That's my take PP as well. If the powers offered short term mercenary contracts I'd dabble in it but I don't want to be locked to a certain power.
Why is everybody complaining how much of a "grind" Elite is if every other MMORPG is exactly the same?
- Thread starter noldunar
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That's my take PP as well. If the powers offered short term mercenary contracts I'd dabble in it but I don't want to be locked to a certain power.
This maxim of "grind is in the mind" only goes so far as a whole truth. Eventually it becomes an excuse for the failings of the game, and not a warning to people about the dangers of no-lifeing it.
When the solution for many many players to prevent grindout is to play the game a whole lot less and avoid sections of it entirely, then that is a problem with the game, not the players. The fix should be more and varied things to make the repetitive game elements worthwhile and fun, not a reduction in game time overall. "Don't play it so much" at this stage means "there's not much game to play so don't waste it".
I can only speak for myself, but I'm playing this game more than any other since skyrim if I was to say don't play it so much I'd be a hypocrite.
But I've always liked games where I do my own thing for example :
Fallout 3 escape the vault then wander off in a random direction months later "oh yes I've got a dad or something"
Skyrim get out of the cavern beneath the ruined town set off in a random direction months later "oh yeah the dragon attack I've got to tell someone"
Freelancer trapped by the mission progression gates, install OpenSP1 (mod disables campaign) wander off in random direction, never deactivate mod.
Mount and blade warband, It's like they wrote it just for me (floris mod).
FD I have to look to discover the basics no attempt to direct my movements, perfect (for me) but I like a sandbox.
You've just described a slice of my own games collection, and even the way I play them. I have a scary amount of hours logged into those very games, and that line about the dad from F3 made me lol because it's so true. For Skyrim I'd recommend that mod that lets you start with a bunch of different beginnings, and then you can skip the main quest almost indefinitely. Good stuff.
But for Elite, it still needs a lot more toys thrown into the sandbox so that I can get that same vibe. Those other games have a ridiculous amount of ways to occupy your time or at the least distract you from their mechanical functions, so they never really FEEL like you're just doing X-Y-Z by pressing some buttons. Here, it's mostly the ship operation itself that keeps me interested, because that part of the game is gold-standard afaic; I've never gotten quite that feel of epicness from any other spaceflight game. That and the long-view knowledge that Elite's relatively new and still indev.
There's still plenty of time for Elite to become deeper and I praise it where it's merited (which is quite a lot of things really), but I can't just be silent when I see glaring issues, in the hopes that they can be resolved. It worked on some issues, like the "let's mark cargo and give no way to unmark it" so it's not like FD never listen.
Yeah, the sandbox is as big as they can get but it does look empty sometimes.
The flight model ship design and interface are all really good (as in best ever), we just need some more complex things to do with them.
Someone suggested (it might have been you) branching mission suggestions based on completed missions opening new opportunities/specific sorties. That would be really good. (if it was you all the suggestions sounded great and i repped it).
I'm very hopeful, the game improves with every patch the groundwork is done (to a really high quality) the AI is becoming a bit skynet (thanks to SJA). All we need now are more complex missions for all the trades.
The thing that gets me the most about all this grind vs non-grind stuff is that they had the right idea back in the first alpha. Where you basically just did little combat scenarios.
I honestly have no idea if the single player missions in ED are still there or if they're still the same, I haven't played since wings as aside from some new ships I have no interest in any of the changes since beta. Anyway, I digress.
The single player missions in alpha were essentially a mini story-arc of missions regarding Mastopolos mining corp (the fact I can still remember the name of this corp is point enough), and you being contracted to them. Just the little bit of added text, that personalisation which makes it sound as though the person giving the mission is communicating with you (as opposed to reading identical generic board postings). There was a clear progression and tiny bit of background information about the company. Something so simple would make Such a difference.
They had it in Frontier with the mini arcs for the factions. They had the same and more in FE2 (does anyone remember the race?). They have it in X3, the corporation side plots where you run a series of missions for the corps. They have it in spades in many of the open world large scale games that exist on the market.
There is just so much potential to give all the factions, companies, corporations, powers, political entities: Life. To make them engaging. The universe itself is brilliant, and I am happy with the layer theyve added with powerplay. However, from a personal perspective, I want to respond to a bulletin board request by having an actual communication with an NPC (text based of course, look at Frontier and FE2 bulletin board). I want this NPC to tell me that they are looking for pilots to help their interests in the system and are willing to offer a substantial sum for my services, and that long service will be rewarded. I want to be given the mission personally detailing what the objectives are, and then off I go. Once my objective is completed I want to be able to go back, get my money, get the offer of another contract if I performed well, and have the option of increasing my reputation with that organisation.
In the mean time this corporation can be publicly supporting one of the powers and all these missions Im running could be aiding a power or subverting another, and from the grand scheme I could see that I contributed to the global galactic outlook. However, the personal interaction is very important imo, and I think that FD have missed a trick by trying to implement the sandbox in greater detail without adding to the layers which are closer to the player first. As a consequence the "grind" is not masked in any way and I find it very keenly felt when playing ED (which is why I haven't played in a long time).
It almost feels as though FD have purposefully built the sandbox and environment first and want to populate it with characters later. I hope this is the case, I hope they haven'd decided to shelve the single player experience as that is why I backed this game, but so far ive been quite disappointed to see it neglected patch after patch.
I honestly have no idea if the single player missions in ED are still there or if they're still the same, I haven't played since wings as aside from some new ships I have no interest in any of the changes since beta. Anyway, I digress.
The single player missions in alpha were essentially a mini story-arc of missions regarding Mastopolos mining corp (the fact I can still remember the name of this corp is point enough), and you being contracted to them. Just the little bit of added text, that personalisation which makes it sound as though the person giving the mission is communicating with you (as opposed to reading identical generic board postings). There was a clear progression and tiny bit of background information about the company. Something so simple would make Such a difference.
They had it in Frontier with the mini arcs for the factions. They had the same and more in FE2 (does anyone remember the race?). They have it in X3, the corporation side plots where you run a series of missions for the corps. They have it in spades in many of the open world large scale games that exist on the market.
There is just so much potential to give all the factions, companies, corporations, powers, political entities: Life. To make them engaging. The universe itself is brilliant, and I am happy with the layer theyve added with powerplay. However, from a personal perspective, I want to respond to a bulletin board request by having an actual communication with an NPC (text based of course, look at Frontier and FE2 bulletin board). I want this NPC to tell me that they are looking for pilots to help their interests in the system and are willing to offer a substantial sum for my services, and that long service will be rewarded. I want to be given the mission personally detailing what the objectives are, and then off I go. Once my objective is completed I want to be able to go back, get my money, get the offer of another contract if I performed well, and have the option of increasing my reputation with that organisation.
In the mean time this corporation can be publicly supporting one of the powers and all these missions Im running could be aiding a power or subverting another, and from the grand scheme I could see that I contributed to the global galactic outlook. However, the personal interaction is very important imo, and I think that FD have missed a trick by trying to implement the sandbox in greater detail without adding to the layers which are closer to the player first. As a consequence the "grind" is not masked in any way and I find it very keenly felt when playing ED (which is why I haven't played in a long time).
It almost feels as though FD have purposefully built the sandbox and environment first and want to populate it with characters later. I hope this is the case, I hope they haven'd decided to shelve the single player experience as that is why I backed this game, but so far ive been quite disappointed to see it neglected patch after patch.
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Yeah Sidey, it feels exactly like a Beta (or rather an alpha) game with very few bugs. Like not all features that make this an actual enjoyable game are in there yet.
Look at the conflict zones: Just endless waves of ships spawning and rotating around each other with no purpose but to be targets for players. That doesn't feel like a galaxy that's "alive" or even "logical" in any sense of the word. Why do these ships circle each other at some empty point in space? If I was in one of those Anacondas, I would just leave my enemies to themselves, circling each other for all eternity, while I go somewhere and attack their stations with heavy bombs or something.... But this?! It's awful game-design.
They desperately need to script some of those instances to do something awesome. Like one team attacking a target, the other one defending it... Once the target or most of the attackers have been dealt with, the conflict zone gets removed and other systems get them. In the sense of a computer generated world, you could do variations (like multiple targets, different priority ones, maybe drones repairing a huge battleship, transports trying to resupply it and you can destroy either of the three, depending on your tier of ship....)
Some conflict zones with timers, some without. In 5 minutes I can come up with 10 ideas for combat zones that would be far from impossible to script if the flight-AI is somewhat working. Some of them might even be capable of procedural variations. Why not have a conflict zones with MULTIPLE (sometimes opposing) goals:
One of the battleships has been damaged like stated before, another one attacking it - if the attacking one loses it's shields, it jumps away and so on.
They are superb at "mathing out" the galaxy but really need to spend some time on "mathing out" content with procedural generation and I don't mean those excel sheet-missions you get at stations. Although why not COMBINE multiple excel-sheet missions with the conflict zone goals - just an example:
Bring some 8 Tons of desperately needed electronics to a damaged battleship. You jump in, full-scale battle going on.
If they have the AI for directing ships from A to B (and I mean, that's like the basics if you want to do a space sim), all of this would just need a little thought. The complexity would come from mixing those simple, simple things procedurally (their strength). They need to use what's already there and script in content, random events, "anomalies".... something that's out of the ordinary, mustn't be a space anomaly... Something to make the similarily created Systems "untidy". For that you don't need 5 new ship models and 2 new types of stations. Just "instance" scripters.
Heck, if there were modding (scripting) tools of any kind I would find out how to spawn a Conflict zone, spawn a ship, use the AI to do some simple, but different things, how to send a message to entering players and then tell you guys where to find it.
I would do nothing fancy, but in space you really don't need more than spawning stuff, flying from a to b and maybe shoot something to simulate a thousand different things - look at Tie-Fighter. It only had space-combat, scanning and docking and managed to do a whole campaign. E: D has more than those basics and uses them for exactly nothing.
Edit: Just wished to add that I am not a great creator of mods (programming is kind of fun for me though). But I could do a couple of scripted events and if I can do that, just imagine what some of the talented modding community-guys could do. Or The guys from FD, if they stopped doing excel-sheet missions and started being creative.
Look at the conflict zones: Just endless waves of ships spawning and rotating around each other with no purpose but to be targets for players. That doesn't feel like a galaxy that's "alive" or even "logical" in any sense of the word. Why do these ships circle each other at some empty point in space? If I was in one of those Anacondas, I would just leave my enemies to themselves, circling each other for all eternity, while I go somewhere and attack their stations with heavy bombs or something.... But this?! It's awful game-design.
They desperately need to script some of those instances to do something awesome. Like one team attacking a target, the other one defending it... Once the target or most of the attackers have been dealt with, the conflict zone gets removed and other systems get them. In the sense of a computer generated world, you could do variations (like multiple targets, different priority ones, maybe drones repairing a huge battleship, transports trying to resupply it and you can destroy either of the three, depending on your tier of ship....)
Some conflict zones with timers, some without. In 5 minutes I can come up with 10 ideas for combat zones that would be far from impossible to script if the flight-AI is somewhat working. Some of them might even be capable of procedural variations. Why not have a conflict zones with MULTIPLE (sometimes opposing) goals:
One of the battleships has been damaged like stated before, another one attacking it - if the attacking one loses it's shields, it jumps away and so on.
They are superb at "mathing out" the galaxy but really need to spend some time on "mathing out" content with procedural generation and I don't mean those excel sheet-missions you get at stations. Although why not COMBINE multiple excel-sheet missions with the conflict zone goals - just an example:
Bring some 8 Tons of desperately needed electronics to a damaged battleship. You jump in, full-scale battle going on.
If they have the AI for directing ships from A to B (and I mean, that's like the basics if you want to do a space sim), all of this would just need a little thought. The complexity would come from mixing those simple, simple things procedurally (their strength). They need to use what's already there and script in content, random events, "anomalies".... something that's out of the ordinary, mustn't be a space anomaly... Something to make the similarily created Systems "untidy". For that you don't need 5 new ship models and 2 new types of stations. Just "instance" scripters.
Heck, if there were modding (scripting) tools of any kind I would find out how to spawn a Conflict zone, spawn a ship, use the AI to do some simple, but different things, how to send a message to entering players and then tell you guys where to find it.
I would do nothing fancy, but in space you really don't need more than spawning stuff, flying from a to b and maybe shoot something to simulate a thousand different things - look at Tie-Fighter. It only had space-combat, scanning and docking and managed to do a whole campaign. E: D has more than those basics and uses them for exactly nothing.
Edit: Just wished to add that I am not a great creator of mods (programming is kind of fun for me though). But I could do a couple of scripted events and if I can do that, just imagine what some of the talented modding community-guys could do. Or The guys from FD, if they stopped doing excel-sheet missions and started being creative.
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It's pretty obvious that so far this game isn't a MMOrpg but rather a single player game with a multiplayer functions.
This thread is a good read and I hope someone at FD takes the time to skim it. While I do think a lot of the concerns will be addressed over time and the OP needs to accept a lot of the reasons given for the "grindy" appellation. Granite, for instance, did a great job including visuals. ED super-fans may never see it, but they have to accept large numbers of folks disagreeing with them have their own likes and indeed it is patently apparent that the design documents for the game all point to something more engaging than the current build. Persistent Tier 2 NPC are high on my list of desires, for instance. But the whole DDF is high on my list... 
Personally, for another year I am giving FD a pass. Here is why: firstly it is clear they are listening and read the forums. Secondly, I see a lot of economic risk evaluation behind the 2015 focus combined with a huge scope that couldn't be done by anyone in 2 years. Least of all a Kickstarter launched project that raised 2.5 MGBP but where V1.0 cost easily 7x that much and the company coding the game was negative cash-flow.
But as the financials seem mostly addressed for now, FD needs to get on with coding more of the unfinished design doc parts. At 2.5 years in with modest budget what we have is a solid foundation and framing (I think DB was pre-mature to say we were ready for furniture). FD now needs to move beyond the Xbox and PP focus and get back to the core design. I think we will see FD do just that. If not, I may rage-post myself. And FD could easily address these concerns with a non-roadmap but crystal clear response about where they are taking the game in the next 2 years, and it is a mystery to me why they don't do that.
For the desire of some that Players affect the Economy or similar ways to make the grind more enjoyable and goal oriented rather than just credits or points oriented, I am of two minds. I think MB's Dev update today sides with me on this one. On the one hand, any given 100 commanders are droplets in an ocean of freighters trucking goods through the galaxy. No effect on an economy at all in major systems. On the other hand, part of the attraction of gaming in general, and say EVE, is that players can directly influence or even control aspects of the economy and politics of the game. That can be fun. My break-point is population. FD have to find a way that players can have major affect on small population systems but keep affect on planets with 10 million persons to be basically nothing and only a blip if done in concert with hundreds of players. That would maintain a semi-realistic course for the simulation while also offering players a chance to make a big splash in small systems and build them up as development into these parts of the game continues.
Personally, for another year I am giving FD a pass. Here is why: firstly it is clear they are listening and read the forums. Secondly, I see a lot of economic risk evaluation behind the 2015 focus combined with a huge scope that couldn't be done by anyone in 2 years. Least of all a Kickstarter launched project that raised 2.5 MGBP but where V1.0 cost easily 7x that much and the company coding the game was negative cash-flow.
But as the financials seem mostly addressed for now, FD needs to get on with coding more of the unfinished design doc parts. At 2.5 years in with modest budget what we have is a solid foundation and framing (I think DB was pre-mature to say we were ready for furniture). FD now needs to move beyond the Xbox and PP focus and get back to the core design. I think we will see FD do just that. If not, I may rage-post myself.
And FD could easily address these concerns with a non-roadmap but crystal clear response about where they are taking the game in the next 2 years, and it is a mystery to me why they don't do that.For the desire of some that Players affect the Economy or similar ways to make the grind more enjoyable and goal oriented rather than just credits or points oriented, I am of two minds. I think MB's Dev update today sides with me on this one. On the one hand, any given 100 commanders are droplets in an ocean of freighters trucking goods through the galaxy. No effect on an economy at all in major systems. On the other hand, part of the attraction of gaming in general, and say EVE, is that players can directly influence or even control aspects of the economy and politics of the game. That can be fun. My break-point is population. FD have to find a way that players can have major affect on small population systems but keep affect on planets with 10 million persons to be basically nothing and only a blip if done in concert with hundreds of players. That would maintain a semi-realistic course for the simulation while also offering players a chance to make a big splash in small systems and build them up as development into these parts of the game continues.
I would like to see a greater set of modules that provide a more dynamic approach to the content also. Currently it pretty much 'expensive module is better' save when you are trying to save on mass. Guns provide the best variety however it is a pretty simple choice in most circumstances. More variety in loadouts, more variety in missions and I'm pretty much happy to keep plodding away for the next few years.
At the moment I limit how much I play to prevent burnout, but I would love to play more.
I think the reason it feels grindy at times is because there are relatively few rewards compared to what you would see in other games that put you on the treadmill. In my opinion a loot system would go a looooooong way if not almost completely eliminate the grindy feeling. if you take a look at a game like WoW, which originally started out fairly grindy (and even then it wasn't as much as say, Dark Age of Camelot), then look at WoW with the Draenor expansion, they are practically rewarding you at this point for logging in! Not that Elite should ever go that route but I do think things like loot drops, possibility of loot drops & salvage, titles & achievements and things of that nature would serve to keep players more engaged through the grindier parts of the game - such as the huge gap between Vulture and the next tier of ships.
Even dead CMDRS should drop 'loot'.
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At least YOU (No Offline Moders) were offered a refund. MMO players got the; HA HA you Downloaded it! SUCKER!
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At least YOU (No Offline Moders) were offered a refund. MMO players got the; HA HA you Downloaded it! SUCKER!
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This thread is a good read and I hope someone at FD takes the time to skim it. While I do think a lot of the concerns will be addressed over time and the OP needs to accept a lot of the reasons given for the "grindy" appellation. Granite, for instance, did a great job including visuals. ED super-fans may never see it, but they have to accept large numbers of folks disagreeing with them have their own likes and indeed it is patently apparent that the design documents for the game all point to something more engaging than the current build. Persistent Tier 2 NPC are high on my list of desires, for instance. But the whole DDF is high on my list...
Personally, for another year I am giving FD a pass. Here is why: firstly it is clear they are listening and read the forums. Secondly, I see a lot of economic risk evaluation behind the 2015 focus combined with a huge scope that couldn't be done by anyone in 2 years. Least of all a Kickstarter launched project that raised 2.5 MGBP but where V1.0 cost easily 7x that much and the company coding the game was negative cash-flow.
But as the financials seem mostly addressed for now, FD needs to get on with coding more of the unfinished design doc parts. At 2.5 years in with modest budget what we have is a solid foundation and framing (I think DB was pre-mature to say we were ready for furniture). FD now needs to move beyond the Xbox and PP focus and get back to the core design. I think we will see FD do just that. If not, I may rage-post myself.
For the desire of some that Players affect the Economy or similar ways to make the grind more enjoyable and goal oriented rather than just credits or points oriented, I am of two minds. I think MB's Dev update today sides with me on this one. On the one hand, any given 100 commanders are droplets in an ocean of freighters trucking goods through the galaxy. No effect on an economy at all in major systems. On the other hand, part of the attraction of gaming in general, and say EVE, is that players can directly influence or even control aspects of the economy and politics of the game. That can be fun. My break-point is population. FD have to find a way that players can have major affect on small population systems but keep affect on planets with 10 million persons to be basically nothing and only a blip if done in concert with hundreds of players. That would maintain a semi-realistic course for the simulation while also offering players a chance to make a big splash in small systems and build them up as development into these parts of the game continues.
The thing is, though, players already can have major impacts on the economy of even high population star systems, assuming they're willing to put in the work. Likewise, player actions can topple governments, cure plagues, alleviate famines or start civil wars. Powerplay made things go wonky in many locations, but the fact is that the idea of players just being a 'drop in the ocean' haven't really held water in a long time. The game just obfuscates the economic simulation enough, and the effects of said simulation are non-obvious enough, that unless you specifically go looking, you rarely notice it. Organised groups have even more of an impact.
This never really goes beyond the local level because of the astrographic bulk of settled space; there just isn't time to expand a minor faction indefinitely. Beyond that, there probably isn't any particular mechanical reason you couldn't get one minor faction to take over the whole of settled space, if you could get enough commanders working together for long enough.
Given that 'player irrelevant' is a pretty threadbare illusion at this point, they'd be better served by dropping the conceit entirely since at this point its only practical effect is to get in the way of potential future gameplay options.
Deleted member 37733
D
I'm only going to reference WoW, because that is all I played.
You're right about collecting ten wolf pelts, but even from the launch of WoW eleven years ago there was a lot more variety in WoW than there is in ED today. Sometimes it was about putting out fires, transmogrifying little monsters or having a race and in each of these cases the environment was different with a little story behind it. You had character talents, melee, missile weapons, more variety with spells, weapons, armour and enchantments.
Every bulletin board mission, community goal or PP goal in FD is about shooting other ships, transporting items from one location to another or a combination of these two things. And those locations are identical, space is space no matter where you are and most stations look the same. Of course ED has a limitation that it's a space sim, whereas WoW artists could let their imagination run wild creating very different worlds.
But even though WoW had a lot more variety eleven years ago it's players still complain about grind today. FD seems to have missed the opportunity to learn from WoW's progress. On balance ED is in a lot worse place than WoW for grinding, I think it's fair for CMDRs to complain.
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