Engineers FDev - have you actually played your own game?

[Viking84]

I suppose that in today's 'fast living' world, everyone wants everything yesterday, including when playing games.

I think we may be speaking past each other. I do not want things now, but I do want things to come when they are due because I have put in the required work, learnt the required skill or completed the required missions. I don't want stuff to drop on me whenever it fancies, leaving me to simply ignore the content until a lucky RNG roll allows me to partake in the upgrade process.

That is the main issue here - the frustrating lack of control we have over both the gathering and upgrade processes. I am no stranger to a good grind, but to enjoy it I have to know that my effort will be rewarded, and that what I am doing is bringing me ever closer to my goal. As it stands I could be unlucky forever and never get my upgraded modules.

 

[Wasp0]

Your actually arguing the opposite side with this statement you know If you don't look at a list you won't find some of the components. Christopher Columbus couldn't change whether gold was present by sailing out of the harbour and back in again either

I'm arguing for ED. Yes it has it's Grrrrrrrr Moments, but reading lots of these type of post about people wanting to handed the materials on a plate or given detailed plan where to find them, or wanting to be ranked Lord high Admiral/King/God after 1 hours play and fly in a Corvette after one kill!

The columbus analogy was meant to show that even back then people had to grind to find places or materials and they where not handed it to them on a plate. I understood it in my naive way

Is it just me, but i don't think of it as a grind! I take the game for what it is and just enjoy it. Hey look i am have gained a rank without thinking about it or oh look i have just found that Material, i wonder if i can Upgrade my FSD now?

Just me!

 

[lemny]

The columbus analogy was meant to show that even back then people had to grind to find places or materials and they where not handed it to them on a plate. I understood it in my naive way

They don't have to tell us exactly where to go and "fetch" the mats. But they could give us proper tools (scanner, functioning limpets, enough storage space) to find and collect them.

Aaaaand don't put the player in the situation where the RNG leave him with absolutely no reward. Even the smallest gain on a previous modded module could ease the pain of hours of hunting for the mats.

 

[Viking84]

I'm arguing for ED. Yes it has it's Grrrrrrrr Moments, but reading lots of these type of post about people wanting to handed the materials on a plate or given detailed plan where to find them, or wanting to be ranked Lord high Admiral/King/God after 1 hours play and fly in a Corvette after one kill!

For the love of good debate, please refrain from imposing imaginary personality traits on the people you are debating with. Not a single person in this thread has asked to get everything handed to them on a silver platter. What has been asked for is to remove the randomness, and make our skill, methodology and equipments determine what we find. As it stands you may be doing everything right, and still end up with sod all to show for it.

The columbus analogy was meant to show that even back then people had to grind to find places or materials and they where not handed it to them on a plate. I understood it in my naive way

Columbus would be a relevant analogy to use if he and a rival set sail, in the same direction, at the same time, and one person found America while the other sailed straight through it and found nothing. That is what is happening in Elite at the moment, and it is down to the difference between randomly placed materials (RNG roll for every rock you pop) and procedurally placed materials (the same rock, in the same spot, will ALWAYS yield the same material).

A quick comparison to Minecraft is in order here. If you seed your world in minecraft, and find diamond ore, you can give that seed to someone else, tell them the coordinates, and they will also find diamond ore. That means that a methodical search, or using logic to determine where the diamonds might be (a specific depth, close to lava, whatever) has value, because you know that what you are looking for is in one fixed spot.

In Elite you have no clue because every rock has a random drop, you just have to hope that you have the right type of planet/asteroid/ship/wake whatever and that the RNG gods roll in your favour. Do you see the difference, and do you see why this has nothing to do with wanting everything with no effort?

 

[Wasp0]

They don't have to tell us exactly where to go and "fetch" the mats. But they could give us proper tools (scanner, functioning limpets, enough storage space) to find and collect them.

Aaaaand don't put the player in the situation where the RNG leave him with absolutely no reward. Even the smallest gain on a previous modded module could ease the pain of hours of hunting for the mats.

Ok, i am not telling you or anyone how to play your game, you play it your way, but why do you want IT NOW? Just play the game, and you will come across what you need. I have been mining, surface scoping, missions, Res/Nav/CZ, smuggling, trading in my do it all Vette, (For Vette, change to any decent ship can be inserted) and i look in my hold now and well what do you know i can upgrade FSD, MC and PP. I have not ground for those they just happened to be there and i collected them. So i'll work my way across the systems to the engineers and do an upgrade or 2 or 3. No Rush to have it NOW!

Fly safe sir

I can't understand the rush to get EVERYTHING the engineers have NOW!

 

[NMS]

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!

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

+1

Make a fun game it is not just how to write a book. The game needs a good game designer.

 

[Wasp0]

For the love of good debate, please refrain from imposing imaginary personality traits on the people you are debating with. Not a single person in this thread has asked to get everything handed to them on a silver platter. What has been asked for is to remove the randomness, and make our skill, methodology and equipments determine what we find. As it stands you may be doing everything right, and still end up with sod all to show for it.


Columbus would be a relevant analogy to use if he and a rival set sail, in the same direction, at the same time, and one person found America while the other sailed straight through it and found nothing. That is what is happening in Elite at the moment, and it is down to the difference between randomly placed materials (RNG roll for every rock you pop) and procedurally placed materials (the same rock, in the same spot, will ALWAYS yield the same material).

A quick comparison to Minecraft is in order here. If you seed your world in minecraft, and find diamond ore, you can give that seed to someone else, tell them the coordinates, and they will also find diamond ore. That means that a methodical search, or using logic to determine where the diamonds might be (a specific depth, close to lava, whatever) has value, because you know that what you are looking for is in one fixed spot.

In Elite you have no clue because every rock has a random drop, you just have to hope that you have the right type of planet/asteroid/ship/wake whatever and that the RNG gods roll in your favour. Do you see the difference, and do you see why this has nothing to do with wanting everything with no effort?

Viking 84...one word coming your way 'whatever'

I have no wish to debate/argue the toss. I am just stating how i play the game.

Sir you enjoy your frustration, sorry i meant game, your way, i'll retire from this thread and play it my way.

Fly Safe Viking and try avoid the coronary!

 

[Mephane]

RNG is not how you get variety.

You get variety from mutually exclusive but equally (or close) interesting options.

Having RNG upgrades where one is better than all the others in 95% of cases (looking at you FSD upgrades) will no produce variety.
It produces grind till you get a good result. Once everyone get a good roll with that one "best" upgrade, where is the variety again ?

Yeah. Variety, lol. Most module types have 1 best-in-slot upgrade that outshines all others. Dirty Drive Tuning. Increased FSD Range. Heavy Duty Armour. Heavy Duty Shield Booster. Reinforced Shields. Overcharged Multi-Cannon. Etc.

 

[Thebadmf]

There's a certain video doing the rounds on reddit, featuring a certain Austrian war criminal talking about 200 tons of Lavian Brandy that I can't post here as it's not family friendly but, it really does hit the nail on the head.

 

[Darth Ender]

In before the perm ban on bad mouthing urandom(). Pretty sure that's in the EULA.

 

[Starender]

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!

LOL i feel the same, and i don't understand why everything is based on RNG, yes indeed we don't want to gamble, we want everything to be "skill based".

 

[Kizbot]

There's a certain video doing the rounds on reddit, featuring a certain Austrian war criminal talking about 200 tons of Lavian Brandy that I can't post here as it's not family friendly but, it really does hit the nail on the head.

Sounds entertaining

 

[Viking84]

Viking 84...one word coming your way 'whatever'

Seriously - you enter a thread, throw out a tired old line and expect noone to call you out on it? And then when someone does you respond with "whatever"? I am happy to hear how you play the game, and even replied politely to that aspect of your post, but if you aren't interested in that then by all means leave the thread.

Sounds entertaining

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/4n2nb6/hitler_discovers_elitedangerous_engineers/
Edit: There is swearing in this video, for those of a nervous disposition! It is however utterly hilarious. Quite tongue in cheek but still hits the nail on the head regarding much of the frustration felt by some of us.

 

[ShimEnki]

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

I hope FD reads this and takes action.

it will be most interesting to view what this action will be if any...this whole 2.1 make or break it thing might actually be in their re-engineering of engineers response/non response. No wonder they have been quite over the recent spell.

 

[Morgan Talbot]

I can't understand the rush to get EVERYTHING the engineers have NOW!

What I want and from what I see from the OP's posts is the TOOLS to find these materials in a sensible way. I want to WORK toward my goals in a methodical and rational way, not play wheel of fortune.

Give me a reason to scan that tiny moon orbiting that gas giant 12,000 LS away. Make the materials on said moon be placed in a logical fashion that makes sense.
Heck using 21st century technology I can do a spectral analysis and get a fair idea of what that moon is made up of, I would hope that 33rd century sensors could be a bit more detailed and give some idea of areas of the planet where I'd have a decent chance of finding what I'm after.

So far as a software engineer, this seems poorly devised, planned and implemented and the goal was to have ENGINEERS! without spending the time/effort to build the underlying systems needed to properly support it.

 

[skurvenyzmrd]

What I want and from what I see from the OP's posts is the TOOLS to find these materials in a sensible way. I want to WORK toward my goals in a methodical and rational way, not play wheel of fortune.

Give me a reason to scan that tiny moon orbiting that gas giant 12,000 LS away. Make the materials on said moon be placed in a logical fashion that makes sense.
Heck using 21st century technology I can do a spectral analysis and get a fair idea of what that moon is made up of, I would hope that 33rd century sensors could be a bit more detailed and give some idea of areas of the planet where I'd have a decent chance of finding what I'm after.

So far as a software engineer, this seems poorly devised, planned and implemented and the goal was to have ENGINEERS! without spending the time/effort to build the underlying systems needed to properly support it.

it seems that is too much to ask for

 

[Cheops1975]

Elite Egg Hunt Dangerous: Refreshing the Mission Board.

 

[Rudolphus]

you would then also be absolutely fine when you work for a company 40 hour and on friday you are taken to a room, and there is a RNG that will make the decision you get paid between 30-100% of your normal salary

I'm arguing for ED. Yes it has it's Grrrrrrrr Moments, but reading lots of these type of post about people wanting to handed the materials on a plate or given detailed plan where to find them, or wanting to be ranked Lord high Admiral/King/God after 1 hours play and fly in a Corvette after one kill!

The columbus analogy was meant to show that even back then people had to grind to find places or materials and they where not handed it to them on a plate. I understood it in my naive way

Is it just me, but i don't think of it as a grind! I take the game for what it is and just enjoy it. Hey look i am have gained a rank without thinking about it or oh look i have just found that Material, i wonder if i can Upgrade my FSD now?

Just me!

 

[GG7]

I posed this exact same question in several of the other complaint threads1 lol!

Big difference in experience between playing around with everything unlocked and having to EARN your way up to everything in the game. I suspected that the FD guys probably don't have enough free time to play the game like we do, but that doesn't change the fact that if they haven't actually played their own game for any significant period of time, then they wouldn't have a clue what its like.

All this Engineer grind content sure made me question their actual in-game experience with Horizons from a genuine player level.

 

[nosscar]

From the OP
"SRV Rock Hunting
Mining
Wake Scanning
Ship Scanning
Hunting Transport Ships
Refreshing the mission board hoping someone would offer me a useful material"


Same here op. In fact i have been doing all of those things and more, i never really did them before, never felt the need, well it was only for credits, and i had enough of them. So now this engineers stuff, 2.1 ect. I am now finding out i have to do all this, and fly around the galaxy, evading smart npc's, investigating uss's, i never did much combat before, now i have to, only trading before really, now i have to mine rocks too, and i never saw a use for my SRV, now i have the need to go down on planets.
I also find i am having to use all of my fleet, due to some being upgraded for specific roles, only use my Conda before, woh is me, woh is me. :x i'll shut up now.