FD, I implore you, do not bulldoze over our existing gear and upgrades

[Sysmon]

* Randomness as in terms of your encounters (whether a pirate comes to interdict you on a trade run, and what kind of pirate), is all fine. Randomness that decides whether one players has a god roll while you go through the treadmill a hundred times and still end up below even the nominal maximum on the slider is terrible.

* When I heard of looting and crafting, I assumed we would be able to craft modules or even entire ships as an alternative to buying with credits. Not grind for RNG USS spawns where RNG material drops to throw into a lottery with RNG stats that ultimately just leads to needless power creep.

I agree, the system we ended up with seems slightly at odds with what looting and crafting usually means. It even took quite a while after launch before we could pick up cargo without it always being illegal! I assume it is "just" because the looting/crafting system we have is a cardboard front of what it will eventually turn into. The RNG spawns for RNG mats will probably not be as jarring if the lottery looked less so, the RNG stats were scaled back a bit and with notable differences between the Engineering tiers. And the power creep would go away if the modifications weren't kept after destruction.

It's the Engineer interface design that's to blame I reckon. The way it is set up we have an unreachable carrot on the right side of the bar. Well, reachable if you cheat.

S

 

[Sysmon]

But new items that you just have to RNGineer again? No thank you. New upgrades to supersede the current ones? No thank you.

How do you propose to keep the game alive then? If everything can be engineered to the max, nothing new is added, there will be no new challenge for the players that have been able to max out engineering. Or alternatively, the difficulty will be too much for those that haven't, until they also have maxed out Engineering. So the goal post will be moved and fixed at an end-goal. Other games just keep moving this goalpost with each expansion - the grind starts over, made slightly interesting by in-game storylines.

S

 

[CMDR ANCALAGON]

New slots on existing ships doesn't make much sense to me, and neither does new weapons for existing ships, possibly aside from those with military slots or defensive modules to protect against thargoid attacks. It just seems to get messy no matter the strategy.

Perhaps the cleanest break would be new modules for entirely new ships! Mine will be called "The Bug Zapper"

 

[Pyrobee]

It's the Engineer interface design that's to blame I reckon. The way it is set up we have an unreachable carrot on the right side of the bar. Well, reachable if you cheat.

S

A decent pilot can take out a god roled ship with an average engineered ship. All this nonsense of engineering removing skill from the game is nonsense, just raises the challange.

 

[Sysmon]

A decent pilot can take out a god roled ship with an average engineered ship. All this nonsense of engineering removing skill from the game is nonsense, just raises the challange.

Why don't you put your decent pilot in an average ship up against a similarly skilled pilot in a "god-roll" ship and see what happens?

S

 

[Mephane]

How do you propose to keep the game alive then? If everything can be engineered to the max, nothing new is added, there will be no new challenge for the players that have been able to max out engineering. Or alternatively, the difficulty will be too much for those that haven't, until they also have maxed out Engineering. So the goal post will be moved and fixed at an end-goal. Other games just keep moving this goalpost with each expansion - the grind starts over, made slightly interesting by in-game storylines.

S

To reiterate some of the options I mentioned in this thread, plus a few new ones:

* New types of items that go into new slots (unlocking those slots can be part of the progression). We got a new slot for the planetary approach suite which was just filled for free, but there is nothing stopping FD from adding new types of slots for anti-Thargoid gear.

* Non-RNG upgrades that build on top of each other, i.e. first you get grade 1, then you improve that to grade 2 etc. - so your previous progression is not lost, it becomes the foundation of any further progression, and you cannot just skip ahead. (The way engineer mods of higher grades just replace lower ones is terrible in this regard, I basically only either do cheap level 1 mods and stick with that, or level up an engineer to 5 and do grade 5 mods directly because anything below is just lost when you do grade 5). This would only really work by dropping the RNG aspect altogether, and making individual mods more expensive. Since dropping the RNG would have other beneficial aspects, like removing the possibility for insane god rolls, this would be a double improvement.

* Multiple upgrade "slots" for mods, one for regular engineer mods, another for anti-Thargoid mods, which both work together but neither does invalidate the other.

* Cosmetic unlocks. Decals, paintjobs, suit patterns, ship kit pieces, you name it. To a very limited extent this already exists, with the Pilots Federation rank decals, but imagine special decals for defeating a particular difficult Thargoid encounter, a paintjob for rescuing a ship in distress that has been attacked by a Thargoid etc.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

It's the Engineer interface design that's to blame I reckon. The way it is set up we have an unreachable carrot on the right side of the bar. Well, reachable if you cheat.

I agree. The interface, with the RNG sliders, secondaries and effects roulette is the whole of the problem. Yet sliders lend themselves much better to letting the players have control of what they want to increase and what they choose to sacrifice. It would be far better to give us complete control of the whole upgrade process. Let players choose a single god-stat to maximise, but this would come with major drawbacks.

Maybe we would end up with everyone using the same cookie-cutter META builds. But don't we have that already?

 

[Mephane]

A decent pilot can take out a god roled ship with an average engineered ship. All this nonsense of engineering removing skill from the game is nonsense, just raises the challange.

That's a strawman. Of course a pilot that is sufficiently more skilled can beat a less skilled pilot against the odds of any stat advantage. But given similar skill, god rolls can and will decide the outcome of a fight.

 

[Truesilver]

A decent pilot can take out a god roled ship with an average engineered ship. All this nonsense of engineering removing skill from the game is nonsense, just raises the challange.

This is true, or at least potentially true. I fly a Courier with mediocre g5 rolls on most modules (drives are +33%, quite good mass, but overall nothing special). FdL and FAS are my bread and butter and I have never lost to a god roller. In fact a god rolled Prismatic shield tank FdL ran from me just the other day.

That said, though, if skill level and builds are truly comparable, the cumulative advantage of god rolled shield, power distributor and drives is likely to prove gradually yet certainly overwhelming in what will almost inevitably be a 20+ mins 1v1.

Of course a pilot that is sufficiently more skilled can beat a less skilled pilot against the odds of any stat advantage. But given similar skill, god rolls can and will decide the outcome of a fight.

Yeah, ninja'd.

 

[Sysmon]

To reiterate some of the options I mentioned in this thread, plus a few new ones:

* New types of items that go into new slots (unlocking those slots can be part of the progression). We got a new slot for the planetary approach suite which was just filled for free, but there is nothing stopping FD from adding new types of slots for anti-Thargoid gear.

* Non-RNG upgrades that build on top of each other, i.e. first you get grade 1, then you improve that to grade 2 etc. - so your previous progression is not lost, it becomes the foundation of any further progression, and you cannot just skip ahead. (The way engineer mods of higher grades just replace lower ones is terrible in this regard, I basically only either do cheap level 1 mods and stick with that, or level up an engineer to 5 and do grade 5 mods directly because anything below is just lost when you do grade 5). This would only really work by dropping the RNG aspect altogether, and making individual mods more expensive. Since dropping the RNG would have other beneficial aspects, like removing the possibility for insane god rolls, this would be a double improvement.

* Multiple upgrade "slots" for mods, one for regular engineer mods, another for anti-Thargoid mods, which both work together but neither does invalidate the other.

* Cosmetic unlocks. Decals, paintjobs, suit patterns, ship kit pieces, you name it. To a very limited extent this already exists, with the Pilots Federation rank decals, but imagine special decals for defeating a particular difficult Thargoid encounter, a paintjob for rescuing a ship in distress that has been attacked by a Thargoid etc.

I can agree to most of that. Except the dropping the RNG part. I'd rather have it reduced a bit, and the entire Engineering system fleshed out better. And the cosmetic unlocks sounds like a covert achievement system, so no thanks to that too!

S

 

[Mephane]

* Non-RNG upgrades that build on top of each other, i.e. first you get grade 1, then you improve that to grade 2 etc. - so your previous progression is not lost, it becomes the foundation of any further progression, and you cannot just skip ahead. (The way engineer mods of higher grades just replace lower ones is terrible in this regard, I basically only either do cheap level 1 mods and stick with that, or level up an engineer to 5 and do grade 5 mods directly because anything below is just lost when you do grade 5). This would only really work by dropping the RNG aspect altogether, and making individual mods more expensive. Since dropping the RNG would have other beneficial aspects, like removing the possibility for insane god rolls, this would be a double improvement.

Shameless selfquote is shameless. I want to emphasize this aspect of the discussion:

The best way to prevent existing gear and time investment to become null and void is to make any new form of progression, be it gear, mods etc. only work by building on top of these things. Not by replacing anything we already have, but by enhancing it further.

 

[Sysmon]

Shameless selfquote is shameless. I want to emphasize this aspect of the discussion:

The best way to prevent existing gear and time investment to become null and void is to make any new form of progression, be it gear, mods etc. only work by building on top of these things. Not by replacing anything we already have, but by enhancing it further.

But... "Progression": Sounds so MMORPG like... There must be a way to not turn ED into WoW in Space.

S

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

You are kidding right? So we are talking to remove engineers to reduce the grind and you want to make the mods resetting with ship destructions? See this is why this game is touching the bottom..... i cant believe Im reading this....

regardless of if you agree or not it would fit in with the elite lore.

add in the opportunity to salvage your gear as well as for npcs to drop salvageable gear and I think it would add to the game.

I am showing my bias however as it would suck for those who like to pvp for laughs, which is a shame.... but imo ed should be a game where we DONT plan on losing our ship willy nilly imo... eng mods being irreplaceable but a chance to salvage some of them as well as get them off other ships would be fine for most pve players at a guess.

personally my issue with engineers was never the grind. its the lack of skill and the wildly random chance. its just not plausible imo. (take my car to the garage to get told good news... the new exhaust system and engine tune came up with this really cool side effect, its exhaust fumes allow to refuel your friends car if he sits behind you!!!

I never expected ED to have weapons with runes of enchantment on them.

 

[Adept]

* Randomness as in terms of your encounters (whether a pirate comes to interdict you on a trade run, and what kind of pirate), is all fine. Randomness that decides whether one players has a god roll while you go through the treadmill a hundred times and still end up below even the nominal maximum on the slider is terrible.

* When I heard of looting and crafting, I assumed we would be able to craft modules or even entire ships as an alternative to buying with credits. Not grind for RNG USS spawns where RNG material drops to throw into a lottery with RNG stats that ultimately just leads to needless power creep.

Indeed. Looting, in the sense of salvaging weapons and other components from defeated ships. Crafting... that was always worrying, and I was right to worry. At least it didn't turn out that every commander is Tony Stark, able to craft new equipment from crystal shards and copper wire on the spot.

 

[Mephane]

I can agree to most of that. Except the dropping the RNG part. I'd rather have it reduced a bit, and the entire Engineering system fleshed out better. And the cosmetic unlocks sounds like a covert achievement system, so no thanks to that too!

S

As for RNG vs non-RNG, I also proposed more than once (but not here) that instead of the rolls overwriting the previous mod completely, a roll of the same grade or higher should only overwrite
those stats that it improves (or negatives it reduces). This would preserve the RNG nature that some people (like you) enjoy (which to me is inexplicable, but whatever ) while giving a much more reasonable avenue towards a theoretical optimum. Adding higher grades on top would then also mean by applying a grade 6 mod on grade 5 you would only keep of that grade 6 mod those effect that enhance your current mod.

(Some quirks of such a system would have to be ironed out still, for example scalating disadvantages on higher grades need to be dealt with slightly differently, also secondary rolls should probably be removed so that the sliders become the definitive range within which the stats can move.)

 

[Adept]

How do you propose to keep the game alive then? If everything can be engineered to the max, nothing new is added, there will be no new challenge for the players that have been able to max out engineering. Or alternatively, the difficulty will be too much for those that haven't, until they also have maxed out Engineering. So the goal post will be moved and fixed at an end-goal. Other games just keep moving this goalpost with each expansion - the grind starts over, made slightly interesting by in-game storylines.

S

There is no gameplay depth at all in grinding. Either Elite gives us meaningful things to do, ways to be involved with is going on in the systems, and effect things more than just moving sliders around, or it's all ultimately futile.

Grinding for a bigger ship or a more powerful laser is extremely empty game play on it's own.

 

[Mephane]

But... "Progression": Sounds so MMORPG like... There must be a way to not turn ED into WoW in Space.

S

It was you who talked about RNGineers and new items and all such being needed to keep the game alive (which btw I read mostly as "keep the players busy"). Me, I would prefer if we could return to the pre-2.1 status quo regarding gear, experimental effects becoming simply variations of existing weapons (like how the earliest incarnations of these were in the pre-1.0 betas) and not have any of that gear progression stuff here at all.

 

[Pyrobee]

There is no gameplay depth at all in grinding. Either Elite gives us meaningful things to do, ways to be involved with is going on in the systems, and effect things more than just moving sliders around, or it's all ultimately futile.

Grinding for a bigger ship or a more powerful laser is extremely empty game play on it's own.

It's only a grind if you see it as a chore and the people who see it as a chore are the ones who chase bigger ships and bigger lasers as their gameplay.

 

[Dubber]

Better still, give me offline solo mode. I'll make my own mods

 

[Sysmon]

It was you who talked about RNGineers and new items and all such being needed to keep the game alive (which btw I read mostly as "keep the players busy"). Me, I would prefer if we could return to the pre-2.1 status quo regarding gear, experimental effects becoming simply variations of existing weapons (like how the earliest incarnations of these were in the pre-1.0 betas) and not have any of that gear progression stuff here at all.

I think you misunderstand me. I don't think that is what is needed to keep the game alive. It is, however, what other game developers seem to think is needed to keep their games alive, and that is impacting the mind set of gamers (and vice versa, as the gamers expect gear progression of their games). I agree that we don't need the gear progression at all. I am suggesting that any Engineering should be scaled back to the point where it is, as you indicate, just pre-2.1 variations of existing modules and weapons.

We could use larger variability of existing gear, but I am not against us being able to mod our way to that variability ourselves. However I would like to see a store-bought special module be reincarnated with a new ship after destruction, and a modified module returned to its base state.

And I would like to see minor modifications be made possible at many other locations that just at the caves of the quantum space wizards. We can keep the Engineers in for special, possibly even shady, modifications. Just not in their current casino-like state.

S