Weapon and suits upgrades grind is broken.

[Erei]

Hey, I'm willing to trade insight and personal computer for whatever engineer mat you have. That's s*** is everywhere. I'm speaking EVERYWHERE, I'm not even looting it anymore.

Also, who was the genius who thought having engineering mat was not enough, so now we also have commodities to care about ? I don't know which one I can sell, and the one I need to keep for upgrading in the future.

 

[Virgile]

The only material I find really frustrating is manufacturing instructions, you need tons of them and can't find it anywhere...

 

[CMDR Davanix]

The only material I find really frustrating are manifacturing instructions, you need tons of them and can't find it anywhere...

I only seen these from missions...and painful missions at that

 

[Erei]

The only material I find really frustrating is manufacturing instructions, you need tons of them and can't find it anywhere...

I checked for my gun, I have almost none of the material needed for a single upgrade but the weapon instructions. Lots of 0/15.

Weapons instruction are on irregular marker or something like that, with threat something (no threat are crap and should be ignored).

 

[Virgile]

Manufacturing instructions can be found on impact site ( see down to earth astronomy video).
But that's really slow and boring( if you don't relog) and I would prefer to have them in settlements or as missions rewards.

 

[Virgile]

I checked for my gun, I have almost none of the material needed for a single upgrade but the weapon instructions. Lots of 0/15.

Weapons instruction are on irregular marker or something like that, with threat something (no threat are crap and should be ignored).

I found a lot of weapon instructions in military settlements.

 

[Virgile]

I only seen these from missions...and painful missions at that

You get them as mission reward?

 

[Lone_star]

I see a lot of people saying that the grind is the “end game”, but to me if we could naturally buy, outfit and upgrade ships and weapons, in order to try different builds, without the need to either use these exploits or wait months to get all the necessary materials, that would open up the game a lot more.

Right now, most people stick to one or two ships, and always go for the laser + multicannon build, because farming for materials is either boring or too slow, so why would a new player for exemple, “waste” materials trying a cannon build, they might think that cannons are fun, but the internet is filled with people recommending the laser + multicannon build, and gathering materials is really slow and boring, so would they risk it on a possible bad build?

But give us a good and natural way to get this materials, that don’t disrupt gameplay, and now you have a bunch of possibilities, different ships, different builds, and literally an entire universe of possibilities.

All I’m saying is that if we could have a middle ground from the current system, that would be great.

I can not upvote this post enough. As a newer player the engineering grind is so disheartening. Stuff like the FSD upgrades aren't bad (because they are universally useful)... but yeah - I google what builds I should use because (for example) I don't want to waste mats engineering the wrong size/grade thruster on my ASP explorer that I have specced for exploration.

I still think that power creep might be a bigger problem than the grind. Engineering would be SO much more interesting if it provided sidegrades instead of (IMO ridiculously excessive) upgrades.

 

[Erei]

I found a lot of weapon instructions in military settlements.

As I said, my issue is not the instructions, it's pretty much everything else.

 

[dm0815]

"Hard" isnt "unable to find because it's broken", "needle in haystack search because you get no indication of where to look" or neither "super repetitive cheese". No, "hard" is something completely else.

OP, there are reports of gear spawning pre-engineered. Which is a great boon if true and can relieve you from hours on hours of frustration. There is a loose group dedicated to figuring out how it works. Somewhere in the Ody subchannel is their thread and they post findings - you may be able to grab some gear from these reports or get lucky finding your own.

Add "losing at rolling dice" to the list. For me it's the worst offender. Dice roll on system state(1), Dice roll on faction state(1), Dice roll on HGE spawn, Dice roll on HGE content and on and on it goes.

(1): Yes I am aware that this is controlled by the BGS and I could influence it. But since I'm unable to tell if and how many other players are influencing the target system it might just as well be random.

I don't need to have my suits maxed out inside a week of playing, so it doesn't bother me much that the progress is slow. I don't mind RNG too - without it there would be simple mindless farming once you figure out where to go.
I'm not sure what to think about 40 Opinion Polls requirement f.ex - I haven't encountered them yet. Maybe they are very rare, in which case it might be too much, or maybe there's a bug which limits their appearance, or I haven't found out where they are commonly appearing.
The fact we can't remove engineering is annoying - It will just mean lots of suit and gun variations cluttering my inventory - with slow material gathering I don't want to loose anything, so I'll keep everything just in case.
It's also annoying that I have no idea what lots of those materials or data I find might be useful for - I'm afraid to sell or trade something that might proove to be very rare and important later.

I thought to myself: Hmm I would expect these in settlements with tourist economy (Did you enjoy your vacation with us? Give us a rating ...). And sure enough I found one during a raid mission. It's downloadable data. Unfortunately only I found one. So... 39 more settlements to go I guess? Unless somebody found a more efficient way.

The problem since the inception of this game is that Frontier can't figure the whole "carrot on a stick" part out. Look at Diablo or any Hack & Slay game out there. The gameplay loop is simple, the story is usually finished within a few hours, after that there is nothing really new to see anymore and yet players spent years and hundreds of hours with these games. There is always some better loot to find, gear sets to complete, harder difficulties to master. The challenge with games like these is to keep the time between the next upgrade reasonable so people don't quit, since these games are repetitive by nature.

How does Elite compare to that? There are no real obstacles to overcome in terms of difficulty. So something that is already not really difficult becomes trivial with the best or any engineer upgrades. A bigger ship doesn't unlock new gameplay I haven't seen before. Elite just doesn't have a gameplay loop to support the massive grind involved to A-grade the higher tier ships or now to upgrade your gear. That's why people take shortcuts I think. Thargoids were a good start, but again the solution isn't to crank the difficulty sky high. The time spent between upgrades must be reasonable.

 

[Flippimonkey]

Yeah, it's a grind. And to my surprise it is worse than Engineers 1.0 for ships. I didn't use Engineers then until they "fixed" it, and I am not using it now. I collect stuff cuz why not, but I am not concerned with Engineers. If that means I can't play parts of the game, that's fine I can't really play the game for long anyway due to crashes.

I'm gonna be honest and say ED needs a new Management Team. To be clear the tech and audio teams seems solid. Braben needs to be more involved if he hasn't been, which given the state of Odyssey's release, I am going to guess he hasn't been. I love that stuttering mess of a brainiac. However the gameplay and game direction team needs to be let go or forced to resign.

 

[Azirphaeli]

The grind to upgrade suits and weapons is broken

So, I have been playing odyssey in a normal way, doing missions and collecting materials to upgrade my suits and weapons, but I noticed that even looting the entire settlement I still couldn't find some materials and the ones I got are in very small quantities for what is required to upgrade your gear.

And if I look on YouTube or Google about how to get some of these materials, all I find are guides about finding a certain place and keep there reloging from the main menu. The same method that is used to collect materials to engineer ship modules.

It's really sad that we still have a boring and broken system like this in the new expansion, just like with the ships, where you have to choose between grinding the same place over and over, without playing the game itself, or try to pick up the materials naturally while playing, but it will probably take months or even longer before you can upgrade your stuff.

The fact that every “guide” depends on some kind of exploit, simply shows how broken this system is, and this is really discouraging me from continuing to play.

Not to mention RNG, even if your are in a settlement that should have the materials that you need, that dosen’t mean that they will be there.

What you guys think?

Perhaps the idea is that you shouldn't have fully upgraded and engineered your gear a week after launch?

 

[Florenus]

I thought to myself: Hmm I would expect these in settlements with tourist economy (Did you enjoy your vacation with us? Give us a rating ...). And sure enough I found one during a raid mission. It's downloadable data. Unfortunately only I found one. So... 39 more settlements to go I guess? Unless somebody found a more efficient way.

The problem since the inception of this game is that Frontier can't figure the whole "carrot on a stick" part out. Look at Diablo or any Hack & Slay game out there. The gameplay loop is simple, the story is usually finished within a few hours, after that there is nothing really new to see anymore and yet players spent years and hundreds of hours with these games. There is always some better loot to find, gear sets to complete, harder difficulties to master. The challenge with games like these is to keep the time between the next upgrade reasonable so people don't quit, since these games are repetitive by nature.

How does Elite compare to that? There are no real obstacles to overcome in terms of difficulty. So something that is already not really difficult becomes trivial with the best or any engineer upgrades. A bigger ship doesn't unlock new gameplay I haven't seen before. Elite just doesn't have a gameplay loop to support the massive grind involved to A-grade the higher tier ships or now to upgrade your gear. That's why people take shortcuts I think. Thargoids were a good start, but again the solution isn't to crank the difficulty sky high. The time spent between upgrades must be reasonable.

What you've said is exactly my argument why there's no need to grind in Elite. You just don't have to. It's completely optional. People take shortcuts, because they want to finish upgrading ASAP, not realising they don't actually need it (unless they are all about PvP against already maxed out players). I don't think comparing Elite to DIablo is good way to go, because those games are too different - In Elite upgrading your gear is optional goal you can choose to pursue, but the game doesn't revolve around it.
Sure, this takes away something that game like Diablo has (this constant progress that player can chase), but that's the price for being a sandbox game - you choose what to do instead of the game showing you your next goal - this has that unfortunate effect that some people get bored when not tempted with next carrot, or when that carrot requires too much effort to get to. Games like Diablo are all about grind - Elite is not. That's why I'm baffled when people come into Elite and treat it like that, complaining that they must undergo that terrible grind, because they perceive something that supposed to be an optional long term goal, as obligatory carrot to catch.

I'm not saying that Odyssey progress is well balanced - it probably isn't - but you don't need to find those 40 polls to open some gameplay - you will probably just be able to install something that will make your game slightly easier. So what's the difference if it takes you longer? If doing the missions to get those mats bores someone, then having suits or weapons engineered won't help anything.

I mean, I would like to have night vision on my suit f.ex. But I can manage without it (i'm actually starting to think it's quite cool that way). If I get it after, let's say, a year of playing, then my game will change slightly and I'll have some new experience - if I'll be able to do it all in a week, then what's the point of it all? Some might say that there's not enough content, so Frontier is making it hard to get, to make it lasts longer - it might be true, but as I said, Elite is not about upgrading your gear indefinietly.

 

[Murfelton]

I lucked into a G3 Dominator with night vision, as well as G3 shotgun, and that’s all I needed to take on high intensity CZ. At this point, I view foot engineering as something I can do at whatever pace I want.

I did a lot of missions in alpha without night vision. It’s possible, but I’m happy to skip that. Night vision was the only foot engineering I was concerned about.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

What you've said is exactly my argument why there's no need to grind in Elite. You just don't have to. ,,,

Nonsense. Just like "you don't have to play the game" is nonsense.

 

[CMDR Myrrhth]

The only material I find really frustrating is manufacturing instructions, you need tons of them and can't find it anywhere...

Take missions with materal rewards. You can often get 5 Manufacturing instructions per mission.

 

[Virgile]

Take missions with materal rewards. You can often get 5 Manufacturing instructions per mission.

Thanks I'll look for them, so far I don't think I've seen any, must be bad rng cause I'm always choosing missions for materials.

 

[Lone_star]

What you've said is exactly my argument why there's no need to grind in Elite. You just don't have to. It's completely optional. People take shortcuts, because they want to finish upgrading ASAP, not realising they don't actually need it (unless they are all about PvP against already maxed out players). I don't think comparing Elite to DIablo is good way to go, because those games are too different - In Elite upgrading your gear is optional goal you can choose to pursue, but the game doesn't revolve around it.
Sure, this takes away something that game like Diablo has (this constant progress that player can chase), but that's the price for being a sandbox game - you choose what to do instead of the game showing you your next goal - this has that unfortunate effect that some people get bored when not tempted with next carrot, or when that carrot requires too much effort to get to. Games like Diablo are all about grind - Elite is not. That's why I'm baffled when people come into Elite and treat it like that, complaining that they must undergo that terrible grind, because they perceive something that supposed to be an optional long term goal, as obligatory carrot to catch.

I'm not saying that Odyssey progress is well balanced - it probably isn't - but you don't need to find those 40 polls to open some gameplay - you will probably just be able to install something that will make your game slightly easier. So what's the difference if it takes you longer? If doing the missions to get those mats bores someone, then having suits or weapons engineered won't help anything.

I mean, I would like to have night vision on my suit f.ex. But I can manage without it (i'm actually starting to think it's quite cool that way). If I get it after, let's say, a year of playing, then my game will change slightly and I'll have some new experience - if I'll be able to do it all in a week, then what's the point of it all? Some might say that there's not enough content, so Frontier is making it hard to get, to make it lasts longer - it might be true, but as I said, Elite is not about upgrading your gear indefinietly.

There are tons of sandbox games with way, way better progression systems than ED. Subnautica, NMS, Kerbal Space Program, etc, etc, etc.

There's not price you have to pay for being a sandbox game if you have half decent game design.

Sadly - the engineering system in ED is barely better than what you see in FTP mobile games. It's funny you mention diablo - Diablo 2 is nowhere near as grindy as ED because the actions required for progression are much more entertaining.

 

[CMDR Myrrhth]

I've never done grinding except for my fleet carrier and I have several engineered ships mostly from materials that I gathered passively. Of course you need to drive the SRV and go to signal sources for G5 materials - and these parts of the game need to be improved because they're not fun. But these are only required for G5 engineering, but you don't need to G5 all of your ships. Most of my ships are not G5, only my favourites get that special treatment. G3 can easily be achieved passively; I often sell G3 modules because I have such an abundance of materials that they're not even worth the space in storage.

But as for how necessary it is: I've personally decided for Odyssey to start over. Put all of my money into a fleet carrier, docked all of my engineered ships there, and sent it into the black to gather dust. Meanwhile I'm working my through all of the ships in game with no engineering and only income from bounty hunting and Odyssey missions. It's slow progress, but it's very satisfying to buy a ship and put it together piece by piece.

As for how tenable it is to fly without engineering: I presently have a Viper, iEagle, and Cobra mk3, and I can fight dangerous level enemies. The battles are intense and difficult, and can last up to an hour sometimes, but I'm having a blast. To do Elite level missions would require engineering for sure, but at this stage I don't see why I should have to do those. Now if I were using my engineered ships I would HAVE to do Elite level missions if I wanted a challenge, but as I'm not engineered there's no reason for me to try.

In Odyssey I'm up to G2 on my suits and weapons - also no grinding - but I found there wasn't anything I couldn't do with G1. Perhaps this will change as I level the Mercenary rank. But at this rate I'll have G5 everything before I get anywhere in that rank so I'm not worried.

The one thing I will concede is that Elite is geared towards dedicated players. It takes a long time to do anything so, for a casual player, maybe the grind does become necessary for progress. But honestly, isn't that always the case with MMO games?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

...
The battles are intense and difficult, and can last up to an hour sometimes, but I'm having a blast.
...

The ship battles vs bulletsponges are neither intense nor difficult but rather a display of plinking away at enemies with peashooters. Aka a snorefest. And totally not worth doing.