Right. So whether some friends showed you what to do, or some online guide showed you what to do, or some YouTube video showed you what to do, or some third party tool showed you what to do... what exactly is the difference? I mean, you didn't use the Commander's Toolbox to run Guardian sites. Some people you know showed you how to run Guardian sites. Is there something about them being your friends that somehow made it more honest?
Big problem when we want to smash our heads into the wall while playing this game....
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Is it dishonest to get information on how to do something, whether its from friends or the internet? I'm pretty glad that ED has a level of sophistication to it that requires a bit more than point, click, select what I want, and hand-holding the whole way. It is what attracts players like me to the game.
When I was introduced to the game it was explained to me (at the time by an IRL friend) that things were placed in the ED universe for player discovery. Not individual player... the entire player base. Growing expanding stories... being released in seasons like a TV show. FDev wasn't giving away the secrets... the player base was supposed to find them. And players could become part of the story lore if they actually did something monumetal, like make a discovery. And I guess some did... because now we know where much of the stuff is. And I then the season concept got dropped and here we are.
Not really sure where you're coming from here me duck, my post was that you don't need 3rd party tools or sites to play the game, my last statement hasn't changed any of that, nor am i saying its dishonest to use them (well maybe those that scan systems for you).
Games never used to be played with external sites or add-ons which meant folks had to team up to work stuff out for themselves.
For the record i actually worked out how to make those Grelics on my own without watching any videos or reading anything on the interweb and given time im pretty certain i would have worked out how to do the guardian stuff on my own also, im really good at solving puzzles, but its better with friends and someone actually showing you in game is fun.
All i am saying is that folks rely on these tools too much, wheres the sense of achievement? Wheres the challenge?
Not going to blow my own trumpet but i worked out the best way to destroy every boss in SSRA, POP and Time on an A4 pad years before Youtube was invented.
We had no add-ons, no guides, no help (we were racing two other guilds to be the first).
So my point is still you do not need any external tools for Elite, if you use them fair enough that's your choice but its not hard to establish trade routes, farming areas, material sites, mining sites etc within a few months.
O7
Third party assistance is as old as Nintendo Power.
I think my point is that there are people who value that sort of challenge and people who value efficiency. I want to get as far in ED as I can without having to invest thousands and thousands of hours into figuring it all out by myself, and probably failing, because I simply don't have those hours. Third party tools make this possible. I mean, if I started playing ED without any previous knowledge of it and without using any tools, I wouldn't even know that the Guardian FSD is a thing let alone where to go to find Guardian ruins and then how to shoot all the pylons and then take a relic and drop it on the platform. The fact that you did manage to figure it out alone is mindblowing to me.
I do. 100%. I need to know where the current best prices for minerals are. I need to know what is required to unlock engineers. I need help. If this game didn't have third party tools, I'd be screwed. But then again, I'm a big dummy without much time to spare actually being in the game. I am only able to post here frequently because smartphones are a thing.
I think you are doing yourself a disservice, i am pretty sure you are intelligent enough to work most of this stuff out as a lot of Elite players are.
But i completely appreciate that you value your time and these tools make things easier.
However i still reserve the right to be a stubborn old git and say they arnt essential to play the game, just quality of life
O7
This club we're in needs a cool little hat like the Shriners get. Or at least a nifty secret handshake.
I think you are doing yourself a disservice, i am pretty sure you are intelligent enough to work most of this stuff out as a lot of Elite players are.
But i completely appreciate that you value your time and these tools make things easier.
However i still reserve the right to be a stubborn old git and say they arnt essential to play the game, just quality of life
O7
I disagree...no not with your position, I disagree that you are stubborn old git, you play the game the way you like and don't see any need for external tools, that's not being stubborn, old or a git. I probably fit at least two of those labels anyway. Handholding in games such that you don't even need to think how to play and everything is just laid out for you is a killer for any games I play, I just don't play them, external tools are handy, but if they didn't exist it wouldn't bother me hugely.
I can't see myself using a secret handshake ever so I prefer the hat, where can I order it from.....
When I read @Shabine's post I was pretty confident about where it was coming from: quite a few people* have recently asserted that not only do you not need 3rd party tools to play ED, but in fact all of the information you need is available within the game. I mostly agree with the first part of that, though 3rd party tools massively improve my enjoyment of the game, but to say that all required info is available within the game feels like going much too far. Working out what to do at a Guardian site is a great example - it's something that I really don't think I'd have gained much satisfaction from, as it's far too convoluted to feel like a challenging but solvable puzzle.
Yup, I've recommended ED to a number of friends but with a serious caveat - that the learning curve is horrific (not sure I've ever experienced a more severe one) and there will be many frustrations. (Oh, and to disregard the nonsensically low stated hardware requirements.) The QOL improvement that I see from 3rd party tools is so great that if they all went kaput it would probably end the game for me.However i still reserve the right to be a stubborn old git and say they arnt essential to play the game, just quality of life
*I think you are one of those people who has said "all info is available within game" but I haven't gone back and checked
Welcome to the universe, where grinding is a big and in most part your life here. Basically it is the only life, the only reason to get back.
I have been frustrated for a long time regarding the missing red line in this universe. The total missing link between minor factions and the powers, the messed up ship classes of freighters, combat ships, passenger cruisers etc. Like, the biggest bus you can get in the game is the Federal Corvette. But shouldn't that be the Beluga Liner? No, the Corvette can carry more passengers than the Beluga. But why not just add more optional slots to make the Beluga carry more passengers? That will make it a potential hull tank. Yes, the biggest bus can be the biggest potential hull tank. That could be fixed with restricted optional slots for passenger cabins only? Yes, but they removed that feature many years ago. Probably because players wanted to fit hull reinforcement in the restricted slots on the Orca. They wanted to use the Orca as a battle ship. Like I mentioned, messed up ship classes.
I was waiting for player factions to be released only to discover that they will not fit in with any other part of the power play, so I just dropped it. Now the universe is flooding with player factions attached to powers that actually works against that same power. That created wars that should be alliances, and many of those player factions died.
But then it hit me that the game is okay this way. Because now I can leave the game for weeks and months without any consequences. Since there is no red line in this universe, no realistic connection between the Powers, minor factions and the Federation/Empire/Alliance I don't care. I have the Corvette, so I have the biggest passenger bus. I don't have to worry about our potential player faction, my only concern is if the carrier is floating.
FDev chose this easy way to get players back. Make it easier to get bigger ships, get that fleet carrier etc. The carriers were supposed to create communities. In stead they are just big ships mostly for personal usage, or for a very small group of commanders. I'm part of such community. We have fun doing stuff together, and when we park our ships for the evening we don't have to worry about tomorrow. We don't shape the galaxy or change it to better fit the power we are attached to. The only thing we have to worry about is if we can afford the carrier upkeep. But with the current free flow of CR that is easy. My carrier can probably survive for years without me involved in any way.
So why this easy way, way the free flow of CR? You could spend many months or years prior to v1.3 to finally afford an Anaconda. But now you can afford it in weeks. Then you need to upgrade that big ships with better weapons. But what you really want are the two biggest ships, the Federal Corvette and the Imperial Cutter. But there is a catch, those ships require a lot of grinding with the federation and empire. And when you grind for federation and empire you are basically working against the federal and imperial powers. Your reputation will actually drop with the federation if you work for federal powers, so we don't do that.
Power play and BGS don't combine with climing ranks with federation/empire. (Don't try to figure out why they decided to implement power play and minor factions that way.) I want the members i our community to get those ships. So we skipped all focus regarding minor factions and power play. It basically messes with FDevs desire to get us bigger ships and to come back to the game anyway, so why worry?
So they will not shut down the flow of CR to our balance. Because then we stop buying ships, and for most new players that is the only part that makes them come back. The problem is that they are probably like me, waiting for Starfield to be released. Then what, FDev?
I have been frustrated for a long time regarding the missing red line in this universe. The total missing link between minor factions and the powers, the messed up ship classes of freighters, combat ships, passenger cruisers etc. Like, the biggest bus you can get in the game is the Federal Corvette. But shouldn't that be the Beluga Liner? No, the Corvette can carry more passengers than the Beluga. But why not just add more optional slots to make the Beluga carry more passengers? That will make it a potential hull tank. Yes, the biggest bus can be the biggest potential hull tank. That could be fixed with restricted optional slots for passenger cabins only? Yes, but they removed that feature many years ago. Probably because players wanted to fit hull reinforcement in the restricted slots on the Orca. They wanted to use the Orca as a battle ship. Like I mentioned, messed up ship classes.
I was waiting for player factions to be released only to discover that they will not fit in with any other part of the power play, so I just dropped it. Now the universe is flooding with player factions attached to powers that actually works against that same power. That created wars that should be alliances, and many of those player factions died.
But then it hit me that the game is okay this way. Because now I can leave the game for weeks and months without any consequences. Since there is no red line in this universe, no realistic connection between the Powers, minor factions and the Federation/Empire/Alliance I don't care. I have the Corvette, so I have the biggest passenger bus. I don't have to worry about our potential player faction, my only concern is if the carrier is floating.
FDev chose this easy way to get players back. Make it easier to get bigger ships, get that fleet carrier etc. The carriers were supposed to create communities. In stead they are just big ships mostly for personal usage, or for a very small group of commanders. I'm part of such community. We have fun doing stuff together, and when we park our ships for the evening we don't have to worry about tomorrow. We don't shape the galaxy or change it to better fit the power we are attached to. The only thing we have to worry about is if we can afford the carrier upkeep. But with the current free flow of CR that is easy. My carrier can probably survive for years without me involved in any way.
So why this easy way, way the free flow of CR? You could spend many months or years prior to v1.3 to finally afford an Anaconda. But now you can afford it in weeks. Then you need to upgrade that big ships with better weapons. But what you really want are the two biggest ships, the Federal Corvette and the Imperial Cutter. But there is a catch, those ships require a lot of grinding with the federation and empire. And when you grind for federation and empire you are basically working against the federal and imperial powers. Your reputation will actually drop with the federation if you work for federal powers, so we don't do that.
Power play and BGS don't combine with climing ranks with federation/empire. (Don't try to figure out why they decided to implement power play and minor factions that way.) I want the members i our community to get those ships. So we skipped all focus regarding minor factions and power play. It basically messes with FDevs desire to get us bigger ships and to come back to the game anyway, so why worry?
So they will not shut down the flow of CR to our balance. Because then we stop buying ships, and for most new players that is the only part that makes them come back. The problem is that they are probably like me, waiting for Starfield to be released. Then what, FDev?
Weeks? More like a few hours. Good rings and a simple core-rigged Keelback in a system that buys opals or monazite for 600-700k per ton and you can clear a few hundred million on a lazy afternoon. Upgrade to a Python with the same core mining mods and you can bank the cost of a-rating the whole thing in a couple of days at the absolute most.
Credits become meaningless fast these days.
I still remember the first time I saw a "Harmless" commander in an Anaconda. That was so wrong in so many ways. I knew then that a big part of the game was broken.
Could have been one of those crazy Hutton types. You know, a space trucker with a preference for juicy jumps. They use Anacondas. So do some dedicated explorers, but most of them seem to favor DBs, Asps and Phantoms for a variety of reasons.
I think The Pilot was right when he said that a lot of people buy the Anaconda too early, and then they end up selling it because they don't know how to outfit and fly it. That's probably true for all the big ships.
Which would be a lot harder to do if you couldn't make enough CR to buy one in 2 hours....
Not unusual for Elite, though - FE2/FFE you could get an Anaconda while still Harmless easily enough ... while the original Elite might not have let you change ships you could certainly fully outfit your Cobra III without ever going anywhere you might get shot at.
Recent ED is perhaps the first game in the series where combat (or indeed, any profession!) outclasses safe-systems bulk trade as a way of making Anaconda-level money in the first place. But then recent ED is almost as fast as FE2 in terms of letting you accumulate Anaconda-level money from a fresh start, so it doesn't really matter how they're balanced.
SOL/Ross154/Barnards Star to Van Maanen's Star, as soon as you had enough money to buy a ship that could jump between those three (particularly to Van Maanen's star, where literally everything was sold on the black market) you could be in a Panther in a couple of hours, without killing a single thing.
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It took me months to buy my first Anaconda, and even then I could barely afford to outfit it. It was one of those rare times I had to really think about the outfitting, because every credit mattered. But I made it work, and flying it was no problem because I'm Navy - we're used to large, slow-moving ships with mass!
No, it is a prep work, not actually playing the game. And not "most" of it, but entirety of that. The proof of it is pretty simple: i can't hop off in any CZ with my friend, because his ship is not an engineered L-pad and his name is not Sweatlord Faoffsky. So instead of, ya know, playing the damn game, we preparing his ship for that by grinding.
You do understand that when playing an MMO you don't get given RAID level gear so you can immediately jump into an end level RAID with your friend and kill the final boss, you need to play the game, level up, earn money, buy gear, do low level dungeons and RAID's, achieve top level, do the preliminary RAID's and get RAID gear so you can tackle the end level RAID and end level BOSS. According to you the entirety of this process is not playing the game, it's grinding, the only bit that's actually playing the game is taking part in that end level RAID so they should make all players top level and equipped with end level RAID gear so they can actually play the game.
People who play MMO's understand how this works, there's a HUGE amount of prep work before you get to fight the final BOSS, and that prep work is called "playing the game."
What you are asking for is that your friend, who may have just joined and never flown a ship before, should be able to take part in a high level combat zone, and that's not going to happen. You play the game, you upgrade your gear, you prepare your ships....for whatever part of the game you are taking part in, this is the game. What you are doing is confusing ED the MMO with games like Valorant and Battlefield where you do indeed go straight into combat zones like that, just maybe, you know maybe you are playing the wrong game with your friend and would be better off with a dedicated FPS rather than an MMO that has FPS like game play.
Have you read the coment you answering? I said "CZ", not "High Intencity CZ with capital ship involved" or "Thargoid CZ with 100500 hydras".
Let alone, that "ThIs Is MmO" ain't an excuse for "grind before you can play".
I used to do High CZs in an unengineered Vulture so 
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