Core gameplay. What's your poison?

[Jaylem]

both, achievement first, then when you have an Anaconda after 7 months of legit gameplay, all engineers unlocked and modules maxed. the only endgame is collect credits, even then, these were mostly from CZ.

Now 3.0, all elite players got the figure with high rank paying missions removed and replaced with atrocious wing missions with lower payouts for more effort.... Palin missions no doubt will receive an unholy nerf also. can't have people stacking cargo in size 16 corrosive resistant rack that they laboured to get....

I now just kill Scouts for fun, pays more than anything else and I suppose it helps the galaxy a little...

 

[Red Anders]

It's a pointless question because, I suspect like most players, I don't identify with either of the options you presented.

 

[CMDR Goro]

Sense of achievement: Some of us have been around long enough to remember the sense of awe when we finally had enough credits to access that elusive Python, only to find it sorely lacking until properly equipped for the same amount of credits. Or bustling from port to port in a T6 with your cargo of choice.

OR

Instant gratification: Gaining access to all the biggest ships and guns and modules within a week of gameplay via "exploits/gameplay-mechanics". Leaving only engineering as the "inevitable" grind. Access to all in-game content as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: This question is obviously biased, but I'm genuinely curious as the player demographic seems to have shifted a great deal since release, and I now see myself as part of the minority.

I started playing at relese. Back then it took me month to get Adder. That felt like achivement. 3 months later i was rolling A rated Cobra. That was achivement too. Then i realised it will tale me year or more to get an Asp so i can do what i really wanted, to explore. That was soul crushing.

I erned my 1st bilion in networth (i dont sell my ships) 100% fair just before manure runs became a thing.
I did those, never looked back.

I play ED for fun, i wanna be "i should mine today" jump into my mining clipper and go. Not grind for a month to be able to outfit one.

 

[Cmdr Thrudd]

I'm certainly in the first camp. I even got a second account so I could reset it's save frequently and do the whole claw-yourself-up-from-a-sidewinder gameplay as I enjoy it so much. I really enjoyed the early game where everything was a struggle and each upgrade felt like an achievement. Of course now with years of experience, 3rd party tools and game changes it's much easier. I reset my alt when I got back from my brake and in a week had an asp, FAS and python as well as Baron and Chief Petty Officer ranks without any real grinding or cheesey gameplay. I dont think I'll reset the alt for a while though as loosing engineer progression each time is quite a loss

 

[Globusdiablo]

It's a pointless question because, I suspect like most players, I don't identify with either of the options you presented.

That's not very constructive Anders. So which options would you prefer?

 

[Globusdiablo]

I started playing at relese. Back then it took me month to get Adder. That felt like achivement. 3 months later i was rolling A rated Cobra. That was achivement too. Then i realised it will tale me year or more to get an Asp so i can do what i really wanted, to explore. That was soul crushing.

I erned my 1st bilion in networth (i dont sell my ships) 100% fair just before manure runs became a thing.
I did those, never looked back.

I play ED for fun, i wanna be "i should mine today" jump into my mining clipper and go. Not grind for a month to be able to outfit one.

I hear you. That elusive goal called balance within a given construct. In that sense I always end up at the word choice, and I think Elite: Dangerous in it's current form has exactly that; players can choose to play the long game or race to the "end-game", or dabble with both as they see fit.

 

[Ziljan]

If those were my only two options for "core gameplay" then I would have quit playing Elite a long time ago. Luckily there are about a dozen other actual core mechanics beyond simplistic gear "progression".

1. Understanding combat mechanics (flight mechanics, weapon mechanics, stealth, passive defense, active defense, internal/external module locations, FA, etc)
2. Using the above to creatively imagine build alchemy for new metas
3. Learning to fly your ship to maximize on the above, this is a totally separate skill. This is actually two separate but related skills, one for PVP and a more simplified version for PVE combat
4. Understanding BGS mechanics
5. Utilising social structure of the game along PP and BGS mechanics to help a faction survive and even thrive
6. Understanding or searching out the latest gold rush mechanics, people have a variety of reasons for doing this
7. Understanding how the Stellar Forge works and how this relates to what we know about the Galaxy irl
8. Locating cool stuff in deep space or the bubble, this is a science of sorts
9. Community Goals (supporting, opposing, policing)
10. Power Play politics, above and beyond the simplistic mechanics, the larger story of PP is one of inter-group relationships both frictional and co-operative
11. Following the story, this gets a bad rap for being shallow, but it actually is involved enough to be a second job just to keep pace with all the different outlets dishing out pertinent information
12. CQC/arena which has its own separate mechanics which are only slightly related to in game SLF combat
13. Understanding trade, NPC locations, profitable routes, rares, mining, and piracy mechanics.
14. And of course we cannot forget the all important forum mini-game

 

[Demascus]

I would never waste my money on a Python.

 

[Cadarnfel]

It's a pointless question because, I suspect like most players, I don't identify with either of the options you presented.

I tend to agree with this. I started playing on PC just after release, then dabbled with PS4 for a while, before settling on Xbox. Throughout that time, I've probably cleared my save on a dozen occasions, usually because I don't like the way my character is going (sometimes they take on a life of their own).

I've nearly always just done missions (fetch and delivery), with some in-the-bubble re-survey stuff. For any one of the saves, never had more than 10 megaCr, and the biggest ship I've spent any real time in is an Asp Explorer.

A play session is very much "hmm, what'll I do today", have a look see if any missions are interesting, check out a couple of nearby star system, drop in on some USSs, and just muck around.

So I can't say "a sense of achievement" - I just do stuff

 

[lokvette]

Getting from A to B and enjoying it along the way, so id guess that puts me in the first group.

 

[[VR] scipio_77]

My poison is combat.

The money grind is too boring however. Too few mission types, most of them are akward and fiddly and none of them really feel special or epic. That, I suspect, is what really drives people towards exploit gold-rushes. Don't get me wrong, many would still do it, but I think the main appeal is to idea of not having to do tedious stuff for a very long time to reach a big ship.

My other staple space game is X3. Elite has a lot of the things I miss in X3... a big galaxy, realistic space systems, landable planets, better combat. In Elite I can enjoy a sunset on a strange world in a fairly realistic representation of the universe (as far a game goes), no such things exists in X3. That is what makes Elite feel special.

But X3 offers one big thing which Elite does not... is a tremendous sense of achievement, and the ability to make the tech and game mechanisms work for you. Gathering missiles a grind? Hate refuelling? Make a self-sustained factory complex, automated shuttle transports and resupply chains to the front-line. No aspect of the game can't be automated or solved by making the world and game mechanics work for you instead of against you. And your impact on the world is extremely noticable.

I'm not saying X3 is the better game, nor do I think the single-player organizations you can setup there would work in an MMO-style game like Elite. However, what X3 does well... is to make the process of building and your journey through the game a very, very rewarding experience. It offers solutions beyond merely troddling along doing the same thing over and over.

This post makes me sound like I dislike Elite, and I do not. I love the sensation of space. But I think a re-vamp of the game to make missions more rewarding, allowing you to setup some things to sort them out over time at the price of some invested effort to begin with and make your own impact on systems more direct and noticable would be welcomed additions.

 

[babelfisch]

I'd prefer instant gratification but than I would miss on sense of achievment. Can I have both, now?

 

[Jmanis]

BGS for me. Was the only thing I longed for in Frontier: Elite 2. Running so many missions for the Imperial Navy, destroying so many federal ships, but never would a system change hands. ED fixes that.

 

[Jaylem]

I would never waste my money on a Python.

You take that blasphemy back, as a beginner non- faction locked ship she is a monster in disguise..... it was my first love before I got into the big Anaconda at the time

 

[Globusdiablo]

My poison is combat.

The money grind is too boring however. Too few mission types, most of them are akward and fiddly and none of them really feel special or epic. That, I suspect, is what really drives people towards exploit gold-rushes. Don't get me wrong, many would still do it, but I think the main appeal is to idea of not having to do tedious stuff for a very long time to reach a big ship.

My other staple space game is X3. Elite has a lot of the things I miss in X3... a big galaxy, realistic space systems, landable planets, better combat. In Elite I can enjoy a sunset on a strange world in a fairly realistic representation of the universe (as far a game goes), no such things exists in X3. That is what makes Elite feel special.

But X3 offers one big thing which Elite does not... is a tremendous sense of achievement, and the ability to make the tech and game mechanisms work for you. Gathering missiles a grind? Hate refuelling? Make a self-sustained factory complex, automated shuttle transports and resupply chains to the front-line. No aspect of the game can't be automated or solved by making the world and game mechanics work for you instead of against you. And your impact on the world is extremely noticable.

I'm not saying X3 is the better game, nor do I think the single-player organizations you can setup there would work in an MMO-style game like Elite. However, what X3 does well... is to make the process of building and your journey through the game a very, very rewarding experience. It offers solutions beyond merely troddling along doing the same thing over and over.

This post makes me sound like I dislike Elite, and I do not. I love the sensation of space. But I think a re-vamp of the game to make missions more rewarding, allowing you to setup some things to sort them out over time at the price of some invested effort to begin with and make your own impact on systems more direct and noticable would be welcomed additions.

Now we're cooking. Good read. Thanks.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

Sense of achievement: Some of us have been around long enough to remember the sense of awe when we finally had enough credits to access that elusive Python, only to find it sorely lacking until properly equipped for the same amount of credits. Or bustling from port to port in a T6 with your cargo of choice.

OR

Instant gratification: Gaining access to all the biggest ships and guns and modules within a week of gameplay via "exploits/gameplay-mechanics". Leaving only engineering as the "inevitable" grind. Access to all in-game content as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: This question is obviously biased, but I'm genuinely curious as the player demographic seems to have shifted a great deal since release, and I now see myself as part of the minority.

It can't be an OR for me since I'm a bit of both.

I don't want instant access to all in-game content ASAP, but I equally don't want to have to spend weeks or months getting to that content.*
I don't mind travelling longer distances for a particular module; but I hate having to look for it manually or being forced to use 3rd party outside tools to find out where those modules are. There is no logical reason to force players to wander around looking for modules, IMHO.
I enjoy trading, but I hate the tools in place to do it. The 3.0 changes are definitely welcome; but still not what I'd like to see**.
I like the idea of exploration and would love to spend days exploring distant nebula, but I hate the "Jump In-Align-Press J-Jump Out aspect of it.***

So yeah; I like the sense of achievement - I just don't want to spend inordinate amounts of time to get that achievement.

As an example of this, in Dreadnought your Tier 1 ship needs 500 XP to unlock something. You get awarded like 4,000 XP if you played really well.
This is all well and good, but by the time you reach Tier 5 ships, you're looking at 55,000 XP to unlock something and you still get 4,000 XP - it's disproportionate and I find that tends to kill my excitement a bit.

*'s

Spoiler

* Just a note here, I don't mind that the content is weeks/months away if there is plenty to do in-between now and then. In ED, for me, this is not the case. Think World of Warcraft and the amount of content between Level 1 and Level 110; granted Blizzard have like a 13 year head-start and the man power to do it.. but given the size of the ED game world, I feel, at the very least, Frontier should have expanded their development team to fill that world with as much content as they possible could.

** I rather like Inara's Market - something similar in-game would be perfect (not the easy-mode it is on Inara, but something along those lines). Click on a commodity and it opens a page with expanded information; where this station exports to and so on. Perhaps further information available in a say 25ly range. You open up the market and get a "Sol is lacking in fish at an increase price and is trading it's surplus of salt at a reduced price to compensate" type of thing; or perhaps view it on a graph that allows you to see and plot the up and down trend of a commod. Etc etc.

*** I'd like to be able to point at a star, hit jump and be able to wait until my ship gets there. If it's 1 ly or 10,000 ly - it's a single jump; but the length of time required to get there is the same as doing it manually (with space legs; that gives me stuff to do in my ship as well, especially if it's science focused with science toys like bioanalysis, or geological scanning or whatever).

 

[Variform]

I still play the game as I did in the beginning.
I let progress in ranks etc. just run it's coarse and do only things that are fun to me.
Only once did I get myself dragged into a grind, the rank for the Cutter, ugh never a grind in my life again!!

Right now I have 27 ships, 1.3 billion in the bank but I still decide every day what fun thing I'm gonna do.
Sometimes I'm out for a while exploring, outside of that I'm running missions, passengers, bounty hunting in a HazRes, planet surveys for materials, etc. etc.
Oh and trying out different ships for different tasks.

You mean that is not a myth, that you can use certain ships for certain roles?

I am a miner and have done that with every more expensive, slightly bigger ship I could pay for. I haven't kept any of the ones I had save a Cobra. My first goal was to get my favorite from the Old Days, the Asp, which I know own. I kept that too.

I noticed a few ships aren't optimized for mining because of the hardware points, so you can't put both limpet types on it e.g.

I don't do combat too much and often I just flee. So I don't notice how some ship or another does in these varying roles. Overall it seems to me any ship will do pretty much any job.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Sense of achievement: Some of us have been around long enough to remember the sense of awe when we finally had enough credits to access that elusive Python, only to find it sorely lacking until properly equipped for the same amount of credits. Or bustling from port to port in a T6 with your cargo of choice.

OR

Instant gratification: Gaining access to all the biggest ships and guns and modules within a week of gameplay via "exploits/gameplay-mechanics". Leaving only engineering as the "inevitable" grind. Access to all in-game content as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: This question is obviously biased, but I'm genuinely curious as the player demographic seems to have shifted a great deal since release, and I now see myself as part of the minority.

i like everything the game has to offer except PvP.... that just aint my bag. (oh and i do not fight thargoids due to role play reasons and not havign a ship capable)

i am the exact opposite of instance gratification. For me ED is meant to be starting with nothing and struggling to make ends meet and desperately saving for new stuff.

as you can imagine i loved the game at launch, but not so much now.... my 1st 200 hrs in the game i would not swap with anyone... 25 hrs in my sidey to A rate it and save for my eagle and a smiliar amount then to save for my adder etc etc etc (i still have all my old ships too)

i used to look longingly at the next upgrade or weapon and was almost childlike excitement saving up for them. .....