Horizons Elite Needs Game Designers

[Blackcompany]

<snip>...cut them some slack in the short term.

No.

I wont do that.

You released a game. Not a Beta test. Not an Alpha. A game. A product you told your community was finished and ready for public consumption.

Except your missions dont work. Your background sim doesnt work. Power Play and exploration are empty shells. And Power Play is actively at odds with the BGS that should have been performing Power Play's function in the background this entire time anyway.

The cut them some slack thing works on future ideas and taking your time to introduce them. But mechanics you released with the base game, over one year ago? Those mechanics should be finished. Polished to a shine and humming along like a well oiled machine. Because that's what "finished and ready for public consumption" means.

I dont get to turn a project into my boss at work and tell him its finished only to have him find out is halfway done and the rest is a hollow promise to fix what's still broken; why should video game developers get to do this just because they make games? Are gamers some less important as people than consumers of music, or books? Of television shows and product delivery services? Does the merchandise we pay for come with a clause stating that false advertising is to be expected, everything is a beta by default until developer decree otherwise and we should just...cut them some slack?

On the future stuff - more planets, more ships - i can wait. I bought Horizons knowing it was not fleshed out yet. On the mechanics present in the original? No.

You sold a finished product that wasn't finished. Now fix it.

 

[Caldric]

I agree game has not heart or soul. Started getting bored after a month now I hardly play there is no immersion.

 

[defekt]

OP's post pretty much reflects a conversation I had with a few mates over a few bevvies at the local watering hole: that Elite is an impressive technical accomplishment largely designed and pulled together by engineers, but in so far as there being a game seamlessly woven in to make the most out of all of that beautiful machinery ED doesn't fare anything like as well.

I think FD realised this quite some time ago and PP was meant to breath a bit of game into the game but it too seems to have been designed with an engineer's hat on rather than that of a game designer, with the net result being-- well, being what it is now: one great big, complicated non-sequitur of a thing.

The path for Horizons looks like it might do something to help ED along a bit in this regard; however, I still worry that FD are dangerously fixated on 'the next big flashy thing' that will sell more units rather than rework old ground that's already been sold. It's not entirely FD's fault, I'm sure that given infinite funds they'd love to rehash the meat and potatoes of ED, but that's not how this business works. ED is what it is now, and likely will remain that way for a fair while to come, if not for good. With each new season FD might be able to justify reworking old ground but it'll likely only be as a sideshow to the next 'big flashy thing', which may mean that the core game ends up with far less attention than it needs.

But honestly, PP is a dreadful mess of a thing that has likely wasted a heck of a lot of money that probably wouldn't have been spent on reworking old ground anyway. Such is the way of things.

Who knows for sure. Certainly not me. Time will tell.

 

[Soliluna]

While I think Elite is technically awesome, with beautiful sound and graphics and really sexy ships - my friends who ask me if I should join them I always say "just wait".

It's a sad truth, I play it now and again but only because I love space and when I feel like wandering around in it.

I always say "the best moments in Elite are when you're learning to pilot. Beyond that the systems for the game are incredible basic and shell like and offer very little compared to other games in other genres".

I always add that there is a lot to come in the future and they are constantly improving upon it, but in all honesty - playing the game as it is now would likely lead them to never play it in the future when it could be amazing. First impressions count for a lot.

 

[Blackcompany]

While I think Elite is technically awesome, with beautiful sound and graphics and really sexy ships - my friends who ask me if I should join them I always say "just wait".

It's a sad truth, I play it now and again but only because I love space and when I feel like wandering around in it.

I always say "the best moments in Elite are when you're learning to pilot. Beyond that the systems for the game are incredible basic and shell like and offer very little compared to other games in other genres".

I always add that there is a lot to come in the future and they are constantly improving upon it, but in all honesty - playing the game as it is now would likely lead them to never play it in the future when it could be amazing. First impressions count for a lot.

That's good advice. I am actively seeking other Sandbox games to distract me from Elite for a year or so, in order to revisit what will hopefully be a more complete, coherent and functional experience. Realizing they released the game as an Alpha has been a painful lesson and one I frankly dont appreciate having to learn AFTER the fact.

 

[amigacooke]

That's good advice. I am actively seeking other Sandbox games to distract me from Elite for a year or so, in order to revisit what will hopefully be a more complete, coherent and functional experience. Realizing they released the game as an Alpha has been a painful lesson and one I frankly dont appreciate having to learn AFTER the fact.

I tested the Alpha and this wasn't it.

 

[ralf_maeder]

Blackcompany, you have a good point here. Kudos to your plead.

 

[HazardousMatt]

I agree with the OP.

A friend of mine just joined the game and everyone knows this game has a steep learning curve. Meanwhile myself and another friend are doing the Distant World expedition. So guess what that means. We can't help our friend that just joined the game. I can't play with him at all because you can't have more than one Commander! Were like 20,000 to 30,000ly from SOL and still continuing on but its sad that we can't take a break and get on another character and help our friend out, who is also getting frustrated with all the crazy interdictions! I'm telling you right now, when "other" space sim games start coming out FD will start to lose business. Yeah sure you can call this game a sandbox, its a sandbox with just sand no toys. You have to use your imagination to have fun in this sandbox, yeah that can be fun for awhile but then it starts getting old and your imagination goes dry.

Maybe FD did bite off more than they can chew.

Maybe this really is a space sim......because there is nothing out there....

 

[Oheck]

Totally disagree, not because the game does not need more life and more soul, because that is true, but because you suggest that FD would not be capable of that.

You simply forget that the devs need to follow a certain design path.
You can only fill in the house with furniture and dress it up when the foundation has been build and the walls can hold themselves upright.

FD has already announced some steps for this season to add soul and this could not have been done earlier.

This is a 10 year project you know!!!!

I think part of the problem is...is this house is huge. It's bloody enormous. I get a feeling at times that they can't stop for too long, to look back on the rooms they have made; to accessorize them; fill them with things to make them deeply interesting and impactful. I want their concept artwork to be something I can fly through, see and enjoy. But they have to get started on that next room. And then the next after that. They will come back to this, or that in time. Maybe when the house is finished. How many will remain living in that house at that time? Will there be enough remaining to pay for the accessories?

 

[JeffRyan]

You're quite correct on those big three reasons for some "creative/gameplay/content" facets being a significant dev challenge.


For me, the big "problem" areas seem to have come about when that challenging game "construct" collides with things like...


Seriously limited resources

The big push in 2014 saw the game officially released as a viable product... but some areas were noticeably minimum viable product (and that's something several FD people openly commented on).

This has left a number of legacy items that will be a hard sell internally to rework; any reworking will take resources off new features that can drive sales. While it's not impossible to make a case for resourcing such things, it's going to be tough to justify from a business standpoint.

Example:

The in-space supercruise dropout transition. There simply isn't one; a pregnant pause. The nearby planet can jump from one distance to a closer distance. Space station will "zoom in" from directly ahead, even if you technically flew pastthem in the last second of SC approach.

Contrast that to the Horizons transition, which runs a beautiful "start-to-finish" animated interpolation between the "drop" trigger point and the "glide" start point. You can tell FD threw extra planning, tech and resources at it, in an effort to avoid repeating the in-space transition experience.

But how hard is it going to be to revisit the in-space transition, instead of coding up, say, a cool fighter launch sequence for up-coming Horizons point-release? Hard.


Risk Minimisation

Some ED functionality seems to have been deliberately "firewalled" from existing mechanics, presumably to avoid multiplying the damage that bugs and unforeseen game mechanic "gaps" can cause.

Example:

PowerPlay and... well... practically everything else in the game. My guess is that the BGS' complexity-induced migraine was so painful that PowerPlay was built almost entirely in isolation. That isolation could be pitched as a positive (optional content - "you don't have to play it"), but it ended up feeling like a different board game concept slapped on top of Elite. Interestingly, despite the almost total disconnect of that extra game layer, PowerPlay and the BGS have still been caught fighting each other, and have had to be separated - see the recent mini-update patch! Some things are crying out for integration, but FD will have to tread carefully to avoid breaking other stuff. Again, new features could continue to be resourced instead of risky reworks that could make things worse before they deliver net improvements. Troubling, but true, I feel.


Momentary Lack of Focus on Consistency

Some of my personal trip-ups in Elite seem to have come about via a design process that perhaps hasn't valued consistency as highly as expediency. And I'm not really talking here about Big Gameplay Vision stuff, like flight model (how FD want ship movement to be), the need to dock to check commodity prices, etc. No, there are plenty of little things that just smack me right in the chops whenever I come across them.

Example:

Outside of special salvage missions, a cargo canister found floating in space is always "illegal salvage", but a cargo canister on a planet's surface always seems to be "legal salvage". Why is it legal? How about if I find one in space, drop it on the surface, and then pick it up again? Is it legal then? Why or why not? What's the rationale here?

Little stuff like this just makes me confused about the design process that spawned it.



I'd love to see FD continue to have enough development resources to do top-class work on Elite. I do wonder, though, whether some work to date has been

(a) rather too thinly resourced to properly deliver coherent gameplay mechanics in the challenging game world
(b) suffered from slightly too much risk-averse thinking, and
(c) not had a laser-like focus on overall consistency.


If each of those three points is address for any given future feature, and that feature is designed first and foremost from a creative perspective, it could turn the ED galaxy from a set of individual whirring mechanical cogs into something that feels like a marvellous ecosystem in action.

Which would be something to behold.

I'd agree with most of that (if not all of it).

 

[Iskariot]

While I think Elite is technically awesome, with beautiful sound and graphics and really sexy ships - my friends who ask me if I should join them I always say "just wait".

If I would be your friend and you had told me to wait I would have been seriously    * off, because I have enjoyed the more than 2000 hours I spent with the game already and there will be a few thousand more too, that is for sure.

 

[JeffRyan]

If I would be your friend and you had told me to wait I would have been seriously    * off, because I have enjoyed the more than 2000 hours I spent with the game already and there will be a few thousand more too, that is for sure.

Same here, it's the bipolarism of ED. It's far from perfect, but it's the game that keeps me coming back.

PS. Not that I ever really leave.

 

[Iskariot]

I think part of the problem is...is this house is huge. It's bloody enormous. I get a feeling at times that they can't stop for too long, to look back on the rooms they have made; to accessorize them; fill them with things to make them deeply interesting and impactful. I want their concept artwork to be something I can fly through, see and enjoy. But they have to get started on that next room. And then the next after that. They will come back to this, or that in time. Maybe when the house is finished. How many will remain living in that house at that time? Will there be enough remaining to pay for the accessories?

You are talking about the game space, I am talking about game mechanics.
I feel that is where for example PG comes in.

For example a good PG mission system can add furniture to to the entire house. Currently some missions are somewhat bugged, but in general missions already have improved quite a bit when compared to what we had initially. FD have added several layers and more will be added this 2nd season.

Another example. Currently we have only 3 basic station types, namely 1.Coriolis, 2.Orbis/Ocellus, and 3.Outposts.
It would enhance the experience very much if FD decided rather sooner than later that more fundamentally different designs are needed and that the existing models needed some stronger PG variants.
FD should use a Season to churn out assets of all types.
Simply adding more assets and using PG to combine them in smart ways could transform how we perceive the Elite universe.
I want to see large military fortresses, Prison installation that look the part, large industrial complexes, true Shipyards, Mining installations in asteroid rings, Solar arrays, Deep space observatories, Secret military monitoring stations etc. etc.
When they have the assets then it will be a piece of cake to fill the rooms of the house with diversity and they could use the new mission system to procedurally connect unique mission types with different assets.

It is my hope that the fact that David Braben said that they will not be adding many new ships this season means that those talented modelers are busy creating the assets I mentioned.

 

[Mrjupp]

It's ironic that games designers are mentioned in this thread as I was reminded by a friend from Facebook on the good old days of games testing. Note the creative genius strapped with duct tape.

 

[SpearUK]

I also love this game but can see it really needs to link up all the game aspects especially to not put off new players.

I am looking forward to the day where I can actually:
Join a minor faction in game.
Can see all my fellow faction members online in game.
Have the ablility to team up with 10 other pilots go over to another minor factions station and shoot the crap out of it, disabling it for 2 days.
I want to be able to work towards improving my factions stations and facilities (cargo runs).
Improving my factions NPC police force (ship delivery),
Being able to request my factions NPC police force to help me deal with pirates.
Being asked by my faction to go scout out a new system to bring back exploration data.

I want the economy to be more dynamic and alive where shortages need to be filled or population will decline, stations will degrade, etc.

There is very little reason or reward for grouping up with other players in this game. The current poor missions don't help with this.

 

[Sapient6]

If I would be your friend and you had told me to wait I would have been seriously * off, because I have enjoyed the more than 2000 hours I spent with the game already and there will be a few thousand more too, that is for sure.

I absolutely love this game. I really do. I spend most of my available gaming time with it.

AND I've told my friends not to buy it.

It's not that I'm a jerk or something, it's just that I know my friends pretty well, and I know that ED's shortcomings are in places that will be more irritating to them than they are to me. They won't be happy if I tell them to jump in, and they certainly won't be thanking me.

 

[Angus]

Proposal: Frontier made a game I dislike.

Conclusion: Ergo Frontier can't make a game.

Anyone else see the flaw in this argument?

Darn, but you chaps are so black and white!

The OP, in my view, has a point but overstated it, as indeed I feel you have with your response.

For me there is some truth in the assertion, but I wouldn't dream of stating FD lacked creativity.

I think they've created a fantastic program that simulates the galaxy and is capable of dealing with the ebb and flow of competing human powers and providing missions and trading opportunities for the player etc etc. but they've been seduced by the all powerful program and they feel that to create a hand coded mission, a unique adventure for the player would be akin to vandalism. Far better to produce routines to generate predictable and calculated returns that can, in theory, be replayed infinitely.

The trouble is the routines are by their nature producing gameplay that becomes routine. So yes, for my taste, FD should maintain the excellent background simulation, but be bold enough to throw some hand coded spice into the mix.

 

[Urantiafox]

Id agree with this.

You are talking about the game space, I am talking about game mechanics.
I feel that is where for example PG comes in.

For example a good PG mission system can add furniture to to the entire house. Currently some missions are somewhat bugged, but in general missions already have improved quite a bit when compared to what we had initially. FD have added several layers and more will be added this 2nd season.

Another example. Currently we have only 3 basic station types, namely 1.Coriolis, 2.Orbis/Ocellus, and 3.Outposts.
It would enhance the experience very much if FD decided rather sooner than later that more fundamentally different designs are needed and that the existing models needed some stronger PG variants. FD should use a Season to churn out assets of all types.
Simply adding more assets and using PG to combine them in smart ways could transform how we perceive the Elite universe.
I want to see large military fortresses, Prison installation that look the part, large industrial complexes, true Shipyards, Mining installations in asteroid rings, Solar arrays, Deep space observatories, Secret military monitoring stations etc. etc.
When they have the assets then it will be a piece of cake to fill the rooms of the house with diversity and they could use the new mission system to procedurally connect unique mission types with different assets.

It is my hope that the fact that David Braben said that they will not be adding many new ships this season means that those talented modelers are busy creating the assets I mentioned.

 

[Soliluna]

If I would be your friend and you had told me to wait I would have been seriously * off, because I have enjoyed the more than 2000 hours I spent with the game already and there will be a few thousand more too, that is for sure.

Fortunately, I know my friends.

 

[Iskariot]

It's not that I'm a jerk or something, it's just that I know my friends pretty well, and I know that ED's shortcomings are in places that will be more irritating to them than they are to me. They won't be happy if I tell them to jump in, and they certainly won't be thanking me.

Fortunately, I know my friends.

I understand. If you really know them that well it should be no problem.
Anyway, they can have a look while you play and decide for themselves, or watch some of the thousands of gameplay vids online.