TL;DR: The "personal narrative" and it's associated grinds are an excuse for trashy game-design that is an insult to Elite Dangerous. It ruins my immersion.
You can skip the next text block, it's just there to maybe understand better where I'm coming from with my complains which is most I'll do here. I've kept my mouth shut for long enough.
Intro
I recently got back into this game after buying an oculus and getting a Horizon account with it. It was then when I finally understood why everyone keeps talking about it. Without an appreciation for Elite's immersion I only ever cared about grinding more to get an Exploraconda that, because the info text said so, was supposed to launch fighters. After finding out I was grinding for a lie and feeling spit in the face with the Horizon release I quit. I'm telling you this because I can now see that because at this time immersion felt like a hindrance to me. All it did was give FDev an excuse to mess with my experience, namely the speed at which I could accomplish new stuff. I thought having to do boring repetitive missions for a Clipper was to so ppl would stay immersed in their experience. Now I can tell that's bull.
Since I was still mad about grinds that usually got excused with the term "personal narrative" I thought all I had to get into it was to accept and participate in it like I did with my wrong understanding of immersion.
Getting into personal narrative
And so I went and created my own narrative. I'm now a nooby bounty hunter in my C-rated Viper that wants to make it big. Why? Cuz that's all this account had when I got it. Since mining had become a thing and it seemed more "narratively" I went and became one. And no , I had a blast until I reached that parts that were intended for, you guessed it, personal narrative. When these stations got attacked and became an attraction for navy rank grinders, I did the same. Let's get some prestige and status with the feds and buy one of these beautiful imperial annihilators.
"personal narrative"
The first couple of times it was dope to have these ppl thank me every time for saving their asses but after only like 10 rounds all I did was spamming yes already. Launch already. Why does this platform need to turn?? This ship (not a station) is open in all damn directions! Why am I forced to look at this animation again? Oh no I was stuck in the mail slot (Thanks Saud Kruger) What? I can't save your life, because I got stuck trying to save you? Oh and I have to go back to where I came from to pay a fine without saving lives, just to be "allowed" to save your family!? Why do I need to do this?
Yes, dear FDev. Why indeed? What am I supposed to even narrative the 30th time I'm helping these ungrateful ppl?
I did finish my grind for the Corvette and it's a superb ship, but for a long time I will fly her with a bitter aftertaste.
Another good example of personal narrative
Fast forward and I found out that you can grind guardian stuff. I was most interested in the FSD Booster and it's pretty easy to get so I didn't suffer the grind sickness. It was an amazing experience. I went in with my trusty DBX, and landed pretty fast, fast enough to get out, drive to the Orca still trying to find a landing spot and laugh with him about the badness of the glorious idea to go land on a rough alien structure in an Orca. I also didn't know about the drones that would spawn which scared the out of me. So much so that I scared my family into asking why I just eep-ed. This is immersion, this is personal narrative. That day is my longest entry and was one of the most enjoyable entries to write.
Entirely refusing to take part in parts of the game because "personal narrative"
However I never did the other Guardian grinds. In fact, I refuse to, simply because I already take less enjoyment into my Corvette and I don't want to ruin my fond memories with the Guardian Site. It means I will never get to use a lot of fun modules and parts of the thargoid game features. But I have to accept that and that's okay as the game has enough other things to do.
Pay2Win?
Anyways. After getting comfortable killing NPC's again I wanted to get back into PVP. PVP means you engineer your ship. Which btw just sth to think about:
The Cobra 4 is basically useless because otherwise ppl would complain about it being pay2win. But Basegame-owners are all forced to buy Horizon should they choose to fight Horizon PVP'ers. Ofc you can reach agreements with other human players of not engineering, but you don't always fight a friend who complies to your agreements, not? thus making this pay2win. But no one complains because the basegame owners have mostly quit or upgraded.
Getting sick of personal narrative
Back to topic: I have been grinding Materials to be able to participate in PVP and I got enough to fit 3 ships to G4. This grind was not very fun but the light of PVP which to me is the most fun thing you can do in ED were my guiding light. That is until I found out I also have to do stuff to unlock all the Engineers.
And this is were I had enough. It makes more sense for my personal narrative to grind "befriending the engineers" than to "grind stuff" for them but I already did the other one and thus I felt extra hostility towards the thought of having to grind their friendship too. They always live far from another and it makes little sense that only about 25 ppl OF ALL HUMANITY are capable of improving a module that runs on what is basically the car of space. Imagine only 25 ppl could tune a car. Especially if they can do so with the remote workshop. It makes no sense. That whole system tramples over Elite's goals. I could go on and on about how much I have to complain about on Engineers just like I did with the naval rank. But instead here's some ideas on how to fix that:
Idea on fixing at least something
Since this seems like an excuse to keep me playing just for the sake of making me keep playing, at least focus the grind on something. No other feature has so much time that's basically wasted. So to fix this make one part easier and the other harder, preferably the gathering part as I don't want to suffer doing the narrative part of befriending an engineer:
Do one of these and just increase the time it needs to get the mats.
About cheats and exploits
Things that the majority of gaming communities viewed as stupid or not fun, yet needed, are usually the first and most often exploited and cheated at things and with the development of them waves little kids that just want to ruin the fun for others come into the game and use them not to get back their own fun but to ruin mine. And since this game (afaik) is free of cheaters without using any meaningful anti-cheat (again, afaik) it makes sense to assume that as soon we get another big wave of newcomers, Not like on xmas, like when the game was available for 10 bucks, everyone will suffer for nothing.
PS: I tried hard with my English, especially the grammar so instead of calling me illiterate, tell me where I did what wrong. Thanks for reading. Also, now that I know Elite has a forum: Screw Reddit :b
You can skip the next text block, it's just there to maybe understand better where I'm coming from with my complains which is most I'll do here. I've kept my mouth shut for long enough.
Intro
I recently got back into this game after buying an oculus and getting a Horizon account with it. It was then when I finally understood why everyone keeps talking about it. Without an appreciation for Elite's immersion I only ever cared about grinding more to get an Exploraconda that, because the info text said so, was supposed to launch fighters. After finding out I was grinding for a lie and feeling spit in the face with the Horizon release I quit. I'm telling you this because I can now see that because at this time immersion felt like a hindrance to me. All it did was give FDev an excuse to mess with my experience, namely the speed at which I could accomplish new stuff. I thought having to do boring repetitive missions for a Clipper was to so ppl would stay immersed in their experience. Now I can tell that's bull.
Since I was still mad about grinds that usually got excused with the term "personal narrative" I thought all I had to get into it was to accept and participate in it like I did with my wrong understanding of immersion.
Getting into personal narrative
And so I went and created my own narrative. I'm now a nooby bounty hunter in my C-rated Viper that wants to make it big. Why? Cuz that's all this account had when I got it. Since mining had become a thing and it seemed more "narratively" I went and became one. And no , I had a blast until I reached that parts that were intended for, you guessed it, personal narrative. When these stations got attacked and became an attraction for navy rank grinders, I did the same. Let's get some prestige and status with the feds and buy one of these beautiful imperial annihilators.
"personal narrative"
The first couple of times it was dope to have these ppl thank me every time for saving their asses but after only like 10 rounds all I did was spamming yes already. Launch already. Why does this platform need to turn?? This ship (not a station) is open in all damn directions! Why am I forced to look at this animation again? Oh no I was stuck in the mail slot (Thanks Saud Kruger) What? I can't save your life, because I got stuck trying to save you? Oh and I have to go back to where I came from to pay a fine without saving lives, just to be "allowed" to save your family!? Why do I need to do this?
Yes, dear FDev. Why indeed? What am I supposed to even narrative the 30th time I'm helping these ungrateful ppl?
I did finish my grind for the Corvette and it's a superb ship, but for a long time I will fly her with a bitter aftertaste.
Another good example of personal narrative
Fast forward and I found out that you can grind guardian stuff. I was most interested in the FSD Booster and it's pretty easy to get so I didn't suffer the grind sickness. It was an amazing experience. I went in with my trusty DBX, and landed pretty fast, fast enough to get out, drive to the Orca still trying to find a landing spot and laugh with him about the badness of the glorious idea to go land on a rough alien structure in an Orca. I also didn't know about the drones that would spawn which scared the out of me. So much so that I scared my family into asking why I just eep-ed. This is immersion, this is personal narrative. That day is my longest entry and was one of the most enjoyable entries to write.
Entirely refusing to take part in parts of the game because "personal narrative"
However I never did the other Guardian grinds. In fact, I refuse to, simply because I already take less enjoyment into my Corvette and I don't want to ruin my fond memories with the Guardian Site. It means I will never get to use a lot of fun modules and parts of the thargoid game features. But I have to accept that and that's okay as the game has enough other things to do.
Pay2Win?
Anyways. After getting comfortable killing NPC's again I wanted to get back into PVP. PVP means you engineer your ship. Which btw just sth to think about:
The Cobra 4 is basically useless because otherwise ppl would complain about it being pay2win. But Basegame-owners are all forced to buy Horizon should they choose to fight Horizon PVP'ers. Ofc you can reach agreements with other human players of not engineering, but you don't always fight a friend who complies to your agreements, not? thus making this pay2win. But no one complains because the basegame owners have mostly quit or upgraded.
Getting sick of personal narrative
Back to topic: I have been grinding Materials to be able to participate in PVP and I got enough to fit 3 ships to G4. This grind was not very fun but the light of PVP which to me is the most fun thing you can do in ED were my guiding light. That is until I found out I also have to do stuff to unlock all the Engineers.
And this is were I had enough. It makes more sense for my personal narrative to grind "befriending the engineers" than to "grind stuff" for them but I already did the other one and thus I felt extra hostility towards the thought of having to grind their friendship too. They always live far from another and it makes little sense that only about 25 ppl OF ALL HUMANITY are capable of improving a module that runs on what is basically the car of space. Imagine only 25 ppl could tune a car. Especially if they can do so with the remote workshop. It makes no sense. That whole system tramples over Elite's goals. I could go on and on about how much I have to complain about on Engineers just like I did with the naval rank. But instead here's some ideas on how to fix that:
Idea on fixing at least something
Since this seems like an excuse to keep me playing just for the sake of making me keep playing, at least focus the grind on something. No other feature has so much time that's basically wasted. So to fix this make one part easier and the other harder, preferably the gathering part as I don't want to suffer doing the narrative part of befriending an engineer:
- Put them all in one system kind of like Shinrarta. Why isn't there one in there anyways? What good is this system if I can't get everything I need at Jameson? Once I'm Elite rank, the discount won't matter all that much, especially if I can gain the 20% back in the time I'd need to fly to all other engineers, engineering my ship. I'm here because I (used to) can buy everything here.
- Make all of them known right of the get go so I don't have to unlock other engineers. After all if you're one of only 25 ppl in the WHOLE GALAXY I'd recon I could just find you on the galactic search engine.
Do one of these and just increase the time it needs to get the mats.
About cheats and exploits
Things that the majority of gaming communities viewed as stupid or not fun, yet needed, are usually the first and most often exploited and cheated at things and with the development of them waves little kids that just want to ruin the fun for others come into the game and use them not to get back their own fun but to ruin mine. And since this game (afaik) is free of cheaters without using any meaningful anti-cheat (again, afaik) it makes sense to assume that as soon we get another big wave of newcomers, Not like on xmas, like when the game was available for 10 bucks, everyone will suffer for nothing.
PS: I tried hard with my English, especially the grammar so instead of calling me illiterate, tell me where I did what wrong. Thanks for reading. Also, now that I know Elite has a forum: Screw Reddit :b