Urgh, I'm still traumatised from doing the Guardian grind ages ago. The modules are well-worth getting and certainly enhance gameplay by providing more outfitting options for the player. However, that grind! sigh It's too much. You do it once or twice, after figuring it out, and it's fun enough, then you might do it again to beat your last time. Then you have to do it again, and again and again... Each time the same thing, well, except when it would regularly (when I did it ages ago) bug out totally and you'd either NOT get the reward at the end - scan fails, orb thing doesn't rise up - or it'd fail at an earlier stage - pylons not responding, randomly resetting (not timing out) - which just made it worse. I did the work (not play) for ALL Guardian modules, yet am still missing many due to bugs. Can't face it again shudder
So, you have a game-play loop that needs to be repeated multiple times, just to access some interesting stuff. THIS is exactly the sort of thing that puts me off playing. Back in the early days, before engineering, I thought being rich would open up options to play around with new ships and new load-outs. It did, though I wasn't that rich. Then Engineering arrived, making non-engineered ships horrible. Super short jump ranges, weak shields, weak weapons, not enough power, weak distributors etc. simply not fun because the universe had been upgraded with engineering. Flying around in an unengineered ship is sorta fun at times. It's intense fun though as you're so weak and easy to kill, player skill is everything. I get exhausted quickly playing like that. When I want to actually achieve things other than just survival, I need something engineered to do it in.
To people who say "well, you don't have to do it", well, I don't have to play the game at all, and, sadly, that's my preferred option at the moment. Engineering is a GREAT feature when one looks at just the Engineering, tweaking my ships to be better is great. The implementation not so much. The non-regular gameplay required though is a nightmare. I was always a happy G3 tweaker of modules. One roll at G3 and I'm generally happy with the improvements offered. One roll. After "improved" Engineering, my material needs were at least THREE TIMES what they were before to hit my middle of the road Engineering level. I like that we couldn't roll backwards any more, that was good, but we did gain the dreaded micro-roll, where the gauge barely moves a pixel yet materials are lost. Material trader helped fill in some of the gaps when it comes to obtaining certain materials, but the exchange rate is terrible. I just farm as I play, so have to trade up for what I need quite often. I just cannot be doing those meta relog type loops any more for data, nor the "if a ship explodes in a [whatever] system state, what does it drop" . Or of course the "fly to system xyz to get loads of [material]", which can work amazingly well, or be a total failure in the same place as last time.
It makes me sad that we have to go through this carp just to access something that's fun. If I could readily Engineer, I'd be playing far far more than I do currently. Hell, give me an option to pay the Engineer in CREDITS to work on a module for me. Perhaps with only "the best" rolls needing materials. Let me buy a solid G3 with credits...I have lots of those from doing gameplay I enjoyed.
Basically, I play for fun and gather materials along the way, be it from exploded ships or mission rewards. I trade for harder to get stuff. Specialist stuff like Guardian and AX, well, I'm done with the former and just cannot face the latter. I'm simply not prepared to spend my free time grinding a boring game loop just to access some fun during a later play session.
Urgh, I hate how I go down this negative path whenever I start thinking of this stuff again.
