FD made an MMO without understanding how successful MMOs work

Scharmers

S
Regardless of what we've ended up with, ED had to have been initially planned as a single-player game. FD's realization that ED could only be profitably pulled off as an MMO had to have come later. My evidence? ED stinks as an MMO. Every design facet in the game supporting "MMO-style" play is awful -- and never mind that a P2P connection is about the worst architecture possible for an MMO.

For example, what is the biggest, most awful cliché in MMO mission design, the one cliché that every new (not-WoW) MMO desperately tries to avoid or at least disguise? You guessed it -- the "go forth and collect ten whatevers" quest. And this awful cliché is the CORE of ED's missions. Go out and look for randomly spawning whatchamacallits. Or just about as egregious: instead of spinning the RNG to find a McGuffin, spin the RNG to kill an Anaconda. Why? Why not?

There are no carefully constructed encounters/instances for powerful players, or dynamically-scaling encounters to match the number of active players -- sail a newbie Sidewinder or a fully-loaded Vulture into a High-Intensity Zone, nothing changes; just a capital ship with endlessly-spawning Eagles and Vipers.

ED is a single-player game with multiplayer tacked on, and it's just painful. Sir David needs to collar a decent MMO designer and put him/her to work on ED ASAP -- no more half-baked, placeholder MMO systems. And no, I'm not confident that "oh we just need to wait". I feel that the weak MMO play in ED indicates a fundamental weakness on FD's part.
 

WiseDuck

WiseDuck
I have been saying what you just said for far to long. It will fall on deaf ears buddy.

All credit to FD for giving their fans what they wanted. The problem is that that fan base don't really play multiplayer games or hate them all together.

Also ED is not an MMO.

Many dev teams are hijacking the term MMO just to make the game they are selling sound bigger than it really is.
 

AndyC77

A
Scharmers said:
Regardless of what we've ended up with, ED had to have been initially planned as a single-player game. FD's realization that ED could only be profitably pulled off as an MMO had to have come later. My evidence? ED stinks as an MMO. Every design facet in the game supporting "MMO-style" play is awful -- and never mind that a P2P connection is about the worst architecture possible for an MMO.

For example, what is the biggest, most awful cliché in MMO mission design, the one cliché that every new (not-WoW) MMO desperately tries to avoid or at least disguise? You guessed it -- the "go forth and collect ten whatevers" quest. And this awful cliché is the CORE of ED's missions. Go out and look for randomly spawning whatchamacallits. Or just about as egregious: instead of spinning the RNG to find a McGuffin, spin the RNG to kill an Anaconda. Why? Why not?

There are no carefully constructed encounters/instances for powerful players, or dynamically-scaling encounters to match the number of active players -- sail a newbie Sidewinder or a fully-loaded Vulture into a High-Intensity Zone, nothing changes; just a capital ship with endlessly-spawning Eagles and Vipers.

ED is a single-player game with multiplayer tacked on, and it's just painful. Sir David needs to collar a decent MMO designer and put him/her to work on ED ASAP -- no more half-baked, placeholder MMO systems. And no, I'm not confident that "oh we just need to wait". I feel that the weak MMO play in ED indicates a fundamental weakness on FD's part.
Click to expand...

You seem a bit misguided. This isn't an mmo in the generic sense. David braben has said he want the next elite to be a multiplayer experience and seeing as it is all set in one universe calling it an mmo seemed the right thing to do. As this caused lots of confusion they later dropped the mmo discription from the website. Rightly so in my opinion. I hope this clears things up for you a little.
 

cherbert

cherbert
WiseDuck said:
I have been saying what you just said for far to long. It will fall on deaf ears buddy.

All credit to FD for giving their fans what they wanted. The problem is that that fan base don't really play multiplayer games or hate them all together.

Also ED is not an MMO.

Many dev teams are hijacking the term MMO just to make the game they are selling sound bigger than it really is.
Click to expand...

And what exactly does the term MMO mean? The real problem is people making assumptions about what they think it HAS to conform to. Its a Game (Check). Its multiplayer (check). Its Massive (check).
 

SiriusSeven

S
I don't think that the online play was ever an afterthought. But I do think they want the game to be played by lone pilots, just like the original. It's their game. They can do what they want I guess...

I think FD simultaneously both loath/fear and want to embrace a massively multiplayer environment. They want everyone to share a universe. That much is clear. But they don't want it to be an MMO, and they actively discourage players from interacting in ways more complex than simple groups. There are no guild. No player trade. Etc.

I've never seen anything quite like it. Time will tell if the new formula can work.

-- EDIT --

Ok, I thought of a comparable game: Dark Souls

Here the developers do everything imaginable to make you feel alone. The only evidence of other players is their blood stains, and the occasional invasion from another player, with the one purpose of killing you.
 
Last edited:

brumster

brumster
I agree with what you're saying but the honest truth is, I've never looked on ED as an MMO. I think the problem is a lot of people do. I am sure I'm in the minority. I play it online with the same mindset as other "MMOs" (quoted because, again, I don't consider them MMO either) like Mechwarrior Online - at most I have a little collaborative pew-pew with 3 mates against NPCs, or maybe a 6-player deathmatch in open. I don't feel I'm contributing to a massive, constantly-running background galaxy simulation or that I'm working towards any goal contributed to consistently by a significant number of players. I may well be, I don't know - it's so "black box" - but I don't *feel* like I am... hence it doesn't feel like an MMO to me. And that's fine, I didn't want it to be. Most online gaming experiences for me end up frustrating me; I prefer collaborative co-op play with friends more. Or even single player!
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Sorry, OP, but I disagree. MMO biggest issue with fetch quests *for me* isn't 'get ten skins of boar'. No problem, I will get those skins for some xp and money. HOWEVER my biggest issue has always been that it made zero impact to game world.

Now, in ED you can still claim that nothing happens - and at this point you would be right....for most visual part. However, in background, every mission I complete, big or small adds to the mix of factions fighting over system's overall status. It changes markets. And so on and so forth. And that's not considering what FD plans to deliver with PowerPlay 1.3.

That is key for success of ED - not because fetch quests are there, but because they matter, even on their smallest scale. And more visually we will see outcomes of these changes, more important this stuff will become (plus more interesting).

So no, very boring argument. Sorry about that.

p.s. and ED is MMO, even more than SWTOR or WOW these days.
 

Lord_Crazy

L
Well I disagree with the condescending ton of the OP, but in substance it is true: quests at the moment are rather boring.
That being said I am not surprised: I don't see ED as a traditional MMO but rather a sandbox galaxy game where we are all connected (by a server, not the force). Quests are only here to make people start a journey or have a quick grind, but IMHO players truly enjoying the game are not accepting quests, they are creating one for themselves.
So far I have been hunting down as a bounty hunters, then reading Galnet made me feel like traveling to CZs, then traveling made me feel like being an explorer. Under these circumstances I don't feel the need to go check the bulletin board as I am already too busy fighting and making plans for exploration.

The exception for me are community goals: they are nice, especially the ones taking place is Lugh at the moment. I hope we will have more of them. It gives us a better understanding of what's going on and the influence we may have in the galaxy. Also, explicitly opposing goals might be funny. They don't have to be PvP, but going further in the goal could adversely and instantaneously impact the other team in their own goal for instance. We need more things like that, giving us a purpose and a story line, and therefore, better than the "go...." quest the OP is talking about.
 

Scharmers

S
robbyp said:
Another day on the planet, another thread on this.
Click to expand...

Well, you know, it's nice to know that a lot of folks are happy with non-trading gameplay that essentially consists of spinning an RNG in nearly the exact same way Privateer did in back in 1993. Except that if I took a bounty hunter contract in Privateer, I just had to warp to the right system to find the baddies; I didn't have to then spend 20 minutes driving around that system looking for just the right space bubble to pop in order to find the baddies.

I mean, FD puts out a patch that allows a whopping four players to play together in the same bubble and it's a BIG DEAL. A patch that allows mobs to AGGRO together (!!) against an attacker. WOW!

Seriously! And pets, what's an MMO without pets! I want a space poodle that floats behind my ship and barks at NPCs. Also space bikinis
Click to expand...

You will after grinding your 1,000th Anaconda from the mission board, believe me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom