Why Does Elite Intentionally Waste Our Time?

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
No. This is NOT a Duplicate Thread.

I tried to make a thread discussing this. But because it included suggestions - those things people often tell me my posts lack - it was moved to the Suggestion area. An area that, lets face it, no one - including the devs - looks at, pays attention to or discusses.

So let me try now to make a DISCUSSION thread. By asking the community one simple question:

Why does Elite intentionally, openly, brazenly waste the player's time?

From the arbitrarily slow SC Acceleration - especially away from planets; that's just agonizing - to the forced deceleration around every rock and pebble in space. From the outright ridiculous time sink that is unlocking RNGineers to the arbitrary RNG grind for mats to the slot machine handle pulls where you have to HOPE the wasted time was somehow worth it, only to find it usually isnt...

At every turn, the game finds a way to create another time sink. Usually, in the form of a barrier between the player and fun. So why does the game do this? How does it benefit Frontier and Elite to create a game where even the people who LIKE it this way, often defend design by insisting you find something ELSE to do while "playing" this game?

I'm sick of spending entire week night gaming sessions watching loading screens. Sick of Alt+Tab just to get information I need to play. Sick of using Forums to try in vain to follow story lines that blatantly CANNOT be followed by actually playing.

I love flying the ships. I love the combat, and even cruising systems just taking in the sights, investigating USS opportunities.

But literally everything in this game is as intentionally inconvenient as it can possibly be. Often times, by refusing to use technology in a world 1000 years more advanced than our own, that we can best RIGHT NOW in our own cars.

I would include suggestions here for how to improve things. But that would get this post moved to another sub forum where no one goes and where no one will open an actual discussion.

So someone - anyone - enlighten me. Players. Devs. I dont care. I am genuinely curious: How does intentional inconvenience and the constant erection of barriers between players and enjoyment benefit ANYONE?
 
He has a point. Intentionally inconvenience seems to be a staple of this game. Looking for data? Well first you must gamble whether it is encoded emissions as opposed to High or degraded. Then you have to hope it spawns a beacon and it won't because the devs seem to either hate us or not understand how cruddy their system is at a core level. People report 7 hour search sessions. Why isn't this a wake up call?

And has another point that super losers who value their time even less than I do. People didn't get this game to watch Netflix in the background while they waste time space gambling for a stupid piece of something. We want to play the game instead of gaming the game. Doing something like watching for USSs is not playing the game. It's a waste of time.
 
Last edited:
@OP: I do not think it does waste players time in any shape or form... I do agree that ED does require a large time commitment to get the most out of it though. The two are not the same thing.

WRT SC and acceleration from Stellar Bodies.... Gravity Well model is the short answer. I am not 100% confident that FD have modelled the gravity wells as good as they could have (some SC behaviours seem counter intuitive to me) but it is probably good enough overall.

WRT Engineers... it is what it is, if you are a min-max-er then I would say the problem is mostly with you. It is largely pot luck but normally we can get reasonable rolls well with-in 25 tries IME.
 
Last edited:
25 tries is not a reasonable number...@rlsg

This is what I am talking about. Some people seem to have absolutely no regard for the sinful amount of time at waste here.
 
Last edited:
OP has a point. It fills lack of content and prevent players from quicker progression for whatever reason. Yet we can use external tools to help with many things - why FD did not implemented them in to the game already? Come on guys we already alt tabbing the game.
 
You have to wonder at a person asking such a question. There is no room for discussion, the OP just wants us to adopt his attitude. This is simply another attempt to pick a fight and show how millennial the OP is. The entire time I am playing, any game, I consider it a waste of time. Elite just does the best job of wasting it.
 
I don't understand why people get so hung up about feeling the need to find information from the web or whatever. Why is it a problem? What's wrong with alt-tab? It's actually a very easy to use and well known key combination - very convenient.
 
There is a difference in wasting time. Between doing something you enjoy and doing something you don't. When we are playing we are wasting our time yes. But it doesn't FEEL like we are wasting time even though the hours tick by. When we are doing tedious nonsense then that's when we start to feel like its a waste of time.

Believe it or not but feelings matter. And these feeling of waste and worthlessness are what make people put down games.
 
You have only yourself to blame when you spend time with something you considering being a waste of time.

For a game we had to pay in advance which was sold promising new and exciting features and content to release over time and systematically revealed themselves as overhyped half baked messes, yours is a pretty bold statement.
 
Last edited:
For example - game allows us to pin ONE engineer blueprint at time... everybody inducing FD at this point knows that player will look for material info at the website instead travelling to the engineer. Why not let us access all this info in game already? Makes no sense.
 
Everytime I see thread about Supercruise being a "waste of time," I have to wonder "by whose standards?"

I, personally, don't consider three minutes from departing one station, to arriving at a second station in another system, to be all that long. Granted, I know how to fly in Supercruise, a skill I suspect the OP lacks given that they described the rules of Supercruise as "arbitrary," but in my opinion there are very few genuine "time sinks" in this game. Most so-called "time sinks" are easily overcome through skill, clever strategy, and a willingness to work towards goals in parallel, not serially.

Except fast tracking powerplay commodities. Whose bright idea was it to do THAT in fixed amounts?
 
I think everyone will agree that it makes the ships seem like you're riding a bicycle. In quicksand. While covered in Molasses. With your legs cuffed. And the brakes locked on. And two wheel clamps.

Lol in all seriousness though, this is without a doubt the most unpopular thing about the game. I'm personally amazed the mechanic made it past Alpha. And it's good that this pops up again and again.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom