Mind numbingly boring hauling

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Let's be honest here; colonization is going to stop being the fancy new toy and will soon largely ignored anyway. Making it something that just sort of happens in the background would at least mean that it would still probably be utilized after the honeymoon phase.
Maybe, maybe not - it very much depends on the players who are inclined to engage in this type of feature. Noting that the same may be able to be said of how a not insignificant number of players approach the game, i.e. interacting with some part of it a lot and most of it much less rather than splitting their time between all activities that the game offers.

If nothing else Colonisation will serve to increase the populated play area of the game over time, noting that in the month since release (with a period where new systems could not be claimed) players have increased the number of populated systems from c.20,000 to c.43,400, added nearly 48,000 starports and orbitals and over 27,000 surface installations.

Even if this was a one off it would be considered a success, in terms of adding to the game.
 
Noting that the same may be able to be said of how a not insignificant number of players approach the game, i.e. interacting with some part of it a lot and most of it much less rather than splitting their time between all activities that the game offers.
As I can only make a valid point from personl experience, so cannot express any kind of global knowledge relating to players (or at least global knowledge that would get me a permaban...) behaviour...

I do whatever activity that interests me at the time I fire up the game - most of the time I just bumble along finding things that make me chuckle, rather than having a 'grand plan' and that has worked for the 7+ years I have been playing - with breaks taken, on occasion, to play through content of the odd single player game - when Colonisation was announced, with emphasis being on BGS / PP2 interaction, I wasn't particularly intertested, when released I got curious, so jumped in and had a go.

Yes, a lot of hauling, and fun finding resources among the rush brightened things up considerably, as well as knowing that the liklihood of some NPC wanting a slice of my 'tasty cargo' could bring even more fun into the equation.

I'm not a career hauler, far from it (well, maybe if I'm stealing...) but have been having consistent fun playing with the mechanics of colonisation to create a squalid pirate den, still more research to be done, naturally, but having given myself some curious targets has proven to be entertaining, to say the least!
 
even as at least most of the vocal players appear to be very outcome-focused
Is this surprising? Would you gather engineering mats and unlock engineers if engineering's only function was to add a icon that indicates the module has been engineered, with no other stat changes? I'm going to go way out on a limb and say that no, you wouldn't, and almost no one else would either.

If it's just something that happens in the background, then it can be functionally pointless without any issue, but if it requires a time investment-- especially a particularly tedious one--, the player should be rewarded for that investment in some real, tangible outcome. It's like game theory 101 haha.

The reward doesn't even have to be a direct advantage over other players; it could be something more QoL focused, like a facility you can build that give the architect access to every engineering blueprint and experimental they've unlocked at the workshops in the system, or something to that effect; just saving a little time jumping all over the bubble to engineer one of these fancy new ships we're getting. I'd be colonizing through the tedium for that, without hesitation.

Instead, we got a handful of credits and not much else.

Maybe, maybe not - it very much depends on the players who are inclined to engage in this type of feature.
No, it really doesn't. Despite some very adamant disagreements that I used the incorrect words, the gameplay loop is tedious and boring. I am giving up at my fifth structure, so I'm well above the average of 2. I'm willing to power through a tedious gameplay loop if there's a point to it, and I'm telling you it's going to get neglected after this honeymoon phase.

Even if this was a one off it would be considered a success, in terms of adding to the game.
I acknowledge that you may feel the need to spin this into a win, but I'm not concerned with the "one off success". I'd rather something that added long-term, recurring value to the game. How has the game functionally changed now that there are 20k more populated systems? It really hasn't. I have a feeling there are a lot of people on this forum that are so invested in the game that they essentially have stockholm syndrome, and will try to polish any turd they're handed. (non-mods, included.) I get it; a first-party forum is probably not a great place to have an unbiased discussion about the thing. haha

And while it's just a personal, vague concern of mine-- it's plausible that colonization reduces enthusiasm and engagement by player groups manipulating the BGS. We effectively have infinite expansion; there's no need to expand into another PMFs system and try to take it over if you can essentially just print out a new system to expand to; one system is generally just as good as any other. I'm on the fence about how plausible this is, but I think the risk is there. The "one-off success" may end up being a net negative for player engagement. Maybe.
 
The actual building process - going from a tiny initial outpost up to a fully-running system - instantly gives more visible interactivity to hauling then "congratulations, you've hauled a bunch of stuff, have some money you don't need and the controlling faction gets some minor BGS effects you probably don't care about". Certainly it's more about the process than the outcome (which I think is generally how Frontier expects the game to be played anyway, even as at least most of the vocal players appear to be very outcome-focused), and certainly hauling isn't the most interesting option given other aspects of ED's design, but it's filling an interesting niche where:
- you can do in-game stuff
- it has a comprehensible and visible in-game effect
- it doesn't automatically require a big group to cooperate to get anywhere
Yeah for sure. That statement was made as a somewhat indifferent one... for me, finally having a purpose for a diverse range of goods is enough to get me interested (as the BGS effects to-date are quite "Oh... well anyway")... but on balance of what people refer to as "mile-wide-inch-deep" for the game, if people are disappointed with the fact that building these things doesn't offer further activity opportunities "then what's the point"..... being able to make that happen faster isn't going to change that for them.

Colonisation I think is very much an antithesis to the culture that's grown within FD which I'll crudely refer to as the "If I can't get a G5 engineered anaconda on day 1, the game is a broken grind" crowd, and probably would've had much more traction back then than it does now... which is why it's a somewhat confusing update given a whole bunch of other considerations.
I'm not a career hauler, far from it (well, maybe if I'm stealing...) but have been having consistent fun playing with the mechanics of colonisation to create a squalid pirate den, still more research to be done, naturally, but having given myself some curious targets has proven to be entertaining, to say the least!
Yeah like, I think there's a lot of emphasis right now on "If I'm not building ORBIS EVERYWHERE, I'm not building optimally"... whereas I'm aiming for my non-experimental colonies to be more thematic, and dependent on a lot more of the cheaper structures which will, incidentally, likely give more weekly dividends than making it "ORBIS EVERYWHERE"
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
No, it really doesn't. Despite some very adamant disagreements that I used the incorrect words, the gameplay loop is tedious and boring. I am giving up at my fifth structure, so I'm well above the average of 2. I'm willing to power through a tedious gameplay loop if there's a point to it, and I'm telling you it's going to get neglected after this honeymoon phase.
There is no disagreement regarding the words used, nor their meaning - the disagreement stems from the opinion that those words necessarily describe how all players view the feature rather than being one or more player's opinion of the feature.
I acknowledge that you may feel the need to spin this into a win, but I'm not concerned with the "one off success". I'd rather something that added long-term, recurring value to the game. How has the game functionally changed now that there are 20k more populated systems? It really hasn't. I have a feeling there are a lot of people on this forum that are so invested in the game that they essentially have stockholm syndrome, and will try to polish any turd they're handed. (non-mods, included.) I get it; a first-party forum is probably not a great place to have an unbiased discussion about the thing. haha
No need to spin a doubling of the number of populated systems - it speaks for itself. That some don't seem to like the game as it is is obvious - and has been for over a decade, with players going as far as prophesying that "without <insert fundamental change here> the game will die!".
And while it's just a personal, vague concern of mine-- it's plausible that colonization reduces enthusiasm and engagement by player groups manipulating the BGS. We effectively have infinite expansion; there's no need to expand into another PMFs system and try to take it over if you can essentially just print out a new system to expand to; one system is generally just as good as any other. I'm on the fence about how plausible this is, but I think the risk is there. The "one-off success" may end up being a net negative for player engagement. Maybe.
It may at that - but then the BGS is not really a territorial control game in that players are not in control of Factions but merely affect their influence. Of course some do consider it to be a territorial control feature, and some of those don't seem to be able to accept that every player affects the BGS (not just those who choose to instance with them). We'll see, in time, how it pans out.
 
well my "burned out and having a break" lasted all of....... maybe 1 day :D

I have already started my 2nd project......... a small extraction site and i have to say compared to my coriolis this is gonna be a walk in the park. i think i will fill my carrier tho whilst i am doing it, chances are i can squeeze enough in there for a couple of small settlements.
 
I think the elephant in the room is that the only real big hauling projects are Coriolis, Ocellus, Orbis and the T3 surface settlement. How many of these a system really needs? 2? Maybe 3 at maximum? Most of the other supporting infrastructure that makes up positive system stats and allows the big station produce useful stuff is just ~12 Cutter or T9 loads, or about 2...3 hours. That's not a lot of hauling, even if you need 2 or 3 to create a bustling station economy.
 
I think the elephant in the room is that the only real big hauling projects are Coriolis, Ocellus, Orbis and the T3 surface settlement. How many of these a system really needs? 2? Maybe 3 at maximum? Most of the other supporting infrastructure that makes up positive system stats and allows the big station produce useful stuff is just ~12 Cutter or T9 loads, or about 2...3 hours. That's not a lot of hauling, even if you need 2 or 3 to create a bustling station economy.
The other pain point is i think a lot of people went straight to this... where these structures need more supporting infrastructure to be properly effective.

To spin an analogy, they spent hours mining in order to buy a stock Anaconda, and wonder why it sucks at everything.
 
No need to spin a doubling of the number of populated systems - it speaks for itself.
I think it needs someone to speak for it. What has actually changed? Yeah, "number go up" but what about, like, a real change? Since we don't even know how the system designing works, most of these new systems are functionally dead-- no economy to speak of, etc. Even if this weren't the case, what would be different? Now that there are 20k more system, I can now do... what? Besides the BGS (which I can't tell if you're dismissing or not-- very unclear to me), was there some shortage of systems that I didn't know about?

Steam says I have just under 5k hours in this game. (The real number is lower; I've left the launcher open accidentally before). I'm not new to this game. You could even say I'm pretty invested in this game. I'm willing to call a turd a turd, though.

Maybe the Vanguard thing has a function that serves to tie colonization into the rest of the game in some yet unknown way, rendering many of my concerns moot. I have hope, at least.
 
Is this surprising? Would you gather engineering mats and unlock engineers if engineering's only function was to add a icon that indicates the module has been engineered, with no other stat changes? I'm going to go way out on a limb and say that no, you wouldn't, and almost no one else would either.
Sure - Engineering is an example of something in Elite Dangerous which is very definitely outcome-focused and at least in its more recent iterations even intended to be. You do the engineering, now you have a better ship. So when the purpose of Engineering is the outcome, it doesn't matter what the process is, it's never going to be fast enough.

On the other side something like Exploration most people aren't doing for the defined in-game outcome of "you now have 3 million credits and your name on an obscure ice-ball somewhere". Frontier aren't going to convince more people to start galactic circumnavigations or visit Sag A* or whatever if they add an extra zero to the per-planet credit payouts. It's about the enjoyment you get out of the process, rather than the (token) shiny thing at the end. People went exploring in FE2/FFE which had absolutely no payout for it at all.

So I think colonisation is certainly intended to be more on the "process" rather than "outcome" side. You're not going to get (more than very indirectly) rich by doing colonisation, there is as you note below very rarely anything that a newly colonised system can offer in a quantitative sense that wasn't already available a thousand times over in the existing bubble. But the process of creating that system - deciding what to build, where to put the stations, looking for scenic spots for the surface builds, gradually seeing it develop over time, learning where the good local markets for Steel and CMM and so on are (and maybe building a port or two to cover the non-bulk requirements in a shorter trip) - all can have its own intrinsic interest and satisfaction, in the same way that jumping to a new system and wondering what it'll look like can keep some players out in deep space for months at a time.

and probably would've had much more traction back then than it does now
Certainly something like the Mikunn plan to build a chain all the way to Lagoon Nebula has a lot of similarities to the pre-release hopes/thoughts of the First Great Expedition and similar.

Now that there are 20k more system, I can now do... what? Besides the BGS (which I can't tell if you're dismissing or not-- very unclear to me), was there some shortage of systems that I didn't know about?
That's definitely an interesting one. So many parts of gameplay in Elite Dangerous would work better with a much smaller bubble - it's why I've spent most of the last decade out in Colonia (which would probably be a bit on the small side for the entire player base, sure, but closer to right than the actual bubble is).

But Frontier not being willing to have the Thargoids permanently wipe out 90% of the bubble (and most players unlikely to agree on which 90% should go), none of those problems really get materially worse if it's twice or ten times bigger either.
 
So I think colonisation is certainly intended to be more on the "process" rather than "outcome" side.
I might believe you if they bothered to document the process and inform the players. It feels more like busy work to fluff up the numbers before the end of the fiscal year (Mar 31).
So many parts of gameplay in Elite Dangerous would work better with a much smaller bubble
I am kind of surprised that pirates/gankers aren't screaming from the rooftops about how colonization is going to ruin what they like about the game. Maybe they are and I'm just in the wrong threads.
But Frontier not being willing to have the Thargoids
I know it's a little off-topic (please no more nastygrams, mods!) but I am still floored that FDev ended the thargoid war stuff. All that effort building a pretty nice UI and some interesting game mechanics and they just... turned it off.
 
I know it's a little off-topic (please no more nastygrams, mods!) but I am still floored that FDev ended the thargoid war stuff. All that effort building a pretty nice UI and some interesting game mechanics and they just... turned it off.
They didn't 'turn it off' - we won. Stories do that - they work to an end.

And while the war was on there were lots of people who complained about it being boring and too much work and 'what is the point!'. Sound familiar?
 
They didn't 'turn it off' - we won. Stories do that - they work to an end.

And while the war was on there were lots of people who complained about it being boring and too much work and 'what is the point!'. Sound familiar?
We "won" because they specifically tuned it so we would win; they could have kept it going forever. I thought for sure they'd put some portal or permanent super titan or something in Sol after the last Titan fell and use the forever-war and loss of Sol as a narrative for why we need to colonize.

The difference is that there were plenty of ways to interact with the thargoid war. There is exactly 1 way to interact with colonization.

For the record, I didn't directly interact with the Thargoid war stuff all that much. I did get all the titan decals though! Pretty!
 
I might believe you if they bothered to document the process and inform the players. It feels more like busy work to fluff up the numbers before the end of the fiscal year (Mar 31).
Frontier's financial year ends 31 May, and it came out a month after their interim half-year update was published, so it was really badly timed for both of those, unless it has an even bigger sustained boost in player activity than any other feature release they've ever done.

Documentation: tricky one, that. The "economic influence" stuff that players are getting most visibly annoyed with is documented. The documentation is probably a little more concise than it should be, and "system economic influence" is a poor choice of name [1], but it was documented. On the other side things like "what does wealth or standard of living do?" really could have a fair bit more documentation (I genuinely can't tell if Frontier has forgotten that they've never told us this) but most players aren't asking about that in the first place.

...but also, the lack of documentation is again primarily outcome-important. If you build a bunch of mixed surface settlements on a planet and stick a Coriolis above them because you want a strong production economy at the end of it, you're going to be disappointed in the results. If you build a bunch of mixed surface settlements on a planet so that you can have a bunch of surface settlements in scenic spots, and an orbital station conveniently positioned for visiting them from, all the existing documentation is more than sufficient to explain the process of building those things.

[1] It's not wrong in a literal sense but nor is it the most useful way to think about what that property does. On the other hand, at least some of the confusion comes from players thinking that "system economy" is any more than a shorthand map label, which isn't really a documentation problem at all.

I am kind of surprised that pirates/gankers aren't screaming from the rooftops about how colonization is going to ruin what they like about the game. Maybe they are and I'm just in the wrong threads.
I think that's got a few reasons:
- most of them prefer to blame <something which really would be massively off-topic here> rather than the size of the bubble anyway, even though it's always been the size of the bubble primarily
- if the average player population of a system in the 20,000-system bubble at any time was <1, making it even lower barely makes a difference
- all the old focal points (Shinrarta, Engineers, etc.) still apply because we can't build copies of those in the new systems
 
The difference is that there were plenty of ways to interact with the thargoid war. There is exactly 1 way to interact with colonization.
Yup, this is the main issue i want devs to acknowledge.

I can strenghten a BGS faction trought various different means, and thus interact with it however i may have an appetite for at any given moment.
For credits i can get lost in the black, mine, try to stack missions...
For PP2 ive got a bunch of different options which can be done at the same time as other stuff.

I have hauled a lot already simply to stake 2 claims and get some small instalations setup in one of em, and its dreadful.
The thought of doubling the amount ive hauled to just get a coriolis and then more to make it useful,to be able to interact with my system using the damn ship ive used to build it, has completely stripped me of any enthusiasm to continue. I dont even care about "slow building" my coriolis, because my only reward will be more hauling to actually make it have a decent market.

As shallow as the colony system is, its still pretty cool to be able to place down new stuff in the BGS and build it up, its the monotonous process that is boring people out of the game. It will be interesting to see how things are in a few months, when the initial rush from content starved players dies down and we see how many systems are left with either bare outposts, or just a few small installations or construction sites that will never be finished. I know atleast thats how mine are right now.
The ratio of systems claimed, to successful claims, when outposts take as little as they do to finish (compared to the rest of ports) does not look good to me already, but again, time will tell.

I dont want then FDEV to chase the next "big update" that is then delivered to the barest minimal viable product to juice the returning player numbers, i want them to get the updates done properly, so that players can actually stay enjoying the game.
 
I can see that if you like hauling, building stations is good. But for someone who thinks hauling is mine-numbingly boring, what's the incentive to do it at all? Why not do something interesting instead?
 
Frontier's financial year ends 31 May, and it came out a month after their interim half-year update was published, so it was really badly timed for both of those, unless it has an even bigger sustained boost in player activity than any other feature release they've ever done.
That's my bad; I work for a company owned by a UK company, and google confirmed the Mar 31 date. I assumed it would be the same for Frontier. Mea culpa.

Documentation: tricky one, that. The "economic influence" stuff that players are getting most visibly annoyed with is documented. The documentation is probably a little more concise than it should be, and "system economic influence" is a poor choice of name [1], but it was documented. On the other side things like "what does wealth or standard of living do?" really could have a fair bit more documentation (I genuinely can't tell if Frontier has forgotten that they've never told us this) but most players aren't asking about that in the first place.
This is that turd polishing I was talking about earlier. The lack of documentation is indefensible. It's a solid failure of Fdev. I don't know why you'd even try to defend it.

If a bunch of people read documentation and come to the same incorrect conclusion, the documentation is to fault. Half of my job is writing documentation (the other half is testing software!). Of course someone is going to read "system economy" and assume it covers everything shown on the "system map". It would be weirder to assume otherwise!

The fact that they haven't yet put out any documentation is shameful.

If you build a bunch of mixed surface settlements on a planet so that you can have a bunch of surface settlements in scenic spots, and an orbital station conveniently positioned for visiting them from, all the existing documentation is more than sufficient to explain the process of building those things.
Sure, sure, but you're forgetting about the effort involved and the fact that they're not being up front that this is mostly just so people can make pretty vanity systems. Also, don't forget that you and I are in a bubble, just on account of us being in this forum, talking about this stuff. Imagine the poor saps who just play the game as a game. They have no idea what's going on or why their system isn't working.

I think that's got a few reasons
Those are solid points, though I am pretty sure that PP stronghold carriers can replace Jameson Memorial. Your point still stands, though.
 
The thought of doubling the amount ive hauled to just get a coriolis and then more to make it useful,to be able to interact with my system using the damn ship ive used to build it, has completely stripped me of any enthusiasm to continue. I dont even care about "slow building" my coriolis, because my only reward will be more hauling to actually make it have a decent market.
I am kind of in the same boat. I am maybe a third the way through my ice asteroid station-- my 5th structure-- and I just can't bring myself to haul any more. My other go-to activity is playing with the BGS with my squadron, but that's on permanent hold because of several critical (PP2.0 related, I think) bugs and the general (expected) chaos that colonization has brought to the table.

It's difficult to assume that Fdev has some broader plan for the game, instead of just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, without considering the broader effect on the game. We'll see.
 
That's my bad; I work for a company owned by a UK company, and google confirmed the Mar 31 date. I assumed it would be the same for Frontier.
March 31st is the end of the tax year, so a lot of companies do align their financial year to that to simplify certain calculations, if they don't have any particular reason not to. But you can pick whatever year you like (e.g. a calendar company might run January->December because they expect to spend money throughout the year on design and printing, then get most of their income from that at the end, so it makes annual budgeting way simpler to run)

though I am pretty sure that PP stronghold carriers can replace Jameson Memorial
Yes - certainly. Though if someone is trying to find other people for the explosions, the people with a Powerplay rank, in their own territory where they get free rebuys at a fairly low rank, were never going to be the targets anyway.

This is that turd polishing I was talking about earlier. The lack of documentation is indefensible. It's a solid failure of Fdev. I don't know why you'd even try to defend it.
I'm not defending it so much as saying "and even if they had put out more documentation it wouldn't have helped with the actual problem"

To use Engineering as an analogy, the documentation for how you engineer a module is fairly solid in-game. There are missing bits here and there.
The documentation for why you'd want a System-Focused Power Distributor, or what combinations to use to make a meta combat ship, is entirely absent from the game and probably out of scope of what Frontier should be providing anyway.
A lot of people have wasted time engineering ships in terrible or at least mostly irrelevant ways, but it's hard to argue that the main cause of that was "bad documentation" as opposed to "half the blueprints being useless in the first place", for example, or that it should be fixed by sticking an "are you sure?" warning on the Shielded AFMU mod.

If a bunch of people read documentation and come to the same incorrect conclusion, the documentation is to fault. Half of my job is writing documentation (the other half is testing software!). Of course someone is going to read "system economy" and assume it covers everything shown on the "system map". It would be weirder to assume otherwise!
Yes. It's a perfectly valid assumption if you have for the last decade not had to care what system economy is. (If you know what system economy is, then the idea of something influencing it directly is sufficiently weird to make you look behind the sign saying "beware of the leopard" to figure out what they're going on about). That is the much bigger problem and why people keep coming to incorrect conclusions about how colonisation "should" work.

That is also Frontier's fault, of course - by a much longer chain of events - in failing to understand how the differences between a single-player game and a MMO would apply to an Elite-like commodities market, and then failing to do anything about it in the previous decade, so no-one has previously had to care about the differences between system economy and station economy, or even much less abstract details like "what economy sells Power Generators?" [1].

But it also means that not only would "better documentation" for colonisation need to answer a whole bunch of questions that Frontier wouldn't even think to ask (because they already know the answer) - but it also needs to answer a bunch of questions most players don't know they need to ask - for a concrete example, I think a lot of people are going to - now they do understand what System Body Economy Influence does - end up making hybrid-economy stations like Industrial-Refinery or even with three or four components - and from the point of view that says an Orbis Colony station is a waste, making a hybrid-economy station is also a pretty bad idea. But the understanding of that isn't the job of the documentation on colonisation, it's the job of the documentation on the economic basics of Elite Dangerous. Which also doesn't exist (in the form of documentation, rather than in-game observable information, at least), and players aren't complaining it doesn't, even though a lot of them are really going to need to know this stuff.



[1] To an extent it also resembles the common problem of people failing to distinguish between Anarchy system and Anarchy station jurisdiction when farming Odyssey settlements. But because there's a big enough subculture (BGS-focused squadrons) that care about the difference, there are plenty of people who can explain what you did wrong when you end up in a detention centre with ten notoriety, and stop misunderstandings becoming common knowledge a bit. The game doesn't have a subculture that's really into Gallium futures markets, so false assumptions about how the economy works don't get countered in the same way.
 
I cant comment anyone else but i remember when the game 1st launched and loas of people were asking if they could name a space station, and the reply was generally no because players paid a LOT for this privilage and so FD didnt want to devalue it.

i wont lie, whilst i supported their logic i dearly wanted a station that i had named in game.

and now we have that option. I genuinely never expected to have a station in game that I had named.... but now that is exactly what i have (admittedly its not the name i really wanted.... damn snowflakes with no sense of humour and so FD not daring to risk any double entendre.

but the ability to have my named coriolis in game? i am actually ok with the hauling i put in for that along with 5000 ARX.

none of this negates the hope of more options to get involved in colonisation........ but it does support the view that what we have now isnt without merit.
 
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