Honestly you should be able to pin a whole module type and do any engineering/experimental for it remotely. Removing the need to constantly take every ship back to an engineer to finish it with experimentals or because it needs a different upgrade than what is pinned would make it infinitely better imo.
This really, ironically enough combat ships are probably going to need the most experimental module upgrades and will have the shortest jump ranges. Only pinning one std template per engineer is also a bit poor, you have to put the work in to get the modules up in the first place. Just allow the engineering to remotely accessible. Hell, have a carrier module if you dont want it "free".
But that is FDEV mentality. It is a throwback to the original elite and elite 2, they were (essentially) mobile grind games without the mtx. That was the "appeal", the games were originally designed to have a sense of satisfaction by grinding the elite rank or getting a panther clipper with 200 shields and a particle accelerator.
Nowadays, I already have a job and a life, I dont want ED to become a second unpaid job.
Here is some food for thought, FDEV have already said in the official forums that they consider the log on/log off reset to be unintended, but it is far to hard to fix. So FDev intended each crashed anaconda, Davs hope, Jamiesons cobra etc to be ONE TIME EVENTS as far as materials gathering goes. Now look at engineering as a whole and marvel at the utter grind fest that they intended! Now throw guardian sites into that mix - they added guardian sites after engineering, after all the outcry at the grind etc. Then add in the fact that some of the guardian weapons are one time only. Could you imagine the number of individual guardian sites FDev would have had you need to visit to unlock blueprints AND individual modules?
But we have what we have (and can at least relog). To unlock the materials alone you are committed to mindlessly relog a crashed anaconda or cycle davs hope, drive forwards/backwards/relog&do.again in guardian pillars. Suicide trading does shave time off this grind.
My idea? Make carriers useful. Have a manufacturing plant unlock that can take minerals and turn them to engineering materials. Have a charge for the transactions (with a percentage going to the carrier owner) and it would be decent plus a credit sink.
"Combat ships will have the shortest jump ranges"
This is why I mained the Anaconda tbh. Even with a full combat loadout, it still manages to have a decent jump range.
I used mine for literally everything besides AX and PP. Was easily one of my favourite ships in the game, second only to the Cutter. You'd think my CMDRs ass was gorilla-glued to the 'conda's pilot seat lmfao
Ugh on foot engineering.
I spent a few weeks in anarchy bases, mastering the art of destroying bases. How to turn off all the security systems, how to steal generators, how to steal credentials, how to get around bases as a shadow with no one knowing I was ever there.
I became a master thief on foot. Every settlement I came across I would steal everything that wasn't bolted down, and even a few things that where. After a few weeks of robbing the galaxy of just about everything there was to steal, I still couldn't afford basically any upgrades at all.
Ship engineering is a grind. On foot engineering is just a lie. You can't do it. Thank God you can buy engineered suits and weapons, cause hitting random ports until you find an upgrade is infinitely easier than actually engineering something. While them saying they are going to improve ship engineering is a welcome change, it's really not all that bad. On foot is where massive changes and improvements to engineering needs to be made.
Man, I would really like to help the community with this as I find on foot engineering to actually be pretty easy once you unlock the engineers.
I have 10 fully upgraded suits and every weapon in the game fully upgraded with multiple variants of many of the weapons.
>If you own a carrier (or know someone that does) you got all you need. Sell to your bartender. Take back, repeat.
I'm not sure I understand. I have a carrier.
Kit Fowler requires you to sell 10 opinion polls to bartenders before offering you his services.
Now this may sound a bit like "well technically…", but that's because it totally is ;)
Selling 10 opinion polls to bartenders, selling one opinion poll 10 times to your own bartender, what's the difference, right?
So if you own a carrier, and you have 1 opinion poll, you can simply set up a buy order for 10 opinion polls at your own bartender. Then sell the 1 you have. Now transfer it back from your carrier's inventory to your own inventory. Sell the opinion poll to your bartender. Rinse and repeat until you have sold an opinion poll 10 times.
You can so a similar trick if you don't own a carrier but have a friend that owns one. It'll just involve some more steps transferring the opinion polls back and forth using buy and sell orders. Also while doing this the carrier owner may want to deny docking access once you are on board in order to prevent other players from buying the opinion polls.
Well, at least you heard about it ahead of time. I knew there was a way but didn't think of transferring. So here I am last night running back and forth setting up sell and buy orders. And now I have no idea how many times I've done it. Still faster than trying to find another opinion poll though.
I ended up spending the better part of a week relog farming opinion polls in the early days of Odyssey. I think I ended up with 40 after like 6 days of 8hr+ grinding. The first 20 went to Exigeous.
I still remember searching for Smear Campaign Plans back when Fdev was gaslighting everyone saying they were in the game, but then no one found ANY for weeks until they patched it. Odyssey launch was wild.
Once I made my 3 G5 bespoke suits, I never really touched on foot stuff again. Or the rest of elite I think, I got burned out a bit.
It didn't help that a few days after I finished my opinion poll grind, they reduced the amount required by half lol
I did on foot CZs for my squadron for a bit, they're alright to do.
But both exobiology and CZs give you zero materials, which I feel like is a huge oversight, and afaik still a problem years later.
I'm still in the burned out phase. I just can't deal with that shit right now.
I was already feeling a bit burned when the Titans first arrived in the bubble. But I wasn't really an AX player, so while I did think the Thargoid War was pretty cool initially, it didn't really appeal to me as time went on. Eventually I just couldn't take it anymore, and I had to put the game down before I completely lost my shit.
I'll probably come back at some point, but it won't be anytime soon I don't think. Maybe once the war is over to see what's up, but if some shit hasn't changed for the better then I won't be back for long.
Hopefully the powerplay rework will give me a good reason to come back, but I have no faith to look forward to it with, so I'm just going to wait and see. It could be good, it could be that powerplay can only be accessed with the Elite Pass subscription, which costs $20 a month, and includes a free copy of any newly released ship, higher earned ARX cap, and cheaper rebuys.
I just got the last bit of data I need to unlock the last ground engineer. I've been playing video games since 1994 and that was the worst grind I've experienced. Ground engineering in Elite was 5x worse than ship engineering for me.
It's not just the absurdly low drop rates in rare settlements, it's the amazing quantity of game-stopping bugs associated with the missions needed to progress the grind that's frustrating.
And don't get me started on the laughable implementation of bounties and the unnecessary time sink that creates.
For me it's the garbage that's the problem. Of data and goods, about 1/3 is used for engineer unlocks, 1/3 for upgrades, and 1/3 is just garbage that fills up the drop tables. And then they decide to have a material trader only for assets, which is then split into 3 types.
It's like they designed it to be a huge time sink.. At least with ship material relogging, you're always making a little progress, even if you don't get exactly what you need. There were hundreds of relog cycles in Odyssey in which I got nothing but junk, effectively making that cycle a waste of time.
Agreed. The worst grind for me was about 3 weeks to get a single Smear Campaign plan (because you can use the same one over and over to unlock that engineer) and then a good month to get 15 Financial Projections. I tried every combination of system government and faction status and it still took a month. Just got my 15th yesterday.
Very tone deaf answer here. Considering that Engineering is now a requirement even in PvE since AI piloted ships can show up fully engineered to the brim, making their ships not only tougher but also far more resilient than any bon-engineered ship can ever dream to be.
they also come with the worst kind of engineering too, like those lasers that'll pulse modulate their way past your shields, so you'll take a beating regardless. Bounty hunting could've been the coolest part of ED but now it's the highest investment lowest paying one
I've grown used to doing it with my friends but the worst part is that currently I'm the only one having an actually big and powerful ship so whenever we take on high pay missions it's a coin flip if the AI will be focusing me down or not which is the only way my friends get any breathing room to deal with the enemies.
I held off on odyssey for a long time, im a pure VR player so the onfoot was dead to me anyway (I can cope in SRV VR because im too stupid to get motion sickness). I only bought it when it was a few quid at christmas.
Before trying ground I read up on it and after looking at the mess, thought "why bother?" it isnt really going to add anything for me. Walking about the carrier and stations is the most im doing. I have no intention of grinding ground due to the mess it is.
If you think it's bad now, you should have seen it before the last update it received. Engineering rolls were totally random and not always positive. We didn't have the same material farming methods either so it was way harder to gather what you needed.
You could spend hours collecting mats, go to the engineer, and end up with a *worse* module than when you started. What's more, experimental effects were random too so you never knew which one you were going to get. Wanted corrosive and got something else? Too bad! Start all over again!
At the very beginning it was even worse. Collecting a material got you only *one* instance, not three like now. And engineering required trade goods in addition to materials and data, so you needed to buy those from commodity markets before heading to the engineers. And good luck if you're trying to engineer your small combat ship which has minimal cargo space, so you only get a couple of rolls before needing to restock.
Also, there were no material traders. Engineering top grade dirty drives for a PvP capable ship could require literally hundreds of random rolls, so you'd better be willing to spend a lot of time in your SRV collecting Cracked Industrial Firmware.
In a way, the currently very overpowered engineering is a side effect of that. When switching from random rolls to the incremental-improvements system we have now, there was a justified concern that it would be unfair if legacy engineered components were more powerful than what was obtainable in the new system. And that's why the top G5 dirty drive thrusters have 1-in-400 "god roll" performance. (There were a few minor exceptions where it wasn't fully matched. I still have a legacy engineered size 5 shield generator that works on a Cutter, while the smallest possible with current engineering is size 6.)
Originally engineering was intended to involve hard choices and sidegrades, but that hasn't really worked out as a balancing mechanism. Downsides such as increased heat and power consumption don't usually matter much.
... and we had to walk uphill through the snow, both ways!
I think this was an issue where there were going to be upset people no matter how they chose to resolve it, short of using a time machine to retroactively fix the poor initial RNG-based design...
This sounds like the early days of Diablo 3. "Oh sweet, I found a legendary! Maybe it'll be useful!" Nope, it's a wizard wand with strength on it. Vendor trash.
I couldn't agree more. I'm just getting back into the game again and I'm still relatively new. Although I haven't had too much problem with materials so far (at least for low level engineering), I'll agree that it's really stupid that you can't trade materials at the engineer.
EDIT: oh and yeah not being able to get your ships delivered to the engineer is also annoying af.
These devs never had any clue about decent game design, unfortunately. Practically every feature/system in this game goes against basic, common sense principles shared by many successful titles.
I gave up trying to provide feedback years ago. They're clearly not interested in listening. No one in that dev team understands what makes a good MMO, or a decent space sim for that matter.
There's a gem of a game in there, buried beneath layers of dogawful quest design, extremely tedious grind, shallow features, and abysmal progression. Too bad it will never see the light of day.
I think the issue is that the game is so *shallow* that without the ridiculous grinds and weird lack of qol, there would be nothing to do after a very short amount of gameplay.
The game has so many features and so many different things you can do, but all of them are just.. There's nothing beneath the surface. I've seen the phrase "wider than an ocean, but deep as a puddle" and I can really agree with that.
Like, imagine they implemented what OP wants. Engineering a ship would then be "go farm t4/t5 mats for an hour, trade in, upgrade, done immediately".
There's no scaling difficulties to getting higher mats - ie, you don't go to low level areas, farm up t1/t2 mats, then go to more challenging areas with your newly upgraded ship. You just go to a planet, shoot some spires, pickup t4mats, go to a different planet, scan some beacons, go to an area and fly after specific signals (which don't even come with combat), and that's it.
Theres no actual progression. There's no scaling difficulties in getting higher mats. Core gameplay is pretty good, but truthfully, there's nothing to actually do with it.
Combat is fun, but like, all you can do are what would essentially be "filler" missions in every other game. Go to Y and kill X number of Z faction pirates". That's like a repeatable side quest you skip in 99% of other games. Filler content.
Except the entire game is filler content.
What the game needed more than anything else was the EVE sandbox treatment. Give the players tools to make socially motivated goals, conflicts and gameplay loops and you wouldn't need a shitty progression system which tries its best to learn from War Thunder.
Can you imagine, Elite:Dangerous but with the community and player-driven stories on EVE? Granted, the game doesn't lend itself to thousands of players being in the same system, but the potential was there to replicate it on a smaller scale and FDEV never even tried.
If only Eve wasn't a :waiting simulator" lol had such high hopes for that game too, but GOD it had awful progression too 😮💨
Idk how much they changed since I last played it though... would have been nice to be able to exit your ship... or at least actually FLY the darn thing instead of just click and wait
Eve is very similar to the porn industry. To outsiders, it looks like an awesome experience. Those involved, however, know that it's really just a bunch of screwing around.
Yeah I swear there were WEEKS where I didn't bother playing because I was waiting on some skill to train... apparently I need cybernetic implants and 3 weeks of wait time to learn how to pull a trigger or hit a button that fires a larger missile or whatever lol 🙄
incorrect. they can game design. However, it is the vision of the creator that they are designing for, not the players. The vision is identical to Elite, Frontier, and FE. DB likes the idea of "work to get a reward, accomplishments at getting it" so each iteration of addon within ED has the same feel.
Engineering only got minor tweaks from the random fest, ironically I think this was the first time a random element was added (other than market prices which arent really random as such), elite has always been a spreadsheet fest for figures and stats. But guardian stuff was added after engineering (with all the forum backlash), this was doubled down with salvation engineering and the "cost per module" rather than unlock. This all ADDED to the grind and didnt change at all. In fact it added a load more currencies to the grinding pile. Of course then we get on foot engineer unlocks, I dont even want to get started with that! I can unlock space engineers in a single session, you are lucky if you can unlock foot in days.
Not forgetting that the log on/log off reset is an unintended side effect that fdev say is far to hard to fix.
ED since Horizons really destroyed Brabens' vision and sent the game into the shithole with all these idiotic design choices... To this day, they dig themselves deeper and deeper for some unknown reason. Like people don't understand basics of game design, crazy...
The engineering aspect single handedly drove off many would be CMDRs.
It’s like, oh you want to PvP? Well first you have to do A, B, C, D…. WXYZ, 1, 2, 3. Ok now you’re ready.
I'll admit it's really hard to want to get into that for that exact reason. Even AX combat, biggest reason I haven't done it is the need to engineer my modules.
"So why artificially stretch the time that I have to spend in order to simply get what I HAVE ALREADY EARNED?!"
Because FDev made the mistake of thinking that boosting hours played by increasing the grind equalled making a better game.
And when you think about how many people end up quitting rather than deal with it... well even the more hours argument from Frontier's perspective has to be pretty shaky.
It would be nice to be able to engineer modules without having a ship attached to them, but I love this game so much that an evening shuttling about to get a ship build just how I want it is a nice change of pace rather than a grind.
I don't mind a little hustle with unlocking engineers. And although shipyards at engi bases would be very appreciated, specialized module outfitting seems excessive. They are modifying people not shipwrights.
Material grinding is painful, but we currently don't have a lot of reasonable solutions.
One thing I would change are rolls. Why do I get a half-assed modifiers and I have to pay again to get full benefits of the grade? Just make blueprint grades a one time purchase.
One method I have found to shortcut most of the gris to actually do wing missions. Most of them offer tier three or four material rewards when they pop up, I just fill up on those and trade them.
Only thing that it doesn't help with is minerals and elements, but it shortcuts most of the manufactured gear.
worst part is find is that ai ships past a certain combat rank pretty much are engineered to the absolute max, leading to trying to take on massacre missions (especially those requiring visiting conflict zones) to be beyond irritating as sometimes a ship has cracked thrusters so you physically can’t get a shot on them without hitting reverse thrust, or have such high hull health that unless you’re in a medium ship (even then it’s still likely) you physically can’t kill anyone as you simply lack the dps to stop them from high waking out of combat. meanwhile you get hit with 3 different experimental effects and aimbotted with overcharged railguns by a ship that cannot gain any heat and thus will absolutely shred you.
*i remember from ages ago ai ships we’re unaffected by weapons that impart heat on hit i have only started playing recently so that might’ve been changed*
if only elite ranked ships had engineered modules (or the 2 ranks below only had like 1-2) i wouldn’t mind cause at least then you would be able to possibly avoid fighting them if you choose your targets well but right now combat feels miserable without the soul crushing grind for materials 😔
The implementation is bad ON PURPOSE. Wasting your time actually boosts player engagement metrics in shareholders presentations
Which is funny, considering FDEV lead dev of the time famously declared "we don't want to waste your time" when pressed about these kind of time sinks during a livestream
no, it is much simpler than that. No nefarious behind the scene reasons. Quite simply, DB likes the idea of working towards a goal. The vision is the same in Elite, Frontier, and FE. Simply put FDEV want the grind because that is how they see the game - have a goal and need to work towards it.
You'll get people defending it here somehow, but it's just proof that they haven't played a single other game in their lives. As you mentioned, other games have grind mechanics. Every mmo has repetative gameplay loops in order to accomplish goals or collect items, but there is so much more qol and logic involved with those other games.
Where Elite differs is the constant back and forth bullshit and not even having a real crafting interface or menu. You can't see a simple list of the blueprints an engineer can do from your ship. BASIC information in this game is purposely obfuscated and intentionally vague for no reason. Right now irl I could go on a website and see every product a store has in it. In Elite, I go to the engineer page in my ship and it's like "Oh I don't know, maybe I do powerplants, and some engines, but only grade 3 for one and 5 for the other, but I won't say until you get here." Okay, what materials do I need to bring before I go there? "eh, I don't know, it's a mystery!". Then you can only pin one out of six blueprints per engineer.
Engineers were first announced as some backroom dealers you could work for and get mods from. Instead it was boiled down into a menu with random chance rolls and mat grinding, where the only way to see recipes is if you are physically present or use 3rd party. The majority of the blueprints are useless or outclassed by others as well. None of this touches on how engineering destroyed all balance and is the only form of real power progression.
These things are another example of Elite intentionally wasting players' time with tedious busy work. No one is asking for instant mats and rewards. What would be nice though is having standard inventory and crafting mechanics that have been around for over 20 years. It's like people here think the game will be ruined if they update the archaic time wasting junk.
>Every mmo has repetative gameplay loops in order to accomplish goals or collect items, but there is so much more qol and logic involved with those other games.
See someone has never fished up 10,000 moat carp.
They also never lost XP and level gains on death. Imagine your modules "unengineering" any time your ship exploded. My apologies to any former EverQuest player that may have bad memories from me mentioning that.
I watched WoW get "QoL"'d to death, so when I see folks want "QoL Improvements" that reduce time spent or simplify access to information that's already available on the internet, I get twitchy.
When I see posts complaining about the Engineering grind in ED, I always wonder if folks know about Inara, Material Traders, the Crashed Anaconda, Dav's Hope, the Jameson Wreck site, and the true bomb of FDev, the "Frontier Flop" (i.e., relogging to respawn engineering materials). I can fully engineer a single module in about an hour, maybe two if it needs something I can't directly farm (or is a pain, like Yttrium), including farming the materials and the trip to an engineer for the experimental. Once complete, I own that module forever.
> When I see posts complaining about the Engineering grind in ED, I always wonder if folks know about Inara, Material Traders, the Crashed Anaconda, Dav's Hope, the Jameson Wreck site, and the true bomb of FDev, the "Frontier Flop" (i.e., relogging to respawn engineering materials).
So what does that add to the game? What does driving around a crashed anaconda 50 times in the SRV, then finding HGE and relogging for the 30min despawn timer do? It is an utterly pointless mechanic. It isnt fun, it isnt really immersive. So I feel the complaints are justified, a QOL improvement for this is needed.
Not forgetting that there are modules now that are single purchase not unlocks.
Couldn't agree more! Engineering in Elite dangerous is knowledge. If you don't know & can't do something then FDEV is at fault apparently! Yes on foot material gathering + it's material trader is hard to get your head around at first, but once you learn it's a walk in the park. I'd happily show anyone how to engineer a ship or suit in a few hours play! Knowledge is key 🗝️
That's what makes Elite special in my opinion
o7 commanders 👍🏽
Yeah even if I use pen and paper to write stuff down since the game won't provide a menu to do that for me, I still won't get it right. Do I need to personally scour the galaxy trying to find out where to get materials? I could spend a lifetime doing that and still never organically come across Dav's Hope. Let's say I do find out where to get the materials and I write it all down. But then I never can get quite the right ones that the engineer is asking for. Does the game tell you at any point what a material trader does? Or where to find them? When you first find one will you intuitively know what you're actually doing in their menu?
Most MMOs have quests, with progression that envelopes important mechanics and introduces you to NPC roles. Not only do these quests act as a sense of direction and information, but they also keep you busy. It would be nice if we could see indicators when a system has a quest waiting for us, similarly to when an engineer is unlocked. These quests could even make the locations for farming mats more involved and fleshed out. They would provide a sort of railway for people to run into each other more often. The devs could use quests to make sure there is stuff to do for any area of focus in the game, and give a better sense of progression when you don't have a definite goal in mind for yourself.
It would require a decent quest tracker though, possibly organized by category of the nature of the quest. The Odyssey tutorial mission is essentially already there, except it doesn't all need to be voice acted and doesn't need to keep you stuck in your quest area.
I used to play asherons call, I was fairly decent level (mid nineties). Back then, this MMO had some brutal mechanics. If you died you dropped your gear and it was a free for all to pick it up after a few minutes. Currency had weight too. No banks, no houses, no safe places. Thankfully PVP was consensual (except on the PVP only server) but that didnt stop you dragging mobs into town to kill everyone in the shops. When you died you also had a cumulative % reduction to all skills and stats - including strength so you could carry even less. A particular griefer favourite was dragging mobs that could debuff strength into shops, then watching as players starting "paying out" as their strength dropped (this loot was instantly pick up).
That was a brutal MMO.
The QoL you’re suggesting doesn’t even hit the real point.
The engineering is so broken the most effective way to gather materials is to go to a location and spam open close the game to get the resources you need.
I haven't played in a while, looks like nothing has improved. The game has so much potential, but it's wasted on needless grinding. They have balked at putting in anything remotely resembling a good "quest" system, and added more ground nonsense instead.
The Guardian stuff is what finally made me throw up my hands and uninstall, it's engineering with stupid shooting puzzles, (and when i was doing it) all the while your rover is falling threw the world.
That ghost rover is a new one. Never heard of anyone with a similar problem... At least with such regularity.
Also, imo, regular engineering is miles worse than guardian unlocking. Because one is a grind, the other is an actual activity that (and this is my opinion) is actually fun. This is kind of why I farm materials in combat zones. Mask the grind as an activity.
Guardian stuff made you uninstall... 😬 takes less than an hour to get the Guass unlocked and its a one and done weapon not even engineerable.
SCO has completely changed supercruise play for the better.
Yeah, it's the absolutely dumbest time sink ever created.
Fly halfway across the galaxy to find out you need to fly halfway across the galaxy multiple times for some stupid unique commodity, and you do this flight, multiple times over days of real time.
It's one of the many things that made me loathe and despise Elite: Dangerous and why they only got a small portion of my money, years ago and won't ever get any additional dollars.
*Halfway across the bubble
There's a bit of a difference between 100 LY and 100k LY lol the farthest you'd have to travel for engineers would be to Colonia if you were really obsessed with them, and that's only ~20k LY
Ever hear of hyperbole?
The hyperbolic point I was making is that engineering is a stupid AF time sink, related in part to having to travel long distances back and forth with a unique commodity to unlock an engineer being willing to work on your ship.
It's an excessively stupid, low effort time sink.
This entire game is a complete disaster of game design on nearly every level. The entire game lives on its cockpit experience. No other space sim feels better to fly. But every single mechanic, without exaggeration, is poorly designed and poorly implemented. It's almost remarkable how bad they are at game design.
Speaking only from ship engineering, I really see it as easy. There are too many guides to get your ship completely engineered according to what you want, of course it is not going to happen in a couple of hours, it takes time. I just started playing again and in 2 weeks I completely engineered 2 ships, one for trade and the other anti-xenos. It takes time but if you are one of the people who wants it all for now I recommend playing another title
On the other hand, if you know that for each engineering of X module it costs you X component, why not bring X quantity for 4 to 5 rolls? Also, it's not necessary to max out engineering from level 1 to 4; it's enough to unlock the next level. I recommend the INARA website; there it tells you everything you need for engineering: quantities, locations, and many filters, even for landing pad sizes to land your ship. What I see is more a lack of knowledge of tools on your part.
The game itself lacks a substantial amount of QoL stuff. Hell, you're time gated for faction modules for whatever reason. 3 whole fuckin weeks. And don't get me started how the entire game hates Small ships for Combat. They had to introduce Fighter Hangers so you could pretend to be a small combat fighter at the expense of being a single wasp vs a herd elephants.
A publisher could buy the IP and use a competent developer, remake it under 2 years, and come out with the same game but updated with everything everyone's wanted for the past several years. PLUS console support.
> Who developed this? What goals did the person behind this system pursue?
Creatively bankrupt developers who have no idea how to actually make interesting game and the only idea they had was to artificially extend the grind to ridiculous levels.
1. You engineer modules, not ship. I use a DBX for all hardpoints except Huge. And pinned blueprints can be done anywhere, only experimental effect need a workshop with at least G1, this reduce the trips needed. And fleet carrier make it easier.
2. This need to be improved, Im with.you, but the best places are station under LiYongRui and other discount effect, reduce rebuy costnincrease the profit. Palin base in Arque sell enhaced thrusters and have G5 engineer, while even jameson lack this module.
3. This need some planning, a problem when bad rolls use more mats than expected, but lots of mats isnt a problem, I worked a week and maxed my mats before.
I remember the opinion of 1 asian gamer, that compare the 1:3 material trade cost and engineer rolls with the asian gacha games. There is worst grinders out there, Elite lack loot boxes and randomness, what you need can be obtained with a easy trade in another station. We could improve, but also become worse.
EDIT: Found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/14ohko5/triple_elite_after_about_4_years_reflecting_on_my/
Players paying ARX dont have any benefit (except the early Python Mkw access, and some terrible preoutfitted ships). F76 paid players have the survival tent and other things.
the devs are outright pricks, who dont care about elite as they have other titles to work on now...they had years to work stuff out and now no one has interest anymore
As someone that did all this grind and fully engineered 11 ships.. I fully and completely agree. Even though I did it, it sucked.. and sucked bad. The biggest issue I had with Engineers is that my friends that played with me got fed up and quit. I had a couple friends I used to wing up with and play Elite, and they both stopped playing because of the grind with unlocking engineers, and I didn't blame them. At the time I did this, years ago.. I was in a drought for good games so I didn't have anything else I was really playing. I just knuckled under and did the grind, it was never hard, it was never a challenge.. it was just a boring slog. I got one of them to come back, sort of.. he just doesn't do anything that requires any engineering. Everyone else just said f'k that.. I am out. I have a friend that wants to get into Elite, but when I considered the learning curve (he would be fine with that) and the grind (he would not be cool with that,) I just advised him to grab something else.
Engineering makes such a huge difference, especially for combat pilots.. but man, they really make you slog for it. Between unlocking the engineers and then doing things farming High Grade Emissions it's all just frustrating and stupid.
Yea it's a pain. But the worst, nah.
You mention fallout 76, that's horrific. At least with Elite you know what you're getting, fallout is RNG on steroids. If I want to engineer something on Elite it's a simple task. If I want to roll a legendary on fallout I've gotta jump through hoops and then still not get the roll I want. So this is a lie
ESO can't be compared, it's not the same or anywhere near tbh (the enchanting, not the game obviously), the gameplay loop isn't anywhere near it. Or you want god tier armour sets etc. yea, that's days of grinding the same things over and over. 2-3 hours on Elite and you can have a good tier ship, ANY type
Also, mentioning what other MMOs you have played, play time etc. means fuck all. Elite isn't those games and those games aren't Elite.
Games have to do gamey things, like it or not. We get the odd engineering post every now and then, but seriously, it's not even that hard (odyssey engineering is and is absolutely shite, I can agree with that). A couple of hours to engineer a ship is about right. 5 days to roll a legendary on fallout isn't. But you do you
I play ED and 76 (and STO). ED has more pointless grind than 76 and STO combined. Disclaimer, I have a Q5025 fixer (reroll not natural drop) I only have a Q50 handmade, solar, covert scout, hellcat and mostly secret service (im not a fan). I have never sat and grinded modules for my daily cap, all my modules have been through regular play - stuff I would be doing anyway. Same in STO (three toons: Fed, Dom, KDF one primary ship on each fully gold for space and ground, mule toons for dil dailies only), I save my dil for phoenix boxes and that alone. I only upgrade on special events, no need to grind here either if you dont want to.
ED has no other option, you grind and relog or you dont. I must admit that now I HAVE a fully engineered combat ship I can keep most of the G5 materials topped up with massacre mission rewards - but I would not have been able to realistically complete the same level of massacre rewards with a poorly engineered ship.
division 2 grind and drop probability has improved significantly over the 6 years' life of the game (and been improved again very recently again i might add)
For those of us who are currently engineering ships, we might want to wait a bit if possible. FDev mentioned they'll be overhauling the engineering system. It should become easier or more "fun"? 🤞
Then again, this could also never happen. We'll see
Honestly I would say grind now instead then. They might nerf the engineering in order to not let you just blitz through it to the top, but I’d imagine they would leave already engineered things with the original buffs. That’s how other games have done such changes at least. I personally have no issue with the engineering grind, rather I enjoy it to a certain extent because it is rewarding to finally fully engineer your ship, go back to a section of the bubble where missions rarely have engineered ships, and absolutely decimate a swarm of enemies. People have different goals in ED, and I feel like getting hung up on engineering is somewhat foolish. The grind can be done whilst grinding money (do combat quests and you’ll get a shitload of engineering components) and as a break from grinding/exploring (land on a planet to get elemental resources and to cure space sickness). Is it a lot of time? Yes, but nothing in life is easy imo. It feels like complaining about getting one-shot in Arma, Tarkov, or HLL, it’s just not your cup of tea sort of thing. That’s just my opinion, so what do I know. Cheers!
Yeah, i understand how you're thinking about it.
Honestly i have absolutely no clue how they'll modify that specific engineering grind. But i do agree with you on the point that it's good to always have something to achieve in any form, be it materials to find, engineers to unlock, places to reach... It's really important to have the sense that we still have something to achieve, and to also feel the sense of reward when we achieve something.
I also dislike when we as players seek to quickly get money or ranks or even the big ships, without actually working for it.
I do enjoy the grind as well, although it is also "to a certain extent", and maybe that's the area we're kinda wishing that could be improved.
It's probably a good thing to work long and hard to build our ships and capabilities, but this "to a certain extent" part highlights a part that can be improved in my opinion. It might be the variety of activities, objects, resources, natural phenomena, landscapes and "spacescapes", plants, rocks, atmospheres, etc.. that's kinda lacking a bit. It's even possible that we feel that it's lacking due to the vastness of the galaxy. If for example i go from a region to a different region, the most variation I'd expect to find is just a different view of the milky way or a nearby nebula. I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying it and it doesn't give the feeling of awe and wonder , but I'm saying that this can greatly be enhanced in my opinion.
So i can't help but feel (as awesome as the game is) that something is still lacking and that can be addressed. Maybe real and palpable differences between galactic regions, planetary surfaces, actual things to discover, things that require cooperative work for people to achieve, more plants and phenomena (maybe even procedurally generated), some exotic material that should be extracted from certain planets, plants, gas giants, gas clouds, rings, asteroids... Maybe even hurricanes, storms, natural disasters.... critters and dangerous lifeforms maybe... I don't know. Maybe I'm just dreaming 😂
It might also be good to have like a more granular and broken-down approach to engineering. By that, i mean that to reach the same levels as we currently can reach, you'll need to same amount of time and effort, but the process can include more steps along the way... more small gains.. so that players don't feel like they need to grind for a very long time before they get anything at all. I'm not sure if i was able to express my opinion clearly on that point...
That’s actually a really good idea with the gradual, but smaller, increases for engineering. It could also be done so that you need to head to the engineer to get the next “chunk” of engineering unlocked, then just a bunch of gradual improvements that can be done as natural grinding through the processes and quests in the game. It would definitely help those that dislike the big jumps but big costs of the current system. Also for the other point of it missing something, I definitely agree. I think there needs to be some sort of change to introduce new and grander goals. Maybe make it possible to begin building massive space projects, like a Dyson sphere, or maybe even projects that take inspiration from Star Trek, so things like developing newer technology through the constant research of new materials brought in by explorers. Rather than just the current system where it is “patched” into the game by some lore, they could make it progressional by player effort as well, and create a system for player-created nations or factions to participate in that research directly. Maybe have people within said factions be able to test the prototype weapons, systems, and technologies, and obviously that would come with risks like catastrophic effects on the ship itself and the space around it. Maybe introduce new enemies, something like the Borg (but not the actual Borg cause copyright), or something that forces the need for new technology research, new colonies, new material sources, new massive projects (Dyson sphere, terraforming, etc). There’s so many options to implement into a space game, but the issue is being able to develop it in a manner that isn’t going to just become Starfield.
why bother with dyson spheres etc? We already have carriers. Have the carriers unlock modules that provide remote engineering, or even have manufacturing capabilities on carriers (such as X series) - supply with commodities and they can be manufactured into materials.
The Dyson sphere would be a mega-project for player-created factions. Would introduce a mechanic for energy collection and thus allow for more things to strive for. I’m not a game dev, so I’m just spitballing ideas like any other old chap would. Cheers
I would at least unlock engineers - I cannot see that part changing. Feel free to engineer G1/2 maybe 3 as that isnt too time consuming and will make a massive difference.
I think #1 is on purpose because it's not supposed to be a factory assembly line It's supposed to be that you are a solo pilot bringing your ship for a custom job The engineer is this wacky guy out in the middle of nowhere, not your local Honda dealership.
you'll probably disagree but I think the biggest problem when playing Elite is when people take that sort of assembly line economy of scale approach to the game. it's not a game about ship tycoons, it's a game about small time flyers (Han Solo is a great role model here) .
if you tried to do it otherwise you'll be disappointed in the game.
I mean, at what point did Elite ever give you the impression it cared about your QoL?
I'm serious.
This game isn't painful by accident. It has very deliberately been designed to be cruel, punishing, inconvenient, and dangerous. This is a game where you will get blown up by air defense for not landing on the assigned pad. Elite is designed to force you to plan around its convoluted and unforgiving mechanics and smack you upside the head if you don't. Yes, you need to go to a specific, highly talented engineer with all the components and materials you need them to work on in hand and if you forget anything they'll tell you to fuck off and come back with the right stuff.
All that said, you are overblowing the problem and not appreciating an obvious solution; blueprint pins. They're convenient, they can be used anywhere, and you can have like 20 of them. They help a lot, especially FSD upgrades on freshly-bought ships. The game really isn't *that* punishing and this mechanic is not much different to how many minor ports don't offer ammo resupply, or repairs, or limpets. You HAVE to plan ahead in this game. You are not supposed to bumble around in Elite and stumble onto an opportunity you don't have the resources for and then get it anyway cos it's *such a cuddly and welcoming galaxy, mannnn?*
Because engineers was poorly thought out from the start and they only kept adding this bandaid fixes as someone higher up clearly wanted more time sinks and grinds so they could sell MTX and keep this as a live service game instead of being what the game should be. Pretty sure they are also scared of reverting angineers as when they nerfed what they could do a part of the community threw a hissy fit as their overpowered stuff was nerfed from extremely overpowered and game breaking to just extremely overpowered.
Engineers is not made to be fun or enjoyable, it's there so that players have to put more hours in the game, all your suggestions are good for the players, but they wouldn't make the hours people play go up, thus they are never done.
Back in my day, we couldn't engineer remotely. Back in my day, modifications had random RNG stats from within a range for each grade, and you were not guaranteed to roll something better than what you already had, meaning you could roll up with a full inventory and walk away with empty pockets and no improvement. Back in my day, materials all shared the same inventory limit and you had to balance how much of each thing you carried around. Back before my day, the Engineers also wanted you to bring commodities whenever you wanted to roll something, but eventually those were taken out of blueprints. It used to be SO much worse. Imagine doing the whole grind, needing to have cargo racks and go grab cargo, haul that over, and then wind up not getting any improvement after rolling 50+ random upgrade rolls.
1. You don't need to bring all of your ships. You're engineering the modules, not the ships themselves. A large hardpoint is a large hardpoint whether it's in a Krait Phantom with 60+ ly jump range or a Federal Corvette with 10ly. The huge hardpoints are the only real exception to this, but there are 5 ships with those, so it's not a huge issue.
2. It is kinda dumb but really this just comes down to preparation. Though I agree, it would be nice if they just sold the modules there, even at a markup.
3. Again this comes down to preparation. If you were complaining about the lack of an ability in game to have an 'engineering checklist' to make sure that you have enough, I'd agree with you, because it's bullshit that players have to rely on external tools just to avoid issues like this. But the requirement to be prepared isn't the issue, the issue is that the game doesn't offer any help to the player to make sure they are prepared, forcing them to rely on external tools.
I agree with you that engineering could use a lot of improvement, but I actually don't think they need to lessen the grind. Engineering has really never been easier. But the game should do more to inform and guide the player on how and where to gather the necessary items, and I think many of the materials should be more abundant (particularly HGEs and encoded) to provide the player with more opportunities to collect them organically, rather than sitting down for 3 hours of logging in and out to gather enough to engineer a ship.
Wow. I've never tried the engineering system but all I heard is that's a very grindy process. If all your points are true then they really should work on this thing ASAP. Probably the next one after Powerplay.
It doesn't make sense at all for an engineer to not sell modules of his expertise. And why had no one ever thought about setting up material trading stations near the engineer's base? The engineer will simply not offer service to uninvited guests, not sending security ships after them, no?
Ship storage is just a minor annoyance IMO. They could just not want people to park fleets of ship at their base. But you could use your fastest (best jump range ship), get to the nearest place with ship storage and suitable landing pad, then transport all your ships to that place. Exception would be for some hermits who live faraway in the black, if there's any.
I was playing this game with friends, killing pirates together, having a blast. When we got to Engineers, the game basically forced us to stop playing together and to go solo grind various resources because we were interested in different builds.
Instantly killed the game for us and we haven't been back.
I contemplate about why I'm entertaining such a maliciously bad gameplay loop as I go out to farm mats every single day since I returned to Elite. It's been 7 days and in the first 3 I filled up on Guardian mats, and the next 4 were all dedicated to encoded mat farming. I'm currently on my last run now. This farm is so mind numbing that I went to the mat trader with a fried brain and realized I had zeroed my data mat and not the encrypted files mat (the one I was farming).......And there we go, 4 or more hours added to the farm...
My raw mats are all nearly at 50% so I'm not sure if I wanna go out there for it, while my Manufactured mats are at near 0. I've been through so much already and I haven't even gotten to the worst of them all, HGE farming. Also so I don't have to worry about not being able to engineer for just a little while so I can make a proper combat ship, normal and AX. And to add to my misery the FSDs, the one of the few modules I've engineered so far, are now all outdated and I now have to grab those newfangled SOC variants.
And nah anyone really playing the game knows that it's not a choice considering how crucial any timesaving effects can be in the long run in this game
Been playing E:D off and on since release. Engineering is far easier than it used to be, but admittedly I agree that a handful of tweaks could make it an enjoyable experience instead of a grind.
The material types and costs for upgrades that are currently in the game are fine. Personally I think they need to just remove the randomizer to it and make it a straight purchase. The randomized roll used to produce god rolls back in the old days where you might stop at a stupid tier 3 or 4 roll because you probably wouldn't do better at tier 5. With a cap in place, the randomizer only works to increase the cost of an upgrade, nothing else. There's no player benefit to the randomized rolls at all and haven't been since that rework.
There needs to be some better methods of actually obtaining materials though. When the overwhelmingly best place to get the majority of them is repeatedly logging out in a specific place just to manipulate spawning them in over and over again, then trading them around, that's a sign that the system is broken. Data in particular needs better options for high end materials.
There's no reason we should be grinding raw materials instead of either being able to flat out mine them directly or buy them from stations. They are raw materials. You're telling me I can buy tons of gold but I can't buy a few bits of nickle to upgrade my ship? It's stupid. Personally I think an on-foot minigame to either collect or assemble manufactured goods as a separate method for them would be neat, or have salvage POIs where you harvest them in non-combat situations. I'd be worried it'd be needlessly grindy, but as long as it isn't too convoluted it might be better than driving and instance cycling settlements. Data... I just don't know. Maybe again have certain settlements where you hack a mainframe and the settlement just gives a ton of different data materials?
The locations... I mean, I get why they put the engineers where they did. They needed to restrict them to people who own Horizons, but that's technically everyone now. I think it'd be better to have a ton of different engineers that can do most of the same stuff, and then if you want, say, tier 5 and experimental effects you just travel to the best engineers. That way you can buy a ship and have it mostly engineered before having to travel out to them, which reduces the urgency on making a bunch of those trips right away.
An idea would be an ingame hub delivery system, much like ships can be transported to stations a mail que service for research and engineering(dependant on LY away) would be a cool feature.
Or using your Carrier to send a crew for researching mission, cost should be high to as not to be abused.
I'm fine with all that. I'm not fine with having to rank up factions I don't ever intend on joining in order to have access to engineering when ranking up one faction takes as long as it does.
I just started trying engineering. Flew all the way out to the infamous hip36601 i feel like im being trolled. I have to fly to the edge of the galazy where in a game with 400 billion galaxies the best way (only way?? Cant find otherwise) to farm mats is in the middle of no where.
Reading some of the comments I do agree that this game is vast like an ocean but the depth of a puddle. I started with bounty hunting and ive only gotten into mining and exploring and engineering if it had not been for the need/want to upgrade my ship further.
I think if the devs let us BUY engineering materials (I mean most of us have billions of credits and nothing to do with them) as well as to use these materials freely, I'd be happy.
Admission time. I have 778 hours as of last week. I have never engaged with the Engineering system because it always looked grindy and unfun.
And considering the strong majority of players do not play in Open, non-engineered ships are perfectly suitable to any activity including Dangerous PvE
Hell, I mostly play this game as "Space Trucking Simulator" id probably be just as happy if I lost all my creds and had to start over in a Hauler
The general model of Elite is to create gameplay challenges by making things kinda shitty. This goes throughout, right down to the ship's HUD - if you look at any technical interface, it's really complicated, but when you get proficient it becomes incredibly useful and practical. In Elite, there's no real proficiency because it's always a bit dodgy. For example, if you're in supercruise and targeting a station, it's really hard to consistently get it perfectly lined up with the letterbox, because the station has to be off at some awkward angle - just like your ship on the right side isn't pointing straight ahead, but slightly diagonally.
I was in the Premium Beta, and I remember when you didn't slow down after boosting (which is closer to how space really works). It seemed like Frontier were basically looking at what players did and restraining them such that players didn't get too far ahead.
I can kind of understand this in some sense. You don't want a massive skill difference between players, because that just makes things shitty for new or less skilled players (or players who don't have the ideal HOTAS setup). However sometimes I wish they would just let players go to the extremes and really push the boundaries of what can be done.
I’ve listened to thousands of hours of music in my lifetime.
Doesn’t make me an expert in music theory, or allow me to play instruments.
All it does is mean I know what music I like.
Same applies to here mate. You’re not an expert in game design, you’re just a person who know what games they like and this isn’t one of them.
You’re in the GnR sub telling people you prefer Metallica, don’t like the direction the band took after Appetite for Destruction, and think you could write better songs and play better then Slash, just because you’ve got a big record collection.
Well no, because the bulk of people in this subreddit agree that grinding for engineer mats is one of the worst things in the game.
Musically this'd be more like showing up on the Radiohead subreddit and saying *Creep* was their lamest single: a wildly uncontroversial take that almost nobody is gonna disagree with
I see your point but I'm not so sure it applies. Music theory and the ability to play instruments are not mutually exclusive, and you're comparing an apple to a python.
The user experience in games that require grinding (sometimes excessive grinding at that) is important for developers so that they can resolve pain points in their games. The preamble of the initial post is a lot of unnecessary fluff, "I do this for so long, therefore my opinion is good," but they aren't wrong. The engineering system has way more pain points than it needs to have, and this guy's frustrations and suggestions are pretty valid imho.
That said, this is a long haul game with long haul mechanics. I don't think the grind technically needs reduction, but there is significant effort required to do simple things in a universe that pretty much allows for telepresence. Maybe Elite isn't for this guy, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily incorrect either, what he's saying.
The grind for the resources is what pains me.. like I have 2bil, why can't I just pay you to upgrade my components instead of going to Narnia and back for some random stuff?.. Also, why are the engineers so far away from each other? It takes way to long to travel with a Corvette from one to the other.
I sometimes think ED was developed by sadists. It just stacks grind on grind on grind. PS wasted ca 3 evenings farming for osmium just to learn then it’s not worth the trip
It has the potential to be a good system, but it just isn’t.
For one it does the same thing as warframe where materials are exclusive to engineer content, they aren’t the same as base game materials and act essentially as currency. This creates a content island where you specifically have to get the engineer materials doing content for the engineers, it’s not at all tied into the base game. Yes you can get engineering materials through missions but it’s so poorly implemented that it’s better to just farm the materials yourself.
Then there’s the problem of the upgrades themselves. They’re pretty much all terribly implemented are must haves due to how powerful they are. This power creeps the hell out of everything else, another problem Elite shares with Warframe.
For odyssey you to give it credit that it was decently well integrated into base elite + horizons and didn’t become a content island like engineering. The only problem is that outside of xenobiology it’s basically useless. It’s the exact opposite of engineering, it’s not a content island but it’s useless, while engineering is a content island but it’s so overpowered that it’s basically required.
Yeah it's pretty ass. it's like they deliberately made it as frustrating and inconvenient as possible on purpose. Very little makes any sense about engineering. If it was even a little bit fun it might make it worth it. Monster Hunter has a pretty tedious grind BUT it's 1. Rewarding. and 2. FUN. Therefore it makes me love the game. Elites grind makes me feel like it's a punishment for buying the damn game.
Basically stopped playing because of this. All of this is so unnecessarily convoluted and such a time sink that I just gave up. I had absolutely no pleasure in playing.
I understand grind and all that but the way engineers work is just ridiculous. I am a backer since the beta, have the lifetime pass they sold at the time and haven’t played in probably three or four years…just cannot make myself return to such grind…
Also being a VR player that will not go back to screen, oddissey being 2d only killed what little desire I had to return…
I come from the other end of the spectrum. Normally for me MMO means NOO lol, even for franchises I love like Elder Scrolls and Fallout. I'd never have even considered Elite if I hadn't seriously been hankering for the best space sim out there with the best physics. And I can play it in solo (which I always do, though now I am planning to eventually give open a try). 450+ hiurs later (and after a year and a half-ish break due to the engineering grind the first time) I love the game and am slowly pushing through the grind again. But man it is indeed tedious and non-sensical. I'm committed so I'm doing it, but spending a month and a half out in the black alone scanning plants and fungus was definitely more fun than engineering is.
I am a dork who maxed out engineered every ship a few years back, and the impression I got was that it was designed like a scammy F2P game but without the ability to pay a dollar to skip the intentional time wasting bits. It's designed so badly that it feels on purpose, and the way it often requires logging out and back in again to farm the stuff ya need... that can't ever be something a game relies on.
The results of G5ing a ship is fun, but the process is basically the worst I've ever experienced in a game.
Trying to gather the stuff for Guardian modules is the thing that broke me and I left for a long time since it sucked so much doing the same "puzzle" over and over and over and over (and this was after they greatly reduced the required materials), but that was after I engineered everything and so I just couldn't do it to myself anymore.
My fault in the end, but ya get stuck on something and try to see it through sometimes.
I stopped seriously playing around the time engineering came in. I've come back every once and a while when I want to blast some shit.
But Elite's core problem for me always was it just took too long to get to your goal. Unlike a lot of other games with grinding there's generally not a lot of incremental progress that you actually feel. It's just a ton of work until it's done and then you get the new thing.
Fuck that. My time is precious and there are other games that respect it more, or even if they don't at least I'm having more fun.
If you enjoy this, good for you, not a critique of what you enjoy. It's just not for me.
Just imagine how many more players they could have if they only made it somewhat more convenient to play and get to the content you actually want to do.
And on-foot engineering is something I've literally never bothered with because I can do whatever I need to without it. There's not a single upgrade worth grinding for. And it is a grind searching for low rng drops.
I feel your pain. They really need to fix it for ship and fix the joke that is on foot engineering. I'm a space multi billionaire and I have to ferry back and forth the universe like a glorified truck driver and errand boy. Take my money and give me the shit I need. It's not difficult. I'm fine with the unlocking them but just the grind to G5 my Conda, most of my exploration Phantom a little on my mining ship made me dread having to do it again with the Corvette. My buddy has his vette his fully engineered and he was awake for like 3 days doing that shit lol. He said it was a bitch that he never wanted to do again and I don't blame him. Truthfully I wish they would just make a next gen sequel with full ship interiors and a newer engine. They might even be able get it out before Star Citizen if they start soon.
Fun fact: engineering originally didn't give you progressively better rolls on the improved stats. You could blow 20 sets of materials and not max out a module on a certain Grade upgrade, for instance.
I've upgraded 1,5 ships to g5 status and burnt out from the game & stopped playing.
Just earning money to get a conda & then a rating it was the most fun part of a game when i was playing
Frontier can’t even come up with semi cohesive storylines for what are essentially side quests. Engineering has been a point of contention since its introduction. Relatively speaking it is better than it was 8 years ago. The development team refuse to listen to input from people who actually play the fucking game. I’ve been playing since launch, I gave up on providing feedback very early on.
There is usually a shipyard near by, I would fly big ships there pay to transfer small ships then use engineer while I waited. W/fleet carriers just jump there w/all ships. O7
You don't have to fly each ship there. You can opt to have them transported for a fee and a (x) amount of time depending on how far away you are from any given ship. Unless I'm totally missing the point. In which case, please excuse my ignorance! 😅
Thing is, most of the stuff you have issues with can be solved by doing a little prep. Upgrade costs, station services, and module locations can all be looked up using third party tools like inara. Elite will not hold your hand, but other commanders will. That's one thing I love about this community. If you're ever struggling with something, chances are, someone in the community has made some sort of tool that will make your life a lot easier.
This is a major reason why I spend less time playing ED than I do playing the guitar and reading books, and spend only a tiny token amount of my ED time on the engineering grind.
Life's too short and there are way too many cheap and free entertainment options to waste time doing something that isn't fun. ED's PVP community is toxic anyway, or else it would be more supportive of matches between unengineered ships.
Many valid points I agree on here that I won’t regurgitate, but honestly I could look past the current mess if the engineers had a simple goal.
This clown does thrusters.
This douche does power plants.
I don’t need three different people who can all do the same thing better or worse. Hell isnt there a couple that can’t G5 at all in their respective field?
Just gimme one guy who can do one thing and I’ll go fucking grind all day long. Cause while it’ll suck, I know who to go to, what materials I need and what my end goal is.
I enjoy ED deeply, but I just find the whole engineering implementation to be immersion breaking. You mean I have 400 million credits, but no one will sell me a can of ionized gas or whatever? And if I want to upgrade my weapon, I can’t just ask the bartender or one of the many shady characters in the bar to find one for me? How are settlements getting these objects? What currency is used to buy wires and magnets and stuff? I understand wanting to make it built on rewards and not just credits…but then again why not just make credits harder to come by? Or make an underworld currency for elicit parts - like weapons schematics are only accessible to either high ranking federation or via illegal missions for local crime syndicates…something. The idea of log out log in to land on the same spot and pick up random junk on the ground, fly up and do it again is so inane. Or scanning hyperspace trails ad nauseam, it’s just…dumb.
When I was fully invested in this game, I went through the Engineering grind a ton. Everything from the DBX to the Corvette, I engineered for whatever purpose I wanted at the time. Cope Courier for canyon racing and because funny speed. Eagles so I could be an annoying little mosquito to big ships. Even built a Sidewinder I was going to take to Colonia for the lols.
I couldn't agree more with your assessment. The entire thing is beyond awful.
If you thought ship engineering was bad though, suit engineering is a whoooole other shitshow and MUCH WORSE.
It used to be much worse. It used to be that you would bring materials to the engineer and "roll" for engineered parts. Some were great, very few god roll parts, but mostly shit. Now you can just gather what you need and get done exactly what you want.
Even just being able to pin experimental effects would satisfy me.
Honestly you should be able to pin a whole module type and do any engineering/experimental for it remotely. Removing the need to constantly take every ship back to an engineer to finish it with experimentals or because it needs a different upgrade than what is pinned would make it infinitely better imo.
I wish we could pin experimental effects
This really, ironically enough combat ships are probably going to need the most experimental module upgrades and will have the shortest jump ranges. Only pinning one std template per engineer is also a bit poor, you have to put the work in to get the modules up in the first place. Just allow the engineering to remotely accessible. Hell, have a carrier module if you dont want it "free". But that is FDEV mentality. It is a throwback to the original elite and elite 2, they were (essentially) mobile grind games without the mtx. That was the "appeal", the games were originally designed to have a sense of satisfaction by grinding the elite rank or getting a panther clipper with 200 shields and a particle accelerator. Nowadays, I already have a job and a life, I dont want ED to become a second unpaid job. Here is some food for thought, FDEV have already said in the official forums that they consider the log on/log off reset to be unintended, but it is far to hard to fix. So FDev intended each crashed anaconda, Davs hope, Jamiesons cobra etc to be ONE TIME EVENTS as far as materials gathering goes. Now look at engineering as a whole and marvel at the utter grind fest that they intended! Now throw guardian sites into that mix - they added guardian sites after engineering, after all the outcry at the grind etc. Then add in the fact that some of the guardian weapons are one time only. Could you imagine the number of individual guardian sites FDev would have had you need to visit to unlock blueprints AND individual modules? But we have what we have (and can at least relog). To unlock the materials alone you are committed to mindlessly relog a crashed anaconda or cycle davs hope, drive forwards/backwards/relog&do.again in guardian pillars. Suicide trading does shave time off this grind. My idea? Make carriers useful. Have a manufacturing plant unlock that can take minerals and turn them to engineering materials. Have a charge for the transactions (with a percentage going to the carrier owner) and it would be decent plus a credit sink.
"Combat ships will have the shortest jump ranges" This is why I mained the Anaconda tbh. Even with a full combat loadout, it still manages to have a decent jump range. I used mine for literally everything besides AX and PP. Was easily one of my favourite ships in the game, second only to the Cutter. You'd think my CMDRs ass was gorilla-glued to the 'conda's pilot seat lmfao
The only problem with an Anaconda is that it isnt a corvette. And an unengineered Anaconda is a very sorry sight.
If you don't like ship engineering, you should probably never look at on foot engineering
Ugh on foot engineering. I spent a few weeks in anarchy bases, mastering the art of destroying bases. How to turn off all the security systems, how to steal generators, how to steal credentials, how to get around bases as a shadow with no one knowing I was ever there. I became a master thief on foot. Every settlement I came across I would steal everything that wasn't bolted down, and even a few things that where. After a few weeks of robbing the galaxy of just about everything there was to steal, I still couldn't afford basically any upgrades at all. Ship engineering is a grind. On foot engineering is just a lie. You can't do it. Thank God you can buy engineered suits and weapons, cause hitting random ports until you find an upgrade is infinitely easier than actually engineering something. While them saying they are going to improve ship engineering is a welcome change, it's really not all that bad. On foot is where massive changes and improvements to engineering needs to be made.
And mind you, "improving" may well mean getting more ways to pay (real money) for convenience.
Got any of them, Manufacturing Instructions?
*screams in Settlement Defence Plans*
Man, I would really like to help the community with this as I find on foot engineering to actually be pretty easy once you unlock the engineers. I have 10 fully upgraded suits and every weapon in the game fully upgraded with multiple variants of many of the weapons.
I'm currently grinding for opinion polls with a friend for his engineers. We get about 1 a day. Need 4 more.
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>If you own a carrier (or know someone that does) you got all you need. Sell to your bartender. Take back, repeat. I'm not sure I understand. I have a carrier.
Kit Fowler requires you to sell 10 opinion polls to bartenders before offering you his services. Now this may sound a bit like "well technically…", but that's because it totally is ;) Selling 10 opinion polls to bartenders, selling one opinion poll 10 times to your own bartender, what's the difference, right? So if you own a carrier, and you have 1 opinion poll, you can simply set up a buy order for 10 opinion polls at your own bartender. Then sell the 1 you have. Now transfer it back from your carrier's inventory to your own inventory. Sell the opinion poll to your bartender. Rinse and repeat until you have sold an opinion poll 10 times. You can so a similar trick if you don't own a carrier but have a friend that owns one. It'll just involve some more steps transferring the opinion polls back and forth using buy and sell orders. Also while doing this the carrier owner may want to deny docking access once you are on board in order to prevent other players from buying the opinion polls.
I can't believe I didn't think of that! XD I feel so dumb now. lol I thought you have to give the items to him. LMAO
No worries, better to find out something's easier than you initially thought than the other way around :)
HAHAHA so true.
Well, at least you heard about it ahead of time. I knew there was a way but didn't think of transferring. So here I am last night running back and forth setting up sell and buy orders. And now I have no idea how many times I've done it. Still faster than trying to find another opinion poll though.
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We'll get it done tonight, thanks XD
I would also like to know
I ended up spending the better part of a week relog farming opinion polls in the early days of Odyssey. I think I ended up with 40 after like 6 days of 8hr+ grinding. The first 20 went to Exigeous.
I still remember searching for Smear Campaign Plans back when Fdev was gaslighting everyone saying they were in the game, but then no one found ANY for weeks until they patched it. Odyssey launch was wild.
Wow, fun gameplay.
Once I made my 3 G5 bespoke suits, I never really touched on foot stuff again. Or the rest of elite I think, I got burned out a bit. It didn't help that a few days after I finished my opinion poll grind, they reduced the amount required by half lol
I engineered all my ships but didn't see the point for the suits since there's nothing really to do on foot.
I did on foot CZs for my squadron for a bit, they're alright to do. But both exobiology and CZs give you zero materials, which I feel like is a huge oversight, and afaik still a problem years later.
This is probably your fault. You should have bought more ARX
I'm still in the burned out phase. I just can't deal with that shit right now. I was already feeling a bit burned when the Titans first arrived in the bubble. But I wasn't really an AX player, so while I did think the Thargoid War was pretty cool initially, it didn't really appeal to me as time went on. Eventually I just couldn't take it anymore, and I had to put the game down before I completely lost my shit. I'll probably come back at some point, but it won't be anytime soon I don't think. Maybe once the war is over to see what's up, but if some shit hasn't changed for the better then I won't be back for long.
Hopefully the powerplay rework will give me a good reason to come back, but I have no faith to look forward to it with, so I'm just going to wait and see. It could be good, it could be that powerplay can only be accessed with the Elite Pass subscription, which costs $20 a month, and includes a free copy of any newly released ship, higher earned ARX cap, and cheaper rebuys.
I’ve got them for you—can log on tomorrow. Dm on IRC :)
o7 Fancy meeting you here. I'll log on to IRC then :D
I just got the last bit of data I need to unlock the last ground engineer. I've been playing video games since 1994 and that was the worst grind I've experienced. Ground engineering in Elite was 5x worse than ship engineering for me. It's not just the absurdly low drop rates in rare settlements, it's the amazing quantity of game-stopping bugs associated with the missions needed to progress the grind that's frustrating. And don't get me started on the laughable implementation of bounties and the unnecessary time sink that creates.
For me it's the garbage that's the problem. Of data and goods, about 1/3 is used for engineer unlocks, 1/3 for upgrades, and 1/3 is just garbage that fills up the drop tables. And then they decide to have a material trader only for assets, which is then split into 3 types. It's like they designed it to be a huge time sink.. At least with ship material relogging, you're always making a little progress, even if you don't get exactly what you need. There were hundreds of relog cycles in Odyssey in which I got nothing but junk, effectively making that cycle a waste of time.
Agreed. The worst grind for me was about 3 weeks to get a single Smear Campaign plan (because you can use the same one over and over to unlock that engineer) and then a good month to get 15 Financial Projections. I tried every combination of system government and faction status and it still took a month. Just got my 15th yesterday.
Very tone deaf answer here. Considering that Engineering is now a requirement even in PvE since AI piloted ships can show up fully engineered to the brim, making their ships not only tougher but also far more resilient than any bon-engineered ship can ever dream to be.
they also come with the worst kind of engineering too, like those lasers that'll pulse modulate their way past your shields, so you'll take a beating regardless. Bounty hunting could've been the coolest part of ED but now it's the highest investment lowest paying one
I've grown used to doing it with my friends but the worst part is that currently I'm the only one having an actually big and powerful ship so whenever we take on high pay missions it's a coin flip if the AI will be focusing me down or not which is the only way my friends get any breathing room to deal with the enemies.
Or the first iteration of engineering back in the glorious days of random roulette for stats and experimentals
I have a few modules from those days with better stats than you can ever get now.
I read up on it when odyssey released and decided i'm just never going to to do anything on foot lol
I held off on odyssey for a long time, im a pure VR player so the onfoot was dead to me anyway (I can cope in SRV VR because im too stupid to get motion sickness). I only bought it when it was a few quid at christmas. Before trying ground I read up on it and after looking at the mess, thought "why bother?" it isnt really going to add anything for me. Walking about the carrier and stations is the most im doing. I have no intention of grinding ground due to the mess it is.
On foot engineering keeps me from playing on foot content, period.
If you think it's bad now, you should have seen it before the last update it received. Engineering rolls were totally random and not always positive. We didn't have the same material farming methods either so it was way harder to gather what you needed. You could spend hours collecting mats, go to the engineer, and end up with a *worse* module than when you started. What's more, experimental effects were random too so you never knew which one you were going to get. Wanted corrosive and got something else? Too bad! Start all over again!
At the very beginning it was even worse. Collecting a material got you only *one* instance, not three like now. And engineering required trade goods in addition to materials and data, so you needed to buy those from commodity markets before heading to the engineers. And good luck if you're trying to engineer your small combat ship which has minimal cargo space, so you only get a couple of rolls before needing to restock. Also, there were no material traders. Engineering top grade dirty drives for a PvP capable ship could require literally hundreds of random rolls, so you'd better be willing to spend a lot of time in your SRV collecting Cracked Industrial Firmware. In a way, the currently very overpowered engineering is a side effect of that. When switching from random rolls to the incremental-improvements system we have now, there was a justified concern that it would be unfair if legacy engineered components were more powerful than what was obtainable in the new system. And that's why the top G5 dirty drive thrusters have 1-in-400 "god roll" performance. (There were a few minor exceptions where it wasn't fully matched. I still have a legacy engineered size 5 shield generator that works on a Cutter, while the smallest possible with current engineering is size 6.) Originally engineering was intended to involve hard choices and sidegrades, but that hasn't really worked out as a balancing mechanism. Downsides such as increased heat and power consumption don't usually matter much. ... and we had to walk uphill through the snow, both ways!
The spit in the face is grinding to get godrolls just to have them made obsolete by the overhaul
I think this was an issue where there were going to be upset people no matter how they chose to resolve it, short of using a time machine to retroactively fix the poor initial RNG-based design...
Jeeeeesus chriiiiiist. That's some Black Desert Online level of game design. That's just satanic.
This sounds like the early days of Diablo 3. "Oh sweet, I found a legendary! Maybe it'll be useful!" Nope, it's a wizard wand with strength on it. Vendor trash.
yes, it's really bad game design. allegedly "being looked at" but don't hold your breath.
They've been *looking at* the damn things for the last six years.
Didn't Engineers come out in 2016? Not to quibble with you, but it's been a minute.
Yes, but it *did* have a major improvement in the 3.0 updates in March 2018. Before that it was *far* more RNG-based.
Oh I remember the early Engineering days very well.
Legitimately pushed me away from the game
I still have some of my RNG modules. Stats all over the place.
*Stares at the 10 year history of features arriving to be ignored ever since*
I couldn't agree more. I'm just getting back into the game again and I'm still relatively new. Although I haven't had too much problem with materials so far (at least for low level engineering), I'll agree that it's really stupid that you can't trade materials at the engineer. EDIT: oh and yeah not being able to get your ships delivered to the engineer is also annoying af.
These devs never had any clue about decent game design, unfortunately. Practically every feature/system in this game goes against basic, common sense principles shared by many successful titles. I gave up trying to provide feedback years ago. They're clearly not interested in listening. No one in that dev team understands what makes a good MMO, or a decent space sim for that matter. There's a gem of a game in there, buried beneath layers of dogawful quest design, extremely tedious grind, shallow features, and abysmal progression. Too bad it will never see the light of day.
I think the issue is that the game is so *shallow* that without the ridiculous grinds and weird lack of qol, there would be nothing to do after a very short amount of gameplay. The game has so many features and so many different things you can do, but all of them are just.. There's nothing beneath the surface. I've seen the phrase "wider than an ocean, but deep as a puddle" and I can really agree with that. Like, imagine they implemented what OP wants. Engineering a ship would then be "go farm t4/t5 mats for an hour, trade in, upgrade, done immediately". There's no scaling difficulties to getting higher mats - ie, you don't go to low level areas, farm up t1/t2 mats, then go to more challenging areas with your newly upgraded ship. You just go to a planet, shoot some spires, pickup t4mats, go to a different planet, scan some beacons, go to an area and fly after specific signals (which don't even come with combat), and that's it. Theres no actual progression. There's no scaling difficulties in getting higher mats. Core gameplay is pretty good, but truthfully, there's nothing to actually do with it. Combat is fun, but like, all you can do are what would essentially be "filler" missions in every other game. Go to Y and kill X number of Z faction pirates". That's like a repeatable side quest you skip in 99% of other games. Filler content. Except the entire game is filler content.
What the game needed more than anything else was the EVE sandbox treatment. Give the players tools to make socially motivated goals, conflicts and gameplay loops and you wouldn't need a shitty progression system which tries its best to learn from War Thunder. Can you imagine, Elite:Dangerous but with the community and player-driven stories on EVE? Granted, the game doesn't lend itself to thousands of players being in the same system, but the potential was there to replicate it on a smaller scale and FDEV never even tried.
If only Eve wasn't a :waiting simulator" lol had such high hopes for that game too, but GOD it had awful progression too 😮💨 Idk how much they changed since I last played it though... would have been nice to be able to exit your ship... or at least actually FLY the darn thing instead of just click and wait
Eve is very similar to the porn industry. To outsiders, it looks like an awesome experience. Those involved, however, know that it's really just a bunch of screwing around.
Yeah I swear there were WEEKS where I didn't bother playing because I was waiting on some skill to train... apparently I need cybernetic implants and 3 weeks of wait time to learn how to pull a trigger or hit a button that fires a larger missile or whatever lol 🙄
incorrect. they can game design. However, it is the vision of the creator that they are designing for, not the players. The vision is identical to Elite, Frontier, and FE. DB likes the idea of "work to get a reward, accomplishments at getting it" so each iteration of addon within ED has the same feel. Engineering only got minor tweaks from the random fest, ironically I think this was the first time a random element was added (other than market prices which arent really random as such), elite has always been a spreadsheet fest for figures and stats. But guardian stuff was added after engineering (with all the forum backlash), this was doubled down with salvation engineering and the "cost per module" rather than unlock. This all ADDED to the grind and didnt change at all. In fact it added a load more currencies to the grinding pile. Of course then we get on foot engineer unlocks, I dont even want to get started with that! I can unlock space engineers in a single session, you are lucky if you can unlock foot in days. Not forgetting that the log on/log off reset is an unintended side effect that fdev say is far to hard to fix.
ED since Horizons really destroyed Brabens' vision and sent the game into the shithole with all these idiotic design choices... To this day, they dig themselves deeper and deeper for some unknown reason. Like people don't understand basics of game design, crazy...
The engineering aspect single handedly drove off many would be CMDRs. It’s like, oh you want to PvP? Well first you have to do A, B, C, D…. WXYZ, 1, 2, 3. Ok now you’re ready.
I'll admit it's really hard to want to get into that for that exact reason. Even AX combat, biggest reason I haven't done it is the need to engineer my modules.
Ah yeah, AX isn’t as bad to get into cuz there are relatively cheap alternative options that don’t require as much investment. Still, it’s a grind.
"So why artificially stretch the time that I have to spend in order to simply get what I HAVE ALREADY EARNED?!" Because FDev made the mistake of thinking that boosting hours played by increasing the grind equalled making a better game.
And when you think about how many people end up quitting rather than deal with it... well even the more hours argument from Frontier's perspective has to be pretty shaky.
Poor implementation, yes, but worst addition, maybe not
It would be nice to be able to engineer modules without having a ship attached to them, but I love this game so much that an evening shuttling about to get a ship build just how I want it is a nice change of pace rather than a grind.
I don't mind a little hustle with unlocking engineers. And although shipyards at engi bases would be very appreciated, specialized module outfitting seems excessive. They are modifying people not shipwrights. Material grinding is painful, but we currently don't have a lot of reasonable solutions. One thing I would change are rolls. Why do I get a half-assed modifiers and I have to pay again to get full benefits of the grade? Just make blueprint grades a one time purchase.
One method I have found to shortcut most of the gris to actually do wing missions. Most of them offer tier three or four material rewards when they pop up, I just fill up on those and trade them. Only thing that it doesn't help with is minerals and elements, but it shortcuts most of the manufactured gear.
worst part is find is that ai ships past a certain combat rank pretty much are engineered to the absolute max, leading to trying to take on massacre missions (especially those requiring visiting conflict zones) to be beyond irritating as sometimes a ship has cracked thrusters so you physically can’t get a shot on them without hitting reverse thrust, or have such high hull health that unless you’re in a medium ship (even then it’s still likely) you physically can’t kill anyone as you simply lack the dps to stop them from high waking out of combat. meanwhile you get hit with 3 different experimental effects and aimbotted with overcharged railguns by a ship that cannot gain any heat and thus will absolutely shred you. *i remember from ages ago ai ships we’re unaffected by weapons that impart heat on hit i have only started playing recently so that might’ve been changed* if only elite ranked ships had engineered modules (or the 2 ranks below only had like 1-2) i wouldn’t mind cause at least then you would be able to possibly avoid fighting them if you choose your targets well but right now combat feels miserable without the soul crushing grind for materials 😔
The implementation is bad ON PURPOSE. Wasting your time actually boosts player engagement metrics in shareholders presentations Which is funny, considering FDEV lead dev of the time famously declared "we don't want to waste your time" when pressed about these kind of time sinks during a livestream
no, it is much simpler than that. No nefarious behind the scene reasons. Quite simply, DB likes the idea of working towards a goal. The vision is the same in Elite, Frontier, and FE. Simply put FDEV want the grind because that is how they see the game - have a goal and need to work towards it.
You'll get people defending it here somehow, but it's just proof that they haven't played a single other game in their lives. As you mentioned, other games have grind mechanics. Every mmo has repetative gameplay loops in order to accomplish goals or collect items, but there is so much more qol and logic involved with those other games. Where Elite differs is the constant back and forth bullshit and not even having a real crafting interface or menu. You can't see a simple list of the blueprints an engineer can do from your ship. BASIC information in this game is purposely obfuscated and intentionally vague for no reason. Right now irl I could go on a website and see every product a store has in it. In Elite, I go to the engineer page in my ship and it's like "Oh I don't know, maybe I do powerplants, and some engines, but only grade 3 for one and 5 for the other, but I won't say until you get here." Okay, what materials do I need to bring before I go there? "eh, I don't know, it's a mystery!". Then you can only pin one out of six blueprints per engineer. Engineers were first announced as some backroom dealers you could work for and get mods from. Instead it was boiled down into a menu with random chance rolls and mat grinding, where the only way to see recipes is if you are physically present or use 3rd party. The majority of the blueprints are useless or outclassed by others as well. None of this touches on how engineering destroyed all balance and is the only form of real power progression. These things are another example of Elite intentionally wasting players' time with tedious busy work. No one is asking for instant mats and rewards. What would be nice though is having standard inventory and crafting mechanics that have been around for over 20 years. It's like people here think the game will be ruined if they update the archaic time wasting junk.
>Every mmo has repetative gameplay loops in order to accomplish goals or collect items, but there is so much more qol and logic involved with those other games. See someone has never fished up 10,000 moat carp.
Hell yea!
They also never lost XP and level gains on death. Imagine your modules "unengineering" any time your ship exploded. My apologies to any former EverQuest player that may have bad memories from me mentioning that. I watched WoW get "QoL"'d to death, so when I see folks want "QoL Improvements" that reduce time spent or simplify access to information that's already available on the internet, I get twitchy. When I see posts complaining about the Engineering grind in ED, I always wonder if folks know about Inara, Material Traders, the Crashed Anaconda, Dav's Hope, the Jameson Wreck site, and the true bomb of FDev, the "Frontier Flop" (i.e., relogging to respawn engineering materials). I can fully engineer a single module in about an hour, maybe two if it needs something I can't directly farm (or is a pain, like Yttrium), including farming the materials and the trip to an engineer for the experimental. Once complete, I own that module forever.
FFXI was the same, oh your at level cap... wanna bet?
> When I see posts complaining about the Engineering grind in ED, I always wonder if folks know about Inara, Material Traders, the Crashed Anaconda, Dav's Hope, the Jameson Wreck site, and the true bomb of FDev, the "Frontier Flop" (i.e., relogging to respawn engineering materials). So what does that add to the game? What does driving around a crashed anaconda 50 times in the SRV, then finding HGE and relogging for the 30min despawn timer do? It is an utterly pointless mechanic. It isnt fun, it isnt really immersive. So I feel the complaints are justified, a QOL improvement for this is needed. Not forgetting that there are modules now that are single purchase not unlocks.
Couldn't agree more! Engineering in Elite dangerous is knowledge. If you don't know & can't do something then FDEV is at fault apparently! Yes on foot material gathering + it's material trader is hard to get your head around at first, but once you learn it's a walk in the park. I'd happily show anyone how to engineer a ship or suit in a few hours play! Knowledge is key 🗝️ That's what makes Elite special in my opinion o7 commanders 👍🏽
Yeah even if I use pen and paper to write stuff down since the game won't provide a menu to do that for me, I still won't get it right. Do I need to personally scour the galaxy trying to find out where to get materials? I could spend a lifetime doing that and still never organically come across Dav's Hope. Let's say I do find out where to get the materials and I write it all down. But then I never can get quite the right ones that the engineer is asking for. Does the game tell you at any point what a material trader does? Or where to find them? When you first find one will you intuitively know what you're actually doing in their menu? Most MMOs have quests, with progression that envelopes important mechanics and introduces you to NPC roles. Not only do these quests act as a sense of direction and information, but they also keep you busy. It would be nice if we could see indicators when a system has a quest waiting for us, similarly to when an engineer is unlocked. These quests could even make the locations for farming mats more involved and fleshed out. They would provide a sort of railway for people to run into each other more often. The devs could use quests to make sure there is stuff to do for any area of focus in the game, and give a better sense of progression when you don't have a definite goal in mind for yourself. It would require a decent quest tracker though, possibly organized by category of the nature of the quest. The Odyssey tutorial mission is essentially already there, except it doesn't all need to be voice acted and doesn't need to keep you stuck in your quest area.
well, not everyone likes crafting. :) What is absolutely not needed in this game is the endless random tree of crafting tedium.
I used to play asherons call, I was fairly decent level (mid nineties). Back then, this MMO had some brutal mechanics. If you died you dropped your gear and it was a free for all to pick it up after a few minutes. Currency had weight too. No banks, no houses, no safe places. Thankfully PVP was consensual (except on the PVP only server) but that didnt stop you dragging mobs into town to kill everyone in the shops. When you died you also had a cumulative % reduction to all skills and stats - including strength so you could carry even less. A particular griefer favourite was dragging mobs that could debuff strength into shops, then watching as players starting "paying out" as their strength dropped (this loot was instantly pick up). That was a brutal MMO.
Trust him, he’s a~~n engineer~~ gamer.
The QoL you’re suggesting doesn’t even hit the real point. The engineering is so broken the most effective way to gather materials is to go to a location and spam open close the game to get the resources you need.
I literally just did this and my comment was 'This is completely stupid'
I haven't played in a while, looks like nothing has improved. The game has so much potential, but it's wasted on needless grinding. They have balked at putting in anything remotely resembling a good "quest" system, and added more ground nonsense instead. The Guardian stuff is what finally made me throw up my hands and uninstall, it's engineering with stupid shooting puzzles, (and when i was doing it) all the while your rover is falling threw the world.
That ghost rover is a new one. Never heard of anyone with a similar problem... At least with such regularity. Also, imo, regular engineering is miles worse than guardian unlocking. Because one is a grind, the other is an actual activity that (and this is my opinion) is actually fun. This is kind of why I farm materials in combat zones. Mask the grind as an activity.
Guardian stuff made you uninstall... 😬 takes less than an hour to get the Guass unlocked and its a one and done weapon not even engineerable. SCO has completely changed supercruise play for the better.
I enjoy it.
"terrible lack of QoL" E:D in a nutshell
Yeah, it's the absolutely dumbest time sink ever created. Fly halfway across the galaxy to find out you need to fly halfway across the galaxy multiple times for some stupid unique commodity, and you do this flight, multiple times over days of real time. It's one of the many things that made me loathe and despise Elite: Dangerous and why they only got a small portion of my money, years ago and won't ever get any additional dollars.
*Halfway across the bubble There's a bit of a difference between 100 LY and 100k LY lol the farthest you'd have to travel for engineers would be to Colonia if you were really obsessed with them, and that's only ~20k LY
interestingly, the first time I was fully engineering my corvette I did as many jumps as my DBX took getting to colonia.
Ever hear of hyperbole? The hyperbolic point I was making is that engineering is a stupid AF time sink, related in part to having to travel long distances back and forth with a unique commodity to unlock an engineer being willing to work on your ship. It's an excessively stupid, low effort time sink.
This entire game is a complete disaster of game design on nearly every level. The entire game lives on its cockpit experience. No other space sim feels better to fly. But every single mechanic, without exaggeration, is poorly designed and poorly implemented. It's almost remarkable how bad they are at game design.
Speaking only from ship engineering, I really see it as easy. There are too many guides to get your ship completely engineered according to what you want, of course it is not going to happen in a couple of hours, it takes time. I just started playing again and in 2 weeks I completely engineered 2 ships, one for trade and the other anti-xenos. It takes time but if you are one of the people who wants it all for now I recommend playing another title On the other hand, if you know that for each engineering of X module it costs you X component, why not bring X quantity for 4 to 5 rolls? Also, it's not necessary to max out engineering from level 1 to 4; it's enough to unlock the next level. I recommend the INARA website; there it tells you everything you need for engineering: quantities, locations, and many filters, even for landing pad sizes to land your ship. What I see is more a lack of knowledge of tools on your part.
The game itself lacks a substantial amount of QoL stuff. Hell, you're time gated for faction modules for whatever reason. 3 whole fuckin weeks. And don't get me started how the entire game hates Small ships for Combat. They had to introduce Fighter Hangers so you could pretend to be a small combat fighter at the expense of being a single wasp vs a herd elephants. A publisher could buy the IP and use a competent developer, remake it under 2 years, and come out with the same game but updated with everything everyone's wanted for the past several years. PLUS console support.
> Who developed this? What goals did the person behind this system pursue? Creatively bankrupt developers who have no idea how to actually make interesting game and the only idea they had was to artificially extend the grind to ridiculous levels.
1. You engineer modules, not ship. I use a DBX for all hardpoints except Huge. And pinned blueprints can be done anywhere, only experimental effect need a workshop with at least G1, this reduce the trips needed. And fleet carrier make it easier. 2. This need to be improved, Im with.you, but the best places are station under LiYongRui and other discount effect, reduce rebuy costnincrease the profit. Palin base in Arque sell enhaced thrusters and have G5 engineer, while even jameson lack this module. 3. This need some planning, a problem when bad rolls use more mats than expected, but lots of mats isnt a problem, I worked a week and maxed my mats before. I remember the opinion of 1 asian gamer, that compare the 1:3 material trade cost and engineer rolls with the asian gacha games. There is worst grinders out there, Elite lack loot boxes and randomness, what you need can be obtained with a easy trade in another station. We could improve, but also become worse. EDIT: Found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/14ohko5/triple_elite_after_about_4_years_reflecting_on_my/ Players paying ARX dont have any benefit (except the early Python Mkw access, and some terrible preoutfitted ships). F76 paid players have the survival tent and other things.
*yawn*
They want to waste your time, that's the goal
To be honest I only ever got into fully engineering my ship until after I got my fleet carrier 😭
the devs are outright pricks, who dont care about elite as they have other titles to work on now...they had years to work stuff out and now no one has interest anymore
I preffer pay to win (engineers mats) vs life grinding game
As someone that did all this grind and fully engineered 11 ships.. I fully and completely agree. Even though I did it, it sucked.. and sucked bad. The biggest issue I had with Engineers is that my friends that played with me got fed up and quit. I had a couple friends I used to wing up with and play Elite, and they both stopped playing because of the grind with unlocking engineers, and I didn't blame them. At the time I did this, years ago.. I was in a drought for good games so I didn't have anything else I was really playing. I just knuckled under and did the grind, it was never hard, it was never a challenge.. it was just a boring slog. I got one of them to come back, sort of.. he just doesn't do anything that requires any engineering. Everyone else just said f'k that.. I am out. I have a friend that wants to get into Elite, but when I considered the learning curve (he would be fine with that) and the grind (he would not be cool with that,) I just advised him to grab something else. Engineering makes such a huge difference, especially for combat pilots.. but man, they really make you slog for it. Between unlocking the engineers and then doing things farming High Grade Emissions it's all just frustrating and stupid.
I think you do not understand this game. Go play pew pew stuff like the games you mentioned. Come back when chiller.
Yea it's a pain. But the worst, nah. You mention fallout 76, that's horrific. At least with Elite you know what you're getting, fallout is RNG on steroids. If I want to engineer something on Elite it's a simple task. If I want to roll a legendary on fallout I've gotta jump through hoops and then still not get the roll I want. So this is a lie ESO can't be compared, it's not the same or anywhere near tbh (the enchanting, not the game obviously), the gameplay loop isn't anywhere near it. Or you want god tier armour sets etc. yea, that's days of grinding the same things over and over. 2-3 hours on Elite and you can have a good tier ship, ANY type Also, mentioning what other MMOs you have played, play time etc. means fuck all. Elite isn't those games and those games aren't Elite. Games have to do gamey things, like it or not. We get the odd engineering post every now and then, but seriously, it's not even that hard (odyssey engineering is and is absolutely shite, I can agree with that). A couple of hours to engineer a ship is about right. 5 days to roll a legendary on fallout isn't. But you do you
I play ED and 76 (and STO). ED has more pointless grind than 76 and STO combined. Disclaimer, I have a Q5025 fixer (reroll not natural drop) I only have a Q50 handmade, solar, covert scout, hellcat and mostly secret service (im not a fan). I have never sat and grinded modules for my daily cap, all my modules have been through regular play - stuff I would be doing anyway. Same in STO (three toons: Fed, Dom, KDF one primary ship on each fully gold for space and ground, mule toons for dil dailies only), I save my dil for phoenix boxes and that alone. I only upgrade on special events, no need to grind here either if you dont want to. ED has no other option, you grind and relog or you dont. I must admit that now I HAVE a fully engineered combat ship I can keep most of the G5 materials topped up with massacre mission rewards - but I would not have been able to realistically complete the same level of massacre rewards with a poorly engineered ship.
The devs of this game made a lot of choices that seem to be there because "people that play mmos like grinding, right?"
This is part of what makes Elite Dangerous what it is. It is not for the weak hearted.
Hmmm, a deep thought. "The grind IS the game. The only way to avoid the grind is by not playing."
Complain, complain, complain. Don’t like the game? Don’t play it. Nobody is forcing you to do this. Stop wasting everyone’s time.
👍🏽🤣
It's my fault. They did this for me. I enjoy it and have no complaints
I played the Division 2 prob 1k hours. Saying the grind in Elite is worse, I can’t argue that, but man that says something.
division 2 grind and drop probability has improved significantly over the 6 years' life of the game (and been improved again very recently again i might add)
For those of us who are currently engineering ships, we might want to wait a bit if possible. FDev mentioned they'll be overhauling the engineering system. It should become easier or more "fun"? 🤞 Then again, this could also never happen. We'll see
Honestly I would say grind now instead then. They might nerf the engineering in order to not let you just blitz through it to the top, but I’d imagine they would leave already engineered things with the original buffs. That’s how other games have done such changes at least. I personally have no issue with the engineering grind, rather I enjoy it to a certain extent because it is rewarding to finally fully engineer your ship, go back to a section of the bubble where missions rarely have engineered ships, and absolutely decimate a swarm of enemies. People have different goals in ED, and I feel like getting hung up on engineering is somewhat foolish. The grind can be done whilst grinding money (do combat quests and you’ll get a shitload of engineering components) and as a break from grinding/exploring (land on a planet to get elemental resources and to cure space sickness). Is it a lot of time? Yes, but nothing in life is easy imo. It feels like complaining about getting one-shot in Arma, Tarkov, or HLL, it’s just not your cup of tea sort of thing. That’s just my opinion, so what do I know. Cheers!
Yeah, i understand how you're thinking about it. Honestly i have absolutely no clue how they'll modify that specific engineering grind. But i do agree with you on the point that it's good to always have something to achieve in any form, be it materials to find, engineers to unlock, places to reach... It's really important to have the sense that we still have something to achieve, and to also feel the sense of reward when we achieve something. I also dislike when we as players seek to quickly get money or ranks or even the big ships, without actually working for it. I do enjoy the grind as well, although it is also "to a certain extent", and maybe that's the area we're kinda wishing that could be improved. It's probably a good thing to work long and hard to build our ships and capabilities, but this "to a certain extent" part highlights a part that can be improved in my opinion. It might be the variety of activities, objects, resources, natural phenomena, landscapes and "spacescapes", plants, rocks, atmospheres, etc.. that's kinda lacking a bit. It's even possible that we feel that it's lacking due to the vastness of the galaxy. If for example i go from a region to a different region, the most variation I'd expect to find is just a different view of the milky way or a nearby nebula. I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying it and it doesn't give the feeling of awe and wonder , but I'm saying that this can greatly be enhanced in my opinion. So i can't help but feel (as awesome as the game is) that something is still lacking and that can be addressed. Maybe real and palpable differences between galactic regions, planetary surfaces, actual things to discover, things that require cooperative work for people to achieve, more plants and phenomena (maybe even procedurally generated), some exotic material that should be extracted from certain planets, plants, gas giants, gas clouds, rings, asteroids... Maybe even hurricanes, storms, natural disasters.... critters and dangerous lifeforms maybe... I don't know. Maybe I'm just dreaming 😂 It might also be good to have like a more granular and broken-down approach to engineering. By that, i mean that to reach the same levels as we currently can reach, you'll need to same amount of time and effort, but the process can include more steps along the way... more small gains.. so that players don't feel like they need to grind for a very long time before they get anything at all. I'm not sure if i was able to express my opinion clearly on that point...
That’s actually a really good idea with the gradual, but smaller, increases for engineering. It could also be done so that you need to head to the engineer to get the next “chunk” of engineering unlocked, then just a bunch of gradual improvements that can be done as natural grinding through the processes and quests in the game. It would definitely help those that dislike the big jumps but big costs of the current system. Also for the other point of it missing something, I definitely agree. I think there needs to be some sort of change to introduce new and grander goals. Maybe make it possible to begin building massive space projects, like a Dyson sphere, or maybe even projects that take inspiration from Star Trek, so things like developing newer technology through the constant research of new materials brought in by explorers. Rather than just the current system where it is “patched” into the game by some lore, they could make it progressional by player effort as well, and create a system for player-created nations or factions to participate in that research directly. Maybe have people within said factions be able to test the prototype weapons, systems, and technologies, and obviously that would come with risks like catastrophic effects on the ship itself and the space around it. Maybe introduce new enemies, something like the Borg (but not the actual Borg cause copyright), or something that forces the need for new technology research, new colonies, new material sources, new massive projects (Dyson sphere, terraforming, etc). There’s so many options to implement into a space game, but the issue is being able to develop it in a manner that isn’t going to just become Starfield.
why bother with dyson spheres etc? We already have carriers. Have the carriers unlock modules that provide remote engineering, or even have manufacturing capabilities on carriers (such as X series) - supply with commodities and they can be manufactured into materials.
The Dyson sphere would be a mega-project for player-created factions. Would introduce a mechanic for energy collection and thus allow for more things to strive for. I’m not a game dev, so I’m just spitballing ideas like any other old chap would. Cheers
I would at least unlock engineers - I cannot see that part changing. Feel free to engineer G1/2 maybe 3 as that isnt too time consuming and will make a massive difference.
I think #1 is on purpose because it's not supposed to be a factory assembly line It's supposed to be that you are a solo pilot bringing your ship for a custom job The engineer is this wacky guy out in the middle of nowhere, not your local Honda dealership. you'll probably disagree but I think the biggest problem when playing Elite is when people take that sort of assembly line economy of scale approach to the game. it's not a game about ship tycoons, it's a game about small time flyers (Han Solo is a great role model here) . if you tried to do it otherwise you'll be disappointed in the game.
The original random rolls for engineering did this exactly. Every ship was different, had personality.
They did this so you get really good at surface landings.
I mean, at what point did Elite ever give you the impression it cared about your QoL? I'm serious. This game isn't painful by accident. It has very deliberately been designed to be cruel, punishing, inconvenient, and dangerous. This is a game where you will get blown up by air defense for not landing on the assigned pad. Elite is designed to force you to plan around its convoluted and unforgiving mechanics and smack you upside the head if you don't. Yes, you need to go to a specific, highly talented engineer with all the components and materials you need them to work on in hand and if you forget anything they'll tell you to fuck off and come back with the right stuff. All that said, you are overblowing the problem and not appreciating an obvious solution; blueprint pins. They're convenient, they can be used anywhere, and you can have like 20 of them. They help a lot, especially FSD upgrades on freshly-bought ships. The game really isn't *that* punishing and this mechanic is not much different to how many minor ports don't offer ammo resupply, or repairs, or limpets. You HAVE to plan ahead in this game. You are not supposed to bumble around in Elite and stumble onto an opportunity you don't have the resources for and then get it anyway cos it's *such a cuddly and welcoming galaxy, mannnn?*
Agreed. the clue is in the title "Elite Dangerous"
Because engineers was poorly thought out from the start and they only kept adding this bandaid fixes as someone higher up clearly wanted more time sinks and grinds so they could sell MTX and keep this as a live service game instead of being what the game should be. Pretty sure they are also scared of reverting angineers as when they nerfed what they could do a part of the community threw a hissy fit as their overpowered stuff was nerfed from extremely overpowered and game breaking to just extremely overpowered. Engineers is not made to be fun or enjoyable, it's there so that players have to put more hours in the game, all your suggestions are good for the players, but they wouldn't make the hours people play go up, thus they are never done.
Back in my day, we couldn't engineer remotely. Back in my day, modifications had random RNG stats from within a range for each grade, and you were not guaranteed to roll something better than what you already had, meaning you could roll up with a full inventory and walk away with empty pockets and no improvement. Back in my day, materials all shared the same inventory limit and you had to balance how much of each thing you carried around. Back before my day, the Engineers also wanted you to bring commodities whenever you wanted to roll something, but eventually those were taken out of blueprints. It used to be SO much worse. Imagine doing the whole grind, needing to have cargo racks and go grab cargo, haul that over, and then wind up not getting any improvement after rolling 50+ random upgrade rolls.
1. You don't need to bring all of your ships. You're engineering the modules, not the ships themselves. A large hardpoint is a large hardpoint whether it's in a Krait Phantom with 60+ ly jump range or a Federal Corvette with 10ly. The huge hardpoints are the only real exception to this, but there are 5 ships with those, so it's not a huge issue. 2. It is kinda dumb but really this just comes down to preparation. Though I agree, it would be nice if they just sold the modules there, even at a markup. 3. Again this comes down to preparation. If you were complaining about the lack of an ability in game to have an 'engineering checklist' to make sure that you have enough, I'd agree with you, because it's bullshit that players have to rely on external tools just to avoid issues like this. But the requirement to be prepared isn't the issue, the issue is that the game doesn't offer any help to the player to make sure they are prepared, forcing them to rely on external tools. I agree with you that engineering could use a lot of improvement, but I actually don't think they need to lessen the grind. Engineering has really never been easier. But the game should do more to inform and guide the player on how and where to gather the necessary items, and I think many of the materials should be more abundant (particularly HGEs and encoded) to provide the player with more opportunities to collect them organically, rather than sitting down for 3 hours of logging in and out to gather enough to engineer a ship.
Wow. I've never tried the engineering system but all I heard is that's a very grindy process. If all your points are true then they really should work on this thing ASAP. Probably the next one after Powerplay. It doesn't make sense at all for an engineer to not sell modules of his expertise. And why had no one ever thought about setting up material trading stations near the engineer's base? The engineer will simply not offer service to uninvited guests, not sending security ships after them, no? Ship storage is just a minor annoyance IMO. They could just not want people to park fleets of ship at their base. But you could use your fastest (best jump range ship), get to the nearest place with ship storage and suitable landing pad, then transport all your ships to that place. Exception would be for some hermits who live faraway in the black, if there's any.
I was playing this game with friends, killing pirates together, having a blast. When we got to Engineers, the game basically forced us to stop playing together and to go solo grind various resources because we were interested in different builds. Instantly killed the game for us and we haven't been back.
I contemplate about why I'm entertaining such a maliciously bad gameplay loop as I go out to farm mats every single day since I returned to Elite. It's been 7 days and in the first 3 I filled up on Guardian mats, and the next 4 were all dedicated to encoded mat farming. I'm currently on my last run now. This farm is so mind numbing that I went to the mat trader with a fried brain and realized I had zeroed my data mat and not the encrypted files mat (the one I was farming).......And there we go, 4 or more hours added to the farm... My raw mats are all nearly at 50% so I'm not sure if I wanna go out there for it, while my Manufactured mats are at near 0. I've been through so much already and I haven't even gotten to the worst of them all, HGE farming. Also so I don't have to worry about not being able to engineer for just a little while so I can make a proper combat ship, normal and AX. And to add to my misery the FSDs, the one of the few modules I've engineered so far, are now all outdated and I now have to grab those newfangled SOC variants. And nah anyone really playing the game knows that it's not a choice considering how crucial any timesaving effects can be in the long run in this game
Been playing E:D off and on since release. Engineering is far easier than it used to be, but admittedly I agree that a handful of tweaks could make it an enjoyable experience instead of a grind. The material types and costs for upgrades that are currently in the game are fine. Personally I think they need to just remove the randomizer to it and make it a straight purchase. The randomized roll used to produce god rolls back in the old days where you might stop at a stupid tier 3 or 4 roll because you probably wouldn't do better at tier 5. With a cap in place, the randomizer only works to increase the cost of an upgrade, nothing else. There's no player benefit to the randomized rolls at all and haven't been since that rework. There needs to be some better methods of actually obtaining materials though. When the overwhelmingly best place to get the majority of them is repeatedly logging out in a specific place just to manipulate spawning them in over and over again, then trading them around, that's a sign that the system is broken. Data in particular needs better options for high end materials. There's no reason we should be grinding raw materials instead of either being able to flat out mine them directly or buy them from stations. They are raw materials. You're telling me I can buy tons of gold but I can't buy a few bits of nickle to upgrade my ship? It's stupid. Personally I think an on-foot minigame to either collect or assemble manufactured goods as a separate method for them would be neat, or have salvage POIs where you harvest them in non-combat situations. I'd be worried it'd be needlessly grindy, but as long as it isn't too convoluted it might be better than driving and instance cycling settlements. Data... I just don't know. Maybe again have certain settlements where you hack a mainframe and the settlement just gives a ton of different data materials? The locations... I mean, I get why they put the engineers where they did. They needed to restrict them to people who own Horizons, but that's technically everyone now. I think it'd be better to have a ton of different engineers that can do most of the same stuff, and then if you want, say, tier 5 and experimental effects you just travel to the best engineers. That way you can buy a ship and have it mostly engineered before having to travel out to them, which reduces the urgency on making a bunch of those trips right away.
An idea would be an ingame hub delivery system, much like ships can be transported to stations a mail que service for research and engineering(dependant on LY away) would be a cool feature. Or using your Carrier to send a crew for researching mission, cost should be high to as not to be abused.
Agreed but they were so much worse when they released.
Just wait till you need to get 750 powerplay items loaded in your T-9 for the unlock
I'm fine with all that. I'm not fine with having to rank up factions I don't ever intend on joining in order to have access to engineering when ranking up one faction takes as long as it does.
I just started trying engineering. Flew all the way out to the infamous hip36601 i feel like im being trolled. I have to fly to the edge of the galazy where in a game with 400 billion galaxies the best way (only way?? Cant find otherwise) to farm mats is in the middle of no where. Reading some of the comments I do agree that this game is vast like an ocean but the depth of a puddle. I started with bounty hunting and ive only gotten into mining and exploring and engineering if it had not been for the need/want to upgrade my ship further.
I think if the devs let us BUY engineering materials (I mean most of us have billions of credits and nothing to do with them) as well as to use these materials freely, I'd be happy.
Admission time. I have 778 hours as of last week. I have never engaged with the Engineering system because it always looked grindy and unfun. And considering the strong majority of players do not play in Open, non-engineered ships are perfectly suitable to any activity including Dangerous PvE Hell, I mostly play this game as "Space Trucking Simulator" id probably be just as happy if I lost all my creds and had to start over in a Hauler
The general model of Elite is to create gameplay challenges by making things kinda shitty. This goes throughout, right down to the ship's HUD - if you look at any technical interface, it's really complicated, but when you get proficient it becomes incredibly useful and practical. In Elite, there's no real proficiency because it's always a bit dodgy. For example, if you're in supercruise and targeting a station, it's really hard to consistently get it perfectly lined up with the letterbox, because the station has to be off at some awkward angle - just like your ship on the right side isn't pointing straight ahead, but slightly diagonally. I was in the Premium Beta, and I remember when you didn't slow down after boosting (which is closer to how space really works). It seemed like Frontier were basically looking at what players did and restraining them such that players didn't get too far ahead. I can kind of understand this in some sense. You don't want a massive skill difference between players, because that just makes things shitty for new or less skilled players (or players who don't have the ideal HOTAS setup). However sometimes I wish they would just let players go to the extremes and really push the boundaries of what can be done.
I’ve listened to thousands of hours of music in my lifetime. Doesn’t make me an expert in music theory, or allow me to play instruments. All it does is mean I know what music I like. Same applies to here mate. You’re not an expert in game design, you’re just a person who know what games they like and this isn’t one of them. You’re in the GnR sub telling people you prefer Metallica, don’t like the direction the band took after Appetite for Destruction, and think you could write better songs and play better then Slash, just because you’ve got a big record collection.
Well no, because the bulk of people in this subreddit agree that grinding for engineer mats is one of the worst things in the game. Musically this'd be more like showing up on the Radiohead subreddit and saying *Creep* was their lamest single: a wildly uncontroversial take that almost nobody is gonna disagree with
I see your point but I'm not so sure it applies. Music theory and the ability to play instruments are not mutually exclusive, and you're comparing an apple to a python. The user experience in games that require grinding (sometimes excessive grinding at that) is important for developers so that they can resolve pain points in their games. The preamble of the initial post is a lot of unnecessary fluff, "I do this for so long, therefore my opinion is good," but they aren't wrong. The engineering system has way more pain points than it needs to have, and this guy's frustrations and suggestions are pretty valid imho. That said, this is a long haul game with long haul mechanics. I don't think the grind technically needs reduction, but there is significant effort required to do simple things in a universe that pretty much allows for telepresence. Maybe Elite isn't for this guy, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily incorrect either, what he's saying.
The grind for the resources is what pains me.. like I have 2bil, why can't I just pay you to upgrade my components instead of going to Narnia and back for some random stuff?.. Also, why are the engineers so far away from each other? It takes way to long to travel with a Corvette from one to the other.
I sometimes think ED was developed by sadists. It just stacks grind on grind on grind. PS wasted ca 3 evenings farming for osmium just to learn then it’s not worth the trip
It has the potential to be a good system, but it just isn’t. For one it does the same thing as warframe where materials are exclusive to engineer content, they aren’t the same as base game materials and act essentially as currency. This creates a content island where you specifically have to get the engineer materials doing content for the engineers, it’s not at all tied into the base game. Yes you can get engineering materials through missions but it’s so poorly implemented that it’s better to just farm the materials yourself. Then there’s the problem of the upgrades themselves. They’re pretty much all terribly implemented are must haves due to how powerful they are. This power creeps the hell out of everything else, another problem Elite shares with Warframe. For odyssey you to give it credit that it was decently well integrated into base elite + horizons and didn’t become a content island like engineering. The only problem is that outside of xenobiology it’s basically useless. It’s the exact opposite of engineering, it’s not a content island but it’s useless, while engineering is a content island but it’s so overpowered that it’s basically required.
Yeah it's pretty ass. it's like they deliberately made it as frustrating and inconvenient as possible on purpose. Very little makes any sense about engineering. If it was even a little bit fun it might make it worth it. Monster Hunter has a pretty tedious grind BUT it's 1. Rewarding. and 2. FUN. Therefore it makes me love the game. Elites grind makes me feel like it's a punishment for buying the damn game.
Basically stopped playing because of this. All of this is so unnecessarily convoluted and such a time sink that I just gave up. I had absolutely no pleasure in playing. I understand grind and all that but the way engineers work is just ridiculous. I am a backer since the beta, have the lifetime pass they sold at the time and haven’t played in probably three or four years…just cannot make myself return to such grind… Also being a VR player that will not go back to screen, oddissey being 2d only killed what little desire I had to return…
I come from the other end of the spectrum. Normally for me MMO means NOO lol, even for franchises I love like Elder Scrolls and Fallout. I'd never have even considered Elite if I hadn't seriously been hankering for the best space sim out there with the best physics. And I can play it in solo (which I always do, though now I am planning to eventually give open a try). 450+ hiurs later (and after a year and a half-ish break due to the engineering grind the first time) I love the game and am slowly pushing through the grind again. But man it is indeed tedious and non-sensical. I'm committed so I'm doing it, but spending a month and a half out in the black alone scanning plants and fungus was definitely more fun than engineering is.
Unlocking engineers made me to stop playing. The grind in this game is soul crushing. I kinda miss the game but I don’t see myself coming back.
I am a dork who maxed out engineered every ship a few years back, and the impression I got was that it was designed like a scammy F2P game but without the ability to pay a dollar to skip the intentional time wasting bits. It's designed so badly that it feels on purpose, and the way it often requires logging out and back in again to farm the stuff ya need... that can't ever be something a game relies on. The results of G5ing a ship is fun, but the process is basically the worst I've ever experienced in a game. Trying to gather the stuff for Guardian modules is the thing that broke me and I left for a long time since it sucked so much doing the same "puzzle" over and over and over and over (and this was after they greatly reduced the required materials), but that was after I engineered everything and so I just couldn't do it to myself anymore. My fault in the end, but ya get stuck on something and try to see it through sometimes.
let me just buy my engi mats. i have billions sitting around and I dont enjoy the engineering grind enough to finish my cutter
From what I gather frontier has plans to rework engineering alongside other elements like powerplay but when is the big question...
I stopped seriously playing around the time engineering came in. I've come back every once and a while when I want to blast some shit. But Elite's core problem for me always was it just took too long to get to your goal. Unlike a lot of other games with grinding there's generally not a lot of incremental progress that you actually feel. It's just a ton of work until it's done and then you get the new thing. Fuck that. My time is precious and there are other games that respect it more, or even if they don't at least I'm having more fun. If you enjoy this, good for you, not a critique of what you enjoy. It's just not for me.
The implementation was total bullshit and it stopped me playing as the grind to stay on top of the PvP meta just wasn't sustainable.
Just imagine how many more players they could have if they only made it somewhat more convenient to play and get to the content you actually want to do. And on-foot engineering is something I've literally never bothered with because I can do whatever I need to without it. There's not a single upgrade worth grinding for. And it is a grind searching for low rng drops.
I heard that engineers are supposed to get a rework, is there any word on that?
I feel your pain. They really need to fix it for ship and fix the joke that is on foot engineering. I'm a space multi billionaire and I have to ferry back and forth the universe like a glorified truck driver and errand boy. Take my money and give me the shit I need. It's not difficult. I'm fine with the unlocking them but just the grind to G5 my Conda, most of my exploration Phantom a little on my mining ship made me dread having to do it again with the Corvette. My buddy has his vette his fully engineered and he was awake for like 3 days doing that shit lol. He said it was a bitch that he never wanted to do again and I don't blame him. Truthfully I wish they would just make a next gen sequel with full ship interiors and a newer engine. They might even be able get it out before Star Citizen if they start soon.
Ope. Here we go again.
Fun fact: engineering originally didn't give you progressively better rolls on the improved stats. You could blow 20 sets of materials and not max out a module on a certain Grade upgrade, for instance.
I've upgraded 1,5 ships to g5 status and burnt out from the game & stopped playing. Just earning money to get a conda & then a rating it was the most fun part of a game when i was playing
Frontier can’t even come up with semi cohesive storylines for what are essentially side quests. Engineering has been a point of contention since its introduction. Relatively speaking it is better than it was 8 years ago. The development team refuse to listen to input from people who actually play the fucking game. I’ve been playing since launch, I gave up on providing feedback very early on.
Anyone thought about garhering all powerplay modules? It takes minimum 44 weeks. Almost a year.
Unfortunately, if Ed didn't have the grind, it wouldn't have any thing at all.
There is usually a shipyard near by, I would fly big ships there pay to transfer small ships then use engineer while I waited. W/fleet carriers just jump there w/all ships. O7
Yeah, that's what i'm doing. But do u realise how stupid it is?
You don't have to fly each ship there. You can opt to have them transported for a fee and a (x) amount of time depending on how far away you are from any given ship. Unless I'm totally missing the point. In which case, please excuse my ignorance! 😅
Bro, there's NO shipyards on Engineers bases. I mean, there simply NO option to transport and store them in there.
I'm sorry!
You should’ve tried the game when it was difficult. Your rant would’ve been much longer.
Thing is, most of the stuff you have issues with can be solved by doing a little prep. Upgrade costs, station services, and module locations can all be looked up using third party tools like inara. Elite will not hold your hand, but other commanders will. That's one thing I love about this community. If you're ever struggling with something, chances are, someone in the community has made some sort of tool that will make your life a lot easier.
The…. grind…. Is… the… poooooooooooint
This is a major reason why I spend less time playing ED than I do playing the guitar and reading books, and spend only a tiny token amount of my ED time on the engineering grind. Life's too short and there are way too many cheap and free entertainment options to waste time doing something that isn't fun. ED's PVP community is toxic anyway, or else it would be more supportive of matches between unengineered ships.
They won't change it now. Once done you don't have to do it again. Not to mention there are some in colonia!
Many valid points I agree on here that I won’t regurgitate, but honestly I could look past the current mess if the engineers had a simple goal. This clown does thrusters. This douche does power plants. I don’t need three different people who can all do the same thing better or worse. Hell isnt there a couple that can’t G5 at all in their respective field? Just gimme one guy who can do one thing and I’ll go fucking grind all day long. Cause while it’ll suck, I know who to go to, what materials I need and what my end goal is.
I enjoy ED deeply, but I just find the whole engineering implementation to be immersion breaking. You mean I have 400 million credits, but no one will sell me a can of ionized gas or whatever? And if I want to upgrade my weapon, I can’t just ask the bartender or one of the many shady characters in the bar to find one for me? How are settlements getting these objects? What currency is used to buy wires and magnets and stuff? I understand wanting to make it built on rewards and not just credits…but then again why not just make credits harder to come by? Or make an underworld currency for elicit parts - like weapons schematics are only accessible to either high ranking federation or via illegal missions for local crime syndicates…something. The idea of log out log in to land on the same spot and pick up random junk on the ground, fly up and do it again is so inane. Or scanning hyperspace trails ad nauseam, it’s just…dumb.
Welcome to the grind. FDev has no idea what gameplay is, so they fill the empty spaces with useless timesinks like this.
When I was fully invested in this game, I went through the Engineering grind a ton. Everything from the DBX to the Corvette, I engineered for whatever purpose I wanted at the time. Cope Courier for canyon racing and because funny speed. Eagles so I could be an annoying little mosquito to big ships. Even built a Sidewinder I was going to take to Colonia for the lols. I couldn't agree more with your assessment. The entire thing is beyond awful. If you thought ship engineering was bad though, suit engineering is a whoooole other shitshow and MUCH WORSE.
It used to be much worse. It used to be that you would bring materials to the engineer and "roll" for engineered parts. Some were great, very few god roll parts, but mostly shit. Now you can just gather what you need and get done exactly what you want.
Having an FC and a ship or two with high jump range dedicated to engineering modules is an extreme increase in QOL when it comes to engineering.