Take a step back: Lets revisit the advertised vision Frontier Developments has for Elite: Dangerous

[Valimer]

Strait from the homepage:

[h=2]What is Elite: Dangerous?[/h] [h=3]Take control of your own starship in a cut-throat galaxy.[/h] Elite: Dangerous is the definitive massively multiplayer space epic. With a connected galaxy, evolving narrative and the entirety of the Milky Way re-created at its full galactic proportions.

Starting with only a small starship and a few credits, players do whatever it takes to earn the skill, knowledge, wealth and power to survive in a futuristic cutthroat galaxy and to stand among the ranks of the Elite.
In an age of galactic superpowers and interstellar war, every player’s story influences the unique connected gaming experience and evolving narrative. Governments fall, battles are lost and won, and humanity’s frontier is reshaped, all by players’ actions.

400 Billion Star Systems. Infinite Freedom. Blaze Your Own Trail.

Sounds like to me they want Powerplay to be the main reason to log into the game. Player influenced narrative driven gameplay is how FD wants to provide open world persistence and longevity.

What do you guys think? Is this the right direction for ED? Does FD want the player to think "What can I do for my faction?" more than "What can I do for MYSELF?" Is Powerplay intended to occupy endgame users?

 

[lefty1117]

That's the vision but right now it is not supported by in-game systems. I don't want to rehash what I've posted in other threads but with small player size instances, no form of global chat, wonky mechanics in local faction influence meta, multiple game modes to support that all impact each other but can't be countered (solo, private, open), the game is in a strange nether region between a cool single player game and a cool massively multiplayer game. They need to pick a direction and go; either make this a true large scale multiplayer game with all the trappings like chat and whatnot, or move towards more content driven, directed single player experiences.

 

[Valimer]

Yes, you are correct. My mistake. There are always more credits to horde away.

 

[Valimer]

That's the vision but right now it is not supported by in-game systems. I don't want to rehash what I've posted in other threads but with small player size instances, no form of global chat, wonky mechanics in local faction influence meta, multiple game modes to support that all impact each other but can't be countered (solo, private, open), the game is in a strange nether region between a cool single player game and a cool massively multiplayer game. They need to pick a direction and go; either make this a true large scale multiplayer game with all the trappings like chat and whatnot, or move towards more content driven, directed single player experiences.

So would you agree that FD's mission statement advertised on the home page is false advertisement or just very poorly executed? Perhaps both?




Also I'd like to point out that no where on the home page do the words "single" or "solo" appear. It is advertised entirely as a MMO game. I would like to ask them why they decided to split the player base.

 

[CmdrBulldog]

We just need more grind! More, more, more! Years of grind! Pit everyone against each other and turn everyone into murderers and pirates. After all it's a tough galaxy full of wretched humans.

Who needs excitement from new things to explore? Who could possibly want more things to do than trade, combat, mining and exploration? Nah, we just need more of this. This will make the game hugely successful!

And politics! We ALL just love politics, let's do more of that too!

 

[Surly_Badger]

So would you agree that FD's mission statement advertised on the home page is false advertisement or just very poorly executed? Perhaps both?

By that definition, can you name any piece of software except "hello, world" that isn't false advertising and poorly executed?

Yes, it's always possible to whip up a crowd of peasants with pitchforks and torches about any piece of software, based on the gap between user's expectations and the delivered reality. Same applies to restaurants, cars, and your entire bloody life.

 

[Valimer]

By that definition, can you name any piece of software except "hello, world" that isn't false advertising and poorly executed?

Yes, it's always possible to whip up a crowd of peasants with pitchforks and torches about any piece of software, based on the gap between user's expectations and the delivered reality. Same applies to restaurants, cars, and your entire bloody life.

If we discredit everything FD says ED is supposed to be, then we don't have much to go on except our own subjective in game experience. Then everyone has their own vision of the game and suddenly there are no right or wrong answers and therefore nothing to talk about.

The intention of this thread was to look at what kind of game ED is supposed to be and if it is going in that direction as well as questioning if it is the right direction for the game.

 

[Valimer]

A serious answer to your post Valimer. Personally I think its heading towards powerplay politics as a means to making the galaxy more dynamic. The plate is there just waiting for the meat and potatoes to be served at a later date. Eventually I believe ED will have a living universe that we can blaze our own trail in. If all goes as I hope it does it'll be the game that all other space games are compared to. Remember the original Elite is the granddad of all modern space games.

Optimistic post? Quite likely. I'm In an optimistic mood.

So you think Powerplay is a step in the right direction then? I think it is as well, it's good to have a sense of belonging and jingoism for a team (however I don't think splitting such a small player base among so many factions was a good idea).

I get the feeling FD wants Powerplay to be THE thing to do. People get an itch for some combat? Go fight for your faction. Then when you run out of money from repawning you go back to whatever you do to earn money. Once you've got some cash piled up you go out and fight again, rinse repeat. It's a gameplay loop. That's where players can get guaranteed action. It makes sense. I just hope FD doesn't lose focus on player wants, because of course players are going to put themselves before any alliance they have hardly any feelings for.

 

[Cidcaldensfey]

Elite Dangerous basically feels as exciting as Dune. Yeah, Dune is awesome on its own, but its also really boring and convoluted. Basically, the gaming experience of Elite Dangerous is the same now as it was upon release. Big pockets of empty space, the occasional interdiction, the same 3 or 4 space stations. Nobody knows how anything works and its all super cryptic in regards to how the simulation works. Everybody is a nobody who is at the mercy of FD and their bizarre storytelling. Really, I could turn on CNN and it would be about as exciting as Elite Dangerous' bulletins. Oh great, an Empire princess isn't really a real princess. Big deal. About as big news as that stupid royal baby people paste pictures of on magazines.

Really, the game is a boring, confusing space grind with no destination. You say 'oh, but its a sandbox' well, no. Its not. Its a controlled environment with the illusion of freedom. The only thing Elite Dangerous has going for it is the scale of the game, which is more of a technological feat. But besides that, the game is pretty stupid. After the first two or three jumps and one mission, you've seen everything the game has to offer. And if FD thinks console gamers are going to play it, think again. The genre is already a niche genre on the PC, console people couldn't give two gentle caresses about your bogus space opera.

People keep clamouring for space bugs to be in the game only because it might hopefully make it relatively interesting. I mean, even my dad quit playing Elite Dangerous because it was so boring. And he's the kind of guy who buys one game and plays it for years, like he logged 500 hours on L4D2 and almost 100 on Bioshock Infinite. Yeah, an 8-hour game has him logged at about 100 hours.

Really. Elite Dangerous has a lot of potential but its just a boring, meaningless grind. At least EVE, the only other space MMO out there really, has something going for it for it, which would be nullsec sov wars, wormholes, etc. I just have no idea what the heck FD is trying to do with Elite Dangerous. It just feels like an unfinished game.

 

[Eric Sheppard]

We just need more grind! More, more, more! Years of grind! Pit everyone against each other and turn everyone into murderers and pirates. After all it's a tough galaxy full of wretched humans.

Who needs excitement from new things to explore? Who could possibly want more things to do than trade, combat, mining and exploration? Nah, we just need more of this. This will make the game hugely successful!

And politics! We ALL just love politics, let's do more of that too!

And you've hit the nail on the head, +1 rep. This is what I fear FD's vision for Elite is at the moment. It boggles the mind, it defies explanation. Everything in the game so far has been time-padding and grinding with very little actual content, and lots of artificial bull to make the experience appear superficially goal-oriented. Why is making money in Elite so hard? Because FD knows that if they made it easier half their playerbase would soon get a fleet of Clippers, Pythons, and Anacondas - and then quit, never to return. Not like there's anything more to experience past that point.

 

[Valimer]

Elite Dangerous basically feels as exciting as Dune. Yeah, Dune is awesome on its own, but its also really boring and convoluted. Basically, the gaming experience of Elite Dangerous is the same now as it was upon release. Big pockets of empty space, the occasional interdiction, the same 3 or 4 space stations. Nobody knows how anything works and its all super cryptic in regards to how the simulation works. Everybody is a nobody who is at the mercy of FD and their bizarre storytelling. Really, I could turn on CNN and it would be about as exciting as Elite Dangerous' bulletins. Oh great, an Empire princess isn't really a real princess. Big deal. About as big news as that stupid royal baby people paste pictures of on magazines.

Really, the game is a boring, confusing space grind with no destination. You say 'oh, but its a sandbox' well, no. Its not. Its a controlled environment with the illusion of freedom. The only thing Elite Dangerous has going for it is the scale of the game, which is more of a technological feat. But besides that, the game is pretty stupid. After the first two or three jumps and one mission, you've seen everything the game has to offer. And if FD thinks console gamers are going to play it, think again. The genre is already a niche genre on the PC, console people couldn't give two gentle caresses about your bogus space opera.

"sandbox" is never mentioned even on the homepage, FD phrases it as "open-ended" which is kind of vague. However they do mention over and over "evolving narrative", hence the Powerplay update. I really think they want the game to be about fighting for these factions.

 

[lefty1117]

So would you agree that FD's mission statement advertised on the home page is false advertisement or just very poorly executed? Perhaps both?




Also I'd like to point out that no where on the home page do the words "single" or "solo" appear. It is advertised entirely as a MMO game. I would like to ask them why they decided to split the player base.

Despite my negativity towards the game over the last week or so, I don't think it's false advertising. Because technically, using the language they've posted, you could make a case that those things exist in game. But it's far less than our imagination had hoped, and that does seem to be a recurring theme here. Perhaps we need to lower our expectations.

 

[X-Terminator]

It's added so they don't need to have a game mechanic break it by bad balancing for them to then need to keep manually adding in stuff like they've done.
PowerPlay will allow the only bit of levelution created by real players so they can walk away at some point and the game will still be playable. It's also a "social experiment" just to see what happens.

 

[Cidcaldensfey]

"sandbox" is never mentioned even on the homepage, FD phrases it as "open-ended" which is kind of vague. However they do mention over and over "evolving narrative", hence the Powerplay update. I really think they want the game to be about fighting for these factions.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Is+Elite+Dangerous+a+sandbox?

I guess the entirety of the internet is absolutely wrong. Yeah, it might not have been advertised as such, but they had no qualms in letting people believe so. FD being tricky to people? Completely unfathomable.

Get real. Wish the weepy-eyed infatuation would wear off of people already because its enough to make me want to throw up. But I guess some people are starting to realize it, based on the amount of activity and posts on the forum. Really, the game from the beginning was a pretty good screwjob. The only reason why FD can't be 100% blamed is because...the real perps are the people who funded it to begin with.

 

[Valimer]

Despite my negativity towards the game over the last week or so, I don't think it's false advertising. Because technically, using the language they've posted, you could make a case that those things exist in game. But it's far less than our imagination had hoped, and that does seem to be a recurring theme here. Perhaps we need to lower our expectations.

I agree, it feels like a lot of it is placeholders and this is just a beta version of the game. I think players were expecting a game with emergent and dynamically driven gameplay, but that's not what we got.

 

[Valimer]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Is+Elite+Dangerous+a+sandbox?

I guess the entirety of the internet is absolutely wrong. Yeah, it might not have been advertised as such, but they had no qualms in letting people believe so. FD being tricky to people? Completely unfathomable.

Get real. Wish the weepy-eyed infatuation would wear off of people already because its enough to make me want to throw up. But I guess some people are starting to realize it, based on the amount of activity and posts on the forum. Really, the game from the beginning was a pretty good screwjob. The only reason why FD can't be 100% blamed is because...the real perps are the people who funded it to begin with.

Well I don't think it's a sandbox, you don't think it's a sandbox and FD doesn't think it's a sandbox either so I think we're in agreement here. Who's right, us or the internet?

 

[Captain Willard]

I got exactly the game I expected and FD keeps making it better, if it's not the game you want. That's another story.

 

[Valimer]

I got exactly the game I expected and FD keeps making it better, if it's not the game you want. That's another story.

Awesome! Do you think FD will continue to expand on Powerplay or will they move on to new features? Would you be satisfied either way?

 

[kurush]

We just need more grind! More, more, more! Years of grind!

Amen. Dispatch grind in pitiful quotas and make sure it will take months of grind to achieve anything. That seems to be the vision

 

[Surly_Badger]

... therefore nothing to talk about.

I agree.