Yep, there sure is an awful lot of complaining about other people here. I'm pretty sure FD just ignores that, yes.
Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?
- Thread starter Bill Clement
- Start date
What if the engineer's too busy experimenting on their modules/weapons to go fetch mats? Or doesn't want to risk life and limb searching for mats? Or is too busy drinking/smoking themselves to death to go look for mats! Whose job is it to go get those mats? Maybe the commander whose ship(s) is/are going to be the recipient of the very powerful and super-cool upgrades those mats are going to provide?How about just making engineering blueprints doable by paying (exorbitant) amounts of credits? The Engineer can then be negotiated with by having any number of the needed materials at hand, until he/she only charges for the labour if the CMDR presents all the mats needed. That could also be subject to stock - different Engineers could replenish their stocks at set rates. If CMDRs then deplete these stocks, they would need to bring the Engineer more mats (the value of which would then be subtracted from the final cost).
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The part which makes it 'unrealistic' for me is the fact that you cannot buy the mats anywhere. I mean these things are literally lying around on a planet and so surely some enterprising young go getter would have set up a decent mining operation by now and be selling them on the open market.
I know the reality is that if you find a planet with a decent amount of Geo POI's it would not take more than an hour to get a load of stuff you need but why can I not buy it off someone else who really enjoys mining for hour after hour.
Having said that all it will mean is that everyone ends up fully engineering ships and so engineering becomes null and void - and here is a long term problem eventually anyone who plays the game for a period of time will end up with a fully engineered top level ship so it means I think more engineering or other ways of making your ship better are going to be in the pipeline.
Probably.
I know the reality is that if you find a planet with a decent amount of Geo POI's it would not take more than an hour to get a load of stuff you need but why can I not buy it off someone else who really enjoys mining for hour after hour.
Having said that all it will mean is that everyone ends up fully engineering ships and so engineering becomes null and void - and here is a long term problem eventually anyone who plays the game for a period of time will end up with a fully engineered top level ship so it means I think more engineering or other ways of making your ship better are going to be in the pipeline.
Probably.
Let me tell you a story. Commander WinterKing was out exploring one night and he came across a lovely planet covered in spiky things that he shot at with his gun. Lots of nice things fell out of the spiky thing when it broke. Commander WinterKing picked up the nice things, knowing they would come in handy later on. On the way back to the bubble Commander WinterKing found a nice gas giant with a big ring full of asteroids. Wonder of wonders, some of these asteroids contained platinum and other nice things, so Commander WinterKing blew up those asteroids and took the platinum back to his home base, where he knew he would get a primo price for the shiny metal stuff.Exactly. It's not just about being a time sink. It's about UNNECESSARY and EXCESSIVE time sinks finding large numbers of materials.
There's a reason why people love quests, but hate grind.
Engineering is a great idea implemented wrong. Instead of doing something difficult and exciting once, you do mundane things over and over again.
Instead of finding x number A, B and C materials that come in tiny amounts, they should have just requested for rare goods that come from one or two places. Or a specific type of item that you have to carry out a specific task for.
Eg. To save the princess you have to get the Sword of Blablabla, which is protected by a Dragon in Cave XYZ, but you can only kill the Dragon in cave XYZ if you acquire Spear DEF at location J.
That's a quest. You know that you're doing something specific to get something done, even if you have to go through hoops to get it done. And you do it once. Not the little crapfest gathering things that you do 50 times over. That's a grind.
And then there's the actual engineering bit. Once you've gotten the materials that they specifed. 1 X A, 3 X B and 5 X C, you click on the button and realize that .... what? It doesn't complete the upgrade with the materials specified, but instead puts you through a dice roll.
That's not engineering. That's poor witchcraft or noob sorcery. You have a blueprint. If you followed the blueprints and provided the specified materials listed in a blueprint, you would have a finished product everytime.
I don't know how some people can be positive about that? I mean I know some people are easily contented, maybe simple minded even... but there must be some kind of corner in their minds that they figure the mechanics behind this whole thing was poorly thought out and meant to be a time sink to distract the lack of actual features and poor implementation, right?
But oh no, a nasty pirate mugged Comnander WinterKing on the way back to his home base and nearly killed the good Commander. When Commander WinterKing got back to his home base, he thought: "that motherf@#$er nearly killed my arx! I better go see Aunty Felicity to upgrade my thrusters so I can run away faster from those nasty pirates, then I should go see that nice lady who drinks too much to get my shields snd shield boosters upgraded so my ship won't lose it's shields so quick."
So Commander WinterKing went off to see Aunty Felicity and the nice lady who drinks too much and got his thrusters, shields and shield boosters upgraded. Because Commander WinterKing is a clever man who picks up goodies as he goes, he had plenty of goodies for Aunty Felicity and the nice lady who drinks too much to use when upgrading his thrusters etc, so his thrusters got upgraded to G3 with a nice exfx which made his ship go very, very fast! "Oh boy, no pirates are gonna catch me now!" Exclaimed the good and clever Commander!
The moral of the story boys and girls is that if you are smart like Commander WinterKing and pick up goodies as you go, you can give those goodies to Aunty Felicity, the nice lady who drinks too much, and the nice lady who smokes too much, and they will upgrade the things in your ship so nasty pirates can't hurt you! But if you are not wise like Commander WinterKing and don't pick up the goodies while you are flying around in space, the nasty pirates will catch you, and before you know it you may be looking at a rebuy screen, which is not the happy ending anyone wants, is it?
Wrong so wrong, you can come into any situation with a positive open mind and find out you negatively don't like it especially if you have a completionist type of mindset. Game play should be fun and not rely so heavily on imaginary fun provided by the players or at least have a reasonable rewarding experience to it which engineers sorta does at first but fades quickly the more you do it.
it doesn't bother me one bit
What, it not being very good?
Fair enough.
Clearly you've never gad bad RNG on a rare drop in a souls game. Irythill pyromancers don't like dropping their armor and fashion-souls demanded them.
But I'm not the one that brought up souls games.
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I'm not really a completionist. Some legendary not dropping in FO 4? I dont care. Some part not dropping in Warframe? Bad luck - I still have tons of other stuff to play with.
I only start complaining when the game isn't fun with what it hands out. Like ED, e.g.
That's fine. Some people are going to care more about customization and/or optimization than that and that may require grind over a variety of games.
Even across genres it probably still helps to look at what works and what doesn't.
Now to wait for the inevitable opportunity to bring up monster hunter in a conversation about grind so I can actually insert a unicorn in a game out of spite.
Go ahead, unicorns are always nice. Dint hear much complaining about monster hunter.
Not fading for me, but then again I'm not a completionist. Completionist sounds like obsessive compulsive, and that's actually an illness, sooo....
May apply to any sort of goal driven play, even if the goal isn't completion as a specific metric.
Could you please elaborate? Your reply is so short I'm not sure what you are saying.....
The ability to move from a positive outlook on a mechanic to a negative one through repetition, tedium or time requirement isn't limited to being completionist in mindset. It can arise from any goal oriented play when the game steers you towards specific things which over time you may find yourself not terribly fond of. I can say from experience that you're going to be aware of your progress on a given metric you've set or aspire towards if you have such a motivation. For me, this game feels uniquely bad in that regard and that was after coming in untainted by negative perceptions until I looked for aid after hitting my own brick walls with certain aspects.
Okay, I get it. Nice to have an adult explaining the "engineering is a grind" issue instead of the childish moaning we get from some of the others! I think unfortunately there's a line in the sand and I don't think the "it's not a grind" crowd like me will be happy with making it easier/"less boring ". This is just like the "supercruise is boring" issue, and the same people have the same opinions with both issues. The only way I can see this working for everyone is if they make an ED Lite for people who want engineering/supercruise to be much faster and easier, and ED Regular for the rest of us. Can't see that happening tho!
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I've met many "positive" people in life. All the happy posts on their social media, bla bla bla.
But it turned out to be fabricated. Everything was manufactured. They set it up, posed for it.
And at the end of the day, their lives were exactly the same as mine. Just packaged.
I'm not negative. I'm pragmatic. I say things as I see them, no filter, no censor.
I see many good things in this game. Things that I like. And I call out the crap I see.
Combat in Elite. Fun. Absolutely.
Graphics? Beautiful. No doubt.
Mining? Better than it previously was. Though the hit rate could be better.
Flying the ships? Pretty good, except for the speed limit, even in FA-Off.
Yes... fricking to have a speed limit in space.
Travel? Jump ranges are too short, and SC travel too long for the secondary stars in a system.
Faster accel/decel in SC needed. Direct jump to B stars needed.
Engineering? Good end game, but crapfest way to go about it.
Grindy mat gathering. Stupidass dice roll mechanics, where a blueprint gives you varying degree of success.
Guardian grind? Pretty similar to Engineering grind, except that at the very least, you still get to play mini shoot 'em up games with the obelisks.
But the amount of stuff you need to gather is still ultimately... excessive.
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Heh heh, time for another story boys and girls! Commanders Nappy Care and DMZ69 were cruising through space, complaining about what a total waste of time supercruise and engineering were, as usual. Problem is they were so busy bleating and moaning, they did not notice a ship full of bad old pirates creeping up behind them! Before they knew it they were being interdicted, and because they had not been picking up all those nice materials like Commander WinterKing did in the previous story, their ship was not engineered very well. So the bad old pirates caught them, oh no!
Unfortunately for Commanders DMZ69 and Nappy Care, the pirates' ship was called The Jolly Roger for a good reason and those naughty pirates did something bad to our unfortunate pair! When they were released several days later DMZ69 and Nappy Care could not sit down for a long, long time. Of course the other commanders found this to be very funny as they were sick of the whining and moaning from those two!
As for the pirates, Commander WinterKing sent them to Hell with some heavily engineered multicannons! And everyone lived happily ever after, except for the pirates of course!
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Well thing is, some people enjoy the grind in game, but absolutely hate it when they encounter it in RL.
Such a disconnect.
I wonder if psychologically, they can accept a prison within a virtual world because they perceive it as an escape from the prison in real life.