Engineers FDev - have you actually played your own game?

[Viking84]

The more I play, the more I wonder if the devs have actually played their own game. Not with a dev account, not with freebies, but actually working their way up the ranks like the rest of us.

Now I'm not just whining here, and I know the title is intentionally a bit rude, but this is an honest question that came about after spending the last 30 hours since 2.1 launched searching for materials and gaining favour with Engineers. These are the mechanics I engaged in during this search:

1. SRV Rock Hunting
2. Mining
3. Wake Scanning
4. Ship Scanning
5. Hunting Transport Ships
6. Refreshing the mission board hoping someone would offer me a useful material

For all of these activities you are at the mercy of a lucky RNG roll to actually get what you are looking for. All of the activities are among the least engaging and rewarding things to do in Elite, and are prime candidates for a proper RPG style grind.

I can almost hear the discussion that went on before this was implemented:

- Guys, we need some materials for crafting. I reckon these should drop from pretty much every activity you can do.
- Good idea Bob! That way all players get rewards regardless of what they are doing.
- Of course they do. And every material from every activity will be unique!
- But Bob, that means everyone HAS to do everything?
- Yes Pete, finally we can force our players to take part in everything our game has to offer!
- Oh well, I'm sure they will survive that with a clear goal in mind...
- Pete, Pete, Pete, that would be too easy! We must ensure each activity can drop at least 10 different materials, so the player has to keep at it for ages to get what he wants.

As you can see, Bob is the problem here, and evidently has a different goal for us all than making the game fun to play. Hence my question to Bob - have you ever sat down and tried to play this game with a clear goal in your mind? It is the most frustrating experience of my gaming career to date, and a huge waste of time as you are FORCED to spend hours doing stuff you don't enjoy doing - the very definition of a grind!

So, FDev, I beg of you, get rid of the randomness in the material gathering process. Make it predictable and skill based. Give us scanners to find surface materials, allow us to choose what rewards we get from missions from materials of the same rarity, allow us to trade low level materials for high level ones... anything to give us more control of how we gather these things!

If you do this the engineering gamble might be more fun - at the moment it feels like going to vegas with your last 10 pound note with the goal of feeding your kids for the next month. Gambling is only fun if you have money to burn, same thing goes for materials!

 

[Kyokushin]

I can search for that materials (however SRV driving is too grindy, there should be specific places on the planets where you can meet specific resources, not entire planet and random()), but why a game is punishing me for a try of getting fun at the end, on RNG enginner lottery?

The visit at the Engineer is in most the punish and time/gameplay loose, than a reward. After few days of playing and collecting stuff i am expecting to be a bit rewarded, even small steps, but in +.
At now i am punished by loosing materials by a poor lottery result.

 

[CMDR RubberStig]

I have 2 really big issues with the current system:

1. RNG favours those who play the most, and therefore by extension punishes those who do not play as much or as efficiently [and I am not the least bit interested in Elite becoming another looter like Diablo or Warframe] and
2. The material storage system is horrific. 600 slots and I filled mine with useless crap within 200 limpets of mining time - with no idea of what I need to keep, or how to get rid of the crap I don't need. Are the items of cargo type we get from missions part of this system? Or am I supposed to sell them off as rare cargo? You want to introduce new systems like this, that's great, but at least explain in-game how they are supposed to work.

[climbs down from soap box]

 

[Kyokushin]

I have 2 really big issues with the current system:

1. RNG favours those who play the most, and therefore by extension punishes those who do not play as much or as efficiently [and I am not the least bit interested in Elite becoming another looter like Diablo or Warframe] and
[climbs down from soap box]

This current RNG system is punishing even players who grinded few hours daily by two weeks. What should i do then? Throw a job, and become no-life to get good FSD grade 5?
I played since release a 5-6 hours daily, not enough?

I can understand an approach of promoting playing instad of doing nothing, but at now it not working well.

 

[Dbrn47]

Yes, I'm sure many of them have played the game and so has their QA. All of this stuff is their vision for the game. They really only change things based on massive negative feedback and when they have time to redesign it. They are very excited when they release a patch to us, so they know what they are putting in their game, they even extended the development time on this patch. They knew what they were giving us and I'll bet they were hoping that we'd be just as excited about it.

 

[lemny]

That's the core problem.
The lack of direction: When i am driving around for hours, i don't know if there is only a low chance to find what i am looking for or am i totally wrong here. (Surface/Planet Scanner should show what's in the rings and on the surfaces)
RNG grinding is ok to me to the point where i get no further improvements for all my work at the engineer's wheel of fortune. This could easy be solved by only have chance to get a bit better stats on next rolls or rolls on already modded modules.

 

[matemaster]

RNG is the best "carrot on stick". Its the easiest and lazy solution to prolong the imminent lack of content game has to offer.

So it took FD 6 months since horizons to release engineers but what new content did it bring ?
- enchanced gfx, better performance - polishing
- voice contact when approaching station - polishing
- overhauled outfiting UI - polishing
- SRV leaves tracks on planets - polishing
- NPC's with pictured faces - polishing
- missions, very slight changes - polishing
- improved AI - polishing
- new ores to mine, new material to collect (I woudn't call this new content because process of getting those is same as before except the text is different, also the sources were allready there before engineers)

So FD basically used sources that were allready in game before engineers to drop materials/data (destroyed ships, wake scanning...), added little bit of RNG to loot tables, added engineer upgrades heavily based on RNG... I would hardly call that new content.

But why such heavy RNG element ? To buy time till 2.2... You see if engineers would not be so heavily dependant on RNG you would have all the most usable engineer upgrades in no time and could use that as argument to point to lack of content ED has to offer

Dont get me wrong I like the polishing FD did in 2.1
I just expect new content from those big updates and polishing in between with small updates .

IMO the only new content that was added with engineers are the new class 3, 4 weapons

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Of course they played this - don't be ridiculous. However, they probably know where to look and we don't and they don't tell because they maybe think we'll figure out but we don't really.

 

[Flavourless]

...now i am punished by loosing materials by a poor lottery result...

How is it a poor result?
If you are starting with a stock module you are guaranteed an improvement, and if not you have already won the lottery at least once.
There are no losers.

 

[avow555]

I have one vision of Ed from Frontier during a live stream during beta rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling etc the eternal engineer lotto wheel and just gave up in the end of many crap rolls, whilst the numpty with the hat prattled away to cover the total ineptitude of what they were trying to drop in the game and make is sound awesomely...

Epic drivel devs, do read signature it's telling you something....

 

[Jukelo]

If you are starting with a stock module you are guaranteed an improvement, and if not you have already won the lottery at least once.

Spoiler

Nice joke.

 

[DoctorDanny]

OP, can't give you any more rep. If I could I would.

I hope FD reads this and takes action.

 

[avow555]

How is it a poor result?
If you are starting with a stock module you are guaranteed an improvement, and if not you have already won the lottery at least once.
There are no losers.

Please search the forum, the epic failure rolls are there at lvl4/5, rolls no better than lvl2...
Oh yes it's true....

 

[CMDR RubberStig]

That's the core problem.
The lack of direction: When i am driving around for hours, i don't know if there is only a low chance to find what i am looking for or am i totally wrong here. (Surface/Planet Scanner should show what's in the rings and on the surfaces)
RNG grinding is ok to me to the point where i get no further improvements for all my work at the engineer's wheel of fortune. This could easy be solved by only have chance to get a bit better stats on next rolls or rolls on already modded modules.

To me the whole RNG thing with an Engineer is counter to what an engineer should be. What I mean is if I take my car to Engineer, and he tells me there is a random chance of a bad effect, I'm taking my car to another Engineer. To me Engineers are all about precision not RNG. This grates really badly on me because for a story to be acceptable it must at least be plausible, and these guys all seem like dodgy, shonky, backyard mechanics, not Engineers.

 

[Thebadmf]

The more I play, the more I wonder if the devs have actually played their own game. Not with a dev account, not with freebies, but actually working their way up the ranks like the rest of us.

Now I'm not just whining here, and I know the title is intentionally a bit rude, but this is an honest question that came about after spending the last 30 hours since 2.1 launched searching for materials and gaining favour with Engineers. These are the mechanics I engaged in during this search: <snip>

Agreed. Well said. I think Design Intention and player expectation are way off base. We shouldn't have to be railroaded and I shouldn't have a hold FULL of mats, from scanning, mining, bounty hunting RES and USS + mission rewards and cannot craft anything useful.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Spoiler

The more I play, the more I wonder if the devs have actually played their own game. Not with a dev account, not with freebies, but actually working their way up the ranks like the rest of us.

Now I'm not just whining here, and I know the title is intentionally a bit rude, but this is an honest question that came about after spending the last 30 hours since 2.1 launched searching for materials and gaining favour with Engineers. These are the mechanics I engaged in during this search:

1. SRV Rock Hunting
2. Mining
3. Wake Scanning
4. Ship Scanning
5. Hunting Transport Ships
6. Refreshing the mission board hoping someone would offer me a useful material

For all of these activities you are at the mercy of a lucky RNG roll to actually get what you are looking for. All of the activities are among the least engaging and rewarding things to do in Elite, and are prime candidates for a proper RPG style grind.

I can almost hear the discussion that went on before this was implemented:

- Guys, we need some materials for crafting. I reckon these should drop from pretty much every activity you can do.
- Good idea Bob! That way all players get rewards regardless of what they are doing.
- Of course they do. And every material from every activity will be unique!
- But Bob, that means everyone HAS to do everything?
- Yes Pete, finally we can force our players to take part in everything our game has to offer!
- Oh well, I'm sure they will survive that with a clear goal in mind...
- Pete, Pete, Pete, that would be too easy! We must ensure each activity can drop at least 10 different materials, so the player has to keep at it for ages to get what he wants.

As you can see, Bob is the problem here, and evidently has a different goal for us all than making the game fun to play. Hence my question to Bob - have you ever sat down and tried to play this game with a clear goal in your mind? It is the most frustrating experience of my gaming career to date, and a huge waste of time as you are FORCED to spend hours doing stuff you don't enjoy doing - the very definition of a grind!

So, FDev, I beg of you, get rid of the randomness in the material gathering process. Make it predictable and skill based. Give us scanners to find surface materials, allow us to choose what rewards we get from missions from materials of the same rarity, allow us to trade low level materials for high level ones... anything to give us more control of how we gather these things!

If you do this the engineering gamble might be more fun - at the moment it feels like going to vegas with your last 10 pound note with the goal of feeding your kids for the next month. Gambling is only fun if you have money to burn, same thing goes for materials!

To be fair FD have played their game and they probably think what they implemented was a good idea. The intent for engineers was for modifications in line with a tinkerer, not a professional engineer, and specials were going to be very rare. Given their alledged 10 year plan for ED it makes sense - progress behind a time wall that slowly unlocks to give the impression of that rarity:

• RNG - finding the materials
• RNG - rolling the modification
• RNG - special or not

Sadly - it's boring as hell.


I get that some will try to insinuate that you're "playing it wrong" and that you should be doing this as a side thing, not a primary thing, but having Engineers shoved down my throat for the last 6 months by FD I am quite sad at the outcome. Mentioned this before - Blizzard made this mistake thinking multiple layers of RNG made for good content ... it doesn't ... It frustrates players who want to enjoy the content for what it's worth.

 

[Electric Kite]

Its clear to me that the RNG is not working for a lot of people. FDEV need to adress this. There are a handfull of people who say its good...but it really is a handfull.

I get why they did it...a solution to lack of ship variety/ loadouts.
The thing is as ive said before...its a BAD solution. An easy one too. I guess that was the appeal for them.

 

[Mephane]

To be fair FD have played their game and they probably think what they implemented was a good idea. The intent for engineers was for modifications in line with a tinkerer, not a professional engineer, and specials were going to be very rare.

No. I know this is repeated often and even FD have described it as such, but what they have actually built, and I refuse to believe this was by accident, is a massive amount of power creep locked behind equally massive grind and RNG. The other words they use, "rare", "special", "tinkerer", "unique", "variety" are just sugarcoating. What we have are is almost textbook Korean Grinder MMO gameplay; the only missing element is the cash store consumable item that allows you to bypass some downsides of the RNG or speed up the grind.

 

[Brimstone]

I'm sort of fine with the RNG for upgrade rolls, but it really needs to be taken out of the actual material gathering process. Some materials and components aren't too difficult to find, but I really feel that all of the special commodities need to be available in regional markets.

I didn't really mind getting the 50 tons of Kamitra Cigars for Liz Ryder, because they were guaranteed to be sold from a specific station. I hated the 25 Modular Terminals for Marco Qwent, though. I'm still not even entirely sure, but they seem to only come from missions at surface stations. If I knew of a place that was guaranteed to sell at least 1 or 2 of these special commodities, like rare goods, then I wouldn't mind so much.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

1. RNG favours those who play the most, and therefore by extension punishes those who do not play as much or as efficiently [and I am not the least bit interested in Elite becoming another looter like Diablo or Warframe] and

I'm not disagreeing, but this is true of most MMOs or any multiplayer game featuring a progression system. But in ED you're not strictly competing with other players and without the RNG, the Engineers would be an ephemeral mechanic at best and would result everyone running very similar loadouts. I think it could be implemented better, but I do understand the reasoning for it.