A writer's thoughts on 'PowerPlay' - Drew Wagar

[Cobblars]

Drew, that's a good wrap-up of PP from my perspective too.
Your closing line resonates with me:
"Give us adventure, Frontier, not politics. That’s the essence of Elite."

Think the idea what that the Politics would lead to adventure.

Personally I look at the PP screens we have been given and much of it doesn't make a lot of sense and just does not inspire me to want to go through it. Too much fun to be had doing other things.

The characters were not very inspiring, I did read up on them all but like a drab movie/book, if you do not connect with those characters then all hope is lost.

The thought that players would gather together to play out in a "Battle Ground/CZ" to determine control over areas sounded quite appealing to me. I think we got that, but not in the way most imagined it would end up to be.

 

[peteuplink]

I think the biggest issue with ED is that everything is the same.

I travel to an anarchy system and go to a pirates unsanctioned outpost and it looks exactly the same as the industrial outpost you visited in the high tech system a few minutes ago, aside from the fact that it has a red skull hologram on it of course. A pirate outpost should look beaten up, like it's been put together from bits of old ships. The lights should flicker. It also shouldn't be out in the open orbiting a planet with a big red sign that's basically saying "HERE BE PIRATES!". It should be hidden away in an asteroid field or a nebula and only discovered by picking up a bulletin board mission that takes you there, or by exploring. Also they should be more frosty towards strange ships entering their space.

Dictatorship systems should have a much bigger military presence. They should be distrustful of strangers. Their stations should look more military too. Rich systems should have huge and impressive stations. Tourist systems should have stations with observation domes on them for sight seers. Poor systems should have smaller stations that look a bit beaten up.

The Empire, Federation, Aliiance, etc should have different architectural styles. If we look at Star Trek as an example, it's pretty easy to tell the difference between a Klingon, Romulan and Federation ship or station. Even here on earth you can see that things designed in Russia or China have a different style to things designed in the US or Europe. Buildings are different, clothes are different... Everything in ED is cut and paste.

Years ago I used to play World of Warcraft. The main thing that stuck out in WoW compared to ED was the diversity of design. Each of the different races had their own architectural style. You could easily tell the difference between the Dwarf, Orc, Night Elf and Blood Elf, etc, capitals. Also the journey to reach some of these capitals could often be a long one fraught with danger. I can remember playing as a Night Elf and having to travel to the Dwarf capital for the first time past crocodile infested wet lands and mountain passes full of bandits. When I finally got there, after dying a few times en-route, the sight of the place with it's giant forges and molten metal spewing from the ceiling into giant pools was amazing. I had a sense that I was on an adventure in a living, breathing world.

This is what I don't get with ED. I feel like I'm flying a ship in the Milky Way Galaxy, but I don't feel that I'm really on an adventure because everywhere is the same. The same types of missions, the same station designs, the same ships. When I'm in a war zone, I want to find missions that are to do with the war. Maybe I could get involved if I'm feeling heroic and help the locals fight off an invasion. If I'm in an area full of pirates, I want to be able to work with or against them. I want to meet an NPC who's lost something valuable and I voluteer to find it for them, going on a journey of discovery through multiple systems until I reach my goal.

Basically I want it to be like all of the space and science fiction stories I read as a kid, and I still read as an adult, with space pilots that go on amazing adventures. I want to travel to a system and find a colony built into an asteroid. I want to meet bounty hunters and crime lords. I want to infiltrate an enemy base to steal plans or rescue a princess. I want to encounter smugglers. I want to get caught up in an intergalactic conspiracy. I want to discover alien races. I want to get caught in a plasma storm and have to find my way out.

Admittedly much of what I've said above may be completely beyond the scope of the game or what the developers are capable of (no offence), but at the very least the ED galaxy should have some character to it beyond 10 still images of some meaningless political nobodies, some news stories and 3D Risk in space style gameplay.

 

[Adam Lusardi]

My feelings are that tier twos would drag old and first time players into the "grouping" that FD wants, first you enter into a Npc wing via tier two random interaction and then gradually build group affiliation with along other Npcs and pcs. Not just ask players to join a group.

 

[Lemonhoko]

I think the biggest issue with ED is that everything is the same.

I travel to an anarchy system and go to a pirates unsanctioned outpost and it looks exactly the same as the industrial outpost you visited in the high tech system a few minutes ago, aside from the fact that it has a red skull hologram on it of course. A pirate outpost should look beaten up, like it's been put together from bits of old ships. The lights should flicker. It also shouldn't be out in the open orbiting a planet with a big red sign that's basically saying "HERE BE PIRATES!". It should be hidden away in an asteroid field or a nebula and only discovered by picking up a bulletin board mission that takes you there, or by exploring. Also they should be more frosty towards strange ships entering their space.

Dictatorship systems should have a much bigger military presence. They should be distrustful of strangers. Their stations should look more military too. Rich systems should have huge and impressive stations. Tourist systems should have stations with observation domes on them for sight seers. Poor systems should have smaller stations that look a bit beaten up.

The Empire, Federation, Aliiance, etc should have different architectural styles. If we look at Star Trek as an example, it's pretty easy to tell the difference between a Klingon, Romulan and Federation ship or station. Even here on earth you can see that things designed in Russia or China have a different style to things designed in the US or Europe. Buildings are different, clothes are different... Everything in ED is cut and paste.

Years ago I used to play World of Warcraft. The main thing that stuck out in WoW compared to ED was the diversity of design. Each of the different races had their own architectural style. You could easily tell the difference between the Dwarf, Orc, Night Elf and Blood Elf, etc, capitals. Also the journey to reach some of these capitals could often be a long one fraught with danger. I can remember playing as a Night Elf and having to travel to the Dwarf capital for the first time past crocodile infested wet lands and mountain passes full of bandits. When I finally got there, after dying a few times en-route, the sight of the place with it's giant forges and molten metal spewing from the ceiling into giant pools was amazing. I had a sense that I was on an adventure in a living, breathing world.

This is what I don't get with ED. I feel like I'm flying a ship in the Milky Way Galaxy, but I don't feel that I'm really on an adventure because everywhere is the same. The same types of missions, the same station designs, the same ships. When I'm in a war zone, I want to find missions that are to do with the war. Maybe I could get involved if I'm feeling heroic and help the locals fight off an invasion. If I'm in an area full of pirates, I want to be able to work with or against them. I want to meet an NPC who's lost something valuable and I voluteer to find it for them, going on a journey of discovery through multiple systems until I reach my goal.

Basically I want it to be like all of the space and science fiction stories I read as a kid, and I still read as an adult, with space pilots that go on amazing adventures. I want to travel to a system and find a colony built into an asteroid. I want to meet bounty hunters and crime lords. I want to infiltrate an enemy base to steal plans or rescue a princess. I want to encounter smugglers. I want to get caught up in an intergalactic conspiracy. I want to discover alien races. I want to get caught in a plasma storm and have to find my way out.

Admittedly much of what I've said above may be completely beyond the scope of the game or what the developers are capable of (no offence), but at the very least the ED galaxy should have some character to it beyond 10 still images of some meaningless political nobodies, some news stories and 3D Risk in space style gameplay.

Have some rep cmdr...well said!

 

[jabokai]

I haven't posted a thread on my diversity posting as I am still waiting for the moderators to reply on whether I should post it or not, knowing the discussion it might generate. That was a week ago.

The discussion's already been had at least twice... and, predictably, closed down.

 

[Ian Phillips]

Three threads. One 35 pages long with roughly 5 posts trying to have a discussion.

 

[Kowboat]

I wouldn't bother unless you want to read "As a white guy, I feel that people in the distant future should be beyond race!" phrased a hundred different ways with zero irony.

 

[Allen Stroud]

Three threads. One 35 pages long with roughly 5 posts trying to have a discussion.

Which is why I suggested posting, closing it and having the discussion elsewhere. I don't actually mind whether so or not, but it would be nice to actually get a reply. Usually the moderators are excellent at responding.

 

[Captain N]

For the last week or so I've been playing the game more than in months. I've gathered enough merits to reach rank 3 with A Lavigny-Duval and somehow I've still managed to find time to make nearly 3 million in bounty hunting and pirate killing missions. I've been flying through Kumo Crew space blowing up Archon Delaine's transports and looking for player bounties to cash in - while feeling more real danger and suspense than in any anarchy system before 1.3.

I can see that the way the mechanics have been implemented isn't particularly friendly to suspension of disbelief; and I don't care much for any of the characters beyond their beautifully made portraits, but if the net effect is that I'm having more fun with the game I can't really judge it too harshly.

People are thinking of defecting over this...? Then again, I spent the last month playing GTA5, myself. Another game. I'm already traitor at heart!

 

[B33 ENN]

I wonder if PP had been announced as a KS extended goal if it would have been funded.

Oddly, enough, I think it might. Now, if you've read any of my other recent posts you'll know I'm no fan of Powerplay as it is, so why do I say that? Well, quite simply, because if they'd suggested it, the KS community, like on these forums now, would have offered ideas back to help shape it into something better.

The biggest mistake Frontier have made is not Powerplay. It's excluding or ignoring the users of the DDF and their feedback.

I might leave this quote here:

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/game...rous-review-in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-yawn

Sadly, I must agree with most of that summation; not because it's been completely reflective of my own experience; but because I know how those problems will impact new entrants to the Elite world:

...The main problem is that Elite: Dangerous insists you do most things manually. First Encounters was all about the autopilot and time acceleration buttons; lock on to a spaceport, hit the auto button, engage maximum time speed and before you knew it you'd have landed and would be hitting the boards for new jobs. Dangerous gives you the minimum of assistance; you have to manage your frame drive speed carefully to strike a balance between spending 10 minutes flying through endless empty space, or wildly overshooting your target. Once you get close enough you can use Safe Disengage to drop you around 1km from a space station, but you then have to go through the rigmarole of landing again.

Elite pretends to offer you a simulation by forcing you to micro-manage details while it controls the real action in order to create the illusion it is more than basically an first-person space piloting arcade game. I've been saying repeatedly here that the unnecessary time-sinks in this game's mechanics are killing the fun, and while most PC players can look the other way, console players will run out of patience for these things sooner. At that point, Frontier will be forced to change them in a hurry in order to prevent further poor reviews in the mainstream.

 

[deMangler]

I think the biggest issue with ED is that everything is the same.

I travel to an anarchy system and go to a pirates unsanctioned outpost and it looks exactly the same as the industrial outpost you visited in the high tech system a few minutes ago, aside from the fact that it has a red skull hologram on it of course. A pirate outpost should look beaten up, like it's been put together from bits of old ships. The lights should flicker. It also shouldn't be out in the open orbiting a planet with a big red sign that's basically saying "HERE BE PIRATES!". It should be hidden away in an asteroid field or a nebula and only discovered by picking up a bulletin board mission that takes you there, or by exploring. Also they should be more frosty towards strange ships entering their space.

Dictatorship systems should have a much bigger military presence. They should be distrustful of strangers. Their stations should look more military too. Rich systems should have huge and impressive stations. Tourist systems should have stations with observation domes on them for sight seers. Poor systems should have smaller stations that look a bit beaten up.

The Empire, Federation, Aliiance, etc should have different architectural styles. If we look at Star Trek as an example, it's pretty easy to tell the difference between a Klingon, Romulan and Federation ship or station. Even here on earth you can see that things designed in Russia or China have a different style to things designed in the US or Europe. Buildings are different, clothes are different... Everything in ED is cut and paste.

Years ago I used to play World of Warcraft. The main thing that stuck out in WoW compared to ED was the diversity of design. Each of the different races had their own architectural style. You could easily tell the difference between the Dwarf, Orc, Night Elf and Blood Elf, etc, capitals. Also the journey to reach some of these capitals could often be a long one fraught with danger. I can remember playing as a Night Elf and having to travel to the Dwarf capital for the first time past crocodile infested wet lands and mountain passes full of bandits. When I finally got there, after dying a few times en-route, the sight of the place with it's giant forges and molten metal spewing from the ceiling into giant pools was amazing. I had a sense that I was on an adventure in a living, breathing world.

This is what I don't get with ED. I feel like I'm flying a ship in the Milky Way Galaxy, but I don't feel that I'm really on an adventure because everywhere is the same. The same types of missions, the same station designs, the same ships. When I'm in a war zone, I want to find missions that are to do with the war. Maybe I could get involved if I'm feeling heroic and help the locals fight off an invasion. If I'm in an area full of pirates, I want to be able to work with or against them. I want to meet an NPC who's lost something valuable and I voluteer to find it for them, going on a journey of discovery through multiple systems until I reach my goal.

Basically I want it to be like all of the space and science fiction stories I read as a kid, and I still read as an adult, with space pilots that go on amazing adventures. I want to travel to a system and find a colony built into an asteroid. I want to meet bounty hunters and crime lords. I want to infiltrate an enemy base to steal plans or rescue a princess. I want to encounter smugglers. I want to get caught up in an intergalactic conspiracy. I want to discover alien races. I want to get caught in a plasma storm and have to find my way out.

Admittedly much of what I've said above may be completely beyond the scope of the game or what the developers are capable of (no offence), but at the very least the ED galaxy should have some character to it beyond 10 still images of some meaningless political nobodies, some news stories and 3D Risk in space style gameplay.

I really hope they get around to addressing this. Even having some AI behaviour or text that reflects the kind of system you are in would be nice for starters. In the original Elite you could pretty much tell what kind of system you were in by the style of aggro you got from the locals.

 

[Ozmodion]

Thank you for this, very interesting read

 

[Deyu]

I think the biggest issue with ED is that everything is the same.

I travel to an anarchy system and go to a pirates unsanctioned outpost and it looks exactly the same as the industrial outpost you visited in the high tech system a few minutes ago, aside from the fact that it has a red skull hologram on it of course. A pirate outpost should look beaten up, like it's been put together from bits of old ships. The lights should flicker. It also shouldn't be out in the open orbiting a planet with a big red sign that's basically saying "HERE BE PIRATES!". It should be hidden away in an asteroid field or a nebula and only discovered by picking up a bulletin board mission that takes you there, or by exploring. Also they should be more frosty towards strange ships entering their space.

Dictatorship systems should have a much bigger military presence. They should be distrustful of strangers. Their stations should look more military too. Rich systems should have huge and impressive stations. Tourist systems should have stations with observation domes on them for sight seers. Poor systems should have smaller stations that look a bit beaten up.

The Empire, Federation, Aliiance, etc should have different architectural styles. If we look at Star Trek as an example, it's pretty easy to tell the difference between a Klingon, Romulan and Federation ship or station. Even here on earth you can see that things designed in Russia or China have a different style to things designed in the US or Europe. Buildings are different, clothes are different... Everything in ED is cut and paste.

Years ago I used to play World of Warcraft. The main thing that stuck out in WoW compared to ED was the diversity of design. Each of the different races had their own architectural style. You could easily tell the difference between the Dwarf, Orc, Night Elf and Blood Elf, etc, capitals. Also the journey to reach some of these capitals could often be a long one fraught with danger. I can remember playing as a Night Elf and having to travel to the Dwarf capital for the first time past crocodile infested wet lands and mountain passes full of bandits. When I finally got there, after dying a few times en-route, the sight of the place with it's giant forges and molten metal spewing from the ceiling into giant pools was amazing. I had a sense that I was on an adventure in a living, breathing world.

This is what I don't get with ED. I feel like I'm flying a ship in the Milky Way Galaxy, but I don't feel that I'm really on an adventure because everywhere is the same. The same types of missions, the same station designs, the same ships. When I'm in a war zone, I want to find missions that are to do with the war. Maybe I could get involved if I'm feeling heroic and help the locals fight off an invasion. If I'm in an area full of pirates, I want to be able to work with or against them. I want to meet an NPC who's lost something valuable and I voluteer to find it for them, going on a journey of discovery through multiple systems until I reach my goal.

Basically I want it to be like all of the space and science fiction stories I read as a kid, and I still read as an adult, with space pilots that go on amazing adventures. I want to travel to a system and find a colony built into an asteroid. I want to meet bounty hunters and crime lords. I want to infiltrate an enemy base to steal plans or rescue a princess. I want to encounter smugglers. I want to get caught up in an intergalactic conspiracy. I want to discover alien races. I want to get caught in a plasma storm and have to find my way out.

Admittedly much of what I've said above may be completely beyond the scope of the game or what the developers are capable of (no offence), but at the very least the ED galaxy should have some character to it beyond 10 still images of some meaningless political nobodies, some news stories and 3D Risk in space style gameplay.

You nailed it, have some rep.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Article pleasant to read. And objectivité.Il will be very difficult to make live a galaxy of several hundreds of billions of stars. But add a soul and a story to the characters should be more affordable.
The adventure ? yes everyone wants. But provided that it is profitable for the company ...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Admittedly much of what I've said above may be completely beyond the scope of the game or what the developers are capable of (no offence), but at the very least the ED galaxy should have some character to it beyond 10 still images of some meaningless political nobodies, some news stories and 3D Risk in space style gameplay.

A lot of the graphical variety is not beyond their capabilities but is beyond practicality.

The amount of effort needed to get just one in-game asset to the extremely high standard the Frontier graphics team do is immense - and they're not a big team by the standards of developers working on top-end graphics games. I expect they're drawing and modelling and texturing as fast as they can, but finishing off the initial 30 ships (which is required to include them in the game at all) and providing new assets for new features (e.g. the mining drones) is probably a much higher priority than adding variation in a feature which - apart from the lack of visual differences - is already basically working. Where they have been able to add variety - e.g. the different styles of outer station docks between the three major powers - the result is very effective for setting the tone despite relatively little actually changing.

I'd definitely like to see more variety in stations, ships, etc. - but I suspect if the forums were given the choice between "a third layout of station interior" or "the Federation finally gets a second exclusive ship", or similar, they'd agree with Frontier's general priorities. (So would I - just a third layout wouldn't help: they'd need a much larger number of basic layout components which could then be randomised together to give unique or at least very diverse templates ... and that would be a hugely expensive in artist time)

This is, I think, an area where the previous games in the series had quite an advantage - with the graphics being (unavoidably, given the hardware) very stylised, it didn't matter so much that there was only one paintjob for the Adder, or that all Coriolis stations looked like identical black-and-white outlines. Now it's all highly "realistic" in style it both takes considerably longer to do each individual one and you need hundreds of times more variations to avoid things looking samey - it's just not practical.

It's not just the graphics, of course - NPC Comms are a similar problem. If they just said "Die!" and "Help!", and we had buttons on our own comms panel to quick-send "Die!" and "Help!" messages, it'd be fine. When the fiftieth NPC has threatened to "boil you up", it just feels very gamey ... but while it's not quite as extreme as the graphics issue, extending the NPC comms set faster than players can learn them all through experience would basically be a full-time job for someone. It's also very difficult to stop silly things happening with more detailed comms - I did a mission today to recover military plans to stop the Federation. Unfortunately, the mission was issued by a Federal faction, to retrieve the plans from a system controlled by the same Federal minor faction! If it had picked a different bit of flavour text, no problem; if there hadn't been any flavour text and it was just a standard list, also no problem.

 

[Frank]

Oddly, enough, I think it might. Now, if you've read any of my other recent posts you'll know I'm no fan of Powerplay as it is, so why do I say that? Well, quite simply, because if they'd suggested it, the KS community, like on these forums now, would have offered ideas back to help shape it into something better.

The biggest mistake Frontier have made is not Powerplay. It's excluding or ignoring the users of the DDF and their feedback.



Sadly, I must agree with most of that summation; not because it's been completely reflective of my own experience; but because I know how those problems will impact new entrants to the Elite world:



Elite pretends to offer you a simulation by forcing you to micro-manage details while it controls the real action in order to create the illusion it is more than basically an first-person space piloting arcade game. I've been saying repeatedly here that the unnecessary time-sinks in this game's mechanics are killing the fun, and while most PC players can look the other way, console players will run out of patience for these things sooner. At that point, Frontier will be forced to change them in a hurry in order to prevent further poor reviews in the mainstream.

You hit the nail on the head with that phrase "unnecessary time-sinks". SuperCruise was a great idea but it's gotten a bad reputation because of the long long journey times. If the pirates don't have time to interdict then that more of a problem with the interdiction mechanic than with SuperCruise.

 

[Jezzah]

There are some great posts in this topic not least of which is the OP and the rest are too many to quote or respond to. It should be suffice to say that this thread should be required reading at the next design meeting over at FD towers.

 

[Ekar]

It's not just the graphics, of course - NPC Comms are a similar problem.

There was a great thread on NPC chatter awhile back,

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=112116

A lot of colourful responses from NPC's thought up by the community (although some are plucked straight from other media) but the interesting bit to me is how messages could be crafted for the immediate situation if the game just did a few checks on various data, such as the size of player ship, weapons, the names of nearby systems or planets, the type of cargo you're carrying, etc.

Eg- ("Drop a canister of <commodity> and I'll forget you were here.")

Having a text response system that utilised some of this basic info would go a long way to making the NPC's appear more human and aware. As you've pointed out, taking on a Fed stopping mission given to you by the same Fed faction is bizarre... but I don't think it's because of the complexity, it appears as though nothing's being checked for logical consistency. That's why the missions feel so hollow and bugged, because the system is way too simple currently to stop silly things like that happening.

edit: I once angered a local security force and the ship messaged me with "lining up my attack run". Gee, thanks for the heads up!

 

[Ironwolf]

The adventure ? yes everyone wants. But provided that it is profitable for the company ...

If FD want the game to be successful, they need to listen to the player base.

 

[drew]

Thanks for all the responses folks and for a well mannered debate. I think we've collectively made some excellent points.

Cheers,

Drew.