Message to Frontier - ITS SO DAMN OBVIOUS!!

[jasonbirder]

Just accept the grind and the fact that you enjoy it.
Don’t argue that the grind isn’t there.
Just be proud and happy that you enjoy it.

If Grind EQUALS Repetition simply avoid rinse and repeat Game-play loops...introduce more variety into your activities
If Grind EQUALS doing Game-play activities you don't enjoy (Haulage, Long-haul passenger runs, surface prospecting etc etc)...don't do them...do stuff you enjoy doing (for its own sake)
If Grind EQUALS the fact that you're simply not enjoying playing Elite currently...give it a break! Play something else for a bit...check back when Q4 drops...its not a crime...I know I'll be off back to DCS when the Hornet is released...it doesn't mean I'll NEVER play Elite again...or even that I don't LIKE Elite its simply there's more than one game out there in the big wide world...

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The only real thing that's in fact shamelessly encouraging grinding are CGs. But then they are also totally optional and why I feel so free and shamelessly avoid them under all events.

The last time i did a trade CG was in a shieldless T6 in open which was a load of fun. Dodging the gankers and pirates was great and being able to outrun them too was useful.

 

[Enderby]

I dont know why everyone is so anti-grind.

Especially anyone playing ED.

 

[captainchubb]

This thread is a bit boring. Any chance we can close it?

 

[Quester91]

All you are doing is describing the base mechanics. You could do the exact same for any other game out there to make it sound boring. Try harder next time.
GTA 5 can be boiled down to this:

Drive a car
Get out of car
Shoot some people
Get in car
Drive a car
get out of car
shoot some people
get in car
drive a car

Ohhh sounds great doesn't it.

Sad thing, is that what I've described in my previous post is, step by step, what it's necessary to participate in a CG, or complete a mission.

Point your ship there, Y button. x 17, straight line, enter a hole in a station, slider right/left, go back bye, rinse and repeat. Exploration, trading, mining, it's all the same. Nothing happens between the steps I listed, no variation, opportunities, options, freedom, window for a flight skill test, risk vs reward, nothing. There's an entire galaxy out there cmdr! But if you want to feel a fake, remote sense of progression, please point your ship there and press Y a few dozen times. Also please wait 5 seconds for jump countdown, 15 seconds for hyperspace, 5 seconds for fsd cooldown once out of the tunnel and a minute more for refueling. That's some engaging gameplay right there that definitely doesn't make the grind even more obvious and tedious.

What you've written down instead is a pathetic attempt of reductio ad absurdum just to blandly try to prove a point by twisting and dumbing down something so completely different it's pretty stupid to even compare. So mirror climbing as usual, nothing new here.

I enjoy a lot of parts of the game but saying grind isn't there it's just plain dumb, repetition is a pillar of Elite's mechanics, it's there to hide the lack of content in exploration, guardian site scans, puzzles in general, cgs, trade, rescue trips, you name it. If you'd actually play the game and try what it has to offer, you'd have noticed it by now

 

[StiTch]

I got no engineering buff. I dont want this stupid cancer of gameplay. I didn't need a stupid buff, I didn't want a stupid buff and I certainly didn't want random enemies bulletsponged to eleven because some random other player dude got his stupid buffs.

Er...yes, dear.

And that, viewers, summarises today's most incoherent and unfounded rant. Thanks for watching.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Sad thing, is that what I've described in my previous post is, step by step, what it's necessary to participate in a CG, or complete a mission.

Point your ship there, Y button. x 17, straight line, enter a hole in a station, slider right/left, go back bye, rinse and repeat. Exploration, trading, mining, it's all the same. Nothing happens between the steps I listed, no variation, opportunities, options, freedom, window for a flight skill test, risk vs reward, nothing. There's an entire galaxy out there cmdr! But if you want to feel a fake, remote sense of progression, please point your ship there and press Y a few dozen times. Also please wait 5 seconds for jump countdown, 15 seconds for hyperspace, 5 seconds for fsd cooldown once out of the tunnel and a minute more for refueling. That's some engaging gameplay right there that definitely doesn't make the grind even more obvious and tedious.

What you've written down instead is a pathetic attempt of reductio ad absurdum just to blandly try to prove a point by twisting and dumbing down something so completely different it's pretty stupid to even compare. So mirror climbing as usual, nothing new here.

I enjoy a lot of parts of the game but saying grind isn't there it's just plain dumb, repetition is a pillar of Elite's mechanics, it's there to hide the lack of content in exploration, guardian site scans, puzzles in general, cgs, trade, rescue trips, you name it. If you'd actually play the game and try what it has to offer, you'd have noticed it by now

Lol. My goodness you can be full of it at times. All I did is pretty much describe a mission in GTA5. There is repetition in every game ever played. It is the pillar of all game mechanics.

 

[punkerich]

If ED isn't grindy, i dunno what is.
It's in its nature.
And it must not be bad at all times.

But yeah, the devs are stretching it just that little bit too much.
I mean, we've been told in case of guardian blueprints it's intended that they only give one instead of three like any other data or mat.
Doesn't that speak for itself?
I'm definately not going to bother with the guardians at all.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Lol. My goodness you can be full of it at times. All I did is pretty much describe a mission in GTA5. There is repetition in every game ever played. It is the pillar of all game mechanics.

i am gonna be 100% honest however...... the fact that people can build a bot to essentially play the game without any human intervention at all does imo show that ED needs to have a bit more to it. combat aside, i ED does need some more complexity even it only a random chance (we all love some RNG in ED right?) such as systems failing or just *something* which means you cant just hit go on a bot and leave it to its own devices to over throw a system or so, what ever it is PPers do.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

If ED isn't grindy, i dunno what is.
It's in its nature.
And it must not be bad at all times.

But yeah, the devs are stretching it just that little bit too much.
I mean, we've been told in case of guardian blueprints it's intended that they only give one instead of three like any other data or mat.
Doesn't that speak for itself?
I'm definately not going to bother with the guardians at all.

I think it's in people nature to grind. They are so used to it from other games that they don't know how to play any other way. One of the reasons why I like the game is that it feels so ungrindy.

I am not forced into getting anything, I can go at my own pace and still have 99.9% of the gameplay open to me not matter what ship I fly or what engineering I have. I don't need G5 mods in everything, I don't need a corvette or Cutter or Anaconda. I can just go at my own pace and I can wing up with people with more powerful ships and it's fine too.

Can't really do that in level based games. No, it's not the game that makes the grind, but the people that play it and what their goals are, how they go about thier goals.

i am gonna be 100% honest however...... the fact that people can build a bot to essentially play the game without any human intervention at all does imo show that ED needs to have a bit more to it. combat aside, i ED does need some more complexity even it only a random chance (we all love some RNG in ED right?) such as systems failing or just *something* which means you cant just hit go on a bot and leave it to its own devices to over throw a system or so, what ever it is PPers do.

Oh I don't disagree with that. ED needs a lot more love to it. But just taking it down to the base mechanics is pointless. You do that with any game and it will sound like a boring grindfest.

 

[StiTch]

I think it's in people nature to grind. They are so used to it from other games that they don't know how to play any other way. One of the reasons why I like the game is that it feels so ungrindy.

Quite. There's a lot of players that see that high level assets, e.g. ships, exist - and become utterly indignant if they aren't allowed to be sat in said most expensive ship within a day. Or that G5 modifications exist and can't be achieved in a day, or that guardian tech exists and cannot be earned in a day...

Get over it. 'tis all about the journey and all.

The problem is when the journey itself is dull. I don't care if it takes a year to get in a cutter, as long as I feel engaged in the process, and ideally the route there is flexible. I don't care if it takes a month to engineer a ship, as long as I get to do more exciting things than hunting for High Grade Emissions.

So it benefits no-one when folks dilute legitimate complaints about lack of depth with incessant moaning about the fact they blew up some tiny machine on a planet and weren't paid enough to buy a fully equipped warship from it. We are still lacking engaging content in many areas - we still cannot play as criminals with even half an ounce of engagement factor - and yet so many "GIVE ME MOAR CREDITS NAO" complaints have been raised that after a week of playing we no longer have a journey to make. Noobs are sat in a 'conda before they've learned to fly a ship in the correct direction, or learned what the game is about...and we're surprised that they're getting bored?

So there you have it. Wanna make the game more engaging? Reduce profits, give us more to do to get those profits in the first place.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Quite. There's a lot of players that see that high level assets, e.g. ships, exist - and become utterly indignant if they aren't allowed to be sat in said most expensive ship within a day. Or that G5 modifications exist and can't be achieve in a day, or that guardian tech exists and cannot be earned in a day...

Get over it. 'tis all about the journey and all.

The problem is when the journey itself is dull. I don't care if it takes a year to get in a cutter, as long as I feel engaged in the process, and ideally the route there is flexible. I don't care if it takes a month to engineer a ship, as long as I get to do more exciting things than hunting for High Grade Emissions.

So it benefits no-one when folks dilute legitimate complaints about lack of depth with incessant moaning about the fact they blew up some tiny machine on a planet and weren't paid enough to buy a fully equipped warship from it. We are still lacking engaging content in many areas - we still cannot play as criminals with even half an ounce of engagement factor - and yet so many "GIVE ME MOAR CREDITS NAO" complaints have been raised that after a week of playing we no longer have a journey to make. Noobs are sat in a 'conda before they've learned to fly a ship in the correct direction, or learned what the game is about...and we're surprised that they're getting bored?

So there you have it. Wanna make the game more engaging? Reduce profits, give us more to do to get those profits in the first place.

Can't argue with this really. HGE's and USS's in general are one of the things I dislike a lot in ED. A USS should be reasonable rare, but when you drop into one it should be well worth the effort. There should be mission givers, reasons why the USS is there in the first place and so on. Make them an adventure in of themselves and not just some randomly placed ships flying around for no apparant purpose or reason.

A debris field could have a black box, when picking it up it gives you information (a non faction affiliated mission) which you could end up with some rare goods after doing it.

A distress call, you drop in and they are out of fuel, so you get given a mission to go get some fuel for them if you have no limpets and fuel limpet controller, you get back and while you are refuelling them, pirates jump in to the area, which then gives you a choice, attack the pirates or try to carry on refuelling. The USS is persistant until they are rescued or destroyed.

Things like that is what USS's should be like. And then you wouldn't need 100-1000s of them just randonly appearing. Some should be semi-permanant, some could be random and appear as you fly along such as distress calls, the ones that should be random basically.

 

[StiTch]

Can't argue with this really. HGE's and USS's in general are one of the things I dislike a lot in ED. A USS should be reasonable rare, but when you drop into one it should be well worth the effort. There should be mission givers, reasons why the USS is there in the first place and so on. Make them an adventure in of themselves and not just some randomly place ships flying around for no apparant purpose.

Not to go off on a tangent but this is IMO exactly how to make them a tad better. It seems strange that we're floating around space for some random pieces of machinery to appear in deep space that weren't there 10 seconds ago.

I'd much rather the vast majority, if not all, materials can be accrued through standard activities - and signal sources are a relatively rare event which can be traced to a cause, for example, a trader hit by pirates and spilling an entire shipment of high end tech everywhere. One can drop in and either start mopping up the lootz, at risk of the pirates turning on you the more greedy you get, or help the trader for a reward and good guy factor boost of some sort.

But nah...we'd better instead focus on putting a "0" on the end of mission payouts to fix all this, amirite?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Not to go off on a tangent but this is IMO exactly how to make them a tad better. It seems strange that we're floating around space for some random pieces of machinery to appear in deep space that weren't there 10 seconds ago.

I'd much rather the vast majority, if not all, materials can be accrued through standard activities - and signal sources are a relatively rare event which can be traced to a cause, for example, a trader hit by pirates and spilling an entire shipment of high end tech everywhere. One can drop in and either start mopping up the lootz, at risk of the pirates turning on you the more greedy you get, or help the trader for a reward and good guy factor boost of some sort.

But nah...we'd better instead focus on putting a "0" on the end of mission payouts to fix all this, amirite?

I don't know what makes people think that grind has to do with credits - that is true some some but it is by far not the only grindy aspect in ED.

I'd even say credit isn't an issue at all, but that doesn't outright debunk the stupid forced grind of the engineer turdpieces or other issues with the gameplay.

 

[Jex =TE=]

All you are doing is describing the base mechanics. You could do the exact same for any other game out there to make it sound boring. Try harder next time.
GTA 5 can be boiled down to this:

Drive a car
Get out of car
Shoot some people
Get in car
Drive a car
get out of car
shoot some people
get in car
drive a car

Ohhh sounds great doesn't it.

Except his ED description saved us more boredom than he already wrote!

If he'd gone into detail about all those jumps omg we'd all be dead.

GTA and ED are worlds apart - there's no comparison - the difference however is describing a GTA mission would generally be interesting AND funny whereas the description above thankfully saves us reading more boring.

It's a case of you make the game sound worse the more you describe it which shouldn't be the case.

 

[Jex =TE=]

The “grind” by definition is repeating the same task over and over, therefore all games have this else you’d only play them once and sell them once you got to the congratulations you have completed the game screen, having not lost a life or done anything repetitive.

No it isn't - nobody has even posted a definition of what grind is but repetitive action in no way defines it - talk about make an argument to fit your narrative!

I always considered grind to be from MMO's where I believe it originates from in killing mobs for XP to level up which I experienced for myself in BDO and it was awful.

Imagine doing the same task (kill monsters), over and over and over where there's little to no challenge at all and the experince doesn't really change.

So in your view it's double grind then, right? You grind first by pressing the same keys over and over but you then have an extra grind of the task that you're doing, over and over so we want to eliminate the "double-grind" games like ED?

 

[Jex =TE=]

This thread is a bit boring. Any chance we can close it?

all the posts are the same...

 

[BigF]

No it isn't - nobody has even posted a definition of what grind is but repetitive action in no way defines it - talk about make an argument to fit your narrative!

I always considered grind to be from MMO's where I believe it originates from in killing mobs for XP to level up which I experienced for myself in BDO and it was awful.

Imagine doing the same task (kill monsters), over and over and over where there's little to no challenge at all and the experince doesn't really change.

So in your view it's double grind then, right? You grind first by pressing the same keys over and over but you then have an extra grind of the task that you're doing, over and over so we want to eliminate the "double-grind" games like ED?

The definition of grind

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(gaming)

I have no beef with the perceived grind. I spent weeks doing the same stuff over and over to raise a faction up at a chosen station.

Also spent a whole month at one Hi Rez killing NPC from one faction. That’s fun but gets a bit predictable after that amount of time.

Most of the rest of my play is just randomly going to different systems to see what’s going on and then doing what ever catches my eye.
My progression from cadet to lt commander was something that just happened. last weekend I cashed in all my rep. From the start of my playing at beta 1 I never bothered with the rank but had enough to 100% each rank up till lt commander just through randomly picking up jobs for the last few years. I guess you could call that anti grind

 

[Jex =TE=]

I think it's in people nature to grind. They are so used to it from other games that they don't know how to play any other way. One of the reasons why I like the game is that it feels so ungrindy.

but you just drift around doing what you want, right? Not really having any goals or objectives, just taking your time (which is fine btw, nothing wrong with that). Other people don't want to just float around in space

So if you don't want any money or getting the ships you want or upgrading them and literally making that a 3 years task, it's not the game for you?

How long have you been playing - 3.5 years and in that time have you even engineered one ship to all g5 rolls?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(gaming)

OK thanks so I was pretty much spot on.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

but you just drift around doing what you want, right? Not really having any goals or objectives, just taking your time (which is fine btw, nothing wrong with that).

I never said that. Please do not put words into my mouth. I have goals and objectives. I don't go all out to get them in the quickest time possible one at a time. I prefer to enjoy my journey.