ship interiors - will they happen

[Factabulous]

Players: "Give us interiors so we can walk about!"
fdev: "Here's the new SCO drive so you have to actually pilot the ship all the way"

Wonder if there is a clue there people might pick up on?

 

[ozrix84]

It completely depends on what kind of existing menu driven activity gets converted into "running around" activity. It depends on whether its fun, boring, repetitive, or insanely repetitive.

And it depends on convenience too. For example: I am constantly looking at my Galactic Map. If I have to exit my pilot chair and run across the cockpit to see the map I would go bonkers. As pilots we are now used to certain tools at our finger tips.

Adding gameplay is great. Adding extra time wasting non-value added stuff that we are forced to use... not so great.

that's a lot of assumptions, and it's for the game designers to figure out what works and what doesn't. fact is, other games have set a precedent, and i personally find it infinitely more engaging to run around the ship and manually park vehicles and cargo in the bay than be chair-bound and watch orange menu screens pass by. also, getting boarded by other players, shot to near death, stripped to my shorts and watching as he steals my vessel with me bleeding out on the floor is one of those crystaline gaming moments that stay with you for a long while.

 

[Greasetrap42]

that's a lot of assumptions...

Its a completely reasonable reply to a very broad statement that was made.

Edit: Almost everything you just described are not existing menu driven activities that could potentially be turned into in-ship activities. Consistency in messaging is important. Certainly if additional gameplay can be added that would be great... as I said in the post you replied to.

 

[Greasetrap42]

...and i personally find it infinitely more engaging to run around the ship and manually park vehicles and cargo in the bay than be chair-bound and watch orange menu screens pass by. also

The irony isn't lost that you are literally describing a computer game that involves players sitting in front of a computer pressing buttons for hours instead of going outside and doing actual real-world activities.

 

[ozrix84]

The irony isn't lost that you are literally describing a computer game that involves players sitting in front of a computer pressing buttons for hours instead of going outside and doing actual real-world activities.

i don't know about you, but i don't usually get the opportunity to fly futuristic space ships around the galaxy outside the computer screen

 

[Greasetrap42]

i don't know about you, but i don't usually get the opportunity to fly futuristic space ships around the galaxy outside the computer screen

I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy as much as many that play ED. And yes I play ED for many hours. But it is highly ironic that you are saying you rather do real activities in the game than "be chair-bound and watch orange menu screens pass by" while you are playing a video game for hours. You must see the irony here. There are real world activities you can choose to do!

I really don't want to derail this forum discussion. It was just a very funny statement.

 

[ozrix84]

I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy as much as many that play ED. And yes I play ED for many hours. But it is highly ironic that you are saying you rather do real activities in the game than "be chair-bound and watch orange menu screens pass by" while you are playing a video game for hours. You must see the irony here. There are real world activities you can choose to do!

I really don't want to derail this forum discussion. It was just a very funny statement.

i mean, okay, that's kind of a random anecdote, but the original point was that there is definitely some engaging gameplay to be salvaged from having interiors instead of interacting through menus.

 

[cmdr bartford]

As others have said, ship interiors would probably get stale fairly quick, I know I don't even go back to the command deck of my fleet carrier anymore because it's minutes of wasted time walking, taking two different elevators and running around hallways with nothing to do, if they do implement ship interiors in a similar manner it would suck and people would complain as well.

What I truly wish for is more fleshed out gameplay loops, especially when it comes to exploration: Diving inside the outer layers of the atmosphere of gas giants to collect different materials, making it the further you go down the atmosphere the more heat/damage you take until a point where your ship can't take it anymore; Denser atmospheric planets in different stages of its "life" cycle i.e planets with volcanic activity and very dense/dark clouds; Water World's where you don't really have much to land on but there's weathering systems in place; planets like we do have in Odyssey currently but with denser and slightly more varied life forms; etc. etc.

There's a lack of sense of exploration in this game, and it's one of the gripes I've always had with No Man's Sky: after you've done a little bit of it you've seen it all, there are little reasons to land on planets and explore them, the way exobiology is set up feels so disconnected and weird to me, why can't we scan life forms from our scarab? There's no real reason to use one if not for collecting materials as flying your ship from patch to patch of life forms is faster, and I could probably keep going on and on.

I love the game for what it is even with all of its flaws, especially now that the novelty from being a new player has faded, but there's so much more that Fdev could implement that would be much better for the game than simply a few more corridors to walk in with yet more nothing to do in them.

 

[aRJay]

that's a lot of assumptions, and it's for the game designers to figure out what works and what doesn't. fact is, other games have set a precedent, and i personally find it infinitely more engaging to run around the ship and manually park vehicles and cargo in the bay than be chair-bound and watch orange menu screens pass by. also, getting boarded by other players, shot to near death, stripped to my shorts and watching as he steals my vessel with me bleeding out on the floor is one of those crystaline gaming moments that stay with you for a long while.

That last argument is one of the strongest ones against adding interiors that I have seen.

 

[ozrix84]

That last argument is one of the strongest ones against adding interiors that I have seen.

in a multiplayer game? also, boarding and hijacking other ships was one of elite's original pitch ideas, so -

 

[Darkfyre99]

How do these things work in other games? Other games have interiors for ships and megaships, nobody considers them useless because they have gameplay attached to them.

That's the thing: the many of the people "against" ship interiors aren't actually against ship interiors per se. We're against ship interiors devoid of gameplay. The current station interiors are a prime example of spaces devoid of gameplay value. There's nothing in the current station interiors that couldn't be done with a menu system. The "NPCs" there are just human shaped kiosks. They're a far cry from the adventures I'd imagined having in stations back in 2014.

Contrast this with settlements. Even though settlement NPC mission givers act essentially the same as the station ones do, they'll patrol, it's possible to attack them, they'll react to your attempts to steal from the settlement, and of course the other NPCs are equally "alive." Because of this, it's possible to have adventures (or simply get into trouble) in them, even if you're just looking to pick up a mission.

Right now a lot of the things we do, like ship repair, or weapon/suit/consumable, and cargo storage are handled through menus. Moving these things to locations of the ship would give purpose, but I fear would upset too many people who are used to the convenience of the HUD magic we have right now.

You're right. But that doesn't mean that you can't add such gameplay anyways, you just need to apply it to other peoples' ships. Imagine responding to a distress call, and boarding a ship to help repair it. Alternatively, what can be repaired can also be sabotaged.

And of course, ship interiors allow for salvage gamplay, searches and rescue, bounty hunting and assassinations, and other forms of gamplay that don't involve your ship. Having access to the interior of your own ship, as long as traversing it is optional, is just a bonus.

 

[Commander Biscuit]

That's the thing: the many of the people "against" ship interiors aren't actually against ship interiors per se. We're against ship interiors devoid of gameplay. The current station interiors are a prime example of spaces devoid of gameplay value. There's nothing in the current station interiors that couldn't be done with a menu system. The "NPCs" there are just human shaped kiosks. They're a far cry from the adventures I'd imagined having in stations back in 2014.

Contrast this with settlements. Even though settlement NPC mission givers act essentially the same as the station ones do, they'll patrol, it's possible to attack them, they'll react to your attempts to steal from the settlement, and of course the other NPCs are equally "alive." Because of this, it's possible to have adventures (or simply get into trouble) in them, even if you're just looking to pick up a mission.



You're right. But that doesn't mean that you can't add such gameplay anyways, you just need to apply it to other peoples' ships. Imagine responding to a distress call, and boarding a ship to help repair it. Alternatively, what can be repaired can also be sabotaged.

And of course, ship interiors allow for salvage gamplay, searches and rescue, bounty hunting and assassinations, and other forms of gamplay that don't involve your ship. Having access to the interior of your own ship, as long as traversing it is optional, is just a bonus.

Good points, and I'm sure even the people in favour of interiors don't want them to be devoid of gameplay, but we have to be realistic about how much FD would be able to achieve with a ship interior system. Just modelling the interiors of 40+ ships is a lot of work, let alone making alternative versions of the interiors for different missions or scenarios. FD understands this and don't want to make a half baked feature. They want associated gameplay for the feature and know how much work is involved, and how much of a financial risk it is sadly.

However, at this point I'd take being able to get out of my chair and wander around the already modelled brig of say an Anaconda. Ship interiors almost certainly aren't coming, but being able to get up and click on the door to leave the ship, or access a locker to change gear would at least be something.

 

[MUTILADOR]

As others have said, ship interiors would probably get stale fairly quick, I know I don't even go back to the command deck of my fleet carrier anymore because it's minutes of wasted time walking, taking two different elevators and running around hallways with nothing to do, if they do implement ship interiors in a similar manner it would suck and people would complain as well.

What I truly wish for is more fleshed out gameplay loops, especially when it comes to exploration: Diving inside the outer layers of the atmosphere of gas giants to collect different materials, making it the further you go down the atmosphere the more heat/damage you take until a point where your ship can't take it anymore; Denser atmospheric planets in different stages of its "life" cycle i.e planets with volcanic activity and very dense/dark clouds; Water World's where you don't really have much to land on but there's weathering systems in place; planets like we do have in Odyssey currently but with denser and slightly more varied life forms; etc. etc.

There's a lack of sense of exploration in this game, and it's one of the gripes I've always had with No Man's Sky: after you've done a little bit of it you've seen it all, there are little reasons to land on planets and explore them, the way exobiology is set up feels so disconnected and weird to me, why can't we scan life forms from our scarab? There's no real reason to use one if not for collecting materials as flying your ship from patch to patch of life forms is faster, and I could probably keep going on and on.

I love the game for what it is even with all of its flaws, especially now that the novelty from being a new player has faded, but there's so much more that Fdev could implement that would be much better for the game than simply a few more corridors to walk in with yet more nothing to do in them.

That is not the case, at least in 3 space games that I will not mention, but that have ship interiors. In one of them, they even made an update because they realized that there was a lot of play in the remodeling of their interiors. In the end our home as space pilots is our ship, I have even played more hours remodeling the interior of my ship in that other game than playing the same one. People like to create their own things, customization is the most attractive thing about mmorpgs, from your character, ship, houses, etc. This is really a very strong point to evolve for ED.

Furthermore, Elite is a game that is characterized by also being a space simulator, anything that takes away immersion is negative for Elite.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

also, boarding and hijacking other ships was one of elite's original pitch ideas

Yes - and then they implemented the rest of the game in a way that would make it virtually impossible to do in PvP, and only really convenient in limited PvE situations.

Problem 1: actually getting on board the hostile ship in the first place. The general inability to disable ship subsystems while shields are still up, combined with the ability to rapidly bring engines back online if they are disabled via reboot/repair is going to make it very difficult to get an unwilling target to stay still long enough to be boarded. If you can't destroy a ship now - and no-one with even mid-range engineering should be losing ships without deliberately taking big risks - you're certainly not going to be able to disable it enough to board it. (And you're going to get boarded by NPCs much less often than you get blown up by them nowadays for the same reasons)

Problem 2: the interaction with the rebuy mechanism. If your ship gets destroyed, you get it back for 5% of its cost. Not a big deal outside the early game. So what happens if someone steals your ship?
- if you pay normal rebuy and get your own copy back, then there's a big limit to how much access the thief can get to the previous copy (even "until they next dock" could be a very long time!) to stop it being used far more to clone ships between friends than in an actual fight
- if you lose your copy, then it still gets used more to sell other players pre-built ships, because in a deadly fight there's a really big incentive just to hit the self-destruct and take the 5% rebuy the moment it looks like they might be trying to board

Bonus New Problem 2a: this is even worse when it comes to the new ARX pre-build ships, because they have no rebuy cost and the payee can materialise a new one any time they like. So only one person needs to actually buy one from the ARX store; everyone else can just steal their copies. Not great for Frontier's business model there.

Problem 3: the game still has 20,000 inhabited systems, and most players aren't by default aggressive towards other players, so finding someone to attack and board you is going to require you to make an effort.


All of that is technically fixable
- rebuy could be changed to 100% of cost + doesn't cover engineering mods
- subsystems could be made targetable through shields (with damage reduction proportional to remaining shield strength) with hull strengths increased to make destroying a ship harder and disabling it easier
- reboot/repair could either be removed entirely or adjusted to be unusable in combat (it'd give the "ship interiors to repair your own ship" content something to do)
- some sort of dynamic system depopulation mechanism could be introduced to reduce the number of inhabited systems (probably by about 99%) until all of them are likely to have multiple players present

I can't imagine that being particularly popular, though.

 

[Rat Catcher]

and i personally find it infinitely more engaging to run around the ship and manually park vehicles and cargo in the bay than be chair-bound and watch orange menu screens pass by. also, getting boarded by other players, shot to near death, stripped to my shorts and watching as he steals my vessel with me bleeding out on the floor is one of those crystaline gaming moments that stay with you for a long while.

What is this wonderful game you describe? When was it released? /s

When the eternal alpha actually becomes a released game, perhaps then it will be worth comparing to actual released games, wouldn't you agree?
Soon to be "ALPHA 4!" and the con will continue until folk realise that they have spent money on the best gaming scam ever, possibly. Yes, I 'pledged' some years ago, but no way would I part with another penny until it releases, although I fear the Grim Reaper would have my blackened soul before that happens!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Furthermore, Elite is a game that is characterized by also being a space simulator, anything that takes away immersion is negative for Elite.

That's true - but sometimes not having the details is better for immersion. Take the "no artificial gravity" part of the setting.

1) The bits of ship and outpost interiors and exteriors seen from ED1.0 onwards are clearly designed with an assumption of a very strongly-defined "down". People are basically fine with this. "Magnetic boots!"
2) You can routinely make 20G+ turns in your ship and not only survive but not even black-out/red-out. Handwaved as a really good G-suit.
2a) Your passengers don't complain either. No-one cares.
3) Odyssey lets you walk around the interiors of zero-G outposts. Handwaves of "all trash is magnetised too" and "synthetic polymers give station drinks really high surface tension" aren't sufficient to stop some people having their immersion broken now that they can look at this close up.
4) Odyssey lets you walk around the interiors of rotating stations. The pseudo-gravity should give a very noticeable tilt on the left and right sides of the concourse with things sliding off counters, people standing slanted, etc. because the concourse floor should be curved to match the arc of rotation and it isn't. The number of players with an instinctive understanding of these physics is basically zero, so no complaints, despite it being a problem that "magnetic boots" wouldn't actually solve.

Likewise "telepresence" had quietly existed in the setting since the original 1984 novella, showed up in various ED fiction since, and no-one really thought to ask "wait, why doesn't this get used for everything?" until 2.3 introduced Multicrew.

It's pretty much inevitable that there are more disagreements between common player perceptions of what the insides of ships look like and what Frontier thinks they look like and what basic maths thinks they look like [1] which would only come out into "well, that breaks my immersion" once more of those insides were easily visible.


[1] Mostly empty space, especially the larger ones, which have cargo/passenger/etc capacities hundreds of times lower than a 21st century vehicle of similar size.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

We already got the teleport to seat with FCs, along with occasional abandonment in deep space.
If they were going to do interiors then zero-G boarding actions (ref; Starfield) would be the obvious selling point. Most likely on megaships. That said I don't see anything along these lines in the foreseeable future given the corporate situation.

 

[galahad2069]

All of that is technically fixable
- rebuy could be changed to 100% of cost + doesn't cover engineering mods

That would instantly make high level organised PvP impossible (and organic PvP as well, for the most part), in exchange for what?
Being able to board and steal some wretched half engineered Asp you'd never even use, since you can just build way better ships for yourself?
No thanks

 

[oblivionmanman 2476]

if it makes pvp impossible,then there would be no ganking and that would please some but not all, i think the game has enough going for it for now,interiors will be a thing of the future,for those that want to walk around there ships ,pleny of games let you do that.meanwhile there is enough inthe game to not have that for now.

 

[Rat Catcher]

if it makes pvp impossible,then there would be no ganking and that would please some but not all

There would be even more ganking if rebuy was 100% and the total loss of engineered modules, think about it!
PvP actually needs more purpose in the game bar some organised events and random encounters - which is one of the things hinted at in the PP 2.0 discussion.
I agree, most of us, for whatever reason, do not play PvP, but I have no wish to see those who do play be penalised to the extent that it takes away thier pleasure in the game.