Historically this game has several features which were initially much more convoluted to achieve than they are now. Including unlocking engineers. I remember unlocking Qwent being much more of a chore than the 5,000ly criteria (which I'd already done when engineers were introduced).
Bored in Space: 5K LY to unlock Palin
- Thread starter BlackSpaceCowboy
- Start date
True, things get easier, people still complain!
Only if you wanted to build a strawman.
I think the unlocks are okay I just don't see any value to having a light year requirement without actually exploring anything. Don't have a problem with many of the other unlocks. It would be fine if he just required distance but they're calling it exploration and it's not. The fact is the large majority of people who are going to do that are not going to go out there exploring.
Except jumping and exploring are not the same things. I've seen this hammered home here over and over again. People still explore inside the bubble. Going a long distance away from the bubble is not the same as exploring but it doesn't mean you can't explore out there. 100 jumps out and a hundred jumps back does not equal exploring any more than one jump out and one jump back does. Perhaps by conflating the two early on in a new player's career they turned them off to the concept of exploring.
I believe what Obsidian Ant was referring to in his video was that there's no requirement to use time to create an illusion of space. Waiting for the sake of waiting isn't content and it's a poor substitute for it. What we do when we get there is why we're going in the first place and the fact that people are watching YouTube videos and movies while they're trying to get to the content locks a lot of the players out of the content because they don't have time for that. Maybe that makes some people feel exclusive that they can afford that time but I don't know if that's conducive to good gameplay.
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I'm saying two things:-
1) Personally I think the Engineers was a poor design choice. IMHO:-
- It's ultimately unbalanced the game (at least combat wise), with PvP and in PvE both suffering.
- FD predominantly generated this pointless counterproductive upper teir of performance more as an excuse to give worth to rather shallow gameplay loops. Want to get 2x pewpew on a laser, then go and do these rather mediocre and unchallanging gameplay loops...
I'd suggest the development effort for Engineers V1 and V2 would have been better spent on not unbalancing the game, and instead putting more involved and interesting gameplay into the game, rather than giving needless contrived "value" into more shallow gameplay loops. IMHO games ideally work well by offering gameplay you enjoy doing, not that you feel you have to do, or almost feel "forced" into doing...
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I think you need a different mindset with exploration.
While I've seen players whizzing around with huge jump ranges, the truth is that it still takes many jumps to get the big distances.
You can do one of two things.
Ignore everything and just jump and scoop to get to a destination
Or
Take your time, scan lots (I still hate the FSS and surface missiles thing but...) and take in the sights.
Allow for being 'out there' for days or weeks (even months) and marvel at the galaxy. When you get back, the scan data will be worth a huge amount and your next/first mega ship will look more affordable.
While I've seen players whizzing around with huge jump ranges, the truth is that it still takes many jumps to get the big distances.
You can do one of two things.
Ignore everything and just jump and scoop to get to a destination
Or
Take your time, scan lots (I still hate the FSS and surface missiles thing but...) and take in the sights.
Allow for being 'out there' for days or weeks (even months) and marvel at the galaxy. When you get back, the scan data will be worth a huge amount and your next/first mega ship will look more affordable.
The argument that engineers unbalance the game, when the requirements are the same for every single player, just doesn't hold up. It would be unbalanced if some players weren't able to use engineers, but that isn't the case.
I personally liked the 5k Ly trip. It let me experience new things, learn how to use Spansh, take pretty pictures, and provided a nice shakedown cruise for Spooky Snek. The most irritating part was getting around that wall of permit locked systems.
It's finding something no-one else has found. You do need to get a reasonable distance from the bubble to do that with much certainty of results.
I have my name on a few systems, but they are mostly more than 2,000 LYs away.
The OP is just not interested in exploring.
To get my Sirius permit, I traveled about 1K LY and collected exploration data. It was suggested that I use road to riches but I wanted to explore myself. It took longer but I wanted to give it a try. After about 30 system scans it began feeling a bit repetitive. I got about 15M cr for it but I can easily make that much mining. So, I just don't like exploring. I accept that some love it. It's just not for me.
So exploring while trying to get to 5K LY would make it even more tedious for me. I am trying to view some Nebulae or some Codex points of interest on the way.
If this was about exploring wouldn't Palin ask for exploration data?
And just because you don't enjoy exploring doesn't mean you belong the Call of Duty category of gamers.
A wall of permit locked systems to get 'around' ? Please explain, was thinking about making the trip myself.
If you are heading away from the core, starting from Sol (toward the Rosette Nebula, for example), you will hit a wall of permit-locked systems just past Bernard’s loop. To get past them, you need to go around, which is irritating because the route plotter doesn’t automatically do this, and you will get a lot of “route plotting failed”. To avoid this problem, head toward the core from Sol. There is a clear shot straight across the galaxy in that direction, and the star density increases, so neutron jumping is easier and more efficient.
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Or don't got to Barnards loop, or go around the locked systems when you do.
DDastardly00
D
Wow this thread took a dive after the first page, leaving me wondering why some people even play this game?? At least the explorers came to provide some balance and perspective. Did any of you 'press button to reach 5000LY, fly on autopilot' -people stop for even 1 second and consider what kind of impact that kind of gameplay change would have? Especially on those of us who actually like playing the game? Maybe sims aren't your thing and that's fine but perhaps you should go play something else? Like Star Horizon? Because Elite clearly isn't your kind of game.
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I must admit, I loath long-distance travel. I've done the trip out to Sothis a couple of times - easier now with the Guardian FSD booster - but I still hate that trip. It just feel like anti-gameplay to me, but we all like different things of course.
My aversion to distance travel is so extreme that I've not played for many months, purely because I'm currently parked 500ly away from my "home" system on Shinrarta, where all my other ships are. I log in, thinking "today I'll do it", then I can't face it lol.
I WISH there was a ship transfer service that ONLY worked while I was offline and I could log in tomorrow and be back home in my ship. I'd love that.
Dunno why I hate long-distance travel so. Likely an OCD thing where I must "save" and exit the game at a dock of some description, I cannot just exit the game while in space or even landed on a planet. So, I have to do any long trip in a single session and dock at the end of it.
The really silly thing is that in my best long-range ship, Mr. Jumpy, it's barely 10 jumps between Sothis and Shinrarta, but the prospect of doing it totally puts me off playing. Any psychiatrists out there? lol.
To be clear, I'm not proposing the game be changed to insta-jump for me, not at all. I'm just sharing the OP's perspective on really not finding long-distance travel in any way an entertaining pass time. Yet I'll happily do passenger runs all day long - nope, not a clue why I don't find that boring!
Scoob.
My aversion to distance travel is so extreme that I've not played for many months, purely because I'm currently parked 500ly away from my "home" system on Shinrarta, where all my other ships are. I log in, thinking "today I'll do it", then I can't face it lol.
I WISH there was a ship transfer service that ONLY worked while I was offline and I could log in tomorrow and be back home in my ship. I'd love that.
Dunno why I hate long-distance travel so. Likely an OCD thing where I must "save" and exit the game at a dock of some description, I cannot just exit the game while in space or even landed on a planet. So, I have to do any long trip in a single session and dock at the end of it.
The really silly thing is that in my best long-range ship, Mr. Jumpy, it's barely 10 jumps between Sothis and Shinrarta, but the prospect of doing it totally puts me off playing. Any psychiatrists out there? lol.
To be clear, I'm not proposing the game be changed to insta-jump for me, not at all. I'm just sharing the OP's perspective on really not finding long-distance travel in any way an entertaining pass time. Yet I'll happily do passenger runs all day long - nope, not a clue why I don't find that boring!
Scoob.
Non sequitur. There is no necessary connection between distance and time in this game.
Example: ieaving a planetary base, it takea longer to SC to a station 1500Ls from planet but 50Ls from the star than to jump 80LY round trip to arrive at same station . So distance/time is not linear in this game. Being a space game doesnt mean it should take weeks to travel somewhere.
On topic, the requirement of 5K LY is not the same as reaching Beagle point.
OA's point is a different topic.
DDastardly00
D
Edited my post to stay more on topic, but my point hasn't really changed that much. People are complaining about traveling great distances, or at least the in-game mechanics of doing so, whether it be 5000 ly or 50,000 ly. So why are they playing this game if they view this as a hindrance? It's a completely fair question.
Seems to be the status quo. Anytime someone has a complaint about an aspect of the game there are always people who jump in with suggestions that they go play a different game because obviously everything has to stay exactly how it is, never mind the fact that it changes all the time and these same people are crying for 2020.
I never read anyone say they view traveling 5000 light-years as a hindrance. They view it as tedious and boring. Are things that are tedious and boring a hindrance? Well it may stop you from playing the game if you're looking for something that's not tedious and boring. I thought we played video games to get away from tedious and boring.
DDastardly00
D
Then you didn't read what I read over the last 5 pages, people very much seem to be viewing this as a hindrance.
That's subjective, what one person finds tedious and boring doesn't that mean others do. I'm fine with the in-game mechanics for traveling just like I'me fine with the unlock requirements for Palin. I also understand that it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea which is fine, it's not even something that is required to unlock the Thruster upgrades, like I pointed out on the first page, you can get up to grade 3 from Felicity and it's fairly easy.
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