Please, try to limit your condescending of other players' complaints about the game...
Elite Dangerous | Update 18.07 - 5th July 2024
- Thread starter Paul_Crowther
- Start date
It does not make the gameplay meaningless in any way though?
I did the unlocks like mere weeks before it was available for free, but guess what I got to enjoy diving around in the cloud and do other activities that other people could not (or not as comfortably) do at the time I did. You can always look at it from the perspective that your gameplay made it possible for ship computers now being able to decode the obelisks automatically or that made it possible to just clone CSLs for mere credits.
All the fun that was had cannot be taken away. You did things back when other people couldn't because they didn't bother with doing the decoding, or simply couldn't, same with caustic cloud diving.
There are a lot of issues with the game that could be responsible for declining player numbers. Pinning it all on making certain assets easier to obtain feels like a spurious correlation, especially since these same patterns existed when the game was still growing.
Thanks to help/guidance from a very nice pilot player , i recently just did my very 1st Guardian site run and i'm pretty sure yes we did the "scan" but ALSO if i recall correctly i was told to "decode" it as well. Are both things not necessary anymore?
And if not, why not and when was it changed? And why was it changed?
Again, it was my very 1st Guardian run , so i was abit overwhelmed & excited by the whole experience ( so fun & immersive! ) . So i might be confused about the whole "decode" aspect.
The prior version sounds really EPIC and , well, dangerous. Any idea why it was changed?
I'm sorta new around here in EliteD , so i'm guessing all these recent changes ( nerfs? ) are because 'Frontier' wants/needs the playerbase to get thru this Thargoid content sooner/faster , in order to make space ( pun intended ) for NEW stuff coming like PP2.0 maybe?
i agree ^ ... But i also know, from experience, how delicate of a balance it is for Developers to maintain endgame in such a way that encourages casuals yet still pushes hardcore players to their limits.
Preferred Rainbow Islands.
And now I have THAT theme stuck in my head the rest of the day. Nice one, Paul.
Before we could even get to see a single Titan, we had to dive into the surrounding caustic cloud without CSL's to quickly get the stuff needed for the CSL's, so we could then get past the caustic cloud!!!!!.
After this, was the first titan attack as you could then get through the cloud with CSL's and then had to find out by trial and error how to best attack/damage a Titan!
It was great new gameplay. Now the stuff you need is all available from Megaships for credits.
EDIT - reason it changed is to get more people involved who maybe didn't have enough play time to do this.
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Having spent a considerable amount of effort making the Titan attack (and destruction) scenarios, they presumably wanted it to be a bit easier for newer players to get involved in the events themselves.
The previous unlock process involved gradually getting deeper into the Titan's defences as it was implemented and played out over several months, so taking a few days every couple of months to gradually build up your anti-Titan equipment and check out the new content was no big deal for people regularly playing and following the Thargoid content more generally - you'd get the bits you need as you went along. Trying to do all that in one go at the end, on the other hand, is a bit more substantial a barrier and having some big spectacular event with "you won't want to miss this, but if you haven't been keeping up for the last six months you probably will" was something I think they wanted to avoid.
I do limit it... I don't have enough time to address all.
(and yes, I did the original Ram Tah Guardian mission, back in the day, too)
Yes, I enjoyed the quest to get guardian modules (It’s not a grind if you enjoy it), and I did the scavenging from the titan caustic cloud (which I thought I hate but really enjoyed) but I didn’t lose anything when others got access to the titans, or got the guardian weapons. It’s the same issue when you saw new players get to the Anaconda within a couple of hours, you feel like an old git ‘you youngsters, it wasn’t that easy in my day!’, but when they get to anaconda level, do they know how to fly or fight using that ship? The answer is nope because the skill involved has to learnt, you can’t by skill in this game with credits or arx (unlike other MMOs).
The things is when you make the barrier to entry too high for some of the most exciting content that’s been in the game for years, then you’ll lose more players. It’s a balancing act between challenge and accessibility. Too much challenge then the game becomes too elitist (pardon the pun). In this case, I think that fdev got the balance right, it was six months before they made The caustic launchers accessible. The Titans and spires sites are the new challange, not the caustic cloud or the guardian weapons.
As far as player numbers are concerned, Elite has remained surprisingly resilient in steam charts (they only metric we have, although I personally don’t play through steam). We’re in the middle of the summer drop off, but I expect that to climb again when update 19 comes along. Considering a lot of us were expecting full maintenance mode after update 18, I’ve been impressed with what we’ve got so far. The SCO is a game changer (and should have come along with Odyssey to be honest). The Python Mk2 is a good combat ship, and the Titan and spire combat is some of the best fights I’ve had in PVE.
The only a couple of things that concerns me. They are;-
1. I’m missing galnet and cgs, the galaxy feels a lot more sterile without them
2. I’m hoping that the new arx revenue is enough to continue development after update 20
Exactly this. Even I am tempted. The only thing that's stopping me is my complete lack of interest in combat. I'm still enjoying the content as a spectator though.
Has anyone else run into the following issues with the new patch:
- Frame rate issues around titans.
- No payouts from either attacking the Titan's exposed thermal core, or doing nothing in the vicinity of the titan (the 14k)
Console yourself with the thought that lots of players have had so little interest in the Guardian stuff that even these latest changes won’t tempt them.
Are you prepared to name your source at Frontier who told you that?
My anecdotal story on access to the Titans being made easier:
It was the ability to buy the necessary equipment at Rescue Megaships that finally enticed me into trying the AX side of this game at all. Since then I've been spending a significant chunk of my playing time plinking at the angry space flowers, I even did some of the little mini-quests to the Guardian sites in order to get the better AX weapons that still can't just be bought with credits.
At least in my case, lowering the barriers to entry has resulted in more engagement, and I suspect that I'm far from the only one.
It was the ability to buy the necessary equipment at Rescue Megaships that finally enticed me into trying the AX side of this game at all. Since then I've been spending a significant chunk of my playing time plinking at the angry space flowers, I even did some of the little mini-quests to the Guardian sites in order to get the better AX weapons that still can't just be bought with credits.
At least in my case, lowering the barriers to entry has resulted in more engagement, and I suspect that I'm far from the only one.
Are you doing it in solos, pvt or open. I found that if your in open or pvt and there are more than three other players, the frame rate tanks more a tropical fish shop (sorry dad joke). It’s the same with payouts, it seems to get confused with a lot of players.
To be fair though, a group of three taking on the titan is quite fun, if you nominate one person as the bomber and you all rush in to hit the core once it pops out!
Because when you apply a "mod" that allows you to have a weapon that is resistant to magical proximal destruction but the weapon does less damage than a vanilla weapon that is already immune from magical proximal destruction, it's not much of a mod.
"Hey, you can now use the guardian weapons! They do less damage than these human AX missiles... but you can look cool doing less damage!"
If people are going to grind for a mod the mod should do more than vanilla.