Please don't neglect mechanics for everyone by focusing on pure multiplayer content!

[Commander Biscuit]

No, I wouldn't, I would point out that the registered forum users make up less than 5% of the total playerbase going by sales alone, so a few hundred people out of the forums isn't enough to matter. NO forum polls that ask for opinions are worthwhile when it comes to the actual opinions of the playerbase, the forums simply don't make up enough of the playerbase to be used for that purpose.

So if the percentual size of a playerbase's opinion is directly related to validity, your opinion in this thread would be about as invalid as humanly possible right?

That's your logic anyway, mine doesn't follow that line of thinking. I don't see why the results of the poll would be drastically different if you simply got more people to participate, but then like I pointed out the poll isn't shooting down my argument in flames.

Btw thank you for your enthusiastic opposition to this topic, the amount of debate and animosity you've created has bumped the hell out of it, and as we all know the squeaky wheel gets the grease. RIP SCBs.

 

[Zeta Legion]

If you look back at the KS and the DDF archives, no, they aren't trying to keep up with Star Citizen, this stuff was mentioned back then and planned for all along. Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen are going to be very similar games across almost the entire spectrum, with 1 exception, there was and still isn't a single player campaign for Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen has always had that as a core part of the game.

Zeta Legion, the single player combat ships in Elite, they won't GET multicrew, they are one seaters. The ships with multiple seats, they were always meant to have multicrew, they've always had the extra seats, and not only that, but various devs have stated at various times that the interiors of the ships were included in their creation for the game, they always meant for us to walk around them, have multicrews, all that, this isn't something they are trying to force into the game suddenly, it was always part of the plan. Turrets will be the weapon of choice for multicrew ships, they would be the weapon of choice for all the big ships now except that chaff renders them no more useful than a fixed weapon, still see lots of the bigger ships carrying turrets, they really are quite useful with the game controlling them, imagine how much better they'll be with a human controlling them. So your argument there, while I would normally agree if it your assumptions were correct, aren't valid.

A FDL can dog-fight just as well as a single-seater ship. A Vulture can dog-fight BETTER than every single-seater ship. Even an Anaconda or Corvette can throw down in single combat purely with fixed weapons and not be at a disadvantage because they are designed to be piloted by a single player. In fact it is quite easy to keep your target in line of sight while piloting either of these behemoths. I should know, because I own both and regularly fly combat sorties in them. The game may be designed to accommodate multi-crew at some unspecified point in the future, but no ship outright requires it to function. As I said, there are no battleships, no drastically different firing arcs on weapons mandating multiple gunnery crew beyond the pilot. Every combat ship is capable of keeping the enemy front and centre, the weapons are all keyed for forward firing, and the systems are easily manipulated by a single operator.

Regarding turrets, they simply do not measure up to fixed or gimballed weapons because:

A) it is very much a fact that turrets are substantially less energy efficient than fixed or gimballed weapons with vastly inferior DPE and DPS. They are also inexplicably more expensive to boot.

B) every combat ship is capable of keeping your target, no matter how nimble, in your forward firing arc the vast majority of the time. Ships like the Cutter or T-9 have difficulty with this, but those aren't really combat ships. Unless you piloting skills and aim is mind-numbingly dreadful you WILL do more damage with fixed or gimballed weapons.

C) when engaging multiple targets it makes much more sense to eliminate them one at a time as quickly as possible rather than hitting all of them with bursts of turret fire for two reasons. One, a wounded target does the same damage as a perfectly intact one, and two, as previously mentioned turrets are simply detrimental to your DPS and DPE to use drastically inflating the time you spend in combat, allowing you to take more hits than you would otherwise.

So unless turrets get a major overhaul, or player crew controlled turrets do significantly more damage than normal via 'space magic', they are not a magic bullet for anything.

 

[Fire70]

Multi crew is a gimmick and will be a huge disappointment.

Please make Season 2 Immersion... I will pay for that..

 

[Arubeto]

Multi crew is a gimmick and will be a huge disappointment.

I think multicrew is a great idea and can imagine that it's great fun whenever I manage to get a crew together. Problem is, if "Wings" (also a great mechanic in principle!) is any indication, I won't be able to participate in multicrew gameplay very often, simply because it's so difficult to get a group together.

Just meeting one other random CMDR, much less 3 other CMDR in the huge galaxy game world is rare, but convincing all of them to spontaneously to stop what they are doing in order to join my play session proved already very difficult in "Wings".

What may make it even more difficult to convince such commanders to join me is that in contrast to "Wings" they'd need to abandon their ships to get on board of mine, and we supposedly couldn't even form the crew in space, but would have to meet up at a space station where everyone can switch over to my ship.

I'd love to play in a multicrew, but given the preparations required to make it happen I'd wish we had the alternative of NPC crewmembers just to be able to take better advantage of this great feature!

Unless FD implements some kind of "Wing Finder" or "Crew Finder" (akin to the "Dungeon Finder" in WoW) where you can sign up (perhaps for a specific role) and get automatically grouped with like-minded players. You'd still have to meet up somewhere, but at least the hassle of finding potential wing/crew members would be gone.

 

[almostpilot]

Multi crew is a gimmick and will be a huge disappointment.

For sure will disappoint a large majority, since it will only meet real players. And especially, if like everything so far is implemented superficially(forever placeholders)

It would be very satisfactory to have an information from the FD when will be implemented in the game, NPC for WING and multicrew. Season 2, 3 .... 10.

 

[ChaosCloud]

Something I'd also love to see as a solo / private player are treasure hunts meant for US.

The only treasure hunts so far, like that from that money bag a while ago, were so hard that I didn't even think about trying, simply because that stuff is meant to be hard but with a whole community the hard for someone is infinitely impossible for me (yeah I'm bad at riddles and the like) so that's exactly why something like this IS needed, toned down mini treasure hunts that you can stuble across which aren't as hard as something meant for a whole community and not be solved in minutes.

And no I don't mean something like stumbling over basic medicine on a planet and getting the mission to bring it to a station.
More like finding a crashed satellite for example, finding a corrupte message that points at incomplete coordinates and gives a mission for nearby planet (maybe even a couple systems away) so you then have to try and figure out where these coords are to find another hint and so on and at the end some nice cargo like a bunch of platin or painite or very valuable intel.
Or instead of coordinates a good description of a terrain section (though I doubt this is impossible as it's one thing to proceduralize terrain generation but a totally worse matter to put that into words, would be nice though)

Something along that.

 

[Lianachan]

ED should always have been a single player game that you could choose to play multiplayer, not a multiplayer game that you could choose to play without seeing anybody else.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

ED should always have been a single player game that you could choose to play multiplayer, not a multiplayer game that you could choose to play without seeing anybody else.

Indeed. What we have is OK but there is so much content we can't have due to the mmo PU . without the fear of people cheating (which is always a problem in MP games ) our save game could be stored on our pc with no worries of hacking . the save could be 100s of meg with persistent characters we could have storage boxes hide our ships on planets.I fear none of this can ever happed so long as everything is online with frontier controlling everything and tracking our character

Give me payday 2 MP with invited people into my universe that when they drop out they just take their progress and money with them every time.

But we have what we have and it does look like npc content is now either cancelled or at least on the back burner in favour of just MP stuff

 

[Ignition]

ED should always have been a single player game that you could choose to play multiplayer, not a multiplayer game that you could choose to play without seeing anybody else.

100000+ times this. Imagine, real newtonian physics, mods, real economics, no problem in balancing weapons or equipment because of MMO elements, a lot more complex gameplay.

It would be the best game ever!

 

[Kristov]

I think multicrew is a great idea and can imagine that it's great fun whenever I manage to get a crew together. Problem is, if "Wings" (also a great mechanic in principle!) is any indication, I won't be able to participate in multicrew gameplay very often, simply because it's so difficult to get a group together.

Just meeting one other random CMDR, much less 3 other CMDR in the huge galaxy game world is rare, but convincing all of them to spontaneously to stop what they are doing in order to join my play session proved already very difficult in "Wings".

What may make it even more difficult to convince such commanders to join me is that in contrast to "Wings" they'd need to abandon their ships to get on board of mine, and we supposedly couldn't even form the crew in space, but would have to meet up at a space station where everyone can switch over to my ship.

I'd love to play in a multicrew, but given the preparations required to make it happen I'd wish we had the alternative of NPC crewmembers just to be able to take better advantage of this great feature!

Unless FD implements some kind of "Wing Finder" or "Crew Finder" (akin to the "Dungeon Finder" in WoW) where you can sign up (perhaps for a specific role) and get automatically grouped with like-minded players. You'd still have to meet up somewhere, but at least the hassle of finding potential wing/crew members would be gone.

Funny thing, raids in MMOs tend to take a group of people to complete them, and you can find random people grouping up to do them as well as finding preset groups to do them. Some of those games have an ingame function for that purpose, some don't, but that doesn't stop people from getting together and doing the raids. Elite's own forums have that happening already, always has, guessing you missed those areas, as did so many others here? People who actually want the social interaction generally don't have a problem seeking out ways to make it happen, it's a known thing, been happening since the days of BBSs so long ago with MUDs and all that.

You want to find crew, use the board, I would wager there's a lot of RP oriented folks who'll love multicrew, that was the majority of the base who screamed for it in STO at any rate, they tend to love being an engineer or gunner or whatever instead of the captain all the time. I'll gun for a better pilot without a second thought, I may learn something you know, wouldn't be the first time for me, so definitely something I'd do. And I've got a friend ingame already who I plan on scaring the hell out of when we get multicrew, teach him to make fun of my smacking Pythons into planets, I'm in my Annie now!

Zeta Legion, you have no clue if a FDL can dogfight as well with a single player as it can with a crew, none of us does at this time. FD has stated that it will make the ship perform better with crew, no details on how that works, but I personally figure it's the main basics of humans being better, generally, than the computer at dealing the situation in real time as it happens. Gunners able to hold a target at range better for instance. Gimballed weapons walk all over, turrets are worse, but if they are rock steady when a human is the gunner's control seat, then they are immediately more effective, especially if that human can put them on target. You can tell me how great any single ship is right now with a single player, but we don't know what multicrew will do to alter that. I'm in an Annie, min crew of 40, 72 optimal, and I'm flying her solo, there's no way in hell I can be doing her justice, it's just not possible. Star Citizen addressed this with it's ships, since some of them take up to 30+ players. Anyone can fly them solo and get full functionality out of them, but that 1 person will be doing so with far less effectiveness than with crew. Full crew means better effectiveness, which gives that ship an actual advantage over a solo player, which what they want to have happen, it gives people are reason to be social, you can kick more ass together than you can alone. That tends to motivate people better than pushing the socialization side, because kicking ass usually means winning, and that is something people will work together for.

Elite Dangerous IS an MMO, it's marketed as one, it's marketed as THE multiplayer experience no less, so they really do need to do something to make that advert at least somewhat true, and this is a step in that direction. Folks can whine about solo and how making more multiplayer doesn't directly benefit them all they want, it doesn't hurt them either and it IS for the betterment of the game overall. You play solo, then you are in no way impacted by the multicrew, it can't be used against you, you'll never face it, and you don't need it and obviously don't want it, you are in solo mode after all, the entirely non-social aspect of this online multiplayer game.

 

[Nitek [pl]]

ED should always have been a single player game that you could choose to play multiplayer, not a multiplayer game that you could choose to play without seeing anybody else.

No. Ed is a multiplayer game...<snip>.

 

[Lianachan]

No. Ed is a multiplayer game...<snip>.

Yes, that's at the root of many of its problems - and it never should have been built with the emphasis on that.

 

[Joe Akeem]

With my scetchy gaming schedule there's no chance of coordinating or planning a team effort. Any of those mechanics will be utterly useless for me. So yes, my vote is on a AI option. Otherwise I'll probably bail out of this game (horrible thought!) sooner or later if development keeps steering in this direction.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

You play solo, then you are in no way impacted by the multicrew, it can't be used against you, you'll never face it, and you don't need it and obviously don't want it, you are in solo mode after all, the entirely non-social aspect of this online multiplayer game.

You totally ignore the lone wolves playing in open. How can you say we lose nothing? Multicrew was detailed in the DDF. Compared to that we lose EVERYTHING!

I have no issues at all with MP multicrew it sounds like it may be ace for some people but why not as well as the multicrew I backed not instead of?

ED is a MP game that is true but it is. Not JUST a MP game and we were told from the get go that a lone player playing in open would not feel outclassed or content limited by groups of players. This can only be true if there are npc options to play the role of players if need be

 

[JohnRoberts]

and we were told from the get go that a lone player playing in open would not feel outclassed or content limited by groups of players. This can only be true if there are npc options to play the role of players if need be

Generally speaking, in all human endeavours, a cooperating group will have significant advantage over individuals. Using NPC crew would create its own problems: a) how good could you make them? and b) how good should you make them?

 

[JL1]

100% agree with OP.

ED desperately needs depth and a big part of that is NPC crew/wingmen and, in general, persistent NPCs that connect to stories and missions. For a large % of people multiplayer crew is a complete waste. Who wants to be a crewmember on a MP ship fiddling with systems when you can fly your own ship or join a wing? Sounds painfully boring. Even if I wanted to I could never find 3 people to crew on my ship when I wanted to play - this is a logistical nightmare. It seems to me that this whole MP crew thing is an urban legend that in the real world would only benefit a tiny % of people.

Why FD is pushing this is a mystery to me. It is quite obvious from reading the forums that most people are not interested. I can only assume that the staff at FD want to play multiplayer crew...

 

[Blackcompany]

So they are going to take time away from a half dozen broken or unfinished mechanics to work on a mode no one wants that will virtually require the creation of a whole other class of ships no one will use?

I dont...what...I cant...I got nothin.

So tell me Why?

Raise your hand if you want to sit in someone else's ship doing the ONLY thing more boring than FLYING in Supercruise, namely, Watching someone else do it.

Or wait: You get to be "PIP Boy." POwer to Shields, PIP Boy. Power to weapons, PIP Boy. Not only could I literally do it myself faster than I could ask someone to do it and then see the results. That person's entire game experience will literally be pressing arrow keys on their keyboard. Congrats, you've managed to create a gaming experience MORE boring than Tetris.

Who actually wants this mechanic and thinks they will use it for more than 5 minutes?

Riding in another's ship, as transportation or a taxi? Sure; no problem. But actual Multi-Crew? No. This is the sort of pure-fluff mechanic you add to a game that is fully fleshed out and otherwise working as intended.

This is not that game.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

NPC Crew would likely add passive buffs to your ship while (hopefully) making/having occasional, fully voiced conversations with you or amongst themselves. Which could be cool, especially if they began reacting to your decisions and/or activities, were persistent and had their own alignments, personalities and preferences.

IF you cant manage that please dont bother.

 

[CMDR_Amanath]

I have yet to see any conjecture from FD or from the player base that has excited me about multi player ships. I know we have been over this a lot of times and there are a lot of people that feel the same way, so ill leave it.

 

[Grumpy181155]

Or wait: You get to be "PIP Boy." POwer to Shields, PIP Boy. Power to weapons, PIP Boy. Not only could I literally do it myself faster than I could ask someone to do it and then see the results. That person's entire game experience will literally be pressing arrow keys on their keyboard. Congrats, you've managed to create a gaming experience MORE boring than Tetris.

I already have a co-pilot doing that. See the photo of her managing Power Distribution and Comms.

 

[hannibal0216]

I think this multicrew thing is actually going to be a huge waste of development time.

Yes, indeed. Can someone tell me any kind of positive resulting from multicrew? Did anyone even ask for it? Did it exist in the older games? Priorities, FD, priorities.