I was actually talking about hard due to (possible) burnout rather than lack of engaging gameplay..... people with burnout tend to find everything hard.... so I was just wondering if that was a factor, like with Old Duck. He was complaining a lot and quite bitterly about bugs in ED, and apparently the PS4 version of ED is very buggy, but then he announced he had been playing ED for over 4 yesrs and wanted to move on..... so that got me wondering about OP...... also gets me wondering about people complaining about ED in general. Are they complaining about engineering, supercruise, whatever, or are they just burned out, and just don't know it?
Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?
- Thread starter Bill Clement
- Start date
Hard is the wrong word here. If the game was truly challenging, it would keep people engaged and constantly on their toes.
That's where the word grind came in. The game isn't hard. It's just repetitious and boring. You repeat inane tasks.
You said you collected materials on the fly? OK.
Collecting manufactured mats.
- Scavenging rare mats at POIs like abandoned bases. To do that, you have to exploit the logging method. It's easy really. Rounadbout, collect, relog. Easy, and boring.
- Picking them up in Combat. Pew pew is definitely fun. NPCs are actually easy to pop once you've figured them out. AI is predictable. You pop them.
Collecting Raw mats.
- No other way except to land on the surface and bound around shooting rocks. Gets boring after about 5 minutes.
Collecting Encodeds
- Crashed ships, Data points at settlements, Encoded emissions, FSD wakes.... scan scan scan till you fall asleep.
There's nothing hard about these activities. They are easy. And just repetitious and dull.
The sort of stuff retirees do. Like mowing the lawn.
Really the best way to fix this would be to make materials buyable in Credits from traders.
And/Or have some special stations somewhere where all material traders are present and you can simply do your business in one locale, at once instead of flying around.
That way players don't have to endure the easy dullness of gathering these mats.
Disagree - some of those raw mats drop while mining, and the limpets collect them without you really noticing (unless full) but if you pay attention they make a different sound when collected.
Disagree - I get loads of Encoded while flying from entry point to docking station just by flicking the hat switch to cycle through all targets in the area, even easier with wide angle sensor mods.
I core mine VOs. Never noticed any raw mats dropping. And I do notice what my limpets are doing.
I don't laser mine. Sitting there and firing a laser into a rock, is boring, it's one of those afterthought-gameplay designs, and brings in next to nothing.
Yes, I noticed that you get lower level encoded sometimes, not always though, by targeting ships in real space.
I already have tons of those. What I need, and what I meant in my posts, are the higher grade ones. G4 and G5 mats for encoded and manufactured.
No, Raw mats don't tend to drop when core mining, so how about if you go land on a planet anyway for a delivery / data / salvage mission then you just pick a compass heading and drive til you run out of the free tank of fuel that's going to be refilled when you next dock? 5-10 minutes here and there is less grindy.
Also, if those lower level Raw / Encoded mats are full / overflowing, what's wrong with trading them?
They're essentially free garbage for recycling, just maintain them at 50-70% stock levels...
Well, I only ever do delivery/data missions if there's a reason to. Like for ranking up for Fed/Empire, which I've already completed BTW. I don't do missions because the payout is crap compared to VO mining.
Also, picking out a compass heading and driving till you run out of fuel is a total waste of time, since you might only chance upon the occasional mesoderite or outcrop every few clicks. I choose instead to land at geological sites which are rather flat and quick to drive over, and most importantly, full of mats.
Lower level mats are not overflowing. They are available. But I use some of them for synthesis. And besides... the trade up rate is horrible.
216/1, 36/1, 6/1 up the board, and sometimes parallel across. Mat traders are ripoffs. Perhaps FD can do something about the exchange rates.
10/1, 5/1, 3/1 sounds much better.
I've started putting a single mining laser on my core-mining build and just depleting any asteroid I find with a core: Prospect > Laser > Seismic Charge > BOOM > Abrasion Blaster. Helps me keep my raw mats topped up, and doesn't add much time to the cycle at all.
At risk of repeating myself, yet again, in this very thread, cos I'm sure I suggested this already...
Let's take one of the single most irritating to collect yet essential Encoded materials as a prime example, if you want to get anywhere quickly by upgrading your FSD...
Datamined Wake Exceptions
Sure, you can trawl the galmap for an Outbreak system, find the distribution point, fly to it and sit there scanning wakes for hour upon tediously boring hour until you have enough of them for a few rolls...
Trust me, I did this until the few brain cells I have left started trying to escape through every orifice so I thought to myself, "Ok Six... Where else can I find these things and what's another tediously mind numbing activity I can break up by combining this and that activity together?" Bingo! Cargo CG's!
So what did I do? Slap a wake scanner on my boring 18 wheeler (T-9), mod it for long range and then, every time I left a station after refilling my cargo I'd hang around the station for a few minutes each trip chasing all the local wakes until I ran out and then I'd continue my journey by jumping out of the system.
As if by magic the tedium of the CG was broken up with a combat-esque style of play chasing wakes while gaining critical flight practice in a ship that handles like a bus with flat tyres and the equally boring tedium of scanning wake after wake after mind numbingly boring wake was broken up by the cargo run.
After a while, it became a habit. Now my DWE stock is always full and I'm not as annoyed.
Honestly, I think you're digging for reasons to hate instead of applying some lateral thinking
Let's take one of the single most irritating to collect yet essential Encoded materials as a prime example, if you want to get anywhere quickly by upgrading your FSD...
Datamined Wake Exceptions
Sure, you can trawl the galmap for an Outbreak system, find the distribution point, fly to it and sit there scanning wakes for hour upon tediously boring hour until you have enough of them for a few rolls...
Trust me, I did this until the few brain cells I have left started trying to escape through every orifice so I thought to myself, "Ok Six... Where else can I find these things and what's another tediously mind numbing activity I can break up by combining this and that activity together?" Bingo! Cargo CG's!
So what did I do? Slap a wake scanner on my boring 18 wheeler (T-9), mod it for long range and then, every time I left a station after refilling my cargo I'd hang around the station for a few minutes each trip chasing all the local wakes until I ran out and then I'd continue my journey by jumping out of the system.
As if by magic the tedium of the CG was broken up with a combat-esque style of play chasing wakes while gaining critical flight practice in a ship that handles like a bus with flat tyres and the equally boring tedium of scanning wake after wake after mind numbingly boring wake was broken up by the cargo run.
After a while, it became a habit. Now my DWE stock is always full and I'm not as annoyed.
Honestly, I think you're digging for reasons to hate instead of applying some lateral thinking
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Yes, I do this to at every system before I jump out. It has also become a habit for me. Irritating one though.
But this is what I call tedium. Chasing wakes can never be fun for me.
I do it because I figure I'm gonna need them for engineering. Once I'm done w engineering, I'll stop chasing wakes.
Exchange rates can be a lot better. Basically I think my stand is that, the game shouldn't ask us to need so many of these items for engineering in the first place.
I'd rather FD change the requirements again to reduce the tedium so that we don't have to pretend that chasing wakes was ever fun in the first place.
A change to one or more of these would be preferred
- Make each engineering tier a one-shot guaranteed success (reduce mat wastage)
- Improve the mat trader exchange rate. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, rather than the ridiculous ripoff rates we have now
- Make each mat pickup = 10 instead of 3
- Reduce the mat amount and tier requirements for engineering
The backstory was kinda vital in understanding what I was talking about as it was all connected to it.
That's great.
Certainly felt like an attack. Then I apologise. Of course there are soft locks, they are very much needed in most games.
I should have been more obvious.
Because the conversation originally was about end-game content and traditional MMO style progression. ED doesn't have a traditional MMO style progression, and the "end game" content can be started right at the beginning of the game. So how that constitutes end game I have no idea.
To me ED is Justine big end game.
Yeah they are gamey. I would have much preferred sidegrades for combat upgrades which would have meant that you didn't have to use them at all. But it is what it is. I can't see it changing anytime in the future.
The misunderstand is that you came in mid-conversation not really understanding what was going on and then I completely misunderstood what you were saying. Easily done.
I think you hit the nail on the head with engineering, tedious mind numbing activity. Engineering is for me the single most irritating activity in game, due to the number of hours i waste trying to do anything engineering related. Aside from that, it is the the greatest way of unbalancing a game i have ever seen, at the same time managing to alienate a huge number of players from the 'i'm going to engineer my ship' to the ones that can't be bothered. In so doing making sure that should you play in open, only a matter of time before you are ganked by some over endowed ship with a pilots ego to match. Should that not be annoying enough, enter the over powered npc's who do the same job. Why oh why was engineering introduced?
This is what I do, but I don't even do it for a few minutes. I also scan every ship when in supercruise and I have a tons of data mats that I can exchange at the brokers if needed.At risk of repeating myself, yet again, in this very thread, cos I'm sure I suggested this already...
Let's take one of the single most irritating to collect yet essential Encoded materials as a prime example, if you want to get anywhere quickly by upgrading your FSD...
Datamined Wake Exceptions
Sure, you can trawl the galmap for an Outbreak system, find the distribution point, fly to it and sit there scanning wakes for hour upon tediously boring hour until you have enough of them for a few rolls...
Trust me, I did this until the few brain cells I have left started trying to escape through every orifice so I thought to myself, "Ok Six... Where else can I find these things and what's another tediously mind numbing activity I can break up by combining this and that activity together?" Bingo! Cargo CG's!
So what did I do? Slap a wake scanner on my boring 18 wheeler (T-9), mod it for long range and then, every time I left a station after refilling my cargo I'd hang around the station for a few minutes each trip chasing all the local wakes until I ran out and then I'd continue my journey by jumping out of the system.
As if by magic the tedium of the CG was broken up with a combat-esque style of play chasing wakes while gaining critical flight practice in a ship that handles like a bus with flat tyres and the equally boring tedium of scanning wake after wake after mind numbingly boring wake was broken up by the cargo run.
After a while, it became a habit. Now my DWE stock is always full and I'm not as annoyed.
Honestly, I think you're digging for reasons to hate instead of applying some lateral thinking
Yay, we found some common ground! The exact numbers though? How about a forum vote?
I haven't looked for a while but last check I think I'd traded around 50,000 mats...
I just luurve the 6:1 (/s) because, "Six6VI" ofc but the junk is free so why waste it?
I never stated it was actual end game content. I said (do I need to pull up the quote again?) end game like content, because it had lore and power gear locked behind it without the appropriate mission (aka progression). You misunderstood it and started a battle over definitions.
It's not like end game content either. What you describe is general gameplay content.
Everything is optional, but you staying on point apparently isn't.
I'm not getting sucked into this again, sorry.
I'm not getting sucked into this again, sorry.
Last night I tried out EDEngineer for the first time (I know I'm late), but holy ship does that improve the whole engineering experience. The shopping list is great, the reminder that you have enough to trade something is even better. And it even tells you where you can find what you're looking for and gives you e.g. a system name instead of the semi-useless ingame hints.
And you can import your shopping list from a ship build on Coriolis. The community is amazing.
And you can import your shopping list from a ship build on Coriolis. The community is amazing.
The engineers give me something to do and an excuse to play the game more outside of "I'mma just kill things for a few hours", grind for a reward, feel happy you got it, even if it kills your soul sometimes (Stares aggressively at Guardian Tech), might just be me though, I'm pretty tolerant of grinding.
As far as engineering a ship goes, it's pretty neat, it lets me customize ships in different ways more outside of "Oh this one is that one but with a limpet controller and more Cargo", engineers aren't exactly overly easy to get either, especially back when they first came out, it was a pain in the rear, but it was worth it, still is, atleast for me, having all my specialised ships as a result of Engineers feels nice.
Earning that Exploraconda with a 60ly jump-range and hitting the big black, and having an excuse to have a Scavenging ship to get me out of my corvette every once and a while feels really nice, and sitting in an SRV driving around as soulless as it is, it gives me an excuse to pop up a movie or a TV show on my second monitor, or just do it while having a conversation with a friend on Voice, it goes by pretty quickly, hell even just putting on some music helps, just click off and drive, but that's easy for me to do, not sure about others, I have the ability to play a train simulator pressing 3 buttons every once and a while for hours on end and be happy lmao.
Besides when you reach a point where you have your pride and joy ship you're A-Rating, like my Corvette for example, it feels really satisfying when I grind out the high grade mods and cap them then go rambo in a CZ to see how far I can go before I chaff myself and run, when shes done, I move to her smaller sisters and do it again.
As far as finding out where to get certain things, well, Inara and EDDB exists, people make tools like these so you're not endlessly hunting things down, "Google is your friend" but Elite Edition, it comes in real handy when you're at a loss, failing that, we got Forums.
As far as engineering a ship goes, it's pretty neat, it lets me customize ships in different ways more outside of "Oh this one is that one but with a limpet controller and more Cargo", engineers aren't exactly overly easy to get either, especially back when they first came out, it was a pain in the rear, but it was worth it, still is, atleast for me, having all my specialised ships as a result of Engineers feels nice.
Earning that Exploraconda with a 60ly jump-range and hitting the big black, and having an excuse to have a Scavenging ship to get me out of my corvette every once and a while feels really nice, and sitting in an SRV driving around as soulless as it is, it gives me an excuse to pop up a movie or a TV show on my second monitor, or just do it while having a conversation with a friend on Voice, it goes by pretty quickly, hell even just putting on some music helps, just click off and drive, but that's easy for me to do, not sure about others, I have the ability to play a train simulator pressing 3 buttons every once and a while for hours on end and be happy lmao.
Besides when you reach a point where you have your pride and joy ship you're A-Rating, like my Corvette for example, it feels really satisfying when I grind out the high grade mods and cap them then go rambo in a CZ to see how far I can go before I chaff myself and run, when shes done, I move to her smaller sisters and do it again.
As far as finding out where to get certain things, well, Inara and EDDB exists, people make tools like these so you're not endlessly hunting things down, "Google is your friend" but Elite Edition, it comes in real handy when you're at a loss, failing that, we got Forums.