Update on Communication

ubermick

ubermick
Frillop Freyraum said:
My recipe (even if you didn't ask for it): don't grind. Never. And only do what you think is right and not what others would have you believe.
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Truer words, never spoken.

Still wholeheatedly believe that while Frontier have certainly contributed to various parts of the game that do our heads in, the mentality of "the grind" is entirely down to Youtubers shoving that narrative down peoples' throats, telling them that if they're not in a fully engineered G5 Corvette within a few days then they're doing it wrong, and here are all the "guides" to do it as quickly as possible, and if you don't enjoy doing it then blame Frontier.
 

optiplex

optiplex
To be truthful i cannot be arsed to read through the many posts in this thread to see if anything has changed, can someone be kind enough to answer this simple question. Since the post by Arthur has there been any updates at all from Frontier. To be honest i am a relaxed sort of person but i am starting to be a little hissed off with the lack of comms from anyone at Frontier and think it is a pretty arrogant way to treat there customers
 

fennster

fennster
optiplex said:
To be truthful i cannot be arsed to read through the many posts in this thread to see if anything has changed
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Just an FYI, if you click on the orange box in the top right corner of any Frontier staffs comment which says "Dev Post" in it, it will jump to the next Dev post in the thread skipping the other content. That is of course if there is any dev posts to skip to.
 

LeoBartlet

LeoBartlet
fennster said:
Just an FYI, if you click on the orange box in the top right corner of any Frontier staffs comment which says "Dev Post" in it, it will jump to the next Dev post in the thread skipping the other content. That is of course if there is any dev posts to skip to.
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and in the case of this thread, there hasn't been a single dev post since Arthurs dear John post.
 

Deleted member 182079

D
Frillop Freyraum said:
There's definitely something to it. I think most Youtubers have their roots in other MMOs and think they know exactly how to play an MMO. In reality, they have no idea where the game has its roots, namely in the original from 1984. The whole MMO superstructure serves the survival of the game first and foremost in my opinion. Actually, everyone should be able to see where the game is coming from - if you just look at the half-hearted implementation of its multiplayer functions. Unfortunately, it's also not a fully-fledged single-player game, but that's another story. Deep down at its core, it still is.

In fact, it plays perfectly as a single player game and if you want, you can simply ignore any competitive considerations. Someone recently said something like "everything is a race". This couldn't be more wrong and is probably the main reason why so many people fall into the grind trap again and again.
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I have a different theory.

I agree with you that ED is at its heart still a single player game. Unfortunately, it doesn't deliver rewards (in the form of new assets / other stuff you can unlock) in remotely the same frequency as what one can expect from other single player games developed over the past 10-20 years, because "unlockable" content (be that via credits, rank, mats, etc.) is comparably scarce in ED (Elite has 38 ships, Forza Motorsport 7 has 830 cars, just to provide one example) so FDev stretched out the hoops one has to jump through to be able to obtain/unlock them.

This can drive someone who's not used to this, and expects a rewards cadency similar to other games, to grinding.

Grinding can (imo) also be attributed to certain tasks being not that enjoyable, or over-reliance on repetition to drag out playtime ("just get it over and done with" sort of thinking).

PS - this is not meant to be a "young people nowadays" jab by the way - I've resigned to grinding on several occasions in Elite, for either one or the other reason. I try to avoid it but when you really want something within the next few days/weeks, as opposed to years, based on your regular play-style, grinding is often the only solution.
 
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Deleted member 182079

D
Frillop Freyraum said:
I think that when people want something urgently and at best yesterday, they should ask themselves why they want it. Take owning a Cutter for example, it certainly requires a lot of grinding if you can't wait. I'd really like to ask every Cutter owner who's taken the grindy road, "Was it really worth it?" How many people burn out and quit the game after a grindfest like this... Incidentally, I now have a Cutter and two Vettes, all three of which are clearly on my list of rarely used ships. If I were only allowed to own 5 ships, these would be the first to be eliminated. It's a good thing I never let myself go crazy for it...

A very specific mentality seems to be ingrained in many modern MMO players who are used to "consuming" as much content as possible in a game in as little time as possible (almost an "all-you-can-eat mentality"). I find that the original spirit of gaming has largely fallen by the wayside, giving way to a widespread desire for entertainment. In conversations, I keep noticing that games and entertainment are now equated. Which does not necessarily mean that the two must be mutually exclusive. But by "entertainment" I still understand a fundamentally passive action (like watching a movie, for example), whereas in my understanding gaming always has something to do with creativity.
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Now that I know what the Corvette and Cutter are like, I'm in no rush to re-unlock them again. Haven't even got enough rank to access the Clipper yet (which I wouldn't mind flying again, need a decent pirate boat), and only recently gained access to the FGS (which I might try out, but am in no rush).

But you don't know that in advance, despite others telling you as such. You have to find out for yourself. And then it boils down to how much patience you have. Flying the Corvette for the first time gave me a nice rush, and once engineered an even bigger one - only to be taken down a peg or two when I got ganked in it soon after in ShinDez and ate a rebuy swiftly. Was the initial grind worth it? Kind of, yes. I wouldn't do it again though (and that was prior to REP+++++ mission rewards so extra painful).

I think it's natural in a game to want to unlock and achieve things, and as quickly as possible. Even though I also believe that most recent games massively overdo it with the rewards - like the Forza games showering you with several (often high value) cars after almost each single race. That's the opposite end of the scale compared to Elite. A middle ground would be best imo, as so often the case.

But I'll leave it at that now before Ratty reports my post as OT ;)
 
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[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_

[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_
Frillop Freyraum said:
There's definitely something to it. I think most Youtubers have their roots in other MMOs and think they know exactly how to play an MMO. In reality, they have no idea where the game has its roots, namely in the original from 1984. The whole MMO superstructure serves the survival of the game first and foremost in my opinion. Actually, everyone should be able to see where the game is coming from - if you just look at the half-hearted implementation of its multiplayer functions. Unfortunately, it's also not a fully-fledged single-player game, but that's another story. Deep down at its core, it still is.

In fact, it plays perfectly as a single player game and if you want, you can simply ignore any competitive considerations. Someone recently said something like "everything is a race". This couldn't be more wrong and is probably the main reason why so many people fall into the grind trap again and again.
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I'd generally agree, if they could balance Engineering so that simply playing the game unlocked the materials required. As it stands, some materials you cannot get simply by playing the game - you have to perform the same specific task repeatedly, sometimes many times over, in order to get them.

The fact that they doubled down on this mechanic in Odyssey is a mystery to me. I would term that Grind.

I do detest the terms Farming and Grinding and the whole mentality that goes with it, though. For me, if you play any game that way then you're missing the point completely.
 

zimms

zimms
ubermick said:
Truer words, never spoken.

Still wholeheatedly believe that while Frontier have certainly contributed to various parts of the game that do our heads in, the mentality of "the grind" is entirely down to Youtubers shoving that narrative down peoples' throats, telling them that if they're not in a fully engineered G5 Corvette within a few days then they're doing it wrong, and here are all the "guides" to do it as quickly as possible, and if you don't enjoy doing it then blame Frontier.
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I disagree. A conspiracy theory is just way sexier than the obvious observation I guess.

I really don't think one could argue away that parts of this game are needlessly repetitive and, well grindy. I don't know when you joined Elite, have you been around for Engineers v1? That really was something, even Frontier agreed and overhauled it numerous times by now.

Or some more recent examples, what would you say are the benefits of having to point&click plants three times instead of one? Or why is collecting 15 Settlement Defense Plans so much more interesting than collecting 5, or just one for that matter?

Is there also a name for the mentality that the game is never at "fault", it's just always the players who are too stupid to play the game correctly?
 

ubermick

ubermick
zimms said:
I disagree. A conspiracy theory is just way sexier than the obvious observation I guess.

I really don't think one could argue away that parts of this game are needlessly repetitive and, well grindy. I don't know when you joined Elite, have you been around for Engineers v1? That really was something, even Frontier agreed and overhauled it numerous times by now.

Or some more recent examples, what would you say are the benefits of having to point&click plants three times instead of one? Or why is collecting 15 Settlement Defense Plans so much more interesting than collecting 5, or just one for that matter?

Is there also a name for the mentality that the game is never at "fault", it's just always the players who are too stupid to play the game correctly?
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I've been around since Beta, and played all the originals as a kid. Yes I've been around for all of it.

And no, I've not inflicted the grind upon myself. Maybe that's why I enjoy the game instead of incessantly ing and moaning about it?
 
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