People who complain about 'the grind' and the game being 'boring'

[-=VampyrE=-]

Thanks

All those game mechanics are incredibly basic and shallow - --- SNIP ---

Explain!

If you wanna challenge then play CG's in open. NPC's are too stupid in this game, they should not be stronger but wiser. Now they are like space zombies -interdicting me every time when I'm flying without any cargo and saying "give me your tasty cargo"...

I dont want G&G PvP-nonsense.
If the Players in Open would ROLEPLAY, you would find me there. Take "The Code" as good Player-Pirates. Had some contact with them. Was real fun!
But at the moment this is noch fun or RPG. This is ....

Anyway...
Right. NPC`s are dump. No real firepower, noch "inteligent" behaviour.
2.2 (directly after the patchday) it was ok. But the they nerfed them... Cause the players could not except the challange!

 

[NeilF]

Explain!

Mining? How has it improved over the past two years? It's fairly simplistic in nature and some more depth to it and indeed even some stateful elements could make it (and exploration) far more interesting/rewarding.

Bounty Hunting? How has it improved over the past two years? As sexy as it sounds, it typically means going to a RES and simply shooting (farming) the Wanteds turning there seemingly for no motive other than so commit suicide?

Exploration? How has is improved over the past two years? Planetary landings were a great technical achievement and for me was the only try improvement to the game since Wings. But it's still insanely point and click at its core?

Piracy? How has is improved over the past two years? Infact having tried PvP piracy a couple of times recently I'd go as far as to say, it still doesn't work very well at all and is in dire need of attention.

Trading? How has it improved over the past two years? By its nature it's a simple profession, but it seems the background sim and what's taking place in the galaxy could easily make it a more interesting & dynamic experience.


Now let's look at what's been released over the past two years and consider what they've really brought to the game?:-
Powerplay? An ill-conceived development IMHO.
CQC? A development effort spent on creating a whole new stand alone game. Imagine what that development time coupld have introduced into the core game?
The Engineers? A questionable ill-balanced arms-race pinned on the back of simply re-using what's already in the game?
Passengers? Warm cargo... Yes, a nice variation on existing gameplay really.
SLF? A nice novelty but no real new depth?
Mutli-Crew? The jury is out on this one, but I predict in a few months it'll be a niche rarely used feature.


So where are any truly deep and involved new gameplay elements/mechanics? Two years! As I've said, for me since Wings, I can only personally say Planetary Landings was such an example... And that's about it!

 

[Jex =TE=]

Reading the thread what 'conversation' you are talking about seems unclear.
Go to location, get thing you want to trade, go to location you want to deliver.
Yes, but that is trading, I fail to see how you would make that 'more', or how it is more in any and all games involving trading, I mean take black desert online, where you don't even need to control your character when going from point to point, I would argue that that is as simple as it comes, in Elite you need to control your ship, so it can be made simpler then what Elite has.
But and this is the essence of my question, as I've repeated now a few times, could you give me an example of a game where trading is not 'simple' and is better then Elite, that is ALL I'm asking, but you seem to be dancing around it?

Explain!

Guys, if we're going to have a conversation you must at least be able to recognize simple game mechanics. I could throw this back at you and ask you the following;

Explain how they are deep mechanics?
Explain how they could be improved upon?

If you can't answer either of those questions we're going to have difficulty understanding each other I'm afraid.

To answer how simple they are you only need to look at what you can take away or reduce. How can you make trading simpler? Other than making it all from the station so you cut out the travel there isn't much I'm afraid. Finding a "good trade route" is only a time sink before its +,J,- over and over again.

How would you improve trading? Well there's a huge amount of ideas from forum users here over hundreds of threads. The fact is you can obviously improve upon +,J,- right? You could add in trade routes for one thing. Safer routes that are more patrolled but take longer or you can plot a course to cut corners but risk piracy. As a result of being sneaky you avoid the pirates and get their quicker and thus earn more credits and build on your reputation within that system as a reliable trader. That in turn could open up other trading opportunities for you and more gameplay.

However, the dull and monotonous back and forth needs stuff to break it up, so different trading mechanics that aren't just go there, press + then go here, press -. There's also an issue with the current credit rate in the game. What's the point of earning credits when they're meaningless and so easy to get now. To play the role of a trader, you need gameplay that promotes trading knowledge within the game and also gives risk of a failure to lose which again is something elite lacks - any meaningful loss. It needs something to give trading a satisfying feel like when you're in combat and you watch a ship you were fighting blow up.

In combat, you don't just get in your ship and you're an ace pilot. In trading, you don't need to know anything other than a good route which u can find online. Combat you at least need to practice to get decent against the AI and against other people, you really need to know your craft. There's nothing like that when it comes to trade (and combat has it's own issues and massively so against the AI).

So to draw more people who are into trading games, don't you think that one of the 3 ELITE ranks in the game should have a little bit more thought to it? That perhaps by making it more engaging than it is it might bring more players to it? The same can be said to other professions. Combat Zones - Fish in a barrel - can they be made more engaging? Yes. The list goes on...

 

[Several]

It is indeed a generation thing - current gamers are used to a fast fed content pipeline rushing throught their minds while playing recent games.

It does not only affect the content of games itself, but also platforms like STEAM - stuff more games faster and faster down your throat. In order to consume all this content, people start to "rush" throught games (min-maxers) with the optimal path in mind in order to "achieve" or "win" the game. The same holds true for the life of most people - rush throught university to get a decent job fast, min-max your life costs in order to live the big dream of life (corvette, anaconda) later on which has been sold to you all your life, so that you can finally lay your mind to rest and tell yourself you have "arrived" and "accomplished" it.

So lets see the recent Multi-Crew change in context: The rules were changed so that your min-maxed path towards your goal now needs longer to be achieved - I think - this is the real reason for people beeing upset. It gets in the way of their already planned future where they do see themselves - just that little grind more and its finally done. The change actually makes that pain enduring grind longer than expected or even blocking that way towards "success" completely off.

Edit: a word

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

Explain!

The wall of text to explain that woudl be huge, but for everyone who played alot games since like 25 years he can surely can tell you that ED ha sonly shallow mechanics because there is a ton of games who made all the aspects that ED has already but with more depth. even the most trading games form the 90's like patricier or Elisabeth and all the others did have a better trading mechanic. If you don't know why they are shallow, I would have to throw bakc the "no imagination" argument you used bakc to you. because you lack the knopwledge what a deeper trading mechanic is and the imaginaton of how it could be existing in ED.

- - - Updated - - -

Explain!

The wall of text to explain that woudl be huge, but for everyone who played alot games since like 25 years he can surely can tell you that ED ha sonly shallow mechanics because there is a ton of games who made all the aspects that ED has already but with more depth. even the most trading games form the 90's like patricier or Elisabeth and all the others did have a better trading mechanic. If you don't know why they are shallow, I would have to throw bakc the "no imagination" argument you used bakc to you. because you lack the knopwledge what a deeper trading mechanic is and the imaginaton of how it could be existing in ED.

 

[-=VampyrE=-]

I can tell you how I did my Traderank.

1. Choose startpoint A.
2. Choose Endpoint B (400 LJ distance)
3. find next Trade-Produkt and Station using Tools. (Example: https://eddb.io/trade/hops or http://www.elitetradingtool.co.uk)
4. have fun.

 

[Muetdhiver]

NeilF nails it.

FD has taken the gamble to bolt fancy minigames over minimal fondations. It does not work.

• CQC is fun for a while, but playing it means not playing the main game.
• PP : I was super hyped about it, and I was expecting it to be BGS+player factions with a lot of focus on coop open play. What do we get : a grindy layer slaped on top of a not quite working as expected BGS. No focus on
  promoting organized team vs team open gameplay.
• Engineers : Grind + RNG for extra % firepower. Mandatory for PvP.

In the meantime, lets look at what they did about making the core of the game better (exploration, bulk trading, missions, mining, combat) :

• exploration : beyond planetary landing, which are awesome for explorers looking for nice vistas and canyon racing spots, zilch. After 2 years, the core of exploration is 100% the same honk // point and wait to scan stuff.
• bulk trading : well, beyond the effect of powerplay and increased effects of the BGS, nothing new beyond a bigger ship.
• missions : this is the place that has seen the most work. Small forks, some tentative chaining and better ties to the BGS. slim, but better than nothing.
• mining : Ice mining and limpets. Scanning rings to find the good spots ? Nope. Gold rushes ? Nope. Rich ore veins in asteroids ? Nope. Do I need to keep going ?
• combat : we got Hazres, and some more interesting SS. Also, a lot of grind to get +X% firepower/speed/whatnot. (looking at you engineers). Interesting coop scenarios ? Nope. challenging NPC's for "endgame" moded ships ? Nope. Cz replacement by sequential ticket based conflicts centered arround new game assets ? Nope. Crime and Punishment to sanitize open ? Nope. Wing content ? Nope.

To me, season 1 & 2 are fails. If I didn't have a lifetime pass, there is a zero% chance of me buying a season 3 upfront.

Thinking of what they could have done with the dev time sunk in just CQC & PP if it had been allocated to stuff like improving
exploration, mining, trading and combat depth makes me sick lol. It's not that they did not try to do it. It's just so minimal that
in the end it looks like putting lipstick on a pig. It cannot work.

IMO unless FD get their marbles together and put some real work on the fondations, that game is going to die out. It's not that
there is nothing to do, it's that the game looks like a disjointed mess of orthogonal minigames. It fail to create emergent stuff
that would create player investment in the game once they pass the "getting the ships I want" phase.

The place where the game is best is coop play arround the BGS. FD, if you want player invested in your game, work on that and
base mechanics. Only then adding shiny stuff will really work.

 

[SkipRat]

This thread is for you.

Perhaps it's a generational thing. Back when I was a kid I didn't have a computer. Born with a plastic spoon in my mouth so to speak. Also, the internet barely existed. A friend of mine had rich parents and a computer that we used to view our first 'nature' pictures.. we printed them out in black in white, all pixelated, but it was awesome. I had books, and a television with an antenna on the roof and 6 channels to watch. We had a VHS and rented movies now and then. We built tree-houses, played pirates on DIY rafts on the canal, we made underground bunkers and lived in them. Entertainment was something we made for ourselves, by using our imagination and creativity.

Now to get to Elite: I never grind, I simply refuse to. When I have a goal to get some rank, or a certain ship, or unlock an engineer, I use my imagination to make it into an interesting multitasking adventure. I visit 20 different systems instead of going back and forth between the 2 most profitable ones. I see lots of cool things along the way, I interdict whatever is wanted, drop into signal sources to find interesting things, I find even more missions and things to do while working on my goal. Now, after about 1 and 3 quarter years i'm a billionare driving a federal corvette and several smaller ships. I've had fun doing all of that because I refused to grind, because grinding is what makes any game boring. I don't have the need to get that goal within a few days or a week. It will take me months to get there, but I know I'll be having fun doing it.

In other words. Please stop blaming the game developers for your lack of ability to imagine a better way to play this game. I've just told you how I avoid grinds.. try it and you'll see that the boredom will quickly end. If it's instant gratification you want, then this might not be the game for you. It's an immense sandbox game, and how you choose to play it will decide how your experience in the game will be. Try to use that dusty old brain.. I know we're all born with similar brains, capable of similar things.. just turn on that imagination button and see what opportunities you'll be able to create for yourself.

Thanks for your attention. I hope I didn't offend anyone. Just trying to be helpful toward my fellow commanders. o7 !

And back then, games that came on 1.44Mb floppy disks had more depth and balance than most games that come out today.

Back then game developers created games as a piece art, the way they wanted to do it. They treated gamers as gamers, not dumb morons that needed to be catered for, if you wasn't good enough, you was told to get better.

Today, its games by numbers and most creativity and imagination in games is dead.

And elite has gone the same way.

So to those who are complaining about this game, make your voices heard, we want our elite back, the game was sold and burn this shallow sack of donkey dung we have been given.

 

[Jex =TE=]

I can tell you how I did my Traderank.

1. Choose startpoint A.
2. Choose Endpoint B (400 LJ distance)
3. find next Trade-Produkt and Station using Tools. (Example: https://eddb.io/trade/hops or http://www.elitetradingtool.co.uk)
4. have fun.

4. Have fun.

You can have fun doing that but other people find it boring. I just explained to you and it was a worthless effort because you can't get it, can you.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Stop grinding, start looking around where you are and work out how to make best use of what surrounds you.

 

[lysan]

NeilF nails it.

FD has taken the gamble to bolt fancy minigames over minimal fondations. It does not work.

• CQC is fun for a while, but playing it means not playing the main game.
• PP : I was super hyped about it, and I was expecting it to be BGS+player factions with a lot of focus on coop open play. What do we get : a grindy layer slaped on top of a not quite working as expected BGS. No focus on
  promoting organized team vs team open gameplay.
• Engineers : Grind + RNG for extra % firepower. Mandatory for PvP.

In the meantime, lets look at what they did about making the core of the game better (exploration, bulk trading, missions, mining, combat) :

• exploration : beyond planetary landing, which are awesome for explorers looking for nice vistas and canyon racing spots, zilch. After 2 years, the core of exploration is 100% the same honk // point and wait to scan stuff.
• bulk trading : well, beyond the effect of powerplay and increased effects of the BGS, nothing new beyond a bigger ship.
• missions : this is the place that has seen the most work. Small forks, some tentative chaining and better ties to the BGS. slim, but better than nothing.
• mining : Ice mining and limpets. Scanning rings to find the good spots ? Nope. Gold rushes ? Nope. Rich ore veins in asteroids ? Nope. Do I need to keep going ?
• combat : we got Hazres, and some more interesting SS. Also, a lot of grind to get +X% firepower/speed/whatnot. (looking at you engineers). Interesting coop scenarios ? Nope. challenging NPC's for "endgame" moded ships ? Nope. Cz replacement by sequential ticket based conflicts centered arround new game assets ? Nope. Crime and Punishment to sanitize open ? Nope. Wing content ? Nope.

To me, season 1 & 2 are fails. If I didn't have a lifetime pass, there is a zero% chance of me buying a season 3 upfront.

Thinking of what they could have done with the dev time sunk in just CQC & PP if it had been allocated to stuff like improving
exploration, mining, trading and combat depth makes me sick lol. It's not that they did not try to do it. It's just so minimal that
in the end it looks like putting lipstick on a pig. It cannot work.

IMO unless FD get their marbles together and put some real work on the fondations, that game is going to die out. It's not that
there is nothing to do, it's that the game looks like a disjointed mess of orthogonal minigames. It fail to create emergent stuff
that would create player investment in the game once they pass the "getting the ships I want" phase.

The place where the game is best is coop play arround the BGS. FD, if you want player invested in your game, work on that and
base mechanics. Only then adding shiny stuff will really work.

No one asked for PP or CQC, no one!

However we got it and it was just horrible, CQC should have had NPCs and PP was just build on the wrong foundation.

But it's all the little grindy situations in the game that makes you scream.

When you read the DDF or listen to the Devs it all sound very interesting.

Then again the actual product are not even close. I get the feeling it's just about ticking goals off in the project by adding a headline.

Passengers, yup got it, move to next milestone.

 

[NeilF]

Simple Awnser? Stop playing ED. Next!!!

Awnser?

I basically have stopped playing...


And while stopping playing is one awnser, another answer might be to question the quality/content of the development choices being made. And I don't think I'd be alone in that TBH... I get the impression there's a good number of players reaching my sort of state with the game. ie: Expecting something a little more involved and challenging after two+ years instead of more and more bolt-ons, some of which are very questionable in design goals? Maybe of course this is the game FD wish to make. Keeping things thin and point and click, which is fine... But it's not what I read into the sales pitch back at kickstarter... Hence the frustration at a missed opportunity.

No one asked for PP or CQC, no one!

However we got it and it was just horrible, CQC should have had NPCs and PP was just build on the wrong foundation.

But it's all the little grindy situations in the game that makes you scream.

When you read the DDF or listen to the Devs it all sound very interesting.

Then again the actual product are not even close. I get the feeling it's just about ticking goals off in the project by adding a headline.

Passengers, yup got it, move to next milestone.

Well, the Engineers was a nice idea to allow CMDRs to tailor/personalise their ships, but of course it got injected with steroids meaning it was a mindless race to grade 5 modifications, instead of any real consideration. And of course so very much of it was simply underpinned by time sponge gameplay on what was already in the game... ie: It in truth offered little new other than new balancing headaches... Another questionable design for more bolt-no-rebadge gameplay...

TBH I think The Engineers has broken the game in some ways that can never be undone now...

 

[KING5TON]

Do you even trying to read stuff people are posting about the issue here... jeez...

Just add him to your ignore list.
It's not like he's providing any debate, it's basically "NO U!"
I'm sure his chosen idol FD will appreciate him telling people to stop playing their game and giving them money just because he can't handle people saying negative things on the internet about a game he likes a little too much.

 

[Armholeeio]

The hook to this game is the grind , grind to get the credits or the materials for X. So many games do it Wot , mmorpg do it and a vast majority of fps do it. Wot there is no story line and repetitive gameplay but it is still a massive popular game and all that is grind to get cash and exp for the next tank or modules, fps have a brief story and I mean a brief story attached to it and then it's Pvp grinding to get the next unlock and next rank. Elite is a grind simulator, it's Microsoft flight simulator with a grind element to it it always has been from the beginning. If people don't like that find another game for a bit and take a break go grind another game ( it's all a grind the devs want you to repetitively play their Ip one way or the other), if you really hate the game that's fine stop playing and leave the forum there is no constructive reason for you stay here being more embittered over the game you so dislike people aren't suddenly going to stop playing as you hate the game. The end of the day this game isn't for everyone's taste or style and I wouldn't recommend kerbal space program if you hate this game as that has even less story arch and even more repetitive gameplay and people love it.

 

[Mikey2305]

@neilf ... tailor, not taylor. Just saying

 

[KING5TON]

The hook to this game is the grind , grind to get the credits or the materials for X. So many games do it Wot , mmorpg do it and a vast majority of fps do it. Wot there is no story line and repetitive gameplay but it is still a massive popular game and all that is grind to get cash and exp for the next tank or modules, fps have a brief story and I mean a brief story attached to it and then it's Pvp grinding to get the next unlock and next rank. Elite is a grind simulator, it's Microsoft flight simulator with a grind element to it it always has been from the beginning. If people don't like that find another game for a bit and take a break go grind another game ( it's all a grind the devs want you to repetitively play their Ip one way or the other), if you really hate the game that's fine stop playing land leave the forum there is no constructive reason for you stay here being more embittered over the game you so dislike people aren't suddenly going to stop playing as you hate the game. The end of the day this game isn't for everyone's taste or style and I wouldn't recommend kerbal space program if you hate this game as that has even less story arch and even more repetitive gameplay and people love it.

Another one.
JESUS WEPT!

PSA guys. It's not your game, it's not your forums, as far as I'm aware FD do not have an issue with negative feedback on the game (as long as it's civil) it's just you that have the problem.
You cannot take negative criticism of a game that you had nothing to do with.
That is weird!
You don't care if someone else plays the game or not, you're not telling people to stop playing and leave the forums for their benefit in the slightest. You just want people with negative opinions on the game to go away so you don't have to confront them.
Obviously deep down inside you there's a voice of reason saying "They're right, the game does have issues" and you can't take it, you just want the nasty people who make you question yourself to go away and stop causing these funny feelings you have when you read negative criticism.

It's not healthy guys. Seek help.

I could be wrong though, I'm no head doctor (but I play one on TV).

 

[Cmdr Nemo]

As a child you learned how to do a variety of things, eat, crawl, walk, run, ride a bike, drive a car, how to read and write as well as math and right from wrong. At somepoint after high school, you became responsible and had to apply everything you had learned previously to support yourself. From that point until the end, everything becomes repetitive. With extremly few exceptions, there is nothing you can do, that hasn't been done by youself or an other.

Walking is the act of putting one foot in front of the other and readjusting your mass to the new location, can't get more repetitive than that; And yet you do it, WHY? Eating a variety of food, cooked in a variety of ways, may seem different; But the basics never change, you insert it, chew and swallow. How repetitive is that; And yet you do it, WHY? Life is what you make it, it is your responsibility, not your peers. Enjoy it or not, is your choice, choose wisely. If not, turn the page!

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

As a child you learned how to do a variety of things, eat, crawl, walk, run, ride a bike, drive a car, how to read and write as well as math and right from wrong. At somepoint after high school, you became responsible and had to apply everything you had learned previously to support yourself. From that point until the end, everything becomes repetitive. With extremly few exceptions, there is nothing you can do, that hasn't been done by youself or an other.

Walking is the act of putting one foot in front of the other and readjusting your mass to the new location, can't get more repetitive than that; And yet you do it, WHY? Eating a variety of food, cooked in a variety of ways, may seem different; But the basics never change, you insert it, chew and swallow. How repetitive is that; And yet you do it, WHY? Life is what you make it, it is your responsibility, not your peers. Enjoy it or not, is your choice, choose wisely. If not, turn the page!

wow, sounds like your Life is sad when it's that repetitive. Just because walking is always the same doesn't makes walking as an experice the same. There ar emore things in life to do and see than a single Lifetime can be filled with. While in ED, you quickly have done and seen it all.

 

[NeilF]

@neilf ... tailor, not taylor. Just saying

Damn you! Grrrr!

 

[KING5TON]

As a child you learned how to do a variety of things, eat, crawl, walk, run, ride a bike, drive a car, how to read and write as well as math and right from wrong. At somepoint after high school, you became responsible and had to apply everything you had learned previously to support yourself. From that point until the end, everything becomes repetitive. With extremly few exceptions, there is nothing you can do, that hasn't been done by youself or an other.

Walking is the act of putting one foot in front of the other and readjusting your mass to the new location, can't get more repetitive than that; And yet you do it, WHY? Eating a variety of food, cooked in a variety of ways, may seem different; But the basics never change, you insert it, chew and swallow. How repetitive is that; And yet you do it, WHY? Life is what you make it, it is your responsibility, not your peers. Enjoy it or not, is your choice, choose wisely. If not, turn the page!

I'm not even going to bother, on the ignore list you go.