Why so much hate for the Engineers?

[Kapow]

The grind is in your head, you can bloody spam G1,G2 mods to rank up and you`d do it in 20-30 mins to G5 for Christ`s sake. Mats drop by the 3 and an hour in a bloody SRV and your dumping stuff as you have 40 of this and 50 of that. Give me a break a child could manage it. No excuses whatsoever and now the real pain commodities gone, Stop!

Well exactly - a child could manage the engineers - there is no skill in any of it. I don't care if it can be done in 20 hours or 100 hours - none of these hours are enjoyable. I can never grasp how in this community we have white knights that actually oppose improvements - I'm not asking FD to Decrease the Mat count - but change the way we collect them - I'm not asking FD to Decrease the number of Engineers, but improve the way we unlock them with some damned game design and I don't ask the engineers to guarantee me a good result on my mod, but put skill to modding by hacking minigame or some puzzle to it, so the result isn't decided by a roll of Dice, but by my skill or the quality of the mats I collect. Gosh this is game design 101 and yet there are still people who will defend the shameless time dump we have (doesn't matter how many hours it eats). I'm not bashing the idea of engineers or the mods - they are fun, but the process, for crying out loud.

Your statement above shows exactly why it is a bad design ......spamming!!!!

Game is not about the Results (Achievements alone) , but about the process - the Process needs to be fun or the achievements, results or RNGeered weapons have no value or meaning.

 

[Moonax IRL]

Yeah and that needs to go! I just did it today engineering up a bunch of rapid-fire pulse lasers. Spam useless level 1 mods 50 times and throw them away to unlock grade 4. Then do 3 useless level 4 mods and throw them away to get to level 5. Then do the mod you actually want and repeat the whole process because you're back to level 3 again! Now do the whole thing 2 more times until all weapons are complete.

There's no challenge in that and no fun. It's just an utterly pointless time gate. Why am I forced to sit in the engineer base rolling and discarding for 20 minutes just to do what I want?

My point is yes its not a challenge, hard or difficult and no its not really fun per se, but some of the G1 mods are really very good improvements if people only want to dabble in Engineers for very little effort or time in exchange.

- - - Updated - - -

Well exactly - a child could manage the engineers - there is no skill in any of it. I don't care if it can be done in 20 hours or 100 hours - none of these hours are enjoyable. I can never grasp how in this community we have white knights that actually oppose improvements - I'm not asking FD to Decrease the Mat count - but change the way we collect them - I'm not asking FD to Decrease the number of Engineers, but improve the way we unlock them with some damned game design and I don't ask the engineers to guarantee me a good result on my mod, but put skill to modding by hacking minigame or some puzzle to it, so the result isn't decided by a roll of Dice, but by my skill or the quality of the mats I collect. Gosh this is game design 101 and yet there are still people who will defend the shameless time dump we have (doesn't matter how many hours it eats). I'm not bashing the idea of engineers or the mods - they are fun, but the process, for crying out loud.

Your statement above shows exactly why it is a bad design ......spamming!!!!

GAME IS NOT ABOUT THE END RESULT (ACHIEVEMENTS ALONE), but about the process - the Process needs to be fun or the achievements, results or RNGeered weapons have no value and meaning.

Personally I didn`t spam as I had a good lot of the engineers unlocked and ranked under the original release which was a good deal harder, slower and more time consuming with single drops of mats etc. Regardless yes the RNG can be a pain and I have been kicked in the teeth a few times with G5 being worse than G3 rolls but overall Engs delivers good variety and improvements to ships for the different roles. I`m sure as time goes on it will be refined and improved but I think its being a very good addition to the game.

 

[thorn-]

If I took my rifle to a gunsmith and said "I'd like you to change out the magazine on this for one that holds more ammunition." and after working on it, it was returned weighing 20 more pounds, got three times hotter, had half the accuracy at 50 yards, and held only one more round I'd be more than just a little upset myself.

Great analogy. Have some rep.

 

[jasonbarron]

Because the quality of pilots have dropped into the toilet and weapons and ships have lost all meaning.

Weapons because its the special effect that will win the fight not the weapon itself.

Ships because you are required to have a tooled out special armor/shield/engine ship in order to just make it to an even playing field. If you haven't put that time in, then the fight is already foregone. Engineered ship will always defeat a regular A rated ship.

Which turns good piloting skills either irrelevant for the non engineered pilot or not needed by the one that is Engineered.

AKA Engineered ship equals an I win button against all other ships without the exact engineering for one particular meta.

Setting aside ship disparity between player, why can't it be viewed that if two pilots match off in equally modded ships skill won't be the deciding factor in the outcome? I agree that this rarely happens, but it rarely happened in pre 2.1 either unless in agreed upon duels.

- - - Updated - - -

The Whinge as you call it, is not about the Commodities, but about the overall system of Engineers beginning with unlocking the engineers and how we rank them up, as well as the Random effects we then end up with. While the mat collection is boring I did say numerous times that while it could be improved I don't see it as a major issue. Major issue is that unlocking and leveling up the engineers is uninventive to say the least and probably an out right boring grind for a lot of people to be more accurate in my wording. The reason you see so many threads, as you say, is a simple indication that the mechanics are not fun for a lot of people. By me playing through such content would imply that I condone such game design and therefor giving the illusion that I'm having fun which definitely ins't the case. Hence all these threads pointing out why people hate RNGeers.

Can you please explain how specifically you'd like this aspect of the game to improve?

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Why so much hate for the Engineers?

Because people don't recognize the engineering tolerances that are built-in to all the "modifications" they are familiar with, and so get angry at the actual realities inherent in bleeding-edge one-off engineering without any regard to tolerances.

Oh, and because people think that they "need" to access everything they can, so if there's an available engineer with access requirements that violates their RP, they just ignore their RP rather than ignore the engineer.

And because the concept of "grind" has been hilariously diluted down to the point where finding a mission for an item you need is considered a "grind".

 

[Kapow]

Setting aside ship disparity between player, why can't it be viewed that if two pilots match off in equally modded ships skill won't be the deciding factor in the outcome? I agree that this rarely happens, but it rarely happened in pre 2.1 either unless in agreed upon duels.

- - - Updated - - -



Can you please explain how specifically you'd like this aspect of the game to improve?

I did in my original post - make it interactive and engaging - create some unique missions and story arcs to our relationship with the engineers.

Another example adding to those in my original post - Engineer urgently needs his latest delivery which got lost on the way. Go and find it - Route is given to you and you can start looking for it in the different systems through beacon scanning, Scanner searching, ect. When you find the wreckage after following some "breadcrumbs" you end up jumped by pirates... Fight your way through and return to the engineer. See in this short story the Pirate Encounter can be RNG, thus can, but might not happen. As well as the route being unique each time based on RNG.... So much can be done here that it hurts my head...- make it a treasure hunt through clever mechanics instead of asking - bring me 200 gold he could say that the engineer hasn't been paid by somebody and wants us to hunt him down, but when you find the person who robbed them you find that they have been also robbed or sold it (RNG element) and you have to carry on until you find the item. The structure of such story arc can be quite simple, elegant and yet enjoyable. Nobody is asking them to create cut scenes, but just events that are engaging and make sense... The Items collected can then be part of what I need for my upgrade, but of course some mats can be collected as they are now.

Finally when we reach the point of engineering there should be a minigame to it and not waiting for a roll - For example try to align some wires during a timed event and try to make it, so that you power as many modules as possible or about learning a formula for some or having a puzzle to solve - ANYTHING else then RNG...

I could go on, but I'm not reinventing the wheel here, just copying basic mechanics used in many games out there...

The above is just off the top of my head... Many great things could be designed that shouldn't take too much dev time and I would rather have half of the engineers number with decent engagement then have 1000 mats and 20 engineers... Quantity over Quality doesn't make good game.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Another example adding to those in my original post - Engineer urgently needs his latest delivery which got lost on the way. Go and find it - Route is given to you and you can start looking for it in the different systems through beacon scanning, Scanner searching, ect. When you find the wreckage after following some "breadcrumbs" you end up jumped by pirates... Fight your way through and return to the engineer. See in this short story the Pirate Encounter can be RNG, thus can, but might not happen. As well as the route being unique each time based on RNG.... So much can be done here that it hurts my head...- make it a treasure hunt through clever mechanics instead of asking - bring me 200 gold he could say that the engineer hasn't been paid by somebody and wants us to hunt him down, but when you find the person who robbed them you find that they have been also robbed or sold it (RNG element) and you have to carry on until you find the item. The structure of such story arc can be quite simple, elegant and yet enjoyable. Nobody is asking them to create cut scenes, but just events that are engaging and make sense... The Items collected can then be part of what I need for my upgrade, but of course some mats can be collected as they are now.

That sounds kinda neat. The first time. The problem is replicating this and scaling it. Very, very quickly you'd have people complaining that it's "just boring series of basic fetch quests, but they don't even tell us where to go". It's easy to come up with one fun idea. It's very different to come up with enough different fun ideas to keep it feeling new and exciting to X players over Y number of repetitions.

Finally when we reach the point of engineering there should be a minigame to it and not waiting for a roll - For example try to align some wires during a timed event and try to make it, so that you power as many modules as possible or about learning a formula for some or having a puzzle to solve - ANYTHING else then RNG...

You do realize that you're not the one doing the engineering, right? A minigame makes no sense. The engineer is doing the minigame, because they're the one with the skills. The RNG you see is the result of their playthrough.

 

[jasonbarron]

I did in my original post - make it interactive and engaging - create some unique missions and story arcs to our relationship with the engineers.

Another example adding to those in my original post - Engineer urgently needs his latest delivery which got lost on the way. Go and find it - Route is given to you and you can start looking for it in the different systems through beacon scanning, Scanner searching, ect. When you find the wreckage after following some "breadcrumbs" you end up jumped by pirates... Fight your way through and return to the engineer. See in this short story the Pirate Encounter can be RNG, thus can, but might not happen. As well as the route being unique each time based on RNG.... So much can be done here that it hurts my head...- make it a treasure hunt through clever mechanics instead of asking - bring me 200 gold he could say that the engineer hasn't been paid by somebody and wants us to hunt him down, but when you find the person who robbed them you find that they have been also robbed or sold it (RNG element) and you have to carry on until you find the item. The structure of such story arc can be quite simple, elegant and yet enjoyable. Nobody is asking them to create cut scenes, but just events that are engaging and make sense... The Items collected can then be part of what I need for my upgrade, but of course some mats can be collected as they are now.

Finally when we reach the point of engineering there should be a minigame to it and not waiting for a roll - For example try to align some wires during a timed event and try to make it, so that you power as many modules as possible or about learning a formula for some or having a puzzle to solve - ANYTHING else then RNG...

I could go on, but I'm not reinventing the wheel here, just copying basic mechanics used in many games out there...

The above is just off the top of my head... Many great things could be designed that shouldn't take too much dev time and I would rather have half of the engineers number with decent engagement then have 1000 mats and 20 engineers... Quantity over Quality doesn't make good game.

Sure, those are some good ideas. I don't think that even the most fervent advocate of the engineers is going to disagree that a lot of the mechanisms are pretty "place holdery"

 

[thorn-]

Because people don't recognize the engineering tolerances that are built-in to all the "modifications" they are familiar with, and so get angry at the actual realities inherent in bleeding-edge one-off engineering without any regard to tolerances.

Oh, rubbish. Stop trying to create some sort of "lore explanation" for a feature that is clearly just a random generation of numbers.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Oh, rubbish. Stop trying to create some sort of "lore explanation" for a feature that is clearly just a random generation of numbers.

I'm not saying it's not RNG, I'm saying it's effectively RNG in real life too when you're trying to hyper-fine-tune real life technology.

Yes, in real life it's down to understandable and knowable factors - different levels of manufacturing quality within tolerances of the manufacturer of a given part, for example, but I wouldn't expect FD to go into that level of detail; where each beam laser has multiple internal components made to varying tolerances and differing within them; and the same for each component; and the same for each scavanged part, also adjust for battle damage; etc etc etc. A basic RNG, within tolerances (like exists in the game already) is a totally fair and reasonable approximation of all that.

 

[Enderby]

Oh come on, surely no one truly likes it apart from those who may be so blinkered by their unquestioning, doggish love of ED that they brook no criticism however fair it may be.

 

[Kapow]

That sounds kinda neat. The first time. The problem is replicating this and scaling it. Very, very quickly you'd have people complaining that it's "just boring series of basic fetch quests, but they don't even tell us where to go". It's easy to come up with one fun idea. It's very different to come up with enough different fun ideas to keep it feeling new and exciting to X players over Y number of repetitions.



You do realize that you're not the one doing the engineering, right? A minigame makes no sense. The engineer is doing the minigame, because they're the one with the skills. The RNG you see is the result of their playthrough.

Ok. In which case I wonder how ESO, GW2 and all the other companies manage to make dungeons which most people keep repeating and that is without the ability to use RNG. Let me answer - the content has good level design, good combat mechanics, intelligent story arc and challenging moments letting the players put their builds to the test as well as feeling of achievement at the end. RNG can be very good for keeping the game from being stale, but making RNG which is there with no purpose or Event based logic is just lazy. Sorry - there is no better word then sloppy and lazy for it.

In terms of the minigame - You are assisting the engineer - Monitoring heats, helping them with wires, controlling their computer (hacking) while they are inside your ship doing the hard labor ... I mean really that took me 5 seconds to think of. It isn't hard to come up with more engaging content then we have now. It is hard to create masterfully crafted content that slots all together to form a gaming masterpiece, but that isn't my expectation from ED. I just want a game that doesn't insult my time. I want a game and not a gambling addiction.

I mean this seriously - while it might seem innocent - the gambling nature of RNGeers is incredibly nasty from the devs as those who easily acquire addictions can actually end up rerolling for a long long time and waste obscene amount of time on this... That in itself is awful and disrespectful design... They gave us a slot machine where instead of money we get weapon/mods upgrade and instead of money we feed it time!!

 

[thorn-]

I'm not saying it's not RNG, I'm saying it's effectively RNG in real life too when you're trying to hyper-fine-tune real life technology.

Erm... yeah, my father was an engineer. He was certainly never paid to deliver a solution where the weight, durability, and performance of a piece of equipment was a random result.

Certainly there were tolerances; not every batch of concrete nor steel is identical. But a proper engineer can account for this, and the weight of a machine (for example), will not double due to some random factor. It will be known before it is built.

 

[jasonbarron]

Erm... yeah, my father was an engineer. He was certainly never paid to deliver a solution where the weight, durability, and performance of a piece of equipment was a random result.

Certainly there were tolerances; not every batch of concrete nor steel is identical. But a proper engineer can account for this, and the weight of a machine (for example), will not double due to some random factor. It will be known before it is built.

It's always nice to see people latch on to semantics. How about we start lobbying fdev to change their names to Mad Scientists? That way everybody could stop throwing out how when they worked in the R&D Department at Boeing and they were engineering the tolerances were much closer!

- - - Updated - - -
When you go to Todd's, just picture this guy:

 

[eqinox]

I wish the RNG in Engineers was related to opportunities or missions you given, not the outcome.

Have an Engineer propose a mod with ingredients with the outcome explicitly stated, with stats. Or be presented with a mission giving a blueprint or mod as a result. Give the mods unique names as well while you're at it. Yeah, I did prefer the system in Borderlands to the one in ED

 

[Kaa Mchorror]

Oh come on, surely no one truly likes it apart from those who may be so blinkered by their unquestioning, doggish love of ED that they brook no criticism however fair it may be.

I don't like it or hate it. The fact is that I don't have to use engineers to kill NPC's or escape commanders so I can take it or leave it.

 

[Enderby]

I don't like it or hate it. The fact is that I don't have to use engineers to kill NPC's or escape commanders so I can take it or leave it.

Absolutely. I think it's a shame, though, that one of the major additions to the game is something that many people can take or leave. But I guess it's here to stay so I just hope that whatever's coming next is not quite as unengaging.

 

[Kapow]

Absolutely. I think it's a shame, though, that one of the major additions to the game is something that many people can take or leave. But I guess it's here to stay so I just hope that whatever's coming next is not quite as unengaging.

I had that hope before engineers, but to be honest -

Wings are still misinstancing and have no mission or actual gameplay support - missed opportunity no1,
Powerplay - Nothing but a board game with flawed mechanics which is stuck on without integration ( It is not a niche feature - it became niche, because it is so badly designed that most people never pick it up, but end content or what ever you wish to call it is sorely missed in ED) - Missed opportunity no2.
Engineers - Grind and a time sink that would make only gambler happy.. - Missed opportunity no 3.

All the features above were core part Season 1 or 2 and they all fail on numerous levels and never got fixed - I don't consider the changes to PP to increase the PP player base by much if at all, so it clearly doesn't fix the underlying issues...

To say that ED is in Game Design crisis would be an understatement - only saving grace of ED is that it doesn't actually have a decent competitor at the moment, so I fully understand why none of my friends play anymore or even consider coming back .

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Long journeys are a kind of a function of a big galaxy, otherwise it would be small. Seriously just don't go .. visit Jackson's Lighthouse (black hole near bubble) instead?

Some good suggestions in thread, especially the display of new stats (new FSD range etc.) before accepting, which I think is essential. For that to be implemented though no good to expect Frontier to fundamentally change how engineers operate (why further develop something you're being told to ditch?). Story arcs too are written content, nice to see, developing your relationship with the engineer, but you have to start somewhere and that is the basic engineer (game mechanics) of 2.2?

Removing Engineer Commodities is a MAJOR concession by FD (made to people bleating about being interdicted. I swear this is not a world of men sometimes) but don't agree engineers is bad designed, at all. Just in the same way as I don't personally PP at the moment, but for me Powerplay represents great potential from core mechanic. To be able to manage territories in the galaxy .. the mechanic can be reskinned and Powerplay (the first iteration) does not limit that. eg. (and I'm no insider) instead of ten powers, copy paste the map for a War with three major factions and their areas of influence. Or copy paste again, with two .. Thargoids versus Human Space. Engineers too are a mechanic and regardless of how you perceive the RNG or how it's presented, if you didn't have that at Engineer, it's just a shipyard and we already have those more or less everywhere. Special Mods can go on sale (at Asteroid Bases) or go with Navy Rank .. later. But first you need the ship modules .. "to be moddable"?

Like I say, good suggestions are good suggestions (adding new stats, after mod, before accept) but none of these things are solved by giving everyone a headache, as no matter what ship you have you will not (and should not) ever be invincible .. A rate, G5 mod every module on a Corvette, you're still a shrimp versus scale of Capital Ship and sometimes you have to back down. This means Engineers remain optional, designs have to fit with existing (and forwad developable) mechanics and if using Engineers means collecting mats, that's the deal and it's a good one. Why would an engineer want credits? From what I can tell most of them already own their own pretty spectacular homes homos?

Isn't Jackson's Lighthouse a neutron star?

 

[Innigo]

I'm saying it's effectively RNG in real life too when you're trying to hyper-fine-tune real life technology.

Orders of magnitude smaller than is seen in the Engineers. So no, neither fair nor reasonable - just a stupid RNG mechanic.

- - - Updated - - -

Absolutely. I think it's a shame, though, that one of the major additions to the game is something that many people can take or leave. But I guess it's here to stay so I just hope that whatever's coming next is not quite as unengaging.

Isn't that par for the course? Wings/Powerplay/CQC and now Engineers. So far Guardians seems to be the Beluga + passenger missions. A new station interface and some photos/stories/videos on the internet about aliens and crashed spaceships *shrug*... at least the passenger missions were a nice addition and I do like the Beluga.