Repeat the same Guardian unlock 18 times? Really?
- Thread starter Mr_sukebe
- Start date
In 2019 FD will focus on fleshing out the 2018 content.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
They were going to address it in 3.1, so soon
(™)
That's a good point. What may have happened was that FD calculated how many Guardian materials someone would get in the course of that mission and set the module costs accordingly, not realising that people would just start relogging at one site.
Only for the people that choose that to do it, then choose to complain about it. Exactly like grinding really.
No need, turns out it's nowhere near as bad as people make out.
Ok...
This Guardian stuff isn't the end of the world that's for sure, but the repetition is pretty bad IMO. I'd finally got down to try it out, completed the puzzles about 4 times, collecting everything, scanning columns and all that but just got bored with it all. Was good fun for the day, but when I looked up the requirements for the modules, and how many more times I will need to fly out here and redo the same puzzle, I smiled & logged out.
It would be great to try out these weapons and modules, but not for the time required to complete this xxx times. Just don't see myself enjoying that.
I hope they greatly reduce the blueprint requirements to 1 for each module.
DeathStroke
Banned
No, it's 'working as intended'. I.E. they have no intention of fixing it.
In your opinion. For a lot of us, it's terrible.
Nope.
I'd argue that randomness to provide abstraction or approximation of variables that are too complex to be adequately detailed is also good.
I never did the Ram Tah mission. it wasn't worthwhile for my CMDR before, and the guardian stuff isn't worth much to my CMDR now.
Most of the Guardian stuff seems to be an alternative to Engineering that's not necessary if you've progress far in Engineering, unless you primarily fight Thargoids.
I poked around a bit, got a few materials, decided I had enough and went back to the gameplay I enjoyed more.
The current system is bad enough that I feel disinclined to do it. However, I'm not sure that the difficulty should be zero for something that provides tangible reward.
There is almost certainly a better way to make these unlocks require effort, without turning them into a free handout for tourists.
They are mostly limited in functionality to harming entities that are no threat to my CMDR and take the place of weapons that are capable of harming things that are a threat to my CMDR.
I'm ok with the idea that special weapons are more effective vs. Thargoids, but to make most existing weapons do mostly nothing to most Thargoids was a mistake, IMO. It permanently relegated most Thargoid content to the sidelines for me.
I don't have any Guardian unlocks and don't have any particular plans to get any.
Another reason for why the Guardian unlocks seem so grindy is because some players want to unlock all the tech in one go. Why not just unlock the tech over a longer stretch of time.
Unlocking the tech in the time span of year feels less of a grind that unlocking it all in a day.
It's the same issue with the big ships, people grind credits and fed/empire ranks to get their ships as fast as possible and get burnt out.
Unlocking the tech in the time span of year feels less of a grind that unlocking it all in a day.
It's the same issue with the big ships, people grind credits and fed/empire ranks to get their ships as fast as possible and get burnt out.
Certainly agree, but how long would you estimate is an acceptable time frame to unlock one module, even if stretched out over an extended period?
I've perhaps spent 8 hours over 2 days on the mission, puzzle & prep, and have yet to unlock a module. I'm sure I am not min-maxing the puzzle & site, and I am collecting a lot of other guardian stuff, but those blueprint stall the whole process! Makes it much longer than it should be IMO.
That's the problem with goals, people focus on them? Just imagine if the entire world revolved around never having goals to focus on, and thus never achieving anything. It's okay, we know how that looks; Frontier has provided a beautiful example.
The game is amazing; it just assumes focus and goals are an implausible notion and who even would, you know, want to progress. I guess if you live for repetitive mediocrity, it's nirvana.
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You would think after five years, the developer would ask itself "Now, what if players want to focus on this?" as part of the design process. But this is asking why a thing exists. And that just never seems to be (a visible) part of the development.
We're playing a sandbox; assuming a linear, universally standardised approach to everything seems really weird in the context of that. Frontier build amazing, beautiful worlds, with just exceptional sound design. They just never stop to ask people why anyone is doing anything at all. Or why they are doing the same thing repeatedly. The game doesn't either. Why do we do anything? It's a mystery.
People burn out because the game assumes everyone is legitimately schizophrenic and that they will perform eleventy different things in any one session, that has no connection to anything else they have ever done, or will do, so of course no one thing would become tiresome because surely it won't be done more than once because we are all goldfish and incapable of remembering anything.
No-one at frontier has ever, visibly, stopped to ask why anyone would do anything at all. Or what would happen if players focus on goals. It's just, clearly, never been a thought process. Sandy is very focused on the particulars of delivery (the great irony of a developer focusing on goals to achieve in a game, that doesn't consider them in return). Frontier doesn't have a producer or creative director for Elite, whom would ask why, what does it achieve, does it fit within the vision and so on.
Because the experience is the goal of any creative endeavour, and the game is beautifully designed, and has an incredible sound stage; they should be most proud of that.
But, what if a player wants to focus on a task? This seems like a very obvious question. I just don't believe it's being sensibly asked. Q4 kinda hints maybe it now is? But I don't believe the game is fundimentally going to change it's spots, and those spots are presently "do not set goals in elite because these will lead to a negative experience". Only the developer can change the outcomes, here.
We can play games like "what if people just play correctly" but this is trying to shoehorn in very linear, static approaches to a game with otherwise highly dynamic potential. And it's not even solving the problem. A good sandbox game considers goal oriented approaches and endeavours to get out of the way; and not throw endless static hurdles. This is Frontier's greatest challenge, in the days ahead.
edited: tidy up thoughts and truncate verbiage.
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The problem is that even if you only want to unlock a single module, you have to repeat the mini-game up to 8 times. It’s not really practical to haul your butt all the way back out to Guardian territory all the time, so the most sensible solution is to just try to do all 8 runs in one go. That’s where the mind-numbing tedium begins.
You pretty much have a choice: 8 re-logs and repeats of the exact same simple mini-game, or 8 dull round-trips to the middle of nowhere, followed by the same simple mini-game.