So, We Aren't Getting an Engineering Rebalance This Year After All.

They tried saying nothing for the first half of the year. I'd have been fine with them continuing but it seemed to be causing some issues.

There's also I think a lot of range in "know whether it's possible". When they first announced Odyssey in summer 2020 it was supposed to be released on all platforms at the end of the year - two years of complete mystery of what they were working on finally at an end and almost ready to go. It then took them almost another year to release Odyssey on PC and almost anothe years on top of that to realise that console Odyssey was in fact not possible. I expect that they are entirely confident right now that Feature X will be overhauled in early 2023, which is exactly why they shouldn't say anything.
Yeah, but that does kinda say "We haven't a clue what we're doing", which doesn't fill me with confidence
 
If they don't know whether it's possible, they should either be saying so, or saying nothing.
I suspect what actually happened was they looked at the 'roadmap' and thought "This is nothing but a year of maintenance - we better put something else in to pad it out" and came up with "Key feature overhaul".
That’s exactly what I think it is. They also barely mentioned it on stream.
 
I'd cry frankly if this was the case, simply as this will be its third tweaking when there is something else that needs love.

I get why they are so reticent on announcing what they are overhauling so ahead of schedule, the complete remake of racing paintjobs into even better racing paintjobs might take more time than expected, and you know how impatient the community can be. If they manage to add military slots and a third seat to the Asp Scout, that will just be the cherry on top.
 
I get why they are so reticent on announcing what they are overhauling so ahead of schedule, the complete remake of racing paintjobs into even better racing paintjobs might take more time than expected, and you know how impatient the community can be. If they manage to add military slots and a third seat to the Asp Scout, that will just be the cherry on top.
If an improved, non eye offending version was released I'd be okay with that, as well as tweaking the bolts off the Scout. But in the Quad of Improvement™ the sharpest corners are on Powerplay updates and FAS Crossfire / Camo.
 
That really sucks.
I'm actually OK with it. I've got my ships exactly where I want them, so I'd hate to see their stats change "under my feet" someday out of the blue. Now if Frontier changes how the process of engineering works without breaking / nerfing / buffing currently engineered ships, I'd be okay with that. IIRC the recommendations I made to that suggestion thread were exactly that - improve the process without rerolling the stats.

Also, I'd much rather see a feature like Power Play get some much overdue love. Engineering has already had its time in the limelight - if you think it's bad now, you should have seen it before the first rework!
 
I'm actually OK with it. I've got my ships exactly where I want them, so I'd hate to see their stats change "under my feet" someday out of the blue. Now if Frontier changes how the process of engineering works without breaking / nerfing / buffing currently engineered ships, I'd be okay with that. IIRC the recommendations I made to that suggestion thread were exactly that - improve the process without rerolling the stats.

Also, I'd much rather see a feature like Power Play get some much overdue love. Engineering has already had its time in the limelight - if you think it's bad now, you should have seen it before the first rework!
Looking at the engineering thread FDev started, the only things under discussion were material gathering and how many clicks we had to do to fill a circle, so that looks as much of a 'rebalance' as we're going to get.

4 years on from the last change, yeah I wouldn't be too pleased myself to find that I had to rework a bunch of broken and unusable ships because of a change to the effects of engineering. Anyone wanting changes to how engineering alters ship performance is likely going to be disappointed.
 
There is in principal a really easy fix for Engineering and that is to use it a game mechanic to get you learning and experiencing different aspects of the game upon completion you are then able to order in engineering upgrades quickly and easily. Then focus the entirety of your game development on the next stage(s) which is what can the player do with their engineered ships and suits i.e. the combat, the survival and living in the galaxy, the story/lore, the exploration

Stop relying on engineering being a gameplay crutch to pad out what's not there and not properly fleshed out.

That's it, problem solved as long as Frontier does it well and of good quality.
 
Looking at the engineering thread FDev started, the only things under discussion were material gathering and how many clicks we had to do to fill a circle, so that looks as much of a 'rebalance' as we're going to get.

4 years on from the last change, yeah I wouldn't be too pleased myself to find that I had to rework a bunch of broken and unusable ships because of a change to the effects of engineering. Anyone wanting changes to how engineering alters ship performance is likely going to be disappointed.
Yeah... I'm fine with how engineering works. My problem is being forced into certain gameplay loops to gather materials.
This is a huge issue for me since I'm mostly interested in building/engineering combat ships.

If I could gather materials while doing my preferred game loops (i.e. combat/bounty hunting) I'd be fine.

The easy fix would be to leave the current system as is, BUT add new ways to gather all materials...

I'd be fine if they did this, as suggested in the feedback thread:

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.
At this point, I'm just really frustrated and running out of patience.

It would be nice if those new missions they mentioned in the roadmap were related to the underlined bit, but I'm not hopeful.
 
If you don't assume the what the overhauled feature is the roadmap could also read as "the codebase is so messed up we can't even think about adding/changing anything major until around 2023"
This statement would be laughable, since they just reworked their code.
 
We are all ofc assuming that what is in the roadmap for next year is engineering. It might be something else, and engineering might be done earlier, I'm not saying it isn't engineering, infact if I was a betting man I'd put money on the key feature rework for 2023 being engineering but we just don't know at this stage. Personally I'd prefer it to notority as its a real pain in Odyssey.
 
Aaaaaaaaaaaand
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O7
 
Yeah Smuggling really could do with being looked at to be fair...

giphy.webp
Apart from to unlock the engineer I've never bothered with smuggling as there is zero point doing it. Its just a faff with no real reward, you'll earn more with the time invested blowing up chunks of space rock or running trade missions.
 
Who mentioned promises?

A community manager made a post about rebalancing engineering 6 months ago. The current roapmap which extends past the end of the year makes no mention of it. So, it's reasonable to conclude it won't happen. That's it.

I don't care about promises, but I do care about ongoing development plans. If they aren't going to address this major problem (IMO) anytime soon, I'm going to move on to games that I consider more fun and less grindy.
to be fair, the Roadmap was reaaalll LITE.
 
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