Elite: Easymode. NPCs stop shooting 'your' target...whatever next? (rambling rant)

Which examples given in this thread are false?

Edit - the game has been RIDICULOUSLY dumbed down since I joined at the start of beta, it has been an ongoing thing now for a few weeks, and whether you agree with the changes or not you must at least acknowledge them.

Not seeing the same 'ridiculously dumbed down' game as you, think you're just having a bit of a hyperbolic rant there. Trying to think where that dumbing down has been applied... Will give you easy mode landing pads and reduced collision damage. Interdictions, maybe.. reduction was a little over the top but it's better than the daft amount happening previously which just became an annoyance with having to evade several on every station run.
 
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Tar Stone

Banned
Not seeing the same 'ridiculously dumbed down' game as you, think you're just having a bit of a hyperbolic rant there. Trying to think where that dumbing down has been applied...

- Cargo insurance
- Reduced interdictions
- NPC AI reduced from beta
- NPCs with no shields
- USSs with multiple attackers no longer exist
- Supercruise dropout distance reduced, you now drop out at the front door
- Insurance tweaks to increase penalty of ship destruction were reversed

edit:

- Idiot arrows on the station holo to tell you where to dock
- Collision damage reduced


edit:

- Interdiction mechanic so easy it is essentially a "Y/N" to go into combat
 
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Only gamma didn't get a wipe. I didn't try use situation nor was interested in cranking up massive amounts of money in short period of time. So I don't care.

Yeah, well I didn't have time to make loads of money in Gamma because in my spare time I was out having (arguably) more fun playing music. But some people made rather a lot out of a broken mechanic in Gamma, and I'd stress it's not jealousy -- but it's not right that it wasn't wiped. Still, makes no difference because it looks like unless you continue to find ways to maintain your income it's too expensive to own the massive ships.
 
Is the OP complaining because NPCs no longer deny you of your bounty at the very last moment (sometimes after 10 to 15 minutes of dog fitting your target on your own), or are they complaining because NPCs no longer help you take down your targets?

Which is easier? Taking a target down on your own, or having3-5 federal security pummel away at them too, while you try to get off that last opportune shot and steal the bounty?

I dunno...maybe if you target is below 5 percent all security disengage the target and allow you to have it, since you have done all the hard work.
 

Tar Stone

Banned
Please tell me there was a long sperg thread over this one as well LOL. Don't, I know there had to have been. HOLO SHOWS ENTRANCE, GAME TOO EASY.

There were a good few posts on it, the original way they did it was so terrible it was like something from a console game. It has thankfully been made a lot more subtle.

I'm probably coming across like a ranting old fool but I'm playing a different game than I was a month ago, and maybe this is the way all games are made these days, but I'm starting to feel a little bit duped and sad about the whole thing. I listened to those guys on Lave Radio over the last year discussing all the DDF mechanics and what we have right now is nowhere near to what has been talked about.

That one simple change of the supercruise dropout distance being reduced was supposed to be to balance out the FA Off boost speed change (it didn't used to bleed off), but the game lost more than it gained with that one simple change. An awful lot of player driven stuff was starting to fill that gap between dropping out of SC and cruising to the station.

Any of these changes in isolation are fair enough, but overall they are, in my personal opinion, hurting the difficulty and therefore the longevity of the game for me. All I can do is shout about it until I run out of steam or get booted off, I think it's clear that they are going for a wider audience - something the previous Elites didn't do.
 
- Cargo insurance
- Reduced interdictions
- NPC AI reduced from beta
- NPCs with no shields
- USSs with multiple attackers no longer exist
- Supercruise dropout distance reduced, you now drop out at the front door
- Insurance tweaks to increase penalty of ship destruction were reversed

edit:

- Idiot arrows on the station holo to tell you where to dock
- Collision damage reduced


edit:

- Interdiction mechanic so easy it is essentially a "Y/N" to go into combat

Will give you a couple of those other than the ones I mentioned, the main one being the reduced difficulty of combat AI. The npc with no shields is a little daft, would be less annoying if it was on ships where it was perhaps believable such as trade ships.

SC dropout, whatever.. if people hadn't sat around outside Freeport doing nothing but ganking incoming ships that probably wouldn't have happened. If you make it obvious to FD that new players are going to get ganked senseless what the hell do you expect, we already know Braben and co are pvp adverse.

Interdictions were over the top and simply an annoyance for most people. That wasn't dumbing down it was balancing. Maybe overdone a little but at least you notice the difference between being a wanted criminal with a cargo full of stolen goods and being totally clean now, before it was just tedious having to evade them every couple of minutes (and no, I never bitched about it).

USS in general are borked, if you want multiple attackers just hit a wanted ship with some feds on hand ;P Most I go into are wedding/funeral barges, trade ships or cans. The whole mechanic needs a serious overhaul.

Insurance tweak? I never noticed that so can't have made much impact.

And seriously, you're trying to moan about little arrows on the station in our hud? =D

Actually my biggest gripe is probably the way Silent Running got reduced to a near useless mechanic, shame 'cos it had a lot of potential for fun.
 
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The game gets easier the more you play it anyway, obviously, because you get better at it. The only issue is how the AI scales with the player's skill level. This is something that has to be tweaked over time to find the sweet spot. It's not something you can really sit down and have fully optimised right from the start.
 
just as a side not I have been playing shieldless since the ability to upgrade engines etc with all the interdictions in the middle of gamma 2.xxx. As I have stated many times before my net connection makes combat very difficult so I have concentrated on other styles of play, long range small quantity cargo in a modified hauler, this was origiinally in preperation for public release wipe (I was expecting it but not worried) as a trial run to see how I could get out of a sidey and what could be done with a modded hauler. I find in most cases if I do get sstopped by interdiction I can boost and manuever long enough (normally hull hits around 75%) to get out of dodge, never tried this against a player as I play in mobius's group and would not suggest it either. but my point is running no shields has been a viable option foir quite some time.
 
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Tar Stone

Banned
Will give you a couple of those other than the ones I mentioned, the main one being the reduced difficulty of combat AI. The npc with no shields is a little daft, would be less annoying if it was on ships where it was perhaps believable such as trade ships.

SC dropout, whatever.. if people hadn't sat around outside Freeport doing nothing but ganking incoming ships that probably wouldn't have happened. If you make it obvious to FD that new players are going to get ganked senseless what the hell do you expect, we already know Braben and co are pvp adverse.

Interdictions were over the top and simply an annoyance for most people. That wasn't dumbing down it was balancing. Maybe overdone a little but at least you notice the difference between being a wanted criminal with a cargo full of stolen goods and being totally clean now, before it was just tedious having to evade them every couple of minutes (and no, I never bitched about it).

USS in general are borked, if you want multiple attackers just hit a wanted ship with some feds on hand ;P Most I go into are wedding/funeral barges, trade ships or cans. The whole mechanic needs a serious overhaul.

Insurance tweak? I never noticed that so can't have made much impact.

And seriously, you're trying to moan about little arrows on the station in our hud? =D

Actually my biggest gripe is probably the way Silent Running got reduced to a near useless mechanic, shame 'cos it had a lot of potential for fun.


Interdictions were an annoyance, and still are an annoyance. That's all they are, they don't represent any kind of risk once you get past the first few times it happens.

SC dropout - I said exactly the same thing as you, regarding it being an excuse to sit and gank, but actually it turned into some amazing gameplay moments, player driven. And station security was beefed up to deal with people sitting in amongst the station hull. Now all that station security is redundant. Nothing happens around stations.

There used to be lots of player stuff happening in the area around stations, I saw players getting chased down for cargo, myself and another player scooped up cargo of tea one night about 20km out from a station after a player battle.

And yeah, I moaned about the idiot arrows, because they were an obvious little tweak added into the game for a very small minority of players on the forum who couldn't get the very simple mechanic of how the station rotates and where the slot is. It was almost like the design team just threw their hands up in the air and said "just put arrows on the damn thing", because it had been explained over and over and over again and still people didn't get it - people who AREN'T AROUND ANY MORE I should add.

Anyway +rep for engaging with me, I'm kind of nearing the end of my time on the forum and with the game.
 
I dunno...maybe if you target is below 5 percent all security disengage the target and allow you to have it, since you have done all the hard work.

Ya cause that's realistic

- Cargo insurance
- Reduced interdictions
- NPC AI reduced from beta
- NPCs with no shields
- USSs with multiple attackers no longer exist
- Supercruise dropout distance reduced, you now drop out at the front door
- Insurance tweaks to increase penalty of ship destruction were reversed

edit:

- Idiot arrows on the station holo to tell you where to dock
- Collision damage reduced


edit:

- Interdiction mechanic so easy it is essentially a "Y/N" to go into combat

I knew there was a lot of pandering to people who complain about the difficulty, but to actually see it all spelled out and listed like this is very depressing.
 

Tar Stone

Banned
I knew there was a lot of pandering to people who complain about the difficulty, but to actually see it all spelled out and listed like this is very depressing.

I will pay a hell of a lot more attention in future to the people who have been involved in the beta testing of games.

They should have addressed the difficulty with documentation and better tutorials, and gauged it over a longer period of time. IMO.
 
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One of the things we’ve seen in console games is that they’ve been a little bit dumbed down over the years. I like the fact that there’s no tutorial in Elite: Dangerous. Look at kids playing games now, it’s funny. Quite often when they get slightly stuck, they just fire up youtube while still playing for a “how to” – I imagine there will be plenty of those here as well.

Sorry mate. You over estimated us. We are all console players deep down inside.
 
Using "console player" or anything related as an insult must be one of the most awkward things I know.

Nothing screams basement more loudly.
 
Using "console player" or anything related as an insult must be one of the most awkward things I know.

Nothing screams basement more loudly.

Tell that to Braben, he suggested it. I'm a console player myself. I got a PS3 and 4. Ive never heard as much whinging about difficulty and wanting an easier ride as I have from PC owners and this game in all my life.
 
The recent change to NPCs so that they no longer "steal" kills from people who couldn't learn to play well enough has made an easy game even easier.

I'd put money on the probability that I'm a better combat pilot than you. There's nothing about "learning to play" when I've performed 80% of the hull damage on a ship at minimum, and then I unload everything I have when the target integrity is down to 3-4% in the hopes of grabbing the bounty and don't because there are four NPC vipers firing at the same thing. Preventing kills from being poached is not always avoidable, like you're implying with that statement, and if you seriously believe otherwise, you definitely know nothing about the game.

Instead of the unrealistic and stupid behavior of security stopping their fire, they should implement some kind of multiple-credit or partial-credit system. Probably more stressful and confusing to implement, but police veering off at the last second doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.
 
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Interdictions were an annoyance, and still are an annoyance. That's all they are, they don't represent any kind of risk once you get past the first few times it happens.

SC dropout - I said exactly the same thing as you, regarding it being an excuse to sit and gank, but actually it turned into some amazing gameplay moments, player driven. And station security was beefed up to deal with people sitting in amongst the station hull. Now all that station security is redundant. Nothing happens around stations.

There used to be lots of player stuff happening in the area around stations, I saw players getting chased down for cargo, myself and another player scooped up cargo of tea one night about 20km out from a station after a player battle.

And yeah, I moaned about the idiot arrows, because they were an obvious little tweak added into the game for a very small minority of players on the forum who couldn't get the very simple mechanic of how the station rotates and where the slot is. It was almost like the design team just threw their hands up in the air and said "just put arrows on the damn thing", because it had been explained over and over and over again and still people didn't get it - people who AREN'T AROUND ANY MORE I should add.

Anyway +rep for engaging with me, I'm kind of nearing the end of my time on the forum and with the game.

No worries, I'm far from rabidly defending the game. I'd noticed some of the issues, perhaps payed less attention to others other than the dumbing down on the combat AI.

Btw on the SC dropout I wasn't defending the change and certainly never called for it, it just didn't surprise me with people ganking trade ships (and others) repeatedly. The best pvp I've had was also around stations, trying to hit somebody who'd ducked into the no fire zone and was using the station as cover (without hitting the station), chasing each other around a coriolis and trying to get the other guy to crash and so on.

Interdictions I'd always assumed were more of a hassle when you hit larger ships with less maneuverability. Since I've never flown (or wanted to fly) anything larger than a Cobra I wouldn't know from experience. What isn't right is that you can just boost away from any encounter you don't fancy.

Anyway, as I said in that other thread the big mistake the FD are making is listening to new players. New players by default do not understand a game, their opinion is pretty much invalid. In any other field in life a newbie gets laughed out of town if they walk in and kick up a fuss because things aren't the way they like. Even listening to more experienced players is dodgy when those players are asking for things to be easier. We need something to aspire to for longevity's sake. We also need a top end that not everybody can achieve, much as that makes some people cry. Without that top end there is no measure of skill or personal achievement and progression, just a flat line... and we know what that represents ;)
 

Tar Stone

Banned
Anyway, as I said in that other thread the big mistake the FD are making is listening to new players. New players by default do not understand a game, their opinion is pretty much invalid. In any other field in life a newbie gets laughed out of town if they walk in and kick up a fuss because things aren't the way they like. Even listening to more experienced players is dodgy when those players are asking for things to be easier. We need something to aspire to for longevity's sake. We also need a top end that not everybody can achieve, much as that makes some people cry. Without that top end there is no measure of skill or personal achievement and progression, just a flat line... and we know what that represents ;)

Absolutely agree with your entire post and quoted the bit I really really agree with ;)
 
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