Grinding isn't the player's fault

[Stigbob]

Because people want to progress. The game literally never lets you forget how much grind is involved.

If it does'nt bother you, then fine, but it bothers a good 40% of the community, maybe even as far as 60%.

When those kind of percentages are in play, there is a definate issue. Thats just logic.

Moreover, take the total number of people who have purchased this game, vs how many people still play it and you'll be getting pretty good numbers on how bad the game design is.

I won't query your numbers (that doesn't mean I agree with them).

But I am querying whether or not grinding is any faster. I don't think it is because you lose out on the other bonus things (like fun) so you've less to throw at traders and can't even access that really convenient grind avoidance mechanism.

At first glance grinding seems as if it should be faster, but obviously it doesn't always pan out that way and if you take it to min-max extremes will be downright counterproductive simply because it negates any multitasking (or fun). Also burning out through grinding is the least productive approach possible.

 

[Old Duck]

NOONE on PS4 is happy. Or at least noone i've spoken too. And seeing the amount of comments and attention these posts get its a real wonder how FDev dont see the issues.

I'm curious - are you on a standard or Pro PS4? I know a few happy Pro owners, but they are spared most of the visual bugs that have driven me mad on my Slim.

 

[Stigbob]

Just look at the most helpful Steam reviews. Take the first 100, count all the reviews with the word grind in it. It's about 50/50. By the way, the 40/60 ratio he's talking about is based on the ratio positive vs negative reviews on Steam.

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

 

[trigun539]

At first glance grinding seems as if it should be faster, but obviously it doesn't always pan out that way and if you take it to min-max extremes will be downright counterproductive simply because it negates any multitasking (or fun). Also burning out through grinding is the least productive approach possible.

Could you please give an example of your gameplay where you avoid all of the "bad" things in the game, a concrete sample? I am very curious and hey, maybe I'll just follow your way of playing the game if it avoids the "bad" stuff in the game.

Also, I am curious as to what you have done in the game or achieved through your gameplay (won't ask how long it took you though, I'll probably just cry).

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

I won't query your numbers (that doesn't mean I agree with them).

But I am querying whether or not grinding is any faster. I don't think it is because you lose out on the other bonus things (like fun) so you've less to throw at traders and can't even access that really convenient grind avoidance mechanism.

At first glance grinding seems as if it should be faster, but obviously it doesn't always pan out that way and if you take it to min-max extremes will be downright counterproductive simply because it negates any multitasking (or fun). Also burning out through grinding is the least productive approach possible.

It's not so much a case of choosing not to grind, its more of a matter that you need to in some instances to partake in certain activities, or even missions.

There simply is'nt enough allowance for all the ships to partake in everythin gwithout a measure of engineering or having a ship big enough to do said mission.

Personally i've probably felt it worse, by choosing to go into PvP, however, people should not have to partake in a mandatory grind, just to access content, it's ust a gateway to keep people playing. Not a gateway for them to enjoy thier gametime.

The problem is that the grind serves the Devs more than it serves the players. You literaly cannot design a game with that logic and expect players to be satisfied with it.

I'm curious - are you on a standard or Pro PS4? I know a few happy Pro owners, but they are spared most of the visual bugs that have driven me mad on my Slim.

Pro, but I still get tha majority of bugs, jsut not the visual ones. (arguably the only ones i would shrug off with a meh).

EDIT: I had 9, yep NINE bluescreens last night. Thats not a marker of a stable game. No matter how people try to dress it up.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

You're right!
If FDev had been paying attention they would have:

Reduced the number of mats needed for engineering recipes
Removed the need for commodities
Simplified the process of engineering to reduce RNG
Increased the number of mats we can carry
Implemented a mechanism for converting mats into different grades

Clearly they're paying no attention at all.

Lol.

Wow they fixed the barest minimum of stuff that took iterally YEARS to get through to them.

But nothing about the thousands of instabiity issues or the fact that those grinds are mandatory for a good portion of the community.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Are you making stuff up?

90% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Well not really. There are enough posts on here to show that the discourse in the community is mostly based around grind and instability. It might grant player retention if the grind is engaging, but its not is it?

Hence the thousands of posts a week complaining about the grind and the constant DC's.



Have you seen the number of posts on this subject? Or do they slip by you?

People don't mind a grind, but nearly everyone is bothered by it being vapid and not engaging.

A couple of observations. The first is that people who are unhappy tend to be more vocal about those who are happy. Its a lot more normal on any forum for people to start negative threads than positive ones.

The second is reinforcement. We tend to notice things we agree with and it reinforces our opinion that our opinion is right. It also makes it easier to dismiss the opinions of those who disagree with you as being in a minority or not being worthy of listening to.

I was reading a thread on the Fortnite reddit sub the other day, and i had to laugh. The comments could have come right out of the ED forums.

"The game is a boring grind"

"The devs don't play the game"

"The devs should fix all these old bugs"

"The networking is terrible!"

And of course, loads of people upvoting and agreeing with them.

And its not just Fortnite, so many gaming forums/subreddits you see the same comments. I sometimes wonder if its the same people, who just buy loads of games and then spend their entire lives complaining about them.

I'm not saying there are not valid critcism of ED or those other games, but i'm saying that opinions are just that, and if you are not enjoying a game, generally speaking, it probably makes sense to move on, rather than expecting the devs to change to do what you want. It very rarely happens.

You can get a good idea from the Steam reviews and ED's rating. Almost all negative reviews can either attributed to the grind, or shallow gameplay mechanics. 1 in 3 reviews are negative. I mean, there are other even more grindy games in theory, such as Factorio, but you almost never notice the grind (at least judging from Steam reviews). I personally don't see how having a rating of 6/10 is good for player retention or player acquisition. I disagree that players quit faster if there isn't a grind, just look at sim games or sandbox games.

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.

Again, i'm not saying that there are not things to critcise in the game, i have my own criticisms as well, but either you enjoy a game or you don't, so either play or do not play. And I remain firm on my point that removing a lot of the grind (effectively making it closer to a sandbox) would not necessarily increase player retention, it might even harm it. Rather than people being strongly dividied, it might result in more people just giving it a big fat meh, reviews like "Launched the game, got everything i wanted, stopped playing".

With or without the "grind", there is the rest of the game there. The working for factions, powers, meeting people, exploring, doing your own thing. If you cannot enjoy the game in an early ship, its not likely you will enjoy the game in a top end tricked out engineer big 3 ship. The only concession ill give on this point is to the PvPers, who do need those things, and for them, a pure sandbox with no losses and everything easy to get would be better for them (except those who thrive on causing people loss), but there again, i also think ED is a terrible game for PvP (personal opinion only!).

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

90% of statistics are made up on the spot.



A couple of observations. The first is that people who are unhappy tend to be more vocal about those who are happy. Its a lot more normal on any forum for people to start negative threads than positive ones.

The second is reinforcement. We tend to notice things we agree with and it reinforces our opinion that our opinion is right. It also makes it easier to dismiss the opinions of those who disagree with you as being in a minority or not being worthy of listening to.

I was reading a thread on the Fortnite reddit sub the other day, and i had to laugh. The comments could have come right out of the ED forums.

"The game is a boring grind"

"The devs don't play the game"

"The devs should fix all these old bugs"

"The networking is terrible!"

And of course, loads of people upvoting and agreeing with them.

And its not just Fortnite, so many gaming forums/subreddits you see the same comments. I sometimes wonder if its the same people, who just buy loads of games and then spend their entire lives complaining about them.

I'm not saying there are not valid critcism of ED or those other games, but i'm saying that opinions are just that, and if you are not enjoying a game, generally speaking, it probably makes sense to move on, rather than expecting the devs to change to do what you want. It very rarely happens.



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.

Again, i'm not saying that there are not things to critcise in the game, i have my own criticisms as well, but either you enjoy a game or you don't, so either play or do not play. And I remain firm on my point that removing a lot of the grind (effectively making it closer to a sandbox) would not necessarily increase player retention, it might even harm it. Rather than people being strongly dividied, it might result in more people just giving it a big fat meh, reviews like "Launched the game, got everything i wanted, stopped playing".

With or without the "grind", there is the rest of the game there. The working for factions, powers, meeting people, exploring, doing your own thing. If you cannot enjoy the game in an early ship, its not likely you will enjoy the game in a top end tricked out engineer big 3 ship. The only concession ill give on this point is to the PvPers, who do need those things, and for them, a pure sandbox with no losses and everything easy to get would be better for them (except those who thrive on causing people loss), but there again, i also think ED is a terrible game for PvP (personal opinion only!).

Well yeah.. people are gonna complain when they put money into a product that has been quite frankly, half cocked at best.

As for the genral complains about the game (in ED's case) are very much legitimate concerns. The networking IS terrible, the Dev's seem to think that people enjoy repetativity with little to no personal attatchment.

The genral concensus for people making a stink is that they enjoy the game in some senses, and would rather see it improved. hence feedback gets left. Constructive critisisim is what should push projects forward, whereas with Elite, it seems to be the contrary, they fix minor things, but leave the majority of the problems to run about unchecked, all whilst showing a supreme level of apathy to the players gripes.

Yeah absolutly there is still a game aside from the grind, but to be useful in the majority of tasks in game, you need the ships and modules, and engineering, these things are mandatory to any real sort of ingame progression.

It's all well and good to be satisfied with whats there, but it's really starting to look like the majority have issues with it.

As i've said, I have no problem putting in effort to progress, but when that effort feels like its being continuously pooped on, it becomes an issue.

EDIT: only terrible for PVP beacuse of aforementioned TERRIBLE networking.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Lol.

Wow they fixed the barest minimum of stuff that took iterally YEARS to get through to them.

But nothing about the thousands of instabiity issues or the fact that those grinds are mandatory for a good portion of the community.

Moving the goalposts there.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Moving the goalposts there.

Well isnt that exactly what you did?

C'mon man.

 

[Stigbob]

Could you please give an example of your gameplay where you avoid all of the "bad" things in the game, a concrete sample? I am very curious and hey, maybe I'll just follow your way of playing the game if it avoids the "bad" stuff in the game.

Also, I am curious as to what you have done in the game or achieved through your gameplay (won't ask how long it took you though, I'll probably just cry).

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.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Well isnt that exactly what you did?

C'mon man.

I responded to a complaint that FDev don't listen to feedback about grind. No moved goalposts there.

You brought up stability issues - which is a completely different issue.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

I responded to a complaint that FDev don't listen to feedback about grind. No moved goalposts there.

You brought up stability issues - which is a completely different issue.

Did you just read that bit? Seems that way.

 

[Darkfyre99]

So by your standards, 1min launching/docking. Then spending 4mins cruising (which again, I hate to repeat myself... You CANT do anything not exactly sure if you get this. The fact that you go for USS/HGEs means that now you have changed course and are not anymore actively going to your destination) If I could send a drone/limpet while continuing my navigation, but maneuver the limpet to go to USS/HGEs then that would be different (Look, another way to fix this issue).

Also, this is 4 minutes of NOTHING. How long do you wait for a loading screen before you get upset? 30 secs... 1min... This is just really, really bad gameplay. People can be AFK and NOTHING would happen.
I think you missed the point here, the percentage of "doing" vs just "waiting" in the game is absolutely horrible. This is not excusable for a game!

I would say it’s more like three and a half minutes, during which time I can take off, scan a wake while traveling out of mass lock, jump, make my escape maneuver, look at several USSs to see if they’re with a 20 second detour for, make my breaking maneuver, land, turn in my missions, get some new missions, and hit “launch.” Maybe four if I stuff the braking maneuver.

That’s a whole lotta something, not four minutes of nothing. If you’re doing nothing, it’s your choice to do so.

You can roll your eyes as much as you want here... the real thing here is that FD managed to make SHIP FLYING boring, that's quite an achievement.

Only to those who insist on flying like the proverbial elderly grandmother. Flying fast, and pushing your skills and ship to their limits, I find to be quite fun. As the old saying goes, “If you’re not willing to damage your ship, you’re not really in a hurry.

Again... fix INTERDICTIONS not slow the stupid game for everybody!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOW people just don't understand... [where is it]

I get it. You fly slow. Not everyone has that problem.

Rewards are absolute crap, why do you think people do gold rushes? Because making money sucks in this game. EASY FIX: updated missions so they pay more... not hard rocket science, no complicated programming. Fixes all of the stupid nerfing that they do and makes their game better...

Twenty million an hour flying an Asp X is an absurd amount to make IMO, and that’s without using exploits.

Yes the game forces all of these things... it is called playing the game. You HAVE to do all of these things to PLAY the game. I choose not to play the game until they fix most of this crap, I value my time too much even for games to just sit around doing nothing WHILE playing a game!

It is really/really crazy to me that I feel like my time is WASTED playing a game. Even more that you somehow find excuses for such bad gameplay :S

If that’s the case, you’ve made the right choice. Personally, I think most of your pain is self inflicted, purely due to how you choose to engage, or not to engage, with this game. YMMV.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Only to those who insist on flying like the proverbial elderly grandmother. Flying fast, and pushing your skills and ship to their limits, I find to be quite fun. As the old saying goes, “If you’re not willing to damage your ship, you’re not really in a hurry.

If that’s the case, you’ve made the right choice. Personally, I think most of your pain is self inflicted, purely due to how you choose to engage, or not to engage, with this game. YMMV.

I agree with the first quote. Don't bore yourself to tears with the space trucking. Go blast some *****.

The last quote though, is not constructive, nor is it helpful. OP has obviously made the post in the hope that something changes for the better. (Which lets be frank, It could be for all)

Shuttin gpeople down like that does'nt help anyone.

 

[Chancer]

Why is it mutually exclusive? Every single update FDev should have been doing, should have introduced more components to manage and deal with in the game. Heat being a bigger issue, more slots and options to modulate heat, more things for traders to deal with pirates, exploration that was more than just supercruising (you'd think SRVs would add to that, but no lol).

At the same time, do you see what half the forums cry about? PVP meta when it's literally irrelevant to the core game design. Space legs, when it's literally irrelevant to the core game design and would be nothing but hugely wasted asset work and an utter netcoding nightmare. Multicrew was a waste besides a fun gimmick, but is a perfect demonstration of the netcoding mess that Space Legs would be. CQC is the biggest joke of it all, because it's such a great design that literally has nothing to do with the game. Powerplay is literally just player BGS but to motivate players to join it the only thing interesting is literally a 4 week time gated lock of a single module that's interesting in the game when the rest of powerplay literally has no significance.

Yet, people spend so much time focusing on these aspects without aiming to improve or further integrate them AFTER their release. They also look more forward to smoke and mirrors of hypothetial "what ifs" of game design without knowing a single thing about what goes into game design. Fdev subsequently listens to this feedback and of course they're going to design meaningless arbitrary nonsense because I don't think they know how to handle a proper multiplayer game. Elite Dangerous still remains an okay space sim but with the depth of an arcade game that also has multiplayer.

The community is as much to blame as FDev is if you ask me. Frankly, I think if FDev didn't have to listen to players at all and have to ride off of gimmick updates that have added nothing to the game, I think they might have done a better job with the overall game content instead of the primitive core gameplay loop that has been almost identical since 1.0 released, except made even easier by making payouts over 10X what they used to be on average, while people are still debating about PVP in Open and Solo and all that hot mess of nonsense.

Players scream for multicrew then go back to their regularly scheduled grind and wonder why Elite isn't doing so well. It's because half the community screamed for it like children without really thinking for a moment that maybe if the first 1.X --> 2.4 updates should have been spent on exactly what 3.0 and onwards is trying to do now. Improved, revamped exploration, improved mining (of all the professions this is the one I believed that required the least change), with engineers turned from a stupid RNG gamble into an actual and logical progression of increasing power (the balance of the game is still subsequently ruined from it, but that's here to say.) Call engineers a grind but at least now when you invest time and effort into the "grind" you actually get somewhere. Exchange rates are perfectly balanced so its better to outright pursue a source of the material you need but you still have the option to exchange extraneous mats at a lesser rate. Every investment actually matters, and progresses you onward instead of the old gambling system.

THAT is an example of FDev's improvement. It's 30 steps forward from the previous system and is actually bearable now. But every update prior to 3.0 didn't do much of any of that except break their game. It's been a long rough road but FDev is making some level of improvement, but they still have a long ways to go. Especially given the recent fiasco of nerfing wing assassination missions to be on par with regular assassination mission pay, claiming it was because it impacted player progression. Sure FDev, it was the one engaging mission type in the game that took skill once you had engineers and you butchered the reward from it, that was causing your player progression woes. NOT the skimmer missions that persisted for over 2 years? NOT the ridiculous passenger missions that pay more than any regular mission for 1/10th the effort and work that are simply glorified cargo missions?

Of course, few players call this out because they only want their big anaconda ship faster and faster without actually caring about this "sense of grind." Why? Because the solution to grinds for players isn't developing a more fun game, it's getting the most interesting thing in the game faster without realizing it doesn't change the ultimate gameplay loop at all. This isn't because FDev designed their "end game" content poorly. It's because the rest of the content leading up to it IS poor, and the players don't care at all so long as they can get easily millions of credits doing the simplest things.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Well yeah.. people are gonna complain when they put money into a product that has been quite frankly, half cocked at best.

Half cocked? I don't quite see that. Yes, i agree, there are many areas i would like to see improved, but ED has given me thousands of hours of play, very few games have done that for me. Even games that have been given amazing ratings and great reviews. Same for many players. They must be doing something right and appealing to some demographic... possibly just not the demographic you belong to.

I think we can look at some of the things that generally speaking do get applauded my a majority:

Flight model (yes, controvertial, some people wanted old style Elite/Frontier flight model, but that would overall probably have earned it a lot more negativity from the hoi-polloi)
Sound
Graphics
Galaxy Simulation
Combat perhaps, at least on the PvE side.

On the side of negativity, the most common (from my perspective) seem to be:

The grind (ranks, engineers, ships, credits, powerplay).
Mission/payout balance (regardless of whether you think 1 million or 100 million per hour is right, i think almost everyone agrees payouts are all over the place)
Multiplayer functionality and features (networking issues especially), at least for those in Open. Less of an issue for those who play PG/solo.

Since the topic is the grind, let's focus on that. I'll throw in my personal opinion of course, and you naturally might disagree:

Ranks (Combat/Trade/Exploration): This one is meaningless except for a few things. Access to Shinrarta and certain engineers require you to have certain ranks. I think the Shinrarta thing should stay, and anyway, you can get better discounts elsewhere and systems which are almost as good. I think the Engineers should not be behind rank locks though.

Engineers: They made some big changes here, that in theory at least has reduced the grind massively for many, although if you go for a complete new ship it can take a bit more effort. Still, with Brokers its a lot easier than before, and for the min/maxers definitely better, or at least more balanced. There are some grinds for access, but most of them aren't bad, especially if you are a rounded player, and they are one off activities, so barely a grind. I suppose the mining of 500t is a blocker for some, wasn't for me, i'd already mined 500t by the time engineers was released.

Ships (superpower ranks): The ranks themselves are largely meaningless, and people sometimes grind for them to get the ships. To me this is a bit anathema. I like the concept. Work for a power and if you stick with them, you get access to the locked ships. I do think the current approach is bad, because of course, some players will grind like hell for them, all the while complaining about the grind. My suggestion would be to use both a time lock and mission lock. Basically something like you need to run 10 missions for the superpower per month (combat missions only) and if you do that, at the end of the month you get a combat based rank up mission. Succeed, and you get the next rank. Fail, you have to try again in another month. The missions get progressively harder the higher the rank you go. This would stop people grinding and give the ranks at least some meaning - loyalty to the superpower and you have shown you can handle the missions for the rank, not just sat in a base mode switching for charity missions.

Credits: This is a joke these days. Partially due to FD leaving massive credit exploits in the game for weeks or even months, terrible mission payout balance where easy and stackable missions exist, and partially because over time FD have given in to the "credits are too hard to get" crowd and payouts have got higher overall while at the same time things that eat credits (repair, refuel) have been reduced. Not all of the changes have been bad in my mind, but it has got to the point where rebuys are almost meaningless.

Powerplay: Well, this I agree 100% its a grindfest, and one i stay well clear of. I have no interest in running to stay in the same place if you understand my metaphor. This occurs both at the CMDR level and the power level. You have to keep working to maintain your rank, which i'm not totally against, but if you are going to commit and try and maintain high rank, you are required to put in a lot of hours, and if you go on holiday for a couple of weeks, well, your rank drops. At the power level its even worse as power borders eventually become saturated based on player input. I know this kind of makes sense, but there is little room for dramatic shifts in borders based on good strategy and there is no real way of a power with many more supporters killing off most of the other powers. The more you expand, the more exponential effort your power needs. By the same token, if a power gets pushed back, it gets easier for them to defend... again, there is some logic to this, but it doesn't exactly make for engaging gameplay for me. There is no win/lose scenario here - only never-ending grind. So as i said, its not for me, even though some people might enjoy it.

Maybe you have other areas you consider to be a grind you'd like to bring up?

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Half cocked? I don't quite see that. Yes, i agree, there are many areas i would like to see improved, but ED has given me thousands of hours of play, very few games have done that for me. Even games that have been given amazing ratings and great reviews. Same for many players. They must be doing something right and appealing to some demographic... possibly just not the demographic you belong to.

I think we can look at some of the things that generally speaking do get applauded my a majority:

Flight model (yes, controvertial, some people wanted old style Elite/Frontier flight model, but that would overall probably have earned it a lot more negativity from the hoi-polloi)
Sound
Graphics
Galaxy Simulation
Combat perhaps, at least on the PvE side.

On the side of negativity, the most common (from my perspective) seem to be:

The grind (ranks, engineers, ships, credits, powerplay).
Mission/payout balance (regardless of whether you think 1 million or 100 million per hour is right, i think almost everyone agrees payouts are all over the place)
Multiplayer functionality and features (networking issues especially), at least for those in Open. Less of an issue for those who play PG/solo.

Since the topic is the grind, let's focus on that. I'll throw in my personal opinion of course, and you naturally might disagree:

Ranks (Combat/Trade/Exploration): This one is meaningless except for a few things. Access to Shinrarta and certain engineers require you to have certain ranks. I think the Shinrarta thing should stay, and anyway, you can get better discounts elsewhere and systems which are almost as good. I think the Engineers should not be behind rank locks though.

Engineers: They made some big changes here, that in theory at least has reduced the grind massively for many, although if you go for a complete new ship it can take a bit more effort. Still, with Brokers its a lot easier than before, and for the min/maxers definitely better, or at least more balanced. There are some grinds for access, but most of them aren't bad, especially if you are a rounded player, and they are one off activities, so barely a grind. I suppose the mining of 500t is a blocker for some, wasn't for me, i'd already mined 500t by the time engineers was released.

Ships (superpower ranks): The ranks themselves are largely meaningless, and people sometimes grind for them to get the ships. To me this is a bit anathema. I like the concept. Work for a power and if you stick with them, you get access to the locked ships. I do think the current approach is bad, because of course, some players will grind like hell for them, all the while complaining about the grind. My suggestion would be to use both a time lock and mission lock. Basically something like you need to run 10 missions for the superpower per month (combat missions only) and if you do that, at the end of the month you get a combat based rank up mission. Succeed, and you get the next rank. Fail, you have to try again in another month. The missions get progressively harder the higher the rank you go. This would stop people grinding and give the ranks at least some meaning - loyalty to the superpower and you have shown you can handle the missions for the rank, not just sat in a base mode switching for charity missions.

Credits: This is a joke these days. Partially due to FD leaving massive credit exploits in the game for weeks or even months, terrible mission payout balance where easy and stackable missions exist, and partially because over time FD have given in to the "credits are too hard to get" crowd and payouts have got higher overall while at the same time things that eat credits (repair, refuel) have been reduced. Not all of the changes have been bad in my mind, but it has got to the point where rebuys are almost meaningless.

Powerplay: Well, this I agree 100% its a grindfest, and one i stay well clear of. I have no interest in running to stay in the same place if you understand my metaphor. This occurs both at the CMDR level and the power level. You have to keep working to maintain your rank, which i'm not totally against, but if you are going to commit and try and maintain high rank, you are required to put in a lot of hours, and if you go on holiday for a couple of weeks, well, your rank drops. At the power level its even worse as power borders eventually become saturated based on player input. I know this kind of makes sense, but there is little room for dramatic shifts in borders based on good strategy and there is no real way of a power with many more supporters killing off most of the other powers. The more you expand, the more exponential effort your power needs. By the same token, if a power gets pushed back, it gets easier for them to defend... again, there is some logic to this, but it doesn't exactly make for engaging gameplay for me. There is no win/lose scenario here - only never-ending grind. So as i said, its not for me, even though some people might enjoy it.

Maybe you have other areas you consider to be a grind you'd like to bring up?

As it has me, but I don't see it as anywhere near a functional game.

Aspects like you've mentioned indeed have been improved, but i do disagree on a few points.

The first beign the material/engineer grind. Well some of it at least, The new system is far better, but they need to kill RNG in engineering entirely (in the rolls) as the expense of rare materials is horrendous and you can't always guarantee accessing them isnt going ot take until the next server tick. (Though the increase to mat storage was a SOLID addition) That before mentioning the massive amount of stupid prerequisites you have to fufil to even get access to them. 500 tons of ore is a great example of this. Essentially the engineers force players to partake in activities they have no intrest in, just so they can improve thier ship to better apply it to thier chosen careers.
The second, well, kinda still part of the first, is the traders themselves. Simply put they are only useful to trade down, not up. The rates are simply too steep. 6-1 is not a good rate scalling up no matter how you look at it.

The Superpower ranks just to get access to a ship would be all well and good, but the impersonal nature of the rank grind and mission structure is what promotes the idea of it being a grind in this sense, not like reliance on RNG like Mat farming, but a grind nonetheless. If they were to feel a little more like a benificial addition, IE: Different bonus' for achieving different military ranks, prehaps in a simlar way to powerplay. But yeah I do agree with you with most of that.

Credits are a funny one.. If you have the experience and ingame knowhow, yes, you can make millions in a short timeframe, well some can, I can't, Not a credit grinder myself. Otherwise you do kinda have to rely on the gold rushes or just aimlessly wandering around hoping ot find lucrative opportunies. Or alternatively, you have to grind cash, to buy the decent ships, to grind more cash. Its a cycle that many get locked into, then, it becomes a grind, if for no ther reason than the fact that the lucrative mission typicaly arent very entertaining.

But where you say rebuys are mostly meaningless, I disagree. It might be the case for those who've used several gold rushes over the years, but not everyone has the willpower to sit at places like quice for weeks on end.
In fact on the rebuy subject, i don't think it would harm the game overly if powerplay was to provide rebuy discounts.. However now we get to powerplay..

Oh powerplay..

Such a good concept, but simply because of that which you've mentioned (rank degredation) it is largely pointless unless its for roleplay or PvP reasons. That needs to be axed. Rank degredation is yet another mechanic designed to dangle a carrot in front of the player to keep them at the grind (initially the modules, later the potential 50mil per week.), and thenthat in turn keeps player counts high and makes FDev look good. Which is a weak way of going about it IMO.

If they were to make things a little more engaging and just a little bit more realistically accesible then they would find thier player count would rise because more people would be finding enjoyment in the game. This last point is something they might be finally understanding (I haven't made up my mind yet. Beyonds total content changes are the decider), which if so, is great, but it really shouldnt have taken so long to realise fun is what raises your player count, not locking stuff behind activities that demand an unrealistic amount of time for the average person.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I agree with the first quote. Don't bore yourself to tears with the space trucking. Go blast some *****.
U
The last quote though, is not constructive, nor is it helpful. OP has obviously made the post in the hope that something changes for the better. (Which lets be frank, It could be for all)

Shuttin gpeople down like that does'nt help anyone.

That’s where I disagree. I believe that if you don’t find something fun, you shouldn’t do it, nor do I think that every game should appeal to everyone. We have different games for a reason, and if every game tried to appeal to everyone, what we’d end up with a morass of banal skinner boxes, and no developer would ever try to do something different.

I don’t particularly enjoy games like Overwatch, despite liking skill based games in general. The closest I come to enjoying a game like that it a single player player stealth FPS. Maybe it’s my age, but if I, through a massive failure to do my research before buying, buy a game like Overwatch thinking it’s something it’s not, I stop playing it once I realize I’m not enjoying myself. I certainly don’t go on Overwatch’s forums and demand that fundamental aspects of the game be changed to suit me. As long as the game gave me better returns than a night out at the movies, I’ll even consider it money well spent.

If I come off particularly harsh, it’s because the last thing I want to see this game become yet another skinner box, where players are not permitted to fail due to the game’s design. This game has already made several steps in that direction, much to the game’s detriment IMO.

ED is often called “a mile wide, an inch deep,” and I think a part of that is due to a rather vocal group of players who prefer skinner box games. The game’s Economic Simulation layer was nerfed to oblivion, due to players players not willing to engage their brains, while demanding massive profits. Supercruise received a similar dumbing down, to the point where those of us who flew optimally found our travel times increased, so that the Netflix players could get to their destination faster. I’m surprised the BGS hasn’t suffered the same fate.

 

[Vorxian]

Credits: This is a joke these days. Partially due to FD leaving massive credit exploits in the game for weeks or even months, terrible mission payout balance where easy and stackable missions exist, and partially because over time FD have given in to the "credits are too hard to get" crowd and payouts have got higher overall while at the same time things that eat credits (repair, refuel) have been reduced. Not all of the changes have been bad in my mind, but it has got to the point where rebuys are almost meaningless.

It's the only bit I am having trouble agreeing with

Regardless of how many credits you have, when you're just 'playing' ED, you're still investing time in the only meaningful progressive indicator: Credits. It's still very possible for someone to lose many hours of game time repaying the insurance for a Cutter loss, including the all important to consider cargo.

PS:Also whilst on loss, losing an explorations ship is also very costly game-time wise. I still don't know why your data isn't backed up whilst in space. It's got to be cheaper hardware than our built in holo me from the other side of the galaxy in realtime, no lag, with direct control of ship systems.. That has got to be (by definition) very expensive hardware running that show