why no explanation of the rules?

[Titus Balls]

In a complex system like market prices in real life, there are so many influences, some based upon real events, e.g. demand, economic change, and some based upon human intervention, e.g. Market Makers doing their thing by moving prices to force buying/selling. As with everything, you cannot learn or know everything about the underlying system, otherwise the markets wouldn't work at all. ED is like that too, where multi-variant calculations are used to balance our little universe. These aren't "rules". They are algorithms. You can work some out by feel, but knowing everything is impossible as you don't have all the information used to do the calculations. e.g. if production of goods is based upon the time since the last purchase, a weighted average of the demand over the past 7 days, and the relative faction influence of that particular station within the system, you can't interpret changes as you don't have those figures.

The problem is markets react to events outside their control (wars, famine, scandals)

Here for example is a daily email I get from my investment company



Now if the background game was truly dynamic and events happened in real time without any interaction in a way that cellular automata does then it would make sense, both NPCs and players could react and demand could go up based on events that happen on a daily basis.

But as we know, it doesn't work that way - Frontier have to inject stuff - so it becomes very predictable, because they have a limited set of goals. They say "Jump here" we say "How high" until we've figured it out. They say "Jump here" we say "Nahh it's not really worth it, we'll stick to these easily exploitable trade routes"

 

[Yokai]

Box. Too. Black. And that's coming from someone with a long history of reverse engineering game mechanics. Problem with not understanding at least the basics is that you never know if you're staring at a bug with reporting, or even an export worth reporting.

 

[Titus Balls]

There will always be people who try to find out every mechanic and how its working. Either because of curiosity or profits. But there are also people who don't want to know how the game works in particular. It destroys immersion (I actually hate that word).
I have less fun playing ED after reading the forum. Talking about mechanics all the time takes away the magic and leaves just a game. However, if someone realy wants to know more about something he should be able to look it up, which is working quite well thanks to the community.

The question I'd pose then is why people come to the forums and continue to ask the same questions - and it's because not only are the mechanics not explained, in most cases they don't make sense! When the map is telling you X station exports Y good to Z and you do that, and make a huge loss then something is fundamentally broken and it creates confusion. This leads to people working out exploits (Seeking Luxuries, Rare goods routes) and because people are frustrated, see these and find they make profit then that's all people end up doing until Frontier close those avenues down and create more frustration and confusion.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[Yokai]

Box. Too. Black. And that's coming from someone with a long history of reverse engineering game mechanics. Problem with not understanding at least the basics is that you never know if you're staring at a bug worth reporting, or even an exploit worth reporting.

 

[Skip Intro]

In Elite|Dangerous rules make you. Or something.

 

[Janichsan]

Yes... that`s the reason... That`s why the rules of chess, football, poker, etc. are being kept secret, so that nobody can exploit them.

You have never played pen and paper RPGs, have you? Players that know the rules in detail can be a curse.

 

[Titus Balls]

You have never played pen and paper RPGs, have you? Players that know the rules in detail can be a curse.

But in a video game, players who know the rules can be a blessing because they can help track down issues.

At the moment, no one knows if these things are problems, bugs or features.

 

[Ancipital]

You have never played pen and paper RPGs, have you? Players that know the rules in detail can be a curse.

A curse, citizen?

 

[Devil's Refugee]

This approach has led to speculation in the past that they were manipulating things manually with no underlying system applying. I don't subscribe to that view myself but i can see how it arises where FD refuse to disclose the rules under which cause and effect occur.

Not sure this is speculation anymore. We know theres a lot of manual intervention. The entire Merkunn experience proves that. And now more recently the "wandering" Jacques Station is another example of dev manipulation rather than the background sumulation automating anything. What we really have are very simple rulesets that seem easy to break with every patch applied, perhaps the reason why FD won't open the black box is that it will expose just how little there is. There are times I question FDs software development process and just how much testing is done inhouse as opposed to the 300,000 unpaid testers they have here....

 

[Skip Intro]

Yes... that`s the reason... That`s why the rules of chess, football, poker, etc. are being kept secret, so that nobody can exploit them.

And I know that this isn't your point, but the rules of Football ( the proper one, not Gridiron ) were changed several times as players used 'exploits' such as the Offside Trap to nullify games.

Teams, though, had become adept at applying the offside trap. Notts County had begun the trend, but by the mid-20s several clubs, most notably Newcastle United with their full-back pairing of Frank Hudspeth and Bill McCracken, had become so obsessed with offside that games would be compressed into a narrow sliver either side of the halfway line.

When Newcastle drew 0-0 at Bury in February 1925, it came as the final straw. It was Newcastle's sixth goalless draw of a season that produced what at the time was an unthinkably low average of 2.58 goals per game. The football was boring, attendances were falling and the FA, for once, not only recognised that something needed to be done, but set about doing it.

 

[Titus Balls]

And I know that this isn't your point, but the rules of Football ( the proper one, not Gridiron ) were changed several times as players used 'exploits' such as the Offside Trap to nullify games.

You're absolutely right - rules in games do get changed all the time to cover exploits:

http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/drone-exploit-warning/

http://community.eveonline.com/news...-news/exploit-notification-forcefield-access/

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-fw-exploit-2012/

 

[babelfisch]

Now if the background game was truly dynamic and events happened in real time without any interaction in a way that cellular automata does then it would make sense, both NPCs and players could react and demand could go up based on events that happen on a daily basis.

But as we know, it doesn't work that way - Frontier have to inject stuff - so it becomes very predictable, because they have a limited set of goals. They say "Jump here" we say "How high" until we've figured it out. They say "Jump here" we say "Nahh it's not really worth it, we'll stick to these easily exploitable trade routes"

I totally understand what you are saying. I still believe that they plan the background simulation to be dynamic and mostly autnomous. To me it looks like it is working at some parts and others are not ready yet, at least I have observed some changes in the last 3 months. But I understand that "wait until they are done" becomes tedious to some people.

The question I'd pose then is why people come to the forums and continue to ask the same questions - and it's because not only are the mechanics not explained, in most cases they don't make sense! When the map is telling you X station exports Y good to Z and you do that, and make a huge loss then something is fundamentally broken and it creates confusion. This leads to people working out exploits (Seeking Luxuries, Rare goods routes) and because people are frustrated, see these and find they make profit then that's all people end up doing until Frontier close those avenues down and create more frustration and confusion.

As I said in my previous post, people will always be curious on how certain things work. In addition to that, we still experience lots of bugs (just think about the current illegal cargo problem), what leads to lots of people comming to the forums asking "does this realy work like it is intended?". I think this is a good thing, player feedback will definetly help FDEV to get those bugs fixed. But I think it is sufficent when we tell them "this mechanic is fishy" and FDEV looks at it and tries to fix it without telling us what they did exactly.

 

[Fian]

To my mind: If you don't know the rules of the game luck is a bigger factor in "winning" than it would be if the rules are explicit. I like to make informed decisions rather than luck ones.

Some rule shave been reverse engineered and some feedback is available to enable this. So we know for example that getting scanned with "stolen" goods is going to reduce your reputation. I would have guessed that.

I would not have guessed the quantum of drop before the first time I was caught (and I still don't know the quantum, all i know is it dropped me from "neutral" to "hostile" with the Federation when I got caught with some prototype tech.)

Had I been able to access the numbers on that impact the decision as to whether to pick up the floating cans, or to go to my normal station or divert to a Black market outpost, would have been more meaningful.

So now I figure it is not worth bringing salvaged goods into a station if i care about the local faction rep - but I am deciding that on a vague basis rather than making an informed decision.

Similarly choosing which module i should upgrade next is based on "gut instinct" rather than understanding the impacts of the options.

For me it would be more fun if i were making real decisions based on real information, not making guesses and being unable to even determine afterwards with any certainty whether the choice i made was the optimum or not.

 

[babelfisch]

What we really have are very simple rulesets that seem easy to break with every patch applied, perhaps the reason why FD won't open the black box is that it will expose just how little there is..

I don't think that the black box is very simple and little, but that very little is working yet

Just guessing though...

 

[Jex =TE=]

You have never played pen and paper RPGs, have you? Players that know the rules in detail can be a curse.

LMFAO so true! So I suppose you had "one of those guys" in your group, huh?

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So 2 years ago the Kickstarter was funded and then they made this game in 2 years?

Seems a little short to me.

 

[DiAL033]

And I know that this isn't your point, but the rules of Football ( the proper one, not Gridiron ) were changed several times as players used 'exploits' such as the Offside Trap to nullify games.

Actually that is part of the point. Let`s say the football rules weren`t public. How likely is it, that after the ten-thousands of games in the history of football no team ever came up with the thought: "Hmm, whenever we make that certain move (don`t really know how that offside trap works), we can get the game to get nullified. But we keep that secret to ourselves."? It will just divide the football teams into one half which knows about this secret and the other half who doesn`t.

To some degree we already have this situation. If you would just play the game and never look into the forums, use this ocr trade tool or look up rare routes somewhere on the internet, I do not think that the game itself gives you a fair chance of becoming an as efficient trader as somebody who does exactly the stuff mentioned.

BTW: if you look up the history of "Football" and especially the history of the term "Soccer", you will learn that there is not really a _proper_ football game. But apart from that, personally, I find them all rather boring

 

[Zplintz]

Hard to publish the rules when they are re(balanced) so often.

 

[Kubicide]

Think it's simply because:

1. They don't want to spend time documenting the detail - common problem/excuse for many developments.

2. Gameplay elements are still being made up or being changed every week - this has been the status quo for some time.

Overall it's just laziness IMO. Someone should be tasked to create and provide the info rather than leave it up to the individuals (customers) to dig through the forums to discover the vague responses from the devs.

 

[Commander Azriel]

If they explained how the rules work, they would expose the fact that they are not working.

Saying , sorry blackbox, is easier then saying we don't know what we are doing. Apparently the beta/gamma wasn't used to test these simulations. We are the guinea pigs.