Hutton Orbital. It has been reported quite widely.
Enlighten me... How is drifting about space for High Grades considered fun?
- Thread starter Miko
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First, I do agree that finding materials (and actually collecting them) needs improvements.
However:
If I look at other games it's not that different. If you are looking for a specific rare item in Diablo 2 you can spend an entire lifespan. In Skyrim you find plenty of leather but getting a Daedric Heart is quite difficult. If you don't refer to 3rd party information it can take hundreds of hours. However Skyrim also spawns loot and enemies based on your level, and while I don't like that approach for a RPG it might be the best solution for a game like ED. Make the first rare materials hard to find but increase the spawns once someone already engineered half his fleet.
However:
If I look at other games it's not that different. If you are looking for a specific rare item in Diablo 2 you can spend an entire lifespan. In Skyrim you find plenty of leather but getting a Daedric Heart is quite difficult. If you don't refer to 3rd party information it can take hundreds of hours. However Skyrim also spawns loot and enemies based on your level, and while I don't like that approach for a RPG it might be the best solution for a game like ED. Make the first rare materials hard to find but increase the spawns once someone already engineered half his fleet.
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Maybe I'm weird, but I don't play games I don't find fun.
If there's an aspect of a game I don't enjoy, but I can avoid, then I avoid it.
What I don't do, is find a boring part of a game and then do it over and over again, whilst complaining about how boring it is.
And, of course, 'fun' is subjective, so a business can stay in business if enough people find it fun.
You, and many others, seem to be operating under a false premise. The point of a game is not fun - the point of a game (any game) is to promote some form of challenge, growth, and progression. How those things are delivered (i.e., the game mechanics or rules) is where the game is either fun, or not. This is subjective, regardless of the game in question.
Chess is chess - some find it to be fun and engaging, and others find it to be incredibly boring. The game is no different between the two groups, and yet it cannot be definitively stated that chess is "fun."
The same is also true for video games, including Elite. Some people do, in fact, find the hunting for materials to be fun and engaging. You, and others, do not. Neither party can definitively state that the activity is fun or not, because it is subjective, and the existence of both arguments is proof of that. The hunt is (largely) the same for everyone, and yet, the reactions to it vary widely.
You also seem to be under the premise that you would enjoy materials gathering a lot more if the methods and mechanics were designed in a way that you, personally, would find to be fun. This is also a false premise - unless you were able to get everything you needed or wanted in one fell swoop, there are no mechanics that would satisfy people like you for very long. These deep, fun, engaging mechanics would soon become boring and tedious simply due to the repetition. You should also be aware that these deeper, engaging mechanics would likely cause the activity to take longer. This seems to be directly counter to your position, so have a think on that.
Since we would end up in the same place anyway, I'm not sure how much worth there is in designing deep, fun, engaging mechanics for what is essentially picking up sticks in the yard. Just give us the ability to do it efficiently, with some reasonably clear direction on how to get the particular sticks that we want, and otherwise spend that development time on things that provide more benefit. It sounds like Frontier might be looking at doing this very thing in the future.
Also, please see the bolded additions to the quoted post.
Riôt
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The USS themselves are not the problem, it's the spawning mechanism that sucks. If you enter a system, using your discovery scanner should spawn a random set of USS that you can investigate. Based on their nature they can decay over time and using your scanner again could spawn a new set of USS. Some types of USS could still be emergent but the majority is at a set position. Of course the spawned USS should rely on the system state and type. Sometimes the USS you are looking for isn't there but you could just try looking for it in another system. This would also allow the USS to be semi persistent, if you are in an instance with another player there is a chance that he already picked up the materials in the same USS or that you join him fighting some pirates. I think that would be a huge improvement and would actually be doable without redesigning the entire game.
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There are some potential pitfalls with that approach:
Do the USS's persist?
If they don't, people will just mode swap until they get the high grade emissions, visit that USS and mode swap again.
Since they'd be part of the instance, then in Open you'll have multiple players seeing the same USSs, which leads to issues with griefers camping in or near HGEs, or you end up with a race to get to them before other people.
I'm not sure this would really work any better than a random spawn.
I can label this "THREAD #918792837942834 ON WHY FDEV SUCK AT GAME DESIGN"
Yes, hunting for HGE USSes is a terrible, tedious, awful, spiteful, nasty piece of gameplay. Nobody is going to argue with that.
If someone actually merged all the individual threads bemoaning the dire USS-hunting 'gameplay', FDev would need to update their forum software and beef up the servers they run on. Such a thread would be so vast and ridiculous that the FDev forum software would implode, melting the FDev forum servers in the process.
Yes, hunting for HGE USSes is a terrible, tedious, awful, spiteful, nasty piece of gameplay. Nobody is going to argue with that.
If someone actually merged all the individual threads bemoaning the dire USS-hunting 'gameplay', FDev would need to update their forum software and beef up the servers they run on. Such a thread would be so vast and ridiculous that the FDev forum software would implode, melting the FDev forum servers in the process.
First thing I would do is remove mode swapping anyway. You can only swap modes when you restart the game. Or add a timer.
As said above, USS should decay over time and if two CMDRs really meet at the same USS I think that's a great thing.
I really hate it when high wakes disappear when I'm half way through scanning the. I can imagine decaying USSs to be just as irritating.
I think the mode-swap timer idea has potential though - regardless of what happens with USS spawns.
Let's just say USS that are currently targeted aren't affected by decay.
Erm, it isn't, is it? That's what you have material traders for. Or did I misunderstand the sarcasm?
Just always pick materials when you get offered mission rewards, hop in a moonbuggy once every two weeks (enjoy the sights), and do a bit of mining now and then. If you also carry some collection limpets when you go hunting, it goes even faster. You'll have all the materials you need. It's how I engineered 10+ ships (and counting). Sometimes I do want some specific materials, but keeping state, allegiance, economy, and pop size in mind seems to help quite a bit.
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No kidding, not stopping at USS when 'playing the game'. Hauling psgrs that bail when hull gets scratched, timed missions, or just hauling cargo, means I'm not stopping for lousy USSssss.
in Diablo, you slay a tons of monster, and based on the difficulty (higher difficulty means i get faster what i want) if you not paying attentions you are dead
in Elite you do nothing and read the forum or watch youtube and wait for the RNG
it would be nice to get HGE Mats via missions based on the system state,
and the good Old just the play game don't work with HGE Mats, unless you looking for them, you are probably never have enough to
engineer on ship in reasonable time let alone combat ships like the T-10 or Chieftain/Challengers
You’re burnt out op. When was the last time you did something other than a gamer gameplay progression unlock?
Changing systems also helps. I’ve never not had more than I need after one session. You seem to get a minimum of 3, and engineers seems to cap out at 7 per level now (in the most tortured way possible sure).
Thing about sandboxes is nothing is holding your hand so if you can actually play elite in an unfun way. I was about to do all this “progression” for the guardian mission but realised I haven’t had enough fun just flying around the crate so just refused to do it right at that moment.
Changing systems also helps. I’ve never not had more than I need after one session. You seem to get a minimum of 3, and engineers seems to cap out at 7 per level now (in the most tortured way possible sure).
Thing about sandboxes is nothing is holding your hand so if you can actually play elite in an unfun way. I was about to do all this “progression” for the guardian mission but realised I haven’t had enough fun just flying around the crate so just refused to do it right at that moment.
Personally, I've never drifted about space looking for HGEs. I've always kept my eyes open as I play the parts of the game I enjoy, and drop into one when I stumble upon it. It's also how I get my surface materials: I'm on the surface playing the parts of the game I enjoy, and if I pick up a metallic meteorite on my wave scanner, I'll make a slight detour to get it. Doesn't matter what I'll get from it... I'll find a use for it sooner or later.
This - just collect stuff as you go along - need something specific in a hurry ? - gather as much general crap of the same vague type - eg data, manufactured or raw and then trade it in for what you really need at a trader.
It's very simple, and very fast - eg sit in a haz rez with collector limpets out for 30 mins obliterating npc's who will actually come to you - take resultant crap and trade it up.
Or fit out for mining - sit in front of a few rocks in a gas giants ring for 30 mins - as well as stuff made from the ore, you get lots of raw materials - visit trader - trade up.
Ultimate version of above - fit something like Keelback,Python, Gunship, Krait etc our for mining and combat - sit in haz rez mining while scanning all the npc's who come up to be destoyed - in 30 mins to 1 hour with limpets doing the majority of the work you will have tons of all 3 categories of stuff required, plus gain combat exp and even train an NPC all in one.
Of all the games I have played since my first zx80 there has never been one where gathering all the materials was as easy frankly.
And I'm afraid if you can't manage to vapourize npc's at will in anything from a Viper 3 up then you have other problems that need addressing first - and yes that is a "Git Gud" - really.
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Playing the game isn't mandatory. You aren't making a strong point there. The only thing mandatory in life is death.