Why make an already grindy game even more grindy?

[Shads]

This is a grindy game. If, like me you don’t actually mind trading then its still an enjoyable game but non-the-less grindy. If you don’t like trading then its going to be a long slog. So why have FD made it even more unnecessarily grindy with the USS missions? Why are there these odd people just hanging in space. No bounty on them, they sell nothing, buy nothing, do nothing. The only function they seem to have is to consume some of your play time. Every time you drop in on one of these things you curse and hammer the cruise button to get back into FSD. Their sole purpose is to annoy you
Please don’t make this game more frustrating than it needs to be FD. Its bad enough that you can spend all evening getting the wrong type of USS missions offered but having random pointless ships is just making what is an already frustration mechanic a complete pain.

 

[Vic Cynex]

Hmm, not sure I agree. Did you ever play DnD?

Nothing more boring than a dungeon where every single room has a monster to hit and treasure to pick up.

 

[natte hond]

FD made it even more unnecessarily grindy with the USS missions? Why are there these odd people just hanging in space.

I agree with this.

the instances are disconnected from supercruise.
I understand its because of the instancing system
but still I wonder why that is and not load when you enter the system.
at least for the missions you have.
now its like fishing in murky waters.
and the 32 players limit is never reached anyway.

the odd thing is the uss you see is not even there for the other cmdr.
but I hoping for a change with 1.1

 

[DimGook]

I thought USS were just a placeholder for better stuff?

Of course you could say that about most of the game...

 

[Hadron-Higgs-Boson]

it always feels to me like the USS mechanic is just broken and missing things, you get a mission which gives one or more systems where your target may be, you then fly into a USS which might or might randomly not contain your target, a hint to where your target might be, an option to change the mission to the other side, or something else, you repeat that little game play mechanic until you find your target. That feels like its a bit too much RNG rather than hunting down a target

 

[Dai]

I sort of disagree with this sorry, I hate this term "grinding" I like the fact I have to work at stuff, and that it isn't all handed on a plate. Sorry if you were expecting a day of two of play and then you can afford everything.

The developers want this to be a challenge, so in order to get the massive high powered ships it is going to take some effort, they also don't want everyone flying around in the massive ships (it would spoil the game) so earning that cash takes time and effort.

The game is totally playable in smaller ships, you can win a fight against and anaconda even in a sidewinder so you don't NEED a big ship!

The best and most fun ships IMHO are the mid range ships cobra, viper, asp etc and the game can be played without this "grind" as long as you are not focused on making money fast.

Slow down , enjoy the game, use the ship you have get into some combat, do missions, trade on the fly as you fly around the system.

I am sorry to say but anyone who says the game is boring is just playing the game in a boring way, stop blaming the game and change the way you view the game and approach playing it!

 

[Dr Roly]

I think the USS missions, and USS in general, could be greatly improved. For example, take the Anaconda missions. Every time, you have to cruise aimlessly around at 30k/s, waiting for the USS to spawn and hoping it's the one were the NPC says "I barely escaped with my life..." etc. Then, every time, you go to the target system and cruise aimlessly around again, waiting for the USS with the Anaconda in it to spawn. There _must_ be a better way of doing this!
-
Suggestion: You take the mission. On flying out of the station, an NPC hails you and says "I heard you're looking for that pirate Uber McShooty. He just attacked me near planet XYZ in the ABC system." No random USS fishing, and you could make all sorts of variations on that forumula to spice things up.
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If you don't like that, how about just having the bulletin board tell you where the pirate was last spotted, with more detail than just the system name?

 

[scorpyon]

I agree that grinding is tedious and monotony in any task can become an irritation, however it's the goal or the end outcome that makes the grind worth it.

Currently for me, that en-goal is probably a Python / Anaconda, etc. However there are seemingly a lot of people now who have already hit that part and have essentially nothing else to grind towards, hence the game now lacks motivation for them and I can totally understand this.
At present, I think the updates can't come thick and fast enough, but unfortunately patience is needed and it might be the case of taking a break and coming back again when there's something more to do.
Unless you live for the PvP and are happy just to do that for now.

Another unfortunate side effect of this, however, is that while you can take that shiny new battleship into battle if you want, the sheer repair and maintenance costs involved in doing so make this currently a fairly daunting task since you're going to be paying through the nose regardless of what the outcome of the battles may be.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom. I am 99% certain there are big things on the horizon. If you compare to Eve, when I played it years back in the day (around early release time), there was little / next to no content to actually keep players involved, but over time it evolved into a massive game filled with stuff to do. It takes time to get there.

Keep the faith!

 

[AtheosisX]

Hmm, not sure I agree. Did you ever play DnD?

Nothing more boring than a dungeon where every single room has a monster to hit and treasure to pick up.

Sounds like you had a very bad DM.

 

[Garik]

This is a grindy game. If, like me you don’t actually mind trading then its still an enjoyable game but non-the-less grindy. If you don’t like trading then its going to be a long slog. So why have FD made it even more unnecessarily grindy with the USS missions? Why are there these odd people just hanging in space. No bounty on them, they sell nothing, buy nothing, do nothing. The only function they seem to have is to consume some of your play time. Every time you drop in on one of these things you curse and hammer the cruise button to get back into FSD. Their sole purpose is to annoy you
Please don’t make this game more frustrating than it needs to be FD. Its bad enough that you can spend all evening getting the wrong type of USS missions offered but having random pointless ships is just making what is an already frustration mechanic a complete pain.

I gave up on USS's some while back. Cruising within systems is a real bore now. I've mastered the the skill of acceleration / deceleration / docking, it is now tedious in the extreme. I just want to get that bit over with as soon as possible, making the process even slower by dropping out at a USS and finding some random clean hauler is painful.......to make things worse my mind has started to wander lately, when I should be decelerating I miss-time my adjustments and overshoot.

 

[Shads]

I sort of disagree with this sorry, I hate this term "grinding" I like the fact I have to work at stuff, and that it isn't all handed on a plate. Sorry if you were expecting a day of two of play and then you can afford everything.

The developers want this to be a challenge, so in order to get the massive high powered ships it is going to take some effort, they also don't want everyone flying around in the massive ships (it would spoil the game) so earning that cash takes time and effort.

The game is totally playable in smaller ships, you can win a fight against and anaconda even in a sidewinder so you don't NEED a big ship!

The best and most fun ships IMHO are the mid range ships cobra, viper, asp etc and the game can be played without this "grind" as long as you are not focused on making money fast.

Slow down , enjoy the game, use the ship you have get into some combat, do missions, trade on the fly as you fly around the system.

I am sorry to say but anyone who says the game is boring is just playing the game in a boring way, stop blaming the game and change the way you view the game and approach playing it!

You can have distant goals that take time to achieve but still make the journey fun. That is what all these type of games are aiming to do. Grinding has bad connotations but to me grinding doesn't have to be frustrating and boring. But if you design in stalling tactics purely to slow progress down then that is never going to be fun. Absolutely nothing should be there purely to frustrate and slow down progress. There must be a point to the grind. It must at least try to be fun and give some sense of achievement no matter how small. But an evening doing USS missions can often leave me angry that I wasted a whole evening and got very little progress simply because the RNG decided to hate me tonight.

 

[BBcokeley]

agree, USS need a major overhaul, make them interesting like you interrupt a deal between police and local pirates, or something like that...... just anything, it needs more in the mix, stupid funeral ships and weddings why not drug deals and the like, where there are riches to be had if you take the risk...

 

[Protoplasmic traveler]

Thankfully my expectations are low... I bought the game to trade my way up to a big ship with nice upgrades (which I now have) and then head off into the galaxy once I have everything I need (nearly there). All the politics, the factional fighting between the empire and the federation, the pirates and the missions are things I never tried because they do not interest me.

Grinding is a lot of fun when there is lots of money being made which quickly translates into nice A6 toys...

 

[Commander Azriel]

Well if you don't like grinding there is always the Community Goal Events were you can....umm...grind with friends? If there were no grind, there would be no game...

 

[Dr Zachary Smith]

A USS scanner would be nice, so you could know what was there whilst in SC, having said that I'm not sure the game knows what's in the USS whilst in SC, it may roll the dice when you drop out :/

 

[gregoreuo]

I sort of disagree with this sorry, I hate this term "grinding" I like the fact I have to work at stuff, and that it isn't all handed on a plate. Sorry if you were expecting a day of two of play and then you can afford everything.

The developers want this to be a challenge, so in order to get the massive high powered ships it is going to take some effort, they also don't want everyone flying around in the massive ships (it would spoil the game) so earning that cash takes time and effort.

The game is totally playable in smaller ships, you can win a fight against and anaconda even in a sidewinder so you don't NEED a big ship!

The best and most fun ships IMHO are the mid range ships cobra, viper, asp etc and the game can be played without this "grind" as long as you are not focused on making money fast.

Slow down , enjoy the game, use the ship you have get into some combat, do missions, trade on the fly as you fly around the system.

I am sorry to say but anyone who says the game is boring is just playing the game in a boring way, stop blaming the game and change the way you view the game and approach playing it!

+1 1 agree with you - this is a brilliant game to also chill out listening to good music as you play.

 

[YDS55]

'Every time you drop in on one of these things you curse and hammer the cruise button to get back into FSD'.

Haha, so true.

 

[Kramster]

Maybe it is just me I don't see ED as grindy or at least it isn't required.

There is no requirement to get to a point to 'unlock' content other than buying bigger ships but I don't feel anyone needs 100m credit ships to play ED. The lack of having to achieve a level or reach some nirvana endgame means it is not a grind, repetitive maybe, grind no. Grinding to me is means I have to do repetitive content just to proceed further in a game, to keep up with my friends and others in order to join them in the games content, this is not what we have in ED.

ED could definitely do with more things to do, more content and fleshed out mechanics but whatever you do, any game with no end will be repetitive but not necessarily a grind.

USS are mostly just for missions and are meant to be random, if you could just drop into the correct USS kill X and jump out that would be no different to 'killing bears outside of town' pointless and predictable. Nav beacons and resource sites are better for combat/bounty hunting and finding warzones is the ideal for just pure combat...USS = mission area

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Since I once took a Mission to find 5 Pirates in certain System which had no NavBeacon or anything else so I had to find them in USS I never make this Missions again. It took me about 3 Hours to find enough Pirates, which was a bit to much for me.

 

[YDS55]

making the process even slower by dropping out at a USS and finding some random clean hauler is painful.

He may seem clean, but with a KWS you might get surprised.