Grinding isn't the player's fault

[TheMegaTurnip]

Lol, I don't grind.

Good for you. you are not the be all and end all of Elite.

The game is literally built to be a grind. If you can delude yourself into denying that reality, thats fine, but don't try to mock those who refuse to lie to themselves. Get me?

 

[Stigbob]

Good for you. you are not the be all and end all of Elite.

The game is literally built to be a grind. If you can delude yourself into denying that reality, thats fine, but don't try to mock those who refuse to lie to themselves. Get me?

No, you are clearly wrong as I don't grind. It's built to allow choice and does so "blaze your own trail".

Some people just choose to grind, then choose to complain about the grind, then choose to blame other people for that, then choose to get sniffy when people say "why don't you stop doing the entirely optional thing you say you don't like". Just embrace your chosen playing style, or change it.

 

[WeavingBird1917]

ED's a niche game hence the twenty year space hiatus. So lots of people will detest it (especially if they bought based off other peoples opinions instead of their own preferences). You should also laugh at anyone with thousands of hours played complaining it's a mile wide and an inch deep.

It's still one of the biggest games on steam four years after launch though so it can't be as bad as some people like to make out.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/438947-Best-selling-games-on-steam-in-2018

Sure, it might be a niche game. But it's not the only niche game on the Steam store. which is my point. There are many other simulator/grind type games (eg: American Truck Sim and Euro Truck Sim 2) which has perfect scores on Steam. Also, they both rank in the Silver top selling games from that link, ED is bronze.

I kind of disagree that the game is so big, that it warrants that the game can't be as bad as some make out. Since the stats are based on Steam only, we can use the Steam player count to determine this. Looking at the player count, it is much smaller than the number of players on Truckers Multiplayer, which is a 3rd party mod for truck sim that I don't even use.

I'm sorry for comparing to truck sim all the time lol, but it's the same kind of niche game too, and it banks on repetitiveness. It's basically ED, but just the driving and trading part. I would also argue that the more players there are, the more accurate the actual rating of the game is. In stats, higher sample space = more accurate result.

Similar to above, people are more likely to give negative reviews than positive reviews. If there is something to criticise in a game, people will.

As for those negative reviews, seriously, just go read them. Perhaps 1 in 10 is actually worth reading. The rest seem to be written either by morons, people who didn't pay any attention to what they were buying, or children - or possible all of the above. Once when someone was making the "look at the Steam reviews argument" i went through the last 10 negative reviews and broke them down. There was 1 that was actually a well thought out critique of the game that was balanced, gave credit where due, and was negative where due, and was useful feedback for the devs. Pretty similar with forum posts as well.

It is true that people tend to leave more negative reviews than good ones. However, a Steam rating of 6/10 is still unusual, even for MMO games (multiplayer games with players who rage all the time, blaming the game for their lack of skill).

When reading Steam reviews, sort by most helpful. I myself would have left a positive review, probably mentioned grind parts. It's really 50/50 that talk about the grind, in the first 30 posts. I disagree that Steam reviews are broken, they're actually a really effective and succinct way of seeing what the game is like generally. I'm sure FDevs would use them instead of forums.

 

[Stigbob]

Sure, it might be a niche game. But it's not the only niche game on the Steam store. which is my point. There are many other simulator/grind type games (eg: American Truck Sim and Euro Truck Sim 2) which has perfect scores on Steam. Also, they both rank in the Silver top selling games from that link, ED is bronze.

It's the space thing that makes it niche, being a massive open galaxy space game is even more niche. The whole space games thing died for a couple of decades as they just don't sell to that many people. Freespace2 regarded as one of the best and most technically polished (for it's time) ever hardly sold at all. I was reading a thing about COD:IW and how some of the fanbase didn't like it because they regard space as being geeky, even though they are gamers themselves.

Four years post release bronze is good, for a niche game it's great it also tends to break the DOOMED myth.

I kind of disagree that the game is so big, that it warrants that the game can't be as bad as some make out. Since the stats are based on Steam only, we can use the Steam player count to determine this. Looking at the player count, it is much smaller than the number of players on Truckers Multiplayer, which is a 3rd party mod for truck sim that I don't even use.

I mean the size of the inhabited bubble, and all the uninhabited systems it's literally astronomical something like 19,000 inhabited systems. When you have that much stuff it can't be done on an individual handcrafted basis as there just isn't time, so you get PG creation which means variations on a limited theme.

There's about 20 towns and villages in Skyrim the NPC's all say the same few lines and do the same few things, scale it up massively and it would be even more limited.

I'm sorry for comparing to truck sim all the time lol, but it's the same kind of niche game too, and it banks on repetitiveness. It's basically ED, but just the driving and trading part. I would also argue that the more players there are, the more accurate the actual rating of the game is. In stats, higher sample space = more accurate result.

I don't know, anyone with thousands of hours played or none at all isn't really to be taken seriously IMO and that's a huge chunk of those reviews. Review bombing has also been a thing if the people who claimed they were doing it were telling the truth.

Personally I tend to really dislike the more popular fashionable games, so review scores don't matter that much to me.

 

[House0fDerp]

Glass houses and whatnot.

One directly affects the ability to see text, the other a nitpick when the message was clear.

Glass houses not so much, pedantry though...

 

[Stigbob]

One directly affects the ability to see text, the other a nitpick when the message was clear.

Glass houses not so much, pedantry though...

Now you are being pedantic about glass houses.

 

[V'larr]

No, you are clearly wrong as I don't grind.

Eh, come on. I'd redirect you to my prior posts but this is getting out of hand. You're being rather silly.

The truth is you do the grind just like everyone else, you just happen to be at peace with it, doing it at your own pace & leisure, and you enjoy it for what it is, which is *perfectly* fine.

Continuing to split hairs about what is/isn't grind is getting this overall conversation nowhere.

There's about 20 towns and villages in Skyrim the NPC's all say the same few lines and do the same few things, scale it up massively and it would be even more limited.

Well...each of those 20 town's NPCs are different from each other, noticably so, even if they do tend to repeat their few lines over and over. I think there's plenty reason it could be adapted to procedural generation and it can be improved upon and grown, but it would definitely take up more time and effort to do so.

I rather hope Fdev does spend at least a bit of effort in that department, because I think Elite definitely lacks humanity in a game that is supposed to have an entire human interstellar civilization in it. Perhaps that's something that will happen when Atmospherics come around and is fleshed out. (pun intended?)

I don't know, anyone with thousands of hours played or none at all isn't really to be taken seriously IMO and that's a huge chunk of those reviews. Review bombing has also been a thing if the people who claimed they were doing it were telling the truth.
Personally I tend to really dislike the more popular fashionable games, so review scores don't matter that much to me.

Meh, there's many reasons I despise & refuse to touch steam - and one of those reasons is that their review system is completely out of control. It's not vetted in any shape or form, there's no quality control, no moderation, no safeguards against manipulation or review brigading (whether positive or negative), it's a whole lot of unfiltered nonsense that is very difficult to read between the lines with.

Take Undertale for instance. A goofy indie game that looks like it was made in the 1980s and has a bunch of silly bullet-time and narrative with some neato 8-bit soundtracks and multiple ways to complete the game.

Despite the fact that its graphics are definitely *not* 10/10, its sound is definitely *not* 10/10 (cool, but not amazing), its premise is questionable, and so on and so forth, it has been completely SWAMPED with 10/10 reviews by the tumblr indie-hippie crowd who in their reviews swear up and down that the game is the best thing ever in the history of anything.

Like, for pete's sake, it's okay to say "Hey I enjoyed this game" but clearly, nobody on Steam is given any reason to be REMOTELY honest about how they review the games they play, and it shows. Or rather, it smells. Badly.

 

[kofeyh]

Essentially a game like elite will feature a degree of repetition. It necessarily has to. I think it is really more the developer had expected players would engage in a singular way, as a whole. That is, randomly accessing every conceivable mechanic in a totally arbitrary and (in a way) indifferent fashion. Grind isn't so much problematic per-se, as perhaps the way it's experienced can be.

We'd be trading, then five minutes later knee deep in a fight in a random CZ, then suddenly exploring, finally getting a bit of biff on with another commander. A little of everything so there's lots happening.

Accept no-one ever does this, and few games even feature a capability to do this. Folks will have a bunch of things they like doing? But not necessarily all at the same time. Frontier made a punt on how people would engage with their game, and no doubt egged on by the DDF (who had some great ideas but fundamentally also missed the point that folks will be goal oriented at times) ended up building a game that assumes an almost schizophrenic play style.

Elite, fundamentally, falls apart when goals are focused on. How often do we hear "you should not focus" on a goal? Just all the time. Having goals is part of any experience for a great many people. Arguably everyone has goals; either focusing on a thing, or just the intention to have fun in a game doing whatever. Because even that is a goal. This is where Frontier found itself. Mechanics that work great if you only spend say 20 minutes on any one thing; but become increasingly more intolerable the moment you focus on a goal; the more you focus, in some ways, the worse it gets. This isn't intentional, I don't believe. Not at all. It's more the unfortunate outcome of how mechanics respond to repetition over an extended timeframe.

I think the recent guardian stuff is an example where Frontier has become aware that they have absolutely been a bit silly requiring umpteen blueprints and dropping that back down, so that in most cases, a guardian module will need a couple visits somewhere to get all the requirements fulfilled. Yes, there's still a fair bit of repetitive logging I suppose if you want to work on a few at once, but there is quite a bit less duplication of effort now.

So I reckon the developer realises this; and I imagine it's going to take them a few attempts to try and find a median between engagement and trying to extend the play a bit because the developer of course wants people to keep playing so will be at cross purposes in that respect. And honestly? demonising of people who just want to focus on a given goal is pretty sad. Goals are a normal part of life; and a game with the longevity of Elite, should probably be a hell of a lot better at handling self-directed engagement from players (ie focus) as it is game-directed (ie going with the flow).

Part of this can be solved by an increasing array of mechanics that have bite-sized engagement and returns on investment. Things like the wing missions; I did a couple fetch and return missions last night and actually was surprised by how much I enjoyed doing them as a single ship-for hire. I got some use out of Cutter, a few hours spent having some fun, being chased by a number of soon-to-be-dead Anaconda and generally feeling like I'd achieved something that session.

It was the same general feeling after a session at a Guardian installation to collect the nifty alien doo-dads for the FSD booster (which has given most of my ships a brand new lease on life). The feeling of "that was cool, I got some stuff done today". I have missed that feeling because you only really get that sense for a bunch of hours when you first start playing. I'd argue a lot of us with multiple accounts have a habit of resetting them, because early on there's a lot of that achievement feel.

It goes downhill, fast, as you come to the point where there's a herculean effort to then achieve much of anything else. Now? Those other accounts just don't get time because it's just too much elite and I need some down time to be able to enjoy the bits I engage with. I think that's where Frontier can get a lot of value going forward; mechanics that offer some little-and-often return, to go along with the slow-burn of random engagement and the long-term aspects of Elite. Both. There's absolutely room for both.

I think Frontier might get that? I imagine their challenge is more how do they fit that into the current game.

I reckon they might be onto something if they can offer some compelling bite-sized stuff to do, along with the slow-burn. Little packaged morsels of engagement interspersed with the big-picture stuff. Because that's gonna work for just a whole lot of people. And more people playing? Gotta be a good thing.

 

[Stigbob]

Eh, come on. I'd redirect you to my prior posts but this is getting out of hand. You're being rather silly.

The truth is you do the grind just like everyone else, you just happen to be at peace with it, doing it at your own pace & leisure, and you enjoy it for what it is, which is *perfectly* fine.

Continuing to split hairs about what is/isn't grind is getting this overall conversation nowhere.

You have to define grind to know what point people are trying to make, simply flinging the term into the conversation proves nothing.

Take Kurama's grindy approach to wake scanning, he refuses to fit a wake scanner to his ship and grab data in passing and instead sits outside stations doing nothing but. So that's limiting his ability to gather it and approaching it in a boring way, it must be boring because he says it's boring. I just replace my warrant scanner with a wake scanner and get on with what I want to do. It has no effect on offensive and defensive capabilities, it just reduces earning potential slightly but allows me to gather other things plus cash at the same time. Which I'm OK with as I'm not grinding money either. My way requires a quick trip to outfitting and I get on with other things whilst occasionally pointing my ship at things. His way prevents any opportunity to gain anything else at all, yet is supposedly faster.

So I'd define grind as approaching the game in a very repetitive unproductive way due to over focus on one single thing in the mistaken belief that it's faster, whilst actively reducing or even eliminating progress in all other area's.

Well...each of those 20 town's NPCs are different from each other, noticably so, even if they do tend to repeat their few lines over and over. I think there's plenty reason it could be adapted to procedural generation and it can be improved upon and grown, but it would definitely take up more time and effort to do so.

I rather hope Fdev does spend at least a bit of effort in that department, because I think Elite definitely lacks humanity in a game that is supposed to have an entire human interstellar civilization in it. Perhaps that's something that will happen when Atmospherics come around and is fleshed out. (pun intended?)

Maybe maybe not, I tend to expect less fine details and personalization in games with more bits of content. In mount and blade warband the NPC's don't even have facial expressions, that's because you have hundred's of them on screen at a time. Skyrim they have limited facial expressions IIRC, but you never see more than 15-20 at a time in the open world even less. ED will never have subnautica's fine map detail, but Subnautica's only five minutes swim across the entire map.

Meh, there's many reasons I despise & refuse to touch steam - and one of those reasons is that their review system is completely out of control. It's not vetted in any shape or form, there's no quality control, no moderation, no safeguards against manipulation or review brigading (whether positive or negative), it's a whole lot of unfiltered nonsense that is very difficult to read between the lines with.

Take Undertale for instance. A goofy indie game that looks like it was made in the 1980s and has a bunch of silly bullet-time and narrative with some neato 8-bit soundtracks and multiple ways to complete the game.

Despite the fact that its graphics are definitely *not* 10/10, its sound is definitely *not* 10/10 (cool, but not amazing), its premise is questionable, and so on and so forth, it has been completely SWAMPED with 10/10 reviews by the tumblr indie-hippie crowd who in their reviews swear up and down that the game is the best thing ever in the history of anything.

Like, for pete's sake, it's okay to say "Hey I enjoyed this game" but clearly, nobody on Steam is given any reason to be REMOTELY honest about how they review the games they play, and it shows. Or rather, it smells. Badly.

Agreed completely, on steam for ED you have "this game is a mile wide and an inch deep" by players with 2000+ hours logged. They are either very slow to recognize their own preferences or they are grinders who eventually burned out and now want someone to blame, either way I'm not bothered how they rate the game. They've also stuck player numbers behind a paywall recently IIRC so steam are not exactly paragons of virtue and an open and honest approach.

Metacritic puts the game at 77%, 80% and 80% across three platforms, which is amazingly high for a niche game which tend to be marmite so the score even there is going to be artificially deflated.

 

[trigun539]

That does look a bit faster, will need to try it out and see how much impact it has on the game while trading and running missions. Wonder how much impact it has on longer super cruise trips if not much then you have to pray to RNG to give you missions to stations close to stars. It does look like your doing something with your ship while in super cruise so it could make the game a bit more interesting.

If this does make a big difference, I would say FD has to make this an in game tutorial. Would save players HUGE amounts of time and avoid the boredom of super cruising. Will comment on my findings! Thanks for the links.

So I tried this out and it does make super cruising a bit better while going to places that are close to starts. I still felt like it took a bit too long on farther out places and you can't do much in terms of maneuvering your ship to get there faster... so that's still an issue. The gravity braking does add good gameplay to super cruising but at the same time you have no idea how much of a gravity well the planet has (maybe I'll figure this somehow... not sure). There were times where I would be too close and get slowed down too much.

Time wise it did save a little bit, but the big advantage is that you CAN do something while in super cruise and that is maneuvering your ship to avoid gravity wells although this decreases when locations are farther from the stars.

Another good thing is that you can focus on getting places faster and can be a fun goal to go there as fast as possible, hadn't slammed my ship into the station to dock faster.

 

[Vorxian]

Steam reviews in their glory or cesspit are still useful. The kneejerk of players isn't something to be ignored though. On Amazon, I tend to gravitate to products with thousands of reviews, that way, on balance, you get to see at a glance how good something likely is.

Example, if you need a travel case, there are two available. One has 4.5 stars rating with 5,700 reviews, and another 4.5 stars with 4 reviews.. I'm going to hit the first product, because like said, on balance, 5,700 reviews and 4.5 stars is a reassuring average of the general consensus. You get the oddballs say omg i ordered wrong product: 1 star. or delivery took 4 weeks! 1 star... or omg it's blue not purple.. 1 star.. it all paints a picture of the overall experience.

Games on Steam meet the same philosophy for me. I have avoided paying money for games that 70% of reviews saying money grab do not buy, or omg the grind is awful, or, too many bugs, or too many hackers do not buy. It may be that a friend calls it the best thing since sliced bread, but if the reviews put me off, my decision is final.

On balance, i think reviews on Steam of ED are accurate. You get white knights defending one side that rate solid praise, and haters on the other just slating things, but everyone meandering around the middle paints a consensus, and playing advocate from my own experience it is a fair consensus.

I know some will hate this even here, but, listening to driving consensus will point out what changes / additions / improvements will swing a few % in the right direction which would be a very valuable shift in opinion.

 

[trigun539]

Saturday morning I jumped into Achenar to pin the lightweight sensor blueprint on my way to Deciat (don't need it just think it'll be handy later as it's the only sensor upgrade I use).

On the run to the station I stopped at every signal that wasn't ceremonial or convoy's, maybe eight signals. I picked up bits that let me add an experimental to my DD boosting speed by 20mps and an FSD experimental, I got enough other stuff to take my weps from G2 to G4 and I topped out storage on three or four random mats that pirates drop. I made about a million in bounties and had some fun fights with engineered NPC's.

Then after doing those upgrades I stopped at a mat trader and swapped those topped off mats (phase alloys and compound shielding) at 36-1 for heat vanes, I've no use for either of them and with full storage have been leaving them in space but kept about 40 in reserve in case I want to engineer with them. So I also added a cool reactor experimental talking that ship up to G5 fully engineered other than guns.

A day later tried it out in random signals toping off some other mats and taking bounties, then switched to my new krait as I had now had the stuff it was waiting for (parked there already) and went prospecting to see how it handles planetary landing, scored twenty odd selenium on the way to a geyser I wanted to look at (the first 6 right out of the bay) plus other gubbins that took my G4 weps up to G5, engineered the Kraits drive/FSD/weps to G5/4 by trading for required mats. Also added experimentals to drive/PP/fsd for the krait at the engineer.

The original plan was go to Deciat in the FDL and add an experimental to the DD, if I was a grinder that's all I would have done as everything else was a result of random signals running in.

I tried to replicate this kind of gameplay and also add the faster super cruising with gravity braking to make stuff more engaging. The game did feel better and not as such a waste of time, however, to take advantage of things like these you have to have a multipurpose ship with just about everything intalled:

- Wake scanner
- Cargo rack
- Discovery scanner
- Surface scanner
- Limpet controller
- Weapons
- Pretty good FSD (has to be engineered)
- Fuel scoop
- SRV
- Shield Generator

So, I guess you can kind of make the game more interesting by using a multipurpose ship and doing all of these things, probably why the Cobra / Python / Anaconda are so popular.

There are a few drawbacks though:

- People deny it, but the game gives you goals.
- Some actions need work to make them more interesting

*** Goals ***
For example:
- Unlocking an engineer:
You think, hey I would like to have a better FSD. Let's unlock the engineer to improve the FSD. Then, you find out that you have to do many/many/MANY repetitions of something to unlock the engineer.
** many players want to accomplish something, it is just human nature. You set a goal and want to do it, but the bars are set way too high and if you focus on it (which a lot of people will do...) you are in for quite the beat down.
- Getting some weapon from Powerplay
Same thing, you have to repeat some stuff too many times
- Guardian weapon:
Still the same repetition
- Getting some "material"
This can be for engineering or anything. At some point, you have to get some material. (it is never something you have lots of, because, it has to be some incredibly rare thing)
This gameplay tends to be pretty boring and time consuming. Also, trading is absolute ripoff. Same grade material is not 1-1, it is like 3/6/16/36/ - 1. You are usually trying to get the rarest material.
- Getting a ship you like
This is just a no brainer, you like some ship and you want to have it. Well, grind some of them money or wait a LONG time to get it. With the gameplay above, while entertaining I made about 1 mil in 45-50 minutes... So yeah, it will take you a while.
In addition to this, the modules for the ship you want will probably cost you close to as much as the ship itself. So get ready for LONG play time or grinding money.

*** Actions that need improvement ***
- Mining
Tried mining and it just got too stale / boring and reward for doing it is crap. "Experts" will say, oh you can make a ton of money doing mining, but too much RNG and gameplay is too dull.
- Surface mining
This is probably more RNG's fault, the gameplay is decent. But stuff is soooo rare that you'll spend hours finding stuff. So, decent gameplay but RNG needs to be WAY better.
- Super cruise in long distances
While locations are close you can kind of improve gameplay by avoiding gravity wells and doing gravity braking. Locations longer to the star do become fairly tedious and annoying.
- Making specialized ships more relevant
After doing the gameplay above which improves gameplay within the game, you are pushed to use of multi-role ships. Basically, if you don't have a multipurpose ship you are going to have a bad time playing the game (unless it is combat and you are close to HAZ res).
This makes a ton of other stuff harder, since you tend to use the Taxi ship to move around and now it means that you need to put more "stuff" into your taxi ship to have a decent time. Or go to the place, and then wait the stupid REAL TIME at the other location for your multipurpose ship to get there.
- Waiting for ships
Don't know who came up with this one, but not being able to instantly use your other ship is absolutely bad (NOTHING is gained by adding wait time here). Whoever came up with this is a moron.
- Traders
Just add PvP trading. The traders in the game are such a ripoff, it is horrible. You can't store cargo anywhere you, so you never have stuff to really trade much and you get destroyed in the trades. You could also add station cargo storage so there is an incentive to pick up more things but not have to get rid of them right away.
- Rewards
Not sure why people complain about too much rewards here, you need a ton of money to A rate most ships. Modules costs as much as the ships themselves and you need a ton of money. This is why people tend to just stick to lower/less expensive rebuy cost ships like the cobra/sidey for missions and risky stuff. I would prefer to take a FGS for risky skimmer mission, instead of a sidey... Makes all the big ships irrelevant, only the Conda for Taxi purposes.

If you had more money, you could get many ships and have different varieties of them. Like a Conda Taxi / Conda fighter / Conda Trader and other stuff. This does not affect the game in a bad way at all...
But as it stands, you'll be lucky to have a good fitted Conda/vette/etc. Unless, you just live in the game.

I'm sure I could come up with some more stuff but too tired. And yes, the game makes you grind in many cases. You have the option to avoid it which means you will never get something in the game.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

The power play rewards wouldn't be bad if it wasn't for the rep decay. It's a model of grind. It basically serves no other purpose than making you grind. You can't play your own pace, you gotta come and continue doing it, or else your effort gonna melt away like dust in the wind.

Go on vacation? Tough luck - it's gonna waste your effort.

Have other things to do? Nope, you had better ground it - now you gonna do the work all over again, sucker.

Wanna play another game? Guess what, you pay the price.

This is grindy game design at its best. And people still argue there was no grind in ED, lol.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Lol, you can't even focus on another aspect of ED without paying the grind price for power play if you want to keep engaged in that.

Punish for not playing - that is toxic game design.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Wait a minute.. you're not playing anymore, didn't I read something like that just recently? But then please tell me what it is, that "Punish [YOU] for not playing". Because, *that* would be a helluva of brilliant game design!

You mean it went away and it doesn't decay the progress for others? It was just for me? Well, I stand corrected then.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Wait a minute.. you're not playing anymore, didn't I read something like that just recently? But then please tell me what it is, that "Punish [YOU] for not playing". Because, *that* would be a helluva of brilliant game design!

Well it kinda does... If you have a week not pulling merits, you drop rank? Kinda invalidates the point of several PP bonus' too, like Rui's buff to EXP' data, that you literaly can't make use of because by the time you get back, you'll be rank one again. LOL.

 

[trigun539]

The power play rewards wouldn't be bad if it wasn't for the rep decay. It's a model of grind. It basically serves no other purpose than making you grind. You can't play your own pace, you gotta come and continue doing it, or else your effort gonna melt away like dust in the wind.

Go on vacation? Tough luck - it's gonna waste your effort.

Have other things to do? Nope, you had better ground it - now you gonna do the work all over again, sucker.

Wanna play another game? Guess what, you pay the price.

This is grindy game design at its best. And people still argue there was no grind in ED, lol.

I do agree with you and relate to it, ED does try too hard to force you to do stuff. It is like tries too hard to keep you engaged and doesn't trust the player to just engage with the game organically. This is a bad approach and player always feels pushed and prevents them from just enjoying the game.

- Missions: they are all timed and real life timed also. (Something came up, oops lost all my missions) (Forcing play time and coming back to the game)
- Engineers: forced material gathering to high levels (Forcing mindless material gathering)
- Powerplay: decay, forcing players to come back to ED. (Forcing people to comeback to the game at the game's terms)
- Guardian: Go to the guardian ruins, etc. (Forcing guardian ruins exploration)
- Xeno hunting: Get a good ship and travel for hours (Forcing guardian grind or grind for bigger/better ship)
- PvP Pirating: Forces you to engineer.

This could all just change to:

- Missions don't expire
- Mining/Surface mining is more engaging and rewards a bit more. Being able to store stuff in other place than your ship's cargo rack is a must I think to really encourage people.
- Powerplay doesn't decay, if people enjoy the game just let them come back. You build resentment otherwise.
- Guardian: Add easier ways to find this stuff and easier to engage (Not having to do hundreds of system jumps to just do this). To this day, I have no idea how to find this unless I google it or something.
- Xeno hunting: Easier way to find and easy to engage, same as above. Also, add a way that it can happen at many levels. Beginner Xeno hunting, intermediate, advanced, some kind of threat level or something.

FD focus too much on exploits / money making nerfs / etc. How much fun did people have with Doom and its codes to get weapons / vulnerabilities / etc? I played Doom all the way through like 20 times and I tried not to use the codes and stuff to challenge myself more.

Let players get the exploits, whatever. The only thing here is that you have to make PvP skill based (Good for CQC, only problem is that the ships are kind of boring).
Right now, you get into whoever has the most engineered / bigger / most shielded ship. Need to add a way higher grades of skill involved.

Improve CQC so you can use your own ships but maybe you have ship classes which depends on the kind of ship + modules that you have on your ship. Some additional ranking would also help match people fairly.

As far a pirating goes, high sec system should protect players really well. Anarchy system anything goes!

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Let players get the exploits, whatever. The only thing here is that you have to make PvP skill based (Good for CQC, only problem is that the ships are kind of boring).
Right now, you get into whoever has the most engineered / bigger / most shielded ship. Need to add a way higher grades of skill involved.

Real PvPers use ships that are underpowered compared to thier opponents.

Most engineered yes, biggest most shielded? Only if they're a total scrub.

Get a Viper 4 man go PvP in that, it'll somewhat restore your love for the game. (Somewhat, it keeps me amused despite how much i despise a large portion of the game)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Real PvPers use ships that are underpowered compared to thier opponents.

Most engineered yes, biggest most shielded? Only if they're a total scrub.

Get a Viper 4 man go PvP in that, it'll somewhat restore your love for the game. (Somewhat, it keeps me amused despite how much i despise a large portion of the game)

Viper was a blast to play. But I can't bring myself to spend all the time just to make it PvP viable again.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Viper was a blast to play. But I can't bring myself to spend all the time just to make it PvP viable again.

Yeah i getcha.

Was literally just saying in another post about reduction of the material grind, better trade rates etc. The engineering is the single worst grind by a country mile.