Returning casual player, whut?

Ok, please bear with me. It's a long one sadly enough.

A while back, I got into this game (blame OA's videos). I found it fun enough to go through the learning curve, familiarize myself somewhat with my HOTAS to a point where I could play blind so I could continue in VR while following some guides to get my bearings.

Pinging bounties, check. Earn enough for exploration. Road to riches was somewhat fun and a good way to get flight time.

Finally I figured, whatever I will chose, I will need some cash to make it happen, so I'll start mining since that's apparently the best way to make money.

Ok, I'll watch a few guides, follow them and start making my way up the cash path to be able to do whatever I will chose when I learn more. Yeah, you'd think so.

I found it was very enjoying to have netflix up in my cockpit in VR while happily do some core mining (2018 I think?). Relaxing while also having fun with the game loop of mining, looking up on external sites (why? WHY? telepresence can project your experience across the universe but a stock market that is interconnected or even accessible for lookup from your cockpit is impossible?) where to sell, and get quite the profit there.

Ok, so far, so good. Had a lot of fun, logged quite some hours.

2 days ago, when I decided to make a time investment again to get reacquainted I was in for more then a bit of a surprise.

Lets start with the last bit; selling.

I'd say like running over a river of broken ice. It feels useless to make it this random, I have no clue why it is like this now nor is there any incentive to find out. Feels bad, feels procedural for the sake of having such a system in place. Weird, but I guess I can live with that.

Here we come to the first bit; the actual mining.

I don't know if I am doing something wrong here or if there has been some incredible knee jerk reaction but holy cow batman. I go for void opals. I understand that a meta can change, but a quick browse and I see that it should be still viable. Good, I thought to myself, let's stick with what we know for now, and then try that new mini game mining thing later when we are back in the groove again.

Wrong.

The void opals are a lie.

Where I could get a full load or something satisfactory close to that in 1.5 hours or so, I now see a mineable rock every, oh, lets say 20 minutes to be generous? Seriously? Who'd think that'd be a rewarding experience? Now, I'm not the kind of player that goes and play fortnite or something like that, and usually my games are slow but rewarding. And the "but" part is where it goes wrong here. I'm not seeing anything viable for such a long time then there simply is no gameloop.

It might be that I am completely misunderstanding things here and that the developers pigeonhole people to certain meta's by making others completely unrewarding to a point where it's too, well for the lack of a better word, "boring" to endure.

So, I've tried for a few hours to make sure that the problem wasn't between the HOTAS and chair, but 2 hours and change mining sessions (double overlap, center of the overlap and even middle of the hotspot all the same) counting from the moment I do my first scan inside the hotspot.
50, and that was because I mined some diamonds as well out of pure frustration of boost/scanning non stop to just break the monotomy.

I asked some other people from a prospect squadron and they confirmed the same experience.

Is there something I am missing or is this game loop stretched out so thin that you'd already need to be invested in ED to still enjoy it? If that's the case, how will you ever hope to keep your playerbase fresh? Or, is it out of whack and for some reason it's not being addressed at all for the longest time for whatever reason? Going on the patch notes and dates, one would have to conclude that this is on purpose tho.

What happened? Why is something that felt rewarding and fun now a test of patience and monotony?

As a returning newbie, I am wondering if that is the state of one of the more simple game loops, and the rest takes more of a time investment and learning curve to even figure out what you want to do in the game, then what is the point? It's a game, I play it for fun, to have fun and learn some things while doing so. I loved getting into ED,but holy cow. I read several patch notes to see if this is a common thing, and it almost seems like from a players perspective the reaction to anything is by nerfing it, a lot.

Does that mean that expectations of what a player would expect and what the developer has envisioned are that far apart?

Perhaps. or, I am just a dumbdumb, not quite understanding either what I am doing, how I am doing it, or misunderstanding what I was supposed to enjoy.

Enlighten me ;) .
 
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Regadring the core mining, reports are in the last patch broke the pulse wave scanner, not tested it myself though.
The current money meta is painite or LTD lasermining.

It's broken? I mean, my limpets are still as idiotic as ever bashing themselves into anything to get to a mineral that somehow clipped inside a rock, and the scan sometimes immediately disappear or shows when you turn around and scan the same area again. But this was broken 2 years ago already.


But alas, some do. The better I get my point across, the less we misunderstand each other.
 
Recently I was minning Void Opals far in the black. No double hotspots, just big, dense asteroid ring. I felt like cores were around every corner, so I have no idea what are you complaining about.
 
Recently I was minning Void Opals far in the black. No double hotspots, just big, dense asteroid ring. I felt like cores were around every corner, so I have no idea what are you complaining about.
Good to hear. Sadly, I only took to the forums because I asked some others and they shared my experience.

Can I guess with "far in the black" you mean that you were away a tad from the core?
 
Good to hear. Sadly, I only took to the forums because I asked some others and they shared my experience.

Can I guess with "far in the black" you mean that you were away a tad from the core?
Yes. Far enough from civilisation to not get NPCs spawning on game loading.
Cores respawn after a week, so try mining in a place where noone else does, because popular mining spots might look depleted.
 
Yes. Far enough from civilisation to not get NPCs spawning on game loading.
Cores respawn after a week, so try mining in a place where noone else does, because popular mining spots might look depleted.
I'll try flying away 1 hour and see if that yields a difference big enough, but I already had enough trouble with navigating the galaxy map properly to be honest, so I have no clue if I was near the edge or not.

I thought an indication of overmined was that clouds would appear in the ring where you are mining.

It's almost like people mine for 5 minutes and then immediately make an entire judgement of "mining" in general, then come to whine about it on the forum.
If you're hinting towards that I did that, no. And that's quite a drab and hostile thing to say. But thank you for your insights, sour meant or not.
 
I'll try flying away 1 hour and see if that yields a difference big enough, but I already had enough trouble with navigating the galaxy map properly to be honest, so I have no clue if I was near the edge or not.

I thought an indication of overmined was that clouds would appear in the ring where you are mining.


If you're hinting towards that I did that, no. And that's quite a drab and hostile thing to say. But thank you for your insights, sour meant or not.

No I didn't mean you actually. Your post doesn't come across as whining.
 
There seems to be either something weird going on with core mining since last patch from general reports, or the game is simply not very clear letting players know that a core was already mined? Core mining does come with a weekly respawn, so if you're spending time somewhere that has already been extensively mined, it will be very frustrating as you'll find abysmal or non-existent yields.
 
I thought an indication of overmined was that clouds would appear in the ring where you are mining.
It is, but those clouds disappear after few hours, while it takes a week for asteroid to respawn
I'll try flying away 1 hour and see if that yields a difference big enough, but I already had enough trouble with navigating the galaxy map properly to be honest, so I have no clue if I was near the edge or not.
You don't need to fly very far. Just find someplace that's not obvious tourist attraction.
I just prefer to fly at least 500LY or more from the edge of human space to mine in peace, uninterrupted by NPCs, but that's not necessary.
 
Core mining is dead. Double painite is where it's at. Plus, FCs will buy your goods at the popular mining sites, to sell it on themselves to stations. Less profit per run, but you'll be able to do a lot more runs in the same amount of time.
 
It is, but those clouds disappear after few hours, while it takes a week for asteroid to respawn

You don't need to fly very far. Just find someplace that's not obvious tourist attraction.
I just prefer to fly at least 500LY or more from the edge of human space to mine in peace, uninterrupted by NPCs, but that's not necessary.
Learn something new everyday (clouds). 500Ly in my barge is a minimum of 25 jumps, I'll try that, thank you.
Core mining is dead. Double painite is where it's at. Plus, FCs will buy your goods at the popular mining sites, to sell it on themselves to stations. Less profit per run, but you'll be able to do a lot more runs in the same amount of time.
I'm halfway to getting my own FC I guess, but I'll look up a guide for painite mining, find a painite build, find somewhere to buy said build and try that out in due time.

I'd hate to move away from core mining because for some very odd reason it resonated with me, but feeling stuck is much worse.

Thank you all so far for the helpful suggestions.
 
I'm no expert on mining so can't offer you much help but I will say I didn't think your op was too whiny and paragraphs don't qualify as a wall of text ;)

If I ever got into mining (or tried again, I did it years and and it was OK but not great fun) then core mining would be the method I'd try because it looked pretty fun. But yeh, seems it's not working right now.

I imagine it'll get fixed though... They only just patched mining so it's in their scope.

Out of interest though, is this all you ever did? Your op suggests you started the game, started mining and that's it.
 
I'm no expert on mining so can't offer you much help but I will say I didn't think your op was too whiny and paragraphs don't qualify as a wall of text ;)

If I ever got into mining (or tried again, I did it years and and it was OK but not great fun) then core mining would be the method I'd try because it looked pretty fun. But yeh, seems it's not working right now.

I imagine it'll get fixed though... They only just patched mining so it's in their scope.

Out of interest though, is this all you ever did? Your op suggests you started the game, started mining and that's it.
I tried some pvp mode where everyone gets those tiny ships, but it was a lan and I got everybody VR for immersive dogfighting. I've also launched from other players' bays a few times to assist in the pewpew, but no clue why I was there or what we were doing. I just killed stuff he tagged.

My goal was to get 10b, and then decide what to do in the game. Since I was having fun I didn't mind the mining one bit. I think I rewatched stargate up to season 7 or something just mining.
Mining is about as exciting as watching paint dry on a cold wet day. Also, hot-spots are not as hot as they claim. I went back to running missions and trading. :cautious:
For some it is, to each his own. I don't like FPS' anymore, cant stand them anymore personally (unless in VR, but that is another game then mouse X on target and click, repeat). And that's coming from someone who held world #1 for TFC for a long while (in the days of gamespy).

I just flew far out of the core, 80 void opal in 70 mins. Seems to go better, but nowhere near what it was.
 
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