The Grind is Real

[Moriarte]

Man, I feel for new players having to go through all this. Having fairly recently done my service to the grind wheel, which took couple of months from nearly 0, in a fairly quck way, I can say two things: I will never go through this again; only small fraction of people will figure it all out and will be bothered to execute.

It’s kinda funny: loving pvp above all else I Had to spend 100 (?) hours to be able to just join the club and start training for pvp duels at the appropriate level. It’s a great challenge for someone like me, who likes challenging himself, but lets be realistic: for many people the whole thing is simply Crazy. They won’t do it.

Just inviting people to look at the situation, where the game builds a huge glass wall between various types of players and goes on like this: “If you want to enjoy pvp in this beautiful game with wonderful and bloodthirsty like-minded individuals, hide in your cave and grind for two months”.

I mean, if I knew in advance how long and real the grind was, I’d dish out another 100 just to avoid doing it, haha.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

That's the cost of wanting to only do PvP in a mostly PvE game.

I have done, thankfully precious little grind in this game.

 

[Mohrgan]

Chalk it up to personal play style.

The notion that only 'the few' would complete the Engineer's maze is pretty silly. I refuse to, I only have the first few Enginers unlocked, but I'm sure this is a minority position.

I would like to point out, that in the myriad of mmo's I have played and PvP'd in, the Engineers seem no different than having to level cap in other games before you get to do big boy things. I don't see why having to put in effort to be prepared for top tier competition is considered some kind of nuisance.

You can, and should, start your 'training' even before you get through the Engineers. Even with a fully g5'd FdL there is a lot of losing involved with PvP, so start off early, in a cheapish ship, and set yourself right with the Engineers like everyone else had to.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Man, I feel for new players having to go through all this. Having fairly recently done my service to the grind wheel, which took couple of months from nearly 0, in a fairly quck way, I can say two things: I will never go through this again; only small fraction of people will figure it all out and will be bothered to execute.

It’s kinda funny: loving pvp above all else I Had to spend 100 (?) hours to be able to just join the club and start training for pvp duels at the appropriate level. It’s a great challenge for someone like me, who likes challenging himself, but lets be realistic: for many people the whole thing is simply Crazy. They won’t do it.

Just inviting people to look at the situation, where the game builds a huge glass wall between various types of players and goes on like this: “If you want to enjoy pvp in this beautiful game with wonderful and bloodthirsty like-minded individuals, hide in your cave and grind for two months”.

I mean, if I knew in advance how long and real the grind was, I’d dish out another 100 just to avoid doing it, haha.

If it was a PvP focused game, then i'd say it would be best with no little to no PvE content and zero "grind".

But its a PvE focused game with PvP as optional content.

If you want a PvP game, there are hundreds out there far superior to ED to get your PvP game on.

Hell, even CQC provides a better PvP experience than the main game.

 

[Duck & Jenny]

Just inviting people to look at the situation, where the game builds a huge glass wall between various types of players and goes on like this: “If you want to enjoy pvp in this beautiful game with wonderful and bloodthirsty like-minded individuals, hide in your cave and grind for two months”.

I still fail to see the enjoyment in fighting hour-long battles Godship V Godship. Spam those SCBs! Wooo!!

Personally, my favorite PvP takes place behind the stick of my Sidewinder and Viper against other "non-meta" players.

 

[krylite]

PvP aside, the grind of the game isn't really more than other MMO games, possibly even less. Regular games such as Skryim or even X4 can be "done" in 20-40 hours or shorter especially by those who just want to rush to the endgame storyline, then the game is put away in favor of another selection particularly by those who are not completionist or don't care to explore the world of the game further. MMOs and shared verses can accomodate a very long playing time for the player character lasting months or even years to reach level x-hundred-x whatever. Within that perspective, ED's grind is probably far less than the average MMOs where the guardian grinds can be done within a few weekend sessions and now many new players are getting their first conda within a couple of weeks.

 

[DNA-Decay]

I like my PvP spontaneous.
Fighting folks who I KNOW are on the other side.
And yeah, it’s been a chore to build something that can kill or survive. But not much of a chore. Mostly my rank and wealth is a by-product of doing interesting BGS projects for Alliance Minor Factions.
Sounds kinda dry, but it encompasses every game mechanic and activity.

And once in a while there’ll be a BGS war between player groups.

And that for me is where the BEST PvP is.
Not in ships dedicated and specialised for PvP. But in ships designed for BGS. Against people you actually can’t stand from the forums.

 

[Jaggedmallard]

The only grind thats still a pain now is the engineering grind and even thats not as bad as it was this time last year. I'm certainly glad new players don't have to go through the old rank grinds.

 

[Slange Lands]

"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy." - anonymous

Just think, the grind could be even worse.

I just found out about Enhanced Performance Thrusters. Yes, after having played for 2400 hours.
What am I doing now?
Converting all my small ships to the above.
It is unthinkable for me to allow my small combat ships not to have the above and engineered as well.
If I could be content with my 2A and 3A G5 drag drive thrusters, I would not be here in Deciat grinding my sanity away.
Ego wins.
I suck.

HA
embrace mediocrity?

 

[Brrokk]

PvP aside, the grind of the game isn't really more than other MMO games, possibly even less. Regular games such as Skryim or even X4 can be "done" in 20-40 hours or shorter especially by those who just want to rush to the endgame storyline, then the game is put away in favor of another selection particularly by those who are not completionist or don't care to explore the world of the game further. MMOs and shared verses can accomodate a very long playing time for the player character lasting months or even years to reach level x-hundred-x whatever. Within that perspective, ED's grind is probably far less than the average MMOs where the guardian grinds can be done within a few weekend sessions and now many new players are getting their first conda within a couple of weeks.

I've yet to see an online game forum where people don't complain about "grind". The reason is that players are similar in all the games. "Grind" isn't something a game does; it's something players do.

 

[Lunahod-1]

There's no other MMO out there where the grind would be so... well, so stupid, for the lack of a better word. Scan five obelisks - re-log, scan five obelisks - re-log, continue scanning the same obelisks and re-logging and so on. There's no gameplay at all in ED's grind. I mean if someone thinks it's a gameplay that only means they don't understand what gameplay is. Sadly, it looks like I'm talking about ED's game designers.

Oh, and gathering materials... There's a lot of gathering matts in other games. Although other devs don't take the word 'gathering' so literally. We all are XXXIV century gatherers. The day will come when we will become hunters and maybe a few centuries later we will start making jugs and bowls out of clay and maybe then we can become space farmers if we're lucky. Maybe one of my grandchildren will own a thargoid ranch.

If you need to grind for matts in another game it usually will be something like 'you need to kill 300/3000/30000 of this type of mobs to get that amount of matts from them'. And, btw, here's the location full of that type of mobs and they re-spawn every 30 sec. Might take you hours and days to get what you want but that would be hours and days of killing mobs which is something that people who play these games actually enjoy doing. It won't be 'press this button five times then quit to the main menu and start the game again and press the same button five times again' and so on. If I were to make a one hour video of gathering data from guardian obelisks I would have recorded no more than two minutes and just looped it. And nobody would have guessed that it's looped.

There's a QoL suggestions topic somewhere nearby. I wonder, if I suggest to add a re-log button to the game would it be considered as something rude and offensive and me being toxic? I mean the best QoL improvement for this kind of grind would be if I just could press 'space bar' for instant re-log, right? Because re-logging is the most used and useful function of the game anyway.

 

[gooddoc]

When players write about 'grind' now, I just chuckle.

There's a new comedy series on E4 in the UK called Dead Pixels, it sums up online gaming & the players quite accurately & is very funny. Well worth the watch!!

 

[Lestat]

Yawn. Use an Alt Account. Made Elite Trading in less than a day. I think If I made him into an Explorer. I could finish him in a few days. I will try that next Saturday if nothing happening. Then switch to Combat. I would ask the suggestion. My guess would be. As a Mostly Harmless Only Attack Elite Pirates and Engineer, you ship asap.

 

[Moriarte]

There's a QoL suggestions topic somewhere nearby. I wonder, if I suggest to add a re-log button to the game would it be considered as something rude and offensive and me being toxic? I mean the best QoL improvement for this kind of grind would be if I just could press 'space bar' for instant re-log, right? Because re-logging is the most used and useful function of the game anyway.

Made me chuckle, moonwalker. Elite is a kind of game, which gets shy when you want fo tell her that she’s grinding. She is not grinding!

I've yet to see an online game forum where people don't complain about "grind". The reason is that players are similar in all the games. "Grind" isn't something a game does; it's something players do.

The reason isn’t that players are similar, the reason is that most developers are driven by the same thing. Don’t pin this on players, mate. It’s the dev’s imagination, defined by lack of attention span, which create short game loops and even forget to insert bindable re-log button.

 

[Brrokk]

Made me chuckle, moonwalker. Elite is a kind of game, which gets shy when you want fo tell her that she’s grinding. She is not grinding!



The reason isn’t that players are similar, the reason is that most developers are driven by the same thing. Don’t pin this on players, mate. It’s the dev’s imagination, defined by lack of attention span, which create short game loops and even forget to insert bindable re-log button.

If that were true we'd all be grinding because we're all playing the same game. In fact you can read in these forums that some of us are grinding and some aren't.

 

[CoyoteXStarrk]

When I return from my current Exploration journey I am gonna be hopping onto the Federal Corvette rank grind.

 

[Moriarte]

If that were true we'd all be grinding because we're all playing the same game. In fact you can read in these forums that some of us are grinding and some aren't.

Yes, yes. The wind is blowing because the trees are shaking.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I believe data and manufactured material farming is quite grindy, because there's no real fun and/or accurate way of getting what you want.
You've either got to game the system by relogging, or just wander aimlessly to get what you need.
USSs aren't even close to being on a normal flight path, so you literally have to stop what you're doing to go spend 5-10 minutes in supercruise just to reach a HGE, that may or may not contain what you wanted, then fly back to your original flight path.

Elements are spot on perfect.
Either find a geological site or one of the awesome biological sites a bit further out.

Data and manufactured need that sort of system.

 

[Slange Lands]

I've yet to see an online game forum where people don't complain about "grind". The reason is that players are similar in all the games. "Grind" isn't something a game does; it's something players do.

Indeed. However, compared to the desired end result of grinding in ED, that is of actual PvP in an enhanced ship, the grinding mechanic of gathering materials in ED is stupefyingly, mind numbingly, soul- searchingly, brain damagingly odious no matter how cleverly one can up with rationalizations to prove otherwise and no matter how hard one tries to distract oneself from it by creative multitasking.

It just goes to show how brilliant the flight model is. That relatively sophisticated adults would go through this utterly dismal mechanic for hours on end must attest to that.

 

[Firebeard]

I'm not sure I've the attention span to grind in elite. I just get bored doing the same thing over and over so go do something else for a bit.