Repeat the same Guardian unlock 18 times? Really?

[Genus]

development team <snip> The art & sound dept. are simply awesome. The code writing team have actually been working very, very hard.

Totally. My record in trying to differentiate between the Devs and Designers is extensive and probably by now, somewhat laboured. But to clarify, Sound and Graphics especially awesome. Stellar Forge, fabulous. Developers, making sense of nonsense. Ship Designers, great but not enough of them and too many clones when Elite has a back catalogue of going on 50 ships. Why only 14 in four years?

Game Designers and executive strategy surrounding the game?

Well, never have found a good way to represent blowing a raspberry on an internet forum.

Frontier's definition of "viable" in MVP, is one that outlines my earlier comment under anyone's definition of normal.

In every single font.

Come Christmas, I'd expect to see some Executives making real decisions. Write to Santa now.

 

[Caduceus Raptor]

I looked at the forums too late it seems!! Wish I read all of these posts before I came out to the Guardian sites to get myself some blueprints for the new modules. I was mostly looking forward to getting the FSD booster if and when then fix it but happened to land at the ruins that only give out the weapon blueprints and after 8 times re-logging to activate pylons and scan the orb, I am not sure if I can do it again!! Another 10 times of the same thing!!

Initially I was very impressed by the scene of the ruins, the sounds and graphics are amazing. Having to repeat exactly the same thing over and over and over..... is got be broken. I can not believe that FD meant for it to be done like this. Here's hoping that someone holds their hands up and agrees that it was a genuine mistake and comes up with a fix.

 

[NeilF]

There are allot of questional stuff around the goids tbh.. from timesink/grindwall to only 4 weapons per ship. Or even why not just use normal weapons and balans it towards that..

I guess thats why the goids are such a big success and everyone that is a bit combat orientated is in the pleades..

Yep... Introducing yet more dedicated weapons just smells of lazy content to me... Why put effort into what you can with your ships when releasing more modules and weapons is so much easier.

 

[tolm]

Yep... Introducing yet more dedicated weapons just smells of lazy content to me... Why put effort into what you can with your ships when releasing more modules and weapons is so much easier.

You know, I'd be kind of okay if there was a new Experimental Effect that needed to be put onto existing weapons to make them "Anti Thargoid" - you know, with maybe a couple of hours spent gathering materials as for any other Experimental Effect and then you could, I dunno, get into some actual content about fighting the aliens?

 

[stormyuk]

Initially I was very impressed by the scene of the ruins, the sounds and graphics are amazing. Having to repeat exactly the same thing over and over and over..... is got be broken. I can not believe that FD meant for it to be done like this. Here's hoping that someone holds their hands up and agrees that it was a genuine mistake and comes up with a fix.

Unfortunately it appears its no mistake, the mistake was when obelisks were giving these out like sweets (relatively speaking), although then it was still a grind, this is grind+++++.

 

[Conch]

You know, I'd be kind of okay if there was a new Experimental Effect that needed to be put onto existing weapons to make them "Anti Thargoid" - you know, with maybe a couple of hours spent gathering materials as for any other Experimental Effect and then you could, I dunno, get into some actual content about fighting the aliens?

they should never made it like this to begin with.

its like physics doesnt apply to the thargoids.. like kinetic energy just stops working on a goid.. "normal" plasma doesnt do damage.. and a 2000c laz0r doesnt hurt it..
where is the immursion crowd when you need them??

 

[npcole]

It's as bad as the number of Strawman erected to try and deflect from it.

There are a number of ways this could have been done:

Blueprints for weapon PARTS. One part per Ruin. One run each. Encourage visitation to different ruins. No grind.

One Blueprint per item, then a treasure hunt for list parts. With clues and persistent sites...not just eyeball scouring of planets.

Data gathering. Visit each ruin. Collect data samples. Once. When sufficient samples are collected, by the entire community, unlock the weapons for sale, for all.

Run unique missions to unlock the weapons as gifts from major powers to help fight the alien threat.

Fdev chose poorly. This is lazy and repetitive and boring and it didn't have to be.

Yes to any of those.

I suppose there is one other thing too, which is that it’s very hard to have “rare” ships or items in a game where people will simply manipulate the mechanics to get max G5 modified everything and complain that there isn’t a button to do it faster.

Of course the same people will then complain that the game has no “depth” or progression.

The mechanic is totally broken. But it’s linked to a bigger problem which is that too much of the game resets on on loading. And too many mechanics in the game rely on it.

Dav’s hope, for example, or any of the Barnicles or other elements of the game are rather broken in “open”. If you arrive and another commander has been around the site you pretty much have to relog.

 

[Jex =TE=]

It definitely isn’t random. I went to the same site for all my weapon blueprints. Never got a module blueprint from that site. The odds of RNG giving me the exact same result 12 times are remote.

how remote do you think it is if 100,000 people do the same thing as you and how many would get 12 in a row?

 

[Jex =TE=]

But what 'balance' is there even to be had here? You dont get stuff that gives you some kind of massively OP power over other players, and there isn't any challenge to the process. Why not just have us do it once because it is fun, and then give us the toys which are fun? What would be the purpose of adding 'balance', and against what would it even be balanced? :S

This - why are you bothering to upgrade ships in the first place sicne the threats are non-existant for an umodded ship. So more upgrades...

So are people saying that as long as ED keeps adding upgrades they'll keep playing the game.

Can't anyone see what a pointless waste of time these upgrades are and always have been except for the FSD boost which ridiculously, makes the game less boring because it cuts down on having to press J and that's literally it's best feature.

 

[Enderby]

I didn’t think it was gonna end up as poor as this. I had my doubts, as time went on, but I didnt for a minute imagine that it would be as crumby as this after 4 years.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Imagine how great this game would be, if the game design was up to the standards of the visuals and audio.

This! And I bet the art and sound guys smirk every time they read comments like these as there's literally hundreds of them. If I was making a game, I'd steal those guys to work on it.

 

[Jex =TE=]

It's bad. It really is. Who comes up with these crappy ideas anyway? Makes you wonder if these people at Fdev have ever actually played their game in the way an actual player does. But if it is really that bad, then why do people do it? That metric, how many people engage with it, is probably all they care about.

They don't play their game. I'd be highly surprised if any of the lead devs went home and played "the game they want to play" (yes, that's what they said).

So either they don't touch ED at all other than for testing it or
This is really fun gameplay to these people

 

[Enderby]

...So either they don't touch ED at all other than for testing it or
This is really fun gameplay to these people

It can’t possibly be the latter.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

I hope it was just a thorough lack of thought and communication, with one dev making the ruins and another doing the 'recipe' and just mindlessly adding stuff from the 'new loot list'. If they actually had a meeting and decided this was a good idea than God have mercy on us all. On the other hand, sometimes I get the impression Sandro honestly doesn't get it. FD seems more than willing to backpedal and make changes, at every turn they make the same mistake again, get surprised by the negative feedback then later fix it.

This should be stickied in Sandro's office:

Two Rules Of Game Design:

1) Doing something that has no challenge over and over without offering an alternative is not fun.
2) Randomness to introduce interesting scenarios=good, randomness for the sake of randomness=bad.

And by God I hope that whatever they are planning for 3.3, they really contemplate the above at every step.

careful sleut - you're straying to the dark side with such a comment.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

Yeah, and its such a shame. They went from us going 'wow, what a cool site and some cool new toys to boot!' to 'man how incompetent can these designers be?'. Seriously, just have people go to each site once, and have that be enough to unlock all modules.

Do fun stuff + get rewarded = happy gamers.

If FD were into actual space engineering they'd build the greatest rocket ever, then at the very end replace the heat shield with a wooden spoon. It makes no sense and obviously doesn't work. Sure, many design choices are by definition controversial. But here I have seen literally noone say that this is actually fun. Or even somewhat okay. It honestly boggles the mind.

It's as though a thousand fanbois cried out - and were suddenly silenced.

 

[Enderby]

It's as though a thousand fanbois cried out - and were suddenly silenced.

Haaaaa!!!

 

[Old Duck]

It's as though a thousand fanbois cried out - and were suddenly silenced.

You add them to your ignore list, too?

 

[Zynniah]

The Guardian tech is, for me, the first exciting new elements to the game since I got it. I bought ED and Horizons during the Christmas sales of 2017. This gave me the chance to see if I was going to enjoy the game without huge expense.

I’ve done this with other games and, if I stick with the game, I usually end up doing the pre-buy with future content since I expect I will enjoy the new content if I’m still playing the game.

I would like to thank FDev for making 3.0 free. You have taught me that the amount of mind numbing grind introduced with new content means I am better off waiting for a sale on future new content in the hope that the grind is reduced before the sale.

I was told that something similar happened with engineers in Horizons. That is the initial quantity of materials needed and ability to actually get them was adjusted later to cut down on grind and player frustration.

While I do plan on going through some of the Guardian sites and various game play associated with them, I am not going to repeat the same task 18 times just to get enough of whatever I need to actually unlock a new item.

I like the story lines, and seeing the weird alien structures. I am shocked at how difficult the puzzles in this game are (breaking cesar ciphers and decoding Morse code in static noise; colour me impressed). The games I’ve played usually limit themselves to things like mazes and towers of Hanoi types of puzzles.

 

[Oss133]

I'm in the pub!

 

[tolm]

The Guardian tech is, for me, the first exciting new elements to the game since I got it. I bought ED and Horizons during the Christmas sales of 2017. This gave me the chance to see if I was going to enjoy the game without huge expense.

I’ve done this with other games and, if I stick with the game, I usually end up doing the pre-buy with future content since I expect I will enjoy the new content if I’m still playing the game.

I would like to thank FDev for making 3.0 free. You have taught me that the amount of mind numbing grind introduced with new content means I am better off waiting for a sale on future new content in the hope that the grind is reduced before the sale.

I was told that something similar happened with engineers in Horizons. That is the initial quantity of materials needed and ability to actually get them was adjusted later to cut down on grind and player frustration.

While I do plan on going through some of the Guardian sites and various game play associated with them, I am not going to repeat the same task 18 times just to get enough of whatever I need to actually unlock a new item.

I like the story lines, and seeing the weird alien structures. I am shocked at how difficult the puzzles in this game are (breaking cesar ciphers and decoding Morse code in static noise; colour me impressed). The games I’ve played usually limit themselves to things like mazes and towers of Hanoi types of puzzles.

Yeh, but that level of puzzle solving (which, lets face it, involves Google for 99% of people who do it ...) is usually for ONE ultra rare weapon or item ... not to be the ONLY way of being able to engage the ONLY (non-human) enemy in the game!!!