No your not. Well, it all dépends on your PvP goals :
- Escape => no engineering required, but defensive outfitting yes. Going naked with tongs in the jungle : Not a happy ending.
- Win engagement => Definitly need engineers.
Engineers - 5+ levels of grind...When is grind too much
- Thread starter Snarfbuckle
- Start date
No your not. Well, it all dépends on your PvP goals :
Probably still smart to at least engineer shields and boosters, though.
So basically you have to play a bunch of Elite Dangerous? Sounds pretty good!
Yep, you have to play for a looong time until you get a ship that is competitive. Neat, huh.
That's what confuses me. You see, Elite is not a game that you play in 5 minutes, get to the end and then move on to the next game. You have to work at it, that's the beauty of the system. You progress as far as you want and do lots of stuff as you want and if you want more then you have to do more to get it.
Where's the grind? For me and others, there is no grind it's just playing this magnificent game.
The youth of today, they want everything given to them on a plate and if they don't get it, they throw their toys out of the pram and complain.
Amusing really.
I'm just playing the game. It's great.
Willful mischaracterization of another's stance. Totally haven't seen this busted canard used here about a billion times.
Perhaps, consider, that FD sold this game with promises of being able to "play your way", without letting on that hours of grinding would be required in order to actually achieve that?
You can play your way.
Just bear in mind that flying an ill-equipped ship in Open may involve close proximity explosions.
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Lol, you're probably half my age.
But nearing 50, I probably should take it as a compliment to be counted as the youth of today.
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Note how it says "open", not "PvP".
This is an open world game with vertical progression. Those don't provide a fair, balanced ground for competitive murder, never have, and never can. CQC was your chance to have something Elite-themed for that kind of fun, and nobody wanted it.
You can now reliably get your top-end competitive ship. You know beforehand how much it will cost you and what materials you need, and no matter what you pick up will get you closer to that goal. There is no lottery, no luck, no "RNG" except for a very small variance. If you absolutely need that kind of gear, it's never been easier to get.
Sure, I’ve already been playing a long time. I hope to continue playing a long time. I like the journey of making my ship the best it can be. I’m not in a rush. I like fighting CMDRs and NPCs alike. In fact I don’t even recognize a difference. Neither does the game. There’s no extra reward or points or badges. There’s no design specific to PvP outside of CQC or indirectly connected to PowerPlay.
So yea, it is neat that there’s always something to work toward. You’ll never convince me that simply playing Elite isn’t fun.
Hyperbole alert!
No, you are not 'locked out' of anything. Neither am I.
I'm logged into open right now, in a python that is not even remotely kitted (let alone engineered) to win PvP battles - hell, it's barely kitted for PvE. But that's on me - in all the excitement of the multimillion credit missions on offer after each CG finishes, I completely forgot to swap out my mining loadout before taking cargo missions with hostile ships. So here I am, in Open, flying a python armed with mining lasers, prospector limpet controller, 2 collection limpet controllers, and a refinery. I've seen a dozen hollow squares, and been interdicted three times (by NPCs). Not dead yet. Not locked out of open.
It is also false for PvE. Once you have a high combat rank you get attacked by high ranked NPCs with engineered modules. If you manage to beat the engineered NPCs the grade of their mods will go up over time. At some point you have to engineer your ship because otherwise your only option is to run from every encounter.
There is much more to do then just get ships. I admit that is the only place you can properly spend credits on, but credit aqcuisition isn't the only part of the game either. I don't even look at the credit reward when I pick up a mission. I just see if I think I am gonna have fun with it and go for it.
I did a couple of planetary salvage jobs yesterday, got a load of materials and legal salvage at the same time, destroyed some skimmers, unlocked Ram Tah engineer all in a couple of hours. But most of all I enjoyed myself. Play how you want to play, but the acquisition of credits and ships is not high on my list.
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Nope. I played without any engineered modules for a long time in open. I have now got some engineered modules and opened a number of engineers up, but it has taken me two years to do that. But I don't grind either and I am not in a race with anybody to get a fully engineered ship. If all you want to do is PvP, then you will have to go through the engineers to get on an even playing field, just like you needed to upgrade your ships at the same time.
Nope, it`s a massive mountain of unfun activity. I left the mountain pretty much untouched. It`s a deterrence.
This starts to touch on the heart of the issue. One can decide to do anything they want in Elite, but decisions come with consequences. If one decides to do this, then they have to do that in order to do this, and everyone who decides to do this also has to do that, and from that perspective, everyone is on the same playing field. If one wants to open a door, other doors will be closed. I see this mindset all too often these days...wanting to have and do everything, and expecting there to be no consequence....simply a lack of decision making ability manifesting in a desire to not have to make any decisions at all.
Not every one, but since they spawn randomly every encounter could be peashooter vs bulletsponge. It isn't really fun.
I don't think that is true. I think the only one that I found really unfun was doing the mining. Apart from that I managed to unlock most of the engineers by doing just what I wanted to do. At times I looked out for certain commodities or certain materials, but it didn't stop me from playing how I normally play. I have found most easy to unlock, devoid of grind (apart from the mining one) as I went around my day to day gaming in ED. I did move to a diffrerent base of operations at times, but that didn't bother me either.
I think it all depends on how you go about it. If you go out of your way to open them up as quickly as possible, grind out all the missions you can find etc, then yes it can become unfun.
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Achilles7
Banned
We've had a looong time: 2+ years! Even I have a fully engineered ship that is PvP capable.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong...but isn't this long term project exactly what Frontier had in mind with Engineers? Outliers will happen in terms of time devoted to engineering; if they happen to be PvP players - then yeah, there's going to be a biiig barrier to entry! IIRC, some dude unlocked ALL of the original engineers in less than two weeks - when it was hard!:O - from the 2.1 live launch date! 'Good job it wasn't Harry Potter! This will always happen...the rest of us have to catch up!
The reason some feel Engineers is a huge grind is because the whole thing turned into an arms race in 'Open'. I've said it before...but the original engineers design was fine for 'Solo' play - long-winded, but who cares, right? Time is relative & when there is no-one to compete with, you'll probably just get around to it eventually.
I would have created a system whereby you unlock grade 1, but there is an imposed 4-6 weeks (insert arbitrary period) similar to PP in principle, before you can unlock grade 2 & so on. This would mean that the hardcore elements unlock them in a few days, but there is a natural cooling-off period before the next upgrade is allowed. This enables each level of upgrade to be utilised, maxed-out & thoroughly tested, thereby also making low level engineering meaningful in the game while regulating some of the power variance between players.
The hardcore players would have had these advantages sooner, but in the 6 months or so after, their ships/weapons would not have been as overwhelming in 'your' random 1v1 contest & there would have been less desperation to rush to get that G5 ship. Huge imbalances would still occur of course because of the nature of the varied playerbase & time v reward mechanics...but this might have helped for emergent PvP & more importantly, for the general attitude towards 'the grind'.
'Too late now, though! [big grin]