Grind - can we solve the problem?

[Stigbob]

Bye bye.

I'm serious. You seem angry at the game because of the things you choose to do, now you seem unable to cope with me concentrating on positives when you are trying to demand that everyone else complains like you.

You are approaching both things in the wrong way, and it wont work.

 

[Mengy]

Focusing on positives is very like grinding, in that it's an optional thing.

This thread is about discussing ideas to alleviate the grind aspect, it is not about looking at the positives in Elite.

But sure there is a lot about Elite that is positive. The graphics and sound design are phenomenal, the ships all look incredible and fly great, for the most part the galaxy is beautiful. It’s a great looking and sounding game. I’d even go so far as to say that the UI design is pretty good, especially when you compare it to other space games in the genre.

However, none of that changes the fact that many of the mechanics of actually playing the game are designed to be drawn out, time consuming, repetitive grinds. It’s a common theme with the development of Elite Dangerous, to the point of being overbearing. Some people might not mind that and may even enjoy the mindless aspect of it, but many people do not. The very fact that so many people watch Netflix while playing Elite should be all the proof anyone needs that something is missing in Elite’s game mechanics design.

Grind itself isn’t a bad thing, in fact a game like Elite requires some degree of grind. It’s the monotonous, repetitive grind design of the game that is bad. It’s the lack of interactivity in playing much of Elite that is bad. It’s the huge time wasting mechanics of Elite’s design which is bad. There is much room for improvement, and honestly a lot of very minor improvements and changes would go a very long way towards improving the situation.

You might disagree Stigbob, but many people do not. Arguing to the counterpoint won’t change feelings, actions by Frontier would.

 

[Ted Striker]

IMO part of the problem is the lack of scenery in this game. Games like Euro and American Truck Simulator have you driving from location to location but with nice scenery to enjoy. In ED it's black space with a monochrome holographic projection over everything, with tiny stars and tinier planets until you get close to them, so flying from station to station doesn't give you much to see during the trip.

Grinding can be fun, like doing Baal runs in Diablo 2 using all your fun skills to kill hoards of enemies and hoping for good random loot. Or it can be tedious, like constantly flying around looking for USS that might have what you want but probably doesn't, or driving around on a planet shooting rocks (it can be kinda fun in the beginning but gets tedious).

There are so many things that can make this game absolutely amazing and make the grind actually fun but will never happen because development is pretty stagnant. The game has been described as a mile wide and a foot deep and it's true.

I'll give one example of something I think can make this game better and deeper: Ever see those automated mining machines on planets, sometimes defended sometimes not? Why can't we build our own?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I'll give one example of something I think can make this game better and deeper: Ever see those automated mining machines on planets, sometimes defended sometimes not? Why can't we build our own?

Not sure how that would make the game deeper.

 

[Stigbob]

I'm happy for you to focus on whatever you want. Please read my OP to know the purpose of this thread.

The grind isn't an issue for me, mostly because I either don't do it at all or I find a way to do it that doesn't involve grinding.

I'm solution focused.

 

[Dr Zarkov]

OP, the game as is now is the whole idea of Elite. Do whatever you want, find your own game and the pace of it. In that regard, this game is brilliant and unique. Therefore

So - ideas to make the game more engaging to the broader player base?

is unnecessary. If you want to play Elite, here it is. With all the suffering and joy and everything. You simply must accept is as it is, or move to something else.

 

[Mr Jack Burton]

OP, the game as is now is the whole idea of Elite. Do whatever you want, find your own game and the pace of it. In that regard, this game is brilliant and unique. Therefore



is unnecessary. If you want to play Elite, here it is. With all the suffering and joy and everything. You simply must accept is as it is, or move to something else.

the truth is that
A) Elite is a beautiful game and grind comes to pilots that "THINK" grind
B) There is no real place where to move if you like 4X multiplayer games

<3 Frontier <3

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I'm happy for you to focus on whatever you want. Please read my OP to know the purpose of this thread.

The issue with your original post is that you think people either enjoy the grind or don't enjoy it. There are others that just don't engage in the the grind either. You want to stop the grind, don't grind and do the stuff you enjoy instead.

I am not saying the game is perfect or that it doesn't need improving, because it does. I want more varied and better gameplay loops too. I want to see the depth of the BGS (the game has depth, but it is very difficult to see) properly visualised, I want to see better res site, combat zones and better USS mechanics, better exploration mechanics, better mining.

But none of that will stop people from grinding. And this is the issue with your original post. With a game like ED, there will always be an easier and faster way to do something and people will just grind that out to get to their chosen goal and then most likely complain about it afterwards.

Just like a poster said earlier or in another thread, they ground out the easiest and quickest way to get Empire rank to get their cutter. It wasn't the only way to get the rank, you could have had fun and variety with it, but it would have been slower. That was their choice to do it like that, and no matter how much variation, cool and good mechanics are put in people will still do the same thing again and again and again to get to that goal in the quickest possible time.

That's fine though. I have no issues with people doing it, but I wish they would stop coming on the damn forums and complain about something that they have chosen to do.

 

[Pielander]

Aside from the actual mechanics of the current in-game progression systems being unnecessarily tedious and repetitive, I think the game suffers badly from a couple of key issues and the way they interact with each other:

- The only meaningful modes of in-game 'progression' are centred around the goal of acquiring the best possible ship. There is essentially no other tangible goal to work towards.

- The ability to engage meaningfully in PvP gameplay (which many people find stimulating, and which incurs no additional development overhead) is effectively locked behind the completion of the 'ship progression' pipeline as described above. Thus, in order to play the game in a competitive way with other humans , players feel compelled to first scale the mountain of other deliberately tedious in-game content.

The addition of new levels of ship progression, such as engineers mk 1 and 2, and now tech brokers, has just exacerbated the issues described above and also led to the game becoming inceasingly unbalanced.

What I would love to see is:

- A simplified route through ship progression, so that players are able to experiment with the full range of available ships and ship capabilities without spending literally hundreds or thousands of hours jumping through relatively fixed, pre-determined hoops.

- Introduction of more skill-based mechanics within the ship / character progression route (e.g. Pilots' Federation handling tests for upgraded licenses to buy larger ships or advanced weapons).

- Introduction of a new PvP mechanic to enable competition between players who are at a similar stage of the game, and who have similarly capable ships, so that PvP doesn't exclude casual or inexperienced players.

- Development of new or existing mechanics to provide more varied opportunities for in-game progression beyond just the the ability to get a better ship. (Making rank progression more meaningful and skill-based and then actually locking ranked missions to particular ranks would be a start). It would be particularly good to have the ability to buy / build structures / mining stations / planetary outposts, and for those to grow into a productive asset Base (and not just a hangar full of ships). It would also be good to see the development of NPC crew members play a more relevant part in the game. (Maybe you could build and train a wing that would be able to carry out tasks or wing up with you over time).

It's often said that ED is a mile wide and an inch deep, and I think part of the 'inch deep' issue is the fact that there's only really one type of progression (ie getting better ships). That's what makes the grind effectively obligatory, and it's a huge shame, because the mile wide infrastructure that we already have would allow for infinitely more breadth of gameplay and progression than that.

 

[Dr Zarkov]

It's often said that ED is a mile wide and an inch deep, and I think part of the 'inch deep' issue is the fact that there's only really one type of progression (ie getting better ships). That's what makes the grind effectively obligatory...

Not quite. You can progress in various fields, and most of them do not need an engineered ship.

You have BGS, a game within a game. There are dedicated explorers. There are casual traders, there are old school wanderers (all Cobra III guys, right on!) and what not... Only the PvP guys must absolutely max out their ships.

Maxing out the size and modules of your ship is only one aspect of progress in this game.

 

[Mengy]

If you want to play Elite, here it is. With all the suffering and joy and everything. You simply must accept is as it is, or move to something else.

True, the game is what it is today, and we can either play the game as it is or go and do something else. However, that doesn’t mean there’s no value in discussing or suggesting ways to make the game better for tomorrow. Change doesn’t just happen without effort.

 

[Surprised Brony]

Not gonna bother reading through the thread. I can already guess it's been a tug of war between "such grind" and "grind is self-imposed" folks.

My thoughts? Make a big end goal. Now, make mini goals to hit along the way. Now, make super-mini goals. Keep going until you can achieve one in a week or less. Then just play. Solved.

This game is among the lesser of grind fests out there. Some games force you to take WEEKS to make the smallest bit of progress.

Offtopic: Can't decide if the Bungie, Zenimax, or Frontier forums are worse anymore. Former two have improved. This one has degenerated.

 

[Stigbob]

Offtopic: Can't decide if the Bungie, Zenimax, or Frontier forums are worse anymore. Former two have improved. This one has degenerated.

It's always like this after a patch, it'll calm down again soon.

 

[Paidtodrive]

Hmmm. The game plays so it's not broken. Granted that it's size can give rise to some issues. It's not perfect but what game is? I think this really is an issue of perception. Players who have put in an hour a day on PC for the past 4 years have logged over 1500 hours. So yeah I think from their point of view, rinse and repeat of the latest exploit posted is a valid opinion.

I'm new to the party playing on my PS4 so in my few hundred hours I've hardly done anything yet. I am old school though so I am totally biased having spent many hours on my speccie playing the original. I think this game is fantastic. Yet like any game I really enjoy, I'm willing to forgive it's idiosyncrasies.

My point is it's impossible to level out the game experience between such vastly different states. The game is how it is. Hopefully FD are considerate in their modifications. I can't make you feel it's less or more grinding and neither can MrBraben and co. Nil carborundum illegitimi and all that.

 

[Soon(TM)]

I don' think this problem can be solved, to be honest.

I've seen games with engaging stories, beautiful worlds and balanced game mechanics, yet people would still grind to get that next best thing, rather than let the game flow and enjoy the ride.
There are people who grind, and there are people who don't. It's as simple as that. It's a choice you make, not the game.

Grind is not an issue in any game, if the immersion and mechanics are fun.

Progression and Grind are the same thing, except one is fun and engaging, the other is repetitive and boring.

What FD failed to do was create progression, instead they created grind.

 

[Pielander]

Not quite. You can progress in various fields, and most of them do not need an engineered ship.

You have BGS, a game within a game. There are dedicated explorers. There are casual traders, there are old school wanderers (all Cobra III guys, right on!) and what not... Only the PvP guys must absolutely max out their ships.

Maxing out the size and modules of your ship is only one aspect of progress in this game.

I agree to a point. I'm probably guilty of stating the case in a bit of an absolutist way, but I still think the vast majority of structured progression that the game provides centres around getting better ships. You can set yourself aims in terms of trading, exploration or BGS play, but ultimately the game doesn't really give you anything tangible to show for it unless it other than incremental contributions towards collecting engineering materials or unlocking engineers (which is the only reason why a lot of people do these things).

I've actually been having lots of self-made fun recently, learning to fly FA off all the time. It's been very rewarding precisely because it's involved learning a new skill, but in terms of tangible progress within the game, my new-found skills haven't really opened any doors or gained me anything.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Grind - can we solve the problem?

Sure you can. Stop grinding.

If you want distant targets in minimal time though, get your grinding head on and don't complain about it. At the end of the day, its your choice.

And please, don't play the i'm the X years old with a family and a job.

I'm 47, have multiple jobs, 2 kids, one of which needs constant taxing between his activities (yes, i'm the taxi), and somehow i've made time to play the game and not grind.

 

[Mengy]

No this problem will never be solved. This dev team is incapable of providing content so all they have to keep us busy is grind.

I’m not sure if they are incapable, but preserving the grind does seem to be a design goal for Frontier. Just look at 3.0, they revamped the engineers to make them better yet added a brand new grade grind mechanic to make them take even longer for most players to progress through. On purpose. Sandro was very adamant during the beta about the new grade grind staying put. And, the new tech brokers are incredibly grindy in how their wares are unlocked. Frontier chose to design these features this way, in the latest patch, so yes making the game grindy does appear to be purposeful on Frontier’s end.

It’s not that they can’t solve it, they just don’t seem to want to for some odd reason. My hunch is they believe it helps retain players. My fear is that its actually having the opposite effect.

 

[Skeloton]

No this problem will never be solved. This dev team is incapable of providing content so all they have to keep us busy is grind.

I don't think any dev team is capable of not making a game grindy. What some other dev teams are capable of is disguising it. Gonna repeat this until people are sick of hearing it but if the core gameplay was fun and engaging, not mindless wandering and waiting, people like myself would notice it myself. Things like waiting for a specific USS to appear could be cut down by having the Discovery scanners ping USS locations in a short radius around you. Its still RNG but the dice is in our hands.

 

[Chris Simon]

Sure you can. Stop grinding.

If you want distant targets in minimal time though, get your grinding head on and don't complain about it. At the end of the day, its your choice.

And please, don't play the i'm the X years old with a family and a job.

I'm 47, have multiple jobs, 2 kids, one of which needs constant taxing between his activities (yes, i'm the taxi), and somehow i've made time to play the game and not grind.

Surprisingly I suspect the people who are grinding the most are the ones who have too much time.
Time restrictions make you enjoy things, make most of the experience.

Naturally this isn't a general rule, but that's how I feel it, sometimes. When I have 10 hours of free time, I find my mind slipping into linear grindy way of thinking ("So much I can accompish in this time") while when I just have an hour or so, I simply try to do something fun or relax.