Nor do I so it's a good job I didn't ask for it.
Ultimately Sandy said that it would be monitored once 3.0 went live so I guess we'll see what happens.
Beyond did literally nothing to help the grind.
- Thread starter Darty
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Nor do I so it's a good job I didn't ask for it.
Ultimately Sandy said that it would be monitored once 3.0 went live so I guess we'll see what happens.
So I just finished 29 G5 + mod shield upgrades and 29 G5 + mod FSD mods. All improvements over what I had before.
The only part of mat gathering that genuinely annoyed me was the stuff locked behind High Grade Emissions. That is honestly the least enjoyable part of Elite Dangerous by a wide margin and I wish they'd remove it entirely.
I find planet map gathering pretty relaxing. Stopping between ship kills to gather mats is pretty lame, but not terribly time-consuming either.
Not sure how many more modules I really want to do x29 ships, but Power Plants and Distributors will get a close look to see how much better I can really make them vs what the grind for their mats might look like. Pretty sure I'm never going to hunt for planet bases to grind for scan firmware mats ever again. I simply refuse.
The only part of mat gathering that genuinely annoyed me was the stuff locked behind High Grade Emissions. That is honestly the least enjoyable part of Elite Dangerous by a wide margin and I wish they'd remove it entirely.
I find planet map gathering pretty relaxing. Stopping between ship kills to gather mats is pretty lame, but not terribly time-consuming either.
Not sure how many more modules I really want to do x29 ships, but Power Plants and Distributors will get a close look to see how much better I can really make them vs what the grind for their mats might look like. Pretty sure I'm never going to hunt for planet bases to grind for scan firmware mats ever again. I simply refuse.
One of the best improvements to making engineers painless is pinning blueprints so you can apply the desired upgrade later at your own convenience. It removes the need to have all the bits for the upgrade you want when you drop in. The only thing you need at the time you actually visit the engineer is the mats for a couple of grade 1 upgrades and the experimental effect you want, as you can't apply those remotely. If you are converting old stuff you need even less.
However if you ground at the old system till it hurt, ground at the new system in beta till it hurt and are now grinding at it again in live I'd guess it hurts.
However if you ground at the old system till it hurt, ground at the new system in beta till it hurt and are now grinding at it again in live I'd guess it hurts.
I have some but not alot. I trade some G4s for them. I know lots of people say trading down is a mugs game...but to me..if you have the G4s but still decide to wander around looking for G5 THATS a mugs game. Mission rewards are ripe with G5 payouts also.
Understood but I think it's more inconsistent than that, and usually more generous. From a standing start (assuming Rank 5 with Engineer, and a reasonable, though not targeted, inventory) many modules can be quickly hard-ceilinged, sometimes inside one hour, including any additional mat gathering.
The potential choke-point that impedes this depends upon:
(A) Needing about 6-10 Top-of-Row mats on the given module (this is the same for all mods, ofc);
(B) Said ToR mats being subject to a potential spawn choke-point, most obviously HGE USS;
(C) Said ToR mats being on a table that doesn't facilitate x-trading at 6-1 from other ToR mats.
Because all elements can be easily x-traded for a force-refreshed ToR mat, the above does not apply to elements. They are not in category (C) above.
The experienced Cmdrs posting in this thread have encountered the choke-point in respect of certain manufactured or data mats and it's causing understandable frustration as there is pretty much nothing that will engender feelings of futility more than spending several hours trying to get HGE USS to spawn.
As to why we're seeing such variation between Cmdrs (I have not had any problems with HGE USS, personally, post 3.0) idk but I'm not inclined to dismiss the adverse experiences of a number of experienced players on this one.
The difficulty of course with x-trading for ToR data or manufactured (unlike, I repeat, elements) is that to achieve say 9 of the desired mat will take 54 ToR for x-trade, which even though missions for (eg) EFC or MEF are abundant, is still a lot of missions ...
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Collecting MEF from missions and trading down is quite an efficient method for firmwares if you don't already know. I feel your pain with the 29 ships though especially if you want to engineer the HRP's and Boosters. It wouldn't be so bad if the gameplay we had to do to achieve it was actually interesting.
Well, it's not hard to understand at all - you could be in the 'right' system that has boom, and a minor faction could be at war - sometimes you might find PHR, other times you might get supercapacitors or what-have-you.
If you select a system without the war (again this is just my example of choice - other system states may apply) then in terms of overall probability, the HGE site you drop in on will be less likely to have supercapacitors and more likely to have *something else*, governed by the dominant system state effects - getting a PHR drop doesn't necessarily mean you're in the optimal system to find them in large quantities.
Anyway, if you already know all of that, you know everything I know, and, so long as you're putting it into practice, I'm stumped to explain why I get the materials I need without difficulty and you don't - maybe the RnG gods just hate you - not impossible, I suppose.
Since you know at least as much as me, and most likely a heck of a lot more by the sound of it, I can't really offer you further advice other than to keep going when you're searching - if you're doing everything right, as you claim, you WILL get what you need.
Perhaps I'm just easily entertained, and what feels like a mind-numbing, spirit-crushing grind to you doesn't feel that way to me.
Just chiming in, haven't read much of the thread...
One of the things I never liked about the Engineers was the material gathering process.
It's far too slow to ever be interesting.
Surface gathering involves just driving around in the hopes of finding the right rock, and that rock has the right material inside. And the spawn rate on rocks is incredibly low.
USSs are the same.
Both processes involve just doing basically nothing for ages.
I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I actually prefer NMS's material system.
You basically trip over the stuff constantly, but you generally need more of it too, but most importantly, you're always progressing towards your goal. There's very rarely a time you wander aimlessly.
If ED adjusted the spawn rates of things to be super high (and would obviously need to increase storage again), but then adjusted the recipies so they required more materials, it'd be exactly the same as now, except without the long periods of nothing in between.
Just my $0.02...
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
One of the things I never liked about the Engineers was the material gathering process.
It's far too slow to ever be interesting.
Surface gathering involves just driving around in the hopes of finding the right rock, and that rock has the right material inside. And the spawn rate on rocks is incredibly low.
USSs are the same.
Both processes involve just doing basically nothing for ages.
I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I actually prefer NMS's material system.
You basically trip over the stuff constantly, but you generally need more of it too, but most importantly, you're always progressing towards your goal. There's very rarely a time you wander aimlessly.
If ED adjusted the spawn rates of things to be super high (and would obviously need to increase storage again), but then adjusted the recipies so they required more materials, it'd be exactly the same as now, except without the long periods of nothing in between.
Just my $0.02...
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Deleted member 38366
D
I'm currently playing "Material Farming Simulator 3.0", formerly known as ELITE : Dangerous 
Seriously, after my planned FSDs are modded (about 40% complete after a full week farming thousands of Mats ) I'll abandon Engineering until something is done about it.
I didn't keep count, but since V3 dropped I might have farmed nearly 10000 Mats. And it still wasn't enough, mostly thanks to the Mat Traders acting like supermassive Black Holes with their ultra-greedy Trade ratios.
Talk about a crappy deal there.
I simply don't have interest in playing some "North Korean MMO" grindfest that still relies on the same old "watching paint dry" RNG mechanics (even despite some buffs applied to their content).
Seriously, after my planned FSDs are modded (about 40% complete after a full week farming thousands of Mats
) I'll abandon Engineering until something is done about it.I didn't keep count, but since V3 dropped I might have farmed nearly 10000 Mats. And it still wasn't enough, mostly thanks to the Mat Traders acting like supermassive Black Holes with their ultra-greedy Trade ratios.
Talk about a crappy deal there.
I simply don't have interest in playing some "North Korean MMO" grindfest that still relies on the same old "watching paint dry" RNG mechanics (even despite some buffs applied to their content).
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I take mental health very seriously. Making light of it because you're incapable of imagining people would want to play a video game in a way you don't find interesting is pretty bad yeah
I will continue to call ad hominems out especially if it's mental health related. Regardless on whether people decide to bold the word 'opinion' as if it's a shield.
All scanning mechanics need to be expanded. It used to be even worse though...
There's a balance to be had between length and fun though, if it's just all length, you're going to get a higher number of complaints. I feel the more reasonable arguments are made by those who aren't necessarily wanting it to take less time, but mostly have it make more sense and possibly not be so mind numbing. It's a video game, not real life coal mining, it doesn't have to be drudgery.
That's cool and all, and I'll check it out, but I think it's a bit silly that we have to resort to spamming persistent sites for this stuff.
That is such bull. "Grinding" would be if I tried to get enough of some material for the next two months or something. You'd be kind enough to allow players to get materials to complete the last grade of an engineered item without calling it grinding? Or in your mind, we'd have to wait till we accidentally find anything and everything to escape your definition of "grinding"..?
Nobody plays a game like an air bubble in an ocean, just drifting about.
You get into the game and you want some weapons effect, because you think it'll make your game play more effective and more fun, or you think it'll be an interesting thing to test.
So, in Elite, you can't find anything unless you use google and a bunch of webtools. I didn't really buy the game to spend hours reading shtt in a web browser, but ok. I found the conditions under which I will find the materials I need and go back into the game and:
- find the correct system
- in the correct state
- with the correct allegiance
- on the 11th day of the last November of the decade in the last light of the new moon.
- go just far enough into Deep Space, but not too far... ship speed not too low, but not too fast, so you don't leave the 'correct' part of Deep Space too soon.
- I stare into the blackness of space, waiting for little beige circles to appear - what an awesome game mechanic! its sooooo incredibly fun! Just staring and waiting.
- Am I supposed to do some kind of role playing in my cockpit at this time? I can't go make a coffee, cause I'd miss my USS...
- and waiting - ohhh there is one "degraded emissons" ... hmm what? did that read "degraded game play mechanics"?
- 5 minutes later: another little circle! "degraded" again
- I know decoded doesn't have what I need, but I jump in there, because I'm starting to get really bored and sleepy.
- how about a little bell sound, when a USS pops in? That way, I could at least watch Star Trek reruns before I drift off into dream space?
- And so it goes, degraded, decoded, degraded, degraded, degraded, distress call, decoded, distress call...
- this is the kind of game mechanic, that is so bad, people write bots to avoid this sort of horror.
- 6 hours later, not a single HGE! What happened to the High Grade Emissions? Is it called "grinding" when you can't find what you *should" be finding?
::
Next day, I go to the forums and find a post, suggesting, that FDev messed up something in the code, where HGE's don't spawn in systems with more than one sun anymore! (FDev owes me $75 for each of yesterday's 6 hours... $450 - and coming to think of it, my work is far more fun.)
- I find me a single-sun system with all the same attributes
- the 17th USS is a HGE!
- isn't it, by your definition already "grinding" if I go through 17 USS, before finding one of the type I need? And even in a high pop system with 10 billion, USS don't pop that much faster.
- Now a "Proto Radiolic Crapamagic" drop was 'crowded out' by another drop that uses the same system conditions - "Proto Heat Exhaustion". I'm like ok, at least I'm in the right place.
- just have to keep staring into space for little beige circles...
If that's grinding, its really the weirdest and most boring grind I've ever done
World of Warcraft grinding beat the crap out of this - in its time.
Assassin's Creed - hmm, I think there was zero grinding in it - or at least, it never compelled me to grind.
ED is the definition of a grind game - have you heard of the three "Elite" ranks? Community goals?
I don't grind, I don't do CommunityGrind, no PowerGrind, No EliteGrind, I only reached Elite in trading - and that was by accident - while watching old Kung Fu re-runs on very enjoyable, peaceful passenger runs that took almost exactly as long as one episode. So perfect!
I don't think a game must always be "interesting" or "engaging" - just like music doesn't always go at full volume and speed.
As long as it doesn't require the player's constant involvement in "boring", I'm totally fine with boring sections of a game - as long as it leaves me free to entertain myself with other things.
I think someone should make a game that largely plays itself - unless the player actively takes over: let me do this part!
Greatest thing about XbtF, Xtension, X1,2,3 was the fact that after you set up your stations, traders, escort ships etc, you could let it run over-night, like an electric toy train and check in the morning if things went well or not. You might have lost stations and ships or you might have earned a ton of cash - depending on many factors. And you could reload if things went poorly.
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