Engineers have breathed new life in the game for me. Anyone who says they're a grind doesn't know what they're talking about--I can unlock and level up to G5 every single engineer in this game FAR easier and more quickly than I can work my way up to the rank & capital required to buy and battle fit a Corvette.
Why so much hate for the Engineers?
- Thread starter Kapow
- Start date
Point, quite clearly, missed.
I don't mind, especially after all the tweaks they made. I like the variety it brought to the game, and the handcrafted assets and additional focal points added to the galaxy. I'm not obsessed with getting 5 everything, just customize a module now and again... moving numbers up slowly is not really the focus of my gameplay so I'm not into the grinding thing, just having a laugh with friends in a VR wing on weekends and then some solo missions or canyon runs late at night during the week.
I'm far more bored with seeing "RNGineers" over and over more than anything in 2.1 -- it's hard getting worked up about Engineers, it'd be like suddenly flying into a rage over mining. Shrug.
I'm far more bored with seeing "RNGineers" over and over more than anything in 2.1 -- it's hard getting worked up about Engineers, it'd be like suddenly flying into a rage over mining. Shrug.
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Saying that one bad mechanic is good because it takes less time then another terrible mechanic doesn't make it engaging or good.
They are grind as they involve 0 skilled engagement and rely 99% on RNG luck. RNG and luck with no skill. Exactly the same as Ranking up - Originally fastest way to rank up were charity missions and relogging (honestly a terrible setup) and later it was message boy missions (with relogging in Sothis and Ceos for Feds). If somebody wants to rank up by normal gameplay - ie no relogging and by doing for example assassination missions - I wish them a lot of luck and and at least a year of free time (Luckily I already have my cutter, but if there was ever a chance to make the ranking up fun I would heavily support it, so this game has better user retention)... Engineers can be grinded in about 100 hours of gameplay (Faster with relogging), but still grinded. End results can be fun, but the way there is abominable game design that should have never passed concept stage in any self respecting studio aiming to do AAA game. The Engineering relies on Gambling addiction and 0 skill combined with unhealthy mix of RNG - that should never be present in a buy to play game that respects players time and their drive to be better pilots...
Ziljan I think that you have missed my point completely. I normally agree with you and I agree with your above statement about the fun effect of the results (I guess you just didn't read my thread opening? ).
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I don't know, I enjoyed the entire trip.
Except for a few minor details and one major pain in the Dekker.
https://giant.gfycat.com/PeskyLinedBunting.webm
Except for a few minor details and one major pain in the Dekker.
https://giant.gfycat.com/PeskyLinedBunting.webm
Put it however you like. I'm with Ziljan on this one. Mods are fun and useful, easy to obtain even at their top tiers and actually involve some pretty good gameplay in the context of the overall game. You want to hate on them instead of reaping their benefits then go right ahead--just pray you don't run into me in Open
I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with making people try all parts of the game to unlock engineers. I used to hate mining for instance, but after having to do it for an unlock I discovered that with the changes to limpets I actually quite enjoy it now.
The unlock chain needs a rethink though. If like the OP you hate Sirius Corp, the fact that you can never get G5 Dirty Drives without working for them is a problem. Especially as that's just to unlock a totally useless engineer that you don't even want! There should be an alternative path to get to Palin.
Also at least one level of RNG needs to be removed. The way I would like to see it would be that you can get a random roll for some basic, easy to find materials and some cash; but you can also choose a custom mod yourself and it would then generate a list of mats you need to collect. The better the mod the rarer the mats.
The unlock chain needs a rethink though. If like the OP you hate Sirius Corp, the fact that you can never get G5 Dirty Drives without working for them is a problem. Especially as that's just to unlock a totally useless engineer that you don't even want! There should be an alternative path to get to Palin.
Also at least one level of RNG needs to be removed. The way I would like to see it would be that you can get a random roll for some basic, easy to find materials and some cash; but you can also choose a custom mod yourself and it would then generate a list of mats you need to collect. The better the mod the rarer the mats.
When I was younger- my history professor once told us a story of how he was in an entertainment park and he saw a 25 year old man on a wooden horse having a huge amount of fun pretending to ride it. He told us how he wished he was capable of enjoying such meaningless tasks, to have such undemanding mind would be glorious, he said and then went on to teach us about Hitlers invasion to Czech Rep after the Munich agreement.
This story always stuck in my mind as I prefer to be engaged on intellectual and skill based level rather then by doing a simple task repetition with no thought, but looking at some of the responses here it is possible that a wooden horse to pretend on is enough and some even call it fun.
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The problem with Engineers is that you can spend a large amount of time for no gain whatsoever (or even a net loss).
I spent the last week gathering materials to upgrade my FSD and spent them all for no improvement, due to low rolls of the RNG. It feels like I've wasted an entire week. Unfortunately, I have to repeat this process over and over, because my goal is to participate in the Distant Stars expedition and I need an FSD capable of 55 lyr jumps.
Worse still, the RNG system for FSD distance improvements doesn't show you the actual jump range you'll receive, so it's possible that what looks like an improvement might actually be worse than your current drive. This happened to me; on my last roll (before I ran out of materials) I got great improvements on everything except optimized mass, which had a small decrease. I thought the large reduction of mass for the drive itself would balance out the reduction to optimized mass, but no luck. My drive now has a reduced jump range after engineering and a week of wasted effort.
There's no good reason that crafting a drive for improved jump range doesn't actually show you the potential jump range you'd get when you accept it (and there's no undo either). It even shows your new Boot Time, but not your new Jump Range. That's completely unacceptable, so I've posted this on the official feedback forum.
This is a terrible game mechanic. So much effort is completely wasted.
I spent the last week gathering materials to upgrade my FSD and spent them all for no improvement, due to low rolls of the RNG. It feels like I've wasted an entire week. Unfortunately, I have to repeat this process over and over, because my goal is to participate in the Distant Stars expedition and I need an FSD capable of 55 lyr jumps.
Worse still, the RNG system for FSD distance improvements doesn't show you the actual jump range you'll receive, so it's possible that what looks like an improvement might actually be worse than your current drive. This happened to me; on my last roll (before I ran out of materials) I got great improvements on everything except optimized mass, which had a small decrease. I thought the large reduction of mass for the drive itself would balance out the reduction to optimized mass, but no luck. My drive now has a reduced jump range after engineering and a week of wasted effort.
There's no good reason that crafting a drive for improved jump range doesn't actually show you the potential jump range you'd get when you accept it (and there's no undo either). It even shows your new Boot Time, but not your new Jump Range. That's completely unacceptable, so I've posted this on the official feedback forum.
This is a terrible game mechanic. So much effort is completely wasted.
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I read your OP, and tbh it sounded like you were mostly mad because you had to grind rep for a faction you had a beef with. Yes Engineers is work, but the work is done by playing the game. If you don't like "grinding" engineers, that is pretty much saying "I don't really enjoy playing Elite". Or at least certain parts of Elite. I think Frontier was trying to showcase their game with Engineers and try to get people to try other forms of play that they may have neglected or not given a fair shake with the new updates, this was part of what they were explicitly trying to correct at the time 2.1 and 2.2 were released. Just be glad they don't make you do Exploration... Lol.
Seriously though. The stuff you are proposing are really improvements to missions and the core game itself, but you are posing it as if it were the Engineers fault that the game is the game. Maybe you should hold off on Engineers until the 4th season? The whole game (aka the "Engineer Grind") might be more to your liking by then.
I did exploration for CG (Raxxla)
It resulted in me watching 2 seasons of Doctor Who and a promise to myself to never do something like that ever again (too many loading screens every jump for my sanity)My main worry is that season 4 won't even make it if FD doesn't start implementing engaging mechanics (None of my friends now play ED - I'm the last one and struggling). You are correct that I don't do many missions and excluding some parts of the BGS I generally feel that the game is just a boring grind missing a lot (not all, but many) engaging mechanics. Roleplaying and commander engagements in Open keep the game somewhat alive for me ( I don't gank, but instead patrol or help on CGs).
To be frank - if there was a space sim alternative similar to ED in terms of flight model which was an actual MMO (IE EVE online with ED's flight mechanics) I would be playing that instead of ED in a heart beat as I prefer having complete and complex mechanics and Universe controlled and driven by players - the emergent part promised by ED, but sadly no such game exists and probably won't in foreseeable future. I'm not trying to Morph ED into Eve online as I realize that while it is partially advertised as such on Steam, the intentions are different. I would just prefer if FD didn't add mechanics that literally waste my time or make it feel devalued. Having only few hours a week to relax at a game makes me want to do exciting things in it. I don't expect to engineer my ship in one sitting. Hell I wouldn't mind if it took me a year as long as the process was fun, which at the moment it isn't (for me)
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It's hard to read your post over all of the pretention you threw in it.
You're no paradigm of having fun. I was just saying that I, for one, had fun doing the varied tasks and getting rewarded for it. In response you basically called me an idiot.
I'm glad to know people like you call me an imbecile. Makes me feel better about myself.
Well, I only came back to ED after about a year away to check out the Engineers. I'm still playing and I'm enjoying the increased sense of purpose they bring. I'm not that keen on the Rep based Engineers (just finished Yoru doing Fed Ex and a few bounty missions), and actually unlocking some of them seems a tad OTT, but I'm going to places that are new and trying out some new things, as well as doing some very old things.
I don't find it a grind - I had plenty of materials from exploring in the past. Besides, it's great to actually have a reason to use the buggy again. The only change really is that I check out USS far more often. Some things need fixed like some of the drop rates. They seem a bit on the low side. Ranking up the Engineers so far has been a trivial exercise IMO. It's a bit boring but you can burn through low level mats to rank up and I'm not bothered about lvl 5 stuff anyway. My ships are far better with just a few lvl3/4 modifications. RNG sucks (as always) but I can live with it after playing LotRO for many years (check that out for RNG and grind!)
I can get why plenty of people don't like it. I didn't think it would appeal to me much, but it does. Some parts of it are very repetitive (it's a crafting system what do you expect, lol) but there is depth there when it comes to planning and finessing the builds. To call into question the intellect of those who disagree with you is very poor form. No space biscuits for you!
My 2c
I don't find it a grind - I had plenty of materials from exploring in the past. Besides, it's great to actually have a reason to use the buggy again. The only change really is that I check out USS far more often. Some things need fixed like some of the drop rates. They seem a bit on the low side. Ranking up the Engineers so far has been a trivial exercise IMO. It's a bit boring but you can burn through low level mats to rank up and I'm not bothered about lvl 5 stuff anyway. My ships are far better with just a few lvl3/4 modifications. RNG sucks (as always) but I can live with it after playing LotRO for many years (check that out for RNG and grind!)
I can get why plenty of people don't like it. I didn't think it would appeal to me much, but it does. Some parts of it are very repetitive (it's a crafting system what do you expect, lol) but there is depth there when it comes to planning and finessing the builds. To call into question the intellect of those who disagree with you is very poor form. No space biscuits for you!
My 2c
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The engineers are ok.
Engineered my AspX's FSD to a 50LY jump range.
That's all I ever needed, took less than a couple of weeks gaming in total, obviously doing lots of other cool and fun stuff in between all the mat hunting.
I can understand the roleplay aspect the OP is describing though, why support a hated faction of Qwent?
It would be especially annoying as he is the only gateway to Palin's +5 dirty drives.
Engineered my AspX's FSD to a 50LY jump range.
That's all I ever needed, took less than a couple of weeks gaming in total, obviously doing lots of other cool and fun stuff in between all the mat hunting.
I can understand the roleplay aspect the OP is describing though, why support a hated faction of Qwent?
It would be especially annoying as he is the only gateway to Palin's +5 dirty drives.
Ye I'm ok with the engineers too. I'll never grind. I play my game, add a wake scanner, a adv scanner, scan a few ships, a few wakes, stop at a few uss now and then and before I knew it the engineer cargo was full. I was in awe at the folks coming out with 100ly jumps, super duper guns so fast. I don't keep up with the jones, I'd rather play my game. Grinding is the game killer.
A-fracking-men.
Or at least let us press the "stop" button as the sliders fly about randomly and rapidly, at least giving us the feel of having some control...
I don't mind the "grind" too much. I mean, I don't enjoy mining, but I did not know that for sure until I mined 500T of random stuff, and 10T of painite, though, int he end, that was more down to the whole prospector limpet thing, but so be it, now I know.
Modular terminals drove me mad, I had the good fortune of someone donating a bunch to me after seeing my months of pain trying to find the stuff. Funnily enough, I now have missions for them everything. You know, because I no longer need them.
I think a lot could be done by just having a better mission system, or some way to choose your mission rewards (at the cost of financial rewards, perhaps rep loss, and certain rewards being restricted to particular system types - or whatever... Basically, take a bit of the random away.).
The rolls themselves would have been fun if we could adjust the sliders ourselves to suit the build we are trying to make. Moving one slider up results in others dropping, forcing you to compromise, rather than some folks getting a sensational roll with a bunch of bonuses, and a special affect first roll, with others rolling tens, if not hundreds of times for not much benefit. The RNG reward is on of the worst aspects, and seems to be the one FD are the most hell bent on keeping.
Put simply, I'll work as hard as you like, grind as long as need be, but give me my damned cookie when I am done, not just a randomly broken off part of it!
Z...
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For me, it has not been a problem that I have been pushed to do things I don't usually do.
Well, mostly anyway.
But with several bad rolls, several parts I want bingoneered, on several ships...
It all rapidly turned into some sort of Hell.
An endless, repetitive, boring Hell.
A Hell simular to what you see in "Modern Times".
I truly DETEST this game design.
Well, mostly anyway.
But with several bad rolls, several parts I want bingoneered, on several ships...
It all rapidly turned into some sort of Hell.
An endless, repetitive, boring Hell.
A Hell simular to what you see in "Modern Times".
I truly DETEST this game design.
I used to hate the engineers, particularly the RNG. Now I've grown to almost like it. I suppose it's the ED version of Stockholm Syndrome.
One thing I have always liked about them though, is it encourages trying many different parts of the game. The permits were no hassle at all for me, as I've had them all for about a year now.
One thing I have always liked about them though, is it encourages trying many different parts of the game. The permits were no hassle at all for me, as I've had them all for about a year now.
I did exploration for CG (Raxxla)
My main worry is that season 4 won't even make it if FD doesn't start implementing engaging mechanics (None of my friends now play ED - I'm the last one and struggling). You are correct that I don't do many missions and excluding some parts of the BGS I generally feel that the game is just a boring grind missing a lot (not all, but many) engaging mechanics. Roleplaying and commander engagements in Open keep the game somewhat alive for me ( I don't gank, but instead patrol or help on CGs).
To be frank - if there was a space sim alternative similar to ED in terms of flight model which was an actual MMO (IE EVE online with ED's flight mechanics) I would be playing that instead of ED in a heart beat as I prefer having complete and complex mechanics and Universe controlled and driven by players - the emergent part promised by ED, but sadly no such game exists and probably won't in foreseeable future. I'm not trying to Morph ED into Eve online as I realize that while it is partially advertised as such on Steam, the intentions are different. I would just prefer if FD didn't add mechanics that literally waste my time or make it feel devalued. Having only few hours a week to relax at a game makes me want to do exciting things in it. I don't expect to engineer my ship in one sitting. Hell I wouldn't mind if it took me a year as long as the process was fun, which at the moment it isn't (for me)
OK now this is the heart of the issue, the general gameplay is lacking in every non-combat career, I agree 100%. The current Exploration "mechanic" is a loading screen and screen saver posing as a video game. Mining and trade aren't much better off.
This is not the Engineers fault though. They never ask you to do anything that is outside of the core gameplay. Ergo if you find it boring, then perhaps you find the core gameplay to be problematic.
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