Engineers Taking a long break because of 2.1, here's why (some suggestions)

Von Shadow

Von Shadow
I'm doing similar more and more....

Ever since 2.1 dropped my Elite game-time has plummeted ..... i was enjoying my gaming .... but now i just feel its lost something
I logged in again last night .... trying to accomplish something and spent 5 minutes staring at it and in the end just logged off

I can't have played more than 3 or 4 hours total since it was released.... and i was playing maybe between 2 and 4 sessions a week of around 2-4 hours .... so gone from 6 - 12 hours a week to < 1.5
And i could have a slot to play tonight but i most likely won't ..... just too many issues right now
 

Lheim

Lheim
You know, I've been playing elite for a year and a half. Never got tired of it.

This new patch makes me wince. Obviously it must be my problem, not the game's. I gotta be the problem here. The concept of "rng grind for mats + the rng grind for upgrades + the rng grind for special effects" can't possibly be at fault.

I previously liked Elite because it was pretty deterministic - any game session, you could make progress. Now? Effort, let alone progress, is flushed down the toilet for no good reason other than to waste my dang time. There's no good way for me to go out and work towards a goal; I just gotta 'do crap and hope the right stuff drops'.

Obviously, it's me. Obviously.

Frontier, plz. You can pick one of the two: rng grind for mats, OR rng on module crafting results. Both? Both? You went with both? The one-two sucker punch? You deserve the backlash. It sucks.
 
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thorn-

thorn-
K-Rose said:
It's only wasting time if it's not fun. I actually agree with much of this but I just had a different route.
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Vatermann wants 200 units of lavian brandy, of which 1 unit spawns every 10 minutes in Lave.

What part of this sounds it would ever be fun to you?

Instead of take a break (which I was considering) I've just reset my save and suddenly everything is awesome again :)
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More than one person has reset their save, for some reason or another. But do understand that most people don't wish to completely wipe out every nickel they've made, every ship, every rank, that they've earned over the past 18 months. If some random bug wiped my CMDR, and support was unwilling to restore my data - I'd stop playing. I'm not going back to 800CR and a Sidewinder, hauling 2T of algae for 90CR profit.

It should be rare that a player will clear-save, due to being unable to enjoy the game. The fact that so many people are doing this screams volumes about the state of 2.1... people are choosing to lose everything and start over, rather than continue their current game.
 
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myrr mac

M
Lheim said:
You know, I've been playing elite for a year and a half. Never got tired of it.

This new patch makes me wince. Obviously it must be my problem, not the game's. I gotta be the problem here. The concept of "rng grind for mats + the rng grind for upgrades + the rng grind for special effects" can't possibly be at fault.

I previously liked Elite because it was pretty deterministic - any game session, you could make progress. Now? Progress is flushed down the toilet for no good reason other than to waste my g time. There's no good way for me to go out and work towards a goal; I just gotta 'do crap and hope the right stuff drops'.

Obviously, it's me. Obviously.
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You know, I dont mind some rng in a loot system.

Id be ok with current rng on everything except the final roll at the engineer. (that ,and having storage). I v played some pretty grindy games. I v put years into oldschool wow, d2, d3, and dnd online. This is just too much though. I mean sure, it wouldnt be perfect, and I d certainly iron out the mission system a bit, and perhaps make stuff like firmware actually be common as its claimed to be, but I m ok with rng as a rule of thumb.

But not this. F this. I m done.
 

Thetele

T
Agree with op.

It take too long to get what you want from engineer, mostly rng is okey for stats but for special effect....
Getting materials for some tier 2 or 3 modifications is already hard. Not hard its easy, but its so slow. 2-4 hours for couple rolls. Then when you finally have modded your ship like you wanted you are bored with it and want to change to other kind of ship. This mean that you need to do most of that again to mod this other ships....
 

Lheim

Lheim
Thetele said:
Agree with op.

It take too long to get what you want from engineer, mostly rng is okey for stats but for special effect....
Getting materials for some tier 2 or 3 modifications is already hard. Not hard its easy, but its so slow. 2-4 hours for couple rolls. Then when you finally have modded your ship like you wanted you are bored with it and want to change to other kind of ship. This mean that you need to do most of that again to mod this other ships....
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There are already people with grade 5 upgrades.

That's the problem with this kind of gamey grindy crap from developers - it never, ever, ever, slows down the people it's intended to slow down. It's about as effective as putting DRM on games; the pirates run rampant, and the people who pay the price are the legitimate customers jumping through hoops to even launch the dang thing.

It just ends up being an annoying roadblock to the time-limited player. Which I am, and it is an annoying roadblock.

But the people who can play 5-6 hours a night? Pft. They breeze through it.
 
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Marcusfalden

Marcusfalden
Have rep cmdr. Thanks to this RNG grind fest I dropped $60 into SC and I am now looking for other space sims.

FRONTIER DEVELOPMENT you will not get any more of my money or precious time. Fix what you have broken.
 

Bran Tse Mallory

Bran Tse Mallory
Sorry to see another CMDR leave their cockpit even if only for a while. All very valid points that I also agree with which you've raised.

Have fun! o7
 

Kaybe

Kaybe
I agree the weapon special effects RNG is a miserable pain. While I don't mind the RNG of other mods, compared to the mats required to get them, I find more people get weapon mods for the special effects than for the weapon boosts themselves. And the chances of landing those special effects, notably the desired ones, is pretty abysmal. FD did state they would add an element in the game where you can voluntarily lose rep with an engineer to get the specific effect desired, which is a good idea, but who knows when that'll happen. Personally, for the time being, I'm focusing on drives and FSD over anything else. Because in an even match, the person with speed and agility always always has the advantage. And FSD because I hate spending too much time going from point A to B ;)

And andrak, I don't consider myself particularly lucky or unlucky. But the forums are already abuzz with people talking about their rank 5 modifications *less than a week after release*. Compare this to pretty much every other online game where getting the best of the best upgrades for each equipped items takes months or more to get. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that of knowing *where* to find materials and commodities for each engi craft, not the quantity involved. Although there are some RNG ranges that are noticeably too large ... for example, rank 5 FSD ranges from 11 to 45%. That's silly. My number one suggestion for these upgrades is that each rank's range should *always* be higher than the previous one. They did this for dirty drives, which is great, but it really should be the case for everything.

But currently, the number one concern for 2.1, *by far*, is the lack of storage for modules and commodities. This is a really really big problem right now for many people, and FD has already stated they are aware of it and working on tackling this.
 
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-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
skurvenyzmrd said:
i dont know, maybe they dont white knight and point out flaws of design. some of us have only limited time to allocate to gaming so dont act surprised when that little time is spent playing a game that provides entertainment value. and no, senseless grind is not entertaining at all, nor half baked release with missing fundamental game mechanics.
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The thing here is that what some people call flaws others really enjoy. I like a bit of random to be honest, makes life a bit interesting. If it was all predictable, it would get boring pretty fast. I haven't done any senseless grind in the game yet, and I won't do it either and have no idea why others do it if it's not enjoyable.
 
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StiTch

StiTch
Bored of the whine posts but this one does sum up all the issues with the RNGineers update really concisely. The majority of it just feels either unpolished or soaked in oversight.

What worries me is the content that isn't oversight and is being defended as good decision. Yes, make a game people will enjoy a lot of hours in. But please make sure they're actually enjoying ​that time ;)
 

CMDR Triklops

C
rngineers, strange, was playing elite every day the last 3 monthes or so, short before getting elite trade rank :D the intent is clearly visible, making it more interesting, many missions like high security sites and stuff is fun to play, since release of 2.1 i wanted to boost my anacondas power distributor, and this specialised firmware is nowhere to get, considering one needs like 10x the requirements to roll the slot machine over and over ... the ultra long distances more or less where ok, lol i had stripped my anaconda to reach the rngineer and realised that i have downgraded my modules to "D" type for larger jumps, rofl, this is all acceptable

the only thing that needs to be fixed on my behalve is the information on what resources pop where, i am a miner and making between 3 and 10 millions per run and need to garbage every few minutes 20 to 50 elements of iron/nickel/carbon

what i really like though with 2.1 is that synthesis now becomes a thing, reloading cannons is just a very rewarding thing, and as i posted before, the lack of information is what reallly really bugs me out, i have no information in the synthesis panel or anywhere about what upgrades i can do, i mean please add the pinned recipes to the synthesis list at least, and giving information for what a material can be used ( after visited engineers for recipes, OR just the pinned ones ) so that decision of what to throw away and what not is made a bit easier, the information "material is used by rngineer" is just ridicoulus

for me after watching 5 minutes yesterday i logged off as well, in halve a year or so there might be fun again, lucky enough its summer now :D
 

Colonel Kenney

Colonel Kenney
Just do some mining .. its still just as buggy as the rest of the game but it is profitable and quasi safe from losing money.

Every time I take my python into combat I am pretty much guaranteed to get my shields dropped and my hull taken down PER FIGHT. Before I could shield tank every enemy and win. Now I can't shield tank one enemy, even a cobra mk III !! So until I get a spare 20-30million to put into the hull might as well avoid combat as much as possible.

That means trading too because if you have cargo - you'll get super assassins coming after you and magically appearing in your instances out of the blue.
 

morbidorbits

M
I have been involved since the original Beta phase of ED and I have mostly ignored; Powerplay; Horizons; and Engineers. Horizons is the only one that is remotely interesting for me, as exploration is more my thing. Exploration is becoming more and more my thing as time goes on (and we have these major time sinkholes added) as I really cannot help but feel I need to avoid so much of the new game patched content. I really need to stop buying the patches as they are taking me so far from the game I used to love, and further and further into deep space.
 
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Mosait

Mosait
You bring up very relevant issues OP. I think some of the issue is not necessarily RNG, but that there is no way to narrow down a search.

For instance, if you are going to go mining/drilling for material, you don't just randomly hit spots until you get lucky. There are ways measure and calculate probability of locating those materials. The prospecting drone was supposed to help with this, but it barely assists in that regard.
Some ideas that I think would make it more engaging and involving the player may be things like:

1) A scanner that gives you a color coded map of asteroids or a planet surface (KSP style?). Seems like the Detailed Surface Scanner could do this.
2) A material scanner for ships (instead of, or with, the cargo scanner...I don't know can it scan for materials?).
3) Make the module modification a mini-game for the player. This way a poor/desirable outcome is upon the players ability. Essentially, make the player be involved in the process.

I do agree with the sentiments that stacking RNG of mats with the RNG for engineer mods is overdoing it. I'm sure some may disagree.

In all, I think the aspect that is being missed is the player involvement. Letting the player decide on where to mine, drill, fight, or roam/search based on usable information makes the experience that much more enjoyable and rewarding. For now, we are randomly shooting random things for random outcomes.
 
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