Preface: if you don't know what a Doppel Diatribe is, read here.
The theme of this diatribe is Odyssey materials, and how they fall into some of the same issues Frontier already fixed before in Horizons, while also adding new ones.
For people who've been around since the early days of Horizons until the few days before Odyssey hit, there was a HUGE improvement over time. In the early days, we had an endless grind for materials very few people knew where to find and there was a strong dependence on third-party tools. Also, the recipes all required some material that demanded actual cargo hold storage, which not only was a hassle for many careers that didn't use a cargo hold at all (or, like, had an 8T hold for recipes that required multiple units per attempt at a roll), but also exposed a lot of people to interdictions because every pirate NPC would be like "OwO what's this on your cargo hold?". As for the materials that didn't need a cargo hold, they shared a single pool, were incredibly varied, not all of them were used for anything, and you'd have a hard time collecting for every recipe you wanted before the limited space filled up.
Odyssey players, stop me if any of this sounds familiar.
The improvements were slow. Glacially so. Some came years apart. But they made a huge difference, and huge improvements:
And after years of grueling wait, Horizons Engineering became not only "tolerable", but for many (including me) an actually interesting system.
...Enter Odyssey.
Let's start with the good:
...That's it. Now to the bad:
I'm pretty sure I missed some other stuff, but I'm gonna focus on that big orange asterisk I talked about earlier: PLAYER TRADING. It's a GREAT idea. Seriously. It is.
...Too bad we can't make any practical organized use of that in-game.
What do I mean? Well, you have no in-game system to find who's selling what you need, or who's buying what you have, other than hop from Fleet Carrier to Fleet Carrier. You need a third-party app synchronizing to Inara (and more importantly, the trader needs to do it), and you need to be refreshing Inara constantly. Or have good networking, be friends with commanders with lots of spare stuff. But most of the forum threads for trading are dead, and even Inara can often be unreliable. So... if you use outside-game tools, you have a chance of trading, sometimes. If you rely on the game only? You're screwed.
So.
How do we fix this?
First of all, just look at Horizons and replicate everything they did back then that worked.
...And as for NEW solutions:
This is for the current state of affairs. I'm pretty sure new solutions (and possibly new problems) will arise as soon as we finally get more guns, more armors and more modules. But those... are a theme for another diatribe.
Until next time, folks.
The theme of this diatribe is Odyssey materials, and how they fall into some of the same issues Frontier already fixed before in Horizons, while also adding new ones.
For people who've been around since the early days of Horizons until the few days before Odyssey hit, there was a HUGE improvement over time. In the early days, we had an endless grind for materials very few people knew where to find and there was a strong dependence on third-party tools. Also, the recipes all required some material that demanded actual cargo hold storage, which not only was a hassle for many careers that didn't use a cargo hold at all (or, like, had an 8T hold for recipes that required multiple units per attempt at a roll), but also exposed a lot of people to interdictions because every pirate NPC would be like "OwO what's this on your cargo hold?". As for the materials that didn't need a cargo hold, they shared a single pool, were incredibly varied, not all of them were used for anything, and you'd have a hard time collecting for every recipe you wanted before the limited space filled up.
Odyssey players, stop me if any of this sounds familiar.
The improvements were slow. Glacially so. Some came years apart. But they made a huge difference, and huge improvements:
- The materials that required cargo hold space were completely removed from the recipes.
- Materials eventually got their own individual pools instead of a humongous shared pool; and the maximum amount you could carry for each varied with rarity grade (300 for grade 1, down to 100 for grade 5). They were also formally divided into Encoded, Raw and Manufactured.
- The entire recipe system got overhauled, with the heavy reliance on RNG mostly removed (particularly yeeting the atrocious feature that could make your gear worse while eating all your mats anyway), making the entire process of 100%-ing a piece of equipment far less taxing than it used to be. It also made the high-end builds more predictable to balance; but whether there was real benefit taken from that, that's for a different diatribe.
- Missions started giving 3 options of rewards, often including crafting materials, and in much better rarities, quantities and varieties than before.
- We got far more places to grab materials from; bases, crash sites, special kinds of missions,
our dear shopping malls, etc etc. - We FINALLY got trader NPCs on some stations that could allow us to trade materials we had in surplus for materials we lacked, for a ratio depending on the grade difference. We could only trade for materials of the same category (Encoded, Raw, Manufactured), and each trader was specialized in a single one, but hey! Before this system, there were materials some players had never been able to obtain before!
- Also, it meant that if your routine tends to give you a narrow selection of those materials very often, instead of capping those constantly, you could trade the surplus for stuff you needed for other recipes, meaning eventually you always get what you want.
And after years of grueling wait, Horizons Engineering became not only "tolerable", but for many (including me) an actually interesting system.
...Enter Odyssey.
Let's start with the good:
- The items are already categorized and already include a trader NPC. Better yet, this trader is in every single orbital station, instead of just a few.
- The Assets "supercategory" already started with every single item being part of some recipe, and they all have trade value for others in the same subcategory (Chemical, Tech, Electrical), meaning no wasted space on garbage Assets.
- The recipes are a one-time pay for the entire effect. That's it. No RNG required.
- None of the materials require cargo bay space.
- They can be sold and bought on Fleet Carriers, or traded between players in person* [massive glowing asterisk that will be addressed down the line]
...That's it. Now to the bad:
- Assets, Goods and Data "supercategories" all have their own 1000 unit cap, just like early Horizons.
- Assets in particular have 3 subcategories sharing the same 1000 cap, and while you can trade within subcategories, you cannot trade between them.
- Since Odyssey guns and armor can have up to 4 mod slots, plus they can be upgraded from grades 1 to 5 (...3 to 5 if you're lucky with the store RNG, which... is a theme for a future diatribe), that means a lot of materials are required at the same time, meaning it's easy to reach any of the 3 caps; or all of them at once.
- Unlike Assets, you don't have traders for Goods and Data, just a buyer to dump the excess. Want something you don't have? Go find where it drops, or go board-flipping or something.
- A lot of material gathering relies on missions and settlements, which are... VERY glitchy at the moment, to say the least. And even the "shopping mall" kind of settlements and missions are prone to the whims of the oh-so-hated BGS (which is... probably something for another diatribe).
- There are a handful of materials that are "core materials" for most of the main recipes (namely weapons/armor and grade improvements). Manufacturing Instructions is by far the most egregious of these, because it's used by all of those, and it's relatively rate both in the wild and in missions. But Power Regulators, Schematics, Gas and others can also become bottlenecks; while the rest of your inventory fills up.
- A good part of the Data and the vast majority of the Goods are actually "vendor trash". When such thing exists, a lot of games have a system to sell them all with a single press of a button, but... nope. We don't have that here. Gotta either check one-by-one on a spreadsheet, or have a third-party tool for that.
I'm pretty sure I missed some other stuff, but I'm gonna focus on that big orange asterisk I talked about earlier: PLAYER TRADING. It's a GREAT idea. Seriously. It is.
...Too bad we can't make any practical organized use of that in-game.
What do I mean? Well, you have no in-game system to find who's selling what you need, or who's buying what you have, other than hop from Fleet Carrier to Fleet Carrier. You need a third-party app synchronizing to Inara (and more importantly, the trader needs to do it), and you need to be refreshing Inara constantly. Or have good networking, be friends with commanders with lots of spare stuff. But most of the forum threads for trading are dead, and even Inara can often be unreliable. So... if you use outside-game tools, you have a chance of trading, sometimes. If you rely on the game only? You're screwed.
So.
How do we fix this?
First of all, just look at Horizons and replicate everything they did back then that worked.
- Give us separate pools AT LEAST for Assets subgroups.
- Reduce the clutter or give some use for it. So much of Data and Goods are redundant clutter that does nothing but get in the way of a good settlement run.
- Maybe give us a trader for Data, even if this one is only in some stations (much like the Horizons traders), or like... just found in Outposts or Odyssey bases or something.
- Give more/better rewards from missions (importance, variety and/or quantity, preferably all 3).
...And as for NEW solutions:
- Give us a button to "sell all garbage" for Goods and Data. We already browse through enough spreadsheets already, and this is not supposed to be EVE.
- Fix the glitches preventing us from getting good rewards from missions. Also, increase the frequency of IMPORTANT materials on those station NPCs we can bargain with.
- PLEASE list them in alphabetic order at the bar. It's already hard to go through the list of useless fluff as it is.
- Reduce the amount of missions "going for glory" (i.e that just give money, rep or influence), specially when we're already allied with the faction. We don't need more rep when we're capped, so hide those missions and shuffle us some actually decent ones with mats.
This is for the current state of affairs. I'm pretty sure new solutions (and possibly new problems) will arise as soon as we finally get more guns, more armors and more modules. But those... are a theme for another diatribe.
Until next time, folks.
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