Why are player complaining about grinding?

[goemon]

there is grind, and than there is grind.

i have not much problems with, for exampel, the ~100-200 hours it might take you to get an exploration conda.

i also don't have much problem with the 5-20 base scanning runs it takes to get a dozend CIF.

both comes somehow with gameplay (which is anyway overrated), which you either like or dislike.

but, for exampel, sitting in SC and waiting for USS to spawn is only good for my email inbox or my duties as a mod on these forums. and that repeats from UA to UP hunting to engineer materials to ... a lot of things in the game.

 

[Friedenreich Xante]

but, for exampel, sitting in SC and waiting for USS to spawn is only good for my email inbox or my duties as a mod on these forums. and that repeats from UA to UP hunting to engineer materials to ... a lot of things in the game.

The USS got grindy when I started to search for them on purpose. As a noob, I just dropped into them randomly, and didn't notice they were tedious. That's where I got most mats from for when I started Engineering.

Lesson learned : don't do repetitive Tasks on purpose. Or at least not for too Long. I tend to stop whenever I get 2-3 of the required super rare materials. That's 6-9 rolls, enough for acceptable rolls with any engineer: I already had them earned previously when I unlocked the engineer.

 

[Vorxian]

The equipment issued by some armies of rather poor countries is so bad (e.g. clothing, shoes, even weapons) that the soldiers bring their own equipment. That was the case in the Ukraine a few years ago when the conflict started. (Maybe the situation improved, but it was bad in 2014)

Maybe for rebels..

But if I joined the British army to defend Britain, at what point would my superior officer turn around and say, here's an invoice for your SA80...

 

[Skatez69]

In some new 2.4 threads player are fearing they have to grind for the new modules which are coming to fight the Thargoids.

I can't understand, why grinding is branded as such a bad thing by so many players out there.

In an huge sandbox like ED, you can't generate one unique experience after another and fill hundreds if not thousands of hours with it.
If you want to be able to get the an A-rated, fully engineered Anaconda without grinding, then you would be there in 10 to 20 hours... and then what?
Grinding is the only thing to keep player occupied for long periods of time.

The same goes for the RNG at the engineers. At the first glance, I also thought that could be annoying... but since FD removed the commodities and tripled the loot, I am totally fine with it.
And if they didn't used RNG and let you simply buy the best outcomes for enough mats/money, we all had much less to do and would be bored even faster.

Many times I was going after some mats simply to try few rolls on my already top notch engineered modules because of the chance for a bonus. And it was fun, most of the times... and it was "something to do".

Sure, there are many things in ED that could be improved within these grind mechanics to make them even more fun, but the base of the game play should be always a grind with a kind of asymptotic progression where you can achieve reasonable results in not too much time but the top notch things should take a long time to keep things interesting.

just sayin... ...it's all IMO... but if you hate grinding, think about the alternatives.

YES!!! This!!!

 

[CMDR Mayhem]

Games started out being about fun, then a business man realized they could brainwash people with progression and time sinks(carrot chasing), in means of getting you to play their way. Which in itself, changes how you play and feel. Now we play games for progression, instead of having fun&messing about(another reason why CQC failed). When you lose progess you realize you just wasted real life time & credits. Which makes some people very irritated.

 

[Knightshark]

Maybe for rebels..

But if I joined the British army to defend Britain, at what point would my superior officer turn around and say, here's an invoice for your SA80...

No, i was not talking about the rebels. I think they were rather well supported. Also, i didn't mean that the army ask you to pay, they just give you crappy equipment, thus creating an incentive to get better things from the (black) market.

 

[Jason Lightning]

OP you lost me at 'thank RNG'

RNG is the reason why Engineers is a grind, a fixed outcome would make it far easier to get modules built for every ship as opposed to shuffling them around.

That and I don't like playing slot machine when it comes to building ships, it's just lazy game design that would be better off with a pro/con point or slider system when making modifications.

 

[FurryFailure]

Because a lot of players (or rather people as a whole) under appreciate good things, this is an MMO and it has End-game equipment, all end-game equipment requires work, granted, I got my Anaconda out of a cereal box because of an Imperial CG.

I hate grinding but, people these days don't want to earn their stuff anymore (See WoW for a good example of this, people whining about the grind ruined the essence of WoW), I didn't feel satisfied with my Anaconda until I earned B and A rated parts for it.

People want it now now now! but these people often don't give a hoot for anything, yes, the grinding is a right pain in the Rear Admiral, but, it's extremely satisfying to pull off, so I 100% agree with you on the bit about it giving the players something to do. (I mean damn, look at the Firemaking skill in RuneScape lol)

I'm currently grinding at Niu Hsing for a Federal Corvette, and I'm currently 50% Post Commander (as of this post), it's so grueling and mentally destabilizing beyond measure, but, as someone once said on these forums;

"Whenever I come face to face with another Commander with a Cutter or a Corvette, we stare dead into each others eyes and relinquish a great amount of respect because we both know the pain we both went through.. then I smiled like a child as I blast them away with my two huge hardpoints", Implying he was satisfied.

It's often sad to see people just get things without feeling the satisfaction of earning it, and I'm someone who hates working for stuff, I'd rather just have it, but, I like feeling the satisfaction that comes with the numbness, it's just painful during the process.

 

[Skatez69]

...I am in no rush, will get there when I get there, and if I feel it is getting grindy will go and do something else.

Completely agree... I'm currently grinding up the Federation ranks (Just got Sol permit, so quite a ways to go), saving up for Anaconda or large Fed ship (currently at 120m Cr, still a ways to go there too), working up the merit ranks for AD-L (2300 merits so far - really want that 50m payday!), trying to get Ally status with Sirius Corp so I can access an Engineer (half way up Friendly so far) and finally looking for Empire Navy missions so I can level up there too... if any one of those becomes too much of a grind, I just switch on to another task or jump in on a CG

The game is what you make of it, only you have responsibility for your destiny!

 

[Jason Lightning]

Because a lot of players (or rather people as a whole) under appreciate good things, this is an MMO and it has End-game equipment, all end-game equipment requires work, granted I got my Anaconda out of a cereal box because of an Imperial CG, I hate grinding but, people these days don't want to earn their stuff anymore (See WoW for a good example of this, people whining about the grind ruined the essence of WoW), I didn't feel satisfied with my Anaconda until I earned B and A rated parts for it, people want it now now now! but these people often don't give a hoot for anything, yes the grinding is a right pain in the Rear Admiral, but it's extremely satisfying to pull off, so I 100% agree with you on the bit about it giving the players something to do. (I mean damn, look at the Firemaking skill in RuneScape lol)

I'm currently grinding at Niu Hsing for a Federal Corvette, I'm currently 50% Post Commander (as of this post), it's so grueling and mentally destabilizing beyond measure, but as someone once said on these forums;

"Whenever I come face to face with another Commander with a Cutter or a Corvette, we stare dead into each others eyes and relinquish a great amount of respect because we both know the pain we went through.. then I smile like a child as I blast them away with my two huge hardpoints"

It's often sad to see people just get things without feeling the satisfaction of earning it, and I'm someone who hates working for stuff, I'd rather just have it, but I like feeling the satisfaction that comes with the numbness, it's just painful during the process.

MMOs are more interesting to gather from though, you have Raid missions and marketplaces. Here we have Wake Scanning and base runs, the same boring point and scan or casual driving to relays for that one material which lets us perform our Vegas style gambling. Which might I add is so random and has terrible odds to get decent results, much less a good one.

Also merely having a Cutter or Corvette doesn't garner respect in my eyes, too many have sped right for them and don't know how to even use the things. A lot of security CMDRs I've encountered using such big ships would be mincemeat to a properly built small ship, let alone a medium PvP boat. I've beaten plenty in my pirate Asp, which TBH is quite sad and implausible if they knew what they were doing and/or built them properly.

 

[sollisb]

let's take an example... Engineers;

You want grade 5 FSD.. To get that you need to collect materials, which randomly drop. So it takes forever and a day just to collect them.

You get tot he engineer, and then go through more randomness, that whittles away at your collected mats until such time as you get a random roll that you accept, or you end up having to go randomly looking for more random mats that may or may not drop.

If they want to push a grind on us; They should reward us. And not with some random reward.. I want a system where i randomly work my of to collect the material that randomly drop in random places and for so doing, I get a tangible reward.

Let's take Naval Rank? Random missions with random values. You do all this and get to King Of The Empire! What do you get for all that? Sweet .... All !

Let's take Res Bounty Hunting; Random spawns in random locations with random value and random ranks.

Not only is the game a grind, it's also pathetically implemented and designed grind!

 

[Knightshark]

Completely agree... I'm currently grinding up the Federation ranks (Just got Sol permit, so quite a ways to go), saving up for Anaconda or large Fed ship (currently at 120m Cr, still a ways to go there too), working up the merit ranks for AD-L (2300 merits so far - really want that 50m payday!), trying to get Ally status with Sirius Corp so I can access an Engineer (half way up Friendly so far) and finally looking for Empire Navy missions so I can level up there too... if any one of those becomes too much of a grind, I just switch on to another task....

The game is what you make of it, only you have responsibility for your destiny!

Traitor!

 

[Vorxian]

No, i was not talking about the rebels. I think they were rather well supported. Also, i didn't mean that the army ask you to pay, they just give you crappy equipment, thus creating an incentive to get better things from the (black) market.

Ahh dont worry, i'm not nit picking It's an interesting question though.

I think my point is this: If humanity is about to get annihilated by an alien race, and the only weapons known to fight them are holed up in some warehouse doing nothing.. then that's a bit dumb. Humanity can worry about the cost, or whatever AFTER winning the battle. If all the weapons are unreachable, and humanity loses, then nothing matters any more and everyone loses.

Pilots federation should be falling over themselves to hand these weapons to anyone foolish enough to want to go to the front line....

 

[Knightshark]

Ahh dont worry, i'm not nit picking It's an interesting question though.

I think my point is this: If humanity is about to get annihilated by an alien race, and the only weapons known to fight them are holed up in some warehouse doing nothing.. then that's a bit dumb. Humanity can worry about the cost, or whatever AFTER winning the battle. If all the weapons are unreachable, and humanity loses, then nothing matters any more and everyone loses.

Pilots federation should be falling over themselves to hand these weapons to anyone foolish enough to want to go to the front line....

No worries! And i agree with you, anyway.

 

[dannysquid]

I blame the instant gratification thing that most young people seem to exhibit, myself.

It seems to me that difficult, enormous, weird, "hardcore" games are for more popular now than when I was a kid. It's middle aged people like me who are more likely to be complaining "why can't it be more like Chuckie Egg!?"

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

In some new 2.4 threads player are fearing they have to grind for the new modules which are coming to fight the Thargoids.

I can't understand, why grinding is branded as such a bad thing by so many players out there.

In an huge sandbox like ED, you can't generate one unique experience after another and fill hundreds if not thousands of hours with it.
If you want to be able to get the an A-rated, fully engineered Anaconda without grinding, then you would be there in 10 to 20 hours... and then what?
Grinding is the only thing to keep player occupied for long periods of time.

The same goes for the RNG at the engineers. At the first glance, I also thought that could be annoying... but since FD removed the commodities and tripled the loot, I am totally fine with it.
And if they didn't used RNG and let you simply buy the best outcomes for enough mats/money, we all had much less to do and would be bored even faster.

Many times I was going after some mats simply to try few rolls on my already top notch engineered modules because of the chance for a bonus. And it was fun, most of the times... and it was "something to do".

Sure, there are many things in ED that could be improved within these grind mechanics to make them even more fun, but the base of the game play should be always a grind with a kind of asymptotic progression where you can achieve reasonable results in not too much time but the top notch things should take a long time to keep things interesting.

just sayin... ...it's all IMO... but if you hate grinding, think about the alternatives.

totally agree... imo the "grinding" in ED is just playing the game.... dont like the grinding then you kind of are saying you dont like the majority of the game imo, and are just aiming for that 1 small part of the game you DO like... which is fine and all, but one should not expect to change the game to accommodate that imo.

 

[CMDR Percivus Keenblade]

My point of view for grinding is rather positive. Roughly grind and reward translates into; satisfaction acquired of a job and effort well done when you finally manage to grab the carrot on the stick and two, not everyone is wearing the bestest of the best pants and those who get to wear those pants are usually the ones who earned it. There is no inequality of opportunity. A welcome break from the real world.

However, when I'm loosing that very progress I made not like some general wear and tear, but so rapidly, such that it makes me feel I'm trying to build a house out of ice cubes on the surface of the sun thats melting all over my hands before I could put two of them on top of each other (I swear this is what I exactly feel with powerplay)... this disappearance of the effort into nothingness annoys more than enough to drive me out of even starting that grind in the first place.

 

[Whiterose]

I think my point is this: If humanity is about to get annihilated by an alien race, and the only weapons known to fight them are holed up in some warehouse doing nothing.. then that's a bit dumb. Humanity can worry about the cost, or whatever AFTER winning the battle. If all the weapons are unreachable, and humanity loses, then nothing matters any more and everyone loses.

Pilots federation should be falling over themselves to hand these weapons to anyone foolish enough to want to go to the front line....

Whilst I agree with you wholeheartedly, history has taught us that a lot of people became very rich during the second world war. Has humanity changed? we shall see.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I blame the instant gratification thing that most young people seem to exhibit, myself. By young I mean the generation after mine.

I'm sure every generation of old dudes have been saying that about the young dudes since humans discovered rock smashing XD.

I think people are saying : let's hope those weapons and such are not gated behind a time wall of repeating a simple action over and over with no variation. (a grind).

Things taking time to get (slow gameplay) is fine if said gameplay is interesting/challenging. Unfortunatly, for stuff like the engineers, most of the gameplay
is neither challenging nor interesting. Which is a damn shame.

 

[Jason Lightning]

I'm sure every generation of old dudes have been saying that about the young dudes since humans discovered rock smashing XD.

I think people are saying : let's hope those weapons and such are not gated behind a time wall of repeating a simple action over and over with no variation. (a grind).

Things taking time to get (slow gameplay) is fine if said gameplay is interesting/challenging. Unfortunatly, for stuff like the engineers, most of the gameplay
is neither challenging nor interesting. Which is a damn shame.

The timewall would be less of an issue if you had a guaranteed end result, but you don't. RNG means that you could spend a week gathering materials and end up with a roll worse than someone lucky enough to get a decent roll on their first and only roll.

Remove RNG and the grind becomes manageable and less of a gamble. That and/or make the mat gathering fun, give us the chance to have massive mat rewards for dangerous raid missions for example.