How to fix Engineers powercreep without upsetting those who grinded for it?

[Arkadi]

I like this idea very much!

Lately I'm sold to a very similar idea: pre-build engineered ships as reward for certain difficult tasks (as a reward for certain tip-off missions for instance). These ships would belong to you but can't be insured. Once they blow up they are gone. These 'temporary' ships could also serve as a reward for certain PvP achievements like, say, after killing a number of players and /or players killed above your rating.

So far nobody seems to like this idea. Really? [where is it]

Thank you for reading. It seems this idea does not get very much attention. Maybe it's slightly off-topic.

Still - having pre-generated engineered ships as reward or as option to go with for some missions, would level the playing field somewhat I think. Beginners as well as veterans could profit from a mission giving a pre-engineered ship to go with for the mission, if they have arrived at the system with a ship not adequate for the mission in question.

I also like the "non-insurance-one-life-only" approach for those rental ships.

I personally disliked Engineers from the beginning but went through the grind never the less - because, well I wanted to stay competitive. Pre-Engineered ships would take the pressure out for Commanders like me, who want to fly a competitive ship, in critical situations, but are more casual in day-to-day gaming.

Fly engaged. Stay entertained. And don't let anyone bring you down.

 

[Mean_Mr_Grinch]

What grind? We have material traders now.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

What makes you believe that? How many hundreds of parameters does your pulse laser have to justify such a bold statement in a swarm of several hundred thousands(?) of players?

Because there are 8 different blueprints with 5 grades for each, and with 10 different special effects that add even more differences, so yes there are lots of parameters. Sure there maybe people that have similar, but am I ever going to know, is it really that important?

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Thoughts?

Power creep is inevitable with expansion packs, which along with new content, is the primary impetus to buy them. (Unless your financial model is based on cosmetics [AKA Path of Exile], which Frontier is not.)

Boiled to the base reasoning - Engineers was developed as a means to sell expansion packs.

There is no fix required. (From Frontiers point of view, IMO)

 

[babelfisch]

Power creep is inevitable with expansion packs, which along with new content, is the primary impetus to buy them. (Unless your financial model is based on cosmetics [AKA Path of Exile], which Frontier is not.)

Boiled to the base reasoning - Engineers was developed as a means to sell expansion packs.

There is no fix required. (From Frontiers point of view, IMO)

And always your posts are most reasonable, glad to see that you are more active on the forums again.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You seem to underestimate gravitational effects towards the current meta that I would especially expect under PvPers. Not sure whether it's your concern either... Anyway, I think the true effective, practical diversity might be a lot smaller than you're dreaming of - with the new Engineers.

I am sure a lot will and have gravitated to the current meta (whatever that is). But that is entirely their choice. No matter what system gets put in they will go all out to get the new meta, so it's pointless. Diversity is there if you want it.

 

[Sole Hunter]

I'm no PvPer but sometimes follow their threads. One of the most conspicuous desires there seem to be to somehow circumvent the grind of the Engineers or at least shorten the path to a competitive ship. Now imagine you could *earn* such ships by PvP activities, no further grind required! Since this ship will vanish instead of seeing a rebuy screen it not only would serve the purpose of a 'mini ironman game', it also would finally provide a true incentive for PvP activities. Wouldn't that be exactly the kind of content most PvPers are so eager about?

For what it's worth, I *did* like the Engineers in their original, randomized form but I agree with you, they're a quite debatable gimmick at best and probably did more harm to the game and widen the split between PvPers and PvEers even more. Not an all too community friendly add on...

that would be a really good solution to circumvent the atrocious grind.

 

[Mean_Mr_Grinch]

This just wouldn't work. Are you going to get a ship with random engineered modules? Are you going to get a ship built by fdev? Neither are going to more competitive pvp wise with engineered ships with some thought put into it.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I was talking about the 'inherent' (or 'natural') diversity of the former Engineers, nothing you could just chose in contrary to the static and way more unified versions we have now.

The thing is, in the old ones people would just roll and roll and roll until they got their god roll. 0.5% difference or whatever it was I don't think is that much different, it just took at lot longer to get too. All the new version has done is made it quicker for people to get to that god roll and that is the only difference.

I much prefer the new system and I don't maximise any of my G5s and none of my weapons will be G5 modded anyway as I want the NPC to be some kind of challenge.

The old engineers for those that followed the meta there was no real diversity and it is the same for this one too. What does give the systems diversity is choosing different types of weapon like Rapid Fire or Overcharged or Efficient and then putting a different special on top of that. That is what makes them diverse.

 

[Mean_Mr_Grinch]

You could choose between a wide range of pre-configured ships, preferably designed by the most successful PvPers. I'm pretty sure they would be very motivated to design their future throw-away ships as powerful as possible!

Well great, and then what? Are people going to survive longer in their plasma/rail fdl or fas? I doubt it.

 

[kofeyh]

Because there are 8 different blueprints with 5 grades for each, and with 10 different special effects that add even more differences, so yes there are lots of parameters. Sure there maybe people that have similar, but am I ever going to know, is it really that important?

It can be, yes. Because the game has obsessed with maintaining a sense of imbalance, and extremes are endlessly rewarded. It would appear, Frontier do not intrinsically believe in fair. This is borne out in just about every conceivable way possible at present. That cannot all be coincidence.

*shrug* it is what it is.

 

[Mean_Mr_Grinch]

Do they have to?

I don't understand what you mean. Do they have to what? My point is giving meta pvp ships to everyone isn't going to solve anything. They're going to get blown up just as fast. The game needs a "Surviving interdiction" tutorial not a meta ship giveaway.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

That was just a very stupid and totally avoidable design aspect of the old Engineers and I'm glad they didn't adopt it for the new ones. One possible solution to that problem could have been a simple limitation on roll counts. After that a module, or a tier, would be "finished". Problem solved.



It's way more "accessible" now I give you that. But think this through and were this leads to if you think about it as a continual process on a vector. It's clearly moving into the direction of maximum reward for minimum effort. While that's certainly desirable in real life, in games it's not and also btw similarly unrealistic.



Just another design flaw and a bad excuse to ditch the old Engineers. Limited roll counts for instance would have easily avoided this as well.

I am not a big fan of either system with the huge power creep. I personally would have either created a slot based system, so you had five slots and you could fit anything with one those slots making each weapon having a huge amount of parameters to play with instead of grades, or get rid of grades entirely and just have the special effects and make the modules more side grades rather then huge upgrades.

But that ship sailed a long time ago. It is what it is, it's far from perfect and we will have to make do with the way it is as it isn't going away.

 

[babelfisch]

This is just a hypothetical idea (not even that because it falls apart before you even start thinking about problems) and it's only interesting if you want to reduce grind for PvPers specifically, which is very debatable in itself... Or you apply the idea to PvE as well.

Anyway, if you want to reward players with engineered modules it should be tied to skill and make some sense. A random 'you earned module X' message wouldn't do the trick for me. Instead, whenever you fight an engineered ship there would be a chance that you acquire one of his engineered modules. They would be heavily damaged and the level of damage would determine how many materials you need to invest into it to repair it and make it functional again or in case of complete destruction the module gets completely useless. This would require that ships don't always explode and we can somehow salvage them. The obvious problems are the complexity of the mechanic and the ability to basically clone modules which sounds very exploitable to me. While initially it's an idea to reward PvP players I think it could only work when limiting it to PvE encounters unless the victim actually loses his modules which opens the box of pandora.

It would go something like this: You win against a ship and there is a chance that it's disabled, you scan the ship and find 'Functional Dirty Drive Thruster Parts', you send your salvage drones, which takes a while and leave you in danger of other players / bounty hunters / authorities. When you are done the salvaged parts allow you to skip one grade (or something similar). Thinking about it it wouldn't even require the removal of ship explosion.

As said above, it doesn't work. But if you want a way to quickly access engineered modules it should be something like this.

 

[GunnerBill]

This is just a hypothetical idea (not even that because it falls apart before you even start thinking about problems) and it's only interesting if you want to reduce grind for PvPers specifically, which is very debatable in itself... Or you apply the idea to PvE as well.

Anyway, if you want to reward players with engineered modules it should be tied to skill and make some sense. A random 'you earned module X' message wouldn't do the trick for me. Instead, whenever you fight an engineered ship there would be a chance that you acquire one of his engineered modules. They would be heavily damaged and the level of damage would determine how many materials you need to invest into it to repair it and make it functional again or in case of complete destruction the module gets completely useless. This would require that ships don't always explode and we can somehow salvage them. The obvious problems are the complexity of the mechanic and the ability to basically clone modules which sounds very exploitable to me. While initially it's an idea to reward PvP players I think it could only work when limiting it to PvE encounters unless the victim actually loses his modules which opens the box of pandora.

It would go something like this: You win against a ship and there is a chance that it's disabled, you scan the ship and find 'Functional Dirty Drive Thruster Parts', you send your salvage drones, which takes a while and leave you in danger of other players / bounty hunters / authorities. When you are done the salvaged parts allow you to skip one grade (or something similar). Thinking about it it wouldn't even require the removal of ship explosion.

As said above, it doesn't work. But if you want a way to quickly access engineered modules it should be something like this.

I like that idea.

 

[Mean_Mr_Grinch]

This is just a hypothetical idea (not even that because it falls apart before you even start thinking about problems) and it's only interesting if you want to reduce grind for PvPers specifically, which is very debatable in itself... Or you apply the idea to PvE as well.

Anyway, if you want to reward players with engineered modules it should be tied to skill and make some sense. A random 'you earned module X' message wouldn't do the trick for me. Instead, whenever you fight an engineered ship there would be a chance that you acquire one of his engineered modules. They would be heavily damaged and the level of damage would determine how many materials you need to invest into it to repair it and make it functional again or in case of complete destruction the module gets completely useless. This would require that ships don't always explode and we can somehow salvage them. The obvious problems are the complexity of the mechanic and the ability to basically clone modules which sounds very exploitable to me. While initially it's an idea to reward PvP players I think it could only work when limiting it to PvE encounters unless the victim actually loses his modules which opens the box of pandora.

It would go something like this: You win against a ship and there is a chance that it's disabled, you scan the ship and find 'Functional Dirty Drive Thruster Parts', you send your salvage drones, which takes a while and leave you in danger of other players / bounty hunters / authorities. When you are done the salvaged parts allow you to skip one grade (or something similar). Thinking about it it wouldn't even require the removal of ship explosion.

As said above, it doesn't work. But if you want a way to quickly access engineered modules it should be something like this.

That would be a fun game mechanic, but is it really gonna be less grindy that what we have now? I mean, I can blow stuff up at a hazres and have most of what I need and can trade for what I don't have.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

It can be, yes. Because the game has obsessed with maintaining a sense of imbalance, and extremes are endlessly rewarded. It would appear, Frontier do not intrinsically believe in fair. This is borne out in just about every conceivable way possible at present. That cannot all be coincidence.

*shrug* it is what it is.

I am not so sure they want to maintain a sense of imbalance. They have already stated that they have plans to rectify some of the issues.

I am still thinking that my theory is what will happen at the moment that Guardian Hybrid modules will eventually become the standard (all new ships will come with those instead of what we have) and they they will have their own engineered area which will only get as good as the current G5, therefore reducing the huge powercreep (there will still be some but it will be the equivalent of G3-G5 which is not too bad) and maybe getting rid of the A-E grade modules and you use engineers for that instead to create the ships you want.

 

[Frenotx]

Frontier should just make the changes that need to be made to balance the game (engineering into side-grades), and not let fear of whining hold them back. Give everyone a big bundle of engineering materials or something if some smoothing-over is required. People might feel shorted at the time, but they'll ultimately be rewarded with a better game, and need to understand that nothing's permanent in online games anyway.

 

[Freelancer Knux]

Frontier should just make the changes that need to be made to balance the game (engineering into side-grades), and not let fear of whining hold them back. Give everyone a big bundle of engineering materials or something if some smoothing-over is required. People might feel shorted at the time, but they'll ultimately be rewarded with a better game, and need to understand that nothing's permanent in online games anyway.

There isnt a problem to begin with though. The "power creep" is only deemed an issue by people who can't be bothered engineering or people who blame everything under the sun for their lack of skill but dont wish to improve.

 

[Frenotx]

There isnt a problem to begin with though. The "power creep" is only deemed an issue by people who can't be bothered engineering or people who blame everything under the sun for their lack of skill but dont wish to improve.

There is an enormous issue. If you can't see any of the myriad game design and balance problems caused or exacerbated by engineering as it exists today, then you need to work on your observation and critical thinking skills.