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 .
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 .