Missions would indeed be a good idea to Make Colonization Great Again.
Campaign to make trailblazers less of a grind.
- Thread starter Dragsham
- Start date
Yes for mission variety that rewards players with materials which are auto-delivered to a colony of choice.
People acquire lots of credits which mostly remain unused, because there's too little to spend on. Colonization could add a big money-sink with NPC haulers. The NPCs would haul at a much slower speed than real players to balance it. This doesn't automate the whole game. It will enable players who are burned-out by hauling to enjoy colonization again. The Architect could hire and manage NPC haulers.
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For an activity that is "mind-numbingly boring", that is quite a lot... (Disclaimer: Not my description)
...but then, what does FD know about their game, or something
Yeah it's so engaging people use multiple alts at the same time to get it done. Nobody is bringing that up here but it's a big part of it.
I'm allowed to use inductive reasoning though. I can't provide data that FDEV locks away. But come on, you KNOW the vast majority of systems claimed are absolutely not built up. Why are you doing this?
No, and I think you’re talking nonsense. That’s my inductive reasoning.
If we had a ship that reduced the hauling by a factor of 10x then we WOULD have time to do other game loops to break the monotony. Also FDEV would make a billion dollars from it right now, but I digress.
Like...is everyone else here on Elite 24/7 or something?? This is not a feature that respects our time and that's the issue. You're baking into the cake a bad premise that I'm not wanting to accept: that a reduction in hauling would just mean people did more hauling to complain about. How do you figure that?
I don't care if it's missions, or hire NPCs to deliver or to slowly load/unload Carrier - at this point, anything that is not direct hauling is good, imo. But, it looks like there are a lot of players who don't want it to be just credits, and it also looks like Frontier shares this view (with how credits-accessible Colonisation is).
There are NPCs flying in and out, but I'm not sure if there are any underlaying systems or if it's just a visual flavour. I like ideas of NPCs doing it and player needs to protect or there would be a chance of failure. Hire NPCs as a UI to see a bar filling up - all of it becomes just a waiting game staring at UI. I would want something like that only because it would be an alternative to hauling, not because it would make the feature fun or more engaging. At least for me playing UI and waiting for NPCs, although way more fun than hauling, still very far away form enjoyable experience.
Plus, if Mission Board options were implemented - there are Donation missions, they can be used as a 'credits' option. I would simply prefer a solution that would allow to play the feature (with variety of options) instead of waiting for the feature to play itself.
Before I give a quick precis of how I'd redesign the Colonization feature again, just a rather depressing set of heads up from someone who has actually worked in the industry here;
1.) Devs don't tend to listen to feedback outside of bugs, they're designing the kind of game they want to make, and wont generally change course even in the face of disasterous feedback. When I was on Ultima Online, they didn't even listen to fellow staff giving them the Meet And Greet feedback I was in part paid to collect for them.
2.) The game engine may not be capable of doing what you, or even they want to make; I especially suspect this is the case here, where everything seems to have the same underlying structure, namely simple local flight sim and moving values up and down on a global database. The last time they tried something new, ground combat in Odyssey, it was half baked, under delivered and shockingly broken at launch.
3.) The community itself usually has far too many people who have a parasocial relationship with the product as-is, and assume the Devs are their friends and Saviours and very meaning of existence, and will argue against any and all attempts to change it, even improve it for anyone else (it is, of course, already perfect for them too); this leads to public debate not only being often pointless but increasingly toxic and destructive of the wider community itself, with no end change to the product to show for any of it.
With all that in mind though, just as an exercise in showing you can have different design ideas, even if we'll likely never get them...
1.) Devs don't tend to listen to feedback outside of bugs, they're designing the kind of game they want to make, and wont generally change course even in the face of disasterous feedback. When I was on Ultima Online, they didn't even listen to fellow staff giving them the Meet And Greet feedback I was in part paid to collect for them.
2.) The game engine may not be capable of doing what you, or even they want to make; I especially suspect this is the case here, where everything seems to have the same underlying structure, namely simple local flight sim and moving values up and down on a global database. The last time they tried something new, ground combat in Odyssey, it was half baked, under delivered and shockingly broken at launch.
3.) The community itself usually has far too many people who have a parasocial relationship with the product as-is, and assume the Devs are their friends and Saviours and very meaning of existence, and will argue against any and all attempts to change it, even improve it for anyone else (it is, of course, already perfect for them too); this leads to public debate not only being often pointless but increasingly toxic and destructive of the wider community itself, with no end change to the product to show for any of it.
With all that in mind though, just as an exercise in showing you can have different design ideas, even if we'll likely never get them...
- Increase sales prices of construction commodities to at least be competitive with the market place, so people will want to deliver to other people's sites. Right now outside of PowerPlay/Guild war politics which is colonizing for Guild prestige, many people have either burnt out with endless hauling for almost no money made at all, or the insane grind to actually get materials there to bother with their own systems, much less anyone elses.
- Add a permanent notice board to every constructed station that says who donated resources. Give people the lure of fame. (Except does that data still exist for already completed stations? Probably too late for this now)
- Allow players to set up NPC fleets to do the hauling for them, using their own equipped ships. Gives a reason to spend more money to have a wider fleet, as well as putting those greedy NPCs that fly fighters to use. Make it expensive, a gold sink, to trade cash earned for time spent hauling otherwise. Equipment level and NPC combat/trade rank improves chances of success/time spent flying the goods in for you. (This infringes on one of the very few use cases the poorly designed fleet carrier system has though, you won't be getting this).
- Someone here suggested Mission Board requests at the station; you'd need to have one active in the system to work, and see above re: Fleet carriers. Good idea though, also a gold sink if the player has to put the reward in. Could tie into hauling/Scarab driving too if you can add your own Rare Goods reward as a further temptation for others.
- Someone here also suggested allowing local bounty work etc, involving other forms of gameplay in system to aid colonization. Also good idea, but would need balancing; if you had bounty hunting aiding the tech level say, someone could come along and shoot police, detech your system, and directly grief people even in PvE (and are we even sure yet how factions work in the new systems?) Would probably have to be just a direct "You did stuff, they get resources" correlation.
- All the above might accelerate the already rich's control of colonization; it would need to be some sort of balancing pass to prevent this, but... I wonder if Wide (simple, plenty) Colonization isn't a deliberate design choice compared to Tall (complicated, few). (I suspect we're in the "burn the product for as much Arx purchases as we can before sunsetting" mode, frankly. What it does to the long term ecosystem isn't the priority now; You're individually buying Arx to rename stations, so go mad and grab as many as Outposts in new systems as you can, so there's more chance of someone seeing your pricey new names as they move about. Leaving you stuck in one system will only sell as many Arx renames as there are slots in there, so boo to that.)
Let's not forget that they redid Engineering and Power Play because their initial approach was just... bad. Both of those are in a MUCH better state now. IMO they should redo the whole colonization system completely.
They should make station construction completely hands off but take a long time. The way you accelerate that time is by doing various activities.
So for example:
This type of approach pretty much satisfies everyone. If I want to expand while doing other things I can just throw money at it and let it take a long time. If I want to haul I can take delivery contracts. If I want to pew pew I can defend the convoys.
They can even increase passive construction time the farther away the station is from the bubble. So if you want to build far away then it requires a more hands on approach or it'll take 6 months.
They should make station construction completely hands off but take a long time. The way you accelerate that time is by doing various activities.
So for example:
- You spend 1 billion to fund the construction of a Coriolis station.
- If you do absolutely nothing then it'll be done in 1 month.
- System spawns "Construction Supply Convoy Under Attack" signal sources.
- Every time you win a battle the construction speeds up.
- Losing a battle changes nothing.
- If available, surrounding systems spawn Delivery contracts.
- Every completed contract speeds up construction.
- Can also just delivery goods without a contract like today, but it's a bit slower.
- If available, surrounding system spawn Passenger contracts to haul workers.
- Every completed contract speeds up construction.
- etc, etc
This type of approach pretty much satisfies everyone. If I want to expand while doing other things I can just throw money at it and let it take a long time. If I want to haul I can take delivery contracts. If I want to pew pew I can defend the convoys.
They can even increase passive construction time the farther away the station is from the bubble. So if you want to build far away then it requires a more hands on approach or it'll take 6 months.
And exaggerate so much that you make your argument look like a joke.
Me I am on for about 1-2 hours per day occasionally longer, it depends on other things like keeping up with the forums. In the past for some of the CGs with different decals depending on your contribution level I would be doing several 2+ hour sessions per day to keep in the 10% band.
Possibly experience of how people in the game have done things previously and little evidence that behaviour has changed that much over time.
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Engineering was made less grindy. Do people en-mass complain about the Engineering grind anymore? No
SCO was added to the game, do people still complain about being stuck in gravity wells taking forever to travel? No.
You're leaning on the wrong experience when it comes to this I guess. The game would have been far better off if these things were in place on day one. So why take years and years to give Colonization the QoL updates it desperately needs?
There's folk that just will not allow constructive criticism. For some weird unbeknownst reason it's not acceptable to complain, to suggest, to try to make things better.
Quite how anyone can seriously say that hauling 250+ loads of commodities is a pleasant, gamey, normal activity is just beyond me.
We the outspoken try to fix what is broken.
Gotta watch my words here. I don't have to say it. We the majority all know. Common sense prevails.
There's a slew of suggestions to make it less grindy, boring, repetitive.
I'm happy those suggestions are tabled.
Don't give up!
it's broken, it's in beta.
It needs to change.
o7
Quite how anyone can seriously say that hauling 250+ loads of commodities is a pleasant, gamey, normal activity is just beyond me.
We the outspoken try to fix what is broken.
Gotta watch my words here. I don't have to say it. We the majority all know. Common sense prevails.
There's a slew of suggestions to make it less grindy, boring, repetitive.
I'm happy those suggestions are tabled.
Don't give up!
it's broken, it's in beta.
It needs to change.
o7
Basic premise is bad. No amount of tinkering around the edges will fix it. 
Why is the basic premise bad?Basic premise is bad. No amount of tinkering around the edges will fix it.
Imagine if they made a park sim where before you could do the fun stuff of running the park they made you do a repetitive thing 5 thousand times for a week for each ride, stand or attraction. That is basically what they've delivered with this update, except you can't run the park because as we all know there is no owning systems in ED because it was never designed for that.
It's like they handed the game over to the park sim guys and they were like -
Crap! We don't know how make a space game.
I know, let's let them build a park...I mean...star system.
But that's got nothing to do with a space sim!
...
Wait...they like flying spaceships right?
I guess....
Let's make them fly spaceships 5 thousand times before they can build a ride...I mean...outpost.
Genius!
Prolonged clapping noises ensue as an extended session of high fives and back-clapping commences
It's like they handed the game over to the park sim guys and they were like -
Crap! We don't know how make a space game.
I know, let's let them build a park...I mean...star system.
But that's got nothing to do with a space sim!
...
Wait...they like flying spaceships right?
I guess....
Let's make them fly spaceships 5 thousand times before they can build a ride...I mean...outpost.
Genius!
Prolonged clapping noises ensue as an extended session of high fives and back-clapping commences
Except there is more to EDO than just the update, so you are not stuck doing just hauling and can go off and "do the other fun stuff."Imagine if they made a park sim where before you could do the fun stuff of running the park they made you do a repetitive thing 5 thousand times for a week for each ride, stand or attraction. That is basically what they've delivered with this update, except you can't run the park because as we all know there is no owning systems in ED because it was never designed for that.
It's like they handed the game over to the park sim guys and they were like -
Crap! We don't know how make a space game.
I know, let's let them build a park...I mean...star system.
But that's got nothing to do with a space sim!
...
Wait...they like flying spaceships right?
I guess....
Let's make them fly spaceships 5 thousand times before they can build a ride...I mean...outpost.
Genius!
Prolonged clapping noises ensue as an extended session of high fives and back-clapping commences
... and, you can build an outpost in 25 round trips on a T9, not "5 thousand"