Grinding isn't the player's fault

[Shinji Ikari]

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.

Well, I've gotten very far with my "grindy" approach. I have four fully engineered ships with top G5 rolls, some others have gotten better milage. Also, I used to scan wakes in food distribution centers since lots of ships come and go away, many more than a station in fact.

Also, I have said this enough times but here it goes, those features are boring even if I don't grind them.

No u.

You go first.

 

[trigun539]

I think the key is the player has two choices:

- grind to get something quicker. Short, but very painful time due to gameplay shortcomings.
- do other “stuff” and hope that by doing other stuff you do some of the grind but it is less noticeable. Very LONG time but more entertaining.

*** Bottom line *****
Not everyone can put in the crazy amount of time to do it the entertaining way. In addition to this, the game doesn’t help you do many different things easily. For example:

- gathering materials: requirements to get 150 of X material. Problem is that now you have to have huge cargo capacity in your ship for however long you play the entertaining way until you get that amount of X material. So if you found Y g5 material you may not be able to pick it up because you are limited by cargo.
- stuff is hard to find and usually there is one location that you know (EDDB) where to get the stuff. Things are so scarce in the game it is ridiculous. Such a big galaxy, but can’t get any materials I need. Every commodity market is like a hurricane passed through and there is nothing left.
- stuff is hard to get to, so you’ll want to just get stuff done, unfortunately that means you have to grind. You can’t swap ships easily and you cannot do other actions while at a far location.

So in the end if you are a reasonable player and don’t have lots of extra time, only choice the game has for you is painful grind.

Time here is in the thousands of hours, and not really sure if you’ll get everything you want without grinding at any moment.

 

[Darkfyre99]

So I tried this out and it does make super cruising a bit better while going to places that are close to starts.

I agree. Supercruise is an example of what I consider brilliant game design in Elite: Dangerous. It's something where it genuinely pays to develop skill at, when done right you're almost immune to player-initiated interdictions (most gankers assume you'll be using the forum recommended method, and end up out of position), and with the exception of the occasional NPC that spawns out of USSs on your six, the same is true for NPCs, even the ones that spawn due to missions. And I think it's lot of fun... though not as much fun as when it was first introduced in the Alpha. Supercruise was generally faster then, for people who knew what they were doing at least, because gravity braking was much more effective than it is now.

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.

Very much true... though I think, in theory, there should be a route to distant (100 kls+) stars that faster than the more direct route you take once you're clear of the system's primary. It really depends upon how closely Frontier modeled the effects of gravity in the Stellar Forge, especially the effects of Lagrange Points. I haven't done much testing on this issue, primarily because my play time is precious, and while I'll willingly spend hours testing a pet theory about this game, I generally do that with tests that can be repeated in few minutes.

The only time I consider taking missions that feature long Supercruises is when the destination system is in a state that will produce the harder to obtain HGE materials, such as Outbreak or Famine. If I'm going to spend ten minutes in Supercruise, I might as well kill multiple birds with one stone. To paraphrase the old saying, "Play smarter, not harder."

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.

Practice and experimentation definitely helps improving your skill, and so does knowing the lay of the land. My home system and port, for example, features a double planet: Jade, a 3g atmospheric, and Emerald, a 1.3g terraformed world. This makes gravity breaking much faster, because together they're almost as good as a Neptune sized world when it comes to skimming the horizon to slow down. Saturn sized and above require you to approach perpendicular to their moons' orbital plane (their mass shadows dominate local space) while smaller rocky bodies require the "Loop of knowing what the frell you're doing."

One thing I do recommend doing is that unless you intend to land on a planet during a play session, remove the planetary approach suite. This lets you get a lot closer to landable planets without risking an emergency drop. I just wish Frontier would let us turn the darn things off, like we can do with other modules we don't need. Here's hoping that there'll be a focused feedback forum for when they do Atmospherics, where such a suggestion is less likely to be missed due to the noise.

Finally, if you're approaching one of those rare isolated stations where there isn't an (apparent) body to break with, or approaching an USS, deselect your target. Your ship's computer does something with your FSD to help you maneuver, which interferes with your ability to stop. As you get closer, slow down until you're 0.1 ls from your destination, throttle down and then reselect it. It again takes some experimentation, but it's a lot faster than other methods.

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.

As I said, this game becomes more fun when you actively pilot, and are willing to risk damaging your ship, as opposed to treating these ships like fine china that'll explode when you look at them. Remember, you're a member of the Pilots' Federation, a criminal cartel which is the third largest Superpower in Human space (sorry Alliance) and practically above the law. Fly like it.

 

[Darkfyre99]

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.

Generally, of that list, I'd say only the wake scanner (I scan a wake as I FAO out of mass lock), shield generator, limpet controller, and cargo bays are "must haves." Everything else can be equipped on an "as needed" basis, depending upon what you're in the mood for.

I generally keep a discovery scanner equipped when traveling or doing short-range sight seeing missions (which I also install a surface scanner for) in order to get some exploration scans that I can use to quickly gain rep in a new theater of operation, and an SRV because I'm still trying to get better at high-speed planetary approaches, but like a planetary approach suite, an SRV is only necessary if you intend to land on a planet. Same goes with weapons. If I'm planning on doing sight seeing missions, I don't equip weapons, because hull damage generally upsets my passengers... including the ones who offer a bonus for ship destruction.

This, of course, assumes that you have a home base, either temporary or permanent. If you prefer to drift from system to system, wherever missions take you, you may want a more varied kit.

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.

When it comes to personal goals, my general approach has always been to kill multiple birds with one stone. Plan ahead, and figure out ways complete multiple goals at the same time. Is unlocking Professor Palin one of your goals? (though for most players, I would say its the G5 dirty thrusters, and not Palin himself, that's their goal) Use the exploration data you bring back as reputation bombs to unlock other engineers, or get factions you want to allied status. Want to unlock Selene Jean, and mining isn't your thing? Wait for a good mining CG, especially one that offers non-standard rewards.

Above all, recognize that this game is under continuous development, and the current iteration of a game mechanic isn't necessarily permanent. Don't be afraid to take the long view, and pursue other goals if one of your goals is currently behind a "grind wall." Consider whether a 3% increase in speed is genuinely worth the effort you're putting into it to get it right now, as opposed to putting it aside and pursing something else. So far, taking the long view has served me well, and I anticipate that when I do start to investigate the guardians (I'm waiting for atmospheric planets, to make things more interesting) I'll have more tools in my exploration tool kit to make doing so fun.

*** 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.

If I hadn't unlocked Selene Jean due to a mining CG with a unique reward, I was planning on waiting for the more interesting, skill based mining techniques and new exploration tools being introduced in Q4 to do so. I'm still hoping that the changes in Q4 will make mining a lot more interesting than it is now. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, and this game can always use a little more seasoning.

- 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.

IMO, this is where developing skill at reading a wave scanner while flyving an SRV comes in very handy. Once you've become decent at it, you can usually find where the metallic meteorites are within five minutes or so, despite the clutter of other contacts. I'm not saying I wouldn't mind other tools in my tool kit (MB4 mobile mining machine anyone?), but the SRV's wave scanner is one of those areas where I feel Frontier knocked it out of the park.

- 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.

Again, this is where I wouldn't mind having more tools for my took box. I don't want to see micro-jumps, primarily because the window of opportunity is too small any form piracy as it is, but a device that could temporarily increase or decrease the local mass lock effect has enourmous potential both as a skill based way of getting to your destination faster, and as offensive or defensive tool.

- 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.

IMO, this is where planning ahead, as well as having a home base, has its advantages.

- 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.

This is something the player base voted for, by a wide margin. And by voting for, I'm not talking about on the forums, but via a poll Frontier added to the game launcher at the time. Why people voted for it varies, but there is a rather large strategic component to this game, and the ability to instantly teleport a highly specialized ship into a system interferes with that.

Again, this is where thinking ahead has its advantages. To quote the great Earl Bassett: "Damn it Valentine, you never plan ahead, you never take the long view, I mean here it is Monday and I'm already thinking of Wednesday... It is Monday right?"

I usually know what I'll be doing the next game session, so if I'm not at my home system or current base of operations, I move ships and modules right before I log out, so they'll be waiting for me when I log back in next time.

- 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.

No thank you. If I was interested in that sort of thing, I'd be playing EVE. Been there, done that, got tendinitis in the process.

- 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.

Personally, there are three reasons why I think rewards are too high in this game:

1) New players are able to skip over the small ships, and thus make their newbie mistakes in ships with relatively high rebuys compared to their skills in the game. This wasn't the case when missions were locked behind Pilots Federation ranks, but now players have access to missions that have rewards higher than what their ships are worth.

2) Currently, missions generally trip my "You can buy your own ship for that!" sensor. Call me crazy, but when I see a CEO offering me three million to take her and five others to another system, I can't help but wonder why she's wasting her money hiring me, rather than buying a company Dolphin, and hiring one of the inevitable down on their luck Commanders who just lost their Anaconda due to a newbie mistake.

3) Personally, I prefer skill based games, as opposed to skinner boxes. I find progress is much more rewarding when I have to use strategy, guile, and a decent plan to get ahead, as opposed to just putting in time. Current rewards are far too close to the skinner box end of the spectrum for my comfort. YMMV.

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.

There's a difference between never getting something in the game, and not getting it now.

I have the assets right now to buy, equip, and engineer my long term goal of getting an Imperial Cutter via fairly "casual" play, by which I mean I've probably "wasted" half my time on Buckyball racing, indulging my curiosity on how aspects of this works, poking my head into places where I don't belong (via roomscale VR and the camera suite) and just flying for the sake of flying. I'd probably have the rank as well, if I also didn't "waste" so much time playing the Imperial Agent, providing aide and comfort to brave freedom fighters resisting the rule of the Evil Galactic Federation.

Toss in the fact that I consider myself lucky if I can put in five hours a week on this game, and I consider myself well ahead of others seem to be, given similar efforts. And far more importantly, I had fun in the process.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

I'm not interested in having an argument with you about something nobody said.​

Dude.

It's a grind. There are how many people here disagreeing with you?

Clearly there is a problem for most.

Just because you are happy to mindlessly do the same thing on repeat for days on end, most of us arent and have lives and families.

 

[Brrokk]

Whether ED contains grind or not, the important thing is this: don't grind! It can ruin the experience in any game, not just ED. Much better to enjoy the game than have all the shinies but be burnt out.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Whether ED contains grind or not, the important thing is this: don't grind! It can ruin the experience in any game, not just ED. Much better to enjoy the game than have all the shinies but be burnt out.

Thats basically a tantamount to saying, do your progression over the ten year period the game is supoosedly going to be developed for. Thats dumb.

 

[Brrokk]

Thats basically a tantamount to saying, do your progression over the ten year period the game is supoosedly going to be developed for. Thats dumb.

No, it's really not. All I'm saying is, if you've bought ED and invested time in it as a leisure activity, you owe it to yourself to have a good time playing it! Surely that's not controversial?

If it's impossible to have a good time playing it, avoid the "sunk cost" mistake and play something else. (But don't grind there either).

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Thats basically a tantamount to saying, do your progression over the ten year period the game is supoosedly going to be developed for. Thats dumb.

It's no more dumb than demanding to do ALL your progression within 30 hours and then having nothing to do for the next 10 years.

Different players want to progress at different rates and FDev have their own desired rate. The trick is to find ways to have fun WHILST progressing.

 

[galahad2069]

Whether ED contains grind or not, the important thing is this: don't grind! It can ruin the experience in any game, not just ED. Much better to enjoy the game than have all the shinies but be burnt out.

Well, what you said sounds really cool, and there really is a certain amount of truth in it, but sadly it's not that simple.
Grind can really ruin the experience, but there are quite a few cool and enjoyable contents in the game which are undeniably hidden behind grind walls of utterly boring activities. Cool things that you are never gonna unlock "naturally" (=without grinding, just by playing the game), or only after some insane amount of time.

I've played more than 2300 hours, and yet I'm only Lt. Commander and Baron, so I'm nowhere near the required ranks for the Vette and the Cutter. Luckily I'm not interested in huge clumsy ships in the least, so I never grinded for them. But an unsuspecting newcomer could guess that 2300 hours is an awful lot of time to spend in a game, it surely should be enough for these unlocks to happen "naturally". Well, apparently it's not.

One of the very first activities I tried in my starting Sidey was mining. Nice scenic areas, relaxing activity, the artwork is beautifully done, and it was a good practice where I could learn the basics about how to control the ship. But after a half an hour, when I realized how boring it was basically, I decided that I wasn't really cut out for that job after all. Another one was exploration. To be able to go anywhere freely in a galaxy of 400 billion star systems sounds pretty exciting, but after my first 1000 Ly trip I realized how utterly boring it was (for me, at least): basically it's just staring at the exact same loading screen countless times, with hardly anything to do in between.

So I'm really not much of a miner or an explorer, but it turned out that I happen to enjoy pewpew very much, thanks to the really cool flight model of ED. I've been enjoying it even more since I unlocked Palin for the G5 dirty drives. But in order to unlock him, I had to do that bloody 5000 Ly trip, which I would never have done otherwise, so there was zero chance I could unlock him "naturally". The same applies to Selene Jean. Her armour and HRP mods are pretty mandatory if you don't want to remain handicapped forever against your engineered opponents by a very large margin, and you have to mine 500 tons of ore for the unlock, which I would never, ever have done "naturally", were it not for that requirement.

The case of the Guardian weapons is somewhat similar. You either grind for them, or reconcile yourself to not using them, ever (unless the requirements are changed, that is). I've been to a Guardian ruin once. I decided not to grind for those weapons, so there's no chance I'll do all the scanning ever again. As things stand now, I'll never have the chance of unlocking those modules "naturally".

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

No, it's really not. All I'm saying is, if you've bought ED and invested time in it as a leisure activity, you owe it to yourself to have a good time playing it! Surely that's not controversial?

If it's impossible to have a good time playing it, avoid the "sunk cost" mistake and play something else. (But don't grind there either).

It kinda is... To even design a game that almost demands several thousand hours in this day and age is a little dumb. Im all for working for stuff in a game, but grind = challenge is not a good model, it should be challenge = grind.

Unfortunatly i did my grind before really realising just how long it took. At this point i only have a couple of ships to do, but it is also at this point i realise just how much time that required.

If FDev want thier game to grow, removal of some of the grindy bits and implementation of more challenging methods of proggresion need to be implemented. I cannont count how many people i've met who left a week later, simply due to the grind, no other reason.