Playing, not grinding...

I've no idea how some people can play as much as they claim they do.

I might be being too sensitive to the English language, but “as much as they claim to” sounds like you’re doubting whether they are playing as much as they say they are. I.e. that they are lying about their play time.
 
Point is, it'd be far more straightforward if they just, y'know, made G5 mat's however hard to find they think is appropriate.

If you want a G5 mod' we're going to make you do G1, G2, G3 and G4 mod's first.
Then we're going to fiddle the RNG so it's increasingly difficult to progress through the tiers.
But we're going to provide you with mat-traders to alleviate some of the annoyance.
And we've given you a map that allows you to locate the nearest mat-trader.
Except that it won't show them until after you've found them.

It's like going to a shop to buy a TV, only for the salesman to insist that you pay for it in £1 coins, by depositing them all in boxes which have been hidden around the shop.
While you're blindfolded.

Sorry, but I like the new system, I know what negative effects are going to be and I know when I've maxed out. Better than rolling 20 rolls on G5 that are worse than a G3.
I also understand what they are trying to do. As far as it goes, if you bought a car and wanted to make it go faster, you might decide to buy a supercharger kit. Want to go faster, put an undersize pulley on it (that's G2) want to go faster, put a larger inter-cooler on it (G3). Decide that you want to turbocharge it instead? Well, you have to take the supercharger, and all the extra parts off and restart the process. This is what should have been done from the start. It makes more sense than with I supercharged my engine, now I want to turbocharge it and presto-majico you're at grade 5.
 

Deleted member 115407

D
If you play the game rather than grind, the Engineers becomes part of it"

Exactly this^^

For the most part, mat collection is something you do while you're doing other stuff. Kind of like mining in WoW
 
No, it is not a grind. It is playing game with repeated gameplay loops.

Grind indicates emotions about such gameplay. Which might or might not be justified.

You will call it a grind because you find it disappointing. I won't. That's two different emotional approaches to repeated gameplay loops.

Can I just say that there are some things in this life that absolutely are, by any reasonable measure, grind. Exhibit A: Shooting rocks, and trying to pick up all the pieces, one by one. It's not fun. It's not engaging game play. It's not bad. It's AWFUL.

It even comes with genuine feelings of nausea and motion sickness for many people from the lurching of the rover. How is that for fun.
 
Get big ship with turrets and a fighter. Go to res site. Scan and shoot while a swarm of collectors gather mats. Go to trader and cash in. Remote engineer right there in the station.
 
To me, the issue is now far less about the process of upgrading.....which is much improved in 3.0......but about our "relationships" with the Engineers. How we get access to Engineers, how we gain Rank with Engineers, how Dynamic the Rank system should be (does it just go from 1 to 5, then that's it, or can we cash in rank for favours like we could pre-3.0?) & how useful Rank is outside of actual Crafting Grades (like being able to buy rank-locked, "off the shelf" modules.....in a similar vein to Palin's Corrosion Proof Cargo Racks). My hope is that they will look into this side of thing over the course of this season.
 
OK, so just a counter thread to all the "I quit" and "engineers Suxx0rs" posts...

This will be obvious to some... Apologies to those people.

Although, I believe the Engineers have taken a step for the better with this latest update, I still think people are missing the point and grinding their fun into the dirt.

I spent a a good few hours in my SRV yesterday and challenged myself to drive from one side of a massive crater on Shinrarta A1 to the other in pursuit of Arsenic for Farseer. (2.2%)
It was a good nearly 100km across from rim to rim and had a massive mountain in the middle. It took less than four hours, so a decent average speed. I learned how to rapidly synthesise SRV repairs while rebounding off massive boulders I managed to hit and how to keep my speed about 40kph by "flyving" I ended up with hundreds of all the essentials, like iron, sulphur etc... But also with about 20 Niobium and Polonium, and a few other class four elements as well as over 20 arsenic.

It was the longest drive I've done in ages and I'll say this, the handling of the SRV seems to be somehow less 180° fliptastic than it used to be... (Or I'm better at driving, because I didn't see anything in the release notes).

I then headed back to Jameson Memorial but as I dropped out of supercruise, I saw about 15 hollow triangles and thought the worst... My poor Type 6 had only a size 1 railgun, a set of homing missiles and less than 200 shields.

Just then, a bunch of o7s appeared in chat.... I realised that they were all scanning wakes for data... LOL.... Had a nice 30 minutes and laughed because 10 of the commanders were in Chieftains flying around willy nilly all with different coloured smoke.
My Type 6 "Scrounger II" was no where near fast enough to keep up.... So I popped back to JM for my modded Courier with 845 top speed. Just then someone would say "Wake 10k behind the station!" and we had a great laugh trying not to bump into each other as we raced towards each new wake, leaving smoke trails like the Red Arrows.

If you play the game rather than grind, the Engineers becomes part of it and you're guaranteed to get an upgrade rather than just a "hope for the best."

This new system is much fairer and less grindy than the last but the thing is, if you incorporate the hunt for materials into your gameplay, it's not even grinding anyway...

Yep, its amazing how much stuff I acquire just through normal game-play. If a mission takes me to a planetary surface, then I'll usually drop down a few kilometres away & try to pick up materials en-route.

Likewise, if I am en-route to a station, & I see a DSS or ESS along the way, then I will usually drop in & take a look (the last couple of times, though, I got jumped by pirates whilst doing that :p).
 
Can I just say that there are some things in this life that absolutely are, by any reasonable measure, grind. Exhibit A: Shooting rocks, and trying to pick up all the pieces, one by one. It's not fun. It's not engaging game play. It's not bad. It's AWFUL.

It even comes with genuine feelings of nausea and motion sickness for many people from the lurching of the rover. How is that for fun.

It is your opinion, and thus isn't really 'absolute'. Matters really from point of view.
 
It seems to me that planet prospecting is yielding much more in general. Granted, I went to one random planet one time since the update and so it is a sample size of one.

I found rocks fairly quickly (not the 30 mins to an hour like usual) and I actually did see rare elements more often than the 3 hours just to find 3 that it used to take. Again, sample size of one.

That being said, I am also free (and do/did) collect everything because I can always trade what I don't want for what I do.

I am happy with that.

I like a lot of the aspects of the game since 3.0.
 
It seems to me that planet prospecting is yielding much more in general. Granted, I went to one random planet one time since the update and so it is a sample size of one.

I found rocks fairly quickly (not the 30 mins to an hour like usual) and I actually did see rare elements more often than the 3 hours just to find 3 that it used to take. Again, sample size of one.

That being said, I am also free (and do/did) collect everything because I can always trade what I don't want for what I do.

I am happy with that.

I like a lot of the aspects of the game since 3.0.

It does for sure, and the same with USS’. The spawn rate of Chemical Manupulators at Dav’s Hope has been increased too. I would say it’s about an average of 1x3 CM’s per run now.
 
To me, the issue is now far less about the process of upgrading.....which is much improved in 3.0......but about our "relationships" with the Engineers. How we get access to Engineers, how we gain Rank with Engineers, how Dynamic the Rank system should be (does it just go from 1 to 5, then that's it, or can we cash in rank for favours like we could pre-3.0?) & how useful Rank is outside of actual Crafting Grades (like being able to buy rank-locked, "off the shelf" modules.....in a similar vein to Palin's Corrosion Proof Cargo Racks). My hope is that they will look into this side of thing over the course of this season.

That, sir is an excellent idea that had never occurred to me.
 
Can I just say that there are some things in this life that absolutely are, by any reasonable measure, grind. Exhibit A: Shooting rocks, and trying to pick up all the pieces, one by one. It's not fun. It's not engaging game play. It's not bad. It's AWFUL.

It even comes with genuine feelings of nausea and motion sickness for many people from the lurching of the rover. How is that for fun.

One man's nausea is another man's therapy. I enjoy driving my SRV around in VR. I did 3 hours+ yesterday as I mentioned in the OP.. It seems something has improved this patch. Can't put my finger on it, though... less spinny?


P.s. re nausea, have you made sure your graphics setting are Keep SRV terrain level (or something like that) I'm a hardened VR nut but even I would walk away from a 3 hour ride weak-kneed if I didn't click that checkbox.

Can I just say that there are some things in this life that absolutely are, by any reasonable measure, grind. Exhibit A: Shooting rocks, and trying to pick up all the pieces, one by one. It's not fun. It's not engaging game play. It's not bad. It's AWFUL.

It even comes with genuine feelings of nausea and motion sickness for many people from the lurching of the rover. How is that for fun.

One man's nausea is another man's therapy. I enjoy driving my SRV around in VR. I did 3 hours+ yesterday as I mentioned in the OP.. It seems something has improved this patch. Can't put my finger on it, though... less spinny? more advanced viewpoint smoothing?


P.s. re nausea, have you made sure your graphics setting are Keep SRV terrain level (or something like that) I'm a hardened VR nut but even I would walk away from a 3 hour ride weak-kneed if I didn't click that checkbox.
 
Can say I have never grinded for anything in this game over the past 3 years, except the final ranks for my Cutter, would never do that again. I could have varied my activities, but I wanted to unlock the same day, so it was spamming the same missions over and over until my eyes bled.

Driver is a man who knows how to play this game properly... He is a Type 9 lover and enjoys a good challenge far more than min-maxing with a grind!

Well played, sir.

p.s. is the official word "grinded" or "ground" hmmm.... interesting...

And if someone does it a lot, are they a "grinder?"
 
If you have to repeat an action a large number of times in order to unlock something, then it's grind.

It's what that mechanic is called. It's a method of gating progression.

If you're engaging with that mechanic by playing a game that implements grinding mechanics, yes, you are grinding.

Not if you're having fun doing it. I've done this to death in so many ways. Some people seemingly waste their time doing stuff they do not like doing, over and over again to get a shiny at the end of it. And then they repeat the process again. And again. Then they complain about the grind.

You're perfectly entitled not to like the game or parts of it. But if you don't like them but keep playing regardless then it's your own fault. Either stop playing or look at the game a different way. This may or may not work. As I've said before...play the game, dont let the game play you.
 
Last edited:
No, it is not a grind. It is playing game with repeated gameplay loops.

Grind indicates emotions about such gameplay. Which might or might not be justified.

You will call it a grind because you find it disappointing. I won't. That's two different emotional approaches to repeated gameplay loops.

^^ THIS...

I love Sudoku. It's basically repeatedly filling up a massive 9x9 square with digits 1 to 9.
For some odd reason, I enjoyed my 10kJump 'round the galaxy stint May-August 2016. Would probably not do it again with GraXXoR, but might well do it in 2019 with Rick Sanchez (3L-173) if they improve exploration mechanics this year.
 
Get big ship with turrets and a fighter. Go to res site. Scan and shoot while a swarm of collectors gather mats. Go to trader and cash in. Remote engineer right there in the station.

Nearly every large ship I own now has a collector limpet controller and a wake scanner. The number of materials I pick up is insane.
 
The per material storage is almost the best part of the 3.0 update.

For me it completely removes the "pressure" from collecting materials. Now I can just collect everything and don't have to worry about storage space. As a result it feels like always finding something useful - stupid I know since the usefulness of the mats hasn't changed, but "feelings". :)

Makes collecting mats more fun to me as I don't have to collect specific mats when I need them. I can collect them when I enjoy doing something that happens to result in me finding mats. Yay.

[hehe]

Seconded.

Mat storage and exchange has for me truly overhauled the game. It on the surface looks subtle, but the effect at least to me has been huge, and frankly, my gameplay style has no real
urgency for much greater Eng power. I have always wanted to gather pirated goods post ship destruction and return those needed items to the population (but cannot as they remain "stolen, even though I remain unwanted and a non criminal) and this change, although I'm not returning items still has an effect of not leaving things behind that has value.

What I enjoy most about ESO is the ability to role play as a resource retrieval specialist. Yes, thieving the thieves. I can clean what has been marked by the thief as stolen and return those items to the resource return center (alright-thieves den) ..and no you cannot return stolen goods here through the BM without harming the economy.

Perhaps one day---something like that will arrive here

Anyways, whats happened so far re mats is a big pos step...more to come I'm sure.
 
Last edited:
No, it is not a grind. It is playing game with repeated gameplay loops.

Grind indicates emotions about such gameplay. Which might or might not be justified.

You will call it a grind because you find it disappointing. I won't. That's two different emotional approaches to repeated gameplay loops.

I reject your definition. Keep the emotions out of this.
 
Back
Top Bottom