Grinding isn't the player's fault

[CariadocThorne]

By definition, whose who would never ask that question aren't asking that question, so you're fundamentally agreeing there. There are plenty of ways to spend your time, but the game segments certain activities such that activity 'x' does not yield reward 'y'. Or if it does you're down to RNG to determine if it rewards 'y' right now vs the next time the dice are rolled. Or might specify you have to do 'x' in a specific way to get 'y' (IE: scooping mats from downed ships). All of that tends to vary what you'd otherwise be doing when otherwise flying.

Some apparently don't care about dropping out of supercruise for random USSs and staying around to scoop the droppings when you down a ship in a res or mission. I don't find the scooping fun personally, but to turn bounty hunting into mats I need to. Otherwise I can't get mats. So I have a choice, downgrade my experience bounty hunting, or take more time doing something more directly related to material gathering, which will be faster than scoop hunting, but inherently worse. Or we just forget that path exists (pretty much where I am).

Now is that not the game's fault? The game literally sets the bounds of what rewards what. It also sets the timeframe of the rewards. It also controls directly the "fun" of every activity. It controls how engaging each method of gathering is.

The only player controlled aspect is how much of the game we're willing to interface with but not the number of mechanics we get to use because that's derived from the design of the game. So yes, the game is designed for those who will not question the use of time as a barrier. The game's design puts potency and variety against active time that it values differently according to the activity. The choice then is to simply give up on time or "grind" and the latter is undesirable, thus the only solution is that the design was indeed for people who aren't going to think about time.

But that's exactly the problem. You are defining the worth of an activity by the material reward it gives. I define the worth of an activity by whether I have fun doing it.

If you define worth by reward, then you spend your time doing activities you enjoy less, but which grant greater reward. Yet again, it is you who is choosing to grind.

I don't have to ever ask "why am I playing this" because I already know the answer. I'm playing it because it's fun. If I ever spend more than an odd couple of hours grinding, I probably won't be having fun, and then I might need to ask that question, but I don't.

 

[Devari]

But that's exactly the problem. You are defining the worth of an activity by the material reward it gives. I define the worth of an activity by whether I have fun doing it.

So I assume here that you haven't unlocked the Corvette or Cutter, or unlocked most of the Engineers, or done much Engineering or done the Guardian grind except possibly a few hours to obtain the FSD booster? All of those activities require grind of some sort because bringing an Engineer 50 tons of tea or cigars or landmines or whatever else is quite simply not "fun".

If you define worth by reward, then you spend your time doing activities you enjoy less, but which grant greater reward. Yet again, it is you who is choosing to grind.

It is FD who is requiring those grinds for game progression. Blaming the player for "choosing to grind" makes it sounds like they have an alternative, non-grindy way of obtaining those in-game objectives.

I don't have to ever ask "why am I playing this" because I already know the answer. I'm playing it because it's fun. If I ever spend more than an odd couple of hours grinding, I probably won't be having fun, and then I might need to ask that question, but I don't.

Which, again, means you should not have a Corvette or Cutter, you should not have a fully-Engineered ship, an SLF pilot with a rank above Expert, any of the Guardian weapons and so on. Those activities require grind.

If you are saying you choose not to grind, and accept that you won't get those things, then that's fine. If you are suggesting you have obtained all of those things without any sort of grind and had "fun" the entire time, I am telling you that I do not believe you.

 

[House0fDerp]

But that's exactly the problem. You are defining the worth of an activity by the material reward it gives. I define the worth of an activity by whether I have fun doing it.

If you define worth by reward, then you spend your time doing activities you enjoy less, but which grant greater reward. Yet again, it is you who is choosing to grind.

I don't have to ever ask "why am I playing this" because I already know the answer. I'm playing it because it's fun. If I ever spend more than an odd couple of hours grinding, I probably won't be having fun, and then I might need to ask that question, but I don't.

Quite the contrary, I'm defining the act as grinding specifically because I'm evaluating how fun I find it. The activities done only for materials are resultingly garbage that constitutes the "grind." So your logic here doesn't actually apply, because I'd rather not grind, but I'd also like to have cool stuff in game. As it currently stands I chose not to have that stuff because the process is IMHO terrible.

When I do engage in grindy activities I find myself asking that question, when I don't I don't move towards certain goals. There is little middle ground that will be achieved in a time I'm willing to invest and the game sets the standard for that investment. I don't.

 

[trigun539]

But it's only a grind if you set those big ships or maxed engineering as your target. And even then you will eventually get them without grinding if you just play the game. Well, engineering will probably require a little grind, but even then not much.

I unlocked nearly all engineers to G5 and engineered my first 2 ships to mostly G3 or G4 with almost no grind, simply because I didn't rush to engineer everything the second engineers came out, just kept playing the game, and I soon had far more of most materials than I needed. Only had to grind when I wanted to build my Krait up to full G5, and by then I'd had years of gathering materials along the way, so it's taken me less than 4 hours of grinding to have everything G5 except my SCB, because I'm only Master combat rank. Selene Jean and Marco Qwent were the only unlocks which felt like grinding, the rest I mostly did a bit at a time, while doing other stuff in the area.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GRIND. If you really want to get big ships or G5 engineering as early as possible, that's entirely up to you. No-one is making you do it, except yourself.

You can deny that all you want, but when you find the game boring, and people like me who choose not to grind (mostly at least), still don't find the game boring, the proof is right there.

I guess you are just ok with the game and that’s fine (very low expectations and I guess a lot of g time or you just don’t care about doing anything in the game - this is still fine). But why push that down all the throats of other players. Why is it so BAD for the game to reward you more, why is it BAD for the game to not make you repeat stuff to an absurd degree? Why is it so bad for the game to decrease the ridiculous engineer/guardian grind? Just give me an ACTUAL valid reason. And yes this is BAD gameplay.

 

[Sole Hunter]

I’ll see you guys on page 50 once this degrades from philosophical debates about choice into name calling and rank shaming. I’ll keep the beer cold.

Same here, i'll let the space truck dads stuck in 1984 spew all their non sense for once and laugh in my corner at the shear idiocy of their comments.

 

[Kubicide]

I would like to chip in on this one.

Like many others here I've played a lot of games over the last 35 years. I'm going to say that Elite Dangerous has no more gameplay to it than the first Frontier did. Missions, planet landing, variety of ships, crew. There has been no gameplay advancement on this game, that came on a 720k floppy, even with all the resources. Sure it looks better. Occasionally you can fight other people, but my disappointment with Dangerous is that apparently the BGS is somehow considered "enough" for gameplay.

My view is that it isn't.

I have enjoyed parts of Elite Dangerous, but I'm now hitting the end of my playing cycle without actually doing anything significant. And that's it on the nail. I'm insignificant. I've upgraded several ships, made some virtual money, done a bit of PP, but I have "achieved" nothing. I've spent most of the time performing repetitive tasks to feel competitive, and now I'm either winning easily or losing easily because ship imbalance is just so huge.

In my mind, I need more sense of involvement in the bigger picture. I got that with Warhammer, planet side, etc

I play with 2 other friends. They're in the same position. The game needs more objectives, community goals, and ability to feel as though you can make a difference. In game, not via web blog stories.

Best post in thread IMO - rep'd. I feel the exact same way especially to the point on this game having the depth and gameplay of a game 20 years ago if that.

 

[Devari]

Best post in thread IMO - rep'd. I feel the exact same way with your point on this game having the depth and gameplay of a game 20 years ago if that.

Part of the issue here, and there is really no other way to put it, is that many of the FD devs don't seem to understand what a flight sim is supposed to be. I'm referring here to the ludicrous dev comments that they don't want to provide more than two fire buttons because they consider weapon switching for large ships like a "Street Fighter button combo". Or how they don't want to implement a single "docking" hotkey or a target-tracking "padlock" mode. Even the UI is considered some sort of "grind" in their mind, as if requiring something to take 4 button presses instead of 1 button press gives the player some sense of "mastery" or "achievement". It really doesn't, it just makes their UI clumsy and inefficient. For some reason they don't understand the difference and this goes far deeper than simply an overreliance on RNG and grind.

Really the devs needs to be given a flight-sim game from the 1990's, it doesn't even need to be a "hardcore" flight sim, it can be a "survey" sim like Janes WWII fighters or Apache vs. Havock or maybe Il-2 Sturmovik. They need to learn how a complex flight system can be made readily accessible to a player without losing any of its complexity. They also need to understand how a complex flight model can be challenging and fun to learn without requiring arbitrary "restrictions" like trying to overemphasise fixed weapons or nerfing yaw for no particular reason.

Given that many of the devs apparently don't understand the fundamentals of how to make a flight sim, and the only "progression" they seem to understand involves grind of some sort, the problem seems to be that FD either does not have the right people making these development decisions or does not have the right people providing an informed perspective on game design. This is completely separate from their issue of underdevelopoing the game. It doesn't require any significant development resources to program a third fire button or a headlook mode or other QOL features that every proper flight sim (and many "space sims") has been using for over 25 years.

Once they can produce a proper flight sim model then they can get to work in understanding how to balance trade and exploration, but when we are still looking at a game that refuses to give the pilot more than 2 fire buttons as a "balancing factor" for large ships and hasn't changed this policy 3.5 years after launch these problems are going to continue. If they consider UI itself to be some sort of "button-pressing grind" they are quite simply not going to be capable of removing or at least minimizing the grind from the rest of the gameplay.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

I've played Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, The Witcher. In each and every case your character must level up. "The Grind" is a fact of life for those who play games. No one gets a game where your character is SUPERMAN right off the bat.

It's not about the destination. It's about the grind involved in getting to the destination.

No, there is a difference, which is what the OP is pointing out. This game FORCES the grind on you, It's not a passive one like skyrim or fallout, as both of those have engaging gameloops that are varied and intersting enough to be a total distraction from even the idea of levelling up. Very, VERY rarely do i find myself thirsting for stuff to hold my attention in those games because the "grind" isnt actually a grind. It's a journey yes. But at no point are you EVER made to feel like you need to put in hundreds of hours just to see a little progress.

Thats where E falls flat on its mug. It's gameplay loops in missions are repetative and feel like procedurally generated missions (Would have been nice if at least a little masking of that fact was applied) and yeild little to no practical advancements, you watch your Ecredit counter slowly tick up, and all that can be thought about is how many more times do i have to do these missions I hate because they are the only decent paying ones on the board before i get that ship/module?

Thats even before the time spent on planets for the RNGneers. Then you get to watch all your hard work be sucked up like milk by a fat kid who hasnt eaten in a week in the RNGneers rolling process. Again, seeing that you'll have to go grind more incredibly rare MAT's because the bloody system is variable.

The whole game constantly reminds you that you have to spend hours doing stuff you find immensely boring just to access the content you do like. You're telling me there is'nt something inherently wrong with that setup in a game? There is.

I've said it before on posts, i'll say it again. Make effort to make the players lives easier and more fun, and fix the blessed bug plague, THEN you will see a massive increase in players as they won't feel like thier time is being wasted by a Dev team that actually has the cheek to say, and I quote "We don't want to waste your time."

I enjoy many aspects of E, but the majority of that comes from creating content with other players (the games best feature IMO). I do not enjoy meaningless boring repetative tasks. This is true for much of the player base, as is evidenced on these forums. Make things a little easier to access and let us get on with the fun bits of the game.

All this "It's only a grind if you make it" cr*p doesn't wash with me either. The game literally NEVER lets you forget how much of a grind it is. You want to edit an engineered module? Better set aside two odd hours. You want a new A rated ship? Better put aside a week when theres no gold rush. You wanna combat? Never fly without rebuy or yup, you guessed it, you'll be GRINDING yet another ship.

People have lives and jobs, they don't need to be made to work in a game they play to try to escape from work, if you get me.

 

[trigun539]

I feel sorry for people who chose to grind away at their big fleets.

Try it my way - one medium ship (pick the one you like the most), engineer it and kit it out for the tasks you enjoy, and you'll have a great time.

Just because the game allows you to own multiple ships, does not make it mandatory.

Lead the simple Elite life, and stop your fleet grinding. Relax! Have fun.

Just because you are ok with it doesn’t mean other people need to be ok with it. But yes, ultimately people have the choice to play or not play the game... I see this as feedback that Frontier needs to see, if they don’t they’ll just lose players. I have stopped playing the game and sucks because I got sold into something that “looks” good but has horrible gameplay (was not too far into the game...). Bought hotas setup and I now that I have spent more time on it I see it as such a waste now.

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

I've played Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, The Witcher. In each and every case your character must level up. "The Grind" is a fact of life for those who play games. No one gets a game where your character is SUPERMAN right off the bat.

It's not about the destination. It's about the grind involved in getting to the destination.

I'm playing skyrim now. You level up as you play and earn skill points which you invest in skills. You're not asked to collect a bunch of materials for hours to assemble an upgrade. Good game design seamlessly weaves gameplay and progression together.

I think ED has taken a lot of positive steps in that direction. You can earn materials in far more ways than in the past.

But they still need to work on their quests or missions. Adding more challenge and variety would help. Having more emergent gameplay opportunities in the open world would also help.

The open world map problem is a well-understood problem in game design.

 

[Stigbob]

The answer, per the responses here, is to not do it and do something else till it just happens but, per the question above, do I hit the point of getting that reward that way before I start asking myself if I care about it anymore?

And the follow up question becomes "what was the point in designing it in such a way that asking that question becomes common?" As for whether it is common, how many threads about grind have we had?

There are multiple ways of getting access to pretty much everything, if you insist on doing it a way you don't like to the detriment of things you do enjoy you are doing it wrong.

There are threads about grind in every gaming forum, in space hulk Death Wing the grinders advocate constant use of the medic with the hellfire acid resistance armor boost and resilient perks to most efficiently grind the other classes they actually want to play. They also moan they are bored and say they've been forced to do this, I suspect given any game they would gravitate to the single most uninteresting approach and blame other people.

I imagine for most they enjoy a subset of things but those things don't reward what they want short of significant alteration or doing that activity until the heat death of the universe to get what they need.

That's your problem right there you confuse "need" with "would quite like". You don't have to have it at all, let alone right now.

Same here, i'll let the space truck dads stuck in 1984 spew all their non sense for once and laugh in my corner at the shear idiocy of their comments.

I'm sure one day you'll be able to come to terms with the video game not being what you expected when you impulse bought it. I suggest pre purchase reading in future.

Good luck and Godspeed.

 

[IVAN__V]

I'm sure one day you'll be able to come to terms with the video game not being what you expected when you impulse bought it. I suggest pre purchase reading in future.

So accept that that it doesn't do what it says on the box....ok. Imagine if in GTA 5 you'd have to collect 100 hidden items before you unlocked the car stealing move..when you stop a car and pull someone out. And then you'd have ot find these 50 hidden items just to unlock gun usage..until that you're down to fist fighting. how revolutionary...Then some forumdads say ''well stop trying to make it the game it isn't bla bla burp'' .

 

[Funny]

For goodness sake if parts of the game are designed around grinding you can't complain that people grind.

 

[Darkfyre99]

This kind of illustrates my earlier point though regarding the game only catering to those who would never ask "Why am I playing this?" I've never seen a game that was purportedly a sandbox try so hard to cater to such a narrow segment but be expected to not draw any criticism for it.

The thing is, the question “Why am I playing this?” only happens when you’re not having fun. It’s a lot like asking, “Why did I do that to myself?” after a particularly self destructive bout of stupidity. If you can find the answer to that question, you’re halfway there to never having to ask that question again.

If you’re having fun, OTOH, you don’t need to ask that question in the first place. Is it any surprise that a game like Elite: Dangerous caters to people who like games like Elite: Dangerous?

Now if you were to ask “Why are you playing this?” you might get a different response. Personally, I play this game to fly virtual spaceships as fast as possible in a wide variety of environments, which requires me to hone my flying skills. This includes flyving my SRV. Everything else in the game is an excuse to do so. It also explains why I don’t enjoy ABA cargo routes more than a few times, why I really don’t enjoy mining, and is part of the reason why don’t enjoy farming NPCs (the other is I consider the infinite spawn mechanic incredibly gamy.)

That particular insight didn’t happen because I asked myself, “Why am I playing this?” It instead comes from asking myself, after trying an activity in the game I don’t enjoy, “Why wasn’t I having fun?” Once I know the answer, I wait until Frontier changes the situation enough before trying that activity again.

I’ve asked myself that question many times since the Alpha, so by the time Engineers arrived, I knew myself and what I enjoy, and don’t enjoy, about this game. So when Engineers hit, and I learned about their requirements, my first thought about the whole process was, “How do I maximize my material gathering while still having fun with this game?”

The answer is simply “Pay attention to what’s around me, and equip a wake scanner and collector limpet on my ships” There are opportunities for materials everywhere that doesn’t require anything more than deviating slightly from what I’m doing. But if you’re playing the game while watching Netflix, you’re going to miss them.

 

[fus roh potato]

There are no goals in the game - just options, you don't have to do any of them in order to play the game.

That's completely false. There's a very long list of things every player is required, REQUIRED, to do in order to bear any relevance in PVP, or to participate in Thargoid hunting.

What difference does it make if you can chose not to do something if the only thing you want to do is blocked by that gate?

 

[Stigbob]

So accept that that it doesn't do what it says on the box....ok. Imagine if in GTA 5 you'd have to collect 100 hidden items before you unlocked the car stealing move..when you stop a car and pull someone out. And then you'd have ot find these 50 hidden items just to unlock gun usage..until that you're down to fist fighting. how revolutionary...Then some forumdads say ''well stop trying to make it the game it isn't bla bla burp'' .

Non-compulsory PVP and the mode system are both quite clearly on the box.

 

[lokvette]

I would like to chip in on this one.

Like many others here I've played a lot of games over the last 35 years. I'm going to say that Elite Dangerous has no more gameplay to it than the first Frontier did. Missions, planet landing, variety of ships, crew. There has been no gameplay advancement on this game, that came on a 720k floppy, even with all the resources. Sure it looks better. Occasionally you can fight other people, but my disappointment with Dangerous is that apparently the BGS is somehow considered "enough" for gameplay.

My view is that it isn't.

I have enjoyed parts of Elite Dangerous, but I'm now hitting the end of my playing cycle without actually doing anything significant. And that's it on the nail. I'm insignificant. I've upgraded several ships, made some virtual money, done a bit of PP, but I have "achieved" nothing. I've spent most of the time performing repetitive tasks to feel competitive, and now I'm either winning easily or losing easily because ship imbalance is just so huge.

In my mind, I need more sense of involvement in the bigger picture. I got that with Warhammer, planet side, etc

I play with 2 other friends. They're in the same position. The game needs more objectives, community goals, and ability to feel as though you can make a difference. In game, not via web blog stories.

Sort of sums up where ive not logged into the game for some time.

 

[crushdepth]

Here's how I stopped the grind: I stopped playing. It's a boring game.

 

[Stigbob]

Here's how I stopped the grind: I stopped playing. It's a boring game.

Any stuff worth hazing ?.

 

[CariadocThorne]

So I assume here that you haven't unlocked the Corvette or Cutter, or unlocked most of the Engineers, or done much Engineering or done the Guardian grind except possibly a few hours to obtain the FSD booster? All of those activities require grind of some sort because bringing an Engineer 50 tons of tea or cigars or landmines or whatever else is quite simply not "fun".

No Guardian stuff, haven't unlocked Cutter or Corvette, and couldn't afford them if I had. Most engineers unlocked though, my main ship is nearly all G5, and my other ships are G3 or G4 where it matters.

Selene Jean was a grind. Marco Qwent a bit too. The rest weren't, because I didn't try to do it all in one go. Every time my normal activities took me in that direction, I would make a slight detour to pick up some cigars or whatever and drop them off. Voila, no grind.

It is FD who is requiring those grinds for game progression. Blaming the player for "choosing to grind" makes it sounds like they have an alternative, non-grindy way of obtaining those in-game objectives.

No, it isn't. You are choosing that. The game does not require progression at all. If you choose objectives which require grinding, that's your choice, the game didn't force you.

Which, again, means you should not have a Corvette or Cutter, you should not have a fully-Engineered ship, an SLF pilot with a rank above Expert, any of the Guardian weapons and so on. Those activities require grind.

If you are saying you choose not to grind, and accept that you won't get those things, then that's fine. If you are suggesting you have obtained all of those things without any sort of grind and had "fun" the entire time, I am telling you that I do not believe you.

My last pilot was Master, but he died... But like I said, no cutter or Corvette, no Guardian stuff, but engineering doesn't actually need to be a grind, if you just take your time, pin blueprints, don't rush for G5 everything, setlle for G3 or G4 in the short term, and gradually upgrade it via remote workshop until it's G5.

But yeah, over 2k hours so far, and I have had fun for nearly every minute of that. I might have spend 25 hours grinding in total over the last few years in this game, but I don't mind a little grinding. I'm probably going to grind for an hour or two tonight, because I'm not happy with my current weapons on my main ship, but I don't think I have the materials for the special effects on the new ones I want. So I'll grind untill I have enough materials for the special effects, visit the engineer and G1 them, with the special effect I want, and pin the blueprint to finish over time.

Quite the contrary, I'm defining the act as grinding specifically because I'm evaluating how fun I find it. The activities done only for materials are resultingly garbage that constitutes the "grind." So your logic here doesn't actually apply, because I'd rather not grind, but I'd also like to have cool stuff in game. As it currently stands I chose not to have that stuff because the process is IMHO terrible.

When I do engage in grindy activities I find myself asking that question, when I don't I don't move towards certain goals. There is little middle ground that will be achieved in a time I'm willing to invest and the game sets the standard for that investment. I don't.

But that is EXACTLY my point. You do not have to have that stuff. You make a choice to grind and have it, or not to.

I guess you are just ok with the game and that’s fine (very low expectations and I guess a lot of g time or you just don’t care about doing anything in the game - this is still fine). But why push that down all the throats of other players. Why is it so BAD for the game to reward you more, why is it BAD for the game to not make you repeat stuff to an absurd degree? Why is it so bad for the game to decrease the ridiculous engineer/guardian grind? Just give me an ACTUAL valid reason. And yes this is BAD gameplay.

Nope, I have very high expectations. I just define them by fun, not by getting a bigger ship which does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for me except let me grind even faster.

Again The game isn't making you repeat stuff to an absurd degree. You are.

You can choose not to do that, because this is not a progression oriented game. Progression does exist, but it is not neccesary, and you can do everything there is to do in the game without ever having to grind for progression. There is no "end-game" content, which can only be completed in a fully engineered Corvette, Cutter, Anaconda, or T10.