I.e. so the game doesn't evolve or update ?
General Materials amount at High Grade Emissions in the upcoming update - it broke everything!
- Thread starter RetroPaladin
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Time for an ED Classic server then ? Oh wait, we have that, it's called Legacy.
They should add Ody there than. Can be without thargs.
It's not evolving. It's revolution. Game was "horizontal" grow for 10 years, i.e. "no progression like WoW" with "vertical progression spikes" (engineers), but that was optional element.
Than they made this "vertical" element a must for thargs, and now they urgently remove it in fact. And I can't say I like where it goes.
Next step will be either completely drop any "vertical" elements OR add new one each new year as WoW does.
And I don't want yet another "vertical" game. Elite was unique in this sense.
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You still have to go back to the fact that FDev made a thread asking the opinions of players with regards to the whole engineering process. All through that thread you have comments on the difficulty in getting hold of engineering materials raised as an issue in many of the posts.
Not everyone will agree with the outcome, but like the C&P changes in 2018 or changes to things like the danger levels of black holes, they've acted on the feedback given.
Personally I'd have liked it if FDev added scenarios that involved having to do some kind of difficult mission or something similar to get a huge payday of materials, but that wouldn't have solved the issue that mats were too difficult to acquire and people feel the easiest solution is relogging at HGEs, which appears to be the central issue to FDev.
Not everyone will agree with the outcome, but like the C&P changes in 2018 or changes to things like the danger levels of black holes, they've acted on the feedback given.
Personally I'd have liked it if FDev added scenarios that involved having to do some kind of difficult mission or something similar to get a huge payday of materials, but that wouldn't have solved the issue that mats were too difficult to acquire and people feel the easiest solution is relogging at HGEs, which appears to be the central issue to FDev.
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I disagree. The Thargoid war is a sideshow for the combat junkies, with a few bones thrown in for those who prefer other types of gameplay. The main content of Elite remains the rest of the game. After all, what do you think will happen once the Thargoids are inevitably defeated? The game will go on.
The game certainly should evolve or update. The Thargoids stuff is fine. I’m just not too interested in it, because interested in the human narrative. I’m still waiting for Frontier to update their Guardian content for Odyssey, and a lot of Horizins content also requires an update. I’m eagerly waiting for the update PowerPlay 2.0, since I live the concept but Frontier botched the execution.
What I have issues with is Frontier obviating gameplay I enjoy when addressing complaints from players… complaints that are self inflicted. Doubly so when other solutions would address those complaints that are equally easy, but would preserve that gameplay.
The ”grind problem” wasn’t that credit income was too low or Engineering drops were too rare. It was that the cost curves were too steep relative to the benefits curves. It’s just math! Change a few variables, and the “problem” is fixed for those who approach the game so shallowly, while the gameplay is preserved for those players who enjoy playing in its depths.
I wrote - for the moment.
Why would I say that? I don't know about YOU, I got a message yesterday when I logged into the game: Thor - weakened - beat him faster.
From this I conclude that Thargoids are now the main content in the game.
I do not know if you did not have such a message ...
Personally I like the war with the Thargoids, not only that I consider the Thargoids to be the calling card of the Elite.
If they tell me, that one flew on a spaceship, met another ship and started fighting - I won't understand what they mean: star citizen, star field or something like that.
But if they tell me he flew and was intercepted by a Thargoid - I'll be 100% sure that it's about the Elite.
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My apologies, I missed that.
I also get PowerPlay messages, CG messages that have no relationship to the Thargoid war, and news about other events around the Bubble. The Thargoid war is just one thing that is happening in the game. Players are free to engage in them, or ignore them, as they will.
And I disagree.
Yep, and I ignore them in favor of other aspects of the game. Just like I ignore all the combat-oriented CGs, and most hauling CGs unless it involves the Empire or harming the Federation. The Thargoids are a momentary problem. The Evil Galactic Federation, or more accurately the mega-corps who rule the Federation with an iron fist, is the real threat!
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the Federation riled them up just to distract us!
And I disagree. The average person would probably think you're talking about Star Trek or Star Wars game. That's the two franchises that most people are familiar with when it comes to "space stuff." They might have heard of Starfield if they're into gaming, given how ubiquidous the advertising campaign was. The Elite franchise, while very much a pioneer in its genre, is still very much a niche game. And Star Citizen is considered a scam to most of the gamers who are familiar with it.
This is why I always lead with "I was playing Elite Dangerous..." when talking about the game. It's a niche game in a niche genre, in a media that is still trying to shake off the stigma that games are "for children."
I am not sure I am still on the way of the subject, but changes don't mean you can't just do exploration things, or what you want. I started 'visiting' thargoid systems after almost 2k hrs.
Forgive me for getting off topic.
You didn't understand me, I gave the example of Citizen and Starfield as these worlds don't have their own peculiarity, there is nothing to distinguish them.
Star Trek has Klingons.
Star Wars is the Jedi.
In Wing Commander, it's the Kilrathi.
The Elite are the Thargoids.
And that's why we need all these engineers just so we can improve our ship and defeat the Thargoids.
There's an interspecies war going on, and you can pretend you're not interested or concerned, but it's not going to change the situation.
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And Vulcans, Romulans, Andorians, Orions, Caitians, Horta, and dozens of other species...
And Wookies, Bothans, Hutts, Rodians, Twileks, Mon Calamari, Neimodians, and hundreds of other species...
And... does that franchise have any other alien species besides the one that was a direct rip off from the Caitian from Star Trek? It's been a while since I even thought about that game...
Right... but most people haven't even heard of Elite, and if you told them you were flying a ship and were interdicted by Thargoids, they would immediately assume you were playing either a Star Wars or a Star Trek game. Those are the two franchises even the most sci-fi illiterate non-gamers probably have heard about.
I don't know, who knows is the author of Wing Commander, though he's making another game now .... Citizen.
All of the recent changes make sense in terms of making an 4.18.08 engineering system which is more suited to the rest of the game than the (mostly) 3.0 engineering system it replaces, definitely, but I think the ship engineering system is one of those where every single individual change that has been made to it since its introduction is logical in the context of the player experience at the time, but the aggregate effect hasn't been tracked closely enough so the end result is a mess.
There's all sorts of leftovers which they'd almost certainly not bother with at all nowadays if implementing fresh (and mostly didn't, for Odyssey) and which don't really serve any gameplay purpose either
- rep with engineers (last served a purpose when you could trade rep for weapon experimentals, now you max it getting your first module to G4 and never touch it again)
- mission-only commodities (haven't really been relevant since they were removed from mid-grade recipes in 2.2ish, despite a few attempts to give them to tech brokers instead)
- rolls (especially with the increased material availability and the removal of randomness) which could just be replaced with flat costs for each grade, or even just a flat cost for "G5" and don't bother with the sub-divisions [1] in the same way that there aren't multiple levels of the Odyssey addons (the suits themselves, yes)
- material grades (arguably since material traders but especially now) and the sprawl of mostly-unused material types (some of which were introduced purely to get the material trader box to be rectangular)
...and if they cleaned up those they could then also start to address that the cost of a blueprint is purely based on its grade, so G5 Dirty Drives (ultra powerful, virtually an automatic pick) and a G5 Overcharged Multicannon (strong but you can make a good case for other mods too) and a G5 Lightweight Life Support (might be the best LS blueprint but still essentially irrelevant on most builds) and a G5 Shielded Fuel Scoop (probably actually marginally worse than the stock module on most builds) have terrible balance versus each other
They're not a priority for cleanup (and probably never will be) and that's probably okay - with the major friction removed complaints will move onto something else - it's just an interesting relic of how ED has evolved over the years.
[1] I think the non-Armoured Power Plant blueprints are the only ones where the downsides are sufficiently large that a non-contrived build might leave them below max for any reason other than "can't afford it yet"
I'd definitely agree that this has the feel of multiple teams looking at it from a perspective of needing to get their own thing done with no scope to look at a wider tidy up, but then I suppose that's the nature of the video game industry.
What I do think is a beneficial change is there seems to have been a move to understand that players will spend huge amounts of time looking to create their 'perfect' ship if that's their end goal, which is probably why to sone extent v1 engineering wasn't perhaps the best. That they're going more to a direction of engineering being part if the process of building a ship for an end goal is probably good news for the game as well. If engineering your ship isn't envisaged as the end game, something else must be.
Dumb question and I know I am going to kick myself, what is HGE?
High Grade Emissions (You can visit a Nav Beacon, or just run a system scan and check out the USS section on the far left of the bar to see what is available in a system)
A Specific type of USS that only contains G4/G5 materials.
Different faction states will determine the contents of any particular HGE but the contents are now buffed to make relogging a thing of the past.
Cheers, Ratty. You used another acronym, USS, that I don't know. 1. What does that mean? 2. Is there a list of these acronyms and their meanings?
Sorry Angus...
USS = Unidentified Signal Source (which when scanned turn into Degraded Emissions, Encoded Emissions, and the like)
If you want a reliable system with normally at least 2 HGE sources and lots of other USS visit Cama Zotz (they also have a Data Materials Trader) it has been kind to me for quite a while.
I think the ED manual may have a list, but don't quote me on it!
It is the most visible content in the game whether it is the main content for the majority of players is unknowable to those outside FDev.