Ok FDev, we need to talk.

I wanted to put this in the focused feed back but I see that it has moved on and I didn't want to get removed. FDev, you are the intended audience for this post.

First, let me give you a bit of background on my CMDRs. I have two Elite accounts on my Xbox. My first account is a deep space exploration account. This account has over 12 weeks of in game time and tens of thousands of systems tagged with it's name. My second account is my bubble account. This account is approaching 10 weeks of in game time, is approaching double elite and a member of the cutter club. I have been an active CMDR since the GPP on Xbox. I tell you this because I want you to understand this is coming from a long time, even if relatively silent member of this community.

Secondly, a little background on myself. I am a life long gamer. I have a successful career that has blessed me with a modest amount of disposable income that I can spend on recreation. Over the last few years, I would spend 20-30 hours a week in game. My wife and I welcomed our first child in November so my in game time has been cut drastically. An average week may see me log 5-7 hours of game time, mostly on Friday and Saturday nights after I have gotten our son to sleep. Forgive the back story, the relevance of this will be apparent later in the post.

FDev,
Let me start by saying you have put out a beautiful game. It is truly one of a kind and the fact that I have spent more time in this game than any other since I left WoW during the Kungfu Panda era is a testament to that fact. That being said, I think the time for me to move on is rapidly approaching and I feel I owe you an explanation of why.

Another CMDR, in a post that appears to have already been removed, said it best. You've wasted my time FDev and my time is more valuable than just about anything I have to offer right now. I just don't have enough of it and unfortunately I have become rather protective of the time that I am fortunate enough to have to relax and you simply seem to not value it as much as I do.

Your engineering system is frankly broken and borderline abusive of the people who keep your project afloat and alive. I understand the major trend in game design for the last several years has been to find a way to keep your gamers in your game as much as possible, but this has crossed a line. I also understand the major focus of the changes to engineering were an attempt to alleviate some of the RNG aspects of the mechanic. I understand all these factors, but in doing so you have taken a mechanic that already was a bit "grindy" and in an effort to fix a different failed aspect of it, made it more grindy. At the end of the day, I can't get past the fact that I had already max engineered several of my ships and you are forcing me to go through this effort again, an effort mind you, that I wasn't really fond of in the first place, but for the sake of the game I chose to participate in. I understand you've built in a sort of "opt out" so to speak. I can simply just choose not to participate and keep my "legacy" mods in place and call it a push. I contend this isn't really an option. You are asking me to not participate in an aspect of a game that frankly I paid for with hard earned money. That seems like an pretty unacceptable option to me. I understand this grind is moderated (only ever so slightly, tbh) by the material traders, but when I start looking at the numbers, I have spent every single hour in game since the launch of Beyond trying to catch my exploraconda up and I am still not done. This is maddening.

My time is so limited FDev. My options are not. This grind is a monumental waste of time. I can spend an entire week worth of game time trying to find one mat for one G5 upgrade and come up empty handed. This is a huge was of time and frankly I expect some sort of reward for the time I spend in game. To be fair, maybe "reward" is the wrong term. At a minimum I expect to have progressed towards my goal in some sort of fashion. To spend what little time I have available in a given week in your game and to come up empty handed is just something I can't tolerate any more.

I've thought long and hard about this FDev and it is a sad day, but I think the time has come to move on. Coming from a life long ( I am 41) gamer, this is an amazing time in the gaming industry. There are so many amazing games out there right now and so many amazing options for me to spend what little time I do have to relax and frankly FDev, you have failed us here.

DWE2 is on my radar so I may just get my Conda geared up and ready to go for that and come back, but for now, the time has come to say goodbye.

CMDR Azazul/Xerbeross signing off. Good luck CMDRs and Fly Safe o7.
 
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I always liked the Engineers (aaaaah my excitement when I saw the good old trailer)

[video=youtube;8rSC0lNuNyw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rSC0lNuNyw[/video]


And I like them even more after 3.0.
 
it is entirely your decision to waste your time playing a computer game. I'll give you a clue - all computer games are a waste of time. By definition.

Sure, they all are. And some feel more so than others. So many other options to "waste my time" in that aren't such a miserable grind.
 
Because I really enjoyed this game for several years. Thought I would express why I feel it is time to move on. Pretty simple.

understandable. sadly this aspect seems very unlikely to change. maybe take a break (there are indeed other great games out there), or ... you did discover tens of thousands (really??) of systems without engineering, right? no reason you cannot continue to do so ...

to the other ducks:
i do get where you come from, guys, but mocking every ragequit post doesn't change the fact that they are becoming increasingly frequent. you might feel good and get away with direspecting these players, but you still need them for the game to be supported in the long run. way to throw stones at your own ... ships. just saying.
 
So FD has wasted your time.
Then what have you been doing all these weeks of playtime?
If FD wasted your time then obviously you didn't have any fun, right?

If you had fun playing ED untill now then your time certainly wasn't wasted.
If you feel that you're wasting time now playing ED then by all means go play something else.

In short, if FD has wasted your time then you took way to long to figure that out.
 
I can spend an entire week worth of game time trying to find one mat for one G5 upgrade and come up empty handed. This is a huge was of time and frankly I expect some sort of reward for the time I spend in game.

Honestly, and with the greatest respect, why not ask people for help rather than typing this huge goodbye-post? If you are spending a week of game time and come up empty-handed you are doing it wrong. You can always get a bunch of G5 mats within the hour and trade for the one you need. You could have done it in the time it took you to type the OP.
 
to the other ducks:
i do get where you come from, guys, but mocking every ragequit post doesn't change the fact that they are becoming increasingly frequent. you might feel good and get away with direspecting these players, but you still need them for the game to be supported in the long run. way to throw stones at your own ... ships. just saying.

I expected that kind of reaction from a few folks. There is always a troll community that would rather flame than discuss. I'm not rage quitting though. I'm not in a rage at all. I love the game and I am grateful for the time I was able to spend in it. It's just time to re-examine that time. I'm sure I'll come back for DWE2 and I might just get the Conda read to go and head out into the black now... just seems like a waste.
 
In short, if FD has wasted your time then you took way to long to figure that out.
The catch there is I've never really considered the time in ED wasted. Quite the opposite. It was a great way to relax and disconnect from the day and that isn't a waste to me. The experience since 3.0 has changed and frankly there are other options out there that are better "wastes" of time.
 
I didn't engineer all my ships again, they're just fine. Also been too busy doing other stuff. I guess some upgraded power distributors would be nice, maybe next month.
 
i do get where you come from, guys, but mocking every ragequit post doesn't change the fact that they are becoming increasingly frequent.

And that somehow makes them more acceptable? The point being "ragequit". If people really aren't able to control their emotions over a game, and feel that they have to leave in a huff having had a rant on some forum somewhere, then they really should expect some disparaging replies.
 
I get the OP's point though. The insidious aspect of power creep is that "it's optional" doesn't really hold water. This is because future challenges in the game will assume the player has an optimal setup, ergo they must grind. I also agree about the issue of "respect". It may sound entitled to demand that from a developer, but it's more an issue of understanding. It seems like the developers don't play their own game, or rather, the *designers* don't. The game continually undermines the player's progress, either by changing the goal posts regarding mission rewards or by presenting unforseeable and insurmountable challenges that undo hours of gameplay (as is what happened to me recently). These circumstances range from game breaking bugs to schizophrenic mission rewards. If the player has no reasonable guarantee of a partciular outcome of an activity, it becomes very frustrating to keep playing.

No matter what angle I view this from, I come to the same conclusion: The game is stringing players along to keep playing and investing time into it. It uses mechanics sadly typical of many newer games to keep their attention whilst periodically offering new microtransaction opportunities. Some may argue that since the in game store is optional, then it is a perfectly legitamate way to gain revenue. However these people forget that the items in the store must be enticing, ergo the game must at least in some way be designed around offering as much opportunity for new microtransactions as possible.

Thus we reach my conclusion - Elite is a game on life support, with a skeleton team of developers pushing out just enough new features to keep players in game so that they will buy more store items. The Beyond update was supposed to change that. Yet here we are with a brand new monetization opportunity (COVAS) and yet more new gameplay features that don't. Bloody. Work.

I'm with the OP on this one, sadly. So long folks and thanks for all the fish.
 
I think part of the problem here is the tendency to want to optimise things..

If you just have to have that new G5 mod on your ship it is absolutely maddening to be making no visible progress towards achieving that despite much in game effort attempting to do so.

This is problem of using procedural generation/RNG to make a large scale open universe unpredictable conflicting rather messily with peoples desire to achieve a specific aim but not really having a definite path towards it... How to you resolve that as a developer? The more predictable you make everything the less intrinsically interesting the universe and the less opportunity for emergent gameplay in the systems. The less predictable things are the more horribly at the mercy of the randomness you are as a player if you are trying to do something specific? This of course effects things beyond the engineering mats, it impacts wanting specific types of missions or seeing particular content (like Thargoid interdictions). Part of the appeal can be in the rareity and unexpected nature of things but it is also the biggest problem... I'm really not sure how FD can address this, they can, perhaps, try and guess what you are doing and nudge probabilities in your favour but that it is a bit messy. They can (and should) provide better (more obvious?) information on where and how you can improve your odds... But beyond that I'm not sure.

This isn't to let FD off the hook! Since they've taken the (necessary) procedural generation route they absolutely need to try and figure this out. I'm sure they are trying but in the meantime (and perhaps ever more) it will be seriously annoying and we are going to see more of this.

Are things actually worse now? I'd personally say not, but it can feel worse with the pressure to re-engineer everything - I feel this a touch myself.
Things like the mat traders are helpful but the rates making it so punishing, FD need to think carefully about that. For the future they should probably consider mechanism for requesting mission types and so to aid with that sort of activity. More esoteric things like interdiction events I'm not sure about - perhaps some things you just have to leave purely to luck..
 
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