Oh you can rank with him with exploration data? Good news to find out while still being on the way to break the 5k, that might be enough to make him go to G5 right away
I was looking forward to Palin the most because of his existing lore connection, not to mention the G5 drive upgrades. I have a significantly higher grind tolerance than most in this game, and have actually enjoyed a lot of this update.
But this Unknown Fragments snipe hunt is just a broken, tedious activity that I can't even call bad gameplay--because that would involve calling it gameplay of any kind. Let's tally up the ways in which this activity fails hard:
And then the kicker: even if they already have all of that information--even if, like me, they're pretty plugged in to the community and lore of the game--even then the actual activity of gathering them involves going to a given system that spawns UAs, and sitting there in supercruise literally doing nothing. Waiting for a random signal source to spawn, and hoping it's an Anomaly type. Then, when we drop into that Anomaly signal source, we go ram or shoot the UA, and out pops one or two UFs. One might spawn immediately. Or you might be waiting for an hour or more.
Then we repeat that as many as twenty, twenty-four more times if your luck is really bad for how many fragments spawn.
I've been doing this in the same system many others are using, with the same methods. Know how many UFs I have to show for more than four hours of this?
Two.
Seriously, who signed off on this? What person, when presented with the idea of expecting players to put together all of the above and then spend hours upon hours literally just sitting in SC in specific systems waiting for an Anomaly to randomly spawn... what person said, "hey, that sounds like a lot of fun"? Anyone? Was that question even asked at any point? I defy one single, solitary person from FD to come into this thread and try to defend the above process as good gameplay of any kind.
You cannot. There's a lot of things about this update that I love, and I will go to bat for this development team when they're getting unfairly criticized. But Palin's unlock criteria? Every bit of criticism is richly deserved. This is objectively bad design that needs to be the subject of a "what did we do wrong and how can we fix it" type of meeting.
Also, can we talk about what kind of whackadoodle thematic sense it even makes to have Palin be the one and only Engineer so far who can craft G4 and G5 Thruster upgrades? It feels completely contrived and artificial, like FD wanted to gate the best Thruster mods behind a tough access quest but didn't stop to think about whether it made any kind of sense for that specific person to have that as their specialty, or whether the kinds of players who would be most interested in Thruster mods would have any reasonable expectation of enjoying the kinds of things they have to do in order to access said mods.
But this Unknown Fragments snipe hunt is just a broken, tedious activity that I can't even call bad gameplay--because that would involve calling it gameplay of any kind. Let's tally up the ways in which this activity fails hard:
- There is absolutely zero in-game conveyance. Nothing in the game, not one solitary thing, even tells a player what an Unknown Fragment is, let alone suggests where to begin looking for it.
- The player has to be reasonably familiar with the UA storyline to even be capable of guessing that UFs might be pieces of UAs.
- Even if they can make that leap of intuition based on the by-definition ambiguous word "Unknown" being in both items, they have no choice but to rely on the Internet for digging up info on where UAs typically spawn.
And then the kicker: even if they already have all of that information--even if, like me, they're pretty plugged in to the community and lore of the game--even then the actual activity of gathering them involves going to a given system that spawns UAs, and sitting there in supercruise literally doing nothing. Waiting for a random signal source to spawn, and hoping it's an Anomaly type. Then, when we drop into that Anomaly signal source, we go ram or shoot the UA, and out pops one or two UFs. One might spawn immediately. Or you might be waiting for an hour or more.
Then we repeat that as many as twenty, twenty-four more times if your luck is really bad for how many fragments spawn.
I've been doing this in the same system many others are using, with the same methods. Know how many UFs I have to show for more than four hours of this?
Two.
Seriously, who signed off on this? What person, when presented with the idea of expecting players to put together all of the above and then spend hours upon hours literally just sitting in SC in specific systems waiting for an Anomaly to randomly spawn... what person said, "hey, that sounds like a lot of fun"? Anyone? Was that question even asked at any point? I defy one single, solitary person from FD to come into this thread and try to defend the above process as good gameplay of any kind.
You cannot. There's a lot of things about this update that I love, and I will go to bat for this development team when they're getting unfairly criticized. But Palin's unlock criteria? Every bit of criticism is richly deserved. This is objectively bad design that needs to be the subject of a "what did we do wrong and how can we fix it" type of meeting.
Also, can we talk about what kind of whackadoodle thematic sense it even makes to have Palin be the one and only Engineer so far who can craft G4 and G5 Thruster upgrades? It feels completely contrived and artificial, like FD wanted to gate the best Thruster mods behind a tough access quest but didn't stop to think about whether it made any kind of sense for that specific person to have that as their specialty, or whether the kinds of players who would be most interested in Thruster mods would have any reasonable expectation of enjoying the kinds of things they have to do in order to access said mods.
My personal guess it's the guy responsible for the SC accel / decel, namely the part that made it so that you spend almost 1 minute approaching a USS because 75% is the most you can go or you will overshoot and 'waste' even more time on approaching it.
Because that's the only person I can imagine actually enjoying sitting around in SC, just waiting there, doing nothing of importance.
SC accel / decel times are bad enough as they are, and if anyone disagrees: go deep space to 800c (past a certain speed do USS spawn so close that they are instantly gone, this is somewhere before that), aim at the damn thing and see how long you spend until you can drop, it's somewhere between 30-60sec just for decelerating at 75% last I measured.
And for comparison go back to 800c after and just slam on the brakes without a USS, you'll be at drop speed in less than 10sec. It's also possible to almost overshoot a USS deselect it and slam the brakes then, that'd be a "workaround" for this nonsense if not most of the gained time would be then wasted on turning around again and decelerating the remaining distance at the horrible 'normal' ratio.
This nonsense is bad enough as it is, combine that with this random chance nature and the illustrated cluelessness, unless you "cheat" and look up a guide on the net because there's literally nothing ingame about it, and you have one hell of a frustrationmockery mixture : /
25 units of Unknown Fragments to unlock.
lol im just gona wait for the next update for this ridicules amount to be nerfed like the Lavian Brandy. Im not gona bother waiting for it to pop up.
what drives me crazy even in something as ridicules and boring as this some fanboy say "what you see as boring someone else see it as fun"
who the .... think waiting for anomaly to pop up for hours as FUN? do these ppl ever played.. ANY game?! jeez
lol im just gona wait for the next update for this ridicules amount to be nerfed like the Lavian Brandy. Im not gona bother waiting for it to pop up.
what drives me crazy even in something as ridicules and boring as this some fanboy say "what you see as boring someone else see it as fun"
who the .... think waiting for anomaly to pop up for hours as FUN? do these ppl ever played.. ANY game?! jeez
Yea i have the exact same approch than you, for me it feels like work, ok these upgrades are powerfull i understand that it should take time but it should also be fun, it's a "game".
I guess you don't like exploration then. I just explored in the 130-150ly range from Merope. Got all 25 within 3-4 hours plus enough data to hit level 3 with Palin out of the box.
Edit: Don't get me wrong, the game play could have been a lot better, but it is not as bad a you think.
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A glass half full kind of comment and I like it.
The grind has killed this game off for me at the moment, but when you combine the search for these bad boys with exploring I can see it makes sense. Good one.
Exploration != waiting for a special USS to spawn. Exploration would be more like "deliver detailed surface scans of 25 Earth-like worlds".
Not in ED it isn't.
I wasn't waiting for USS to spawn. I was exploring, free form. When a USS did spawn I went to investigate.
I did a 50,000 LY radius exploration and im couple of Mil away from Elite in exploration. Its not the same as waiting for an anomaly to pop up. ur comparing apples to oranges.
Like saying "oh you dont like driving in the SRV for hours?" so you dont like bounty hunting then.
the chances of getting 25 fragment while exploring is 0.00000000001% . specially if your doing just EXPLORATION. As in discovering new systems, and checking out new planets and stars. which i did for over a year and never found a single artifact.
Can you guys plz stop defending really BAD game design aspect in the game ? we all love ED thats why we r here. just dont go over the top with ur loyalty its not healthy for the game.
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I'm not defending it. I agree it could have been done much better. I'm just saying it's not as hard as you think and advising on the most efficient way to do it. It was much quicker than getting 25 modular terminals which I assume you already have done?
Take a DSS, jump between systems 130-150ly from merope scanning interesting planets and investigate the USS that pop up. It took me 3-4 hours and then it was done never to be repeated. I even found some interesting systems, one with 2 WW and a ringed amonia world. I enjoyed the experience except for the last few when it started to feel like a grind. But I wanted Palin and now it is done as painlessly as currently possible IMO.
Edit: I don't think they will reduce it because they have already reduced the other ones.
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No, you do not get to play that card here.
I'm a DWE veteran just like you, long-range Fuel Rat, planetary prospector, and Elite Explorer well before DWE. I've been beyond Beagle Point, gone to SgrA* four times, traveled more than half a million LY and spent over 4Mm in an SRV. And I'll tell you the exact same thing rain_walker just did.
Don't you dare try to blow off criticism of this garbage "gameplay" as the complaints of someone who just doesn't like exploration. It's not only egregiously condescending, it's also complete that any thinking person should be embarrassed to try peddling.
Yep, did this last night and was going to post the exact same thing.
The hilarious irony here? When doing the relog thing, you actually have to take care not to get caught in the geometry of the wreckage that likes to pop in, and of course have to find the wreck in the first place. That's right: the "gameplay" involved in the expected method of gathering UFs is so bad, the "relog-scumming" workaround actually requires marginally more skill and player agency.
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Please take your ranting to one of the many rant and whining threads on 2.1. I thought this thread is for practical help in getting the 25 UF.
Perhaps my initial statement was a little blunt, I would have to confess to getting a little frustrated with the hyperbole over what is a relatively trivial task. Especially for two player who have traveled to the far side of the galaxy.
All I've said is exploring in the area of the UAs is a relatively efficient and painless way to unlock Palin that will also get you enough data to reach level 3 with him. I don't believe you've actually read my posts. If you'd rather spend an hour mode switching that's your call, personally I find mode switching worse than my method.
Not once have I defended the game play. I agree it's not good.
I will not be responding further on this matter as I have no wish for a forum argument and it is derailing the thread.
You, two gentlemen, are responsible for saving my mental health. Thanks to your little shortcut, gathering 25 UF's took around forty minutes counting from my home starport three jumps away from Izanami. The biggest issue was to locate the site in orbital cruise. It took around ten minutes.
Wasn't Izanami one of the tip offs ship wrecks ?
Tip offs seem to be happening very often in the last few days:S
Yeah, going for coordinates from OC is done really badly, first not being able to target coords from the surface map and then not even having the compass in OC.
The easiest way I've found so far is going sideways (to get max 'turn' speed) and go at min. speed trying to isolate your heading to one axis, either NS or EW, then work from there.
I hope we get surface targetting and bookmarks soon : (
It is fairly easy once you get the hang of it.
I hold myself at around 100km altitude, control throttle and just yaw.
If Lat is going up/down slowly then Long must be going quickly, vice versa...