low-key activities. I begrudge no-one their space sandbox. Why these activities are required to further a career in combat, however, is another story.
That's issue one. The disconnect between chosen career and necessary activity for advancement. (Edit: The precedent for this particular complaint was set pre-2.1, and with the 'blaze your own...' tagline. Pre 2.1 Elite certainly had its issues, but it was possible for players to gravitate to a specific career and to a large extent remain there. 2.1 was a rude awakening for many players due to its prescriptive nature.)
Issue two is Frontier's constant choice to encourage repetitious, skill-less play, by how they stack the numbers on top of their barebones mechanics. You can choose not to do it, or choose to not do it in a single sitting (which you have to for sanity's sake), but let's take for example the guardian sites. How many times an individual player can rehash the guardian blueprint 'mini-game' before it gets boring is up for debate, but the fact is Frontier has made mindless, riskless repetition obligatory in order to get even a single module... and that's to say nothing of their proposed synthesis-based guns.
Back to engineering, if I want to G5 a module I need 10 rolls of the final grade to safely reach the maximum, which means what, 200 - 300 Grade 5 rolls per ship? Not including grades 1 thru 4. Again, you don't have to max the ship out, but what player profile is going to enjoy collecting that many things from a static, risk-less HGE in parallel to their usual game activities? I'm sure there are people who do enjoy it, but the numbers involved, purely from a design perspective, smell strongly of gating achieved by artificial prolongation of non-mechanics. This isn't content in any meaningful sense of the word.
Edit: it shouldn't even be surprising to anyone, as Frontier themselves have reined in the numberwang as a result of widespread player discontentment. Do you remember how many blueprints were needed when guardian sites initially dropped? Do you remember when engineering materials dropped 1 unit only and there were no traders? Do you remember when HGEs weren't scannable with the FSS and you literally had to sit and stare at nothing and wait? I 'member.
If you can defend these mechanics and say there's zero responsibility for the mass discontentment on Fdev's side... or that subsequent reworks were unnecessary tweaking in what is and was a perfect game, I will happily listen to your arguments. If I'm told again that "hey mang, it's just cuz, like, you ain't playin' it like me, lol, just go play Mario Kart" I might pop a blood vessel though, so please be careful if you start typing that...
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