Why is this game so unneccesarily inconvenient?

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Ok. Hows this.

Fd doesnt respect your time because they artificiall inflate the time it takes to do EVERYTHING.. though im sure you would like me to cite specific examples. How many would you like?

I will start with these 2.

Supercruise accelleration- WAY to slow and time wastey for long trips. The amount of time it takes to travel places in supercruise is an arbitrary choice by the devs. It isnt based on anything. How long it takes to escape the gravity of an object- OR how far away an objects gravity slows you down.........both are arbitrary choices made by the devs. I personally like the supercruise mechanic as a whole. I just feel it could have been streamlined. But it never will be because it is an (intended) artificial time sink in a lot of ways.

And now for a less subjective example.

Naval ranks, Engineer invites and permit missions- instead of triggering once the player meets the criteria they rely on RNG. Players spends tons of time to meet the requirements- then they have to spend tons more time waiting for RNGesus to bestow the mission upon them.......

As a freeby.... i will toss in one more. Gathering engineer materials. But i dont feel like wrighting an essay on all the artificial time sinks you will find doing that.

If you need dozens of other examples...... Read the forums. Many others have stated them more eloquently than I ever could. Unless of course you are just being contrary for the sake of being contrary.

P.s. i noticed you said "unsubstantiated". Not "incorrect"

Okay, so you say 'artificially inflate the time it takes':

Firstly, it's a game, so everything is artificial.
Secondly, just because you would like to do something more quickly, doesn't mean that FDev doesn't 'respect your time' - they just think that's how long something should take.
In order to fully 'respect your time' then everything would have to be immediate - anything else is just subjective opinion of what is quick enough.

Given your examples:
Supercruise - this is subjective.
Permit missions - I actually agree that the mechanism is poor, but again, nothing to do with respecting your time.
By the way, there was a bug (fixed in 2.3) where the missions weren't appearing at all.
Engineer materials - subjective again.

So, essentially, 'not respecting my time' comes down to 'I want it now!', which is exactly what I thought it was.
Thanks for confirming that for me.


ps.
Why on earth would I share my personal circumstances with a ranting poster on a game forum?

 

[HagbardCeline]

Whats with the obsession of Bio-Waste here? Hm...

IMO this is a bio-wast post.

Crap should be ignored.
/HC

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Edit: it posted before I was finished? The hell.


Anyway, I came back from a 3 month hiatus, figured that Commanders just may have something interesting for me.
Multicrew looked nice but for some reason I have not yet figured out how to even get it working for me. Whatever. I had unfinished business anyway.

Except... nothing really changed I guess. I left after one hour because I had the same issue that caused me to quit: everything is so gorram inconvenient.


1: Finding crap.
Want a specific module? Well go ahead and visit a dozen stations. Your ship is useless without the modules. Yet you have to go spend hours to collect everything you need.
How hard can it be to make a module finder, huh? Why can't I just do a search? Does it make things too easy? Screw you. I was killed by a goddamn NPC and I could not fight back reliably and I was dead before I knew it. Why? Because my ship did not have the goddamn shield I wanted, and I was searching for the shield for the past 2 hours already. Seriously, go screw yourselves.

2: Trading crap.
Want to find a trade route? Well if you don't have a second screen and/or never heard of EDDB, you're out of luck kiddo, trading ain't for you. If you want to trade then, go visit every goddamn station, write down the fricken prices. Figure it out. Except I see you already moved back into a combat ship and went to that RES. Yep, so many do that.
Again, how fricken hard can it be to have a price finder in the actual game, huh?
But noooo, you would rather spend months on developing a fancy face generator instead of developing practical stuff. And then there's idiot players who encourage that kind of development. The hell is wrong with you?

3: Planetary crap.
Why, oh why, do we even have surface installations? I find that those are the most worthless timewasters and I just want to get on with my day.
First, you have to land on the planet. This takes longer than just landing on a station. But ok.
And then, you accept missions or buy resources. Guess what? Now you have to take off and find that in plenty of cases, your destination system is obscured by the very planet you're on. Proceed to spend minutes to get out of the fricken planet, turn around, and jump. Meanwhile you're already having a mental breakdown and wonder why the hell you landed on the planet, and promise to yourself you will never do that again voluntarily.

4: Travel crap.
Seriously the whole idea that celestial objects slow you down in supercruise is nonsense and the only reason why this mechanic is there is to slow you down. Literally, it has no other purpose. Because apparently things are not inconvenient enough already that you have to visit dozens of stations or surfaces to even get basic crap done, no, you have to do that slowly or else you will not fully appreciate space.

5: Engineer crap.
"This planet has like, 5% germanium yo"
Cool, so 1 in 20 chance to find it? Meaning I seriously have to go shoot like 20 rocks to have even a decent chance at finding this mineral I need? (I know, chances don't work like that, but whatever) I dunno about you but I find that the wave scanner is pointless. Because of 1 single thing: all of the stuff you are finding is at the surface in big rocks that look different than other rocks. I bet with some optical scanning device from the 34th century you can find that crap from orbit. I want pinpoint locations. I want to know exactly where to look, and NOT memorize the different kind of wave signatures and then HOPE that this one rock has what I need and I can fricken move on with my day. Because I really do not want to roam around on these planets longer than needed. They're boring; if you're seen one, you've seen them all.


And that's just of the top of my head. Thing is... why are these not being worked on?
"Muh immersion?" If anything the fact that crap is inconvenient will make me realize it's a game because in a real universe, stuff like this would definitely be there to make things more convenient for pilots.
In general, everything that I need to do before I can do something else is boring. Because I want to specifically do the "something else" because I find THAT the fun part. Yet in 9 out of 10 cases in Elite, it just has to be made harder than it needs to be to actually do that.

Finding crap: Doesn't take very long to figure out how to use the galaxy map filters and infer where the best places to get certain modules are. Passenger cabins - Tourism stations, high grade modules - high tech economies, discount modules - li-yong rui space etc... Sure there could be something in-game to help with this, though.

Planetary crap: What is this drivel? Planetary landings are fantastic, and take offs don't take that long, come on. Surface stations and assets look great, especially the big cities. And, oh dear, planets are big and space is 3 dimensional, what a travesty!

Travel crap: Gravity wells are not nonsense in the slightest. Space is not small, and that is part of the charm of the game.

Engineer crap: Again, it's really not that hard to find what you need. But I'l grant you, planetary searching could and should have better mechanics. However, the SRV wave scanner is not at fault here - it's the scanning we do from our ship that's the problem. Planets are only boring if you go to the same types all the time, I've seen plenty of varied and interesting planets and terrains.

You probably need to eat something, or get some sleep, or have your coffee because your OP is just grumpy...

 

[Kyennamo]

So, essentially, 'not respecting my time' comes down to 'I want it now!', which is exactly what I thought it was.
Thanks for confirming that for me.


ps.
Why on earth would I share my personal circumstances with a ranting poster on a game forum?

No one said i want it now. And the fact that it was your only take away from what i said says more about you than it does about me.

You can agree or disagree. Thats the point of a discussion. But If you cant participate in a discussion with people who have differing opinions without dismissing said opinions as a "rant" again, says more about you than it does me.

I simply think enough people have concerns about the "artificially inflated time sink" aspects of elite that it merits atention. Sorry you disagree with that

 

[Darth Ender]

I think most of the OP's thread would be remedied by a simple and logical in-game database that you could query like galnet that gets updated to their central servers whenever a player visits a station if the last entry is older than a few hours.

There is absolutely no reason why that shouldn't be a central part of the game. There is absolutely no excuse for people to have to resort to 3rd party sites to properly play the game or have to take paper notes yourself in a game that takes place in the far future and we have instant access to news regardless of where we're at. It makes sense in our reality and in the in-game universe.

That takes care of finding crap for your ship and trading.

The slowing down near planets I believe is a technical constraint of the game engine. If you move too fast near a collide-able object, you risk passing through the surface before a collision is detected and this can lead to all kinds of issues. On top of that, certain planets you can't land on yet so that would be doubly bad. So an in-game explanation is made to cover a technical one. This exists in just about any space game that even lets you get near planets. It's tied to the cpu power of your own computer so to be playable on a wide variety of computers, the limits have to be fairly loose in how close before slowing down and how much to slow down and what the max speed can be in the game. All directly related to how collision detection is done in the game engine. So i dont see that going away, only tightened up maybe as computers generally get faster and old ones obsoleted.

I do hate the destination obfuscated issue. You dont pass through normal space when you go into hyperspace. So the idea that a planet can be blocking you is stupid. Just brain jarringly stupid.

The RNG location of items on planet surfaces is also lame. I think they were toying with the idea of being able to scan from orbit zones on a planet where certain materials were concentrated in higher than avg quantities... Something like that would be nice. Still giving you a hunt around and explore while collecting but not potentially leaving you without the materials you're looking for after 30 minutes of trekking around on a boring ...bland... pointless planetoid.

Overall, yes, i do agree that a lot can be done to eliminate the time suck for the sake of being a time suck aspect of the game. But the roadmap of Fdev is known only to them and they seem to think the core game is great and are working on other things.

At least they're finally putting out ship kits that aren't modeled after fast and the furious cars.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

No one said i want it now. And the fact that it was your only take away from what i said says more about you than it does about me.

You can agree or disagree. Thats the point of a discussion. But If you cant participate in a discussion with people who have differing opinions without dismissing said opinions as a "rant" again, says more about you than it does me.

I simply think enough people have concerns about the "artificially inflated time sink" aspects of elite that it merits atention. Sorry you disagree with that

Your entire argument consists of "It takes too long" and that somehow this means you're being disrespected.
I've pointed out that 'too long' is subjective, and that a different opinion of too long is not lack of respect.

Your original statement was "Im not even going to bother explaining it to you because its obvious you dont get it." - and now you claim that I'M the one who can't participate in a discussion?
Sounds exactly like ranting to me.

 

[raeat]

Because someone at FDev has confused unwieldy user interface with game challenge.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

OP, you just need to git gud...at masochism.

 

[DefiledDragon]

Edit: it posted before I was finished? The hell.


Anyway, I came back from a 3 month hiatus, figured that Commanders just may have something interesting for me.
Multicrew looked nice but for some reason I have not yet figured out how to even get it working for me. Whatever. I had unfinished business anyway.

Except... nothing really changed I guess. I left after one hour because I had the same issue that caused me to quit: everything is so gorram inconvenient.


1: Finding crap.
Want a specific module? Well go ahead and visit a dozen stations. Your ship is useless without the modules. Yet you have to go spend hours to collect everything you need.
How hard can it be to make a module finder, huh? Why can't I just do a search? Does it make things too easy? Screw you. I was killed by a goddamn NPC and I could not fight back reliably and I was dead before I knew it. Why? Because my ship did not have the goddamn shield I wanted, and I was searching for the shield for the past 2 hours already. Seriously, go screw yourselves.

2: Trading crap.
Want to find a trade route? Well if you don't have a second screen and/or never heard of EDDB, you're out of luck kiddo, trading ain't for you. If you want to trade then, go visit every goddamn station, write down the fricken prices. Figure it out. Except I see you already moved back into a combat ship and went to that RES. Yep, so many do that.
Again, how fricken hard can it be to have a price finder in the actual game, huh?
But noooo, you would rather spend months on developing a fancy face generator instead of developing practical stuff. And then there's idiot players who encourage that kind of development. The hell is wrong with you?

3: Planetary crap.
Why, oh why, do we even have surface installations? I find that those are the most worthless timewasters and I just want to get on with my day.
First, you have to land on the planet. This takes longer than just landing on a station. But ok.
And then, you accept missions or buy resources. Guess what? Now you have to take off and find that in plenty of cases, your destination system is obscured by the very planet you're on. Proceed to spend minutes to get out of the fricken planet, turn around, and jump. Meanwhile you're already having a mental breakdown and wonder why the hell you landed on the planet, and promise to yourself you will never do that again voluntarily.

4: Travel crap.
Seriously the whole idea that celestial objects slow you down in supercruise is nonsense and the only reason why this mechanic is there is to slow you down. Literally, it has no other purpose. Because apparently things are not inconvenient enough already that you have to visit dozens of stations or surfaces to even get basic crap done, no, you have to do that slowly or else you will not fully appreciate space.

5: Engineer crap.
"This planet has like, 5% germanium yo"
Cool, so 1 in 20 chance to find it? Meaning I seriously have to go shoot like 20 rocks to have even a decent chance at finding this mineral I need? (I know, chances don't work like that, but whatever) I dunno about you but I find that the wave scanner is pointless. Because of 1 single thing: all of the stuff you are finding is at the surface in big rocks that look different than other rocks. I bet with some optical scanning device from the 34th century you can find that crap from orbit. I want pinpoint locations. I want to know exactly where to look, and NOT memorize the different kind of wave signatures and then HOPE that this one rock has what I need and I can fricken move on with my day. Because I really do not want to roam around on these planets longer than needed. They're boring; if you're seen one, you've seen them all.


And that's just of the top of my head. Thing is... why are these not being worked on?
"Muh immersion?" If anything the fact that crap is inconvenient will make me realize it's a game because in a real universe, stuff like this would definitely be there to make things more convenient for pilots.
In general, everything that I need to do before I can do something else is boring. Because I want to specifically do the "something else" because I find THAT the fun part. Yet in 9 out of 10 cases in Elite, it just has to be made harder than it needs to be to actually do that.

The inconvenience is there to distract you from the simplistic mechanics and barebones content

 

[yolomcbobbinz]

Post has more salt than the dead sea

 

[DefiledDragon]

(Is that the right usage of 'time-gate'? I don't actually know what they are)

It's a magic door. Oh wait, no sorry that's a timehole (well ok, a stasis leak, but it's close enough )

Edit: A time gate is like a grind wall btw.

 

[Kubicide]

For FDev: time = depth. That's really all there is to say.

 

[Xolarix]

And of course there's the hardcore Elite fans who praise Frontier unconditionally.
It's okay. You can be you, it's a free world.

To make things clear though:
No, I do NOT want instant gratification. Never said it, never will.
I want convenience. There's a difference here. You folks immediately go for a slippery slope argument and pretend as if people like me are the stupid lazy players who "just don't get Elite" because we want less frustration.
It's disrespectful and uncreative.
Now, I admit, my initial post was kind of grumpy, but hey, I just got back from playing Elite and this stuff just irked me to no end. Months of development for... nothing much impressive, unfortunately. To say I was underwhelmed is an understatement.

I do not ask for a one-click button to buy the module, move it to me, and install it on my ship, even if I bought it a hundred ly away.
All I want is to know WHERE *EXACTLY* I CAN FIND IT. It's not that hard. And no, EDDB may help me with that, but really, why do I have to rely on a third party for basic crap like this?

Same goes for trade routes. I don't need an automated system that docks, buys, and sells for me without me doing anything. I only want to know WHERE to find the best routes in the vicinity.
Same goes for scanning materials. I don't need an automated system to scan, collect, and automatically generate engineering rolls for me at the click of one button. I only want locations where to find it. Considering I often need multiple different materials anyway, I'll be spending some time on that anyway, even if I knew exactly where to find it all. I just don't want to spend days on this, understand?

The supercruise travel times are way too long. But really, I get it. Space is big, ok?
It is. But we're in the 34th century and can travel at 2000c. And some measly moon with 0.0001 earth masses is dragging all that power down to less than 1c and it takes AGES to get to a decent speed? That is utter bullcrap even with the semi-realistic physics in this game.
I'm not asking for an instant teleport and 2000c speed, I'm asking for less of the unneccesary breaks on my supercruise ability. Faster accelleration, less "slow down" warnings unless I get really close to a celestial. (as in: a couple Mm)
No, I also do not appreciate my FSD slowing down halfway through a 300kls cruise because I'm now approaching the other star. I'll decide for myself when I slow down, I'm a strong independent pilot and I don't need impossible arbitrary physics to hold my hand and tell me that some glorified hot gas giant is somehow pulling my speed down at that insane distance of 150kls. Space is big. Then make our FSDs act like it and not care so much about the relatively tiny planets, moons, and stars, in relation to the speeds and distances we can/have to travel.

Same goes for hyperjumping off a planet. You move into hyperspace. It's an alternative dimension presumably full of thargoids, weird sounds and nebulae. Your FSD allegedly rips a tiny hole in the fabric of reality to get into this dimension, travel at breakneck speeds and then create an exit hole at a star of your choosing. And for some reason, I require a clear line of sight to my star before I can rip a hole in reality. Not only does it not fit our lore for how the FSD works, but it adds time you need to spend on moving the other way before you can jump. Which is easily a minute or so. Now you can go scream that I am impatient, but I really don't have 24 hours a day to play a game, unlike some of you apparently. I got an hour, maybe two if I'm lucky. One minute is a decent sized chunk of my playtime at that point.
One minute is enough time to already be in the other system and travelling at speed to my actual destination. I'm making progress then. First flying away from the planet I was on does not feel like progress, it feels like taking a few steps back before I can move forward.

I'm asking for convenience. I'm asking for less frustration. Not for a win button.

 

[NMS]

Edit: it posted before I was finished? The hell.


Anyway, I came back from a 3 month hiatus, figured that Commanders just may have something interesting for me.
Multicrew looked nice but for some reason I have not yet figured out how to even get it working for me. Whatever. I had unfinished business anyway.

Except... nothing really changed I guess. I left after one hour because I had the same issue that caused me to quit: everything is so gorram inconvenient.


1: Finding crap.
Want a specific module? Well go ahead and visit a dozen stations. Your ship is useless without the modules. Yet you have to go spend hours to collect everything you need.
How hard can it be to make a module finder, huh? Why can't I just do a search? Does it make things too easy? Screw you. I was killed by a goddamn NPC and I could not fight back reliably and I was dead before I knew it. Why? Because my ship did not have the goddamn shield I wanted, and I was searching for the shield for the past 2 hours already. Seriously, go screw yourselves.

2: Trading crap.
Want to find a trade route? Well if you don't have a second screen and/or never heard of EDDB, you're out of luck kiddo, trading ain't for you. If you want to trade then, go visit every goddamn station, write down the fricken prices. Figure it out. Except I see you already moved back into a combat ship and went to that RES. Yep, so many do that.
Again, how fricken hard can it be to have a price finder in the actual game, huh?
But noooo, you would rather spend months on developing a fancy face generator instead of developing practical stuff. And then there's idiot players who encourage that kind of development. The hell is wrong with you?

3: Planetary crap.
Why, oh why, do we even have surface installations? I find that those are the most worthless timewasters and I just want to get on with my day.
First, you have to land on the planet. This takes longer than just landing on a station. But ok.
And then, you accept missions or buy resources. Guess what? Now you have to take off and find that in plenty of cases, your destination system is obscured by the very planet you're on. Proceed to spend minutes to get out of the fricken planet, turn around, and jump. Meanwhile you're already having a mental breakdown and wonder why the hell you landed on the planet, and promise to yourself you will never do that again voluntarily.

4: Travel crap.
Seriously the whole idea that celestial objects slow you down in supercruise is nonsense and the only reason why this mechanic is there is to slow you down. Literally, it has no other purpose. Because apparently things are not inconvenient enough already that you have to visit dozens of stations or surfaces to even get basic crap done, no, you have to do that slowly or else you will not fully appreciate space.

5: Engineer crap.
"This planet has like, 5% germanium yo"
Cool, so 1 in 20 chance to find it? Meaning I seriously have to go shoot like 20 rocks to have even a decent chance at finding this mineral I need? (I know, chances don't work like that, but whatever) I dunno about you but I find that the wave scanner is pointless. Because of 1 single thing: all of the stuff you are finding is at the surface in big rocks that look different than other rocks. I bet with some optical scanning device from the 34th century you can find that crap from orbit. I want pinpoint locations. I want to know exactly where to look, and NOT memorize the different kind of wave signatures and then HOPE that this one rock has what I need and I can fricken move on with my day. Because I really do not want to roam around on these planets longer than needed. They're boring; if you're seen one, you've seen them all.


And that's just of the top of my head. Thing is... why are these not being worked on?
"Muh immersion?" If anything the fact that crap is inconvenient will make me realize it's a game because in a real universe, stuff like this would definitely be there to make things more convenient for pilots.
In general, everything that I need to do before I can do something else is boring. Because I want to specifically do the "something else" because I find THAT the fun part. Yet in 9 out of 10 cases in Elite, it just has to be made harder than it needs to be to actually do that.

Welcome to the deep gameplay of the game.

 

[metascrawl]

Planetary landings would be a lot more bearable if the next target system was above the horizon about half the time (which you'd expect, on average), rather than about 5% of the time (which you wouldn't). It's hard to avoid the conclusion that they've just added that little inconvenience deliberately to slow you down, as it's just not credible that it would be that way.

Wait, what? You can jump to any number of systems from a given system. Are you saying that the game looks at the system you've targeted on the galactic map and quickly rotates the planet to obscure it? Or is it that FD have carefully positioned every planetary base in the game so that the maximum number of systems within jump range are on the other side of the planet? (That would only work if the planets didn't rotate by the way, I thought they did). In any case, it's it hard to avoid the conclusion that your 5% figure is the result of either terrible luck or gross exaggeration. It doesn't match my experience at all.

 

[Nilt]

1: Finding crap.
Want a specific module? Well go ahead and visit a dozen stations. Your ship is useless without the modules. Yet you have to go spend hours to collect everything you need.
How hard can it be to make a module finder, huh? Why can't I just do a search? Does it make things too easy? Screw you. I was killed by a goddamn NPC and I could not fight back reliably and I was dead before I knew it. Why? Because my ship did not have the goddamn shield I wanted, and I was searching for the shield for the past 2 hours already. Seriously, go screw yourselves.

2: Trading crap.
Want to find a trade route? Well if you don't have a second screen and/or never heard of EDDB, you're out of luck kiddo, trading ain't for you. If you want to trade then, go visit every goddamn station, write down the fricken prices. Figure it out. Except I see you already moved back into a combat ship and went to that RES. Yep, so many do that.
Again, how fricken hard can it be to have a price finder in the actual game, huh?
But noooo, you would rather spend months on developing a fancy face generator instead of developing practical stuff. And then there's idiot players who encourage that kind of development. The hell is wrong with you?

3: Planetary crap.
Why, oh why, do we even have surface installations? I find that those are the most worthless timewasters and I just want to get on with my day.
First, you have to land on the planet. This takes longer than just landing on a station. But ok.
And then, you accept missions or buy resources. Guess what? Now you have to take off and find that in plenty of cases, your destination system is obscured by the very planet you're on. Proceed to spend minutes to get out of the fricken planet, turn around, and jump. Meanwhile you're already having a mental breakdown and wonder why the hell you landed on the planet, and promise to yourself you will never do that again voluntarily.

It shouldn't take you minutes to get to the other side of the planet. Just get up high enough to get into SC then stay in the middle zone (it's pink on my UI but I modified the colors due to a color limitation I have) and you'll cruise along at a fairly decent clip. I prefer flying inverted this way so I can see the surface a little better but YMMV.

4: Travel crap.
Seriously the whole idea that celestial objects slow you down in supercruise is nonsense and the only reason why this mechanic is there is to slow you down. Literally, it has no other purpose. Because apparently things are not inconvenient enough already that you have to visit dozens of stations or surfaces to even get basic crap done, no, you have to do that slowly or else you will not fully appreciate space.

Mass interferes with the FSD, period. This means in SC if you get too close to a planet it's not as efficient at doing what it's supposed to, essentially. It's annoying to you, perhaps, but many others actually enjoy it.

5: Engineer crap.
"This planet has like, 5% germanium yo"
Cool, so 1 in 20 chance to find it? Meaning I seriously have to go shoot like 20 rocks to have even a decent chance at finding this mineral I need? (I know, chances don't work like that, but whatever) I dunno about you but I find that the wave scanner is pointless. Because of 1 single thing: all of the stuff you are finding is at the surface in big rocks that look different than other rocks. I bet with some optical scanning device from the 34th century you can find that crap from orbit. I want pinpoint locations. I want to know exactly where to look, and NOT memorize the different kind of wave signatures and then HOPE that this one rock has what I need and I can fricken move on with my day. Because I really do not want to roam around on these planets longer than needed. They're boring; if you're seen one, you've seen them all.

What, did you want a guarantee of hitting it? Sorry but the game is designed without that concept in mind. It's intentionally using older design elements instead ifo handholding throughout. Some of us like that, some of us don't. Such is life. Asking for some changes is reasonable, but to expect this large of a design element to be abandoned is simply unrealistic.

To add to the discussion others have had about why computers in the far future are so limited, it's because of the lore. The computers are purposefully limited to prevent any artificial sentience from emerging again. This is due to a human vs AI war in the past, much like in the Battlestar Galactica universe.

 

[Old Duck]

Edit: it posted before I was finished? The hell.
...
1: Finding crap.

..... Seriously, go screw yourselves.

2: Trading crap.

.... The hell is wrong with you?

3: Planetary crap.

.... the fricken planet .... having a mental breakdown ... why the hell ...

4: Travel crap.

..... basic crap ....

5: Engineer crap.

.... crap from orbit. .... fricken move on ... boring; if you're seen one [post like this], you've seen them all.


...the fact that crap is inconvenient....... the fun part [follows]:

This is Doctor Fraiser Crane. I'm listening....

 

[Darkfyre99]

Edit: it posted before I was finished? The hell.


Anyway, I came back from a 3 month hiatus, figured that Commanders just may have something interesting for me.
Multicrew looked nice but for some reason I have not yet figured out how to even get it working for me. Whatever. I had unfinished business anyway.

Except... nothing really changed I guess. I left after one hour because I had the same issue that caused me to quit: everything is so gorram inconvenient.


1: Finding crap.
Want a specific module? Well go ahead and visit a dozen stations. Your ship is useless without the modules. Yet you have to go spend hours to collect everything you need.
How hard can it be to make a module finder, huh? Why can't I just do a search? Does it make things too easy? Screw you. I was killed by a goddamn NPC and I could not fight back reliably and I was dead before I knew it. Why? Because my ship did not have the goddamn shield I wanted, and I was searching for the shield for the past 2 hours already. Seriously, go screw yourselves.

You could learn how to use the Galaxy Map's tools to narrow down your search. It's not an "I win" button by any means, but if you use the tools Frontier has actually provided, plus a little common sense, you can usually find what you're looking for within a couple of jumps of your location.

2: Trading crap.
Want to find a trade route? Well if you don't have a second screen and/or never heard of EDDB, you're out of luck kiddo, trading ain't for you. If you want to trade then, go visit every goddamn station, write down the fricken prices. Figure it out. Except I see you already moved back into a combat ship and went to that RES. Yep, so many do that.
Again, how fricken hard can it be to have a price finder in the actual game, huh?
But noooo, you would rather spend months on developing a fancy face generator instead of developing practical stuff. And then there's idiot players who encourage that kind of development. The hell is wrong with you?

You could learn how to use the Galaxy Map's tools to find where the most volatile, and thus most profitable, systems are. It's not an "I win" button by any means, but if you use the tools and information Frontier has provided, plus a little common sense, the Galaxy is your oyster.

3: Planetary crap.
Why, oh why, do we even have surface installations? I find that those are the most worthless timewasters and I just want to get on with my day.
First, you have to land on the planet. This takes longer than just landing on a station. But ok.
And then, you accept missions or buy resources. Guess what? Now you have to take off and find that in plenty of cases, your destination system is obscured by the very planet you're on. Proceed to spend minutes to get out of the fricken planet, turn around, and jump. Meanwhile you're already having a mental breakdown and wonder why the hell you landed on the planet, and promise to yourself you will never do that again voluntarily.

If you feel visiting a planetary installation is a waste of time, then don't go. It's as simple as that.

Some of us like a wider variety of places to visit, and there's good markets to be found in planetary installations, ones that haven't been squeezed dry due to sites like EDDB.io, which is simply trading on autopilot.

4: Travel crap.
Seriously the whole idea that celestial objects slow you down in supercruise is nonsense and the only reason why this mechanic is there is to slow you down. Literally, it has no other purpose. Because apparently things are not inconvenient enough already that you have to visit dozens of stations or surfaces to even get basic crap done, no, you have to do that slowly or else you will not fully appreciate space.

You could learn how Supercruise actually works. It's not an "I win" button by any means, but once you learn how Supercruise actually works, you can easily get anywhere within 1 kls from your arrival point in under three minutes.

The most recent Buckyball Race demonstrated that you can complete a four hop trade route in under fifteen minutes, in a Type-9, if you actually know what you're doing. This includes buying and selling commodities, escaping mass lock, hyperspace jumps, AND docking the most graceless ship in the game, all in under fifteen minutes.

You know, I'm starting to sense a pattern here...

5: Engineer crap.
"This planet has like, 5% germanium yo"
Cool, so 1 in 20 chance to find it? Meaning I seriously have to go shoot like 20 rocks to have even a decent chance at finding this mineral I need? (I know, chances don't work like that, but whatever) I dunno about you but I find that the wave scanner is pointless. Because of 1 single thing: all of the stuff you are finding is at the surface in big rocks that look different than other rocks. I bet with some optical scanning device from the 34th century you can find that crap from orbit. I want pinpoint locations. I want to know exactly where to look, and NOT memorize the different kind of wave signatures and then HOPE that this one rock has what I need and I can fricken move on with my day. Because I really do not want to roam around on these planets longer than needed. They're boring; if you're seen one, you've seen them all.

You could learn how to use the Wave Scanner on your SRV. It's not an "I win" button by any means, but if you learn how to use a wave scanner, develop some decent SRV piloting skills, and understand how materials are distributed among the various kinds of meteorites, you can easily find the very rare deposits nearby in a few minutes.

And that's just of the top of my head. Thing is... why are these not being worked on?
"Muh immersion?" If anything the fact that crap is inconvenient will make me realize it's a game because in a real universe, stuff like this would definitely be there to make things more convenient for pilots.
In general, everything that I need to do before I can do something else is boring. Because I want to specifically do the "something else" because I find THAT the fun part. Yet in 9 out of 10 cases in Elite, it just has to be made harder than it needs to be to actually do that.

You could try developing the skills you need to thrive in the rest of the game. It's a crazy idea, I know. But it just might work.

- - - Updated - - -

I see this said a lot.
I have absolutely no idea why someone would think that a game developer should 'respect their time'.

In fact, it seems like people are just trying to blame someone else for their lack of patience - but I'm happy to listen to alternative theories.

Alternative theory: people not only lack patience, they also lack the will to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their goals quickly.

Personally, I feel that Frontier respects my time quite well. Because there are very few parts of the game where you can't trim down the time it take to do something substantially if you're willing to learn how how the game works, and then develop the skills to take advantage of that knowledge.

Now GOLF, on the other hand, has no respect for my time what so ever. I mean, trying to use sticks to knock an erratic little white ball over a six mile long course, only to end up roughly back where you started? Who's idea of fun is that?

[SUB](Mine)[/SUB]

 

[Lucifer Hate]

Elite is not like when you were in little league and no matter how bad you did you pretty much got participation awards. People seem to think especially these days there should be this instant gratification that I do not have to work for. Elite is the big leagues of gaming where you have to earn and work for success. Perhaps that is or isn't the game for you but changing into this generations version of "I participated, I win" would ruin this game. Work for what you want, don't expect it to be handed to you on a silver platter

 

[PiLhEaD]

1: Finding crap...
2: Trading crap...
3: Planetary crap...
4: Travel crap...
5: Engineer crap...

1. Nope
2. Nope
3. Nope
4. Nope
5. Nope

So in summary, you don't like any of the major aspects of the game.

Crap!

p.s. bye