Repeat the same Guardian unlock 18 times? Really?

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

The artwork and sound engineering is outstanding, but for the love of randominous, will sandro ever learn that grind is not gameplay. Having just one my fifty somethingth guardian base run I'm really losing interest in the game entirely now. For example in the two calendar years from the release 2.0 to end of 2017, I'd amassed over 4Bn credits. This entire year, using inara to track my progress I've made 21m.

I could handle doing a hundred things to get the guardian tech, as long as they were different tasks each time, not the same task rinse and repeated. I'd really love to know are we meant to relog for these base runs thus legitimising thatas valid gameplay, or does he actually expect us to getback in our ship, orbital cruise, find the needle in a haystack landable zone and redeploy our SRV each run. If thats the case, I wouldn't be surprised if a future updates new gameplay was using our ships hud to manually solve bitcoin hash sums.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The last development I actually think raised the bar in any significant way was Planetary Landings... Almost everything added since them has felt like either a simplistic design/development, or worse still, poorly designed/considered.

I agree on the whole. The only major thing which I think has changed the game for the better has been the trade tools. For me, it has made trading an enjoyable experience compared to before. I really like them. Of course there are the small things like SLF.

But yeah, we certainly need work done on Combat Zones, res site and the BGS, they all need updating.

Engineers I would have done completely differently. But hey, too late for that.

 

[jasonbirder]

And consider if all the work on the Thargoids, their bases, and the Guardians etc etc had instead gone into making standard combat scenarios

Its a SPACE game...be honest...we all want Aliens...

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

The alien (both thargoid and guardian) visual and audio artwork is superb, its the gameplay thats lame, and they are different contributors responsible for the game play mechanicsms and design as opposed to the sound and graphics. That major flaw in the game would be present whether it were solely human inhabitants of the galaxy, or 100% xenos or anything in between, gameplay is gameplay regardless of what species the characters are. IMHO the aliens make a nice diversion from the bubble, let me take my eye off the lame implementations of many a thing in the game. Like BGS state war/civil war - hen two factions are at war do they really line up like tin soldiers and keep hardpoints retracted unless in a CZ, or would they interdict and destroy each others ships and anyone flying missions for them? And would all wars be faught in space, wouldn't there be base assaults on starports and planetside skirmishes for and around various installations from starports to non dockable assets such as mining rigs.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

"Maintenance mode"? That's crazy. Maintenance mode means "bug fixes only, no new development".

So no. ED is not in maintenance mode.

Poor decisions notwithstanding

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

Restocked my Guardian materials, the only material with low levels is Guardian wreckage components with only 89/300 parts. All set for the next wave of Guardian devices.

 

[Enderby]

That doesn't seem to compute. Ie: Why develop a DLC (for Q4) then?

Hmm, let’s wait to see how good this ‘premium’ dlc is.

 

[Enderby]

Maybe maintenance mode was a little strong. More like ‘minimim-effort-mode/last stop before maintenance mode mode’.

 

[Jex =TE=]

And you don't have to get one right away, since there are AX MCs that you can start with. Those MCs will ease you in.
As a matter of fact that was my natural progression in game.

You know what? This right here shows you why you have to grind and you have to grind right now.

Winter is coming, remember? Aren't we meant to be taking on this threat to humanity or should we potter about the universe taking our time to unlock this content?

The reason why nobody cares or feels a sense of urgency is because FDev will run their "story" at the players pace so take your time if you want, we know FDev won't push the story further or that you'll even need to bother getting anti-thargoid weaponry.

 

[Jex =TE=]

The last development I actually think raised the bar in any significant way was Planetary Landings... Almost everything added since them has felt like either a simplistic design/development, or worse still, poorly designed/considered.

Well think how long we had to listen to "Winter is coming" like it was going to be some amazing story and then we got "thargoid Thursday"

ED's main story, the major part of the game, has been a huge disappointment.

 

[Zelos]

The artwork and sound engineering is outstanding

I disagree on that part.
The sound engineering has some pretty obvious flaws that haven't been fixed for years. E.g. if you start to decelerate from a constant cruise speed, the engine sounds like it's powering down, rather than powering up from idle to provide the neccessary thrust.

Art is also a bit mediocre. Compared to Star Citizen (which isn't finished), the ships look rather basic - and despite that, there is more stutter and FPS issues as the game engine doesn't perform as well on the same hardware.
Especially the older ships haven't been reworked to fit new basics like ship name tags and numbers as well as many decals. Hard to place them.

 

[CMDR Bornstellaris]

Still, there is no reply from any FDEV employee and even more important, no response from Sandro - just goes to show how much they care about what our opinions are. This mechanic is flawed and it’s a lazy design, there’s no other way to put it. It also seems that none of these guardian modules were even QA’d in the slightest, there weren’t even in the beta so that players could at least test them - which is another problem. A lot of these devs don’t even play the game and require players to do their jobs.. Sigh..

 

[Genus]

Maybe maintenance mode was a little strong. More like ‘minimim-effort-mode/last stop before maintenance mode mode’.

Liability Mode

 

[Muetdhiver]

Still, there is no reply from any FDEV employee and even more important, no response from Sandro - just goes to show how much they care about what our opinions are. This mechanic is flawed and it’s a lazy design, there’s no other way to put it. It also seems that none of these guardian modules were even QA’d in the slightest, there weren’t even in the beta so that players could at least test them - which is another problem. A lot of these devs don’t even play the game and require players to do their jobs.. Sigh..

FDev response so far can be summarized as : "Ship rigged for silent running"

Also : I don't think the game is in maintenance mode. Just look at the quality of the art & stuff. This stuff is really good.

The only problem is that the design gents are doing a second rate job at using those great assets into compeling gameplay.

It's a bit like if ferrari built their fancy cars only to put a lawnmower engine in them and call it a day XD

 

[zimms]

I disagree on that part.
The sound engineering has some pretty obvious flaws that haven't been fixed for years. E.g. if you start to decelerate from a constant cruise speed, the engine sounds like it's powering down, rather than powering up from idle to provide the neccessary thrust.

Are you talking about Supercruise or conventional? Supercruise might not work as you think and for normal cruise, I can definitely see and hear my Asp decelerating.

Art is also a bit mediocre. Compared to Star Citizen (which isn't finished), the ships look rather basic

That's just your personal taste and I'm sure many disagree.

and despite that, there is more stutter and FPS issues as the game engine doesn't perform as well on the same hardware.

Wait, what? Are you saying SC runs better than Elite on the same hardware? Lol [haha]

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

FDev response so far can be summarized as : "Ship rigged for silent running"

Also : I don't think the game is in maintenance mode. Just look at the quality of the art & stuff. This stuff is really good.

The only problem is that the design gents are doing a second rate job at using those great assets into compeling gameplay.

It's a bit like if ferrari built their fancy cars only to put a lawnmower engine in them and call it a day XD

Not all of it. Personally I think the knocked it out the park with the trade tools. I also really like the megaship interactions which hopefully will be expanded upon with other installations and used for other uses such as missions, spying missions and so forth. Not just piracy.

 

[Muetdhiver]

You are right, trade tools are really cool.

OTOH I can't figure a way to make the trade tool grindy in any way. Maybe that's why it's great

I like the megaship piracy gameplay too, even if the rewards are frankly laughable.

It's not all bad. It's just that every time a gameplay loop can be made repetitive and boring to unlock X, it is done so.

Hell. Imagine if they repurposed CQC with fighter hangars near stations at risk from thargoids that anyone could jump in for some massive time limited battles to drive thargoids off. Pair that with the ability to transfer your ships to the station under attack while using the AX fighter during the immersion timer.

Instead we got Thursday stealth thargoid assaults....

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You are right, trade tools are really cool.

OTOH I can't figure a way to make the trade tool grindy in any way. Maybe that's why it's great

I like the megaship piracy gameplay too, even if the rewards are frankly laughable.

It's not all bad. It's just that every time a gameplay loop can be made repetitive and boring to unlock X, it is done so.

Hell. Imagine if they repurposed CQC with fighter hangars near stations at risk from thargoids that anyone could jump in for some massive time limited battles to drive thargoids off. Pair that with the ability to transfer your shops to the station under attack while using the AX fighter during the immersion timer.

Instead we got Thursday stealth thargoid assaults....

That would be really cool. I would love for that to happen. Not sure I would want a shop at a station under attack by thargoids . I know what you meant.

 

[McNemisis]

I've said this before in previous post and i'll say it again on the off chance that it might be read by the design team.

not having a way to reset an instance of a mission or objective (the ruins sites for the objects) but having to rely on log out and back into the game to reset so you can complete it is not good game design i can think of no other game that accepts this as a mechanic. and if Frontier truly didn't want people doing this to reset the mission they would have added more sites so you wound't have to.
they may say that logging is an unintended mechanic but they made it happen in the 1st place with poor copy paste design choice.

add to that that most new content is bugged beyond completion to start with again understandable in such a big game but not more than once or twice.
we've had ruins that wouldn't scan for months on end took ages to fix mission that scanned to many to little items take your pick. entire mission lines taken out of game after beta and "Q/A" testing.
i'd forgotten about the whole winter is coming thing well winter came and went and all happened.
I also remember a stream where ed was quoted as saying you wait till the new content next week you'll love it.. well may weeks have rolled past and well nothing of merit has transpired with the Thargoid Story.

the longer this goes on for the more i think that the they can't offer any more than switch flicking / Texture swapping and good old copy paste based game design.

i mean who has an invasion when the only people that see the invasion are the dev's that paste in the damaged station.

i also think that it's evident in the new Wing missions number as a casual player killing 100+ ships of an evening or moving 4000+ tons of cargo in a wing with friends just jumping back and forward between a couple of stations.
wheres the game play in that. undock jump dock rinse and repeat and your supposed to subject your friends to this "Gameplay"

i'm aware these are my opinions and your welcome to take them as you please.
i used to love logging into the game go earn some money maybe explore. now i just read the forums waiting for the day something interesting comes up.

i made the mistake of jumping my I-Courier couple of thousand light years out of the bubble i'm not even sure it will make it back the this year the rate I've been logging in recently.

i also find it amazing that devs will leave no comments on threads like this just choosing to ignore it all, i'd love to Know what DB though of all this as well.

they said that JP wasn't gong to affect development of ED but i can see no proof of that you look at some of the stuff they have done for the that game it could also be a different company designing it.
bet they won't have to relog 18 + times to collect etc...

TLDR rant finsihed

 

[Canoe]

i also find it amazing that devs will leave no comments on threads like this just choosing to ignore it all, i'd love to Know what DB though of all this as well.

they said that JP wasn't gong to affect development of ED but i can see no proof of that you look at some of the stuff they have done for the that game it could also be a different company designing it.
bet they won't have to relog 18 + times to collect etc...

TLDR rant finsihed

The silence at this point is quite frankly deafening. Nothing at all to say FD..?