Earlier this week, someone handed me 30 salvaged frigate modules at the Anomaly. I was grateful at the time, but even then, I felt weird about it. Now what reason do I have to go out of my way to do crashed freighters or derelict freighters? But hey, whatever, now I can get my freighter into green and blue systems without having to grind those modules for ages first, I suppose.

Then yesterday, some guy randomly handed somebody else at the Anomaly 30 cargo bulkheads. I was immediately wary and honestly hoping he wouldn’t start handing me things. Then he handed me 30 cargo bulkheads, without me saying anything, THREE TIMES. 90 cargo bulkheads. Then I saw that same guy handing out a whole BUNCH of stuff to another guy who asked for some cargo bulkheads of his own. Just pile after pile of crazy valuable stuff, hundreds of millions of units worth. One of the things he handed him was a pile of over 1,000 Quicksilver. Handing someone Quicksilver can only be done with fake Quicksilver which has been save-edited into the game as an inventory item. It’s just a worthless inventory item with the Quicksilver icon. It’s not actually Quicksilver, and you can’t use it as such.

This is what made me realize that probably ALL the stuff that guy was handing out is save-edited. This made me realize that probably those 30 salvaged frigate modules the other day were save-edited, and now I feel even scummier about taking and using those. I got rid of all the cargo bulkheads except two because it just felt so much like cheating. And when I looked up the sources for getting cargo bulkheads, I realize that taking those would absolutely ensure I had NO reason to ever do a crashed or derelict freighter again, since those are places to get cargo bulkheads, and I already have much less reason to do them without needing salvaged frigate modules.

If I had taken those, there would be whole huge chunks of the game and content that I would have literally no reason to experience and explore. I don’t even know what people’s intentions are doing this stuff, but all it does is ruin the game since now I have no reason to earn those things myself. And the ones I did use don’t feel earned. It feels like I cheated. And then even when I decided to get rid of them, I have all this pressure on me to make that decision in the first place, and then to decide how to go about it. I don’t want to deal with all that. It’s one thing to hand out a few valuable or useful things to newer players, but when you bombard them with potentially literally months’ worth of grinding that it would take to naturally get those items, you’re just taking away any incentive to actually PLAY THE GAME.

I really don’t want to sound ungrateful to those who are a bit more reasonable and just give a small bit of help here and there. But unloading massive amounts of crazy valuable stuff onto new players, especially if you save-edited it into the game in the first place, just seems like a crappy thing to do. I can’t be alone in thinking this way. In fact when I’m in the Anomaly, I get kinda nervous that someone is going to start handing out massive amounts of stuff like that. Especially when I actually see somebody handing out that kinda stuff, I get nervous that they’re going to turn to me next, and then I’ll have to deal with all that hassle and those feelings of taking something I didn’t earn and ruining my motivation for experiencing different parts of the game.

I shouldn’t be getting NERVOUS that somebody is going to hand me a buttload of stuff in the Anomaly every time I go there, man. It makes me just want to avoid going there and interacting with people, but then the multiplayer stuff is normally some of my most favorite parts of this game.