Engineers Does anyone get enjoyment from the current system?

Tornlin

T
So I made a post on the improvement forum about the current mechanics for grinding material.

I also wanted to post here and see who enjoys the current methods of getting all the material for engineering?

I for one do not, the rinse and repeat and log off and on methods give me absolutely no enjoyment and are unfortunately a requirement if you want your ship to perform well.

I understand content needs to be behind some form of barrier to encourage playing the game but to me flying around a specific system and picking through wreckage or driving around a colony and logging dozens of times is both frustrating and insulting. There are ways to make the grind more seamless and enjoyable, god forbid we got to enjoy the game whilst aiming towards end game content right?
 

[VR] Frank_G

[VR] Frank_G
It is much better than before. No more hoping, but constant progression at a fair level, forseeable outcome and controllable special effects. I would love to see some missions instead of just bringing materials to make it more part of actual gameplay and personal narrative (damn, i said it...).
As i like to stop at USSs to collect stuff and catch a little unexpected space-brawl from time to time, i almost never leave an engineer without new results, even when going there without informing me outside the game up front (which actually is getting more and more into my playstyle - just let it come).
 

Dean Demon

Dean Demon
For me there is no grind for mats at all, there are two approaches to obtaining them so if you specifically target mats then you will find you get rather bored quite quickly and end up getting frustrated and so call it a grind or take the approach that i do is just play your normal game and mats just come your way so i'm playing the game i want and secondly then have aquired the mats for engineering and haven't got bored and had a great time so then do some engineering when i want so it's a win win situation but each to their own of course.
 

Komemiute

Komemiute
Frank_G said:
It is much better than before. No more hoping, but constant progression at a fair level, forseeable outcome and controllable special effects. I would love to see some missions instead of just bringing materials to make it more part of actual gameplay and personal narrative (damn, i said it...).
As i like to stop at USSs to collect stuff and catch a little unexpected space-brawl from time to time, i almost never leave an engineer without new results, even when going there without informing me outside the game up front (which actually is getting more and more into my playstyle - just let it come).
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Yup, pretty much this.
 

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE
Is it enjoyable? Hmmm for me it depends on how I'm currently looking for the mats I need - some methods are enjoyable some not - for example I don't enjoy driving the SRV that much so when I'm collecting mats at a base with lots of obstacles or at a crash site on very rough terrain it's an exercise in frustration. But missions are ok and I enjoy RES sites. And these days I scan most USS but that's not fun. Thank heavens for the material trader though (apart from some of the exchange rates ie. G1/2 with G5 which are just silly). If I am low on a specific mat what I usually do is start by trying to find that mat by the usual methods and then when I'm either 50% of the way there or giv up in frustration I'll then look for lower grade mats and trade up - for example I'm currently trying to find pharma isolators - after spending a couple of hours in the right type of system I only obtained 3 (and I never once saw them as a mission reward) and after spending 2-3 hours in a haz-res killing Elite Condas etc. I only obtained 3. Frankly you start to think that the developer is trolling you. So I'll now switch to the trader.

Things that would improve the situation:
- less RNG more skill involved in finding mats/data
- improve the horrible USS mechanic (plenty on this said by others already)
- more materials given as mission rewards (and higher grade materials)
- better in-game methods to know where to look for a specific material (i.e. better than "found on planet surfaces")
- decrease rarity of G5 mats - IMO most G5 mats are still too rare, it just encourages people not to bother and just use the traders
- increase mats received from 3 to 4
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
I enjoy it. Can depend on the material and how much you want it, in which case it can be 'more' stressful. but generally I'm one who picks up materials as a habit (after battles eg.).

I try to scan ships as habit too, work out what to do with it all, later.

Exchange rates don't bother me because I haven't really gne out of my way to collect low grades, so getting more of those is just as easy.

Also enjoy sessions in SRV knocking down outcrops. Relaxing, no thinking needed, with sports radio on in cockpit. Specifics like Guardian/Thargoid stuff I treat like a mission and I like giving myself missions OK.
 
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Deleted member 110222

D
Yeah I quite like it now.

The problem I had with the old system was that it was entirely possible to never get a positive in your lifetime.

Now that improvements are guaranteed with each payment, it's actually quite fun.
 

ZeroAi

ZeroAi
Tornlin said:
So I made a post on the improvement forum about the current mechanics for grinding material.

I also wanted to post here and see who enjoys the current methods of getting all the material for engineering?

I for one do not, the rinse and repeat and log off and on methods give me absolutely no enjoyment and are unfortunately a requirement if you want your ship to perform well.

I understand content needs to be behind some form of barrier to encourage playing the game but to me flying around a specific system and picking through wreckage or driving around a colony and logging dozens of times is both frustrating and insulting. There are ways to make the grind more seamless and enjoyable, god forbid we got to enjoy the game whilst aiming towards end game content right?
Click to expand...

Last night my friends and I met at a beacon to get keys before heading to a structure to use the key.

Sadly, we found you could only activate the beacon and get a key once without logging off and back on.

Then when we used the key at the Guardian Structure, only the first one to complete the scan got the Vehicle Blueprint.

So we basically spent the night in four different solo instances because for some reason FDev didn't want people to play together when it came to unlocking the new Guardian based SLFs :-(
 

dayrth

Volunteer Moderator
dayrth
Yes.

Maybe because I don't engineer much, but the engineering I do, I enjoy the whole process. Including collecting materials.
 

Hacker#451563

Hacker#451563
I find that with patients, common sense, and using the outside game tools I don't really have a problem.
Grade 5 mats should be rare, a high level drop from a USS or a destroyed ship is a big bonus that money just can't buy. Also, most of the time you can get things to lvl 3 or even 4 with pretty commonly found stuff.

You want an A-Rated Çonda or Python or Krait? You should have to work for a good 2-3 months for the money for that baby, and during that time you should be able to pick up enough mats for you to get most, if not all, the modules to lvl 3 grade.

Then you use that powerful ship to get the higher grade ones for the final 1 or 2 levels of upgrade.
If you used a Get Rich Quick guide for your 500 million in 5 days and you suddenly realize you have 6 pieces of mechanical scrap and a flawed focus crystal to try and upgrade your entire ship I have no sympathy.

What I don't like is the fact that re-logging a Guardian or Thargoid site to collect stuff is the most efficient way of doing it. You get no incentive for flying about being a space explorer unless you DON'T need to look for mats.

This is the big problem with the collection based content in Elite right now.
 

Kort

K
Searching for mats has allowed me to get involved in a lot of different aspects of the game. I don't think of it as a grind at all.
 

Sylow

Sylow
I wouldn't go so far as to say "enjoy", but I find it workable by now.
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I also agree that HGEs are still terrible, but I didn't go HGE hunting since a loooong time. I just keep collecting everything. Some of my ships have collector limpets on board, for others I see collecting as the time they need to recharge their shields anyway. Once my storage gets full, I visit a material trader and get what I actually need. Sure the conversion rates are rough, but all the materials I trade came in "for free", so I don't mind so much.
.
And thanks to pinned blueprints, the last ship I engineered also never went to Palin. I just flew to Deciat, did G1 engineering and added drag drives, the rest of the thruster engineering was done by remote workshop. Similar upgrades were done on several other modules. So all in all, things got much quicker and easier. I only went for surface prospecting for less than an hour and was done, which really wasn't that bad.
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It's still not what I call awesome gameplay by itself. But the effort is manageable and actually rather low, if you just collect stuff during your normal play. At the same times, any engineering is a guaranteed upgrade, no lottery any more. So while not being great gameplay by itself, it nudges you into the game, which I consider to be fine.
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Phil JMac

P
There are a few things I do to get mats that are fun

I like trading, so I often pick up a lot of source and return missions(I don't board flip, there are usually loads of them if you know where to look). These will inevitably bring incoming enemies so if you get your missions put aside then go out in a combat ship you'll get Deadly Anacondas interdicting you - They always seem to have G4/G5 mats on them and it's good combat training and a break from trading.

On the trading front I don't get greedy with credit over mats - If they are offer I'll take them. I know if I buy a ship I'll want to upgrade it so it's money in the bank

I always have a wake scanner onboard my traders and I'll scan a wake every time I leave a station - It's surprising how your wake data fills up (including Datamined)

If I take a scan job I'll spend 10-15 minutes shooting rocks...

And scan ships everywhere whatever your doing


I find I will end up hunting HGE's for very specific things but the list is MUCH shorter than it used to be. EFC's , Biotecs etc used to be a pain but I now always have enough. Believe me it has got better.
 

Caldric

Caldric
There is no part I like about gaining access to the engineers, a couple of them are just plain stupid. Grinding mats gets old, I mean compared to other games to get top tier items it is not horrible grind. But then Grade 5 is just a pain in the ...
 

bullfrog

bullfrog
My first objection is that engineering is a Red Queen mechanic.

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
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The moment you play engineers, simple bandits become impossible to challenge without engineered parts when previously they could be faced with better quality materiel acquired through the primary mechanic of earning money and finding a vendor.

So now to get back to where you were before engineering, at least hardware parity instead of abject inferiority, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops which are puerile in conception and disjointed from the primary mechanics of the game and very grindy.

You cannot persue a career wandering the stars capitalising on luck, as getting engineered parts is essential to simply going about your business and expecting to hold your own and so takes priority over wandering or luck. The process is so grindy you have to get a plan and the plan has to be Frontiers plan, you have to play the game the way they intend you to or else be defeated repeatedly. It is playstyle tyranny.

One big flaw with the design aesthetics is that raw materials are treated exactly the same as data and are not incorporated into the commodity gameplay, which should itself be more expansive and include player warehousing. This broke logistical immersion but Frontier never took it seriously because station economies are a fudge and they continued the fudge into the engineering mechanics.

The engineering mechanics are what you would expect from a bunch of people trying to justify being paid to sit a round a table and come up with games mechanics and I think that is exactly what they are. They are born of fear and necessity, not creativity. Frontier devs imho need to relax and have a little fun.
 
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Krash

Krash
I enjoy material grinding when its predictable and I know how much time to allocate. Its a task with rewards and I like that. The only investment is time. I gather top tier mats and trade down. Some top tier mats (such as Core Dynamic Composites) have HGEs as their most reliable source. That is saying a LOT cuz HGEs are finicky pixies with a mind and will of their own. The next most annoying material to grind is something like Selenium since its not dropped at the crashed conda site I have to scour a planet in the SRV and pray to the RNG gods to be merciful. Besides those hair pulling situations, material grinding aint so bad for me personally.
 
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