Walking around stations may be a bad idea

[Herik]

I would be very happy if I could sit on a bench in a park on a ring, take a stroll past the gated community and then get the shuttle home to Space IBIS at the starport. Gazing at the stars through the transparent aluminium canopy probably wouldn't work as the glare from the streetlights and hydroponics would mask them and a peaceful stroll would probably be marred somewhat by Federation/Imperial propaganda blasting through the PA. The unicyclists and space didgeridoo buskers would annoy too. ;-)

Hmmmm...riots?

Ooooh, must remember to stock up on muscular entropy and bone mass maintenance nanites at the pharmacy. At my age the cheap genespliced stuff needs a bit of a boost. (please don't ever consider this as a mechanic)

Just sayin'

Ahh yes; but remember in the (dim) bars or restaurant lounges you could sit and watch through that transparent aluminum the ships coming and going (to and fro) about the galaxy.

 

[Tradesman]

I'd rather be able to walk around the ship itself if there was room to do it. Space stations seem cool but I don't know of any practical reason to do it. The only way I could see it happening is if it was limited to the shipyard/bay and something akin to a 'home' or apartment, kind of like in Anarchy Online. But there would have to be some reason to it.

Just about to say that but I love to be able to walk around the outside of my ship to inspect it and view my paint scheme.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Walking around stations may be a bad idea

Ill counter with: Walking around stations may be a great idea!

Loving the idea of getting out of my ship, having a look from outside. Hopefully there will be bars full of NPCs. Maybe you can start a bar fight! Yay!

 

[Herik]

Glad to see I'm not the only one feeling this way. Walking around stations, FPS mechanics and planetary landings are unnecessary distractions for FD, and are box-ticking exercises which is exactly what FD wanted to get away from by going to KS instead of a publisher.

Walking around stations has been tried in other similar games, and we've seen how pointless it is. It is fun for five minutes, but what's after that? Is it just a more cumbersome UI than what we currently have? Or is FD really thinking of building an RPG on top of Elite? It's either going to be a useless hindrance, or a shallow RPG experience.

Planetary landings is the same. I've seen people dreaming of visiting planets with varied cities, amazed at their majestic size. Not going to happen. You will have a handful of city types, which will be duplicated in various configurations around the galaxy. Once you've seen one, you've seen them all. The development effort to make planetary landings a fun and lasting gameplay mechanic are beyond the reach of FD - and I believe every developer on earth.

Same thing with flora and fauna. You will have Icy Planet 1, 2 and 3, Rocky Planet 1 and 2, etc. You can travel all the way up and down the west coast in the USA, but every strip mall will look the same.

I have zero interest in FPS gameplay in a space simulator, and almost zero belief that FD could make a compelling FPS game on top of Elite - us FPS gamers are generally a very different demographics than Elite players. We have been spoiled by extremely slick gameplay experiences so the expectations are sky high for FPS mechanics, and again, we've seen similarly resourced companies with no FPS dev experience fail miserably in their FPS endeavors.

FPS mechanics might work if FD and the Elite playerbase was more FPS-oriented, and if FD had background in FPS game development. But since neither is the case, scrap it.


One of the main reasons why I didn't get the unlimited expansions pass was that the planned expansions don't bring anything of value to the game beyond bloat and shallow mechanics.

For those saying "don't play the expansions, then": expansions take away development resources which could be better utilized in fleshing out the bare-bones game in its current state (missions, exploration, trading/economy, bounty hunting, piracy, lore/roleplaying). In their current (speculated) promised state they are just marketing ploys which will fall flat come release. They might bring a few more players, but any MMORPG or FPS player trying out E: D because "now it has this expansion which turns the game into a perfect hybrid of genres" will be bitterly disappointed and quit in disgust.

Everyone else will be disappointed by the high expectations set by other games which do the things FD is supposedly doing in expansions much better.


Don't turn E: D into a chimera, but concentrate on perfecting the already sublime, if unfinished, game. I'm sure your marketing department can come up with expansion which are organic and integral to the existing framework (Thargoids! Epic storylines involving ancient artifacts found around far reaches of the galaxy, or boozing and womanizing royals! More ships!)

Well I'm responding, even though I said to myself I wouldn't; Ye of 'little world', DB knows what he wants in this game.

 

[Morgo_the_MonkeyGod]

Like he said:

This is because:-

(A) You have no.........computing skill, imagination, faith, vision.

I am yet to find a computer (psuedo) science grad who can actually use a computer properly, let alone write software.

Well, I've known a few...mostly working in game development for some titles you may have heard of. ;-)

 

[Neilos]

Ill counter with: Walking around stations may be a great idea!

Exactly. No one knows what it'll be like until it arrives. And with teh work that FD have shown they can produce I'll wager that they make something solid (if perhaps a little thin)

 

[Alex Hughes]

I agree; also we should note if FD doesn't pursue this, another game will; and not in the too distant future...I want FD to stay on top.

X:Rebirth - been stated a few times during the thread. I was unsure if there was a forum policy on this so I decided not to name it in the OP. I think it should be said that people making the argument that FD will do a better job than Egosoft may be right but Egosoft's track record was impressive prior to Rebirth. Their relative failure is perhaps indicative of the scale of the challenge which FD is now undertaking.

I should also point out (to be fair to Egosoft) that Rebirth is now a fair bit better than it was and is now a pretty good game.

You know I simply don't understand why people create threads like this. People are complaining that the galaxy is empty (not me btw, I love it) and FD have said the ability to move around your ship, station and planets is coming. Your opinion is not going to affect this, its their design decision not yours. So you've wasted your time and effort ranting about this. Besides, and this is the important bit, IF you DON'T want to do this, you DON'T have to. Its totally OPTIONAL!!! So why complain about something that hasn't even been implemented yet.
You have no idea how well or otherwise this will be implemented. I for one would welcome anything that would let me do more things in Elite. Yes it will be a big job, but overtime any shortfalls if any, will hopefully be refined and improved. Just dismissing it outright, because you don't like the 'idea' of it, is shortsighted and a little idiotic. Wait and see how it looks and feels and if you want to partake then download otherwise continue to play Elite as is, no harm done.

1) Expressing an interest in the future development of the game is not "having a rant"
2) I expect FD are interested in the opinions of their customers - they say they are - and successful businesses care about their customers
3) I don't think anyone has 'dismissed it [walking around stations] outright'. There are a range of good opinions here including some from people with experience of more successful implementations than Rebirth
4) Actually I do like the 'idea' - I am concerned about the scale of the task and wanted to discuss it.
5)I love this game and want to see it go from strength to strength.
6) Have a nice day

 

[natte hond]

they probably come up with procedurally generated faces and bodies.
even the layout of the interior could be randomized.
don't forget with whom your dealing with here.
its the digital magician, he did it before!

okay he,s only human I know.

 

[Marshall...]

Doing a space walk for on the spot repairs/patching up would be pretty cool.

 

[n13L5]

Hate it when people make threads to talk down game play options they haven't seen.

I think FD understands that actual game play has to be associated with such a feature.

In EVE, for example, walking around stations bombed simply because they never developed it beyond a technology demo, using their profits from EVE instead to make the console game Dust and also sank a fair amount of money into a spooky MMO that got cancelled before getting finished.

Does anyone have any doubts that the integral first person play in Star Citizen will not be great to play just because the game has space ships?

People with limited vision are always fast to speak out against potential pitfalls of something new. Sure, the pitfalls are there. But first, leave it to the developer, then see if they made a great or a poor implementation of it.

 

[wibbleboy]

I'd like to see Frontier ease towards such goals, rather than jump straight in. Such an undertaking is a massive task even for the large Star Citizen team, who are using a limited number of hand-crafted locations and an established FPS engine.

IMO procedurally generated environments for the stations shouldn't be too complex. The hard part will be making them distinctive, interesting and believable. Any NPC interaction will be the hardest thing to implement well.

Perhaps Frontier could work towards incremental goals.

1) Add on-foot exploration within your ship, plus within the docking bay. These are enclosed areas which wouldn't require any NPCs.
2) Add ship-to-ship docking. Which would allow exploration on other player's ships (plus ship-to-ship refueling for search and rescue operations, for all you "out of fuellers").
3) Expand upon this by adding key areas to stations. I don't think that 100% free exploration would add much to the game; but a variety of areas such as outfitters, bars, scenic views, ship market, etc could be implemented and have them linked by some travel mechanism (lifts, transport tubes, etc) which would give the illusion of free exploration without needing to implement a complete station. Ideally these transitions would be seamless, with no loading screens.

However, if new areas were added for outfitters, market, etc. they should be optional. The existing mechanism for loading, outfitting, etc should remain. Perhaps you could potentially haggle a better deal in person?

 

[ascendence]

From what I 've read here I believe the ability to get up and leave your ship is in the offing at some point in the future.

Prior to ED being released a rival similar product introduced the ability to walk around stations as an expansion to what had been possible in previous games in the series. I think most fans of that series would agree it was a disaster (now gradually being fixed). The problem for that game was that each station interior was one of a small number of models and each station was populated by a small range of NPC characters - so you can fly half way across the galaxy to walk into an identical looking station to have an identical conversation with an NPC that looks identical to thousands of others. Interaction with those NPCs was then limited to a handful of brief scripted conversations and a simple mini-game.

Now I don't have a problem with the current limited number of station docking zone interiors in ED; the stations look terrific and taken with the range of outposts I'm happy. However unless FD put an enormous amount of effort into generating something that doesn't really seem central to an Elite game I worry that a first person experience out of the ships will necessarily be very limited and 'immersion breaking'. It's acceptable for one landing pad to look like another (even on a planet surface) but will walking down corridors identical to corridors lights years away and past people who seemingly have clones throughout the galaxy not be the ultimate immersion breaker? Perhaps FD are capable of producing station interiors and human models in a procedural manner to get the variation required to simulate a 'living, breaking universe' but it seems an epic undertaking to me.

There's also the question of what to do when you leave your spacecraft. If you can do everything you need to do from your spacecraft why bother leaving and therefore why bother tasking developers with working on such a peripheral aspect to the game? However if the player does need to leave their spacecraft to complete a task then there is the risk that process will become very tedious and repetitive slowing down the game. The rival product to ED implemented station walking as a required feature to play the game successfully and back-tracked rapidly in patches and revisions as players resented repeating out of ship tasks at each station they landed at.

I'm not saying that FD couldn't do an excellent job of implementing walking around stations. I'm just apprehensive that the scale of the task required to achieve that in a convincing, immersive way means that it could be a very long time before this feature would add to the quality of the game. This is time that could be spent on enhancing the core functionality of the game: better multiplayer, more varied missions etc., a wider rage of stations and outposts perhaps including some unique structures at key locations etc... We have to remember that FPS and PRG games are sophisticated undertakings in their own right.

So basically I'm worried that getting out of your spacecraft and walking around will necessarily expose the limitations of the simulation and actually be counter immersive.

Thoughts?

>limited types of space stations = terrific
>limited types of npc inside space stations = terrifying
what

 

[Flying_Fox]

I would love if The bulletin board were moved outside of the ship so you actually had to go look at it.

 

[Helvellyn]

It may turn out to be a bad idea but some of the comments about other things (e.g. planet landings) suggest that FD probably aren't interested in it unless they can make it work, and meaningful. I'm not 100% confident in it but I'm looking at it with more hope than fear at the moment.

 

[Snakebite]

From what I 've read here I believe the ability to get up and leave your ship is in the offing at some point in the future.

Well based upon my experience so far it will be a dull and pointless experience. There may end up dozens or hundreds of players wandering around Li Quing Jao but all you will ever meet is repetitive generated AI's because all the human players will be bubble wrapped up in Solo mode just in case they get assaulted at the bar or something....

 

[Zeonix]

I'd be content with walking around my ship unless we get personal bases.

 

[Soulside Journey]

I think it would be a cool feature to walk around in, and leave your ship. But the priority should be to add more station types, after all we have just 3 basic types and outposts.

I would love if The bulletin board were moved outside of the ship so you actually had to go look at it.

I think you would love that for a couple of times, and then you would simply be annoyed everytime you have to do it.

 

[Xbob42]

so you can fly half way across the galaxy to walk into an identical looking station to have an identical conversation with an NPC that looks identical to thousands of others.

Man, that sounds like a nightmare. I sure am glad Elite Dangerous isn't super repetitive like that or anything.

 

[Steve50]

Completely agree. I couldn't be less interested in walking around stations. Elite, for me, is a game about space and spaceships - that's what I want from it.

I have similar concerns about landing on planets. Unless they find a way to add interesting and varied gameplay alongside them, both walking around stations and landing on planets seem like a colossal waste of the dev's time. I would much, much rather them add new and varied gameplay for the core of the game - space and spaceships.

I agree about walking around, for me that simply doesn't fit in the Elite game. Landing on planets though, yes. It was done great in Frontier, we need it ASAP.

 

[BigBadB]

Hate it when people make threads to talk down game play options they haven't seen.

I think FD understands that actual game play has to be associated with such a feature.

In EVE, for example, walking around stations bombed simply because they never developed it beyond a technology demo, using their profits from EVE instead to make the console game Dust and also sank a fair amount of money into a spooky MMO that got cancelled before getting finished.

Does anyone have any doubts that the integral first person play in Star Citizen will not be great to play just because the game has space ships?

I have many doubts about SC, and this is just one of them.

It's really a question of resources and focus. The time they spend on the FPS part is time they can't spend on the spaceship part. So the FPS part won't be as good as they could have made if they weren't also making the spaceship part, and vice versa. Now, the combination of both in one game could make up for that to some event - the whole could be greater than the sum of its parts - but I fear it's just as likely that the opposite will be the case.

People with limited vision are always fast to speak out against potential pitfalls of something new. Sure, the pitfalls are there. But first, leave it to the developer, then see if they made a great or a poor implementation of it.

Right, so it's wrong of us to express any concern over the future development direction of the game. Pardon us for wanting to provide the devs with any feedback.