CG, game itself actually encouraging cheating??

[Amanojaku]

The real problem is fdev could stop it and haven't. I don't blame players for doing it. I've done it myself.

Just like when everyone made billions mining before the release of FCs. Everyone who was playing at that time probably has a FC or has at least bought and sold one.

And if fdev does stop relogging, they'll have to increase mat rewards somehow, imo. HGEs are fine, but Raw and Encoded mats seem to be very slow to get in comparison (without relogging). I mean, you will always have a decent amount of Raws if you're an explorer, and you can sit outside a starport with a wake scanner to farm Encoded yawn, but HGEs blow them away. It's unbalanced.

 

[JTFireblaze]

Relogging isn't cheating. But it is an exploit of a game system.

Regardless of people's opinions on relogging, it undoubtedly is the fastest way of gathering mats.

This CG is based on gathering mats so obviously people want to do it in the most efficient way to get to the top of the leaderboard, especially now that the rewards are approaching the billions of credits.

Until an alternative solution to relogging (more efficient engineering materials farming) is introduced, people will continue to do it.

Frontier have "fixed" raw material farming with the crystal shards sites. They can "fix" data farming and manufactured farming in a similar way. Huge comms stations with large numbers of data scan points. Scrapyard POIs with large numbers of manufactured mats. I can guarantee people with re log a lot less if these existed

Edit:

There is a discussion in the alpha forums about relogging and what future gameplay loops could be like in an un-reloggable world

Fdev - in the stream (27th April) you said "we're looking closely at how people are using relogging" in the alpha. Aka - grind much?

I'm curious - are we sure we (you) understand why relogging happens when people are doing their 'gameplay', and how to fix the underlying problems? On the stream I heard nothing telling us "what problem you are trying to solve", what you mean with what a "relog exploit is". I'm worried you are...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[JTFireblaze]

if fdev does stop relogging, they'll have to increase mat rewards somehow, imo. HGEs are fine, but Raw and Encoded mats seem to be very slow to get in comparison (without relogging). I mean, you will always have a decent amount of Raws if you're an explorer, and you can sit outside a starport with a wake scanner to farm Encoded yawn, but HGEs blow them away. It's unbalanced.

Raw mats are in a pretty good place right now I think. Hit the crystal shard sites and you can fill your G5s without having to relog once. Yes you need an explorer ship, an SRV and a little time. But I hit all the sites and never relogged once.

The other mat types however...

 

[Bigmaec]

Oh god this is absurd.
AEC and AEA maxed out in less than 20 minutes.
No wonder why no one uses a wake scanner.
So much fun, so much gameplay

But the logs are nice...

 

[Dartay]

Just like when everyone made billions mining before the release of FCs. Everyone who was playing at that time probably has a FC or has at least bought and sold one.

Ah void opals. Good times. I painted my Python gold and set the cockpit AI to German.

Then my fiancee left me for a German. This conveniently freed up ARX for a new cockpit AI.

 

[Katie Byrne]

The real problem is people's OCD in wanting everything maxed out.

You don't need to G5 absolutely everything, unless you're doing competitive PvP. The majority of players don't.

again, mats are not just for engineering

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

They've been looking into preventing relogging since 16 December 2014.

They better fix the reasons why people do it first, or it's probably uninstall time.

Gathering encoded data has to much RNG which is why lots of people just use the Jameson crash site and material trader instead.

That is one of the reasons why people do it.

And they were succesfull unfortunatly: with mission board... at the point that after that "fix" i reduced 2/3 times of my playing time in elite....

That. Same.

 

[sewerratuk]

Gathering mats has been a bone of contention from the start, there was a lot of threads about it and Fdevs answer wasn’t to look into the gameplay loops but instead bring in an easy fix, ie material traders.
Get rid of mat traders, bring in some logical loops for gathering and relogging won’t be an issue

 

[Deleted member 182079]

again, mats are not just for engineering

Synthing mats for engaging solo in what was originally designed as multiplayer content is even more niche than PvP.

My point was that the vast majority of players don't need to grind mats but do it anyways because they can't help themselves.

And it's really only a problem for G5 stuff - I'm swimming in mats for everything up to G3 without having to relog but I do engage in most activities across the board, scan ships in SC etc.

 

[Susanna]

When surface mats at geo and bio sites were first released in the game.
You could re-log and farm them over and over.
to stop that exploit Fdev introduced a very long timer on those geo and bio mats.
Why dont they just add the same timers to every other perm mat producing sites in the game ?

Once all mats have a timer that cannot be exploited.
Take a good look at how long it takes someone to collect mats and then re-work the spawn amounts or permit player-player trading of mats.

But, but, but... That would mean... Having to make finding materials easier... And that would reduce the grind! Which would reduce playing time, which would reduce FDev's metrics to shareholders, which could mean less investment, which means smaller bonuses and pay rises, which means smaller pension pots, which means unhappy fdev employees, which means that the answer is no!

 

[Erei]

It's funny, but to me spending ages scanning wake scanners, trying to kill pirate in specific system hoping they drop what you're looking for, having limpets on me all the time to collect stuff (or play a stupid minigame that would feel dated on a Nokia 3310), etc.. All of that is soul crushing. In fact, when I begun, that's what I did. I earned a pitiful amount of mats that way, and I went to google because it was an insane grind that way. Found the reloging method and the various site to go. Never looked back.

Jameson's crash relogging is not particularly fun, but it's fast. I take unfun and fast over unfun and very, very slow anytime.

 

[Katie Byrne]

Synthing mats for engaging solo in what was originally designed as multiplayer content is even more niche than PvP.

My point was that the vast majority of players don't need to grind mats but do it anyways because they can't help themselves.

And it's really only a problem for G5 stuff - I'm swimming in mats for everything up to G3 without having to relog but I do engage in most activities across the board, scan ships in SC etc.

dude there is a whole communtiy of people that play ED soley for AX - and those that get good soley for high level AX

Just because you don't do it doesn't mean it doesn't matter

no offense to you but you need to think beyond yourself - like i said earlier - I hate the mat system. It's just a timesink for players.And for high level AX to already have to spend 2-3 hours of mat gathering per fight even with relogging - removing that without changing the system completely for synthesis would just kill high level AX altogether

 

[Bigmaec]

dude there is a whole communtiy of people that play ED soley for AX - and those that get good soley for high level AX

Just because you don't do it doesn't mean it doesn't matter

no offense to you but you need to think beyond yourself - like i said earlier - I hate the mat system. It's just a timesink for players.And for high level AX to already have to spend 2-3 hours of mat gathering per fight even with relogging - removing that without changing the system completely for synthesis would just kill high level AX altogether

This is why synthing should die in a dumpster fire, AX combat can be balanced by other ways.
This is all arbitrarily applied to make people spend more time in this game, which speaks for itself considering how much FD likes their own gameplay and has faith people play for playing, and not to grind.

 

[Katie Byrne]

This is why synthing should die in a dumpster fire, AX combat can be balanced by other ways.
This is all arbitrarily applied to make people spend more time in this game, which speaks for itself considering how much FD likes their own gameplay and has faith people play for playing, and not to grind.

I would 100 percent support scrapping synth altogether if different balancing mechanics were introduced, we've been crying out for someitnhgl ike ammo racks or ability to carry reloads for a very long time

EDIT

And yes, you hit the nail on the head right there in the last part

FDEV think of progress only as unlocking stuff - they dont tihnk that you may have plans AFTER you've built your ship or whatever. To them the grind towards ships or modules IS the game sadly

 

[JTFireblaze]

Gathering mats has been a bone of contention from the start, there was a lot of threads about it and Fdevs answer wasn’t to look into the gameplay loops but instead bring in an easy fix, ie material traders.
Get rid of mat traders, bring in some logical loops for gathering and relogging won’t be an issue

Material trader is an elegant solution for a problem that doesn't need to exist. Frontier gave us a problem (far too many materials and no easy way to focus on a particular one because of RNG) and sold us the solution (trade your stuff for the stuff you need)

Get rid of a couple of tiers of mats (remove T1 and 2, redistribute synth and engineering recipes, there's 40% of RNG drops gone) and add a nicer way of finding what you want to find. Certain star systems have certain materials already, they just need better signposting. And increase drops from 3 to maybe 5 or so... Engineering is "older" content now and catch up mechanics are nothing new in live service games.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

dude there is a whole communtiy of people that play ED soley for AX - and those that get good soley for high level AX

Just because you don't do it doesn't mean it doesn't matter

no offense to you but you need to think beyond yourself - like i said earlier - I hate the mat system. It's just a timesink for players.And for high level AX to already have to spend 2-3 hours of mat gathering per fight even with relogging - removing that without changing the system completely for synthesis would just kill high level AX altogether

How many players are we talking? Dozens? Hundreds? Millions?

AX combat in itself is a niche activity, just like this forum is a niche group of the entire player base - even basic AX combat is already gated behind an obscure grind wall so it's unlikely the majority of Elite players even tried it, let alone the end game stuff where synthing mats is required. And you can go up to Basilisk without synthing any mats at all.

Beyond that is anorak territory, like it or not, "dudess".

 

[Martind Forlon]

Relogging to gather mats isn't cheating

/thread.

It's not ... it is just the most dull and boring and **** (add your favourite word) way how to play any game. Myself have zero interest to play like that.

 

[Bigmaec]

It's not ... it is just the most dull and boring and **** (add your favourite word) way how to play any game. Myself have zero interest to play like that.

It's just orders of magnitude more efficient than other methods, so you have much more time to play the game you like if you're looking for just some
stuff to upgrade quickly. Or, like this case of absolute nutjob CG.

 

[Arindor]

To exploit BGS/factions/markets and the like, naughty naughty.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

It's just orders of magnitude more efficient than other methods, so you have much more time to play the game you like if you're looking for just some
stuff to upgrade quickly. Or, like this case of absolute nutjob CG.

I'm surprised they have another CG like this, wasn't there one not so long ago where relogging was basically a requirement to get anywhere in the rankings? Hope it's because of EDO crunch time...

Fwiw it's the second CG in a row I don't bother signing up for as it's simply not fun - surprised that from all the options FD have they picked this one again. Thankfully the Alpha kept me busy instead.