Unless they tell us exactly what they tweak the participation numbers will drop to such a low level without the big groups and contributions will be scattered so much, that I deem it impossible to fill a bar unless they reduce the numbers to basically zero.
I'm not too worried about that - they could divide it by ten and we'd win 5 or 6 systems out of hundreds a week requiring heavy coordination. Dividing by a hundred would probably be slightly too far.
But: they have good numbers now on what a full good faith fightback is capable of. They can balance to that and hopefully fairly quickly.
Systems seem to vary between 2 and 4 weeks total depending on number of stations, so even with carry-over some of them would be pretty tough. Equally, there's so many of them that while some might be won in week 1, others might end up waiting to week 3 or 4 not because they couldn't in theory have been week 1 victories but because others were more important.
(And of course Alert and Control states always have a 1 week timer so it doesn't apply there)
I'll be honest with you, my motivation has gone from 150% (I even purchased Arx for the first time since Odyssey release) to 0% in the span of a single news post. I evacuated my AX ships from HIP 23716 just in case that there are other "hidden", "fun" or "buggy" mechanics involving accessibility of ships in a invaded or lost port/system. I jumped my FC from the frontlines deeper into the bubble and will wait&see what's going to happen next. Right now, I don't see much point getting involved in the Thargoid War. I don't care for Credits or Engineering (material) and other rewards don't exist. Any participation won't change the outcome of the fight, since most larger communities seem to have pulled back from the fight as well.
really, this is ill conceived ...
fdev spent months planning U14, getting the community interested in ED... and it WORKED.
more players than ever, they felt a cause, they were pretty well co-ordinated, and process was being made nearly 50% in HIP 23716.
now we are told, that all that focused effort, with more CMDRs than ever, needs to be doubled, and weekly...
thats just not going to happen, and Fdev know that... even without the reset, we'd probably of had a drop in number this week.
yes, it has to be hard, but even if HIP23716 had been taken back, it would have been ONE system...and the goids are threatening others... and with new maelstrom arriving, we would still be loosing ground (fast)
so it makes no sense at all....
also I do not buy, "we are new to this, and looking at numbers", Fdev had ALL week to see what the progress the community was doing, they can see better than anyone player numbers, and what the result of HIP 23716 was... and how other systems were fairing.
.. it has been obvious, player numbers, even focused were making very slow progress , even for a prolonged multi week effort.
(even the community was able to track this, with the limited data we have, and no idea of the hidden numbers (like target to 100%))
really, as a developer, if your bgs is so inflexible, that you cannot make some more timely adjustments you really need a rethink.
as of now, you have pretty much wasted the BUZZ you created around U14, even if you correct it now...
many of the players than came back will have move on again...
and you wonder why ED numbers dwindle?
also as a play mechanic in makes little sense... you need players to see progress, that parts of gaming, its why we have scores/credits etc...
this is not a rogue like ! (or is it?)
sure, the goids could be given weekly 'reinforcements'.. this would create a sense of urgency , to focus in one system.
but not a reset, as this means only focused efforts can do anything... and thats just not going to work, when a good percentage of players are 'lone rangers'.
very disappointing, this is not something Fdev could not predict, the numbers were there for them to see... and they chose not to do anything about it.
Last edited:
I have a question, What happens when the Goids have control of the bubble and we are all exiled to Colonia. How will new players in the Newbie safe zone get from there to Colonia without any engineers being available and no ship that will make the journey and a hostile Goid at every turn?
Can we make sure to get footage of this, be good for a laugh.
Can we make sure to get footage of this, be good for a laugh.
I reset my password just to say I 100% agree with this. So many people were back so many people were excited. What four days into the first tic they are like oh hey btw everything will reset good luck. Especailly after an insanely hard grind really it resets. What were they thinking even if this was to make feel hopeless and have a little overwhelmed intro thing. We weren't even able to make a dent after a lot of people no lifing the game in ONE system. I just don't understand it now all the buzz is just gone. But you know what I got my money's worth out of the game at least it's sad that it's probably going to go back to dying. They need to be REALLY transparent if they want to fix this but so many people have probably already moved on and won't come back
I had initially dismissed the rumors of a reset as a misunderstanding, but then I logged back on and saw the progress lost. So demoralizing.
It seemed tough enough without the reset!
Deleting so much progress is a massive disrespect to players' time. It wouldn't have been so bad if we have known ahead of time.
It seemed tough enough without the reset!
Deleting so much progress is a massive disrespect to players' time. It wouldn't have been so bad if we have known ahead of time.
Yea, a % of weekly progress transfer to the next week, would be a great idea.
Also for all the arguments of "maybe we're supposed to lose the first few weeks" -- if the outcome is predetermined and scripted by the narrative then the whole "thargoid war gameplay/bgs" is a blatantly non-interactive illusion that pretends to be something it isn't.
Analyzing it from that perspective the UI that invites you to participate (when it is in-fact meaningless) becomes a now annoyingly, obvious lie -- failing at the deception it was supposedly created to achieve.
There is a place for such fakery in game-design and some games use it to good effect, but I don't think this is the intent here and it certainly doesn't work in a game that requires a huge commitment like Elite most of the time and it just doesn't work here on any level in this particular case.
Many players aren't too excited about seeing the bubble (or their particular section of it) burn and the process by which it is happening isn't fun to just observe from afar since it's just watching a (broken, lol) timer count down until the next stations/systems get taken over by the Thargoids. Again, there are ways to make this fun and there are games where it's just fun to watch the AI play eachother, but this is not the case here.
The comparisions with the power-play resetting mechanisms are also a bit misaimed since that's by design a more zero-sum game where a loss or wasted effort for one side is a potential gain or opportunity for everyone else who are also human players. It has it's many flaws, but it has a better foundation to work on a conceptual level.
Analyzing it from that perspective the UI that invites you to participate (when it is in-fact meaningless) becomes a now annoyingly, obvious lie -- failing at the deception it was supposedly created to achieve.
There is a place for such fakery in game-design and some games use it to good effect, but I don't think this is the intent here and it certainly doesn't work in a game that requires a huge commitment like Elite most of the time and it just doesn't work here on any level in this particular case.
Many players aren't too excited about seeing the bubble (or their particular section of it) burn and the process by which it is happening isn't fun to just observe from afar since it's just watching a (broken, lol) timer count down until the next stations/systems get taken over by the Thargoids. Again, there are ways to make this fun and there are games where it's just fun to watch the AI play eachother, but this is not the case here.
The comparisions with the power-play resetting mechanisms are also a bit misaimed since that's by design a more zero-sum game where a loss or wasted effort for one side is a potential gain or opportunity for everyone else who are also human players. It has it's many flaws, but it has a better foundation to work on a conceptual level.
Additionally, how fast can you recover lost credits/ships to stay and fight. you must accumulate more credits than you loose on ships/ship repair(s) etcetera, especially the newer players. This mechanic seems to suggest or assume that only the billionaire plus category players could afford to work in this mechanic. For the rest if you take time out to earn means you will lose a system or more as you are not able to fight effectively? My apologies if I am misunderstanding how this works out.
From what information was shown in game I expected to loose the two stations and the progress bar to be kept. As it was at 40% my very naive expectation was, that we might be able to regain one of the stations during the second cycle. And then to fill the bar in the third cycle.
Remember that the work in a single system doesn't stop there - as the info in-game states even when we fill the bar and end the phase we enter the phase of rebuilding infrastructure.
In a six week cycle my expectation was that we could repell the attack in two systems and start rebuilding infrastructure in one.
And that would have been perfect and still hopeless with 8 Maelstroms and maybe 200 systems affected! Positive progress in ONE percent! ONE! Negative effects in 99%.
As it stands now we get nothing but negatives and stand no chance to change that, as what we saw in week one was basically the maximum expectable participation.
Yes, we begin this war on the losing side.
I love this!
It just makes you want to fight even harder!
Problem is not the estimates. It's the weekly reset, which is a complete design decision disaster. All the hard work we have done during the last week, undone for no good reason. Many players will quit the war efforts just because of this.
We don't care that it's HARD to recover a system. We care to have our efforts not to go waste. I don't care if it takes 1 week or 5 or 10 to recover a single system. What I want to know is that every passenger I saved and every thargoid I blown contributed to the overall effort.
This notion goes away completely with the weekly progress reset.
This is a huge f. up, and after the good reception Update 14 had, with many players wanting to contribute and play the game, you screwd it all just with this dumb decision. You will surely notice it soon enough in the number of active players in the War event...
Last edited:
It looks like as if the mighty fleets of the superpowers and the larger independent governments are doing nothing. Where is the progress shown that was made by this military organisations? There should be at least in systems where the superpower military is involved some effect to represent this. Or are Cmdrs the only one fighting? Then we should overthrow all the governments in the Powers because of unbelievavle incompetence and put all this capital warships to good use.
I wouldn't worry about it, a massive Guardian fleet will soon emerge via a portal from their home in Raxxla to save the day.
Panav Antal will be installed as supreme galactic leader and you can all have discounted tickets to the newly constructed Thargoid petting zoo in Polevnic.
Cushty
O7
my uncle works at david braben and he said this is canon
HeatherG
Volunteer Moderator
Very well put together.
I feel bad for anyone that's worked so hard and then it gets reset
5900 players did not stop the Thargoid invasion in HIP23716. I'm not against the reset system (I think it offers an interesting challenge), but the quotas for civilian evacuation and Thargoid destruction should be greatly reduced in my humble opinion. Otherwise, as is the case for French groups, players will get discouraged and do other activities. The war may never go back.
Last edited: