Elite, The "Grind" and External Perspective

[shadragon]

Randy Pitchford of Gearbox software weighed into the Battlefront 2 Loot Crate debate on Twitter and touched on topics directly relating to Elite Dangerous and the so-called "grind." His is the most cogent view I've seen in a long time. Given his credentials as a game designer, no one can question his attitude toward game development as it's almost identical with Frontiers world view

I reordered his comments in chronological order below to maintain the full context for those interested. For the Elite perspective, begin at comment /7. The references to paying to win are obviously not Frontiers model and that isn't the point I'm trying to make.

Randy's posts on Twitter hit the nail on the head for players who think of Elite as a grind with ships and other game features locked behind rank advancement. While his argument is aimed toward Battlefront II and P2W, his overall statement holds true in regard to some players view of Elite's "grind."

 

[Oss133]

Tl:dr, if you don't like playing it, don't play it.

It's a fair point well made.

 

[Whiterose]

His last two points sum it up for me, either do something else, and its your time, if you feel its becoming a grind then do something else. That for me is the advantage of ED there is always something else to do, I set myself objectives that are realistic, next rank either in exploration, combat etc, or looking at the stats pages set myself a realistic goal. The problem arises with unrealistic goals, eg combat rank from harmless to Elite.

 

[Conch]

Borderlands lootboxes? He means the slotmachine probably.. those are fine.. but stuff from destiny, shadow of war, battlefront etc are ruining games with bolted on loot boxes for real cash.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Borderlands lootboxes? He means the slotmachine probably..

Borderlands 2 had a chest that could only be opened with a special key that couldn't be obtained in-game. As I recall it contained weapons that were several levels above where you currently were in the game.

 

[Conch]

Borderlands 2 had a chest that could only be opened with a special key that couldn't be obtained in-game. As I recall it contained weapons that were several levels above where you currently were in the game.

true, but they gave away those keys for free and never asked money for it.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

true, but they gave away those keys for free and never asked money for it.

Did they?! I wish I'd known that! I never opened that chest...

 

[Conch]

Did they?! I wish I'd known that! I never opened that chest...

yeah they gave them away on twitter and events.

nothing really special came out of it, mostly purple weapons.
but BL2 is best played with Gibbed and 4 conferance calls

 

[GreyAreaUK]

yeah they gave them away on twitter and events.

nothing really special came out of it, mostly purple weapons.
but BL2 is best played with Gibbed and 4 conferance calls

You know, it's been a while since I last played that game. Might have to spin it up again. Love that turret

 

[KING5TON]

Ey?
We should be listening to the morally bankrupt Randy "bo bandy" Pitchford now?

Have i slipped though a portal into an alternate dimension again where things like Alien Colonial marines was actually good and they didn't pull all the crap they did with that game like they did in my normal dimension??

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Ey?
We should be listening to the morally bankrupt Randy "bo bandy" Pitchford now?

Have i slipped though a portal into an alternate dimension again where things like Alien Colonial marines was actually good and they didn't pull all the crap they did with that game like they did in my normal dimension??

I don't really care what he was a part of in the past, he made some good points.

 

[metatheurgist]

I blame achievements. Why else would people "need" to finish games so badly.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

the other term he is looking for is simply "gambling box" because thats what they truly are.

The issue with grind that he seems not to understand is what grind is.

grind is that non challanging repetition of the same thing. Sure we can stop playing a game, but wow in a game you had to pay, there it kinda is too late. The question about grind is: whats the purpose aside having to force people to clock hours in a game with repetitive non evolving tasks? Just to appear on some top played game lists? because outside of games with a p2p model there is not even a reason to apply such a thing. Good games have a good progression and therefore never feel grindy. Like Diablo 2. while you had basically play through the game3x to solve the highest difficulty it never felt grindy because progression was good, you developed your character and challange increased to make that meanigfull. but today the amount of games with mindless grind is just overwhelming huge.

And yes thats right many people go on and play something else. ED has this issues, because too many fatures are extremely repetitive like trading, or mining or CZ's. And why is this? because the first 10 minutes of that feature feel exactly like the last 10th hour of that feature. there is no suprise in them in their static mechanic, there is no progression in them.

Imagine CZ would alter and instead "this zone has a capital ship which regulary retuns" would be more like, combats start small, and increase the more you help oen side winning the other brings more and more forces in until after a big challanging last wave the combat is finally won with a big reward. A reward you can't get anywhere else. But atm, all that Combats give us is standing and money while combat in the first 5 minutes is the same as 5hours later. You can also achieve the same rewards simply by doing somethign else. That takes meaning out of the combat and makes the combat itself rather "grindy".

Why have early games come up with a few levels, then a boss, a few harder levels, a harder boss, and so on? because of progression and the inner feeling of having achieved something and overcoming something that was harder than before. This is actually lacking in ED. in fact the further you go in ED the easier stuff gets yet with how prices scale of ships equipment and even RNGeneers the grind just gets longer and longer before getting something new to toy with.
And THIS is the core of why many stopped playing ED and why they call it GRIND.

In my opinion a grindy game is a badly boring desigend one, and Elite has so much potential to make all it's features entertaining without the need of grind. And if FD achives this they will get a lot of happy gamers and bring back a lot of their old ones.

 

[Cmdr Kurnek]

I've never thought elite was a grind, even in the early days when earning credits was a lot harder and the economy was less broken (though still broken).

I still think they should have looked less at making combat earn more, and more at making trading harder/riskier (say, in low sec/anarchy systems, more interdictions that are hard to avoid and survive without equipping shields, ecm, point defence etc) to earn at that level reliably, and bring 'safe' trading routes down to the same earnings as combat (circa release).

But that's all in the past now, the economy is broken, everyone is a million/billionaire and there are no cash sinks once you have the ships you want that anyone cares enough about. There is no going back short of flattening everyone's credits to a maximum of 1 billion including ships and starting (almost) again with better cashsinks etc. But that wont happen...

 

[StiTch]

It's a little black and white but some good points made.

Problem is that is isn't so one-dimensional when you're looking at something like ED. There is content I really, really enjoy playing - but to do so I must engage in grind. I would have no motivation to pay to skip that grind, but I must never the less engage in something I don't particularly enjoy to do the bits of the game that do attract me.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Never cared for any of the Boarderlands games. I don't care for the cartoony look of them.

But I do agree with "if it's not fun, do something else that is."

 

[Zebaoth]

It's a little black and white but some good points made.

Problem is that is isn't so one-dimensional when you're looking at something like ED. There is content I really, really enjoy playing - but to do so I must engage in grind. I would have no motivation to pay to skip that grind, but I must never the less engage in something I don't particularly enjoy to do the bits of the game that do attract me.

Care to give any ED specific examples?

 

[5 Puppis]

The grind is not the game, the grind is the stuff that gates away parts of the game.

For example: flying into a CZ to test a new ship or loadout is fun. Exploring and finding a crazy new stellar phenomenon is fun. That's stuff is the game and is what keeps people playing. OTOH the current rank system that locks away many ships is a grind wall. Yes, one can be zen about it and be content with only certain ships (I've no desire to own a Corvette or Cutter for this reason), but it doesn't change that the grind wall is there for people who want to try out that part of the game. One can be happy playing a game but still recognize there are problems with its mechanics.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Care to give any ED specific examples?

There are definitely some grindy bits. I don't think anyone has ever enjoyed shipping commodities to Engineers in order to be accepted.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

The grind is not the game, the grind is the stuff that gates away parts of the game.

For example: flying into a CZ to test a new ship or loadout is fun. Exploring and finding a crazy new stellar phenomenon is fun. That's stuff is the game and is what keeps people playing. OTOH the current rank system that locks away many ships is a grind wall. Yes, one can be zen about it and be content with only certain ships (I've no desire to own a Corvette or Cutter for this reason), but it doesn't change that the grind wall is there for people who want to try out that part of the game. One can be happy playing a game but still recognize there are problems with its mechanics.

oh god, dude I already forgot about the rank grind for the clipper, that was really horrible, huge reptitive tasks of here and forth just to get a ship to test. Really that indeed belongs to the stupid things. Especially since this grind hardly had any purpose. And why? because it was badly linked to the PP. Playing for a PP character of the empire should massively contribute towards your empire rank, but it doesn't therefore I flew probably thousends of hauling and messaging mission. Yes pretty muchdthe definiton of grind. A good design would have ironed that well into the games features giving it a lot more purpose than the selfgrind.