By no means I will try to mock you here, this is not supposed to be a flaming/trolling/whatever thread. I just want to try to explain to you why people are currently complaining about a lack of features/content.
First of all they don't complain because they don't like the game. It's the exact opposite. They like the game and want it to be as successful as possible. They only fear that because the game in it's current state (yes it's only gamma, but wake up guys release is in mererly a month) doesn't match their expectations, critics might get a bad first impression of the game after release and people who despite that still buy it might not be satisfied.
Now you might say just because the expectations of a few people aren't met, the game won't automatically be unsuccessful. And you are right. Well, or not, depending on how many people 'a few' are:
Let me make a bold assumption: by great chance you (who complains about people complaining) are going to be an explorer in ED. And that's perfectly fine. But ask yourself this question: What are you doing the exploring for? Is it because you are generally interested in astronomy, everytime you see a new star zoom towards you after frameshift gives you goosebumps and you want to go to star systems that no player has ever explored before? In short: are you exploring just for the fun of exploring?
If so, congratulations! Then you have already got all the features you need and with 4 billion star systems in ED you've got content for the next 100,000 Years or so of gameplay to keep you happy.
But let me remind you that in a game that is supposed to feature piracy, bounty hunting, mining, trading, smuggling, being a mercenary and what not else as well, exploring is only one part of the game.
And for 'the few' that are complaining, gameplay at this stage looks the following:
Interdict, shoot, claim bounty, repeat.
Interdict, shoot, force cargo dropping, get cargo, sell cargo, repeat.
Buy goods, Frameshift, Supercruise, sell goods, repeat.
The thing with repetitions is, that they tend to get boring pretty quickly, especially if you have no real reason to do all these repetitions for.
A bounty hunter won't have a huge smile on his face when he kills his 100th pirate because it looked totally different than the kill before or the 98 kills before that (that's an exploring analogy here).
I know that many here are saying ED is about making up your own story inside the universe, therefore giving yourself a reason for the repetions and yes you can do that. That's a totally awesome way of playing (really). But not for everyone. I would even say it's not the way for most of the people that will play ED. Simply because most computer games provide a story or some kind of higher goal and people are used to it and expect it from a game (at least in a certain amount).
I also know that some people here are stating, that ED should rather be for the die-hard fans than try to appeal to the masses. Maybe you even assumed from my view of the game, that i'm not one of the die-hard fans. And you are right. In fact i never heard of the Elite series before. But let's face it: that's presumably what the majority of players will be like with FFE being almost 20 years in the past.
So ED hasn't really a choice there, since the servers ED is running on and the constant stream of updates and expansions everyone is eagerly awaiting, have to be funded somehow. And that is simply done by the masses.
And yes, you could say that this wouldn't be a problem if you had an offli... No. Stop it. Seriously.
I myself tried several things in ED: i started like most people by doing courier missions. Then I started my career as a trader which went rather well. Trucking my way from system to system i also used my D-Scanner occasionally and threw a little smuggle in just to spice it up from time to time. As i got barely enough credits to buy myself a Viper - and with the wipe for 3.9 coming - i tried bounty hunting and a little bit of piracy when no one was looking. The only thing I haven't tried yet is mining, just because i'm generally not very interested in it.
So i went through (almost) every playstyle to the part where it says 'repeat' and i am now, like many others, facing the question what to do, other than repeat.
Maybe a fellow CMDR might ask me if i want to go bounty hunting with him? Maybe word will spread that in some nearby system huge amounts of gold can be mined. Might even give that a try. Or Maybe the local pirates are planning the biggest heist in Eranins history?
Well, none of this is very likely for us to happen right now, because ED simply lacks a sense of community in-game. Hence the desperate cry for Multiplayer features. And no matter what FD will come up with in terms of galactic events and lore about the various factions of the game, it will never be as dynamic, unpredictable and exciting as community-generated content.
And for people complaining they want to feel alone in space and don't care about multiplayer: there are 4 billion star systems. Get lost. Or play solo (Ok, there was a bit of mocking there, but come on, you have your features already, now please let us have ours).
I hope this might help some of you to understand why part of this community has some concerns about the gameplay in ED, especially bearing in mind official release is coming up soon(tm). If you might even share some of these concerns with us, please help us pointing them out to FD, so we all can play a game we are all happy about and be able to play it in a way we are all happy about, hopefully for so long time, you won't even remember what the word 'offline' means anymore
On a sidenote: I know another space sim (and i bet a good amount of you people do, too) that is almost 10 years old after all and also had an explicit lack of content in multiplayer but is still played today. It's called Freelancer (yeah, i know, it's by the other space-sim guy, but doesn't affect my point here). And why is that? Because people started giving it more features to play as a community by modding (the point here is 'community features', not 'modding' btw). They turned it from a multiplayer game to an MMO. Kind of where ED lacks right now, the MMO part.
TL;DR: read it fool.
First of all they don't complain because they don't like the game. It's the exact opposite. They like the game and want it to be as successful as possible. They only fear that because the game in it's current state (yes it's only gamma, but wake up guys release is in mererly a month) doesn't match their expectations, critics might get a bad first impression of the game after release and people who despite that still buy it might not be satisfied.
Now you might say just because the expectations of a few people aren't met, the game won't automatically be unsuccessful. And you are right. Well, or not, depending on how many people 'a few' are:
Let me make a bold assumption: by great chance you (who complains about people complaining) are going to be an explorer in ED. And that's perfectly fine. But ask yourself this question: What are you doing the exploring for? Is it because you are generally interested in astronomy, everytime you see a new star zoom towards you after frameshift gives you goosebumps and you want to go to star systems that no player has ever explored before? In short: are you exploring just for the fun of exploring?
If so, congratulations! Then you have already got all the features you need and with 4 billion star systems in ED you've got content for the next 100,000 Years or so of gameplay to keep you happy.
But let me remind you that in a game that is supposed to feature piracy, bounty hunting, mining, trading, smuggling, being a mercenary and what not else as well, exploring is only one part of the game.
And for 'the few' that are complaining, gameplay at this stage looks the following:
Interdict, shoot, claim bounty, repeat.
Interdict, shoot, force cargo dropping, get cargo, sell cargo, repeat.
Buy goods, Frameshift, Supercruise, sell goods, repeat.
The thing with repetitions is, that they tend to get boring pretty quickly, especially if you have no real reason to do all these repetitions for.
A bounty hunter won't have a huge smile on his face when he kills his 100th pirate because it looked totally different than the kill before or the 98 kills before that (that's an exploring analogy here).
I know that many here are saying ED is about making up your own story inside the universe, therefore giving yourself a reason for the repetions and yes you can do that. That's a totally awesome way of playing (really). But not for everyone. I would even say it's not the way for most of the people that will play ED. Simply because most computer games provide a story or some kind of higher goal and people are used to it and expect it from a game (at least in a certain amount).
I also know that some people here are stating, that ED should rather be for the die-hard fans than try to appeal to the masses. Maybe you even assumed from my view of the game, that i'm not one of the die-hard fans. And you are right. In fact i never heard of the Elite series before. But let's face it: that's presumably what the majority of players will be like with FFE being almost 20 years in the past.
So ED hasn't really a choice there, since the servers ED is running on and the constant stream of updates and expansions everyone is eagerly awaiting, have to be funded somehow. And that is simply done by the masses.
And yes, you could say that this wouldn't be a problem if you had an offli... No. Stop it. Seriously.
I myself tried several things in ED: i started like most people by doing courier missions. Then I started my career as a trader which went rather well. Trucking my way from system to system i also used my D-Scanner occasionally and threw a little smuggle in just to spice it up from time to time. As i got barely enough credits to buy myself a Viper - and with the wipe for 3.9 coming - i tried bounty hunting and a little bit of piracy when no one was looking. The only thing I haven't tried yet is mining, just because i'm generally not very interested in it.
So i went through (almost) every playstyle to the part where it says 'repeat' and i am now, like many others, facing the question what to do, other than repeat.
Maybe a fellow CMDR might ask me if i want to go bounty hunting with him? Maybe word will spread that in some nearby system huge amounts of gold can be mined. Might even give that a try. Or Maybe the local pirates are planning the biggest heist in Eranins history?
Well, none of this is very likely for us to happen right now, because ED simply lacks a sense of community in-game. Hence the desperate cry for Multiplayer features. And no matter what FD will come up with in terms of galactic events and lore about the various factions of the game, it will never be as dynamic, unpredictable and exciting as community-generated content.
And for people complaining they want to feel alone in space and don't care about multiplayer: there are 4 billion star systems. Get lost. Or play solo (Ok, there was a bit of mocking there, but come on, you have your features already, now please let us have ours).
I hope this might help some of you to understand why part of this community has some concerns about the gameplay in ED, especially bearing in mind official release is coming up soon(tm). If you might even share some of these concerns with us, please help us pointing them out to FD, so we all can play a game we are all happy about and be able to play it in a way we are all happy about, hopefully for so long time, you won't even remember what the word 'offline' means anymore
On a sidenote: I know another space sim (and i bet a good amount of you people do, too) that is almost 10 years old after all and also had an explicit lack of content in multiplayer but is still played today. It's called Freelancer (yeah, i know, it's by the other space-sim guy, but doesn't affect my point here). And why is that? Because people started giving it more features to play as a community by modding (the point here is 'community features', not 'modding' btw). They turned it from a multiplayer game to an MMO. Kind of where ED lacks right now, the MMO part.
TL;DR: read it fool.
