Ok let’s hypothetically say that HGE material drops were brought back up to the spawn rates of the beta; you still have to fly out to the system state that you are looking for, you have to drop in to each high grade signal source to collect the materials that you need, and you have to fly back out to the appropriate materials trader to trade rare materials at a 6:1 ratio to get what need and rinse and repeat.
That right there is something that is decent, doable, and you get the proper reward for your effort just like void opals, you put in a large amount of time and you get rewarded a boatload of credits in response to the effort you put in. If YOU want to grind and take things slowly you can do so easily and sail the slow waters, but if people such as myself and many others want to take other avenues such as void opals and beta level HGE drops that’s our prerogative.
There is currently a huge rift between fully engineered players and little to no engineered players in this game. My self and many others in this game want to see that gap closed and give the players the opportunity to theorycraft different ship builds in order to see what works for them and most importantly to have fun! Right now engineering is the one of the biggest burdens that players are currently facing along side many bugs that persist here. By putting your head in the sand and pretending that this grind is in the mind or whatever buzzwords of the day you use is not only insulting to yourself and us, but also newer players who are playing catch-up with the rest of us in order to do what they want to do in this game.
I - as a rather new player (have it around two months now, played around 200hours) - am of the sort 'little to no' engineered players. I only have Elvira Martuuk, Felicity sent me an invite, but I am not so hot to be killed by unkillable Thargoids for flying with meta alloys, so maybe I will do it, maybe not. Another of the first engineers did not yet invite me. I am taking it very slow, because of the material grind. While driving around with the SRV is fun, the rest is more grind and quite senseless. I am not happy about the entire engineering as it is. I was quite speechless reading the many (and well written) instruction how to unlock the engineers, how to grind materials (with logging in and out again for crying out loud) and so on.
I did find HGEs (and easy, using the FSS, more than once in my home system, without even grinding it). But one seldom finds what one really needs, and I refuse to be ripped off by a 'material
scoundrel trader' (is this the name?).
So - I now have a grade 5 FSD in my DBX, and I am explorer Elite. And I do not have much motivation to continue this. I would rather play and do other things. You mention the 'huge rift'. This was something which nearly turned me off the game completely! But the game is rather good, it has a stable base and world. The rest is not so stellar, missions I mostly avoid, except the simplest missions, because many missions seem to be very buggy. But I am playing solo, because I just cannot compete with players who - for this or that reason - have all the engineers unlocked and engineered their ships to the beyond. And this will stay so for a long time. I am not willing to jump through hoops. And still I play and enjoy the game. Just maybe not in the way the developers intended me to. Not my problem. As a new player you can either feel forced to take on the grind - which longtime players had years to do it - in a few weeks to 'catch up and compete', or you ignore it. I ignore it. I cannot compete. Fine, I will play solo.
And do not get me started about the logic of the entire Thargoid situation, where you have weeks of grind to have the questionable 'privilege' to fight them. While nobody else cares. The so called super powers do simply nothing, no military is seen. So it falls to Freelancers like us CMDRs to fight them. Or not.
I think the entire reason for the engineer situation is that the developers not only want but
need to limit access to the higher tiers of ship modifications/powers. They dropped the ball with in game money. Money is very easy to come by, not many days pass without new reported schemes of the kind x million per hour/minute/second. One can only shake his head...
So they introduced a secondary 'currency' into the game and now have to guard its value by grinding. Not good.
On the other hand, while sometimes flying around, scanning and finding lots of USS, including HGEs I see, that the developers did care about the problem to find materials. Despite this some materials are rare, even if the are theoretically not rare, but common or standard. Arsenic for example is hard to find, but is not counted as a rare material. Small wonder if one looks at the amount of different materials. Dealing with RNG is always tricky. It may be a configuration problem. Pharmaceutical Insulators (whatver that may be) I never saw in the game, btw. I also do not need them for the engineer I have, so no trouble. On the other hand I found - without really looking specifically - already 18 Military Grad Alloys (MGE) which are 'Very Rare'. I do not even remember where I found them, but I did not look too much, so it must be in a HGE in my home system. So I suspect people who are willing to put a lot of time into this grind will find much more...
And while being skeptical about the entire engineering situation I find it fun to look for USS, driving around with my SRV, all things you do for materials. It is not entirely grind, it can be fun. I think the fun stops the moment when you need one or two pieces of something to finish a mod, and cannot find it because the RNG just refuses to give it out. And I refuse the material traders, I refuse to be ripped off and handled like an idiot. I think most of the complaints for specific materials - like the Pharmaceutical Insulators - stems from situations like this.
The only way out of this - IMHO - is to take it slow, and refuse to compete against those who are lucky enough to enjoy this grind, and have the time at hand to actually do it.
So yes - engineering and the material grind - has put a rift between players. The same goes for the 'Guardians and Thargoids'. An enemy I cannot fight and cannot flee I am forced to avoid. Especially when he is no threat to my existence at all.
So I am quite happy playing the core of the game, which is actually lovingly done and very good. What later Game Developers did to the game with engineering, Guardian grind and buggy missions is best ignored, IMHO.
