How is Frontier preserving the Uniqueness of our ship in Beyond?

[Stealthie]

I'm guessing the whole point of the "tech broker" is because somebody got twitchy about the possibility certainty that almost everybody will be flying around in fundamentally similar ships.

Still, the tech broker is there to give you a heap of diverse gadgets and they said all modules will have experimental effects now too.

Speaking of which, is that true?
Haven't heard any mention of new EE's for modules.

 

[WR3ND]

I haven't particularly cared for nor needed to grind higher tier ships either. I haven't lost a ship since 3301 and only 5 total. I mostly just fly small ships in the game because I like the way they handle more. Got bored farming NPCs for combat rank pretty quick so took up exploration instead. I have a Python I've used for a CG (Repair Jaques Station) and a passenger mission during a bit of exploration, but haven't bothered with it much. It just isn't as fun to fly.

I don't think I'll have anything to really worry much about regarding AI and NPCs in the game, regardless of mods, since I think most people wouldn't be able to play the game if I did. In some respects I guess you could say I've already won the game, so I haven't really had the need for higher tier gear, and have the luxury of playing the game more on my own terms. I'm not here for the MMO rat race game mechanics so much.

But yeah, credits or rare materials. Sure, people can have at it if that's what they want.

Anyway, this all seems a bit of a tangent, unless I'm missing the point of the OP or something. I haven't gotten much sleep, so it's a definite possibility.

Cheers.

 

[[VR] Deggial]

I, too, am with the OP.
And I always was and also stated so in the related threads: I LIKE(ed) the RNG for this very reason!
We are in the minority, though.

But is not only about uniqueness, but also the joy of knowing, something special and fortunate happened when rolling a "god mod".
Now, everything is predictable - and with the certainty, the possibility of joyful surprises has vanished as well.
There is no light without shadows.

Sure, the frustration of bad (or even just medicore *) ) roles went away as well.
Unfortunately, people are more sensitive to frustration than they enjoy glorious moments. Additionally, those medicore moments inevitably outnumber the great ones, hence the frustration is way more present than the rejoice.
(Personally, I always felt that the time I use the god-role equipment (= the whole rest of my gaming life) does make up for the odds during the creation. But what the hey!)

-

Furthermore, the game lost (a little bit) of its long-term incentive.

With the new engineering system, there is no going beyond the end point. An equipment is done when the highest level is reached.
With the old system, there was always the chance of something better. A new attempt, even month after the initial "level of satisfaction" was reached, was alwasy worthwhile.
This is gone, too.

The need to replace the previous long-term goals is, why FDev introduced the new, slow leveling of each module from grade 1 to 5. They had to find a way to stretch the experience. Obviously, the need for instant gratification results in this feature not being well percepted in the forum either. Again: What the hey!

I'll just keep playing (or, more precisely, will start again after my current pause) and deal with the new system as it is. It has merits over the old system and it has its drawbacks. I can live with both versions.


---

*) The problem is, of course, that the average is seen as inferior nowadays. Everything has to be extraordinary, or it won't count ...

 

[Ian Skippy]

Once everyone is G5, the game wouldn't have changed one bit. It will play exactly the same.

Except you dont have just one mod per module, but different choices + specials, which leads to different ships.

 

[Cosmo]

I don't mind. I'm a communist, after all.

You don't mind people to have the personal and economic freedom to choose, own and trade ships. That's unusual lol.

 

[WR3ND]

You don't mind people to have the personal and economic freedom to choose, own and trade ships. That's unusual lol.

I was in a thread recently where someone was seemingly equating communism with satanism. It's one of those terms that seems to have lost meaning beyond what meaning people choose to give it. Anyway, just thought it was kind of funny.

I worked at a book store once in my younger years that had a book on how to identify communists in your neighborhood and the like. Wish I would have picked it up for a good laugh now and then.

 

[lmp1986]

Bigger selection of experimental effects helps to preserve uniqueness to a degree. Consider for example FSD upgrades. In the old system the only thing everybody did was G5 range increase and all the uniqueness came from whether you got a lucky or a bad roll. Now you get a choice of fairly useful experimental effects. Maybe you want to really max it out so you go for the optimal mass buff. Or maybe that fraction of a light year doesn't make a difference to you and you go for reduced mass. Or maybe you hate scooping so you go for the fuel efficiency mod. The overall number of combinations will be lower than in the old system but the number of different useful combination should go up.

Basically the new system is less dice rolling and more tinkering.

 

[askavir]

Once everyone is G5, the game wouldn't have changed one bit. It will play exactly the same.

I enjoy very much playing the same but with much faster ships that can also jump much further

As for the rest, I would have preferred a modding system where I could improve one aspect of something while at the same time getting a meaningful opposite drawback (*), over the system we got where it's pretty much always straight linear upgrades.

(*) - For instance, we could improve our ship top speed at the expense or reducing it's manouverability (and the other way around), instead of simply improving linearly both at the same time. It would provide meaningful choice and consequence, either extra speed or extra manouverability, never both. I know in the live game there is a theoretical power usage drawback, but it ends up being completely negated by the linear straight up improvements to the power supply tht make any sort of power shortage completely impossible. With this kind of manual tweaking and with actually impactful pros and cons, we would have had uniqueness (there would always be players that favored more speed OR more agility), but uniqueness based on player action and choice without having to boil down to RNG and luck. But well, that ship has sailed.

 

[RagingxPenguin]

Eh. Sorry but getting superior modules based entirely on luck is a steaming pile of.. You know.

 

[Ambroza]

Ideally, our ships will now be made unique by our choices (with the new experimental effects and the tech broker). This is much preferable to them being made unique by a roll of the dice.

 

[Oss133]

So, is the game dead again?

And something about placeholder and shallow and personal narrative and broken?

 

[dm0815]

I don't give a damn. I'll gladly give away the difference of 0.00042% in jump range between my fellow commander and me for a much saner crafting process. Or try engineering two long range rails that don't suck and shoot for the same distance, a real "pleasure" under the current system.

Unless you aren't totally melted by another engineered ship, it's hard to tell how much of a difference a mod makes anyway.

 

[Jimbodiah]

Get of that horse mate. Plenty of us have crappy mods but still like the concept of them creating a unique ship.

Well, keep your crappy mods, and they will stay unique as everyone else will get max upgrades now. Problem solved.

 

[Codger]

When I joined the game back in 2.0, before Engineering, everyone still had unique loadouts and unique ships, even though you could buy every module, and they were all identical.

Engineers messed that all up, by adding the random element. Loadouts became a guessing game, because you could never guarantee what results you'd have.

I like the new system much better. You can actually PLAN your loadout, and know that it's achievable.

There's a lot more to uniqueness than some random element being introduced. The uniqueness comes from the choices the CMDR makes in his/her loadout and style.

 

[Dbrn47]

I'm guessing the whole point of the "tech broker" is because somebody got twitchy about the possibility certainty that almost everybody will be flying around in fundamentally similar ships.

Still, the tech broker is there to give you a heap of diverse gadgets and they said all modules will have experimental effects now too.

Speaking of which, is that true?
Haven't heard any mention of new EE's for modules.

Yes, it's true.

 

[Mohrgan]

Fickle is the only word I can use to describe this entire thread. For a year people have been asking for the type of changes we see now, but just like petulant children, it's never good enough. You can't please them all....

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

… Plenty of us have crappy mods but still like the concept of them creating a unique ship.

Just don't roll that module to the max and you get your "unique" ship

More seriously. After looking a bit at the possibilities of the new system and the new special effects on non weapon modules I think the new system will offer more options for the players to adjust their ship in a "unique"* way.
While the overall options are reduced, the ability to plan and get exactly the effect wanted allows players to create ships that are build to their liking ("unique") without having to spend weeks trying to get that lucky combination of secondary rolls.
Making ship customization more accessible for more players. Since adding or changing special effects only costs the materials needed for the special effect players can try things out.

Sure the new system isn't optimal and offers only a short list of options. More options for special effects would be great and would offer even more possibilities.

Overall I think it will allow more players to get ships that are better for their unique play style than with the old system.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

OK, I'll chime in here... the uniqueness of the current engineering system is really just an illusion. Example...

I have three vipers.... one with full MCs, one plasmas and bursts, one beams and packhounds. They are all modded up for the best performance and protection, and know what, they are all the same. I mean, there are little differences here and there, but they're all the same ship. I could swap the weapons out on them like Mr. Potato Head and they would perform fine and all similar to each other.

Fought another Viper the other night, flown by a top PvPer. Know what? My viper performed fine. His too. He might have had an advantage in some percentages, but in the end it was just two vipers fighting.

Just like paint jobs and ships kits, which never get seen 99% of the time, the special snowflakeness of 99% of our builds is all in our heads.

*edit*

And I'm sure there are a lot of people who will mid-grade their mods, and have some "good enough" builds. Those will be "unique". For those of us who just G5 the crap out of everything.... it is what it is.

 

[Turbosnowy]

The overwhelming impression I get from pvpers (and I don't pvp in E: D - nver will either I suspect) is that they want a level playing field, so it's all about skill not RNG aka luck. Seen a few comments in the thread where people are saying 'Ha PVPers will be crying' - they are currently, but thats because unless grandfathering of god rolled mods that the new system wont match is removed, the pvp field will remain uneven and that makes the pvp crowd sad pandas. Of course they may alter favourability in game by having more friends than you do or whatever in a given encounter but at heart they seem to want ships to be comparable, so if they have an honarbu duel with someone and win the other guy cant claim they only won because of RNGesus rather than their awesome personal skillz and epeen magnitude. As it stands, victories can be cheapened with claims of 'well you rolled your ship before the patch etc' and so epeen droop will become a problem in the pvp section. Could be terminal. Get the game balance paramedics in.

So whilst I don't participate in pvp, I do understand where they are coming from, and further the fact that all the major PVP entities are united (from what I can see) in asking for either:

1) New system allows for same or greater mods than that possible in old system, so everyone (even if grindy) *can* get to the same level, they have balance and epeens are restored or
2) Reduce any current godrolls in excess of current mod max in new system to the current max in the new system so balance and epeens are restored.

Now given that in order to be competitive against their rivals (who automatically have the bestest possible mods ever in the old system) PVPers are driven to match that by also having the bestest possible mods ever (likely 100s if not 1000s hours of grinding mats and 1000s of wasted rolls before a top edge case pops out) they are saying, 'You know what, I spent literally months of my waking life getting my FDL to where it is but am happy for it to be nerfed so at least it is equal to the best anyone else has (mainly because of fear someone else has one that was slightly luckier than yours, possibly due to an extra 1000 rolls or so' - well to me that has to mean something. That's giving up a massive amount of time and effort, asking for it to be deleted essentially, just to get the one thing they want - Balance.

If balance means getting rid of RNG allowing some people to have something noone else can get due to sheer improbability, I'm ok with that - we get variation via other mechanics like different weapon loadouts, whether you want to go fast or tanky or stealth or whatnot - plenty to differentiate without adding in RNG to modules and weapons and crazy secondary effects.

So probably for the 1st time, speaking as a carebear I feel for the pvp crowd - I am with you guys on this, we need to get this resolved so we're all happy - we need balance restored.

 

[Lecitron]

So it seems to me with this new engineer system that we are losing something important. Before secondary rolls made it so that no two ships had the exact same stats. Now once you reach the max upgrade on a component it will be identical to everyone else that maxed it out. Most serious players will have done this in under two weeks for their entire fleet.

Gone will be the days of record breaking FSD jumps. No longer will your racing eagle/courier be the fastest. No longer will your shields be able to take just a little more punishment than the next guy. What we will have is a ship modified from a parts magazine. Not something that you tuned to be truly your own.
This makes things much duller as now we will essentially just have "S" class modules.
Never once did I complain if I ran into a ship with better upgrades. I just said to myself, "Damn, that guy was tough. Nice ship!"

Now we will have Call of Duty in space. Same ships. Same Guns. But we have to cater to those PvP guys who can't handle getting downed by a slightly tougher opponent despite screaming "Come at me bro!" all day long.

I prefer balanced ships than a broken system.

For me fdev are doing all right