Engineers RNGIneers - Nothing At All Fun about Them

[Blackcompany]

Do you know what's fun in Elite?

Flying Spaceships.

Touring the galaxy.

Fighting pirates in RES.

Taking passengers on tours.


Do you know what ISNT fun in Elite?

Trying desperate to pretend you ARENT playing EVE Online instead. Seriously. Which scene was it where Han Solo (or maybe it was Malcolm Reynolds or Buck Rogers) pulled out their PDA and checked off which minerals enemy ships dropped, just to be sure they were collecting the right crap for the sake of a special engineer who was too stupid to accept money for their work?

Oh. That's right. That scene was cut.

Because it wasnt ENJOYABLE.

And surprise of all surprises: Its no more fun here, than it would be there. This is a system copy and pasted from decade old, tired, mostly dead or dying MMO's. FANTASY MMO's, at that. Where collecting scraps to weld into weapons MIGHT make some semblance of sense.

But here? In this universe? Its patenty absurd that we cannot simply fly to an Engineer, pay them a fee and have them tweak our stuff. Sure, maybe Experimental add-ons might require strange new parts and minerals; but if I just want to add range to my lasers at the expense of more heat or power use...NO. I want to fly down there, get the adjustment, and get back to having fun.

Because micro managing a spread sheet of information about what I need to collect in order to craft something isnt fun. RNG feeding me WORSE garbage than I started with ISNT FUN. And in case you have not noticed from your (gradually declining) Steam player numbers: When people stop having fun playing your game, they go play other games, instead. And they take their wallets with them.

Please consider removing the RNG grind from standard adjustments for Engineers. Keep it for experimental stuff, if you must. But remove it for those of us that just want to tweak stuff. Because guess what: A lot of us, arent enjoying this facet of your game (or even using it) at all, and its just another reason to take a number or two off the review score, to be honest.

 

[xGundam]

Do you know what's fun in Elite?

Flying Spaceships.

Touring the galaxy.

Fighting pirates in RES.

Taking passengers on tours.


Do you know what ISNT fun in Elite?

Trying desperate to pretend you ARENT playing EVE Online instead. Seriously. Which scene was it where Han Solo (or maybe it was Malcolm Reynolds or Buck Rogers) pulled out their PDA and checked off which minerals enemy ships dropped, just to be sure they were collecting the right crap for the sake of a special engineer who was too stupid to accept money for their work?

Oh. That's right. That scene was cut.

Because it wasnt ENJOYABLE.

And surprise of all surprises: Its no more fun here, than it would be there. This is a system copy and pasted from decade old, tired, mostly dead or dying MMO's. FANTASY MMO's, at that. Where collecting scraps to weld into weapons MIGHT make some semblance of sense.

But here? In this universe? Its patenty absurd that we cannot simply fly to an Engineer, pay them a fee and have them tweak our stuff. Sure, maybe Experimental add-ons might require strange new parts and minerals; but if I just want to add range to my lasers at the expense of more heat or power use...NO. I want to fly down there, get the adjustment, and get back to having fun.

Because micro managing a spread sheet of information about what I need to collect in order to craft something isnt fun. RNG feeding me WORSE garbage than I started with ISNT FUN. And in case you have not noticed from your (gradually declining) Steam player numbers: When people stop having fun playing your game, they go play other games, instead. And they take their wallets with them.

Please consider removing the RNG grind from standard adjustments for Engineers. Keep it for experimental stuff, if you must. But remove it for those of us that just want to tweak stuff. Because guess what: A lot of us, arent enjoying this facet of your game (or even using it) at all, and its just another reason to take a number or two off the review score, to be honest.

This makes sense.. but RNG could still be used if:

-There was no Commodity to do the upgrades
-There was no Commodity-Reward from missions (this is the worst - have to ship a lot of things while doing missions)
-There was no Material cap on your ship
-There was no Data cap on your ship (we are in 3302 and we still cannot store more than 500 data? what? shouldn't we have exabytes??)

A change on the material management would be enough imho.. i would only play random things and get everything from time to time, then, when i feel like doing it, i would go to every engineer to pimp my ship

 

[foebits]

Preaching to the choir really. But since FD has a hard on for both tiny fighters and wasting the player's time, this will never be fixed. And you're right, it is a huge reason they're losing players faster than Trump can insult people.

It's almost like they're doing some hard, intensive research on what people enjoy in a game, and doing the exact opposite in order to purform some kind of demented social experiment. I mean christ, multiplayer doesn't even function, IN THEIR MMO!

 

[Truesilver]

The fundamental problem with the acquisition process of RNGineers is that too many parts of it allow only one decision: do or don't.

Example of (ostensible) choice

You can get some mats via blowing up ships, dropping into USS or running missions.

Example of non-choice

Other mats can only be got via running missions.

A huge section of the 'introductory' requirements follow the non-choice model.

Many of the best mats (EFC anyone?) are non-choice.

And many of the mats that ostensibly fall into my first category are truly non-choice (because actually the spawn is so much higher in one avenue than the others).

Basically I could have lived with the acquisitive side of RNGineers if I could have achieved it playing the game my way - like I could with creds.

But, no ... the choice I was given was binary: do this one thing or don't mod. No decision tree. Just a binary: do it or don't do it.

 

[Sylow]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Blackcompany again."
.
Hmm. Anyway, we've been saying the very same thing already during the beta. And the developers even admitted in the 2.1 beta forums and on a lifestream at that time, that they originally had a very different concept in their mind. While they never told what the original concept was all about, hints were that it was based on missions. Unfortunately they would've needed more time to implement that. They had a version, but it had some issues. Instead of getting the time to do things right, they had to quickly build what we have now. We were not told why, but i guess it's so an internal milestone was met.
.
Considering the state of Wings and PP, i would not expect any significant fixes or rework any more.
.

 

[Truesilver]

Considering the state of Wings and PP, i would not expect any significant fixes or rework any more.
.

My own expectation is the same but I'm guessing that the way forwards will be via Season 3.

Basically I think S3 will bring in alien (or similar) mods or modules so God-like compared to RNGineering that although 2.1 will still exist, it will be completely superseded. Your Thargoid power distributor will be so much better than your g5 charge enhanced power distributor that Exquisite Focus Crystals will cease to be relevant.

Effectively it will be a wipe, just a sort of RP, hidden wipe.

Of course, this will all come with a new currency and a new grind wall.

I just hope and pray that it doesn't mean another several months of repetitive tasks in order to remain competitive ... but here I may be naive ...

 

[Blackcompany]

Thanks for the responses. Good to know I am not alone in this.

They really NEED to fix this. Even if the would just fix acquisition. Let me buy the mats on the market. Or salvage them from USA or combat. ALL of them - not just some.

Forcing me to mine, or run low paying delivery missions...nope. You're basically telling me: go play another game. And take your wallet with you.

 

[Dread Lord]

Thanks for the responses. Good to know I am not alone in this.

They really NEED to fix this. Even if the would just fix acquisition. Let me buy the mats on the market. Or salvage them from USA or combat. ALL of them - not just some.

Forcing me to mine, or run low paying delivery missions...nope. You're basically telling me: go play another game. And take your wallet with you.

I love it the way it is now! A tidbit too easy though for my taste since they patched it a while back to make it easier but what can you do...

Nothing has been more fun than min maxing my ships to my preferred playstyles! Engineers were what was missing in Elite, ever since that Patch dropped I am back in the game and comp0letely hooked!
That's how good it is!

 

[777Driver]

I love it the way it is now! A tidbit too easy though for my taste since they patched it a while back to make it easier but what can you do...

Nothing has been more fun than min maxing my ships to my preferred playstyles! Engineers were what was missing in Elite, ever since that Patch dropped I am back in the game and comp0letely hooked!
That's how good it is!

Have to agree, I have largely avoided engineers. Past two days decided to work on my T9 and imperial Eagle, the T9 is running at just under 1000mj of shielding, clean drives, missiles and torps were already modded, powerplant is overcharged and the power dist is ENG focused, the FSD is maxed - Absolutely love it. The imperial Eagle is now at 730m/s and it's not even maxed, modified a few extra enhanced drives and stuck them in storage.

Next phase is to finish of the Cutter and Anaconda. Plan is to just kick back and canyon run for the next few day's.

 

[Mikey2305]

Ooh, are we having a discussion about engineer mods being purchasable?

 

[psyantologist]

I have my fair share moments of spending most of my gaming time on inara.cz with ED running in the background. Without help like that (thanks a bunch, by the way) playing Engineers would be virtually impossible. It's ridiculous that we have to do this in order to make proper use of the game features.

Yet, by now, I got used to the Engineers as such. I even enjoy the RNG nature by now, because it's thrilling to get a nice roll after a new bad ones - or even getting that Special effect on a decent roll number one.

But the micromanagement should work inside the game.

Let us pin as many recipes as we like - tell us on the material/data inventory which ones we need for what we want. Heck, tell us on the contacts tab and the info HUD too when our sensors spot them!

Allow us to select block-lists so ship/data point scans and limpet scoops do not fill up our limited storage. Or, yes, remove these limits. Cargo capacity is enough of a (reasonable) hindrance already.

Allow us to offer our services to potential mission givers, so we get notified of (more or less near-by, according to our specifications) Missions that reward us with specified materials and commodities. I'd rather fly half-way across the bubble for a few tons of x rather than refreshing the same few local mission boards.

Apart from these, by now I enjoy the micro-management. But, yeah, that's thanks to inara. I even enjoy doing random missions that lead me to new places (and new missions)

But some more structure and ease-of-use is needed in order for this to work for the fellow next door. I cannot really recommend Elite: Dangerous in this state, anymore. Before the Engineers, I did that, despite the endless gamma state (which I think is as such a good idea)

It's all a matter of priorities. There's loud cries for space legs. I understand. That'd be nice. Nice, sure, of course. But I don't think it's as necessary as getting the basics working well enough to make the game work well enough for the typical space game enthusiast. There's simply more important things to sort out before a potentially infinite amount of development time should get channelled into new game modes and features, is my more or less humble opinion.

The basic frame-work of Elite, the style, the sound, the music, the graphics, the flight model, the combat - all of these are pretty dang great! Iron out the gameplay and it's a masterpiece - without walking around. And thennnn we can focus on space legs, is what I'd suggest.

 

[xGundam]

Thanks for the responses. Good to know I am not alone in this.

They really NEED to fix this. Even if the would just fix acquisition. Let me buy the mats on the market. Or salvage them from USA or combat. ALL of them - not just some.

Forcing me to mine, or run low paying delivery missions...nope. You're basically telling me: go play another game. And take your wallet with you.

I agree... one thing that I liked of ED is that I could possibly do anything to get credits. Forcing me to do missions-mining-or any other thig that I actually don't like is like limiting one's freedom to enjoy the game.
I'd give up 50M to get the materials I need instead of doing those repetitive tasks.
If only the grind wall wasn't so damn frustrating.

 

[Blackcompany]

I agree... one thing that I liked of ED is that I could possibly do anything to get credits. Forcing me to do missions-mining-or any other thig that I actually don't like is like limiting one's freedom to enjoy the game.
I'd give up 50M to get the materials I need instead of doing those repetitive tasks.
If only the grind wall wasn't so damn frustrating.

I agree.

I think Engineers should be a two tier system.

Tier 1 - Sliders:

Fly in. Pay some credits. The Engineer fine tunes stuff. Want longer range lasers? More heat damage? Fine. But power consumption and heat buildup are increasing, too.

Longer jump range? Sure. But it means drawing more power for your FSD.

Tier one should be a slider based trade-off system.

Tier 2 should be experimental add-ons. These can still require mats and a grind. Fine.

I would use Tier 1 like mad to fine tune. And it would offer a badly needed credit sink to boot, with the trade-off oriented nature of the system assuring it could not be overpowered.

 

[xGundam]

I agree.

I think Engineers should be a two tier system.

Tier 1 - Sliders:

Fly in. Pay some credits. The Engineer fine tunes stuff. Want longer range lasers? More heat damage? Fine. But power consumption and heat buildup are increasing, too.

Longer jump range? Sure. But it means drawing more power for your FSD.

Tier one should be a slider based trade-off system.

Tier 2 should be experimental add-ons. These can still require mats and a grind. Fine.

I would use Tier 1 like mad to fine tune. And it would offer a badly needed credit sink to boot, with the trade-off oriented nature of the system assuring it could not be overpowered.

Actually there could be a ton of solutions out there, but making the whole game a damn grindfest is just bad... I say this because I'm the kind of player that enjoys a lot of games and haing to focus on just one to restart to enjoy it is.. well, just bad :/

 

[CMDR R SWIPE]

I'd be more content with the Engineers if you could pin blueprints and use them from your ship.

They could have made it so that when you have the Engineer do something, you're basically getting a lesson/training on how to perform the modification yourself. Throw some coin at them, they train you, you can take the BP with you and mod at will.


But since that's not how it works (and highly unlikely it ever will), I'd be happy with data/mat/commodity storage at the engineers' bases.

I've spent the better part of the last month doing nothing but collecting/etc to unlock engineers and level them up. Still a couple left (Turner and Sarge) that I care to "use".

Now if they'd just fix the Biotech Conductors and let us get EFC, and fix the SRV scanner (admittedly, I've not been on a surface in a couple weeks, maybe it is now)....

 

[fruitbat]

No credits for engineered mods ever.

Other changes open for discussion, but never ever credits for mats, mods etc.

 

[Weps]

Other changes open for discussion, but never ever credits for mats, mods etc.

There's a CG right now where you can give mats to progress it. The reward is in the form of credits.

I'd say that qualifies as credits for mats, and FDEV seem to want to try out the concept.

I for one one welcome it, even if this particular CG was for high end mats. I just vented around 200 units of various mats and data because I had no more room left and I got bored of planning ahead on which mods I *might* do, just to have a reason to consume those mats. It was an awful experience, what is essentially wiping away progress just because FDEV were incapable of designing a coherent mechanic for players to consume mats they have collected, and to turn their work into some form of in-game advantage, no matter how small.

 

[Mikey2305]

I had this issue in a convoy beacon last night picking up chemical manipulators plus a whole lot extra... am going to try checking the contacts panel, targetting what i need and letting my limpet die after one pickup which after all is all i need. That ought to resolve the constantly chucking out materials, oughtn't it? Or am i being thick!

 

[JohnRoberts]

There's a CG right now where you can give mats to progress it. The reward is in the form of credits.

I'd say that qualifies as credits for mats, and FDEV seem to want to try out the concept.

I for one one welcome it, even if this particular CG was for high end mats. I just vented around 200 units of various mats and data because I had no more room left and I got bored of planning ahead on which mods I *might* do, just to have a reason to consume those mats. It was an awful experience, what is essentially wiping away progress just because FDEV were incapable of designing a coherent mechanic for players to consume mats they have collected, and to turn their work into some form of in-game advantage, no matter how small.

I'm pretty sure fruitbat meant "never make mods and mats purchasable", and not "never make mods and mats sellable".

 

[AveMe]

Also, remember what we're collecting and how!
You know, in XXXII century you need to go down to planet surface, drop buggy and mine spacerocks to get IRON because you can't buy it ANYWHERE else....