I’ve just read a post on the (I’m assuming official, it’s official right?) Elite: Dangerous reddit decrying the grindy nature of the game.

The odd thing about it though is that they missed out PowerPlay almost entirely in their analysis. The key to their argument was that they wanted bigger ships, but some of them are locked behind an artificial wall of ranking up with a Major Faction (Empire, Federation). That irks me a little, but my tactic is to accept that I’ll never fly those ships and make it part of my character. As a member of an independent power based on pseudo-communist (techno-communist?) thinking, I say that CMDR Dazirius firmly believes that anyone who would curry favour with beastly organisations such as the Empire or, to a lesser degree, the Federation, in order to access more expensive material goods is a fool and a traitor to humanity.

But that’s not why I clicked the link. I was hoping the matter of PowerPlay grind would come up. You see, it works like this:

1. Get players involved in a group. Get them so involved that their social life within the game revolves around that group.
2. Threaten the group with disbanding if a specific level of grinding is not maintained.
3. ???
4. Profit!

It’s insidious really. It gets to the point where one Utopian may see another having fun rather than doing their part for the commune and feel betrayed, forgetting that games are *supposed* to be fun.

So, how much grinding is it really?

Let’s start at the beginning of the cycle. You’re knackered from being up til Guru knows when fortifying the last couple of systems to avoid turmoil, but you’re back, at Tanner Settlement, in your Trade-Conda with the shield missing (need the space for dissidents you know) and wondering what to do. Hitting up the reddit, you see a list of systems that *really ought* to be fortified as soon as possible to dissuade any attempts to undermine. It never really works, but there’s always hope, so you plot a course to a system that needs about 5000 merits of fortification. If you can deliver all of those yourself, you’ll have maintained Rank 5, and as far as keeping yourself useful, that’s job done.

So back and forth you go, 4 jumps out, grab the first 50 dissidents for free, then spend 4 million credits to top up to a full hold, and womble back (now 8 jumps), drop them off for processing, then repeat.
People will tell me “You’re doing it wrong. Do some trading on the side, it’ll be more interesting, honest!”.
I respond, “No it won’t. For one thing trading in Utopian space is shite, and for another I want every nook and cranny of that cargo hold filled with rebels, because I’m not going to be doing this for a second longer than I have to pal.”.

So you finish that 5k set of deliveries. It’s been two, maybe three evenings of play, depending on how much free time you’ve managed to pour into it without your family wondering where you are. I very generously didn’t put the word ‘play’ in quotes earlier (I kinda had to there, but for different reasons – this is getting meta). You’ve got your Rank 5 secured, spent a minimum of 40 million credits, leaving you 10 million from your salary. Not too bad, but not great either, considering one false move could cost you 9 million to rebuy your ship after insurance.

It’s getting on for the middle of the cycle and it seems from in-game that all is going well. That’s probably because you’re not paying attention though, as one quick look on the reddit shows there’s a fifth column attempt to prep $SHITSYSTEM for expansion. All hands to the pumps, you start shipping prep material out to a better system to try and knock $SHITSYSTEM off the list. This time, the game is slightly different. You have to pull preparation material from any control system and take it to your target system. Granted that’s not *massively* different from pulling dissidents from the target system and taking them back to HQ, in fact, let’s face it, it’s basically the same, but you take the small novelty and run with it.

Now you’ve shipped 5000 dissidents and 5000 tonnes of prep material (promotional flyers – “Utopia FTW – Vote Pranav Antal”), and you’re starting to wonder when the fun starts.

It’s close to the end of the cycle by this time. $SHITSYSTEM is off the expansion list, all the profitable systems are fortified, looks like we’re running at a profit, no turmoil here.

Then it all starts again.

I sometimes fantasise about having a wonderful job. I don’t often wish my fantasy job looked more like my real one.