Major Feature Overhaul - Question

[Sera Scratch]

Engineering is the only things that needs overhaul, not because there is big problem with it, but because it's the biggest barrier for new players to drop or stay in this game. They need to add catch up mechanics to it, specially via cash shop, since it's a new trend in MMO world. Credit card swipe and you are already fighting Thargoids.
This game needs to start generating some revenues for future development.

A small amount of grind is necessary, especially for new players. Look at WoW and other live service games. The time put in to grind out some of the content helps people slowly come to grips with mechanics in the game and add a sense of achievement for the end result. I agree with everyone that Engineering currently is WAY too grindy and makes for a miserable experience, however I question the idea of pay for play (Upgrades/ships/modules)

Not only does it lessen the experience and feeling of achievement for when you finally have that fully engineered corvette, but it doesn't make alot of sense in Elite. WoW, as an example, allows people to pay for a level 100 character. But they also allow multiple characters per account, and multiple accounts too. Elite however only has the one, with Cmdr's receiving different ships. Starting off with some laser pointers in the sidewinder, then upgrading to an Eagle, is a nice progression as you face more challenging enemies. But if a new player just poofs into an Andaconda with access to fully engineered systems for Thargoids, they'll be missing out on a key part of the experience (And probably end up with a massive rebuy from getting dusted.)

Yea, Engineering sucks, so does the economy with it's whack payments for missions. But to remove it entirely doesn't seem like the way to go.

 

[Star Wanderer]

A small amount of grind is necessary, especially for new players. Look at WoW and other live service games. The time put in to grind out some of the content helps people slowly come to grips with mechanics in the game and add a sense of achievement for the end result. I agree with everyone that Engineering currently is WAY too grindy and makes for a miserable experience, however I question the idea of pay for play (Upgrades/ships/modules)

Not only does it lessen the experience and feeling of achievement for when you finally have that fully engineered corvette, but it doesn't make alot of sense in Elite. WoW, as an example, allows people to pay for a level 100 character. But they also allow multiple characters per account, and multiple accounts too. Elite however only has the one, with Cmdr's receiving different ships. Starting off with some laser pointers in the sidewinder, then upgrading to an Eagle, is a nice progression as you face more challenging enemies. But if a new player just poofs into an Andaconda with access to fully engineered systems for Thargoids, they'll be missing out on a key part of the experience (And probably end up with a massive rebuy from getting dusted.)

Yea, Engineering sucks, so does the economy with it's whack payments for missions. But to remove it entirely doesn't seem like the way to go.

It's for the good of the game. More revenues equals more salary for developers to work on Elite. And players this days have lots of money, so they love swiping their credit cards to pay for progress. Old players might look sceptical at such tactics, but younger generation love them, cause it saves them time.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

But on foot you can buy pre-engineered. So it's kind of have a skip mechanic.

Preengineered weapons easly cost as much as a Vulture, new players who just want to jump right in neither have the money yet, nor do they even know preengineered exist, unless they have done their research or found one early on by luck. And you still have to go through 2 more base engineering levels and 2-4 mods.

 

[zimms]

On foot engineering is a far worse offender than ship engineering.

A bit of both. There are aspects that Odyssey Engineering does better then ship Engineering. If mods were removable and Frontier hadn't repeated some mistakes they already reworked in ship Engineering it would be better overall imho.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Preengineered weapons easly cost as much as a Vulture, new players who just want to jump right in neither have the money yet, nor do they even know preengineered exist, unless they have done their research or found one early on by luck. And you still have to go through 2 more base engineering levels and 2-4 mods.

And the pre-engineered is purely random chance.

 

[metatheurgist]

Suit and weapon engineering have been waaaay for interesting than ship for me. And you only need to do 2 suits and 3 weapons. Imagine having 3 weapons on a 'vette.

CRs are meaningless. Cost of a Vulture is nothing, maybe if they kept the cost of the Vulture at 20M instead of (once again) listening to players. Since they made it so you can't lose bonds you can just do as many ground CZs as you like to get whatever suit you want.

 

[V'larr]

What would you prefer (both have pros and cons):

- FD keeps the feature and the changes secret
or
- FD makes it public, which feature they plan to overhaul and starts a discussion with the players about it?

Unequivocally the latter. Communication and collaboration of ideas and effort is always greater than the lack thereof.

 

[Fizzatron]

Just for clarity, and please without the not so subtle digs at Frontier*, what are the options for the Major Feature Rework?

Currently it looks to me like:

Engineering
Powerplay
?

*not saying you can't be mad or sad at Frontier, just want to stick to the topic.

 

[Gleitfrosch]

Engineering is the only things that needs overhaul, not because there is big problem with it, but because it's the biggest barrier for new players to drop or stay in this game. They need to add catch up mechanics to it, specially via cash shop, since it's a new trend in MMO world. Credit card swipe and you are already fighting Thargoids.
This game needs to start generating some revenues for future development.

I would prefer an economy overhaul. Something compared to the X games, not just magically generated items and prices.
Although I too think that engineers broke the balance of the game.

 

[Sera Scratch]

I would prefer an economy overhaul. Something compared to the X games, not just magically generated items and prices.
Although I too think that engineers broke the balance of the game.

Economy overhaul is great, but I think Engineering grind is something they could address first since it impacts all of the jobs, rather than just the traders. I agree, economy is buns with extra sauce. It would be amazing to be able to properly saturate markets, find trade routes/deals and not feel like you're hauling just the most expensive of whatever commodity. I always dream of it being like the EVE online stufff.

 

[metatheurgist]

Just for clarity, and please without the not so subtle digs at Frontier*, what are the options for the Major Feature Rework?

Currently it looks to me like:

Engineering
Powerplay
?

*not saying you can't be mad or sad at Frontier, just want to stick to the topic.

Missions. They're pretty basic one step things with one wrinkle.
NPCs. How about some ship comms? How about every settlement NPC not treating me like I'm wearing a Hazmat suit?
BGS. Return to slightly more believable (not going to say real, that triggers ) mechanics.
Security. It'd be good if that actually existed at all.
C+P. Again would be good if that actually existed at all.

Edit: Oooo. Rares! Still waiting to be the first guy sailing in the first Fujin Tea for the season in my cutter because the demand will be up in competition with others like the good old days of East India Trading.

 

[Jmanis]

Just for clarity, and please without the not so subtle digs at Frontier*, what are the options for the Major Feature Rework?

Currently it looks to me like:

Engineering
Powerplay
?

*not saying you can't be mad or sad at Frontier, just want to stick to the topic.

Missions
T2 NPCs
USS, research and procedural activities (eg megaships and installations, and everything you can do with recon/ research limpets)
Literally everything about crime and punishment and hostile rep
Military career paths

Just to name a couple.

 

[23RD]

Last year we announced a major update that would rework a long standing feature. This is still being investigated, however a number of changes (not least the Thargoid War itself) have required our attention as a priority. We will share details of this investigation and our plans towards the end of this year

Devs haven't a slightest idea about what should they rework. So by the end of the year i expect from them something like "we've done some investigations and decided not to rework anything couse we don't have resources for that. Here, take some goids narrative"

 

[metatheurgist]

I would prefer an economy overhaul. Something compared to the X games, not just magically generated items and prices.

The items and prices aren't magically generated. They actually ran a sim with thousands of NPC trades to set a baseline. The same thousands of NPCs whose influence should dwarf whatever players think they can do to influence a market of 6 trillion souls. The baseline has since been tweaked to generate stupid amounts of stock since "Traders" don't want to do anything else besides run the same (best margin) commodity between two spots over and over and over again.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Just for clarity, and please without the not so subtle digs at Frontier*, what are the options for the Major Feature Rework?

Currently it looks to me like:

Engineering
Powerplay
?

Those are the two which keep coming up because they've had the "give us feedback" threads which didn't result in any changes being made. (Which may, of course, be because the overall outcome of the feedback threads was "it's not popular but any major change would likely be received worse").

With the description of "long standing feature", and if we assume ones which haven't already received a rework to rule out things like mining, political BGS or exploration, some obvious remaining ones are:
- trade/economy (there was a hint near the U14 launch that the Thargoid War might cause a recession, which it hasn't and won't in its current form)
- supercruise (not really been touched since release)
- bounty hunting (no significant changes since release)
- outfitting, possibly incorporating engineering (the basic outfitting model hasn't changed since release and still has a lot of the flaws with lots of modules being way more useful than others)

 

[Rubbernuke]

Sandro is back again!

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Sandro is back again!

View attachment 356209

I'd be happy if he was actually back on ED, but I doubt we'll get that lucky.

 

[Brrokk]

Just for clarity, and please without the not so subtle digs at Frontier*, what are the options for the Major Feature Rework?

Currently it looks to me like:

Engineering
Powerplay
?

*not saying you can't be mad or sad at Frontier, just want to stick to the topic.

Well, the most major feature of ED is flying spaceships, so I guess more ships. Panther Clipper confirmed!

More seriously, the major feature could be exploration, trade, smuggling, PvP combat (CQC?), a geologist rank, operation of wars in CZs, mission variety, passenger missions, more landable planets etc. At least there are lots of options.

I guess not Thargoid combat, engineering, mining or maybe exploration as those have previously had reworks. Power play is possible but I guess it depends on the level of player interest, which FD know better than us.

 

[Fizzatron]

Those are the two which keep coming up because they've had the "give us feedback" threads which didn't result in any changes being made. (Which may, of course, be because the overall outcome of the feedback threads was "it's not popular but any major change would likely be received worse").

lol, that sounds about right tbh.

With the description of "long standing feature", and if we assume ones which haven't already received a rework to rule out things like mining, political BGS or exploration, some obvious remaining ones are:

- trade/economy (there was a hint near the U14 launch that the Thargoid War might cause a recession, which it hasn't and won't in its current form)

I'd like to see that one actually. Something more resembling a functional economy with real supply & demand.

- supercruise (not really been touched since release)

I don't think there's anything needed for that barring a few tweaks to maybe speed up leaving gravity wells of gas giants and/or upping the speed limit of supercruise. In fact I don't see a need for an 'overhaul' of that at all. I would like to see a mini-jump to a secondary star, maybe that counts but it's not really a supercruise thing in my mind.

- bounty hunting (no significant changes since release)

Hmm, not sure what that would entail. Though that makes me think that would be part of an overall mission overhaul, which could be interesting.

- outfitting, possibly incorporating engineering (the basic outfitting model hasn't changed since release and still has a lot of the flaws with lots of modules being way more useful than others)

Again, I'm not sure what they could do there, maybe being able to save out loadouts. Maybe my perception of an overhaul is greater than what would be counted as such?

Having read that though, there is one aspect that I can think of that could do with an overhaul, and that's how ships are handled in relation to our commanders. Now that our CMDR is the primary element of the game in a practical sense rather than suggested, I think the connection between our CMDR and our ship needs to be loosened so that when we disembark we can travel to another station that has a stored ship and be able to not worry about the 'active' ship elsewhere, which I believe is the case at the moment, correct? It's been a while as I generally don't go off by myself on foot, which I think is because of that IIRC.

Also, as part of that separation, having a permission/privilege system whereby you can allow your ship to be piloted by a friend/team member would be really good as well.

I'd like that see that overhauled, which is a pretty fundamental aspect of the game that is still in the 'your ship is your avatar' era of the game.

 

[Fizzatron]

Well, the most major feature of ED is flying spaceships, so I guess more ships. Panther Clipper confirmed!

FDev, this plz.

More seriously, the major feature could be exploration, trade, smuggling, PvP combat (CQC?), a geologist rank, operation of wars in CZs, mission variety, passenger missions, more landable planets etc. At least there are lots of options.

Exploration has been overhauled, though I can see areas of improvement, but that would lean more to more accessible planets etc.. which I think puts it into the scope of new content rather than overhaul?

PVP/Bounty Hunting/C&P; as I mentioned in relation to bounty hunting in my reply above, I would be interested to see what they could come up with here that would change that up significantly, and probably would be tied to a mission overhaul as well I guess.

When it comes to things like Passenger missions, I'm not sure what can be done either, though I guess the overhaul could be to actually show the passengers as actual NPCs, which would be pretty cool, including any aspects of extra stuff in relation to it - ie; to actually dock at an arranged point and see them all getting hauled off into servitude if one were to take up an offer of that nature, or expand a single passenger mission for a wanted/bountied person to include escorting them on foot to their destination which could also shoot outs on foot etc.. That would be great actually. Though maybe that might be too much expectation for the overhaul, but I'd be down for something like that for sure.

I guess not Thargoid combat, engineering, mining or maybe exploration as those have previously had reworks. Power play is possible but I guess it depends on the level of player interest, which FD know better than us.

I agree, though I'd also suggest that PVP/C&P would fall into the above category too.