Dear Mr Braben....

[NeilF]

I would like to see random equipment failures and escape pods introduced. Sometimes your ship will breakdown, an escape pod (if you've purchased one. They were in the original Elite weren't they?) will return you to the nearest station and you then have the option of paying for your ship to be towed in. If you couldn't afford an escape pod, or were too cheap to buy one, then the old self-destruct is for you my friend Perhaps whilst your broken-down ship is waiting to be recovered, it could be hijacked by marauding pirates! Unless you've happened to install an expensive anti-hijacking security system. The possibilities are endless in this game, that's why I love it.

Can't think of anything more annoying!

1.5mCR of cargo in your ship's cargo space and you lose it all down to basically nothing more than bad luck?

 

[JupiterJoe]

Can't think of anything more annoying!

1.5mCR of cargo in your ship's cargo space and you lose it all down to basically nothing more than bad luck?

That's life NeilF, that's my point. If you can afford 1.5mCR on cargo, you can afford an anti-hijacking system or insurance. If you squint a little, your name says 'Nerf'. How fitting

 

[NeilF]

That's life NeilF, that's my point. If you can afford 1.5mCR on cargo, you can afford an anti-hijacking system or insurance

1) It's a game! I play a game to get away from the drudgery of life, not to mimic it
2) With your suggested game mechanic you'd simply just end up with a necessary evil mechanic which is nothing more than an annoyance. ie: You'd also have to pay the extra CR just to prevent the bad luck scenario!


God knows the game needs some more depth, so let's add some to the gameplay, not just random throws for the dice to simply inflict CR loss and annoyance. eg: Have a comms signal while SC'ing offering you money for your cargo. Do you risk going to the location to sell the cargo or not? Anything to break up the standard gameplay a bit and add some variety and depth!

 

[Jack Schitt]

Can't think of anything more annoying!

ZX Spectrum Elite had a feature that, on very rare occasions, would conclude the docking sequence with a message that read, "YOUR SHIP IS BOARDED BY PIRATES. THEY SHOW NO MERCY." And that was that, game over.

I never found out whether this was some sort of sticking plaster to cover an internally-monitored fail state, or just a means of encouraging players to use the Save feature more frequently. Given the limitations of the Spectrum I suspect the latter, although it wasn't specifically mentioned in the manual. TV Tropes suggests certain stations were more likely to spawn this event but in my experience it seemed random. I only saw it about a half dozen times in 10+ years of playing ZX Elite, and it only cost me anything the first time. If its purpose was to encourage saving, it worked.

 

[LtCasey]

+1

Your right, generally. Except, the USS. I've found multiple ships very often in it, one of my last encounters were three pirating anacondas, while I was carrying 3tons of Gold for bating pirates.

While in my trusting Cobra, i was out of there in notime. Puh!

 

[JupiterJoe]

1)Have a comms signal while SC'ing offering you money for your cargo. Do you risk going to the location to sell the cargo or not? Anything to break up the standard gameplay a bit and add some variety and depth!

I like this suggestion and I'm all for adding gameplay. The escape pod suggestion was to allow for all sorts of possibilities in this department. As it is, when you get attacked your systems get damaged. Yesterday, my Thrusters were down to 30%. If they fail you're stuck in space. Having an escape pod would be a fun option, as opposed to hitting self-destruct and losing any cargo. I'm just saying, leaving your ship unattended should have some risks. One day you may be presented with the option of stealing someone's ship too of course. It may be a tempting short-cut to a bigger ship, loaded with expensive equipment, that would have taken you ages to be able to afford. All's fair in love and war.

 

[JupiterJoe]

"YOUR SHIP IS BOARDED BY PIRATES. THEY SHOW NO MERCY." And that was that, game over.

[Sigh]Those were the days.

 

[Winterwalker]

Basically adding my name in agreement with the OP.

Though I can't really give an opinion on the current build as player (no rig for playing, as yet, coming soon) but I can as a kickstart backer. I agree then that without a high level of dangerousness, it kind of defeats the object of a game which follows not only in the fantastic code of Elite but PLUS, the legendary difficulty which that game always associated.

I don't want to be a "good" pirate, I'd like to become a GREAT one, Elite in fact, and unless the environment tests me I won't become. So it's not so much, "make my enemy strong, so that if defeated I will not be ashamed" (a plains Indian proverb) .. but "make my enemy strong such that I may be given honour" (Klingon)

 

[gurugeorge]

I'll make no apologies for a long post. Stop reading right now if you don't like them. I don't do TL;DR.

So, generally I love the game. I've been in since the Kickstarter, tested since Premium Beta, and yes I'm an '84 Elite original.
Mostly I've been positive throughout the various Beta stages and Gamma and into release.
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Recently that changed for me, with a seemingly small change by FD, which was changing the final shot kill rule. That isn't the point of this post however. The point is for me to explain why that small change was the tipping point for me personally, why I'm so concerned about the change in attitude very recently by the Devs and the direction they seem to be going in.
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So I'll start by saying straight out that I'm really concerned that the Devs have seemingly changed attitudes recently, and are making the game too easy, far too accommodating to new players who have been playing less than a week and whine like crazy, and taking out the challenges in the game.
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These challenges are what actually makes the game Elite, to me. Yes it's harsh. Yes it IS often unfair, but that is what MAKES it Elite. It's not a happy clappy universe where everyone is treated fairly or gets rewarded nicely and by damage dealt. It's where the highest, most respected ranking in the galaxy is based on killing people. Not 50% of them or even 99% of them. It's based on killing them. It has been for 30 years.
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But if youv'e done 90% of the DPS, you are the one who has in fact killed the enemy, the fact that some guy happened to get the last shot in doesn't mean the others' contributions are irrelevant. This isn't like everyone wins so everyone must have cake, it's based on contribution to death. Getting the last shot in is largely down to chance anyway, whereas the respective contributions everyone makes to a kill are the solid things that are getting the enemy's health down that makes the kill shot possible. The final shot should get some recognition or mark, but all the contributors should have recognition too, that's not making the game easy, that's just common sense.

 

[SentineI]

I would like to see random equipment failures and escape pods introduced. Sometimes your ship will breakdown, an escape pod (if you've purchased one. They were in the original Elite weren't they?) will return you to the nearest station and you then have the option of paying for your ship to be towed in.

Random equipment failure would be AWESOME. Space is dangerous (or at least it is in real life & hard SF), and unpredictable equipment failure would help you feel that. Not always anything life-threatening, just inconvenient most of the time. Maybe your scanner stops working, or one of your weapons, or your power supply drops to 75% capacity (forcing hasty disabling of non-essential modules), or whatever. Scary stuff when you aren't near a space station.

Maybe they already implemented this, but tied it to ship wear & tear... which you can trivially fix every time you dock (thus making it pointless). This stuff needs to occur no matter how much you repair your ship, or rather BECAUSE you keep damaging & repairing your ship, invisible wear & tear need to build-up (like in real life). I though I even remembered Frontier saying something like that, but I haven't seen it so far.

AFAIK we already HAVE escape pods, it's just they are automatic when your ship explodes. They have discussed the idea of you having to manually activate them - IMHO that should only be the case in Ironman Mode (once they get around to implementing it).

 

[Wicz]

It seems to me that the addition of a " hard mode " ( Ironman anyone ), would be the best way to address this.


Then everyone is happy.

 

[schuesseled]

The kill reward shouldnt be last man gets it or last pc gets it, it should simply be a shared bounty. A percentage given to each individual npc or otherwise based on damage dealt to both shields and hull.

As for the rest of the ops issues, they mostly seem of a personal nature. A desire to have to the most unforgiving game ever, not everyone wants that.

 

[Lobstris]

Random equipment failure would be AWESOME. Space is dangerous (or at least it is in real life & hard SF), and unpredictable equipment failure would help you feel that. Not always anything life-threatening, just inconvenient most of the time. Maybe your scanner stops working, or one of your weapons, or your power supply drops to 75% capacity (forcing hasty disabling of non-essential modules), or whatever. Scary stuff when you aren't near a space station.

Maybe they already implemented this, but tied it to ship wear & tear... which you can trivially fix every time you dock (thus making it pointless). This stuff needs to occur no matter how much you repair your ship, or rather BECAUSE you keep damaging & repairing your ship, invisible wear & tear need to build-up (like in real life). I though I even remembered Frontier saying something like that, but I haven't seen it so far.

Oh Heck yes! Really would love to see this (and mis-jumps in hyperspace) implemented in game. Plus escape pods that need to be manually flown back to stations.

 

[NeilF]

The kill reward shouldnt be last man gets it or last pc gets it, it should simply be a shared bounty. A percentage given to each individual npc or otherwise based on damage dealt to both shields and hull.

As for the rest of the ops issues, they mostly seem of a personal nature. A desire to have to the most unforgiving game ever, not everyone wants that.

Far too complicated...

What if you take 100% of the shields away, and then back off, such that the shields then completely replenish? Then a few minutes later someone else completely destroys the ship? What %age do you think you earned?

Last hit = bounty is simple and completely in keeping with the Elite universe IMHO.

 

[Kortossis]

These posts remind me of the NGE destroying star wars galaxies, nothing stopped that train either.

The statement above was edited by forum moderators, and it is NOT what I said.
[0]
If you don't like what I said fine, If you don't understand just ask, or just remove the post. Don't dictate what I think or feel and speak for me... rules or not.
[0]
I thought this was elite dangerous, not hello kitty or else...

 

[HappyMonday]

I'm not sure how much further away from the KS vision they can get. It already seems to be Elite: Mostly Harmless to me, and I am far from hard-core, and not a particularly good pilot. I am in the DDF, and saw very little demand to make things harder and harder, but plenty of people arguing against Elite: Carebear. I skipped the gamma, and started playing the GA a couple of days before Christmas. I am fairly cautious, but this far I have been killed just once, and that was a ramming that took me from 80+% hull to dead. And yet we are still getting lots of rant threads from people complaining about how hard it is, and how long it takes to get going. I don't see how Iron-man will help - the (not implemented) design was already watered down so much that it wasn't really iron man at all.

Belated reply. To be more specific, I agree the DDF was largely arguing for E:Very Dangerous. The opposite tack began to gather momentum as the game developed wider interest and the design decisions became known more widely as I recall, in the more public forums. As such, we're on the same side of the coin there, and the games core aspects are fundamentally too easy for my taste at present too.

I also didn't make my point about Iron-Man clearly - I was suggesting another compromise fudge 'mode' basically. One way of appeasing the 'hardcore' element without alienating those who don't want a difficult or frustrating experience is to change the design of Iron Man considerably to be very dangerous indeed, aside from just the 'you actually die' aspects previously mooted. Sadly, given the interlinked structure of the game, I expect that's extremely difficult if not impossible.

 

[ste]

I would hate to see kill assists. That would be more dumbing down. Its a bounty for killing them.

 

[Zarkon]

+1 to almost everything in the OP. Game feels like it's losing it's edge with every update. Anarchy and Feudal systems should be pure hell to fly through, higher ranked NPCs should be fearsome and very hard to kill, and many features are starting to feel like they only require minimal knowledge to become proficient at (no real skill or experience required to master).

 

[Continium]

Devs (So primarily Mike, Sandro and Mr Braben himself) before you make any further changes please really think about what you are doing to MY Elite.

Except its not your elite. Whatever 'visions' you had growing up or over the past 30 years are completely subjective, everybody would have had a different experience and therefore different expectation of ED.

You say you would prefer it if everybody was forced into open play because knowing you are playing with NPC's ruins your 'immersion' - given that all previous elite games where offline, did that not ruin your immersion too?

Essentially what your original post boils down to a request to change the game for your own desires, and is no different to all those other complaint threads that get shot down on the forum every five minutes.

 

[Snakebite]

Nice post Draig,
I have to back you up on pretty much every point there, especially the solo/open switching exploit, that is killing it for me.
And the Elite that you describe, that not just yours, it My Elite too ;-)