Don't have that unlocked.
Make the engineering grind remotely palatable
- Thread starter sprecdaddy
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Just saw you joined the forum in 2015! You've figured all that long long ago! 
Engineering offers some new options for the Vulture. E.g. two multicannons with incendiary/corrosive effects.
While you're certainly not special, I also wouldn't say you're normal, at least, compared to the average gamer. You have to remember, the average gamer puts in less than 80 hours to this game. By playing longer than a single month, you have already surpassed the average. By your own metric, that means the average player is unlikely to get even a single fully engineered ship. And given that unlocking them is the hardest part of the process, this bias is even further against the starter players.
I remember my own journey to unlock the first Engineers very clearly, and it was daunting, to say the least. I realized that I would need to jump a lot in order to unlock the engineers, so I decided the best First choice was to unlock felicity, for her FSD engineering. Unfortunately, she required a meta alloy, something I had no idea what it was. I looked it up in the codex, but the descriptions were vague. I poked around for a little while on the parts of the bubble closest to where they said the aliens were, but had no luck. Finally, I felt obligated to go look up the answer online. According to inara, there was exactly one station that was selling meta Alloys at the time, and it was over 500 light years away; and almost incomprehensible distance for me at the time. I really had no concept of what it took to explore, or travel long distances without convenient stations nearby. I poked around at a few nearby stations, but none of them had a good combination of a ship with good jump range, and a decent FSD, so it was looking like it would take hundreds of jumps to get there. Finally, again, I looked it up online, and found a good station and ship combination that would get me there in a reasonable time frame.
The next day, I set out. As I traveled, I quickly grew bored. This was not exploration, I didn't know how to scan planets, and everything I was seeing was already discovered, anyway, so it seemed pointless. Instead, all I had was a series of unending jumps, followed by Fuel scooping, followed by more jumps. To an experienced player, this might seem like a short hop, but to a new player, it's just doing the same thing over and over and over again. Finally, I got there, managed to buy my meta alloy, and realized that it was even further back to my goal.
Nonetheless, I headed out, jumping again and again towards my destination. Finally, after hours, I arrived... only to realize that this station was on the ground! I had never landed on the ground station before. I came in too hot, crashed into the ground, and promptly exploded. My meta alloy was lost, and I was back to Square one.
I quit for that day, but the next day, I got back on and tried the whole thing again. This time, I succeeded; only to find myself staring at a screen that asked for materials I had never seen before. Wake data, most predominantly. I had just spent all that time trying to unlock this engineer, only to find that once I actually got there, I couldn't even do anything with it! By now, though, I was in too deep. I was going to get this engineering come hell or high water. I flew to the nearest station, found a wake scanner, and began running around looking for wakes... only to find virtually nothing. I was in quiet, Outer Rim systems, where there was precious little traffic. After an hour fruitlessly searching, I once again gave up, and looked online. Their best advice was to go find an outbreak system, and scan repeatedly. Okay, find an outbreak system. I looked throughout the entire galaxy map, and eventually was able to find one .. again, several hundred light years away. I flew there, but after spending all that effort and looking things up online, I wasn't going to just scan a few wakes and then head back; I had already invested far too much effort, I was going to be done with this. So I sat there, brainlessly scanning wakes for the next 3 hours, getting enough data that I never needed to scan wakes again.
Finally, unbearably, I headed back to felicity, and engineered my FSD. And promptly quit the game, not playing again for several months.
This is just a glimpse into what it's like for a newer player trying to get into engineering. It's not quick, it's not easy, and oftentimes it's not even fun. It's slow, grindy, and involves more than a little looking things up online. It's bad, and could be - should be - significantly better.
Wow, yeah. My 1st engineer I unlocked was the explosive guy. The most useless engineer. Actually the 1st was the one unlocked with metathingens.
Do we have a source for that information?
There's about 500k regular players monthly, so a good part stick to it!
But I agree with you on some. The overall game design could use a good rework! A lot of good things, a lot of room for improvement.
Still, I like it a lot and many people do.
Otherwise FDev would have unplugged it long time ago.
Back in 2016, braben gave the information in an interview. Although he actually said 60 hours, now that I've checked it.
It should have been better named "Elitist" then.
More seriously, it always been a niche game, mixing hard-science with fantasy and all a bit dry by most people standards.
Personally, it is one of my favorite game of all times, since Elite II.
More seriously, it always been a niche game, mixing hard-science with fantasy and all a bit dry by most people standards.
Personally, it is one of my favorite game of all times, since Elite II.
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Obviously. The vast majority of gamers with internet access don't even own ED and never will. And of those that do, a large percentage won't like it. Just like many of the other games they own and don't like or don't play anymore. MMOs aren't even all that popular when compared to single player games. And within MMO genre ED is a small niche title.
So compared to an average gamer that has absolutely no desire to play ED, ya I guess I'm different.
However.... among gamers that actually own and play the game for +6 months I am not special and I suspect well below average in overall gaming abilities. In that context I believe engineering a ship in ED really is not that tough.
I agree completely with all of the above. It reflects my own position also.
The acceptable time required to unlock engineering depends entirely on what kind of game you expect this to be.
I spent a lot of time in Lord of the Rings Online. That has an "epic" quest line which tells the game story, taking you from starting zone to level cap. I started playing it 15 years ago and I still haven't finished the epic line because it keeps being added to. When I started ED and got the first invitation from Farseer I thought, "Oh, here comes the epic quest line". I therefore didn't mind unlocking engineers one at a time over a few months; it actually went quicker than I expected. Compared to LOTRO, delivering 50 cigars was laughably simple and quick.
I can see that it's all annoying if you want to jump straight in to the game and do top-tier combat in CZs or PvP. But I think that's just an error of expectation: ED isn't a game where you can do that. (And if it was, I doubt if I'd be here playing it).
I spent a lot of time in Lord of the Rings Online. That has an "epic" quest line which tells the game story, taking you from starting zone to level cap. I started playing it 15 years ago and I still haven't finished the epic line because it keeps being added to. When I started ED and got the first invitation from Farseer I thought, "Oh, here comes the epic quest line". I therefore didn't mind unlocking engineers one at a time over a few months; it actually went quicker than I expected. Compared to LOTRO, delivering 50 cigars was laughably simple and quick.
I can see that it's all annoying if you want to jump straight in to the game and do top-tier combat in CZs or PvP. But I think that's just an error of expectation: ED isn't a game where you can do that. (And if it was, I doubt if I'd be here playing it).
To be clear, this is the average player of elite, not the average player of all games everywhere.
Long-term players often fall into the Trap of thinking that they are the most important audience, but in reality, they are probably the least important. It's the experience of the new player, the average player, that gives actual Revenue to the company and keeps the game going. Without them, the game dies. Without you, the game goes on uninterrupted.
You see this all the time and high-end competitive games. They want changes to rebalance things specifically to their preferences, failing to realize that doing so will break the game for many other players.
Wise Developers strike a balance between the two of them with carefully calibrated changes that make the game better for newer players without substantially impacting the experience of the older players.
Unfortunately, older players often fail to realize why these changes are good, because they themselves have not experienced the issues in question for many years. That's why I think it's important for older players to occasionally go watch a newer player on Twitch or another streaming site. It helps them get back into that beginner mindset, to understand how things used to be, and not disregard the issues they once faced as trivial, simply because they are a long forgotten memory.
How long have you been playing?
Things are very trivial in advancing, today, compared to more than 5 years ago, credits are considerably easier to accumulate than then, a specific 'beginner area' safe zone has been created, there are plenty of tutorials to play. The only non-trivial thing is learning to fly your ships well, some find it easier than others.
So, would you care to cite some examples 'older players' have forgotten, which are 'challenges' for a new player today compared to a new player, say, 6 years ago? I'm seriously curious.
I posted one of my personal experiences just a few posts back. Go ahead and give it a read.
As for myself, I've been playing for probably 3 years now, though I can't recall for sure. I attempt to stay in touch with my inner noob, however, by regularly watching newer players on twitch, and helping to teach them.
What about pre-engineered modules readily available (for a premium price of course) ?
Would only have to catch them, like for spacesuits or hand guns.
That solve the problem without breaking any existing gameplay.
Would only have to catch them, like for spacesuits or hand guns.
That solve the problem without breaking any existing gameplay.
I did... Which brought back the happy memory of jumping over 5,000 LY out from the bubble in a DBX that probably jumped around 30LY (I killed 2 birds with one stone) then all of the way back. The explo data wasn't worth much in those days either, but it was fun. I suppose it is a difference in how we approach challenges, a couple of weeks play, seeing new (to me) areas, then returning with a heap of 1st discovered (in those days it only took a couple of 1,000s of LY to be finding virgin systems) and knowing that the first hurdle toward engineering had been jumped.
Perhaps I did my journeys 'later' in my play than you, probably 8 months after starting to play, so making a long journey was more of an adventure for me.
Even my first trip out to the Abyssal Plains (arriving just as 3.3 was released, so able to 'find' bio & geo with the 'new' DSS - it took me around a month to return to the bubble!) in a Krait II, armed, armoured and with SLF, was not daunting, and I meven got to visit Colonia on the return trip.
Great idea!
I absolutely agree that mindset plays a large role in how you approach these things. I would bet you're of the 'Explorer' subtype of gamer, from the Bartle taxonomy of player preferences. For you, exploration IS the goal. And that's great!
But for the Achiever and Socializer subtypes, it's about more discrete objectives, either for their own sake, or to show to others. Those types of players can only enjoy the Explorer type of gameplay after achieving those basic goals first. They crave a concrete sense of progression, of knowing where they're going, and without that, they quickly grow bored and irritated. They will attempt to bypass uninteresting content as quickly as possible, to get back to the stuff they do enjoy.
And that's just fine! Not everyone will enjoy every aspect of the game; not everyone can. And sure, maybe some players just aren't meant to play this game at all. But it's up to the developers to make a game that's as accessible as possible to as large an audience as possible, because audience = success, and success = further development, and further development is good for all players.
I bet you are wrong...
There's a way to find out, if you've got a little time!
(Note: I just googled this quickly, so it may not be the original test)
Edit: Here's my results, if people are curious:
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