The Game IS the grind, or "How I learned to stop complaining about 2.1 and realised real problems"

[LoreLSR]

The Game IS the grind, or "How I learned to stop complaining about 2.1 and realised real problems"

Personal satisfaction lasts short.
Let's start from the beginning.

I was one of the players complaining about the NPC's AI, because I played Elite a lot but it was mainly because of awesome visuals and exploration.
I was one of those players thinking that your objective in the game is to make ships such as Anaconda affordable for you; and this is why I was complaining. Because the loss was frustrating, against "intelligent" artificial intelligences.

Now I realized how much I was wrong. The new AI was the GREATEST addition to the game since I started playing.

A lot of things changed in the last weeks. I focused on every activity present in the game and ended up stacking missions and credits and gone to a point where I could afford everything, except rank locked ships.
And this is the moment when I realized that if you play with that mentality, the game is useless for you.
As soon as I bought and fully outfitted my Anaconda, the game was not entertaining for me anymore.
I thought a lot about it, and concluded that I myself was the problem, my mentality was wrong, I had become sort of addicted to the grind to a point where I left a Station and said "What to do now?". So I started going for ranks, but I realised it was another grind.

So I started thinking again, and asked myself if the problem was really me.
And this is when I switched to powerplay, and this is when Frontier, with the PP recap, made me lose faith even in this part of gameplay.
So what is the real problem?
Is it our mentality as players?
I don't think so.

IMHO this game needs something more, some REAL purpose.
Every activity present in this game desperately needs a purpose.
The only category of players present in the game that I deeply respect as of now are pure explorers. They are going beyond, they don't care about the bubble, about credits, about ranks.
Every other activity in the game can be reduced to credits, and personal satisfaction. Of course the second one is the most important thing, but it doesnt' last long, inside and out of the gaming universe, especially when you keep doing low rewarding and repetitive activities. People call that grind, but I don't like this term because it makes me feel little more than a drug addicted.


I started imagining a galaxy where, as a miner, your reward wouldn't be only credits, but you could actually use resources to build your own outpost, or planetary base, or even build your ship and modules instead of buying them.
Where Powerplay really affected the bubble, and the storyline of Elite, where there were real wars, and not the ones started by redditors.
Where combat oriented ships were not made just for earning more credits.

Where engineering had an higher purpose than improving your ship, because engineers are good, but the farming needed for mods is an activity created ad hoc for distracting us from the fact that when we'll finish modding ships, we'll return to use them for the same activities we always did.

This game feels a lot like it is a beautiful "base" for a real game.
And this "real game" could be the biggest, most beautiful and most satisfying game the gaming industry has ever seen.
But last weeks made me realize that we are so far from this moment, that I don't know if I will have the patience to follow Elite on the long way it needs to become the game it deserves to be.


Sorry for my english because I had little time, and thank you for reading.

 

[mwobey]

IMHO this game needs something more, some REAL purpose.
Every activity present in this game desperately needs a purpose.
The only category of players present in the game that I deeply respect as of now are pure explorers. They are going beyond, they don't care about the bubble, about credits, about ranks.
Every other activity in the game can be reduced to credits, and personal satisfaction. Of course the second one is the most important thing, but it doesnt' last long, inside and out of the gaming universe, especially when you keep doing low rewarding and repetitive activities. People call that grind, but I don't like this term because it makes me feel little more than a drug addicted.

Every time I visit the forums or other online discussions about Elite: Dangerous, I get disillusioned when I see people complaining about the grind of 2.1 and ranking up.... but then I head over to a lore discussion and I'm quickly sucked back in. The FD lore team seems to put a *lot* of effort into making the galaxy feel truly alive, and there are a ton of plot hooks sitting out there waiting for players to uncover. If you're looking for a greater purpose, might I suggest hooking on to a plotline of your choice and trying to help push it forward?

For instance, if you like exploring: there's currently a search lead by the player group Children of Raxxla going on in the Heart nebula for something called the "Formidine Rift". No one knows for sure what it is, just that it featured prominently in the novel that was released with E and that the devs have asserted it's something that can be visited in game. Periodically GalNet articles will pop up about it when you're docked at a station, giving people clues to its location or its nature (just this week a prominent NPC wrote an article mentioning that the people searching for it should probably bring guns).

If you're more into the trading/transport side of things: there's another plotline going on involving alien "Unknown Artefacts" and the Barnacles that you've probably already encountered during the Engineer grind -- You probably researched them a little bit to know how to obtain engineer materials, but did you know about some of the more interesting interactions between the two? For instance, Unknown Artefacts left floating free in space always orient themselves towards the star Merope (and can be found free-floating in USS only in a 130-150 Ly shell around Merope). If Unknown Artefacts are sold to a station's black market, the station starts bugging out with electrical glitches... until they receive meta-alloys from a Barnacle. The devs have hinted pretty strongly that there is a connection between the Artefacts, the Barnacles, and some big things we're going to be seeing in the future of E. A player group called Canonn has formed around producing theories about what this connection might be, and has tasked themselves with keeping meticulous data on the locations and interactions of barnacles and artefacts; it sounds like they're always looking for more people willing to experiment with artefact cargo.

If neither of those interest you, Community Group events spring up every week that have very real effects on the universe: for instance, a few weeks back, people managed to bring 1 billion tons of hydrogen fuel to Jaques Station as the goal of a community group event. The station used this fuel to attempt a hyperjump out to Beagle Point, and has been missing ever since. Now, there are a series of events going on determining what new power will take the stage if one of the current Powerplay factions is dissolved -- even if you have no interest in Powerplay at the moment, you can still participate in the events and have a very real effect on the in-game universe.

The best advice I can offer is that, if you're looking for a purpose to your actions, stop focusing on numbers (whether ranks, or ship upgrades, or credits...) Instead, assume an active role in the *world* of Elite, and take advantage of a team that's incredibly willing to let you shape it.