Collective goals in this game require grind to work. Powerplay/BGS etc. are designed to be unachievable by a single player (excepting of course, the masochists who enjoy flipping systems solo. This wasn't how it was designed though).
It would actually be quite easy to reduce the grind. Just play through the gameplay involving personal goals, behind which you lock content. If you need to repeat a process more than once, either make that process challenging, interesting or engaging to do more than once. Otherwise, don't make players repeat it.
If you insist on making players repeat something, there should be a good reason for it. "Because otherwise they'll get through the content too fast" isn't a good reason.
I played Elite because I wanted to fly a spaceship doing interesting and/or exciting stuff. I enjoyed changing my setup around when I got bored of it. Despite similar mechanics in place pre-engineers, once I'd earned the credits and bought a decent combat/trading/exploration ship, I had the Freedom to participate in all the other aspects of the game any way I chose. If I got bored of my FAS, I could sell it and buy and outfit a fully specced FDL in a few hours, then get back to PP or BGS or whatever, without handicapping myself in a lesser ship. Now, it could take a week or more to do the same thing. Experimenting with builds had become a PITA. I'm a parent of two young kids, with a 9-5 (6am - 7pm really). I do not want to spend the couple of hours I play each evening doing busy work.
I kind of agree with some of that, but I have a fairly damning conclusion that not all players are going to like:
My conclusion - is that it's PvP Combat that has ruined the game for many, more specifically, it's PvP combat enthusiast players that have ruined this game for everyone (without making it much better for themselves - oh, the irony!)
Please bear with me - this isn't a personal or individual attack - so try to rein-in any misplaced ire that you may have after reading that last paragraph.
Cool.
Allow me to explain...
Once upon a time there was a vanilla game that as was nicely illustrated in my quoted post. There were very definitely still elements of "grind" (if that's your own personal way of describing the game?), but I for one never did any "grinding" in the game - I only ever flew my ship around in search of gaming that I enjoyed doing. Missions back then were far more simplistic, and AI did go through some iterations of "weakness", "randomness" or just plain "bad-a-ss" ( I once got one-shot in a mid-level Cobra from an Elite Anaconda in some random uninhabited Anarchy system... which I still think is fair game in this game, but the background NPC has been manipulated heavily over the years ).
One could, and indeed some players very much did, grind for Credits (and Rank) as quickly as humanly possible for the sole outcome to be in the bad-est ship with the best-est weapons in the galaxy to be able to confront and vanquish other players as their "reward" for all that "grind".
Back then, however, I remember after many months of happy and enjoyable play with absolutely no grinding from me whatsoever - (I was just having fun enjoying my time in the game) - I traded in my Cobra and bought my first real upgrade ship - an Asp Explorer. It took a long time again to be able to A-rate it entirely, and to get it to a stage where I could go to a combat area with strong shields and weapons (I think compromised nav beacons and Haz Res were a thing at the time...) and engage in some dog-fighting with pirates - for the sheer enjoyment of it. It also gained some credits for your efforts - but that wasn't the reason to go and do this - the fun was the thing. I also remember not being able to stay for long in those areas - at least no very often. The A-rated Asp X that I enjoyed flying - boost sounded like a demented Chinook helicopter - was fairly good up to a point, but at some stage sooner or later you'd have to leave after finding an opponent or opponents that would best you in combat - and that's entirely fine by me... so you'd have to extended and escape instead of staying to be destroyed.
... I wouldn't have lasted long in a basic sidewinder in the same Haz Res before needing to leave, or just plain got destroyed. This was prior to engineering, so I absolutely believe that there are some places that you shouldn't really go in some ships - just like it has been from the start.
... so at no point in the past was it that any player could just go about in a basic sidewinder and "beat a CZ" as it is in today's language, so that's a fairly moot point even to begin with.
But how did the PvP combat enthusiast degenerate the game?
Well, in the past it was always, always, always on the player to choose what weaponry he found to be most "fun", instead of conforming to some highest DPS meta- and this is where the downfall of the game occurs for me.
You didn't specifically need the best-est ship or load-out to simply enjoy the game. You formerly just had a personal choice and that personal choice was always going to be guided by fun rather than "win". Some weapons were marginally better than others in some areas, but that didn't render the lesser from being a player's choice, just because they liked using them, or the visuals of beams, or simply the visual look of the weapon on the pylon and the way it deployed from the hull. Some of it was arbitrary, but there was no massive drawback or disadvantage in choosing what one liked, which is exactly where we have ended up today - and the largest part of the way we have ended up today is the responsibility of the PvP combat enthusiast.
The highest DPS meta was always, always going to be the domain of the PvP combat brigade...
...likewise the highest defensive meta. Absolute MJ of shield, plus boosters, etc... all marks out a ship as a PvP build rather than just an average player playing the hard-coded game-world.
Along came engineering. Average players just went about in the normal hap-hazard way of selecting ship fits that suit their mood or their current "budget" of both Cr and materials, but the PvP combat guys went absolutely all-out to must-gather-as-many-materials-as-possible to be able to "grind" out the top G5 builds possible. That definitely was never, ever required to engage with any gameplay and actually, I started to find too high engineering makes the background game slightly too easy and a bit less fun to engage with - so you can guess that I just didn't grind and left my engineering to a modest amount and continued to have brilliant fun playing the game, and I daresay the majority of all players did similar to me and just didn't go out stock-piling hundreds of materials - taking hours and hours to do so, just so that they could benefit from top G5 builds on everything they equipped. You just don't "need" that in the game. Unless you use the game as a PvP combat platform. (Which, actually, it really isn't!)
But now it turns out that some players say that engineering is a pre-requisite for CZs. Is that actually a thing? I dunno - because I have been away on DW2 and only just returned to Colonia. Somehow I doubt that to be absolutely true. How about fitting out a Krait II with all A-rated stuff including shield boosters and HRP/MRPs, kinda like I've just done with a Krait Phantom over at Colonia and flown into a couple of combat areas - not CZs, specifically - but had a reasonable amount of fun in a reasonably tough ship that has no engineering on it whatsoever! Did I have to leave the scene? Yes, I did - it was a megaship heist scenario and I clipped the megaship using frag cannons for my first ever time, so forced to retreat from multiple enforcers going after my hundred-credit bounty!!! (If I were to complain about anything, it'd be that I believe that there are far more important elements in the game that require attention than other than engineering, any perceived "grind" or inability to "WIN" CZs...)
This is where it gets tricky, because the "de-facto" best-est mode to play in was Open. Apparently! But to do that meant that normal and average players were faced with a stark choice, due to the proliferation of arms races. To engineer or not to engineer?
For the game? You really do not
need to. Never did. It was arguably better fun not to go too far overboard with engineering, due to it potentially making your game experience less fun, less challenging or less satisfying as a direct consequence - personal opinions may vary... but the fact remains that you didn't
NEED to engineer.
Unless... You wanted to PvP combat. Or, perhaps wanted to remain in Open and be able to defend against an aggressive PvP combat bell'.
So for reasons brought about by PvP combat enthusiasts, it was a case of engineer in Open or be destroyed in Open if you met a bell'.
Therein lies a double whammy... If you were like me, to engineer meant enjoying the game a little bit less. To engineer to the maximum meant enjoying the game an awful lot less. And also to set aside a considerable amount of game time to do unwanted engineering would be to enjoy the game a little bit less on top of that already little bit less enjoyment But to quit Open for another game mode? - that also meant to enjoy the game a little bit less as well. All because of PvP combat enthusiasts and their forced proliferation of combat ships, combat modules, combat engineering and the coercion of engineering to keep up or just keep from being destroyed quite so easily.
The conclusion is quite simple - without PvP combat as a "main focus" or in some cases "sole focus" - there would be absolutely no grind whatsoever.
There would be no
need to engage in any Credit race,
Absolutely no
need to engage in any ranking race,
Absolutely no
need to engage in engineering to the maximum...
In short, there would be no need to "grind". (Personally, I already play with no need to "grind" for anything...)
Unless, of course, "the grind" is already in your personality in the first place...
Must get to Elite? Must get to Elite quickly? Must get to Elite QUICKEST? Must get to double/triple/quadruple Elite??? <- that type of grind is not the fault of the game. Just as any grind you engage in within the game is not the fault of the game itself. That's partly in the player themselves, but it's also partly due to PvP combat brigade mentality allied to the view of some that Open mode is de-facto the best-est mode to Play. (Hence the Open-Only this, or Open-bonus that threads that appear here regularly)
