I class anything playing a game that requires my active mental attention. And outside combat that's maybe 10% of the time spent in ED
I'm curious, what do you class as 'playing the game'
- Thread starter Saool
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You don't need much beyond d-rated modules and a long range jumpdrive for exploring.
Hmm. No I don't like grind either. Maybe it is down to what we chose the engage in to achieve our goals as others have said. All the things I do, I find fun. But I don't do them endlessly to achieve a goal, at least not in one sitting. I've been working on my T9 for weeks. From going back into Power Play to get a Prismatic shield, which involved re-learning the mechanics of that (and shooting Feds, which is always nice), to driving around on moons, to scanning wakes, to fighting in war-zones. I have enjoyed all of these aspects of play. But I don't sit there doing any one thing for hours. I do it till it seems less fun, then do something else. The T9 is still there. It is not going to suddenly vanish. I am not in a mad rush. And I think that, for me, is the crux of it.
I play most aspects of the game. I fight in wars, engage in the BGS, have done Power Play, go exploring, short haul trade loops, long haul trade, watching Thargoids, visiting Guardian ruins, going to places like the Formidine Rift, playing police, shooting Feds, engineering things, looking for new mysteries and undiscovered bases, even some CQC. There is so much to do I end up planning out my activities. Which I why I look upon the walls of hate for the game with confusion. Maybe it is not all the game, but rather, how people play it.
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Yes, this appears to be the only way to play at the moment, as each individual gameplay feature that you mention is shallow and lacking in terms of interest beyond the initial encountering of the feature by a player. Some people have more patience than others of course. But nothing will be solved until Frontier actually adds deeper gameplay design to the game - for example, combat missions that actually take place in a location with structures or scenery, instead of just an endless string of random blank patches of empty space/identical patches of planetary rings. Other game developers long ago worked out that you need to add variety and versatility to your environments in order to keep players' interest; in Elite, for example, combat missions could take place at abandoned stations, pirate bases, industrial facilities or ship graveyards/junkyards. That way players would have a variety of scenery and, more importantly, a different challenge each time they took a combat mission, with enemy ships placed at different points around a different structure. You'd be able to use your flying skills to evade enemies or surprise attack them. Adding this kind of thing would also allow Frontier to add more interesting types of missions, such as heist/virus upload/trench run/proper assassination/stealth missions.
...*sigh* some day, maybe they'll work it out. Then the grind won't be so much of a problem, because the individual activities - which players need to do a ton of in order to achieve goals like engineering - will actually be fun and engaging in their own right.
There's a thread floating around about waiting 30 minutes for a USS to pop up for a mission. Design like that is what makes the game feel grindy. Sure, you could take every USS that pops up for the sake of variety, for the sake of doing something more than just waiting, however, the fact is that USS still isn't popping up due to RNG. It's not fun, it doesn't have a purpose, it's just there because they decided to go with RNG. Now, it can stay RNG and still be fun if they add something more to it, like active scanning for these signal sources in some way... something engaging that still allows you to hunt for this specific signal source, without having to dive into every USS that does pop up.
It's a matter of things being interesting or fun to do when you are out for a specific something. A matter of pacing and not having your fun or immersion broken by archaic or draconian design. Things can stay grindy as many define it, they just need something on top of these mechanics to distract you from the fact that it's taking up so much of your time with no reward other than 'Oh, cool, I'm in a spaceship flying in space zomg.' For some people, that is enough, for others not so much. Neither one of those people are wrong, just different.
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I agree entirely. I have no issues at all with the gathering and crafting requirements of 3.0, save for the few remaining choke-points, most of which are HGE USS related and which, I hope, Frontier will eventually fix.
(I do have serious concerns over some of the outcomes that modding has, as affecting PvP game balance, but those would be off-topic for this thread.)
But yeah, the upgrading process itself is, for me, close to being completely fixed.
Different strokes for different folks. To me, "playing ED" means occasionally loading the launcher, waiting an hour for it to update the game, then trying to get it to display properly because FD won't allow spanned windows (window sizes cannot be larger than the primary monitor res, so you have to use various 3rd party apps just to get it to display anything useful), and if successful i then select "continue game" and "solo", to find myself sat in my Eagle space-plane, hanging around near a station. Then i try rotating the ship, by moving the mouse around. But it won't rotate, instead making weird growling noises, maybe turning half a degree but essentially broken down and unresponsive. Next i try operating any of my thrusters - so i'll open the throttle, and attempt to use my main engines to apply thrust to my ship. But it just briefly surges forward, then cuts out, and won't accelerate anywhere. So i try the other thrusters, and they're even less responsive.
Since it would take hours to reach the planet surface at this crawl, and would be a very tedious and not-at-all exciting exercise in futility anyway, i sometimes traipse over to the station instead, and slooowly fly around it, or maybe even occasionally going thru the intractable docking rigmarole. If so, then i'll sometimes scroll thru the "duh mishuns" board, grimacing at the shallow absurdity of the (ahem) "mishun givvers" and the dubious rationale of their priorities, motivations and rewards, before quietly backing out of there and maybe window shopping for 5 mins at the outfitting screen, wondering what all the different offerings mean or which is better / worse (someone here tried to explain it to me once but they might as well have been explaining the rules of cricket). Then i'll either log out, or launch, frustratedly crawl around outside for another 5 mins trying to coax any life at all out of my ship, and then log out.
Of course, i also spend at least half of these 'play' sessions repeatedly scrolling thru the bewildering array of control options, usually looking for something as harebrained or abstract as a "landing gear" key or "vertical thrusters", but i guess that's more of a 'minigame', to the main fray of up-a-bit, left-a-bit high jinks.
I'd love to regale you all with epic tales about the kinds of larks i get up to in the previous installments, but to be honest it's all very high-paced and action-packed, and i wouldn't want to upset or confuse some of our more sensitive ED casualties. I mean, 'fans'.
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Atm 'playing the game' is hitting the 'Upgrade' button 
Running Trade missions= Playing the game
Flipping the board for 15mins to get data missions so you can try to rank up faster = Grinding
Chilling out in a REZ bounty hunting listening to Spotify = Playing the game
Board flipping at a station to stack passenger missions = Grinding
And so on....
Flipping the board for 15mins to get data missions so you can try to rank up faster = Grinding
Chilling out in a REZ bounty hunting listening to Spotify = Playing the game
Board flipping at a station to stack passenger missions = Grinding
And so on....
Playing the game... hmm, starting off in a small ship, taking notes of commodity prices, study the galactic map, jump to another system which might buy some of the commodities the current station is selling. Rinse and repeat until the stick-it note you used to keep track of prices is full and switch to an off-line market tool. Feel powerfull because you now (think) you KNOW the market. Dollar signs everywhere. A new ship, more cargo, better runs... some cg's, yet another ship.. start exploring, come back for some combat fun... experience horizons with awesome planetary bases and doing crazy things with srvs.
That was about the first year or so of my ED experience and I LOVED it. Many of you did so and liked it as well.
And it's all still there.
Yes yes.. I know.. the bugs, the exploits/unforseen elements, and all those completely illogical off-worldly choices..
Now needing to 'play' the forums in order to understand what's happening all around us in-game.
No doubt many of the strangeness will be fixed/improved in time. But the question is when. And what will they brake this time?
Personally, I think everything was at its best just a little after the original release of Horizons.. as in version 2.0.something.
Let's hope for an equal 3.0.something I guess.
That was about the first year or so of my ED experience and I LOVED it. Many of you did so and liked it as well.
And it's all still there.
Yes yes.. I know.. the bugs, the exploits/unforseen elements, and all those completely illogical off-worldly choices..
Now needing to 'play' the forums in order to understand what's happening all around us in-game.
No doubt many of the strangeness will be fixed/improved in time. But the question is when. And what will they brake this time?
Personally, I think everything was at its best just a little after the original release of Horizons.. as in version 2.0.something.
Let's hope for an equal 3.0.something I guess.
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Oh, I like playing computer games, I was great fan of them in my teenage years and I still play them time till time, however now that happens not too often because adult life is much busier
My the most favourite one is Half Life 2, in my opinion it's the best games which had been ever made. I played it so many times and I dream about releasing third episode some day. They should end that amazing plot!
I also like GTA, Hitman and Alien VS Predator series, the last one from them was really good. BloodRayne is my favourite too, in my opinion it's one of the best ones in case of main female character. Chaser, Thief and Prey are good ones too.
I like some mmorgs too, especially Cabal, Shaiya and World of Warcraft. But I don't play them often because I don't like much that donating thing for such types of games.
And I adore virtual gambling, especially online casinos 888 casino and card games, it's a great fun for me too but I've never spent too much money on such games.
My the most favourite one is Half Life 2, in my opinion it's the best games which had been ever made. I played it so many times and I dream about releasing third episode some day. They should end that amazing plot!
I also like GTA, Hitman and Alien VS Predator series, the last one from them was really good. BloodRayne is my favourite too, in my opinion it's one of the best ones in case of main female character. Chaser, Thief and Prey are good ones too.
I like some mmorgs too, especially Cabal, Shaiya and World of Warcraft. But I don't play them often because I don't like much that donating thing for such types of games.
And I adore virtual gambling, especially online casinos 888 casino and card games, it's a great fun for me too but I've never spent too much money on such games.