Same story here... I really suspect an element of gleeful malice in whoever coded this requirement with regard to Colonia engineering... Peter Cook playing the devil in the original film 'Bedazzled' comes to mind o7
Colonia Engineers need a re-think
- Thread starter GreyAreaUK
- Start date
Vetinari said: Also bought and engineered 4 5A FSD Drives.
We sell those now
I'm not sure I did say that
I can see its a simple formatting error so not offended or worried etc just found it quite funny and just to set the record straight in case the person wants to reclaim it.If ID has made an error do I get a prize decal as have read nearly all of their contributions to complicated BGS, PP, Tip Offs etc and this could well be the very first time?
Yes but is anyone who flies out to Colonia all that casual, it is more effort than I have been prepared to put in in 4 years.
Where? I'm hunting roundabout colonia for a coupleWe sell those now
I wouldn't take it so personally because it's likely an issue with the impact of casual play on the game experience rather than a specific dislike of the players themselves.
As with most content in most games, if you pitch the access level for things sufficiently low that someone who plays for an hour a week can expect to hit them in 5 hours, that person will probably think it seems like a well-paced challenge. To someone who plays for five hours a week, it's going to seem a little easy. To someone who plays for four hours a day, much of the sense of achievement gained from reaching a goal is lost because the whole experience has been rendered trivial.
It will be the same when fleet carriers come out. I can guarantee you that no matter how much they cost or how much unobtanium we will need to run them, we'll see a thread telling FDev the cost won't allow them to buy one on their one-hour-a-month account and another telling them that the grind to collect unobtanium is ridiculous and that the dev team just don't respect their time. In fact no, we'll see about 20 of the second one
So yeah. I don't hate casual gamers at all, I've been a casual player of other games and will be again. I don't want to see this game's balance pitched at the casual player though, for no other reason than it won't provide anything in terms of long-term goals for me if it is. It can't be balanced too hardcore either because that would limit the potential player base, but things taking time is such an Elite trope that it's very unlikely to change. We've already seen credits effectively removed from the game even for players with only a modest amount of time to play, if that's what they focus on.
Anybody who is a long term player of this game will already be setting their own personal goals because that's all we have left. I'd still like the game to set some for me too though but if they have to be achievable by someone who doesn't play regularly, they're going to be a weekend's work for me and I'm not some six hours a day player. There are loads of games on the market that aren't suitable for casual players and equally, loads that aren't suitable for players who want a more involving experience. Liking one doesn't automatically mean you hate anybody who prefers the other but it does mean you'll (entirely reasonably) not want a game that you like to be changed so that it's closer to their tastes.
Usually Jaques or Colonia Hub. It's also a good idea to check Colonia Orbital.
Well spotted, have a rep.I'm not sure I did say that
If ID has made an error do I get a prize decal as have read nearly all of their contributions to complicated BGS, PP, Tip Offs etc and this could well be the very first time?
(The BGS stuff also has plenty of errors in, of course. I just stick mostly to researching things that barely anyone else does, so no-one notices)
The trouble I think is the scale. In terms of "effectiveness" from the squadron leaderboards, it looks like about 1% of the players make about 50% of the trade profits. (And about 10% make half of the rest). Similar patterns for combat and exploration, even more pronounced for niche activities like AX combat or CQC. Obviously not the same 1% in each case, but still not a big proportion of players. But obviously if the game only appealed to that small percentage, it would never be able to fund as much development as it does.
Elite and co have famously had a very vertical inital learning curve, which then gets very flat later in the game, mainly just because of how the open-world model works. In FFE, even as someone who'd been playing for years, if I started a new game making those first few Medicine runs to Soholia would be difficult and require a lot of reloading, but once I'd got into a decently-fitted Cobra III the NPCs just stopped being a challenge.
Elite Dangerous has certainly flattened out the initial learning curve a bit (which is good!) and introduced more high-end encounters as well (things like the Civil Unrest pirate POIs, or a high CZ, or a Thargoid swarm are going to be well beyond the capability of a casual player), but really big stuff for the top 0.1% of players is trickier - I think this is in part why the loss of Galnet, CGs, etc. hits so hard: it was only ever a few thousand people participating, and probably under a thousand putting serious effort in, so on a scale of "Elite Dangerous player base" it's an obvious thing to hold off on to save time. But obviously it's disproportionately the loud and intensive players in that thousand.
ED has become far too focussed on loot progression. Imo gameplay is its own reward and doesnt need pride and accomplishment via gear gathering.I wouldn't take it so personally because it's likely an issue with the impact of casual play on the game experience rather than a specific dislike of the players themselves.
As with most content in most games, if you pitch the access level for things sufficiently low that someone who plays for an hour a week can expect to hit them in 5 hours, that person will probably think it seems like a well-paced challenge. To someone who plays for five hours a week, it's going to seem a little easy. To someone who plays for four hours a day, much of the sense of achievement gained from reaching a goal is lost because the whole experience has been rendered trivial.
It will be the same when fleet carriers come out. I can guarantee you that no matter how much they cost or how much unobtanium we will need to run them, we'll see a thread telling FDev the cost won't allow them to buy one on their one-hour-a-month account and another telling them that the grind to collect unobtanium is ridiculous and that the dev team just don't respect their time. In fact no, we'll see about 20 of the second one
So yeah. I don't hate casual gamers at all, I've been a casual player of other games and will be again. I don't want to see this game's balance pitched at the casual player though, for no other reason than it won't provide anything in terms of long-term goals for me if it is. It can't be balanced too hardcore either because that would limit the potential player base, but things taking time is such an Elite trope that it's very unlikely to change. We've already seen credits effectively removed from the game even for players with only a modest amount of time to play, if that's what they focus on.
Anybody who is a long term player of this game will already be setting their own personal goals because that's all we have left. I'd still like the game to set some for me too though but if they have to be achievable by someone who doesn't play regularly, they're going to be a weekend's work for me and I'm not some six hours a day player. There are loads of games on the market that aren't suitable for casual players and equally, loads that aren't suitable for players who want a more involving experience. Liking one doesn't automatically mean you hate anybody who prefers the other but it does mean you'll (entirely reasonably) not want a game that you like to be changed so that it's closer to their tastes.
Same with content behind grindwalls. A reasonable player economy is fine, but if all thee gear is locked behind grindwalls why not play a F2P game?
Deleted member 182079
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Aren't most games structured that way though? Especially sandbox ones? The difference I guess is other games have something of a story/campaign which Elite doesn't - most players require a reason to play, something to work towards - be that content locked behind a progression tree, or a campaign. A campaign which takes time and effort to design and implement would have to be pretty beefy to keep long-term players interested, and in all likelihood they'd fly through it in no time (few hours maybe?) and are then back to square one.
Often when you have unlocked everything, motivation drops; the only way to counter that is as you say make the gameplay itself rewarding, like playing a driving sim where the act of driving a vehicle is sufficient enjoyment people get out of it (or flying spaceships in Elite). But that only works so far i.e. if the driving/flying model isn't complex enough to allow for a prolongued learning curve, motivation will drop once more. Or you just keep adding more vehicles/spaceships, but variation between each will only go so far, too.
I think Elite's structure is mostly ok, as in if you'd have everything unlocked from the get-go player motivation will drop a lot faster, and you would have to come up by yourself with reasons to play the game - which at this stage is difficult enough even for me, clocking in at over 2,000 hours that that's to be expected to be fair (which is why I bought a second account.... to play though the progression tree in a somewhat different way this time around).
I can understand that other people have different tastes and/or expectations of how a game should keep them 'busy'. If I was given a choice by FDev to decide whether they should focus on developing a story mode of sorts, or "just" flesh out the game environment (atmos etc.), I 100% would choose the latter, but I have a feeling I'd be in the minority.
The difficulty is how steep/flat do you make the grind curve to unlock stuff (as Ian and Red were saying above) - as a game that can be played pretty much indefinitely, it's important to not make it too flat, but a balance has to be struck with how accessible it is for newcomers. As you can play the game for 50 hours and drop it because you have seen enough of the game, or 5,000 hours, it's a really difficult balancing act to get right.
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Ye, most simmers don't aim to unlock gear. They love to have different missions and take time to master their craft.
But let me name Mass Effect 3 MP. It's pretty much a looter shooter with gear progression. Monetised. I played that a lot. Like really a lot. It just had satisfying gameplay. Shooting was OK but timing melee and powers was my favourite. I unlock stuff over time and eventually my portfolio was complete. I thought I'd stop around that spot but I just kept on playing. People devised solo challenges (it's designed as 4 player coop) up to the highest difficulty or themed runs - content was very limited with basically no modding. It was pretty much just the basic gameplay that kept people playing.
I also play Warframe which is gear gathering galore. However I can choose to hunt specific gear. I can choose my challenge. And it's not a pain in the rear to find players to help me. In contrast I get the bulletsponge served on my plate with no gear to tackle unless I grind the powercreep and I don't like to be pushed like that. ED is designed in a way where you have to grind gear to enjoy it now and that's just wrong.
Currently:
Shield Cell Bank grade 4 (Brandon)
FSD Interdictor grade 5 (Brandon)
Life Support grade 5 (Dorn)
Fuel Scoop grade 5 (Hicks)
In the next few weeks Refinery grade 5 (Hicks) should also be available. We'll eventually also have AFMU grade 5 (Olmanova) but at current rates probably not for at least another year.
Deleted member 182079
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Probably not what you want to hear, but as far as I know NPCs rank with your combat rank, so a CMDR reset may do the trick (or I heard some players raising a ticket to get only their combat rank reset, not sure if that also affects NPC strength)?
I don't think FD will change the current way the game is structured, and honestly I don't think it's needed when it comes to engineering itself, apart from some tweaks on how to obtain certain mats. Since 3.3 (and especially mat traders) it's become a lot easier to achieve G5 engineering, and frankly it's not even necessary to G5 everything. I take your point on bullet sponge enemies, I don't enjoy fighting those either, but what's the alternative - a re-design to the extent of removing/replacing engineering is just not going to happen, and replacing bullet sponges with cannonfodder will not be any more satisfying as most players do engineer their ships.
I wonder actually how this works for those who just play on a vanilla copy (not that I understand that either, but ho-hum).
Not gonna throw 500 hours in the bin and grind again. They should just uncouple the spawning from combat rank and instead tie it to map / system state. Anything random should be avoided, so players can pick what they feel they can tackle without blowing a fuse.
See, this is yet another of those things where FDev need to stop settling for "adequate" (which, arguably, this isn't) and add a bit of depth to the game by providing several ways of accomplishing the same thing.
It doesn't have to be anything complex.
Like with MA's, back in the day, you could either harvest them from barnacles or you could buy them if you had the credits (back when Cr189k was a lof of credits).
When it comes to engineers, I'd suggest that each engineer should be linked to a system faction (IIRC, they already are) and you should be able to max' your rep' with the relevant faction and then be offered an "engineer invite mission" (a bit like a navy rank mission).
Complete that and you get the invite from the relevant engineer.
It's not like this would create a "short-cut" to the best engineers since most of 'em (on every tier) have some kind of speciality* which is worth unlocking on merit.
It'd just create a secondary option for people who find themselves in the OP's position.
*FWIW, although I unlocked Auntie Felicity for the G5 FSD mod's, I still unlocked Elvira Martuuk for the G3 shield mod's.
I have G5 Reinforced Shields pinned from Lei Chung - for combat ships which are likely to be tedious to fly out to Lei Chung.
I then have G3 Thermal Resist Shields pinned from Martuuk - just to give my multiroles a half-decent shield and then I can fly them out to Lei Chung to G5 them.
Well the short answer to your final question is simple. I don't want to, I like playing this game. Thing is I genuinely don't see these massive grindwalls in most of Elite anyway precisely because I play it fairly regularly. I just potter about here and there usually, for example at the moment I'm mainly running missions when I play because I have a little BGS project that I'm working on, but I've picked up about 60-70 G5 engineering materials whilst doing it over the last week and also made about 100m credits.
Same with the engineers - the unlock requirements for most of them aren't in any way a massive grind (other than perhaps Palin for non-explorers) and the materials needed to use engineers are only a grind if you set off aiming to fill up your stocks and do it to the exclusion of anything else. I very rarely have to set off to collect specific materials when I want to engineer something because I'm picking them up every time I play the game whilst doing other things.
You said that gameplay is its own reward. Everything you wrote after that seems to suggest that's something you thought sounded good rather than something you actually believe though because if gameplay is its own reward, surely you should be doing what I do which is enjoying that gameplay and not worrying about whether you have all the gear?
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This.
Sure, it could be argued that unlocking engineers isn't exactly sparkling gameplay but nor it is a "big deal" either.
So, you've got to collect 50 of something or other, a dozen at a time, and deliver it somewhere 4 jumps away.
Repetitive? Definitely.
Tedious? Possibly.
A "Grind Wall"? Erm, no.
If any of this stuff needs changing, the best change to make would to be to make it all more diverse and dynamic.
When it comes to problem-solving, in games, the entertainment comes from figuring out how to do stuff and then doing it.
Once you've done that, having to do the same thing half a dozen more times provides very little extra entertainment.
In that sort of situation, if a game doesn't think solving one puzzle is sufficient to earn a reward, it should present you with a different puzzle rather than forcing you to re-do the same one.
Last night, in Skyrim, I spent two hours trying to complete a quest, in a mod, where I'd lost a key to some sewer system and I had to faff around to recover it.
That was fine because it was entertaining.
If I'd recovered the key, opened the door and then lost another key while trying to open the next door I would've been applying console commands.
I don't mind doing "useless" stuff as long as it's entertaining.
Once the "useless" stuff stops being entertaining, as a result of being repetitive, it needs to be over ASAP.
Unlocking engineers, in ED, isn't entertaining, as a result of being repetitive, but it is, at least, over pretty quickly.
Call it "motivation wall", then. Collecting gear upgrades just so I can draw to even terms again is to me so unneccessary and superfluous like an ulcus at the um. In the end I'd have to bring myself to do activities I shouldn't need to be doing in the first place. Whether you call that grind or something else is just semantics. I had an enough fun gameloop before the powercreep. I don't really need to do unfun stuff to unlock that gameloop again. I already played that. I already unlocked ships to play that stuff. Doing the same over and over again (unlocking stuff) to access gameplay I already experienced just doesn't cut it.
I'm not hot on meta ship crap. I don't want no grade 5 bullocks. Or x-perimental effects. At least not when you shove HP-sponge between me and vanilla game activities. It's like "soft-locking" existing content behind a new gate. That's just dumb, imo.
How does one actually contribute to that? I plan to take a trip to Colonia soonish, I'd like to lend a hand.
Lori is the worst for me, I still haven't unlocked her xD (I'm just not into combat). But I agree with you otherwise and I love hard to achieve things. I just wish they were challenging in interesting ways, not just grinding. But as long as you don't actually take it as a grind, it's fine.
Edit: I somehow screwed this post up, edited now xD.
You, sir, are a life saver - I had entirely missed that. Thank you so much! Adding a Corvette to my pre-departure shopping list.
We sell those now
Well I thought you did, but had an odd experience. I bought a Python on arrival when last there, then encountered the no 5A FSD thing, so made do with a 5B (was fine for my purposes at the time, but frustratingly temporary as I don't engineer B rated modules). But then just as I was leaving Jaques Station had a 5A FSD for sale. I bought it, put it in the Python, then went to buy another for a Krait and they didn't have any. I checked back a while later and drew another blank. So I assumed that my 5A FSD was a glitch. Maybe that was introduction day and they were intermittent? Anyway, thank you for the tip.
o7
Interesting - I meet another human player (and often more than one) every time I fly in Colonia, which is far from true back in the Bubble (aside from being ganked at Shinrarta). So have had an opposite experience. I'm on Xbox, maybe Xbox commanders are antisocial and prefer the outer reaches?
o7