Ah, speed and efficiency are different things. The gameplay I'm proposing isn't the fastest, but it is the most efficient. I think it's also the most enjoyable. Again, that's by definition: "Do whatever you like" is always going to have you doing things you enjoy.
Make the engineering grind remotely palatable
- Thread starter sprecdaddy
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You talk as if engineering was a constant activity.
Once engineered, it stay engineered, and for 1 to 3 or 4 ships there's no need of huge amount of materials.
You can even swap modules, so no need to engineer everything for every ships!
What's the deal?
Maybe we could "unengineer" modules and get some mats back, sure.
That would help with experiments and silly builds =)
Once engineered, it stay engineered, and for 1 to 3 or 4 ships there's no need of huge amount of materials.
You can even swap modules, so no need to engineer everything for every ships!
What's the deal?
Maybe we could "unengineer" modules and get some mats back, sure.
That would help with experiments and silly builds =)
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It's not actually efficient.
Let's say one person takes 3 minutes to kill an enemy ship, and 60 seconds to collect the materials. After 1 hour, they'll have killed 15 ships, and collected their materials. A typical ship, on average, will drop maybe 1 G4, 1 G3, 1 G2, and 1 G1, for a total of 120 units of materials, so they've killed 15 ships and collected 1800 materials.
A second person skips the collection. They take 45 minutes to kill 15 ships, and then spend 15 minutes collecting at a High Grade Emissions site. It takes about 2 minutes, including relogging, to collect 5 units of G5 materials, with a total value of 1215 units of materials. Assuming it takes 5 minutes to reach the HGE site, they'll get 5 repetitions, and will therefore collect 6075 units of materials.
See the problem? The combat player is only getting 120 materials per minute spent collecting; the HGE farmer is getting 608. By skipping the collection process, and using the saved time to farm the high-efficiency sites, you end up getting three times the yield at the end of the hour. It is actively a bad decision to stop to collect materials mid-combat.
Now, what I want to do is dramatically reduce the time it takes to collect those materials. Let's say, 5 seconds or less.
Now, the math is instead, 1800 materials collected in 75 seconds(24 per second), versus 6075 in 325 seconds(18.7 per second). Now it is more efficient to stop and collect those materials, rather than saving time and going to an HGE site.
HGE sites would still be faster OVERALL; it would just now be worth stopping to pick up combat materials, rather than leaving them behind.
What about being able to buy pre-engineered ships at incredibly high price?
That could be cool, not every sellers have to sell the same shi*ty loadout.
Technologically advanced systems could have premium ship configs for rich & impatient players ^^
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Oh,
Oh, this is the signal source relogging you've recommended before. Sorry, I'm not going to compare something I believe FD regard as an exploit with proper gameplay.
Yes I see the problem.
Without even looking at your numbers you are comparing a singular focused activity to another activity that accomplishes many goals at the same time. Relog farming at an HGE will collect mats faster as mentioned earlier, but overall is a less efficient use of time . It does not increase your combat rank, improve combat skills, give any credit rewards., or any other side benefits.
The time to pickup mats following combat can be buried while the player needs to pause the combat: waiting for shields to regen, looking for next target, or getting another coffee. Also pickup of mats can be ignored until a pause in combat is necessary, combat doesn't need to be interrupted for it. If some mats get missed no biggee.
There are plenty of other non-combat examples where collecting mats during regular gameplay is far more efficient than grind-farming.
Unless you have never relog farmed a guardian site, you're taking a hypocritical stance.
Either way, if that is your belief, you should remove yourself from the discussion. If you're unable to consider the game as it is, not as you wish it would be, then your input has zero value.
Fdev do not call it an exploit, by the bye. They have called it unintended gameplay. There is a very clear difference. One is bannable, the other is not.
Incorrect. You can get both more kills AND more materials by not picking up the materials and HGE farming, instead.
At the end, the HGE farmer will have BOTH more combat rank/credits, AND more materials. And that is precisely the problem. That should not be the case; the game should be as you describe it, but it is not.
OK. you can believe whatever you want.
Have fun grind-farming and complaining about it on the forums.
OK. you can believe whatever you want.
Have fun grind-farming and complaining about it on the forums.
This is a matter of facts, not beliefs.
But thanks for your input.
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But ultimately, if it's quick and easy for everybody to engineer their ship(s) to max level wouldn't that even the playfield and be the same as if no-one could engineer at all?
Let's remove engineering altogether, vanilla ships are fine.
One less grind.
Maybe every enemy ships should be single-shot, what a waste of time to have to dog-fight for long minutes!
Or win the game as soon at it starts, games are time wasters anyway. don't you think so?
Let's remove engineering altogether, vanilla ships are fine.
One less grind.
Maybe every enemy ships should be single-shot, what a waste of time to have to dog-fight for long minutes!
Or win the game as soon at it starts, games are time wasters anyway. don't you think so?
Grinding isn't inherently bad. Diablo 2 has stayed popular for 20 years based almost purely on grinding. It just needs to be done well.
What Diablo 2 recognized was to make grinding enjoyable, you need variety and excitement. Whenever you find a unique item or rune in diablo 2, it's fun, because that ONE find means something cool. By contrast, finding a level 4/5 gem in that game is boring, because it just means 1/3rd of a 5/5, and even then it's just one chance with low odds of getting something cool. But that's okay, because there's the other type of grind, too.
Elite basically ONLY has the gems. Not only that, while in Diablo 2 you can simply click items to collect them; in Elite, you need to play a minigame to pick them up. So it's less enjoyable on one end, and more annoying on the other.
Imagine, for a moment, if Diablo 2 were more like Elite. Rather than finding new and exciting weapons as you play, you instead level up your starting weapon by putting hundreds or thousands of gems into it. Each gem can't just be picked up; you must manually move your character's hand down and over the gem, before very carefully grabbing it. There's no WAY people would play that game for long.
Imagine, in turn, if Elite were more like Diablo 2? You can quickly and conveniently collect materials, and while you can achieve basic engineering very quickly and easily, more advanced effects take luck and effort to acquire, but which reward you with very powerful and distinct effects. Not just statistical bonuses, but different abilities, unique effects, rare cosmetics. Right now, getting a G5 weapon is barely worth mentioning, but on the Diablo 2 forums, there are a CONSTANT stream of people posting they finally found their Jah or Ber rune, and it's ALWAYS exciting.
I'm not saying Elite should try to copy Diablo 2, but as a very successful game that very rarely sees complaint, they've definitely done something right, and we can learn from that.
I see what you mean but personally I found Diablo II immensely boring.
I wonder what made you pick-up Elite in the first place? Is it considered that good a space combat simulator that people pick it up solely for that aspect?
I wonder what made you pick-up Elite in the first place? Is it considered that good a space combat simulator that people pick it up solely for that aspect?
I believe that's the main attraction, yes. I personally grabbed it because I found an old copy of starlancer and wanted a more modern version. Rebel Galaxy also played a role; I made a suggestion about an improved economic system in that game, and they referred me to this one.
Interestingly, I found both Elite and Diablo 2 to be very boring to start with, but after getting back into them, I enjoyed both of them quite a bit. Acquired tastes, I suppose.
Unless you PvP, there's no need to grind to engineer, or to engineer at all.
No need, for sure, but progression is a primary objective for many players. In skyrim, for example, it's perfectly possible to beat all the story content without leveling up at all, because everything is scaled to your level. But players still love leveling up, getting that sensation of increased power. Take that away, make Skyrim a purely narrative experience, and it would not have experienced nearly the success it did.
Similarly, while there's no doubt that engineering has caused a great number of complaints, I believe it also has caused a greater number of players to stay around for longer. Most of the players complaining would not be here at all if not for that system.
Exploring requires engineering to get jump ranges beyond 40ly. Engineering is a pia for the casual player, but such players are looked upon with utter horror by a vocal minority around here, like players who stay in Solo. Unless you can boast all day long about having G4 dirty this or G5 experimental that, yer akin to a pesky freeloader!
Someone suggested allowing fleet carriers to sell the mats so that people who have the time to farm such things can supply to and let the 'market' decide (heaven forbid such a mechanic!) to at least give the casual player some kind of alternative to the time sink.
Someone suggested allowing fleet carriers to sell the mats so that people who have the time to farm such things can supply to and let the 'market' decide (heaven forbid such a mechanic!) to at least give the casual player some kind of alternative to the time sink.
Not really, but it really does depend on what you mean by exploring. Getting places as fast as possible, I don't see what that has to do with exploration, but apart from all that I have the pre-engineered level 5 FSD with an experimental and a Guardian FSD booster, neither of which required any engineering except for the experimental which was indeed trivial. I also traveled many 100k ly in a ship with a 30ly jump range, as did a lot pf players before engineering came along. Exploring does not require engineering, it very much depends on exactly what you want to do.
Quite frankly, what people expect from Elite scares me for the future of the title.
Yeah it seems to me they got exactly what they asked for.
Players: The engineering grind is unbearable, make it easier.
FDEV: Ok, what we'll do is make it so that players can get pre-engineered modules with no engineering at all, that should fix all the complaints.
Players: The engineering grind is unbearable, we demand you fix it right away
FDEV: (shrugs shoulders) well we tried!
Players: The engineering grind is unbearable, make it easier.
FDEV: Ok, what we'll do is make it so that players can get pre-engineered modules with no engineering at all, that should fix all the complaints.
Players: The engineering grind is unbearable, we demand you fix it right away
FDEV: (shrugs shoulders) well we tried!
They did the same with the money fountain. Now buying ships is a non-event, everyone is billionaire in a month.
Elite is far from perfect on many aspects, but a lot of complaints are from people who doesn't actually enjoy the game as "hard science space sim fantasy" and wants it to be what it never was, "fast paced arcadey shoot them all". It is sad, because Elite is (was?) unique on its niche.
Elite is far from perfect on many aspects, but a lot of complaints are from people who doesn't actually enjoy the game as "hard science space sim fantasy" and wants it to be what it never was, "fast paced arcadey shoot them all". It is sad, because Elite is (was?) unique on its niche.