No I accept that a task can be a grind, but I don’t accept your point of view that seems to be gameplay loops that I enjoy = fun, gameplay loops that I don’t = grind. My position is gameplay loop that says fill all my bins now = grind, Gameplay loop that says engineer 1 ship now = fun. The difference is in the effort:reward balance. In first one lot of time needs to be invested, you fill your bins and then go, so what next? Reward comes some time later when you want to engineer another ship and you have all the mats you need. In the second I spend a modest amount of time and get instant reward of Fully engineered ship. Neither approach is more efficient. At the end of both you still end up with a number of fully engineered ships in the same amount of gameplay time. All it is doing is splitting a long term goal into separate smaller goals each with its own reward and it is a valid method of game design to keep players engaged. Every aspect of gameplay you work through a virtual bar to reach a specific goal, the effort:reward balance is the important thing. Mining you start with empty hold, you work to fill it, then move to sell it. You get a reward, in this case credits. So because you are working your way along a virtual bar to reach a certain point mining is a grind?! take another example - Monopoly. You start with some cash, but no properties. Your first goal is to get a set of properties. Next goal to build houses and hotels on them, working your way along 2 virtual bars. Gameplay is repetitive, roll dice, move piece, resolve anything on the square. Heavily influenced by RNG, to the extent that all your gameplay efforts can be ruined by a bit of bad luck. Playing Monopoly is obviously a grind. Funny how it is one of the most successful games ever designed. Every game has this aspect of play. You invest a certain amount of effort into the game and you get a reward at the end of it. Games where you put very little effort in for large rewards don’t tend to be successful as players get bored quickly and the rewards become meaningless. Games where you have to invest large amounts of effort for little reward also fail. Although the current industry MMO meta is to design games where you get decreasing rewards with increasing effort to encourage players to spend real cash to boost their progress. Where personal preferences come in is in how engaging the gameplay is to you. I don’t find laser mining engaging so no matter how much of a reward I get from it I won’t do it.
What FDev have done with engineering is design a gameplay loop where you can invest a few hours of gameplay and get a significant reward. I reckon I can go from a stock A-Rated ship to fully engineered with a couple of evenings of play. That is a fairly modest amount of effort for a significant pay off. A fully engineered ship is considerably better than a stock one. You may choose to call that grind if you want, but we will have to agree to disagree. I would think most game designers would disagree with you though.
Having designed a number of games (not computer games, board games) I am well aware that FDev haven’t got it right on everything. The problem with Imperial and Fed rank is not the basic gameplay it is that the effort vs rewards is not balanced. If you want to do gameplay like that far better to give players modest rewards at each level. Things like a 5% bonus on bounty payouts if you hand in at a Fed station, 2.5% discount on modules etc. That is how RPG experience levels work. There are modest goals to work to which gives small benefits against a longer term goal of making their character significantly more powerful. The current rewards, system permits, take them or leave them, only Achenar gives you access to an engineer. The ships everyone just wants the Cutter and Corvette, so it is a long path to ships which while very good are not that much better than the Anaconda. Having said all that I believe you can go from zero Fed rank to Corvette in 8 hours of gameplay.
No, you have not at all understood anything I have stated. I stated in general. Everything, can be a grind to someone. It has no bearing or meaning regarding you, or me. The bars are there to be ground down as that is the mechanic the game system works with in.
Your opinion of how you feel is completely irrelevant. In fact, I don't even care one iota if you like something or you don't at this junction. Because you are not reading and absorbing the details I have put forward. I shouldn't need to say the same thing three times in different ways to get across to you. That something you enjoy may be something I hate. Something I enjoy may be something you hate. Something else we both may enjoy, someone else will hate. To anyone who feels they HAVE to do something they HATE. Then of course it will feel like a grind if it is required. It literally has no bearing to how you feel about a task compared to someone else. You are not the important person in this remark. Neither am I. It is a problem with the game play. If there is no way to do a task by any other means and it isn't entertaining at all. That is bad game design. When thousands of people complain about your bad game design as they have. Then you have a really bad game design. Hence why the FSS came about.
F4Fred - If you can not see me for what I am. I am a passionate person that can see the potential in Elite Dangerous. If only Frontier's leadership had any real common sense about how to design an MMO. Which is what Elite Dangerous is, an MMO. Instead, they are taking the thing that is actually driving their active numbers up, and cutting its legs off. Then create bugs that obliterate a game feature. Driving the players that were mining to do something different. Oh, look at this game over here. They actually design stuff to reward players for playing the game. What is this? Double pay out weekends? Double experience weekends? Hey, couldn't that be used for the Mission board? For the Engineering materials? For the mining system? For the bounty system? Would you want to spend a weekend bounty hunting if the bounties pay double? If only Frontier actually bothered to read these posts. Seems like the only traction in the game occurs when there is a petition for change by the Customers of the game.
During the Fleet Carrier beta, we for warned everyone. There were plenty of people able to afford fleet carriers. There are still plenty of people with enough money to pay for their fleet carrier with 50+ jumps a day, and buying fuel at a high expense to be lazy and never come close to spending a quarter of their funds in 10 years. Trying to put a purpose for Credits in the game at this time and point is too late. To be fair you can't hurt anyone who has cheated and exploited or spent the last year and a half fairly mining to insanity. The only thing you do by making it more difficult is make the people who didn't cheat, who didn't exploit, be the ones who are punished first. Frontier's employee's know all of the loop holes. They designed them after all. So I am not surprised.
Right now, this game is literally paper thin in dynamic. All actions in the end result in earning credits. Most, poorly. Only a couple really well. The only dynamics that holds players back is time gating. This can be handled through many mechanics. The easiest, resource management. Credits, engineering materials, mining materials, limpets, trading goods, rare goods, better ships to do the previous tasks in either larger quantities, faster speeds, or more fire power. Power Play includes buy to win practices in game, with time gating based on real life time. (wait X time or buy your next allotment now for X credits)
The crime system is proof of a paper thin dynamic. There is zero subterfuge. There is zero means to do any sort of heist. There is zero means to pull off the perfect crime. Because the moment you commit a crime there is zero way to prevent your own ship from turning you in. There is zero way to jam someone else's ship from sending a reported crime. There is no way to eliminate witnesses, there is no way to pull off the perfect murder. There is nothing at all beyond being wanted for something. The first thing a criminal would do is gut the ship's computer from ever giving away your actual identity. The first thing I would do is change my Ident to a local police ship. [ report sent to the police - Joe-SDC just shot POLICE unit 4. ] Now when I kill Joe, take his loot and run away. There is no wanted crime all Judge Dredd on me or my ship. As long as I get out of there in time. Skill, ability, criminal tech. This, would add depth and complexity to the system. End results being different. Just as you could choose any other ship to be your target. You might spend an afternoon harvesting ship ID's. Just like you would harvest data signatures.
Limpet design stupidity - The art of Frontier coding something with zero skill and not taking into account anything from the real world. Right now you can google drones performing automated maneuvers. Those drones number in the thousands and they are all running off from a single laptop. Not some multi ton giant piece of trash that can only manage at best 3 drones. The limpets each weigh in at 1 ton. That, is a giant little flying thing. Asteroids are even bigger. Frontier has programmed the limpets to fly along the surface of the asteroid ON PURPOSE to cause them to crash into it when the asteroid tumbles as they would. But when they fly to your ship they suddenly take a dive away from your ship to fly way down below before flying up to the hatch. This is stupidity and absurdity. No one in their right minds would program this 1 ton machine to go grab a fragment and then fly suicidally close to the asteroid as it returns to the ship. They would program it to get the fragment and then fly AWAY from the asteroid first. Then it would fly back to the ship and not try to fly so far below the ship as to fly into another asteroid either. They also would not design the limpets to not be able to take a couple taps into an asteroid. Let us be real. Prospector limpets fly into the face of an asteroid at 220 meters per second as I recall. You realise that we don't even make automobiles that could function at those speeds to turn a headlight on and off afterwards. If they can do that. They can take a bump into an asteroid and then take a pause before coming back on line after it bounces away and regains telemetry. Lastly, there is zero reason for us not to have a Master limpet controller. ( A laptop duh! ) and then launchers that you switch between type. There is zero reason to limit any of these to just a couple. All ships already have a communication array capable of instantaneous greater than light speed communication that spans any distance of light years. There is zero reason why you can't talk to 30 limpets with a single controller. There is only the reason they want to limit how many limpets we can use. Again, taking up our time and not providing us with tools.
