Expected more from Titans

HRDiagram

HRDiagram
For some reason, I don't expect the Titans to just blow up/withdraw after a set amount of damage has been dealt, but that the combat will evolve into something else.
The speculation made by the engineers was limited to overheating the titan to force the exposure of a core, not what it could lead to.
I believe there's much more coming up, that will emerge over time, and having it all revealed within the first hour of release would be anticlimactic.
Wanting to apply a similitude to MMOs, when new "bosses" are released, it might take days/weeks/months to figure the strategy to defeat them, sometimes with the Devs using artificial barriers or narrative plots to pace the event correctly.
I don't see a difference, aside from ED not really being an MMO.

Once the nut will be cracked, and everyone knows how it all pans out, titan fights will become another game loop, for those who were not there during the current phase.
Not even for a second I will believe that all these assets and mechanics have been created and added for this one occasion only, and will be discarded and forgotten once (and if) the current eight titans are defeated.
 

Cosmo

Cosmo
HRDiagram said:
I believe there's much more coming up, that will emerge over time, and having it all revealed within the first hour of release would be anticlimactic.
Click to expand...

I hope you're right, because there's no decent reward for interacting with the Titan atm.

HRDiagram said:
Wanting to apply a similitude to MMOs, when new "bosses" are released, it might take days/weeks/months to figure the strategy to defeat them, sometimes with the Devs using artificial barriers or narrative plots to pace the event correctly.
I don't see a difference, aside from ED not really being an MMO.
Click to expand...
Well for example in WoW the Lord of the Scourge is the Lich King. A group of players can defeat the Lich King after passing various challenges in the Icecrown Citadel. The difference is players can:
  1. Play it from start to finish in a reasonable time
  2. Defeat the boss
  3. Get random loot drops
  4. It is re-playable for more and better loot drops
The Titan is akin to a spaceship final boss. By comparison players can only play the start (attack the Titan), cannot defeat it, no nice rewards (loot drops), it's not re-playable from start to finish. Maybe they'll add these things later, but I expected more from the get-go. It's not satisfying if there's only 1/4th of the whole. Watching a weekly progress bar for an obscure end-goal isn't thrilling either.

Helmut Grokenberger said:
Sounds like a very different game. Elite isn't your classic MMO. Never was, never will be.
Click to expand...

That's the sound of game design that attracts a million+ active players.
 
Last edited:

Felix DiCestria

Felix DiCestria
Helmut Grokenberger said:
I thought so too... launching the torps at the heat vents feels very trench run like, including the torps making the curve to actually go into the vents.


I don't think Frontier does need to "enable the event". The Titans will be defeated once their bucket is filled. Nobody knows how long this will take, but it will happen. In the case or Taranis probably sooner than later.


Sounds like a very different game. Elite isn't your classic MMO. Never was, never will be.
Click to expand...
In addition to which Galnet suggests the aim is to get the Titans to retreat from the Bubble.
Presumably to Col 70 Sector or somewhere similar.
Nothing suggests 'Titan go Boom LOL!'
 

HRDiagram

HRDiagram
Cosmo said:
Well for example in WoW the Lord of the Scourge is the Lich King. A group of players can defeat the Lich King after passing various challenges in the Icecrown Citadel.
Click to expand...
But defeating a raid boss in WoW takes weeks upon release (to the point that world firsts have become an esport).
ED is not a real MMO, it has a niche market, and no loot is involved, so its scope is somewhat different by design.

I am still hoping that, eventually, defeating a titan, or whatever comes out of it, will be something that everyone who wants to do it will be able to do.
After all, the current "end boss", the Hydra, requires many pilots on average (without mentioning the extremely skilled AX pilots who solo one/multiple interceptors).

But it will be after the initial, introductory arc, is concluded.

Even accessing Icecrown Citadel and getting to fight the Lich King happened in phases before everyone could do it to their heart's content.
 

Cosmo

Cosmo
HRDiagram said:
ED is not a real MMO, it has a niche market, and no loot is involved.
Click to expand...

They could add some loot though. For example after reducing the Core to 0% release valuable materials and collect it with the cargo scoop. That's better than nothing.

HRDiagram said:
I am still hoping that, eventually, defeating a titan, or whatever comes out of it, will be something that everyone who wants to do it will be able to do.
After all, the current "end boss", the Hydra, requires many pilots on average (without mentioning the extremely skilled AX pilots who solo one/multiple interceptors).

But it will be after the initial, introductory arc, is concluded.

Even accessing Icecrown Citadel and getting to fight the Lich King happened in phases before everyone could do it to their heart's content.
Click to expand...

That's true. We'll wait and see how it pans out.
 

Disemboweled Ego

D
The titans suffered a lot from being released piecemeal, unlike the spires.

Because of that every time new titan content was released my reaction was "this is it?" The first few times the atmosphere was able to carry it, but there was never the instant sense that I'd want to return there for the gameplay (unlike with spires).

Lets play it back:
  • Unclassified Relics Discovered
    Community is excited about what we can do with them - we can use them for a CG to unlock modules a year later (That's it?)
  • Caustic mine field with no way to get around the pulse. (That's it?)
    Can eventually grind for samples/materials that have no use until months later. Feels unrewarding.
  • Pulse neutralizer released, can explore titan, nothing to do there really (That's it)
  • Pulse Xeno Scanner released
    Can farm for materials that have no/limited use/sample the titan for a CG (That's it?)
  • Subsurface rescue missiles released
    Can collect pods from the titan (That's it?)
  • Nanite missiles released
    Can expose the core and shoot it in an underwhelming repetitive "boss fight" that you're expected to do literally a million times (That's it?)
The pattern of new module - go to titan, repeat does not add up to be greater than the sum of it's parts there, every module except for the scanner is single use and none of the elements play off each other. There's one way to do things (use the new module) and then you're done.

The design and mechanics of the titan are really cool, but the way you interact with them is awful.

It's too late to fix it but in hindsight it should've been more community driven and strategic from the start:
  • Caustic generator mine field:
    should've been clearable with a concentrated community effort to reduce caustic damage and the barrier of entry for new players (caustic sinks not 100% necessary any more)
  • Pulse wave:
    only (small)fast ships should be able to get past even with the neutralizer (which co-incidentally would require clearing some caustic in the previous phase!) and they would have to sabotage something in the titan to disable the Pulse wave either for a few hours for everyone or for a few minutes for your wing to sneak past.
  • Stealth around the titan:
    most stealth games only work because you have UI stuff like view cones and visibility indicators, in a 3D space with more abstract geometry that's even more necessary, this needed to be it's own stealth module (either a thargoid IFF or preferably a whole stealth overhaul). It could even make cool beeping sounds, beep boop!
  • Getting to the titan:
    We never got a way to fight thargoid interdiction which are just annoying/time wasting with glaive lightning RNG patterns or boosting away from an interceptor.
  • Titan Rescues:
    This should be a bit more involved, but not too much, it would be fine if this was what the current core fight is - do something to off the titan and while it's distracted grab some pods and make your escape.
  • Final titan fight:
    This needs to be something more than the most standard "shoot things to expose weakpoint" boss fight. It's not skill based, it's not challenging, it's not a puzzle, it's not rewarding and it's not fun. The current design here has painted itself into a corner - the titans are a hazardous enviornment that's hard to get to so you can't force players to fight high-end interceptors here without making it inaccessible for most of the playerbase and frustrating for many that will try anyway. This is why stuff like disabling the caustic generators, pulse wave and maybe even eventually the anti-guardian field would help (and feel rewarding for the players because new options are unlocked by them instead of being handed out by CGs). Having a full blown AXCZ around the titan would be too distracting (and NPC pilots are worthless and many don't even know they're supposed to be there currently). Having interceptors mend heat vents unless you kick their butt could work. Eventually having a dockable megaship drop in for repairs for a limited time every now and then would be a cool setpiece and nice breather. The blue defensive wave pattern is cool and it could be used as a piloting skill check if it formed with holes/tunnels/paths you could take to fly in and deliver the final blow like some sort of ditch scamper?
I'm pretty down on the current encounter too, but I hope whatever happens after the titan is explodified is better.
 

aRJay

aRJay
varonica said:
But this isn't a game loop, this is an ongoing story, and once part of it ends that's it, history continues with other stuff, just like the Colonia Bridge can't be built over and over again, and Jaques can't jump his station over and over again. This isn't a traditional MMO where you can say start a new character and just play through all the original content again ad infinitum, soon the Titan's will be gone.....and I mean gone forever and new players will never have the experience of battling them, that's how the game is designed.
Click to expand...
This is why I feel having story/narrative gameplay in Elite is wrong Elite is a running in linear time which is great and small stories etc are fine because it is easy to say that missing them for whatever reason is no big deal but this skirmish with the Thargoids was a little too big for some people to do that and when it has become part of history they will be upset.
 

CMDR X

CMDR X
I would love to see all of our available assets used in the war. I want a concerted human effort of capitol ship fleets warping in and have them blast away at the Titan shields, while us riff-raff sneak into through the cracks and deploy our torpedoes. I want to land on the beast and run up the vents to throw in grenades. I want to drive around on them with the SRV mowing down defense turrets. That kind of thing.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
aRJay said:
This is why I feel having story/narrative gameplay in Elite is wrong Elite is a running in linear time which is great and small stories etc are fine because it is easy to say that missing them for whatever reason is no big deal but this skirmish with the Thargoids was a little too big for some people to do that and when it has become part of history they will be upset.
Click to expand...
Yeah, so this has been a big dichotomy in Elite Dangerous and one that's been a constant thorn in it's side. I think the Thargoid war was somewhat on the right track, but the "big bang" around the

ED's strength has always been it's procedural generation. I think it could stand to have a bit more invested in that strength, but FD decided to invest efforts elsewhere... but that gets OT pretty quick.

With more depth to the procedural generation aspects, you could have mini narratives evolve from player activity to strengthen the "lived experience" of the game. In that context, the overarching story input from FD would be less about throwing plot devices around the place (e.g titans) and more about setting the thematic of the current environment (procedural invasions, maybe backed by lower-impact Titans occasionally)... but then other "flavours" could be overlaid by FD. Maybe a superpower war breaks out... the lived experience of players may not be too dissimilar, unless you have particular positive or negative reputational effects through a pursued path of support or vendetta... and procedural activities (missions etc) could reflect that.

It just seems like a bit of anti-design to take a universe where procedural generation is it's strength, and hand-jam narrative devices which require "shielding" from player activity, whether that's shielding from narrative effects, or even player effects.

I think the Thargoid war was good, but when it shook out like this, it was pretty clear the end would always be a bit clunky. Either way, no real surprises tbh.
 

Anjin

Anjin
I'd be surprised if all the content created for the Thargoid war gets binned if the war is won.
I suspect the Thargoids are going to withdraw from the bubble and settle somewhere (Barnard's Loop?).
Then players who want to experience AX combat like in the war can get kitted out, head on over and take the fight to them.
 

Disemboweled Ego

D
Reggit said:
Whats the bet - 12 months from now....
The Titans are destroyed - The Thargoids are defeated - inhabited space returns to normal...
Click to expand...
Every previous thargoid invasion of the bubble, they'd run the event once a year maybe and it was fun and never overstayed its welcome despite being just a glorified CG. I assume when it ends they'll re-run this too, but with less titans and a faster pace.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom