Can we please stop pretending that's a real thing that happens for any significant number of players?? That's such an extreme statement it makes one feel you are pushing a narrative.
C'mon, this is faintly ridiculous.
- Thread starter Noddie
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Can we please stop pretending that's a real thing that happens for any significant number of players?? That's such an extreme statement it makes one feel you are pushing a narrative.
I'll challenge my friend, when he is able to get in-game (RL restrictions currently) to get an Anaconda within a day of playing. He has never played before so it should be interesting to see if he can do so!
(In other words I think it is total moopoo as a claim, at least for a new player!)
(but it is only around 500 million... or 800 million if you include Reactive Composites as "A" rated
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Yes I do have some more to go that's right.
The engineering is grindy I agree. That's why I´d rather have quicker mats than quicker credits.
Plenty of games out there where you can "can log in, play an hour, make significant progress, and then log out". What got me in to ED, amongst many other things, was the feeling of constantly being in danger, consider every credit spent, selling my hard earned last ship so I can afford to at least C rate my new ship then realizing I have no rebuy money so the next boom delivery is done sitting on needles and then the lusting and dreaming over that unobtainium ship. Never felt that before in a game, and im 40+ been gaming since commondore 64.
Sure now I can grind mats so I can G5 that module so my ship gets this and that stat but that is not the same thing.
I do enjoy ED immensely still and do a LOT of other activities. For the last few months it's been the only game I play and I play it almost every day. Never happened before with a game either.
But yeah, I guess there's as many takes on what makes ED great as there are players playing it
another unique aspect of the game.You're wasting your time in my opinion resetting your characters, but that's just me. You can't unlearn what you have learned. You can't get that feeling back. Deal with it.
All you are doing is sitting here wanting others games made worst, so you can attempt to get a feeling back you NEVER WILL AGAIN.
This statement right here shows how out of touch you are with the new player experience. I had an A-Rated FDL and I died a LOT because I was new and had no clue what I was doing with combat. I didn't manage my pips so my shields would go down, etc etc. My fitting was wrong in a few places, etc etc. So again, you are benefiting from HUNDREDS maybe thousands of hours in the game. Which is tainting your expectations of how your new character is supposed to feel.
I'll challenge my friend, when he is able to get in-game (RL restrictions currently) to get an Anaconda within a day of playing. He has never played before so it should be interesting to see if he can do so!
(In other words I think it is total moopoo as a claim, at least for a new player!)
(but it is only around 500 million... or 800 million if you include Reactive Composites as "A" rated
There's just no way unless you know one very specific place/tactic. And even then he's going to need some 80+ million for the ship and fit that can do it. Without the LTD mining, he'll have to map, what, some 100+ planets for the starter cash to do the credit loop?
Just...yeah. I say you win that challenge.
I could lose it in around 40 minutes...
Have him buy & sell LTD's on one of my fleet carriers!
But that really would be 'cheating'
The problem in my opinion is that they introduced the engineer grind completely disconnected from credits and cargo holds.
Thus, all credit buffs throughout the years completely trivialized and turned the ship progression into a kindergarden game you can max in a single weekend day (except for the rank for ships, which is going to take a second day if you do it in one of the fringe systems that are a single mission type and destination spouting machine). But it does nothing in the engineering direction, which would have been the next credit "sink". Nowadays you will get your FC and then you are done with the credits game - just meaninglessly going into tens, hundreds of even trillions of credits that you will have no way of spending.
For engineering materials, all of the loopholes with relogging the game to cheat your way to infinite materials aren't limited by your ship's cargo hold - it all goes into a magical inventory. Likewise, it will reach a point that it will serve you no purpose. After you're done with engineering (again, another matter that can be solved in a single day) and you fill up your caps, the materials become meaningless as you literally won't even be able to collect them anymore.
Thus, all credit buffs throughout the years completely trivialized and turned the ship progression into a kindergarden game you can max in a single weekend day (except for the rank for ships, which is going to take a second day if you do it in one of the fringe systems that are a single mission type and destination spouting machine). But it does nothing in the engineering direction, which would have been the next credit "sink". Nowadays you will get your FC and then you are done with the credits game - just meaninglessly going into tens, hundreds of even trillions of credits that you will have no way of spending.
For engineering materials, all of the loopholes with relogging the game to cheat your way to infinite materials aren't limited by your ship's cargo hold - it all goes into a magical inventory. Likewise, it will reach a point that it will serve you no purpose. After you're done with engineering (again, another matter that can be solved in a single day) and you fill up your caps, the materials become meaningless as you literally won't even be able to collect them anymore.
I can see both sides of it. One the one hand, I too am very glad that I started back when the whole thing started, and I wouldn't swap my months of "grind" to finally be able to buy a poorly rated MkIII for anything, all the hours I got to spend in the Sidey, Eagle, Adder, Hauler and Viper along the way. It was a great experience that taught me more about flying the ships and the sometimes very subtle differences between them and yes, I did actually have FUN the whole time.
Back then a Fuel Scoop was a really good investment because the expense of refilling the tanks vs. just filling them up for free made a tangible difference in your profits at the end of the day. I know, sounds silly now, doesn't it? Now only Explorers really bother with the scoops because the fuel prices compared to today's incomes are negligible.
On the other hand, as @Vandaahl pointed out, we were all in the same situation back then, WE didn't have 90% of other players already whooshing around in G5'ed, A-rated 'Vettes, back then a stock Anaconda was about as high as any of us ever aspired to get, and I'm willing to bet that we'd have seen it differently if that had been the case. I can imagine being a new player stuck in a stock Sidey coming to the forums and all the discussions are about whether to buy another Corvette and G5 it or just buy a Conda, do the same thing and use it as a Colonia taxi and nothing else.
Unfortunately, in my ever so humble opinion, the fact that all of us "old geezers" (a moniker that I wear with pride, by the way) are flying around in top of the line magic boats casually eating one 25 million rebuy with a smile after another, seems to, in some cases at least, have led to some new players getting the notion that you can only "have fun" in a G5, A-rated 'Connie, and that's as far from the truth as anything can be. I had one. For an hour. Except I'm grateful that I didn't bother wasting the mats to G5 it, but that was mainly because even A-rated, some 800 million later (no big deal, I had a couple billion to burn and that ain't even much anymore), I knew I would never enjoy flying that pregnant space whale. I know, some people really love that boat and more power to you, I don't write this to diss your dreamboat, it's just to illustrate that it's in no way "necessary" in order to "have fun."
Finally, and I promise to shush then, let's all remember, old and new together: Just because you can buy and kit an Anaconda in a week now, that still doesn't mean you can fly it, particularly if you rushed through the game getting there and believe me, even with credit inflation, it's still a lot less "fun" to learn to fly and fight in a boat that will rinse your account with every rebuy than it is in a boat that you can replace with bus fare.
There's a reason that real life pilots learn to fly in Cessnas instead of 747s.
Peace and good will to all. o7.
Back then a Fuel Scoop was a really good investment because the expense of refilling the tanks vs. just filling them up for free made a tangible difference in your profits at the end of the day. I know, sounds silly now, doesn't it? Now only Explorers really bother with the scoops because the fuel prices compared to today's incomes are negligible.
On the other hand, as @Vandaahl pointed out, we were all in the same situation back then, WE didn't have 90% of other players already whooshing around in G5'ed, A-rated 'Vettes, back then a stock Anaconda was about as high as any of us ever aspired to get, and I'm willing to bet that we'd have seen it differently if that had been the case. I can imagine being a new player stuck in a stock Sidey coming to the forums and all the discussions are about whether to buy another Corvette and G5 it or just buy a Conda, do the same thing and use it as a Colonia taxi and nothing else.
Unfortunately, in my ever so humble opinion, the fact that all of us "old geezers" (a moniker that I wear with pride, by the way) are flying around in top of the line magic boats casually eating one 25 million rebuy with a smile after another, seems to, in some cases at least, have led to some new players getting the notion that you can only "have fun" in a G5, A-rated 'Connie, and that's as far from the truth as anything can be. I had one. For an hour. Except I'm grateful that I didn't bother wasting the mats to G5 it, but that was mainly because even A-rated, some 800 million later (no big deal, I had a couple billion to burn and that ain't even much anymore), I knew I would never enjoy flying that pregnant space whale. I know, some people really love that boat and more power to you, I don't write this to diss your dreamboat, it's just to illustrate that it's in no way "necessary" in order to "have fun."
Finally, and I promise to shush then, let's all remember, old and new together: Just because you can buy and kit an Anaconda in a week now, that still doesn't mean you can fly it, particularly if you rushed through the game getting there and believe me, even with credit inflation, it's still a lot less "fun" to learn to fly and fight in a boat that will rinse your account with every rebuy than it is in a boat that you can replace with bus fare.
There's a reason that real life pilots learn to fly in Cessnas instead of 747s.
Peace and good will to all. o7.
The point argument like this completely miss is that you already know how to play the game.
I have 1500 hours in the game. If I start a new CMDR, I don’t have to relearn how to fly, I don’t have to struggle to make cash because I know how to do it. I won’t be wasting money on ships/ weapons I don’t like because I’ve already done it.
to me, arguments like this sound like “I went through high school again and it was way too easy!” Like of course it would be
I don't recall ever saying or implying any such thing.
There is no contradiction because I've never made any claims about what you think is more enjoyable.
I speak for myself, not any of those you seem to have confused me with.
It's not a sense of accomplishment I'm after. It's a sense of consistency and verisimilitude. I'll get the sense of accomplishment either way, but it will be more meaningful in a game with a meaningful set of objective constraints, especially considering this is an exclusively multiplayer title (outside of the training missions).
After Jumpgate, I played a little EVE Online during it's beta...wasn't what I was looking for, but not for the reasons you seem to presume (and I am not sure why you're still presuming to know what I would or would not enjoy).
I want a first-person fantasy space-flight simulator in a dynamic, player driven, setting. I want what was originally sold to me in the Elite: Dangerous development plan, specifically "a game that doesn't feel like a game, it feels like a world I'm being brought into". That's the game Braben claimed to want to play. That's the game I want to play. That's the game we almost had. That's what we've been steadily moving away from since launch, if not before.
The latter, credits fall like rain now. When Is tarted, at the launch of Horizons, "cut the power" ground base assault missions were the top paying thing at 75,000, now those pay 3m+
First off, some people just like bigger ships in sci-fi. "Fly what you like" remember?
Secondly, the Anaconda is by far the most versatile ship in the game while still having a really good jump range fully loaded compared to other ships. For a new player who wants to do it all, especially starting to work on my Engineers, the Anaconda was a no brainer. You can explore, fight, carry SRV's and SLF's -material farm etc etc all in the relatively safety of a large ship with good defensive stats. You can mine and still carry enough firepower to ward off pirates. Also it's awesome and gorgeous!
And I really take offense to this stereotype that people attracted to Anaconda's are somehow wrong or have wrong priorities or are cheating the game or something. I don't get this.
Why grind away for months, when I can just stare in awe at this.....
Sure, whatever floats your boat. I'm only pointing out that it's not the ONLY way to have fun. But if it's all you want from the game, then you do it your way. There is no such thing as "wrongfun".
You're vastly overrating it there. "Explore, fight, carry SRVs and SLFs etc in the relative safety of a large ship with good defensive stats?" Yes, the Annie can do that. But so can the Kraits or the Python (except for the SLF in the Python's case). And if we leave out the SLF alone but keep everything else, then there is barely a single ship in the game that you can't do everything you mentioned in. You got them on the "large" bit though since they're mediums, but once you've tried landing at a tricky site in a 'Connie, you'll learn to appreciate the smaller ships. Or not. It's all good, man. You do what you feel like, blaze your own trail and all that.
You're not "wrong" for really liking the Connie. Not unless you think that you cannot possibly do all that Elite Dangerous has to offer unless you're in a G5'ed, A-rated Connie, that is. Then you are wrong. If you simply prefer to do it in a Connie, then that's just your preference. Again, no "wrongfun" here or anywhere else.
I'm really not hearing much from you in the way of suggestions to make that vision your reality. With all due respect, I seriously doubt a credit grind is all it would take to make you happy.
To me Elite very much feels like a massive living world I was brought into. Perfect? No. Needing polish and fleshing out? Certainly. Does that mean it will NEVER happen? No, we don't know that.
Look I've been where you are in several games. This is burnout talking. Tearing down the game for others so we can't get the ships we want in a reasonable time period won't magically fix everything for you.
Sure, whatever floats your boat. I'm only pointing out that it's not the ONLY way to have fun. But if it's all you want from the game, then you do it your way. There is no such thing as "wrongfun".
You're vastly overrating it there. "Explore, fight, carry SRVs and SLFs etc in the relative safety of a large ship with good defensive stats?" Yes, the Annie can do that. But so can the Kraits or the Python (except for the SLF in the Python's case). And if we leave out the SLF alone but keep everything else, then there is barely a single ship in the game that you can't do everything you mentioned in. You got them on the "large" bit though since they're mediums, but once you've tried landing at a tricky site in a 'Connie, you'll learn to appreciate the smaller ships. Or not. It's all good, man. You do what you feel like, blaze your own trail and all that.
You're not "wrong" for really liking the Connie. Not unless you think that you cannot possibly do all that Elite Dangerous has to offer unless you're in a G5'ed, A-rated Connie, that is. Then you are wrong. If you simply prefer to do it in a Connie, then that's just your preference. Again, no "wrongfun" here or anywhere else.
I don't disagree with any particular point but these aren't mutually exclusive as I can and do switch between ships when the need arises.
I'm in a Vulture as we speak doing some Emp rep grinding in Mainani. Great fun although that droning engine sound is getting hard to deal with after a few hours lol.
Now...am I only IN that Vulture because nothing here supports an L pad for my 'Conda ? I'm not answering that
Not a lot wrong with the Vulture either - the 'Flying Coffin' is a brilliant little ship with big teeth...I don't disagree with any particular point but these aren't mutually exclusive as I can and do switch between ships when the need arises.
I'm in a Vulture as we speak doing some Emp rep grinding in Mainani. Great fun although that droning engine sound is getting hard to deal with after a few hours lol.
Now...am I only IN that Vulture because nothing here supports an L pad for my 'Conda ? I'm not answering that
I've never been a fan of grind, and I'm certainly not looking to introduce any. I'd much rather if grind was impractical, and there was as much potential to fall behind as there was opportunity to get ahead.
I'd be happier with any change in a direction I see as positive and I'm not ever expecting the game to live up to my ideals...it doesn't have to for me to enjoy it.
You know what would go a long way to making my vision a reality? Using the alpha economic factors; the 1.1 missions and rewards; the ship mechanisms from 1.4; and the planetary surfaces from 2.0. That would be a big improvement. Engineers, Thargoids, Guardians, and FCs...I had more fun without them.
Since I've been a regular player for more than six years and the game has consistently been moving away from feeling like a living world--and more like a fractured reality where everyone wanders about in their own solipsistic surrealist farce--I have no reason to expect it to get better, because it's fairly clear to me that my idea of better (doing justice to the original vision) is diametrically opposed to Frontier the business' idea of better (maximum profit).
I'm glad you're enjoying the game, but I'd be lying if I thought your infatuation would last.
I don't want to tear down the game for others, I want to play a game where I don't have to handicap the snot out of my character to encounter even the vaguest whiff of consequence, or experience the slimmest hope that he could fail.
It's not a cutthroat galaxy my CMDR exists in. It's a nightmare from which he cannot awaken where nothing is ever allowed to go wrong no matter how badly he screws up. There are participation trophies at every turn; guardrails and warning signs demarcating every vague threat (and no downside to ignoring the ones that can be ignored); every tresspass, no matter how heinous, is quickly forgiven; such a collection of 'quality of life' enhancements that even flying my CMDR's ship has become optional; everyone laughs at all of my CMDRs jokes and buys him free drinks just for existing (even if he murdered five thousand of their friends and family last week)!
Ultimately, Elite: Dangerous presents a setting were reality itself is a bootlicking sycophant. It's almost as if the fabric of spacetime and the hands of fate are contorting themselves into a pretzel to give my character a reacharound. By handing my CMDR everything he could hope for, free of charge, the game has relegated my attempts to extract enjoyment from it (as a player who doesn't want to always win without contest) a series of increasingly arbitrary convolutions.
I do still enjoy the game, but it could use a bit less 'free Swedish massage' and a bit more 'survival horror'.
Maybe the better decision would have been to strengthen the experience of the base game, add more things to do that provide value to the player beyond progression.
I don't think the solution to grindy gameplay necessarily needs to be to reduce grind. If the players don't enjoy playing the game and only find enjoyment in progression, shortening the progression time is just going to reduce the time before the game entirely loses value to them and is thrown into the trash. The better (and harder to implement) solution is to improve the base game features. Just look at the hollowness of what should be the pillars of this game; the economy, politics, missions, mining... combat and exploration (those two are slightly better implemented IMO). There is so much space for improvement, the 'early game designs' document would be a great place to start.
People complain about grindy progression. FD drastically increases progression speed. Then proceed to introduce new, excessively grindy mechanics...
And then people still complain about grinding, because the game is just as grindy as before, but now people grind by collecting dirt and literal mob drops to gain abstract stat buffs. Was the objective to reduce grinding? This was not achieved. But water it down to grinding for things that are much harder to engage with? Yes!
I think that engineers feature should be completely scrapped. Clearly the people who have designed these buffs haven't actually made a feature that improves the game.
The assets and characters are pretty nice though, they deserve to live on as part of a better game mechanic.
All of this is a little too late to fix now, I think. Good lesson for the next space game!
There was so much that just could happen at release. I could drop into a conflict zone with a Cobra, meet another player in a Cobra, and we could fight a heart-pounding duel. Unplanned, it just happened!
And the future was so bright, the features that were lacking would surely be fleshed out with the planned updates... and then we would get planetary surfaces...
I play the game now and I feel all these possibilities have been strangled by poorly designed game mechanics taking this game in the wrong direction.
But has it all really helped frontier's bottom line? How many more sales have they gotten from implementing powerplay? Engineers? I'm not sure how much profit there has been in taking this route. Maybe it has simply been a bad choice, even from a profit perspective.
TLDR; You don't really fix a grindy game by making it shorter. FD shortened grind and then introduced more grind, so they even failed at shortening the grind. I'm cranky and wish that pretty much every game feature added since release should change, and I probably have too much nostalgia for the old beta days.
I don't think the solution to grindy gameplay necessarily needs to be to reduce grind. If the players don't enjoy playing the game and only find enjoyment in progression, shortening the progression time is just going to reduce the time before the game entirely loses value to them and is thrown into the trash. The better (and harder to implement) solution is to improve the base game features. Just look at the hollowness of what should be the pillars of this game; the economy, politics, missions, mining... combat and exploration (those two are slightly better implemented IMO). There is so much space for improvement, the 'early game designs' document would be a great place to start.
This is what I just do not understand!
People complain about grindy progression. FD drastically increases progression speed. Then proceed to introduce new, excessively grindy mechanics...
And then people still complain about grinding, because the game is just as grindy as before, but now people grind by collecting dirt and literal mob drops to gain abstract stat buffs. Was the objective to reduce grinding? This was not achieved. But water it down to grinding for things that are much harder to engage with? Yes!
I think that engineers feature should be completely scrapped. Clearly the people who have designed these buffs haven't actually made a feature that improves the game.
The assets and characters are pretty nice though, they deserve to live on as part of a better game mechanic.
All of this is a little too late to fix now, I think. Good lesson for the next space game!
I wish that I didn't agree with this, but I do...
There was so much that just could happen at release. I could drop into a conflict zone with a Cobra, meet another player in a Cobra, and we could fight a heart-pounding duel. Unplanned, it just happened!
And the future was so bright, the features that were lacking would surely be fleshed out with the planned updates... and then we would get planetary surfaces...
I play the game now and I feel all these possibilities have been strangled by poorly designed game mechanics taking this game in the wrong direction.
But has it all really helped frontier's bottom line? How many more sales have they gotten from implementing powerplay? Engineers? I'm not sure how much profit there has been in taking this route. Maybe it has simply been a bad choice, even from a profit perspective.
TLDR; You don't really fix a grindy game by making it shorter. FD shortened grind and then introduced more grind, so they even failed at shortening the grind. I'm cranky and wish that pretty much every game feature added since release should change, and I probably have too much nostalgia for the old beta days.
I've only played the game for months not years. With the Epic giveaway I got a alt account. Progress was much quicker on that account because I knew exactly what, where, and when I needed to do it to get to the same level as my main account.
Truly new players will not know any of the needed details. They probably do not know about the reddit elite dangerous knowledge, or this forum, or the third party websites. So can they make quick money, sure, but only if they know how, and they are limited by their current ship size and amount of time they can play. Some people on this forum think most people play 24 hours a day 7 days a week, which would be incorrect.
Truly new players will not know any of the needed details. They probably do not know about the reddit elite dangerous knowledge, or this forum, or the third party websites. So can they make quick money, sure, but only if they know how, and they are limited by their current ship size and amount of time they can play. Some people on this forum think most people play 24 hours a day 7 days a week, which would be incorrect.