Rank grinding, trade grinding, grinding, grinding, etc

[Insomnia]

I never grind. I just...play. If i'm not in the mood I don't play. Money still accumulating)

Pretty much this.
I just play and do whatever I feel like doing. Money is always coming in.
I used to grind so I could grind more, to grind to be able to grind some more. But now I just play.

 

[Unfluffydave]

Let's see:

You either shoot stuff, move stuff, mine stuff or look at stuff.

You do this over and over and over and over again and over again.

For credits and/or rank.

It's the Elite way.

Exactly! Just like in every previous Elite game. If they made ED a linear progression MMO like most others it would not feel like Elite to me. That is one of the reasons I like, I can log in, do my thing, log out again all without the pressure to get to max level and into "raids" that you get with those type of MMOs.

 

[thesnowdog]

The feeling of "grind" would be helped a lot if there were alternatives to doing the same repetitive tasks.

Missions should be the alternative, but even in 1.5 they are still pathetic. I would much rather do a fun and engaging mission than go to a HAZREZ, but fun and engaging missions just don't exist yet.

And this is my biggest concern for Horizons. If the "grind" on planets doesn't pay as well, if the missions are just as terrible as the ones in space, then many people who want that clipper, anaconda or whatnot are not going to see the point in landing on planets after the novelty has worn off. Unless... unless FD can just put some actual gameplay on them that's fun and engaging. But that hasn't happened for the main game yet so...

I don't have a problem with the missions myself tbh but it's pointless complaining about the missions being poor quality if you don't suggest improvements that the dev team can make.

 

[Jex =TE=]

There's no objective method to determine how much "grind" there is in a game (albeit I really wish there were). However, if a game is too "grindy", then threads such as "mile wide, inch deep" start to pop up (or just plain "too much grind" threads, such as this).

I do believe ED suffers quite a bit from "too much grind" syndrome - making progress towards any of the latter ships takes a lot of time and repetition. Said repetition is the key problem here - in exploration, once you've seen one star system with 3 suns close to each other for visual awesomeness, you've seen them all. Once you've found a lucrative trade route, you've seen all trading has to offer (you can repeat the process of finding and exploiting a new trade route, but it'll be largely the same). Combat is a lot of fun and probably the most dynamic aspect - lots of things can go well or wrong, but even there patterns emerge after a while (especially true if you consider how many ships one needs to destroy on the way to Elite status). Finally, the game makes players wait a lot - wait for SC to charge, wait for jump to charge, wait to approach a station / destination in SC, wait for the bulletin board to load, wait for the dock animation to finish for outfitting... this definitely compounds the issue.

All of the above aren't bad in and of themselves, but combine it all and I can see why ED can be seen as "too grindy". Heck, I sometimes get fed up with it too.

I would prefer it if the space travel was longer but with things to do along the way. To counter the loss of credits earned over an hour, just increase the profits but the fact that I can launch from a space station and travel a few trillion miles and be landed at another station within 2 minutes doesn't fit right at all.

Having to flip some switches, input navigation routes, check your gauges, scan for other ships or whatever - doesn't matter too much just something to do. If you didn't have all the things you listed about flying to places, then all you would do is click buy/sell at a space station which seems just as dull.

 

[Dbrn47]

To correct your statement a little.
1 Its up to the developer to design a game that probably makes economically sense to his employer. The developer isn't your contractor and there are more players than you
and they might define the fun in that game differently.
2 About your enjoyment you are correct, but as you are not forced to play the game you are free to decide not to play it if there is not enough fun in it for you.

In conclusion this means, If you do not have the fun you wantto have, you are free to look for better choices to spend your time.
If you claim that you paid for the game, yes, as it was advertised, but will never find a statement that you will get 126 yerks of fun out of it.

Regards,
Miklos

Well at least you are telling me obvious things. No need to correct my opinion. It's my opinion, there's nothing to correct.