Excellent, exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks for your responses.
When FD dropped the ball (with the background sim in v1.3)
- Thread starter SentineI
- Start date
Excellent, exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks for your responses.
God, I'm dreading the 1.4 announcement. I can see planetary landings on the horizon. 80% of the forum will whoop with delight, and I'll be done, I suspect. GAMEPLAY, people. Read the words - *game_play*. Make it an enjoyable game to play!
Ah, who am I kidding. I'm the minority. I clearly just don't get it
Even if it is the planetary landings expansion announcement, that doesn't mean it's going to be at the expense of updates between the announcement and when it actually goes live. We could have 2 or 3 major updates before then...expansions are usually announced about 6 months before they are released.
I'm honestly losing the energy and will to contribute on this forum some days. The number of times I've typed in a semi-wall of text and then cancelled it with a dismissive "Oh, what's the point, it won't change anything and no-one will listen or understand".
But, in short, I'm with ChrisH, Granite and the original Reddit author. We are too far down the line for the old "it's under development" excuses to be valid any more. Too many people have expended their own personal effort, as part of the testing phases or even just post-live community work, for me to ignore the fact that this game is set on a path and it will not change. The path is NOT the path I want, it's not the one I felt was sold, and it feels to me that while there are still high hopes on Frontier's side, they will take so long to implement that the damage will be done (if they are even implementable). The core aspects, such as the BGS, the flight model, the weapons mechanics - need to be right from day one. Too much game time has passed under the bridge to change or fix this now.
God, I'm dreading the 1.4 announcement. I can see planetary landings on the horizon. 80% of the forum will whoop with delight, and I'll be done, I suspect. GAMEPLAY, people. Read the words - *game_play*. Make it an enjoyable game to play!
Ah, who am I kidding. I'm the minority. I clearly just don't get it
I don't need to add anything here, and I agree 100%.
It's a shame too, but it is what it is.
See Sandro, this is the kind of thing which gets me and I believe others, here.
The general feeling is that FDEV had a clear direction you were going in - we assumed you were going to go down a perfectly sensible route of putting some meat on the bones of the game from when it was at 1.0. This means that we thought you were going to concentrate your time and effort into putting more gameplay into the game. Adding basic things like actual life into the galaxy. All this before doing stuff like powerplay!
Instead, you're adding Powerplay. And having to spend your time and effort into tweaking this most un-Elite-like bolt-on. And the more code you add into the game, the more diluted your dev time and effort becomes, as you now have to maintain that powerplay code. You now have to spend time and effort tweaking powerplay - which again sucks dev time and effort from adding actual meat to the bones.
Powerplay wasn't expected. It wasn't even particularly wanted by - I think - most players. We wanted, and still do want, meat on the game. Powerplay is not meat.
And you've done it again with CQC. All that time and effort to make a basically separate game using ED assets.
I'm hoping against hope that this Gamescom announcement FDEV are currently hyping, won't be the huge disappointment that the powerplay and CQC announcements were to many. I hope that on the 5th August everything I've said here is proven wrong.
Regards.
Thanks for taking the time to reply Sandro, and while I appreciate you can only say what you are allowed to say, what you have said doesn't help at all I'm afraid.
A number of people are sick of waiting for what we have so far to improve, while each patch just adds more stuff that "isn't quite there yet", which only adds to the disappointment I'm afraid.
I keep the forum open and post occasionally, but there is nothing in the game currently that is making want to log in
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Thanks for taking the time to reply Sandro, and while I appreciate you can only say what you are allowed to say, what you have said doesn't help at all I'm afraid.
A number of people are sick of waiting for what we have so far to improve, while each patch just adds more stuff that "isn't quite there yet", which only adds to the disappointment I'm afraid.
I keep the forum open and post occasionally, but there is nothing in the game currently that is making want to log in
Wholeheartedly agree. The game is just getting worse with each patch/update.
Hopefully in a few month FD may actually be able to deliver on what they promised.
+1 ... can't remember such a perfect posting in this forum!
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Thanks for taking the time to reply Sandro, and while I appreciate you can only say what you are allowed to say, what you have said doesn't help at all I'm afraid.
A number of people are sick of waiting for what we have so far to improve, while each patch just adds more stuff that "isn't quite there yet", which only adds to the disappointment I'm afraid.
I keep the forum open and post occasionally, but there is nothing in the game currently that is making want to log in
Adding new features drives sales, fixing the ones already there does not.
The BGS should not at this stage require any manual intervention. It's not rocket science, and it's been in place for months. If it was broken by PP that's indicative of a deeper issue with development and testing that should be addressed before adding anything further in the game, otherwise Frontier are liable to keep breaking stuff every time a new feature is released - and as time goes by, there's more things to break. If the procedures are not sorted the problems will only get worse, not better.
You posted that the Reddit contributor was playing the wrong game and should buy himself a subscription to EVE. Your original post had nothing to do with expectations, it was merely a snide remark. It also missed the point, as Granite and others said, that the Reddit dude was attempting to play the game which Braben and FD touted.
Good to hear from Sandro that they're still giving it attention, but would echo the calls for FD to stop adding layers of complexity until what's there actually works.
Yes, I am waiting to have some higher goal to all these repetitive actions in game. I thought it will be Powerplay, but I was mistaken.
That's what I said. I'd love for them to fix what we already have.
Edit: You don't need to tell me what drives sales either, I'm not stupid.
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Let's not use hyperbole when there's no really basis for one, shall we? No, game is not getting worse with each update. If that would be true, game would be truly gone at this point.
Different people play for different reasons, but BGS is there and it's working. Yes, there are some limitations and quirks, and it's not perfect. There's no perfect complex game out there without bugs.
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But Elite really never provided any goals.
I was part of the group the OP talks about. We spent months working and recording what we did. I updated a spreadsheet every day to track what we did in a few systems and recorded the status of every faction in those systems. We did stuff like that to try and figure out how the BGS worked and to find the best ways to influence it. It was frustrating because things didn't seem to make sense, and we reported bugs, but it did feel like we were getting somewhere. The bug reports were being answered and our issues were being resolved. It was pretty good.
We did all that because the way you interact with the BGS is by PLAYING THE GAME. You fly your ship and do ANYTHING YOU WANT and it would further our goals. Trading, exploring, combat, smuggling, shooting down other faction ships, taking missions, all of it worked on some level to influence the BGS and it was fun.
Then Powerplay hit and erased everything we had worked for. It really did. We tried to keep going but whatever effects the powers had over a system were messing with what we were trying to do. We stopped getting answers from people at Frontier. You can understand why people were upset and stopped playing.
I'm not entitled, I don't think the game should be made just the way I want it just for me. We had a good thing going and a lot of people were playing and having a good time with a promising game, then it was broken. We'd just like it fixed, that's all.
While I am a fanboy, I have to agree with the general sentiments here. I don't even mind Powerplay as a concept, but I feel there were missed opportunities there that could have made PP more engaging, and therefore the dev time might have been best spent on, as Genar said, meat.
The issues with the BGS right now:
1. Exploits.
There are and still exist certain exploits how you can kickstart influence values. These aren't real exploits, more unbalanced features. We reported them since week 1 after 1.3, but they are still there.
2. Volatility.
1.3. and the mission overhaul brought a massive increase in volatility. It seems as if the diminishing returns for the system have been abolished. You are easily able to kick influence up 50% in a day if you know what you are doing.
3. Overall balance and immersion
The overall balance is in the gutter. E.g. it does nothing at all to work in a CZ. You can earn combat bonds the whole day, but someone doing a combat mission and flying to another system to destroy some ships will achieve more in 20 minutes than you will in 4 hours in the combat zones. In 1.1. the system was rather well balanced. Trading, exploration, bounty hunting, smuggling, combat bonds all added or removed influence. With 1.2. that was gone. With 1.3. this was not only gone, but put on it's head.
4. States and cooldown sharing
This has been addressed by Sandro already. And this one is really complicated. The others aren't, because they are just numbers to be adjusted.
Solution:
I've been saying this for a long time, and I'll say it again. There needs to be a big playersimulation.
Simulating players doing influence relevant actions. Trading, bounty hunting, smuggling, killing ships, handing in combat bonds. Then triggering the queue for the simulated system. Then these need to be input into test routines and run before the release of changes.
There are certain BGS changes implemented with 1.3. that for sure have never been unit tested against expected values. Because they are so out of whack with the rest of the BGS that it pains me every day when I see they are still in the game.
1. Exploits.
There are and still exist certain exploits how you can kickstart influence values. These aren't real exploits, more unbalanced features. We reported them since week 1 after 1.3, but they are still there.
2. Volatility.
1.3. and the mission overhaul brought a massive increase in volatility. It seems as if the diminishing returns for the system have been abolished. You are easily able to kick influence up 50% in a day if you know what you are doing.
3. Overall balance and immersion
The overall balance is in the gutter. E.g. it does nothing at all to work in a CZ. You can earn combat bonds the whole day, but someone doing a combat mission and flying to another system to destroy some ships will achieve more in 20 minutes than you will in 4 hours in the combat zones. In 1.1. the system was rather well balanced. Trading, exploration, bounty hunting, smuggling, combat bonds all added or removed influence. With 1.2. that was gone. With 1.3. this was not only gone, but put on it's head.
4. States and cooldown sharing
This has been addressed by Sandro already. And this one is really complicated. The others aren't, because they are just numbers to be adjusted.
Solution:
I've been saying this for a long time, and I'll say it again. There needs to be a big playersimulation.
Simulating players doing influence relevant actions. Trading, bounty hunting, smuggling, killing ships, handing in combat bonds. Then triggering the queue for the simulated system. Then these need to be input into test routines and run before the release of changes.
There are certain BGS changes implemented with 1.3. that for sure have never been unit tested against expected values. Because they are so out of whack with the rest of the BGS that it pains me every day when I see they are still in the game.
The background simulation doesn't exist. Your pc spawns NPCs to fight, everything else is static. FD didn't want to pay server costs to simulate the factions, NPCs, trades, markets, etc, so decided not to.
Rep +1 because actually explaining what caused your concerns.
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Let's not spread lies. If you feel that way, fine, but you can't stay these as facts.
Thanks. That is really appreciated.
Ok, maybe I should say "punctuated equilibrium" rather than "static". Nothing changes until triggers of cumulative player action occur. So there are no minute by minute changes to markets as pirates kill traders, only big changes due to community goals and weekly power play expansion. Market prices fluctuate a little around set levels, but those equilibrium levels don't change over time.
Why isn't the game as dynamic as advertised? Some people say because it is still in beta. The OP mentioned that people working on it were sacked. We know that the game uses peer to peer networking with out central servers to save money. It's not a big stretch to assume that FD decided not to do the advertised thing that everyone is asking for that would be really fun only because of money issues.
Hopefully they do get around to it as Sandro said.
Why isn't the game as dynamic as advertised? Some people say because it is still in beta. The OP mentioned that people working on it were sacked. We know that the game uses peer to peer networking with out central servers to save money. It's not a big stretch to assume that FD decided not to do the advertised thing that everyone is asking for that would be really fun only because of money issues.
Hopefully they do get around to it as Sandro said.
Give us bigger trading ship in gamescom and all is forgiven.