3.0 Beta

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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby Deal » Fri Jan 26, 2018 2:00 pm

Relix Typhon wrote:From what I've seen (not played the beta) the engineering has been dumbed down and there is no variance anymore.
Everyone will just end up with a stock G5 module.

It's fine for casual I suppose but it's gonna literally be a case of collecting mats and clicking generate until you have said stock improvement.


Except that casuals might have been happy with one or two G5 rolls per module and now have to roll a shit tonne of them to achieve the same effect.

So I guess that mix maxers will be unhappy that their hard RNG'd modules have no real value having lost their uniqueness, but casuals will be bitter about the new grindwall they face.

I'll see how it pans out as I haven't looked at the materials trader stuff, but at this point, I either start a mad scramble to engineer as many things as possible (I'm not even sure what I need yet - at least in terms of weapons), or suck it up and do the grind after 3.0.

I'm not particularly happy about it in either case. (just bought a second account too). If they'd added or improved gameplay surrounding materials collection I'd be more impressed.
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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby wrmiller » Fri Jan 26, 2018 3:32 pm

Relix Typhon wrote:From what I've seen (not played the beta) the engineering has been dumbed down and there is no variance anymore.
Everyone will just end up with a stock G5 module.

It's fine for casual I suppose but it's gonna literally be a case of collecting mats and clicking generate until you have said stock improvement.


Not just dumbed down. Now, when you want to engineer a module you have to go through each and every grade, which means I now need to go fetch more materials than I needed previously once a particular engineer was unlocked to G5. It won't be too bad on my existing G5 modules, but if I want to buy a new ship and outfit it I'll need every material required for G1 through G5.

And the RNG is still here. Each roll will be better than the last, true, but how much exactly is pseudo-random. Sometimes it takes 3 rolls to achieve the next grade, sometimes it takes as many as 6. And the closer you get to max, the less improvement you see with each roll. Like a capacitor charge profile. :roll:
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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby Relix Typhon » Fri Jan 26, 2018 4:00 pm

You are both correct, there is now much more process involved i ncollecting for each and every module!
I'm not a min / max-er at all but I'll miss the fact my ship isn't unique anymore and that I cant play around with upgrades because they are now always a known quantity.

And I agree although there is still an element of RNG on how long it will take you to get to the top, you will always get to the top. Just like everyone else.

Whole system just seems dumb and clicking generate enough times will give you a "new" stock

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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby Falcon_D » Fri Jan 26, 2018 4:43 pm

Actually, I’m quite liking the engineering changes. Sure it takes more mats now to engineer multiple modules. But once an FSD is engineered to top G5 long range you don’t need to try and keep rolling to get the god mode buff.
Something I noticed. When engineering my beams on my Chieftain the experimental effects stayed on from grade to grade. You don’t loose the experimental effects. Unfortunately one of the experimental effect for the beam weapon is lower weight. So you either choose thermal vent or lower the weight. On one of my current G5 efficient beams I have both thermal vent and a lower weight due to secondary effects.
Need to try more engineering. Only got to G2 on the Thrusters, FSD, etc. with the mats I had in beta.

To be honest. I never thought there was anything smart about the RNGineers anyway. The smart play of trying to balance your ship due to power, heat, speed and jump range restrictions died out when Engineers were implemented. RNGineers used to remind me of the old people I saw in casinos sitting at the jackpot machines, putting in tokens and pulling the handle and then watching the wheel spin, rinse and repeat.

Oh and I finally managed to get Filament and Compact Composites from the material trader. :)
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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby Deal » Fri Jan 26, 2018 5:32 pm

Falcon_D wrote:Actually, I’m quite liking the engineering changes. Sure it takes more mats now to engineer multiple modules. But once an FSD is engineered to top G5 long range you don’t need to try and keep rolling to get the god mode buff.

If you like it you like it, it's just that no one really needs the god rolls, gaining a god roll for 1 specific module is arguably a niche unto itself (whereas these changes affect everyone in every case, every time, irrespective of what their interests are) and perhaps more importantly, making the optimal G5 mod a deterministic proposition (in the worst case scenario) and allowing people to get their mods up to snuff in a reasonable time frame were not mutually exclusive endeavors. They just chose to do it that way.

Which is a bit sneaky, because via some minor changes, they've locked people into the game plying the same old mechanics for much longer.
AKA cheap, minimal effort game design for maximum return.

They could perfectly well have had mods <= grade 4 applied as a one shot deal, and then stretched out the 5 rolls with some kind of diminishing returns, if they wanted the optimal gear to take a certain amount of time.

(so basically, if you wanted to apply any mod up to grade 4, you just do that, but grade 5 rolls are harder to stack)

Even worse, if you decide you don't like the mod on your expensive module and want to switch to something else, you have to start from scratch. (i think. Not spent a huge amount of time with it since I had few mats on the beta server).
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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby Falcon_D » Fri Jan 26, 2018 6:47 pm

Deal wrote:
Falcon_D wrote:Actually, I’m quite liking the engineering changes. Sure it takes more mats now to engineer multiple modules. But once an FSD is engineered to top G5 long range you don’t need to try and keep rolling to get the god mode buff.

If you like it you like it, it's just that no one really needs the god rolls, gaining a god roll for 1 specific module is arguably a niche unto itself (whereas these changes affect everyone in every case, every time, irrespective of what their interests are) and perhaps more importantly, making the optimal G5 mod a deterministic proposition (in the worst case scenario) and allowing people to get their mods up to snuff in a reasonable time frame were not mutually exclusive endeavors. They just chose to do it that way.

Which is a bit sneaky, because via some minor changes, they've locked people into the game plying the same old mechanics for much longer.
AKA cheap, minimal effort game design for maximum return.

They could perfectly well have had mods <= grade 4 applied as a one shot deal, and then stretched out the 5 rolls with some kind of diminishing returns, if they wanted the optimal gear to take a certain amount of time.

(so basically, if you wanted to apply any mod up to grade 4, you just do that, but grade 5 rolls are harder to stack)

Even worse, if you decide you don't like the mod on your expensive module and want to switch to something else, you have to start from scratch. (i think. Not spent a huge amount of time with it since I had few mats on the beta server).


After playing games like GW2. I tend to appreciate the lack of RNG. In GW2 nearly all the epic weapons have the same stats, though distributed differently. But to get these weapons, armour, etc. you had to face RNGeasus.
Yup. Each individual module requires you upgrading from G1. Tried it on my 3 beams.
As I said, it’s my preference. As for everyone else, it’s up to them to judge and feed back to FDev.
BTW, I have a few god mode rolls on some of my equipment. Keep engineering the shit out of my Python. Lost count of the number of rolls on some of the modules.
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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby smartroad » Fri Jan 26, 2018 6:52 pm

I don't mind the idea of going through all the levels to unlock a grade 5 for the first time. I get what they are trying to do, that G5 shouldn't be super easy to get. What I would like is that once G5 is unlocked for one device, to get it on another you just need to roll a single roll for each of the preceding levels. Keeps with the idea that you are building on an existing "narrative", as they call it, but doesn't present a huge barrier to still be able to get up to the G5.
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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby Xebeth » Fri Jan 26, 2018 8:00 pm

I'm not sure how I feel about the Engineering changes yet, I did a bunch on the Chieftain I picked up and it didn't seem too bad, got the FSD to max pretty quickly (because I had the materials), and got a reasonable cross section of other stuff done. I like the lack of RNG and the fact that you can choose your special effect, but I can also see how it would be a pain if you were working through a fleet of ships.

Putting aside the max stats available for one moment (which they've already said they will address), I'm thinking this is about adapting game play tactics, usually, unless I'm looking for something specific, I just ignore most material, going forward (with the increased caps) I'll probably just collect everything and use the brokers to get stuff I need but don't have, but then I've always taken the approach that stuff gets Engineered when I have the stuff, and I rarely spend much time searching for it.

As for the rest of the Beta stuff - the planets are awesome, it's amazing what a bit of colour and a few tweaks to lighting can do, I like the Chieftain (looks great, sounds great, flies well), and the trading stuff is all good.

Edit: Oh yes, because it seemed to be missing from the notes initially, for all you cow traders out there

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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby Deal » Fri Jan 26, 2018 8:18 pm

Falcon_D wrote:
After playing games like GW2. I tend to appreciate the lack of RNG. In GW2 nearly all the epic weapons have the same stats, though distributed differently. But to get these weapons, armour, etc. you had to face RNGeasus.


RNG used judiciously can add a bit of value to proceedings at very little cost (in terms of development), but excessive RNG is usually abusive imo.
So yeah, I tend to think there's a balance to be had, but can't deny that it's going to be relative to people's tastes.

Falcon_D wrote:Yup. Each individual module requires you upgrading from G1. Tried it on my 3 beams.


That's not what I mean. The now mandatory grade progression [1-5] is both per module and per blueprint (I think, not checked properly I must admit). If so, then in effect, say you rank up your drive to the optimal G5 dirty, then decide you would prefer clean. Either you buy a new module and rank up clean from 1-5, thereby keeping both and not wasting your original efforts but having to redo it for clean, or you wipe the current module (perhaps you can't afford a new one) thereby losing fruits of your labour and have to re rank it as clean. Same module, different modification.

Falcon_D wrote:As I said, it’s my preference. As for everyone else, it’s up to them to judge and feed back to FDev.


I'm trying to look at how this affects everyone. It doesn't really seem legitimate to me that people who might not care about getting a god roll equivalent in every case should be forced to jump through the same mitigation that was applied to make it deterministic. Who needs god rolls on their mining ship shields? but in order to get them to an average G5 roll, you now have to play the pseudo min/max game. It's as disproportionate as it is unnecessary imo.

Just to put this into perspective, earlier I bought and rolled g5 mods on 18 shield boosters at a cost of 54 mats (3 mats per roll). Non are perfect, but they are workable. To attain the same (sub optimal) result after the patch, I might need to gather 250 or more mats (as I understand it, assuming 3 rolls per rank unlock which yields 3+6+9+9+9) and bearing in mind that some are rare, and that's before you factor in the special effects. This beta seems like an upgrade hamster sellotaped to the back of a downgrade elephant to me. (I've read that if you are unlucky, it can take as many as 6 rolls to unlock the next rank, so if you had a really bad dice day, you would need over 1200 mats for 18 modules, but in my limited experience, I've not seen it take more than 3).

But yes, if you don't raise your voice about issues that concern you, you can't really complain if nothing is changed, yet realistically, they are just not going to refactor the GUI at this point. It's a done deal imo. Changes might come in the form of data shuffling like progression probabilities and such though. The maths.

Falcon_D wrote:BTW, I have a few god mode rolls on some of my equipment. Keep engineering the shit out of my Python. Lost count of the number of rolls on some of the modules.


I'd be happy to roll the dice a few times (and have done), but only up to a point. And much depends on whether I find the underlying gameplay fun (I don't really, in this case. If everything dropped in combat, yeah, I'd be there)
In those cases, I prefer games where I can just buy someone else's god roll because I'm filthy stinking $$$ :D

NB: If my maths are wrong, please point that out. Really not happy atm.

Edit: uh, I'm crap at maths. It might be 648 rolls mats for 18 modules, not ~250. I'll let someone else figure it out though.
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Re: 3.0 Beta

Postby Relix Typhon » Fri Jan 26, 2018 9:40 pm

I'm not sure how optimised the betas usually are but how are the new planet details etc affecting CPU/GPU usage?


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