Grind is good.

[Stealthie]

Well, sometimes.

I've decided to fit all my Thargoid-hunting ships with a wake-scanner.
So, nipped across from Merope to Achenar, bought half a dozen E-rated wake-scanners, landed at Fortune's Loss, transferred the wake-scanners there and... I don't have the mat's I need to mod' them all.

And I'm fine with that.

As a result of this, I now have a nice little "adventure" ahead of me, this evening, to gather the required mat's, take them back to Achenar and get the mod's done.

Point is, I think "grind" can actually make for enjoyable game-play, as long as it's broken down into small "packages" with well-defined goals and rewards.
It's only when it becomes a continuous thing, with no specific objective and no guaranteed result that it becomes irritating.

 

[W.T.Sherman]

It probably helps to add a little imagination into the mix.

 

[Lateralus]

No it isn't.. It's a poor & lazy way of gating high-level content/features. Those features should be gated by difficult to accomplish actions and achievements... not by soul destroying time-sinks.

 

[Sylveria]

Well, sometimes.

I've decided to fit all my Thargoid-hunting ships with a wake-scanner.
So, nipped across from Merope to Achenar, bought half a dozen E-rated wake-scanners, landed at Fortune's Loss, transferred the wake-scanners there and... I don't have the mat's I need to mod' them all.

And I'm fine with that.

As a result of this, I now have a nice little "adventure" ahead of me, this evening, to gather the required mat's, take them back to Achenar and get the mod's done.

Point is, I think "grind" can actually make for enjoyable game-play, as long as it's broken down into small "packages" with well-defined goals and rewards.
It's only when it becomes a continuous thing, with no specific objective and no guaranteed result that it becomes irritating.

I think anything that requires some sort of "effort" can be considered a "grind" depending on perspective.

The only question, IMO - is what sort of defined "meaning" the grind requires, and whether the efforts substantiate the ends.

Professions need to be balanced all around to justify the meaning. The "why" to the "what".

 

[Factabulous]

It's almost like you weren't intended to 'grind' the game, but do varied things. We need a new term for this new way of playing - I propose we make up a new word for this - I think game-play would cover it (as it's what happens when you play the game). I'm sure others have different ideas...

 

[shadragon]

No it isn't.. It's a poor & lazy way of gating high-level content/features. Those features should be gated by difficult to accomplish actions and achievements... not by soul destroying time-sinks.

So please give us your amazing and complete plan of how this should be done, how it affects every level of experience from beginner to advanced and make it engaging throughout.

 

[Gamatech]

I agree with OP. I like grinding, it puts an obsticle between you and goodies without being biased towards players with more skill. That's not to say I don't think some things should be locked behind a skill gate and be hard to achieve, but having grind as well makes nice toys available to those who aren't interested in getting competitive or practicing. All they need is time.

 

[UnhappyDev]

No it isn't.. It's a poor & lazy way of gating high-level content/features. Those features should be gated by difficult to accomplish actions and achievements... not by soul destroying time-sinks.

Well, what kind of actions and achievements? Travel to SagA? Because that would be an appalling grind to me.

 

[dreamer1986]

When you see missions with rewards of 10k credits or less, like I've seen a lot tonight, and you do them just for a small amount of reputation, no, the grind is not good, its ridiculous.

 

[Kubicide]

When you see missions with rewards of 10k credits or less, like I've seen a lot tonight, and you do them just for a small amount of reputation, no, the grind is not good, its ridiculous.

Wait - didn't the 200k credits for 200k LY interest you? /sarcasm

Yeah, every game has a grind in the context of having to perform a series of actions/tasks to accomplish 'x'. But good games make this fun and basically take away the pain or reduce it. Elite really has one of the rawest grind mechanics ever, and it's likely because of how things finished up in 2014 when they were late and had to release the game with bare essentials.

 

[Dbrn47]

I'm fine with grind as long as I feel rewarded for the time. The longer it is, the more substantial the reward needs to be. I feel pretty rewarded by having an engineered Cutter, but the issue is the route to earning such a thing wasn't quite fun or interesting enough to want to do it again to get an engineered Corvette. Not that it'd be difficult, especially with this engineered Cutter, it's just a bit long and tedious. The appeal just isn't the same the second time around and it took many breaks for me to continue working toward the Cutter in the first place.

Once you've seen and done everything that many times already, it's hard to get the same satisfaction from it. I'm going to try and keep a positive outlook for the year ahead. Maybe all the coming changes will make it feel fresh and fun again.

 

[DaggerSnake]

Well, sometimes.

I've decided to fit all my Thargoid-hunting ships with a wake-scanner.
So, nipped across from Merope to Achenar, bought half a dozen E-rated wake-scanners, landed at Fortune's Loss, transferred the wake-scanners there and... I don't have the mat's I need to mod' them all.

And I'm fine with that.

As a result of this, I now have a nice little "adventure" ahead of me, this evening, to gather the required mat's, take them back to Achenar and get the mod's done.

Point is, I think "grind" can actually make for enjoyable game-play, as long as it's broken down into small "packages" with well-defined goals and rewards.
It's only when it becomes a continuous thing, with no specific objective and no guaranteed result that it becomes irritating.

Sounds like you’re just going to play Elite.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Some of the engineer mats and data are nigh impossible to find. I have no problem with things being difficult, risky, or even taking a long time to achieve - just as long as there is a guarantee that the effort gets the expected results. But with RNG deciding what is available, there is no guarantee.

I'd much prefer if the engineers offered missions to get some of whatever data or mat you need. The type of missions should be specific tot he engineer, so the Prof wants some thargoid stuffs, the Dweller wants you to smuggle something, the Blaster wants you to kill someone, Felicity gets you to scan a black hole, etc. This way you have a choice of getting stuffs the random way during your normal gameplay, but there is an alternative that gives a more specific way of of getting them as well.

 

[Chrystoph]

Add to this the fact that the Engineers are more like Steampunk non-reproducible weird science than, well... Engineering and you have something that has a lot more in common with a casino and chaos theory than the physical sciences.

 

[Tel Prydain]

The grind IS the game. If you don't like the missions, trading, bounty hunting, mining, exploring, BGS manipulation, assassinations, pirating, planet-side prospecting, powerplay or passenger missions in a Cobra, you're not going to like the missions, trading, bounty hunting, mining, exploring, BGS manipulation, assassinations, pirating, planet-side prospecting, powerplay or passenger missions in the Anaconda*. Sure, it might help you do some of those more efficiently, but the core mechanics are the same.

* I will grant a minor exception for SLFs, both with AI and with multicrew. It's the only gameplay feature in the 'end game' ships that shows any significant difference.

 

[kofeyh]

Point is, I think "grind" can actually make for enjoyable game-play, as long as it's broken down into small "packages" with well-defined goals and rewards.

This is Frontier's struggle; because those small "packages" are typically neither well-defined (inconsistent RNG) or rewarding (hours spent attempting actions to somehow be granted an outcome, that is still 'magic' due to multiple levels of RNG). That folks can justify this time spent, is lovely, but it is not intrinsically rewarding as it stands, because most would simply not do this if there was no actual pressing driver or reason.

This will forever be Frontier's challenge. Mechanics for the sake of it, versus mechanics that have an actual reasons for existing and doing; the latter tend to be more enjoyable as they foster player agency. A fair amount of development was focused on the 'repeatability' aspect, because it's designed to be a rudimentary time sink, and more thought has gone in to making it an endlessly repeatable set of tasks, that shameless include aspects of gambling to heighten the sense of reward (those crazy secondaries are essentially the cash payout, the dopamine trigger that feeds more repetition). This is no accident.

Frontier mean well, but there's a reason they are agreeing to fundamentally improve the experience; few will accept the current mechanics over the long term. Short, to medium? Yeah. But everyone has their limit; it's a simple mechanical time-sink that doesn't really resonate overly well, as it stands, and still has some horrific imbalance built in. We can often make the unpalatable acceptable by inventing coping mechanisms; but this doesn't mean the source mechanics are suddenly amazing, indeed we've had to invent to ensure it isn't. But that doesn't obviate the reality.

Engineers was designed to keep people playing for hours on end. The fact that so many base stats are broken, and such huge exceptions are permitted to continue, means this has been placed well above any sense of reasonable balance. Frontier are well aware of what is possible at this point; and yet it persists. It's created such a power creep, and has distorted to such a degree that the difference between an 'okay' outcome and 'god roll' is, frankly, obscene. And this brings huge player impact as a consequence.

Pretending this is okay, over the long term, isn't healthy. For either the game, or it's community and player base. Frontier can do better, and likely should. This doesn't mean engineering will die in a fire. But it cannot remain as it stands.

Effort asked, with engaging mechanics that are rewarded in kind, is good. Mindless repetition, is not. Don't settle for mindless repetition. Even if you can justify it, today. You may not, tomorrow. Nor should you. Nor should we. There are better ways to challenge the player base. And to their credit? I think the developer finally understands. Time will tell if that's reflected in changes.

 

[Mindphaser]

Grinding in Diablo 3 is fun, because its not that hard to get a set of armor/weapons for a particular build. Once you reach level 70 the game opens up a bunch of new features and it really takes off. Thats grind done right. You can still have fun with mediocre gear but can keep tweaking it as you play until you get a major upgrade etc.

Elite does grind the bad way. Its tedious and often unrewarding, and that G4 upgrades can have a chance to be better than G5? Thats absurd. We shouldn't have to wait until next year for FDEv to fix this, it should be introduced asap. At this point why bother doing anything with engineers until the fix is released? I hate the Engineers. The idea was fine on paper, who wouldn't want to modify their ship? But the grinding for mats, the ridiculous unlocking requirements made it garbage.

Grind can be good when its properly done. In Elite Dangerous it soooooo isn't.

 

[Brrokk]

Do, or do not. There is no grind.

This isn't just an attempt at humour; I think it's actually true in an activity I've chosen for entertainment.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Grinding in Diablo 3 is fun, because its not that hard to get a set of armor/weapons for a particular build. Once you reach level 70 the game opens up a bunch of new features and it really takes off. Thats grind done right. You can still have fun with mediocre gear but can keep tweaking it as you play until you get a major upgrade etc.

Elite does grind the bad way. Its tedious and often unrewarding, and that G4 upgrades can have a chance to be better than G5? Thats absurd. We shouldn't have to wait until next year for FDEv to fix this, it should be introduced asap. At this point why bother doing anything with engineers until the fix is released? I hate the Engineers. The idea was fine on paper, who wouldn't want to modify their ship? But the grinding for mats, the ridiculous unlocking requirements made it garbage.

Grind can be good when its properly done. In Elite Dangerous it soooooo isn't.

I play the game, do different stuff and 90% of the time I find I have what I need by the time I visit an engineer. Occasionally it means doing one thing to find the missing materials, but if you focus on playing and having fun it's a doddle.

 

[Aashenfox]

Yeh, I have to say, I set out last night to get at least 24 G5 HD HRP rolls. I didn't expect to do it in one sitting, and I was thinking, as I was looking at my inventory, and only had 7 compound shielding, 0 CDCs and 0 tungsten... Do I really wanna do this? OK, let's do it, but it wasn't as bad as I thought (funny, it never is...)

I thought to myself, right, compound shielding first, it's easy. Just blow up combat ships. So I took the FAS out of my home base (Magnus Gateway, EZ Aquarii), went straight into supercruise and started USS hunting, didn't even get more than 10ls from the house. First one was a distress call, threat 2. Perfect! That'll be a small wing of something. So I dropped in. Sure enough, a Master Vulture and a couple of Competent Eagles. I groaned about hte eagles cos I am PA/rails, and sometimes they can take a little longer than they should. Anyway, 5 minutes later I now have 16 compound shielding. Repeated, in a weapons fire detected, got loads, didn't even pick them all up (an FDL I think), got 24 compound shielding in about 25 minutes.

Now the CDCs...Inara says that you should hunt CDCs in BOOM systems. THIS IS WRONG!! You need a fed system, ideally with over 100m population and a state of NONE! This still took a little longer than I wanted, basically, every high grade USS I dropped into had ONE (so three) CDC and the rest that other type of composite, I can't remember. Anyway, after a mildly boring hour, I had 24 CDCs. Now for the tungsten. I have a specific tungsten farm now, Clota 1. Very good for arsenic and tellurium too. Land in one of the huge craters with ejecta rays, near the central mountain and profit. It';s also 1.5G, so no flying materials or SRVs.

And that was that, 2.5 hours, 24 HD HRP rolls.

The thing is once you know what to do, it isn't that bad to find the mats. Same with my G5 DD rolls the other day. First the bases, working down a list on this forum, got an average of 3 CIF per base, so had to visit about 8, that took a while, but I actually like trundling around the bases trying to do them as fast as poss. Then the cadmium, again just went to a planet I know gives lots of cadmium, wasn't too bad, and lastly the pharma isolators, the easiest of the lot, go to an independent system in outbreak and hit the high grade USSes.

I didn't feel like I was unhappily grinding at any point, really. I don't like surface prospecting much, but when you have a good location and you know roughly where to land, it isn't THAT bad. Mining is something I just can't enjoy.

If only the knowledge some of us have about collecting mats fast, were present in the game for everyone, I think there would be a lot less people complaining about engineers.