Except you can just choose not to engineer at all and not play that portion of elite Dangerous.
Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering
- Status
Might as well skip Elite all together then, since it's a significant portion of the game?
Speaking as someone with 30+ years IT industry experience, the wide reaching changes of the kind people are talking about here would take a lot of planning and work to achieve. If changes of this order along side everything else that appears to be in progress in the game can be done by November this year, FDev would be doing well. Even that might be an underestimate of the work required.
Funny y'all mention this. I had decided to engineer my PA's and went about getting the 50 Bromelite he needed. Prior to this I could find and mine Bromelite nearly everywhere I went but now that I needed it I couldn't fid it at all. Finally thanks to fellow Commanders I found and mined the Bromelite. I went to see Bill and within a few minutes was at grade 5 access.
So the wierd thing to me is the lengthy time needed just to gain access to an Engineer vs the short time needed to get to Tier 5.
I'm sure not all engineers are this way but that's been my experience so far.
So the wierd thing to me is the lengthy time needed just to gain access to an Engineer vs the short time needed to get to Tier 5.
I'm sure not all engineers are this way but that's been my experience so far.
Never had a problem with engineering or "the grind". I have two dozen fully engineered ships, at least to my last count. I've enjoyed they system of engineering, especially after they dropped that "slot machine-esque" slider scale.
If anything though, they should make ship based engineering materials, data, elements etc. buy/sell-able among the players, like how the upcoming on foot materials will be with Carrier bartenders.
If anything though, they should make ship based engineering materials, data, elements etc. buy/sell-able among the players, like how the upcoming on foot materials will be with Carrier bartenders.
I haven't seen any mention that the bartender will actually have stock - it's not guaranteed that players will be able to buy mats from each other or sell the items they have collected (and for the sake of balance, I hope it doesn't go that direction - if someone could get a new account and their friends could help get them into a fully engineered ship in order to skip the entire game, they're better off just not playing the game)
Bartenders will act as a sort of commodity market for the On Foot engineering materials, as discussed in the official end of the year live stream/Carrier Interior reveal.
I guess I'm hoping that the "sort of" part is that items sold will disappear into the ether, and items bought won't come from the FC stock - like the commodity market (isn't the market module called something different on fleet carriers?)
If it's anything like the commodity market: player has way too many suit schematics and wants to sell them. Player puts up 100 Suit schematics for sale at 1 Million credits each. Player waits. Other players come and buy his goods. Everyone wins. Again, this is just a guess, and we are going to find out soon enough how it will work.
Trading on foot engineering materials can already be done by simply just standing in front of a Player and dumping your on foot materials at him. Bit of an "on your honor system" though.
Fleet carrier bartenders will make everything "official"
Can't wait, because I have way too many opinion polls, settlement defense plans, cat media and other stuff I don't need lol
You can already sell all of that stuff to the bartenders in the concourses - at a predetermined value.
What you're hoping for is the ability to set your own price, which is the part that breaks the economy and caters to players who can't stand the "grind" (aka The Gameplay™).
I'm personally really looking forward to buying tons of Odyssey mats so I can G5 some suits and weapons. I don't enjoy looting settlements all that much so I would prefer to just buy the materials. Ground CZs are the most fun part of Odyssey, and they unfortunately don't give any materials. Hopefully Fdev will realize that letting players play the game the way they want is vastly preferable to making people do repetitive activities for the sole purpose of upgrading their stuff.
Perhaps all of our suggestions about how to expand access to engineering, how to change the emphasis to experimentation with crafting rather than the mat collection time sink aren't really penetrating.
Maybe the Devs can answer some philosophical design questions about the crafting experience FIRST and then we can make suggestions to support this philosophy.
1) What proportion of gameplay time related to engineering/crafting should be devoted to material gathering?
2) Is the philosophy around material gathering mechanics, that those activities, in and of themselves are supposed to be engaging and skill based - or low skill and redundant - serving more as a time sink?
3) Is the philosophy around material gathering that players must engage in the full range of available game mechanics to access crafted items that benefit a narrow gameplay style? For example, Everyone has to mine to get top armor. Everyone has to mine to get top plasma mods. Everyone has to smuggle to upgrade power distributors. Everyone has to trade at 50 stations to get top shield mods.
4) Is the philosophy that the time spent selecting and experimenting with mods should be vastly lower than the preparatory time gathering the materials to engaging in that crafting exercise?
Looking forward to dev guidance here.
Maybe the Devs can answer some philosophical design questions about the crafting experience FIRST and then we can make suggestions to support this philosophy.
1) What proportion of gameplay time related to engineering/crafting should be devoted to material gathering?
2) Is the philosophy around material gathering mechanics, that those activities, in and of themselves are supposed to be engaging and skill based - or low skill and redundant - serving more as a time sink?
3) Is the philosophy around material gathering that players must engage in the full range of available game mechanics to access crafted items that benefit a narrow gameplay style? For example, Everyone has to mine to get top armor. Everyone has to mine to get top plasma mods. Everyone has to smuggle to upgrade power distributors. Everyone has to trade at 50 stations to get top shield mods.
4) Is the philosophy that the time spent selecting and experimenting with mods should be vastly lower than the preparatory time gathering the materials to engaging in that crafting exercise?
Looking forward to dev guidance here.
It's never safe to assume anything, but you do you
It's impossible to let all players play the way they want, in a shared world multiplayer experience - what some players want is a direct contradiction to the desires of others. How would they decide which players to treat as second-class citizens? And how would you feel if you were part of the group they chose not to cater to?
Those "repetitive activities" aren't for the sole purpose of upgrading stuff - I could just as easily argue that ground CZs are just repetitive activities to grind out credits (but for what purpose?). I actually enjoy running missions, exploring settlements that aren't partially disabled for the purpose of ground combat, etc. It's not just a grind to get materials, it's the gameplay (what do you do with those materials once you have everything maxed out? Keep repeating ground CZs? Sounds more repetitive than running a variety of missions, but whatever...)
I think if I were FD I'd look over this thread and say, "no consensus is seen here; there are no changes which are clearly required".
I have no idea what your talking about.
It seems to me like the solution is having people like me buy materials from those like you who enjoy what myself and many others consider to be a grind. People with the materials make more money and those buying get to play the way they want which is in my opinion a win-win situation.
How will selling you my materials address the fact that you apparently don't like the gameplay?
And why would you think I need credits - I do enjoy the gameplay, so credits are easy to come by.
I didn’t mean you in particular, but rather people who enjoy (or at least tolerate) some of material gathering activities. I do happen to enjoy some gameplay, just not all of it by the way.
What confounds me about your stance, is why you seem bothered by other people just wanting to play the way they want (after all, it will still cost me credits and by extent playing the game to get any mats from other players).
I didn't mean me in particular, either - how will anybody selling you the materials gathered while playing the game address the fact that you're looking for a way to avoid playing the game?
Why change a game that you don't enjoy instead of finding one you do? What makes your wants more important than the players who enjoy the game already?
If there was a way to play it how you wanted without changing it for everyone else, I have no issue with it. But it's a shared galaxy...
- Status