Missing my Space-ship fix. Anybody know if these things have changed? Can I change my signature yet?

[Sylow]

I feel the need for catchup because my weapons turned out to be peashooters. That is btw not necessarily engineer related but that doesn't really matter. Combat vs medium and up has become a slog and I just don't want to put even more time into grinding stuff out to get to old levels of output. That's all.

Statements like that always make me wonder what happened to your ship. I mean, you should report it to FD. Perhaps sell the broken weapons and buy new ones. I have no idea. I mean, since years whenever a new ship comes around, i do the very same thing: get the ship, equip it. Do no engineering, but rather take it to a HAZRes zone. Kill stuff of any size and combat rating. Of course, as i don't have feedback cascade, taking down the enemies shields are a bit more troublesome if they use SCBs. But only on small ships that's really an issue. Medium or bigger ships carry enough punch to still get the job done, without any engineering. And small ships suffer in that situation even when fully engineered. (You can still build small ships, which can do that job, but your options are indeed limited. )

The difference really isn't that much in killing stuff. I can destroy NPCs of any size and rank well enough in a non-engineered ship. (Even the Crusader, terrible as it is, was able to defeat anything up to and including Elite ranked NPCs in Anacondas without being engineered at all. ) What i can't do in such a ship is attacking wings of enemies and relying on my defenses to just carry me through the fight. Without engineered shields and hull (including SBs and HRPs) i have to pick my targets. In a fully engineered ship i can engage about anything in a HAZRes zone without having to worry. In worst case, my shields have to recharge a little longer. But i can use that time to collect materials after the fight, so again, no damage done.

I'm sure it is a quite different experience and comes more organically to new players. But that's like the slowly cooked frog. I was tossed from hot to cold, so I noticed and didn't like what I had to do to deal with that. I sunk already too much time trying to make it work - all that's left that interests me is exploration. I have no interest running the treadmill - whatever the requirements are - to overcome the HP inflation. 5 mins would be tops I'd spend to requip stuff - but not hours upon hours just to get where I already was.

I am here since the beta. So, i guess i am no that much of a new player. And i also utterly hated the first implementation of engineers. (Not too hard to confirm, if you look up my postings of that time. ) But i do use the system and can confirm that collecting materials and upgrading your equipment has become much better. No it's still not the shining star of gameplay. But it is manageable and not worse than many systems in other games. It required plenty of nagging from our side and took FD long enough to get there, but i do credit that we arrived at a point where the system is workable. It would just still be great to get defense stacking and some of the very binary special effects under control and things would be fine.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Statements like that always make me wonder what happened to your ship. I mean, you should report it to FD. Perhaps sell the broken weapons and buy new ones. I have no idea. I mean, since years whenever a new ship comes around, i do the very same thing: get the ship, equip it. Do no engineering, but rather take it to a HAZRes zone. Kill stuff of any size and combat rating. Of course, as i don't have feedback cascade, taking down the enemies shields are a bit more troublesome if they use SCBs. But only on small ships that's really an issue. Medium or bigger ships carry enough punch to still get the job done, without any engineering. And small ships suffer in that situation even when fully engineered. (You can still build small ships, which can do that job, but your options are indeed limited. )

The difference really isn't that much in killing stuff. I can destroy NPCs of any size and rank well enough in a non-engineered ship. (Even the Crusader, terrible as it is, was able to defeat anything up to and including Elite ranked NPCs in Anacondas without being engineered at all. )
....

Mission spawned and CZ ships gave me trouble. A particular nasty one were Clippers and FDLs. I took out the shields then plinked the hull for minuscule damage with burst lasers (which had worked perfectly fine before). I've tried cannons, mutlicannons, pulse, missiles, rails. Beam + burst wasn't the hottest in damage but they worked just fine allround pre 2.1.
In the end I just rammed them to pieces to get it finally over with.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

And then I looked at the bounty and really felt shanked. It didn't even suffice to pay the repair bills.

 

[Sylow]

Mission spawned and CZ ships gave me trouble. A particular nasty one were Clippers and FDLs. I took out the shields then plinked the hull for minuscule damage with burst lasers (which had worked perfectly fine before). I've tried cannons, mutlicannons, pulse, missiles, rails. Beam + burst wasn't the hottest in damage but they worked just fine allround pre 2.1.
In the end I just rammed them to pieces to get it finally over with.

CZ ones i do believe. They got upgraded. But the problem there, at least according to my experience, again is not firepower. I can take them down with non-engineered weapons fine enough. But due to them being upgraded, non-engineered defense makes things a bit more complicated there. On mission spawned NPCs, hmm.. i guess you speak of wing missions?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

CZ ones i do believe. They got upgraded. But the problem there, at least according to my experience, again is not firepower. I can take them down with non-engineered weapons fine enough. But due to them being upgraded, non-engineered defense makes things a bit more complicated there. On mission spawned NPCs, hmm.. i guess you speak of wing missions?

No, they came after 2.1 I think.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

It's like this: You spend 500 hours playing to make some progress. Then comes an update, you find your stuff nerfed to uselessness and then you can:

a) try to save that time invested by tossing in even more time
b) cut your losses and don't submit to sunk cost fallacy - once they screwed me over with 2.1 - what reason is there to believe it couldn't happen again?

I think b) is the rather sensible route - I played games that were more fun than hamstermilling my way back to useful gear in ED going that route.

 

[V'larr]

so they should you're not exactly doing the work on your own are you.

No. That's not how it works - that's not how working in a group ever works.

You don't suddenly understand less or earn less progress in school, just because you participated in a group study.

You don't get teamed up with co-workers, and suddenly everyone's minimum wage goes down as a result. Unions have started riots over far less.

Name another game that has your group take XP directly away from your gains, instead of each member simply earning XP separately on their own depending if they were present or not for the source of XP gain?

I can find and name at least 10 games for every 1 you can find, that do things the sensible way.

Not that I didn't already hash this argument out to death 2 years ago, but I digress....

___

Its like buying a corvette, it has a cost and its expensive to replace but its effective at what it does.

Crew members already have a cost, a credit one. That's where you look at when making something expensive or not. XP and XP gains do not correlate to money or money expenditures.

___

The good news:
Getting materials and engineering is a breeze now, much quicker and enjoyable than before, and there are several ways to get the same kind of materials. IMO, engineering is in a pretty good spot now.

The bad news:
"All these changes to exploration" was just adding a grindy minigame to get pretty much the very same almost nothing as before.

Yeah, I've seen here and there that Engineering is a straightforward thing, and reckon that's what I will focus on if I fire up the game soon: engineering my 'Conda and heading out for a long-term deep space voyage.

I'm curious how the 'new' exploration feels compared to 'honk and go', and I imagine I'll have a little bit of being fond of the system I was used to, but I'm open-minded to it.

__

Im not lazy but I'm certainly too busy to hunt some thread to read your signature, or do your home work.

Yet not so lazy that you couldn't resist being toxic for no constructive purpose at all, huh? If you had nothing to contribute, why did you bother to post at all? Good grief.

__

(snipping for brevity)
Considering that your rank is nothing else than a way of showing off how much time you've spent in game, i don't really see a problem there.

The combat rank grind is plenty grindy without punishing players for doing it whilst having a crew or being in a wing. That's total oranges to apples that shouldn't have any correlation to begin with. It should take a player the exact same amount of time playing to get that rank, regardless of whether they have a crew or are in a group at the time or not.

Whatever gains are gotten by having the crew and wing are already bought and paid for by player efforts in obtaining and training their crew (and keeping them alive), and in finding and working together with wing members.

There is not and never will be a good reason to punish player's XP gains, especially in a game with grind goalposts set as far as this one's.

 

[Stigbob]

Crew members already have a cost, a credit one. That's where you look at when making something expensive or not. XP and XP gains do not correlate to money or money expenditures.

You spend experience and credits on the crew member in exchange for the advantage of the crew member. I'm fine with it.

 

[V'larr]

I feel the need for catchup because my weapons turned out to be peashooters. That is btw not necessarily engineer related but that doesn't really matter. Combat vs medium and up has become a slog and I just don't want to put even more time into grinding stuff out to get to old levels of output. That's all.

For what it's worth, I get you. I'm in the same mindset now as when I quit the game, where I put in the time and effort to get Trade and Exploration Elite rank, use those funds to obtain a Corvette (after doing the rank grind for that), just so I could go for Combat and Triple Elite with a crew and a fighter and all - just to find out that doing so was chopping myself off at the knees.

So the thought of engineering anything besides my exploration ship at the moment really just drains all motivation for me, with that in mind.

 

[V'larr]

You spend experience and credits on the crew member in exchange for the advantage of the crew member. I'm fine with it.

I feel like you have quite literally ignored my statement prior: "XP and XP gains do not correlate to money or money expenditures".

'Spending XP' should be an accomplishment, not a fun tax. That's what currencies are for.

I get that you are 'fine with it'. I, as I think I've been making clear for a good long time now, am not. And I don't believe I'll ever understand why, exactly, anybody is fine with it - aside from a sense, perhaps, of ennui ranging to full-out dissatisfaction without the sensation of someone stealing out of your cookie jar just after you've spent all day working and waiting to get home and enjoy them. Which is a very British thing, in my opinion.

 

[Stigbob]

I feel like you have quite literally ignored my statement prior: "XP and XP gains do not correlate to money or money expenditures".

'Spending XP' should be an accomplishment, not a fun tax. That's what currencies are for.

I get that you are 'fine with it'. I, as I think I've been making clear for a good long time now, am not.

Its not a fun tax as you can achieve more with an SLF in tow, you get more kills for your XP expenditure so its not a flat loss and in some circumstances its a huge gain.

And I don't believe I'll ever understand why, exactly, anybody is fine with it - aside from a sense, perhaps, of ennui ranging to full-out dissatisfaction without the sensation of someone stealing out of your cookie jar just after you've spent all day working and waiting to get home and enjoy them. Which is a very British thing, in my opinion.

Its because its a video game and not a big deal, just something people do for fun.

 

[V'larr]

Its not a fun tax as you can achieve more with an SLF in tow, you get more kills for your XP expenditure so its not a flat loss and in some circumstances its a huge gain.

I addressed this argument already in this thread.

Its because its a video game and not a big deal, just something people do for fun.

So, confirming precisely what I have just stated. You do you.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

No. That's not how it works - that's not how working in a group ever works.

You don't suddenly understand less or earn less progress in school, just because you participated in a group study.

You don't get teamed up with co-workers, and suddenly everyone's minimum wage goes down as a result. Unions have started riots over far less.

Name another game that has your group take XP directly away from your gains, instead of each member simply earning XP separately on their own depending if they were present or not for the source of XP gain?

I can find and name at least 10 games for every 1 you can find, that do things the sensible way.

Not that I didn't already hash this argument out to death 2 years ago, but I digress....

your delusional, if you want to sell your phone and split the profits with your friend its not suddenly worth twice as much


Like the entire Final Fantasy series among many other titles, there are currently 14 releases so crack on and list 140 please.

 

[Stigbob]

I addressed this argument already in this thread.

No you didn't.

So, confirming precisely what I have just stated. You do you.

It does seem to be a big deal for you. Possibly because you ignore the obvious XP benefits you can get from an SLF.

 

[V'larr]

your delusional, if you want to sell your phone and split the profits with your friend its not suddenly worth twice as much

Like the entire Final Fantasy series among many other titles, there are currently 14 releases so crack on and list 140 please.

There is nothing delusional about what I have stated and which you have sidestepped entirely with the absurd comparison that XP gains is like trying to sell a phone with your friend's help.

What you are saying ONLY makes sense if we were discussing having improved XP gains by having a crew or being in a wing - and at extreme rates, too, to be 'worth twice as 'much'.

I have never played a single RPG that works in that fashion. There are games with limited sources of XP that don't get shared between members, sure (namely the Fire Emblem series) - I've played those, but that's different, as it's the equivalent of managing an entire army of CMDRs. Mind you, I've never played a Final Fantasy either, so there you go.
(From a bit of googling, it seems you're incorrect about FFXIV having anything in the way of XP splitting, by the by. Given I haven't played the other titles, I wouldn't know offhand about the rest.)

No you didn't.
It does seem to be a big deal for you. Possibly because you ignore the obvious XP benefits you can get from an SLF.

I did. You plainly haven't read it, because now what you're doing is prompting me to repeat myself, addressing the exact points you're trying to raise.

As you said, games should be something do for fun. So what happens when said games becomes something not fun?

Allow me to rephrase the question at hand, here:

In what way would it reduce the fun you're having in the game, if they took away XP splitting and allowed equal & separate XP gains?
Who would suffer?
The top 1% of remaining active hardcore players that might complain that other players are getting a slight advantage in also obtaining combat Elite rank? (Despite how much easier it's gotten over time to get Trade & Exploration in comparison, in so many ways?)

Who, exactly, is it more fun for, to have the game remain as-is with XP splitting?

It does not make sense to me.

 

[Stigbob]

I did. You plainly haven't read it, because now what you're doing is prompting me to repeat myself, addressing the exact points you're trying to raise.

As you said, games should be something do for fun. So what happens when said games becomes something not fun?

Allow me to rephrase the question at hand, here:

In what way would it reduce the fun you're having in the game, if they took away XP splitting and allowed equal & separate XP gains?
Who would suffer?
The top 1% of remaining active hardcore players that might complain that other players are getting a slight advantage in also obtaining combat Elite rank? (Despite how much easier it's gotten over time to get Trade & Exploration in comparison, in so many ways?)

Who, exactly, is it more fun for, to have the game remain as-is with XP splitting?

It does not make sense to me.

SLF's are more fun than no SLF's so the XP deduction is well worth it, if and when it applies which isn't always as sometimes its an XP gain depends what you are doing.

 

[V'larr]

SLF's are more fun than no SLF's so the XP deduction is well worth it, if and when it applies which isn't always as sometimes its an XP gain depends what you are doing.

They would be more fun, except the XP deduction ruins it. If bringing more passengers with you on a road trip meant you had to drive 50% slower, few people would go travelling anywhere at all.

And, for the third time, I already addressed the point you're trying to make here. That is, the cost for said 'XP gains' are already paid for in player time and currency (plus the act of reaching out to find and socialize with other people in the case of wings).

 

[Stigbob]

They would be more fun, except the XP deduction ruins it. If bringing more passengers with you on a road trip meant you had to drive 50% slower, few people would go travelling anywhere at all.

You can't even see the XP deduction so why worry about it ?. If it bothers you ditch the NPC since you were going on about exploration in the OP its not like you need one.

And, for the third time, I already addressed the point you're trying to make here. That is, the cost for said 'XP gains' are already paid for in player time and currency (plus the act of reaching out to find and socialize with other people in the case of wings).

That's not true if you jump into the SLF and have a blast the mothership does the majority of the killing and you directly benefit with a huge XP boost way above what you could get on your own in an SLF with an unmanned mothership. If you use the SLF to cover your escape on mission you directly benefit with XP for successful completion.

You only see the cost and not the gains. Try cheering up a bit, its only a game and not like you have to use NPC's.

 

[V'larr]

You can't even see the XP deduction so why worry about it ?. If it bothers you ditch the NPC since you were going on about exploration in the OP its not like you need one.

That's not true if you jump into the SLF and have a blast the mothership does the majority of the killing and you directly benefit with a huge XP boost way above what you could get on your own in an SLF with an unmanned mothership. If you use the SLF to cover your escape on mission you directly benefit with XP for successful completion.

You only see the cost and not the gains. Try cheering up a bit, its only a game and not like you have to use NPC's.

That's the rather the whole issue, the cost being in the way of the gains here. And not using NPCs is, indeed, what I've resigned myself to; hence the exploration focus for the time being and my inactivity over the past, what, 2 years? Who's counting anymore, I digress.

Whether you are a player that likes to fly the SLF yourself or not should have no bearing on the matter, as I see things. Fun does not need to be gated, mitigated, or punished.
To get to the point you have a ship that can take a fighter and a crew into combat, you have already given up your time, effort, and credits, and put a portion of those at some level of risk every time you go into combat (less so, now that finally we have crew insurance).
You do not need to have XP taken away, too, to keep things 'balanced'.

And really, if the SLF question is a balance problem? Then handle that directly, by changing SLFs. Don't take away player XP earnings to do it.

 

[Stigbob]

That's the rather the whole issue, the cost being in the way of the gains here. And not using NPCs is, indeed, what I've resigned myself to; hence the exploration focus for the time being and my inactivity over the past, what, 2 years? Who's counting anymore, I digress.

Whether you are a player that likes to fly the SLF yourself or not should have no bearing on the matter, as I see things. Fun does not need to be gated, mitigated, or punished.
To get to the point you have a ship that can take a fighter and a crew into combat, you have already given up your time, effort, and credits, and put a portion of those at some level of risk every time you go into combat (less so, now that finally we have crew insurance).
You do not need to have XP taken away, too, to keep things 'balanced'.

And really, if the SLF question is a balance problem? Then handle that directly, by changing SLFs. Don't take away player XP earnings to do it.

A two year break seems a little OTT over an invisible and optional minor game mechanic IMO. Just vote with your menu choices, which FDEV can see so they know how far the NPC XP related boycott spreads. Which given how universally popular the NPC rebuy seems to be could well just be you.

If it ain't broke and whatnot.