When FD dropped the ball (with the background sim in v1.3)

[leetd00d]

The BGS was actually working pretty well just before 1.2 hit.

As someone who has done almost nothing else than playing it, you can believe me on that one.

1.2. Brought the addition of 2 long cooldown states, War and Election. The CW cooldown had been tuned down to 3 days, and all was working well in 1.1. Then 1.2. brought War and Election with 25 day cooldowns. These, together with the improved number of expanded systems and the cooldown mechanics lead to cooldown mania. Example: In Bielonti, the Anarchy faction expanded twice. To Lenore and Sikarici. They had a War in Lenore and went into 25 day conflict cooldown. Therefore no conflicts in Bielonti, Lenore and Sikarici were triggering, whether involving The Silver Gang or not. And you could never know why, because there is no information that The silver Gang is in Cooldown, the system is in cooldown or that the Silver Gang was actually in 3 systems, not two.

Th3 result was many ppl thought the BGS was bugged. We certainly thought so when we couldnt trigger a civil war in Tionisla, because we didnt know that Social Tionisla Labor was in 3 systems, not 2.

1.3. Then reduced the cooldown. Seeing whether a faction is in a cooldown is important. Seeing in which systems a faction is is important. Furthermore I'd really like charts to see the influence ovdr time, sith state markers. And ideally on the community page, not only in game.

We created a tool like that for ourselves, but entering data is tedious and trained monkey business. I am sure I spent at least 30 hours entering data manually, instead of playing the game.

The different missions are great. The only thing thats needed:
- rework of the cooldown mechanic (announced)
- balance balance balance
- more info, like influence over time reporting with a charting module
- some additional content, like triggering of events (small CGs) for station building, station shrinking, targeted expansion (and colonization), increase of production
- better economic model to have visible possibilities to manipulate what the station is producing and in which amounts (e.g. being able to manipulate a High Tech / Refinery to export Resonating Separators instead of importing)
- population changes


The announced changes sound very very well. I hope that the execution will live up to it.

Excuse me, Sir - but with all respect - you are wrong. It never worked well.

- showing different prices/demands to commanders at the same time
- automagical stock-decrease and increase
- factions jumping from 5 to 70 % in one hour
etc.

Not mentioning the other stuff like "why does ai bring goods that are on stock to the station" and all that
come on - its not even close to a "sim", its a bunch of scripts that is everything but intelligent

 

[_Flin_]

Excuse me, Sir - but with all respect - you are wrong. It never worked well.

It was never completely bug free, but if you wanted to play it, you could do so in 80% of the cases.

- showing different prices/demands to commanders at the same time

Is this an BGS issue? The buy-prices are actually dependent on the amount of stuff in your cargo hold.

- automagical stock-decrease and increase

Well, it's not magical. There are two ticks, 10 minutes apart. First the production tick, then the consumption tick. The production tick does production of goods and deliveries of NPC goods, the consumption tick does consumption of goods and exports of goods by NPCs.

While you don't have to like this system (I could imagine something less clunky as well), this is how it works. It is not magical.

- factions jumping from 5 to 70 % in one hour

Well, there is one influence update per day. If someone works on this faction, the 70% jump will happen at one precise point in time. The 70% part is only after 1.3, before 1.3. jumps like these were impossible, due to diminishing returns (I think we maxed at 30% or so in a day, it was way more feasible to spread the effort to multiple systems and have higher absolute influence gains than working in one system).

Not mentioning the other stuff like "why does ai bring goods that are on stock to the station" and all that
come on - its not even close to a "sim", its a bunch of scripts that is everything but intelligent

Well, as I said, I do not like the economic model very much and think it could be improved a lot, to resemble an actual economy.
Therefore I will not argue against that.

When talking about the background simulation, most people are talking about the influence mechanics, minor factions, expansions and politics, and not so much about the economics.

I'd like to have a better economic model but don't see that happen anytime soon. Since it was explicitely stated by FD that this will not be the focus and they dont want a spreadsheet game.

 

[smiths121]

MY own little group (about 3-5), have had some success with the BGS, we had expanded to 3 systems and were preparing to take control of the 3rd when powerplay hit.
Early 1.3 cycles had bugs where powerplay would affect minor factions at the end of a cycle, the dambed -57% influence loss, but the influence loss/gain has ironed out for us based on fortifcation verses opposition. End of this cycle we got a nice 20% bonus as Mahone went into turmoil including our controlling system. It gives us a week to get our faction expanding into its 4th system.

We have survived becoming exploited. I have ranted against powerplay and its affects on the minor factions, but the recent dev diary give me some hope. I am currently in a "can live with it, it is not for me" mode and focussing on our minor faction. Now we understand more about its affects on the minor factions, I am turning my attention to how to fight back without joining a power. I know by pm there are others who want to do the same. I only have one system as evidence, but I think i have found a way to avoid powerplay forcing civil war and endless we could lose it all situations. I need to do a lot of number crunching this week and when Mahone comes out of turmoil.

I am very divided on powerplay, on one hand it has generated a lot fo change around our parts, on the other it does walk through months of effort put in by groups prior to 1.3. I guess its move on or adapt, and I am slowly coming around to adapt.

Simon

Simon

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Thanks Sandro. I thought that was already understood. Good luck with your efforts, I look forward to see where this game is heading.

It was understood, yes. But there are enough things that were understood to be coming that have not appeared, and new stuff from out of left field, that those that are still waiting for their stuff need some reassurance.

 

[medwyn]

What is the BGS simulating actually? I've never seen it taking any effect on the game world overall: the economy sim is as static as it can be and does not reflect any real supply or demand, nor connected to any needs, even if noone plays ED, the galaxy is sitting there happily. Where's the game?
The political sim did not affect me at all while I was playing. Minor or major factions do not matter, I may have a green welcoming message or not, does not matter (it mattered in fuel price when fuel was part of the game with its high price but it was nerfed to a useless state so fuel is "just there" now).
So overall I don't see any BGS working in the background which is important in terms of the game. There's nothing to play with. Affecting minor factions leads to no consequence either so I don't consider it as a gameplay element, it does not affect my gameplay either way: I don't have to make different decisions because this or that minor faction is in charge in any system. They are just different words in different order. Scramble has the same level of gameplay.

The other thing came to my mind is the term "huge potential" ED supposed to have. This is like a mantra, a claim towards the game but if I take the last 8 months into account it's one of the most useless terms I have heard here on the forums.
There's no such thing as potential. It's an imaginatory term reflecting the need we players have to get a great game but it has no relation to either the code nor to the devs. FD made it very clear with their decisions that it's a business they are running and income as a priority is most important to them. That alone renders the "huge potential" pretty invalid: making a good game or maximizing the profit are two different things and if we take a look at where FD's profits are and in what state ED is, I have no doubt that it's pretty useless to bring up this conception of "great potential" again.

Profit. That's what's all about. That's the vision and not this or that sort of game. Accidentally some commanders will be happy with the following decisions whatever they'll be anyway - people are different enough for that by nature so if FD announces an upcoming release to Nintendo and a Super Mario co-pilot for everyone who buys the pack pre-release, there'll be people cheering and trying to prove how great this potential is. It's not that hard to spend 10 years of development with these things and without addressing the very fundamental problmes echoing back from late Alphas. Of course, catering for those already paid is a questionable financial act.

FD knows how to grind. They grind real money from players. In this RW powerplay they pick the power provides the most income and do whatever needs to be done to achieve the most with the necessary minimum effort. They pledged to the power called "KS backers" to get the necessary modules they needed, then defected them and found other powers to pledge to so now we can have QCQ. What's next?

 

[medwyn]

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

Hear, hear...

 

[Herik]

FDEV released this game at least 12 months prematurely in my view. I understand why, but it was an unfortunate decision to have to make. Devoting resources to firefighting and adding features in a piecemeal fashion to placate the frankly insane player base has probably affected the game for the worse, compared to how it would have been if there were no complaints to handle or expectations to manage during development. I wonder if future FDEV titles will be funded and managed in a more traditional way, so that players don't get a chance to influence the developers or mess anything up before the game is actually ready for release.

I believe your wrong on that one; -the 4 or 5 big investors may have been pushing hard for that release date. Its certainly arguable the large player base was doing it; I recall much forum activity around them waiting...

 

[Wellington]

Yup, and the first line is: the idea is how the galaxy will change over time.
-
Work in progress, guys. BIG work in progress. EVE Online took five years to develop into a working ecosystem. Elite Dangerous will need at least a few years to even begin to work as has been described in the above vision. I really cannot understand how people expect all this to just be there, present and balanced and working smoothly, when the game is less than a year old.

They DIDN'T SELL AN IDEA! They SOLD a product! A FULLY WORKING "PRODUCT"!.......... Plain and simple truth is he lied through his teeth, played the crowd like a fiddle and came away with the dollars and left all us gamers playing catch-up with a broken product.....

 

[Bardolin]

See, the thing is we were working with the full understanding that the game wasn't done in the hopes that our feedback would help to fix the background sim. It seemed like it was working because we would see a result of a war or an election that didn't make sense and ask about it and be told that yes, something was broken somewhere and they had to fix it. This happened over and over, which is fine, we knew things weren't finished but that's all part of making a game and testing to find bugs.

Then we get a big shiny update that is supposed to address a lot of the issues we had. I know some of us got our hopes up a little too high but no one was prepared for what Powerplay turned out to be. We thought for sure a major BGS overhaul would be needed to support such a thing. Nope, it's just an unrelated overlay on the galaxy map.

Hey fellow BGS burn-out.
As part of the group, I will say that seeing months of hard work and accomplishments (expanding in neighbouring systems, fighting in wars between factions, all the funny lore and community activities) almost literally flushed down the drain was a massive downer and it burned me out as well.
I still boot it up and pew pew a few pirates in RES once or twice a week, since the actual flying experience is good, but that's not enough to get me to invest hours in this game again.
Thing is, while I understand the anger of some (like Glyph, who put a lot of effort into it only for him to be ignored or in a couple of cases even accused of lying), all I get is massive disappointment due to a feeling of FD mishandling things and wasting a great potential element of this game.

 

[kreuzbichler]

That has different pros & cons than Star Citizen's chosen strategy of developing all planned features in parallel for years, and then trying to integrate them all in one 'big bang' before commercial release. .

I have checked out SC about 2-3 months ago and immediately backed it with almost 100$ when i saw the TONS of infos and making of videos they put out every day, and they actually show the stuff FD is only talking about showing absolutely nothing (preprendered CG trailers don´t count , sorry but I´m not dumb to fall for ´not actual gameplay footage´ in a size 3 font.

I think it´s the other way around SC is implementing all this as core features planned from the ground up while FD can now work out how to tack on all the stuff they´ve promised and presold with expansion passes. Lots of reworks will be required and preexisting stuff might be trashed.

 

[Beondred]

I don't know about you, but what I see is "Hey, check out this great game - one thing you guys in particular may love, is the ability of the games denizens to be impacted by the actions of players. For example, you are able to save a famished population or thrust two rival factions into war. You are able to trade economies into boom and contribute to the expansion of their empire or subjugate them into the dark ages. Focused actions lends to a new state of the faction as they change based on the occurrences of our simulated galaxy".

So player buys the game and tries to do this... doesn't work. Get's disappointed.

I'm not getting the whole 'toys out of the pram' vibe. In fact I think this 'spoilt child' response given by many players is counter-intuitive to progress, I find this message to be more juvenile than the original.

Personally, I think, I'm the idiot that bought the game and fell for their marketing spiel. I enjoy the game for what it is, an incredibly shallow space fps. However, it is also a very 'authentic' experience in regards to physics and this plays a great part in setting the atmosphere for me.

For me, the physics of the game is enough, but everything else that's in the game? From a 'game design' perspective? It is borderline laughable, it has been described even by developers themselves before as the bare minimum - because it truly is the bare minimum.

These "Elite is the bomb, use your imagination" or "Go play Eve" or "Spoilt child unable to wait" posts are the part of Elite I actually hate the most. This to me is childish; not the 'Product not as described/unhappy customer' posts.

Suggesting that a game you purchase should require an imagination to enjoy is ludicrous; like going to a movie and finding out it has only audio... "You need to imagine the video!"; did we buy a 'interactive imagination engine'?.

Or people suggesting that because someone wants more from a game that they should play a different game, 'I really like this but wouldn't it be better if it did this?'... 'No. Go play Eve'.

Or - that because they are disappointed and demand better from a company that they are a child. 'I found this part of the game less than satisfactory and it has soured my experience to the point where I no longer want to play'.... 'What a baby!! Spoilt child has toys growing on him like a cancer!'.

These people are like teenage sycophants who adamantly defend their pop singer obsession from true appraisals as if the company or it's employees are unable to take criticism. Stop White Knighting, you are fooling nobody but yourself.

If what this poster details is true I know not to waste my time with factions in the game because the effect on anything will be 0. In fact, why should I even contribute to any faction given that a group cannot even change how everything interacts together in the slightest?

Ultimately what this suggests is the background simulation need not even exist, because it does nothing. It is a waste of developers time that could be spent elsewhere based on this persons observations.

I printed this post and attached it to my wall. If I could, I would send a copy to FD: they should have it on their walls too.

 

[TomR]

Hey fellow BGS burn-out.
As part of the group, I will say that seeing months of hard work and accomplishments (expanding in neighbouring systems, fighting in wars between factions, all the funny lore and community activities) almost literally flushed down the drain was a massive downer and it burned me out as well.
I still boot it up and pew pew a few pirates in RES once or twice a week, since the actual flying experience is good, but that's not enough to get me to invest hours in this game again.
Thing is, while I understand the anger of some (like Glyph, who put a lot of effort into it only for him to be ignored or in a couple of cases even accused of lying), all I get is massive disappointment due to a feeling of FD mishandling things and wasting a great potential element of this game.

High Five.
Yeah I'm not mad or anything. I still play the game here and there, it's just a hollow experience to not care who you are shooting or what you are fighting for.

 

[Jacob Marshall]

Spoiler

I don't know about you, but what I see is "Hey, check out this great game - one thing you guys in particular may love, is the ability of the games denizens to be impacted by the actions of players. For example, you are able to save a famished population or thrust two rival factions into war. You are able to trade economies into boom and contribute to the expansion of their empire or subjugate them into the dark ages. Focused actions lends to a new state of the faction as they change based on the occurrences of our simulated galaxy".

So player buys the game and tries to do this... doesn't work. Get's disappointed.

I'm not getting the whole 'toys out of the pram' vibe. In fact I think this 'spoilt child' response given by many players is counter-intuitive to progress, I find this message to be more juvenile than the original.

Personally, I think, I'm the idiot that bought the game and fell for their marketing spiel. I enjoy the game for what it is, an incredibly shallow space fps. However, it is also a very 'authentic' experience in regards to physics and this plays a great part in setting the atmosphere for me.

For me, the physics of the game is enough, but everything else that's in the game? From a 'game design' perspective? It is borderline laughable, it has been described even by developers themselves before as the bare minimum - because it truly is the bare minimum.

These "Elite is the bomb, use your imagination" or "Go play Eve" or "Spoilt child unable to wait" posts are the part of Elite I actually hate the most. This to me is childish; not the 'Product not as described/unhappy customer' posts.

Suggesting that a game you purchase should require an imagination to enjoy is ludicrous; like going to a movie and finding out it has only audio... "You need to imagine the video!"; did we buy a 'interactive imagination engine'?.

Or people suggesting that because someone wants more from a game that they should play a different game, 'I really like this but wouldn't it be better if it did this?'... 'No. Go play Eve'.

Or - that because they are disappointed and demand better from a company that they are a child. 'I found this part of the game less than satisfactory and it has soured my experience to the point where I no longer want to play'.... 'What a baby!! Spoilt child has toys growing on him like a cancer!'.

These people are like teenage sycophants who adamantly defend their pop singer obsession from true appraisals as if the company or it's employees are unable to take criticism. Stop White Knighting, you are fooling nobody but yourself.

If what this poster details is true I know not to waste my time with factions in the game because the effect on anything will be 0. In fact, why should I even contribute to any faction given that a group cannot even change how everything interacts together in the slightest?

Ultimately what this suggests is the background simulation need not even exist, because it does nothing. It is a waste of developers time that could be spent elsewhere based on this persons observations.

Epic post.

 

[nexxo]

They DIDN'T SELL AN IDEA! They SOLD a product! A FULLY WORKING "PRODUCT"!.......... Plain and simple truth is he lied through his teeth, played the crowd like a fiddle and came away with the dollars and left all us gamers playing catch-up with a broken product.....

No, he sold an idea. Because at the time an idea was all he had to sell. You really should never assume a product until you see it.

 

[medwyn]

No, he sold an idea. Because at the time an idea was all he had to sell. You really should never assume a product until you see it.

I bought ED at release not for an idea of 40 pounds but real 40 pounds. I bought a product which was (is still) not of satisfactory quality and I see it.

 

[nexxo]

I bought ED at release not for an idea of 40 pounds but real 40 pounds. I bought a product which was (is still) not of satisfactory quality and I see it.

Then you shouldn't have bought it (yet). Checked out some reviews first, get the first-hand opinion of other people who have been playing it right on these here forums. After all the alpha and betas had been around for a while. You can't reasonably argue that you had no way of knowing what you would be buying.

 

[Jockey79]

I'm merely reposting what someone else posted on Reddit, which was hidden within all the other comments, and I thought really deserved greater attention, by FD if no-one else:

You know, I keep seeing references and comments regarding conversations that happen on Reddit.

Here's a clue, if I want to read Reddit drivel, I'll go to Reddit and read it.
It's as bad as 4chan and 8chan constantly trying to promote themselves as if they are some power house to be feared.

If people have comments / complaints / suggestions or praise - they can just type it here, this is the "official" forums after all.
We don't need -it's on Reddit so it's life changing- style posts.

(Sorry, but getting annoyed with how people go on as if Reddit is the start and end to all things internet)

 

[Roybe]

It was never completely bug free, but if you wanted to play it, you could do so in 80% of the cases.



Is this an BGS issue? The buy-prices are actually dependent on the amount of stuff in your cargo hold.



Well, it's not magical. There are two ticks, 10 minutes apart. First the production tick, then the consumption tick. The production tick does production of goods and deliveries of NPC goods, the consumption tick does consumption of goods and exports of goods by NPCs.

While you don't have to like this system (I could imagine something less clunky as well), this is how it works. It is not magical.



Well, there is one influence update per day. If someone works on this faction, the 70% jump will happen at one precise point in time. The 70% part is only after 1.3, before 1.3. jumps like these were impossible, due to diminishing returns (I think we maxed at 30% or so in a day, it was way more feasible to spread the effort to multiple systems and have higher absolute influence gains than working in one system).



Well, as I said, I do not like the economic model very much and think it could be improved a lot, to resemble an actual economy.
Therefore I will not argue against that.

When talking about the background simulation, most people are talking about the influence mechanics, minor factions, expansions and politics, and not so much about the economics.

I'd like to have a better economic model but don't see that happen anytime soon. Since it was explicitely stated by FD that this will not be the focus and they dont want a spreadsheet game.

I agree with everything stated here.

For those that are transient through systems , the BGS is superfluous...and would appear to be non-existent. It is not. There is some serious gaming going on between those that are playing the BGS. Most of the perceived 'randomness' is usually someone fighting against you...somewhere in the game.

Automation will be paramount to the BGS 'becoming all it can be'....however, there will still be required dev supervision to maintain the galaxy from 'exponential issues'.

- - - Updated - - -

You know, I keep seeing references and comments regarding conversations that happen on Reddit.

Here's a clue, if I want to read Reddit drivel, I'll go to Reddit and read it.
It's as bad as 4chan and 8chan constantly trying to promote themselves as if they are some power house to be feared.

If people have comments / complaints / suggestions or praise - they can just type it here, this is the "official" forums after all.
We don't need -it's on Reddit so it's life changing- style posts.

(Sorry, but getting annoyed with how people go on as if Reddit is the start and end to all things internet)

Jockey, you might not care for Reddit or the things that happen or are stated there, but this company does...and they take it as serious business. I respect your viewpoints on many things we discuss...but you cannot dismiss this fact. Reddit matters. It is part of the community. It is something that FDev is trying to manage.

 

[Patau82]

Experiencing the same problems. At the end of 1.2 managed to gather a small group of cmdrs and got to work on flipping a system. After reading many threads, most of them complaints that BGS wasn't working, we got to work on flipping Gilya.
I was pleasantly surprised when everything worked as it was supposed to and we successfully flipped Gilya with 2 weeks of hard work, we even managed to unlock a rare commodity!
I then went out for a quick exploration trip just as 1.3 hit and was very surprised when all of a sudden systems I was keeping an eye on suddenly started having massive faction influence swings?? this still seems to be happening
I've been planning another flip for a while but not sure if its worth it, anyone currently having success in raising a minor factions influence?
I want to flip wolf 1301 back to a faction that doesn't ban wolf fesh, it mysteriously flipped on the 14th of June I think due to BGS bug but there's no real way of knowing
hope they fix this asap its been 6 weeks now!

 

[medwyn]

Then you shouldn't have bought it (yet). Checked out some reviews first, get the first-hand opinion of other people who have been playing it right on these here forums. After all the alpha and betas had been around for a while. You can't reasonably argue that you had no way of knowing what you would be buying.

No, I shouldn't have checked any reviews first nor get opinions (especially opinions) of other people. ED is on the market as a product and it should meet certain requirements (see more: Sale of Goods Act 1979) about satisfactory quality and fit for purpose.
Softwares are not excempt of these regulations regardless of how some people think differently.
Release is a legal act where ideas don't matter any more because they become commercial products.

Let me correct your 'you shouldn't have bought it yet'-sentence: FD shouldn't have released ED yet. That would have been the only correct way. (A remarkable difference between 'business' and 'rip-off'.)
But as they did and accepted real money, now they are responsible for the quality they accepted the money for. And that's still not there.