Unlocking Selene Jean was a grind for myself, not only did it involve mining,I also had to go through Todd's 'shoot everything that moves' unlock... Never want to do that again.
At least there's a quicker way of unlocking Ram Tah for my alt.
what else are they making harder for new players? How many hours it is taking now?
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At least there's a quicker way of unlocking Ram Tah for my alt.
Yea, i remember unlocking Selene for the first time being a real chore since i didnt get mining at all and, in the beginning, i couldnt barely fire those mining lasers without falling asleep.
Weird enough, i eventually started to like mining both laser and core. And i mean like it a lot.
So if werent for Selene unlock there are chances i would have never got into mining.
For the rest of my accounts unlocking Lei Cheung was the real chore.
And at least on my Epic account, which didnt left the bubble for more than one year, i was really late to unlock Palin/Chloe - however, i did more than ok in G3 drives so there was no pressure.
I feel your pain. I was never of fan of mining in ED, though these days there’s sufficient variety in mining methods that only the inevitable “do nothing while the limpets collect the ores” is the main turnoff for me. But I was always willing to mine to complete a mission, assuming the payoff was right and the quantity was low, so unlocking Selene was always inevitable.
Todd, on the other hand, I had already qualified to get his invitation when Engineers was introduced, despite not being a combat oriented player. My ships were always combat ready, and if I had sufficient time, was in a pugnacious mood, and it was a soft target, I’d do a spot of bounty hunting while running missions if an NPC moved to interdict me. IIRC, reward creep at that time was already high enough that unlocking him would’ve required only two or three bounty kills if I scanned them first. This was pre-interstellar factors I believe, so I didn’t even need to make additional kills. I had sufficient unclaimed bounties already to do so.
These days, reward creep is so high, I believe a single bounty kill, scan or no scan, is sufficient to unlock him once they meet the requirements, so it should be fairly trivial even for newbies to get access to him… assuming they’re not using “this one weird trick” to artificially inflate their combat difficulty while not developing their combat skills to get “easy money.”
That was the easiest unlock for me, first time around (and on subsequent accounts) as I had the 50 markets traded in the first month or so of playing - and didn't bother (or particularly take notice of) with engineering for around 8 months as I was busy learning how to play first!
Lori Jameson took me longest to unlock. Just because combat ranking took me quite so long!
Totally agree. I also feel the same way about meta builds. Yesterday I got my new Guardian Plasma Cannons from the latest CG, and I built a new DBS just for these. Of course it's shieldless (more on that in a bit), and it's anything but a meta build. What engineering I did is G3 max, and I only had to visit Felicity and the Dweller (using my default pinned engineering for armor). The hardest part of building the ship was flying to the engineer bases, LOL.
When I came back from the High RES test, I was at 10% hull. Now that was a thrilling run! And while the DBS doesn't have a proper damage model like the Anaconda, it "wears" its damage stickers well, making it look properly beat up. I was definitely punching above my weight with those plasma weapons, but being shieldless and not the best hull tank made combat challenging and properly "realistic". I really shouldn't be able to go into a HAZ RES in a small ship and farm wings of pirates forever without any fear of damage - that's "How to ruin your ED experience" in a nutshell. And when people do this, using their meta builds, they complain that combat is boring and offers no challenge. Well, that's what you get for playing the game on the easiest setting, LOL.
BTW, I'm not "self-nerfng" in a "I'm going on the battlefield naked without clothes or body armor" sort of way. In my DBS, shields are not an option, as I cannot power them with my armament. Heck, half my systems power down when I deploy hardpoints as it is! In my Cobra, I could run a shield, but that ship is built for stealth, so why install something that'll be turned of half the time (silent running)? Again, not the meta, but way more fun IMO. That said, I do have a shield tanking Mamba for CZs (when in bullet sponge town, do what bullet sponges do), but that ship also is no meta, and I find CZs challenging enough.
These days my boredom with Elite comes more from the repetitive nature of combat - every CZ and RES and mission is basically the same, only the scenery changes. Compare this to a game with proper fleet mechanics like X4, and it feels pretty shallow after awhile. Still, it's a fun "arcade game", especially when flying non-meta ships where being destroyed is a real possibility.
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oh I hate those with a passion. The worst is the one (I will not say any names, because I am not allowed to call them idiots by name) who spends his YouTube career on "how to do this and that as fast as possible" and "how to get rich as quick as possible", promoting the worst kinds of grind, and then complains there is nothing to do and he is burned out on the game and calls the game and its developers second-rate.
Second place goes to those kind of "efficiency" guides that tell you play the relog game at Jameson's Cobra and then... SELF-DESTRUCT BECAUSE YOU CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO DO 3 OR 4 JUMPS TO RAY GATEWAY. This really grinds my gears.
Third place goes to all those min-maxing ship build guides for explorers and traders, who are fine if seen by themselves but fail to mention that you shouldn't take out paper planes into open unless you know what you are up to. Most of the build guides on YT are actually terrible.
Then there is the kind of YT guide that has a talking head reading out info from the wiki. I guess those are for the illiterate generations.
Most of the guides on Youtube are not worth the time and bandwidth they cost the viewer.
/Old man rant over.
No it's gotten a lot easier . I remember getting 7 credits for pc parts on the spectrum . I ran a trip to beagle point in my 44 lyr dolphin fully engineered with the biggest slot locked for passenger in 2018 that trip took me 3.5 months and netted me 400 mil ( I got my exploration elite with that). 2021 in my fully modded dolphin 55 lyr I went back again and was making a min of 20 mil a day which works out on a 30 day month around 600 mil .
Mining still gets you rank on trading and you make pure profit and is still ott.
It took me 2 years to get triple elite king and admiral .
We didn't even have a starter system . Credits are now just a way of keeping count .
It took me 2 years to get my first elite exploration then a few months later I got trade ( no mining) then a year later Combat
And don't get me started on the 1000 mat limit we had or the old engineers .
Look at the amount of Elite traders and explorers ( not prestige ) and then see the percentage of Elite Combat Commanders .
So I disagree with your opinion it's harder compared to when I started 2016, the game has been getting progressively easier for new players .
Mining still gets you rank on trading and you make pure profit and is still ott.
It took me 2 years to get triple elite king and admiral .
We didn't even have a starter system . Credits are now just a way of keeping count .
It took me 2 years to get my first elite exploration then a few months later I got trade ( no mining) then a year later Combat
And don't get me started on the 1000 mat limit we had or the old engineers .
Look at the amount of Elite traders and explorers ( not prestige ) and then see the percentage of Elite Combat Commanders .
So I disagree with your opinion it's harder compared to when I started 2016, the game has been getting progressively easier for new players .
Agreed, perhaps with one exception: combat rank is still a hell of a grind. That thing might even be harder nowadays.
Its the only one that isn't monetary related, it did get easier for a bit as thargoid scouts were classed as elite pilots . But that was actually fixed in 2020?
Oddly (not sure if this still holds), I was at ~12% Combat rank for ship when EDO landed. Well, I did no more ship combat and just did on-foot missions - scavenge, CZ etc.
I was shocked when I got a Pilot's Federation notification that I'd just made Elite in piloting ships!
Saved me grinding ship combat, at least... (Although personally, I'd have been happier to earn it the proper way; guess it must have been a bug?)
I see that myself, and it is now the fastest way to get combat rank for me: running those settlement raids where you kill the entire population. Still slower than scout farming IMHO. I think it is a feature, not a bug. It should give EDO users a slight advantage, aka pay-to-win. ARX in EDO are also much more than in EDH.
S
Apparently, some people like the engineering and more than one person remade characters to do the hoop jumping stuff over again.
I can't imagine why. I bought the game for 6 people and the engineering is why they quit.
The hoop jumping isn't fun for me.
I play for the simulation of being a pilot and doing the missions I choose to do.
I really like when mining pays 200 million per hour. That is my favorite. When mining doesn't pay well, it seems like a waste of time doing it. When mining pays well, I have a ton of fun mining with the knowing that it is very profitable and not a waste of time.
These are not complex concepts. I don't know why anyone is confused by any of these concepts.
I can't imagine why. I bought the game for 6 people and the engineering is why they quit.
The hoop jumping isn't fun for me.
I play for the simulation of being a pilot and doing the missions I choose to do.
I really like when mining pays 200 million per hour. That is my favorite. When mining doesn't pay well, it seems like a waste of time doing it. When mining pays well, I have a ton of fun mining with the knowing that it is very profitable and not a waste of time.
These are not complex concepts. I don't know why anyone is confused by any of these concepts.
For some, maybe.
lets go for it,challenge on,do youre worse devs ,the community accepts the challenge and will win. lol im going to play on regardless.
If I get my engineering finished, I will probably push that idea too to make it worse on new players.
The devs seem to just want you to buy the game and quit.
Wasn't it Lave? Somehow I recall the deja-vu of Elite 1984, and that feeling of starting with 1000cr and a ship.
Hell, I remember when most didn't have an Anaconda until at least a year of gameplay. And some people call it a "grind" as if it actually means something today.
I can't help but wonder if for them just getting out of bed in the morning is considered "grind". They probably complained to their parents the same way they post on forums, too.
With a well made Python this missions are possible. Maybe not every time. Must be heavily engineered btw. Took me 6 months to get into a Python back in 2015.
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