What is depth?

[CoreHaven]

I like Elite. Having said that....

Okay so depth in a video game is a certain game feature having many elements tied to it.

For instance sometimes I play Red Dead Redemption. I will ride my horse from one town to the next. This is traveling. How does the traveling in that game have depth? Well it has events that constantly happen. I could see a hunter shooting at something, I could see a stagecoach being chased, I could be held up myself, etc etc. These are all tied to the world and traveling. There's literally dozens of things that could randomly happen. That's depth.

Let's take an element of Elite. Can be anything. So we'll take Planetary Landings. You can disengage an SUV and sort of drive around down there and chase beeping noises for stuff that doesn't at all matter. There.

See the difference?

How much meat does a game play element have? How much meat does planetary landings have? How much meat does power play have? How much meat does.....
And when we ask these questions many players begin to complain about " depth ". Oh there's stuff there it's just either half broken or not very " deep ". And there it is.

 

[Kapow]

Wrong. I don't know how long you've been playing, but I've logged way too many hours since the opening day over a year ago. I have never felt "grind" at all. Therefore it is impossible that the game being a "grind" is a statement of fact. It is a statement of your opinion. I respect your opinion. I respect it as much as everyone else's and a lot less than mine.

That's your opinion.

I have over 180 hours in the game and I've done all the roles available as each role bored me after around 30 hours so the game is a grind as a matter of fact in my opinion, because it became Factually repetitive as there was often only one way to do the task - that is a fact not an opinion. Definition of Grind is being able to complete one single task in one way over and over. FACT. Thus 5 available tasks each completable in one way only results in factual GRIND filling the definition of the word. If you enjoy yourself roleplaying without any real mechanics to back up your roleplay good for you, but that is a unsubtantiable experience measurable only by you own opinion. I prefer to work with facts and logic. I can sit and day dream about how I'm flying around and catching criminals, but the game doesn't back it up with factual reaction, thus it isn't an opinion again, but a fact. This game is not a paper DandD but a Sandbox experience with player persistence. At least that is what is being sold and not delivered.

Now in your quotes you state that I say opinions. As above I have to disagree as instead of opinions I've been mostly stating facts, while you have been going on and on about opinions. If I have stated opinions I've backed them up by a factual description of broken mechanics IE the broken spawning. It is great that it doesn't bother you, but it is a fact that it is a broken mechanic, not an opinion (just making sure you don't get lost here ). It is great that in your opinion the game is great, but it is a fact that the reward vs risk is set on bizzare rules set which if applied in real world would result in mass murders and collapse of any system hence open Factually makes little to no sense (FACT). You like to lead Pseudo Intellectual debate which leads nowhere while you play with words. Please back your statements with facts rather then opinions or don't expect me to engage in your pseudo intelectual chit chat.

Opinion is biased and unsubstantiated claim - ie I like Flowers - opinion. Fact - the flower is broken - I like Elite Dangerous Mechanics - Opinion. The mechanics in Elite Dangerous are broken - FACT.

 

[dreamer1986]

Well, let's see here. Let's take every game activity and compare it with other games, as much as we can.

Combat. We have a variety of ships that we outfit for combat, with standard equipment, and once we have the perfect balance of damage/energy consumption/protection for that ship, we rarely need to change anything. Then we find NPC's/players, we shoot them, until they explode, and repeat +infinite times, with very little variation. Some peole say skill is needed to do that properly, but since the ships don't move at super speeds, that's not really important and doesn't give depth. As examples of games with depth interms of combat I choose CS GO as a shooter, and XCOM 2 as a combat strategy game. CS Go is as complex as you want it to be. Even though you play on a limited number of maps, the gameplay options are nearly infinte, with many factors to consider, like allies and enemy positions, grenade placement, time you need to consider to attack, and so on. In XCOM, there is a huge amount of depth in the sci fi setting, with a ton of equipment variations, that cover different functions, enhancing the strategic aspect, and enemy types, with varying behaviors and abilities, and also different soldier types, with many abilities. During the round you have a lot of options, being a challenging game that offers a lot of freedom of choice.

Trading. In Elite you find stations that have cheap products, then you find other stations that buy them for more credits. Once you find two stations, you go back and forth until you are rich. I will take into consideration two games, X3 TC and Euro Truck Simulator. X3 TC, has a similar trading system at the beginning, changing drastically in time because of station building and the hiring of pilots. The complexity of stations and the economy was amazing, and you could influence the supply and demand of entire sectors with your trading fleet. A huge amount of depth and complexity in trading there, leading you to be able to build your own fleet with the materials you produced. Euro Truck Simulator, does trade quests very well, giving a relaxing and satisfying drive from one point to the next, forcing you to pay attention to the rules, to not get huge fines or destroy your cargo, and if you weren't careful, you could lose money on a mission. Surprisingly fun.

Mining. In ED you go in an asteroid field, send a prospector drone, find a good asteroid eventually, then shoot it with lasers, send collector drones to get the mined material, and repeat till full. Then you either sell what you mined, or find profitable missions to get better rewards. In most other MMO games, without needing to go into specific examples, mining is directly related to crafting. You mine and then you craft better equipment for yourself, or to sell to others. Quite a different system, and a lot more complex.

Quests. In ED you select a quest from a random list in a station that covers the basic actions that you do normally, travel to a distant station and deliver something, attack an enemy and so on. The texts repeat and you know what to expect after a few hours of playing them. I will consider quests in general RPG's, like Witcher 3. These are spread basically into two general types, while ignoring the unmarked ones, and these are Main Quests and Secondary Quests. The Main quests advance a storyline and provide a path for you to follow, to find someone you lost a long time ago, to hunt a terrible enemy, which gives your game purpose. The secondary quests are useful to meet other characters, to understand the world better, and to develop your character. Many RPG's offer multiple options and ways to finish quests.

I will not talk about smuggling, rare trading and piracy, mostly because the first two are just a type of trading, and piracy I don't consider that is balanced and satisfying in ED, like in Eve for example.

I hope that this answer clarifies a little what is meant that ED doesn't have depth in its activities, in comparison to what already exists in the games market.

 

[Zorronov]

Well tedious to you, clearly, as you, one assumes, do not recognise the perceived lack of depth that others do. It's subjective, of course.

No...but people who say the same thing over and over? That's tedious.

 

[bfgm]

I have over 180 hours in the game and I've done all the roles available as each role bored me after around 30 hours so the game is a grind as a matter of fact in my opinion, because it became Factually repetitive as there was often only one way to do the task - that is a fact not an opinion. Definition of Grind is being able to complete one single task in one way over and over. FACT. Thus 5 available tasks each completable in one way only results in factual GRIND filling the definition of the word. If you enjoy yourself roleplaying without any real mechanics to back up your roleplay good for you, but that is a unsubtantiable experience measurable only by you own opinion. I prefer to work with facts and logic. I can sit and day dream about how I'm flying around and catching criminals, but the game doesn't back it up with factual reaction, thus it isn't an opinion again, but a fact. This game is not a paper DandD but a Sandbox experience with player persistence. At least that is what is being sold and not delivered.

Now in your quotes you state that I say opinions. As above I have to disagree as instead of opinions I've been mostly stating facts, while you have been going on and on about opinions. If I have stated opinions I've backed them up by a factual description of broken mechanics IE the broken spawning. It is great that it doesn't bother you, but it is a fact that it is a broken mechanic, not an opinion (just making sure you don't get lost here ). It is great that in your opinion the game is great, but it is a fact that the reward vs risk is set on bizzare rules set which if applied in real world would result in mass murders and collapse of any system hence open Factually makes little to no sense (FACT). You like to lead Pseudo Intellectual debate which leads nowhere while you play with words. Please back your statements with facts rather then opinions or don't expect me to engage in your pseudo intelectual chit chat.

Opinion is biased and unsubstantiated claim - ie I like Flowers - opinion. Fact - the flower is broken - I like Elite Dangerous Mechanics - Opinion. The mechanics in Elite Dangerous are broken - FACT.

Boom Headshot

 

[Triple88a]

Depth.

Missions: All the factions have exactly the same type of missions with the same descriptions. Also none of the factions have their own story mission lines. For all you know you could name the factions "faction a, faction b, faction c" and everything would be the same. Like there is nothing unique to it other than the endgame reward.. Like yes i understand the whole "sandbox make your own excitement" type of thing however just because you have a choice doesnt mean that there should be no information at all. For example X3 is also a sandbox and you can make your own game however theres 9 or 12 different faction story lines that you complete if you'd like and each one is unique to the culture of the faction/race. You could of course blow the faction from the face of the game and take over all the systems with your fleet of ships.

The mission types are very boring. Go find this guy in blah system and kill him.. so for the next half an hr you're stuck dropping in and out of cruise to look for 1 target.

Then theres the donation missions.. those are worst of all because they kill ALL type of immersion. "give us money and buy some rep... only you're gonna have to do it 500 times." It would be more RP to just spend 20 mill at once and get enough rep to rank up to max rank..

What else is there.. trading. Trading is pretty well done in ED. The only thing missing is there should be a log book of the prices and items from your last visit to station "a".

Theres no NPC voice comms. This kills the immersion big time. When you get interdicted by an npc, they should tell you that in voice comms. When you attack an enemy, same thing. When you're scanned, same thing etc.

Next is a big one.. the systems.. there is absolutely nothing memorable a system other than the sun. Theres 400 billion star systems.. you telling me that every single star system is well formed? Not a single one is still in the early state where it's still just a nebula? What about the asteroid fields? Where did those disappear to?

Faction home systems.. currently theres no difference between a faction home system that is suppose to be alive with billions of people population and an empty system in the middle of no where. Imagine if the streets of New York were empty.. No people, no travelers, no shoppers, no security, just empty.

Oh and i havent even gotten to the ships and the stations. Every faction uses the same stations.. Most of the factions are at war yet they all use the exact same equipment? Not a single faction changed their design? The ships have some differences but theres a handful of unique ships to it's own faction.

ED lacks depth big time.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Well tedious to you, clearly, as you, one assumes, do not recognise the perceived lack of depth that others do. It's subjective, of course.

But one gets the impression that anyone that comments that the game does lack depth or is boring is derided by those who think that it is not - and their retorts often seem to come down to deriding the commenter as being somehow sub-human or lacking generally.

This whole discussion has become so absurd its a fun way to spend the time when youtube ads pop-up. The vast majority of the 'ED lacks depth' remarks are akin to some dudes standing behind the back Picasso at work while yelling "I SEE WHITE SPACES ON THE CANVAS! WHY DONT YOU PAINT STUFF THERE! LOL, RED WOULD BE LIKE AWESOME! WHITE IS BORING! I KNOW PAINTINGS FROM LIKE YEARS AGO THAT HAD MORE COLOR AND STUFF AND NOT SO MUCH WHITE!"

When such claims are then backed-up with statements such as "the painter needs constructive criticism", "I expect more from paintings in 2016 than you do" or "I guess you like boring white canvas-paintings but I like complex paintings" one can only hope they're trolling. Because the alternative is just way too depressing.

 

[Enderby]

I wish I could de-rep but I can't

 

[Kristov]

That's the opposite of what it means -- it means there should be something to do once you've completed the progression (or at least the main part of the progression). Your giant 500 million credit ship should have content that needs a giant 500 million credit ship to play with. If you can do everything with a Cobra, then there's no end-game content because all the content is mid-game content.

Like, if you could build your own surface station but needed to transport components that took up 400 tons of cargo space and couldn't be subdivided (or that you got as mission cargo of 400 tons) that could be end-game content because you couldn't do it except in one of the largest ships. Or if there was a combat instance so difficult that only Anacondas could survive (which might not even be possible; the 'condas would have to actually be the best at combat for that to make sense). Maybe a special super-profitable mining zone where your ship takes constant damage based on its size (smaller = more damage) but the very largest and toughest ships could mine effectively?

...it's a lot easier to conceive of end-game content in straightforward RPGs.

Well, no, see end game content literally means the game ends, I mean, it's right there IN the phrase itself after all. And that also means there's a limited amount of things you can do, which is true of all games with end game content, you get to that and..well..that's all folks!

Elite Dangerous has no end game, so it needs no end game content, there IS no end to the game. There are other games like this, Minecraft for example, or over half that list of top 10 games that was posted, no end game in them. And since those games have all done very well on the market, I'd say that there is no need for an end game or end game content, especially since the top 6 games have none....

Elite has no storyline that drives you forward, it's up to you to figure out what you are going to do and why, it simply gives you a framework to play with. This is something that many people can't quite come to grips with, they don't get it, they NEED to be told what to do and where to go, otherwise, they are lost. For those people, this game may well awaken them to the joys of free form gaming, or it may not and they need to move on to a game that leads you around by the nose and has a set start and end. That's why so many threads about lack of depth come up, some people NEED to be told what to do in the game or there's nothing there to them, simple as that. They aren't meant to play free form games, it's not for them, and that's fine, it's not for everyone, no shame, no harm, no foul. I don't particularly like some games that others love, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those games, they just aren't for me. My grandson loves Minecraft, I don't see the appeal at all, even though it's a free form game like Elite Dangerous, it just doesn't do it for me, he loves it, he also loves Elite Dangerous. I'll watch him play both of them and he's having fun, so who cares if I don't see the appeal in Minecraft, HE does, and that's all that matters when he's playing it, HE enjoys it.

If you don't enjoy Elite Dangerous, you don't enjoy it, simple as that, the game is what it is, there's more coming but it's not what so many who say there's no depth think is required to give it depth, a storyline, a campaign, those aren't in the 10 year plan because those require a start and finish point, which isn't what Elite is.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Been here, done that.

Missions are getting updated again come 2.1 so having a little patience would probably help.
We also have a road map so asking for things that aren't on it will have to wait.

These threads are just silly, boring and repetitive, more so than the game itself which I'm happily off to play along with some nice cold beer I just purchased from my local emporium.
Have fun whining...those that are.

 

[bfgm]

This The vast majority of the 'ED lacks depth' remarks are akin to some dudes standing behind the back Picasso at work while yelling "I SEE WHITE SPACES ON THE CANVAS! WHY DONT YOU PAINT STUFF THERE!

lack of content in a picasso is different from lack of content in Elite Dangerous. Try again..

 

[Ian Skippy]

I dont need to try again, because my enjoyment of ED is not influenced by whatever you think.

 

[Enderby]

Also, one cannot seriously compare ED to a Picasso - unless it's the Citroën version perhaps.

 

[SnowyNI]

There's a big thread on it every few days or so. God it's tedious.

It's only tedious to some.

 

[sbdags]

I'll tell you what - this thread has sunk to the depths ...

 

[bfgm]

I dont need to try again, because my enjoyment of ED is not influenced by whatever you think.

What does "Trying again" (referring to your analogy) have to do with your enjoyment of ED not being influenced by what I think?

 

[Kristov]

lack of content in a picasso is different from lack of content in Elite Dangerous. Try again..

No, it's not, it's exactly the same, as both are subjective opinions. You've given us a list of the top 10 games and said all of them had end game content, which was blatantly false, 6 of them have no end game and no end game content, so you clearly have no actual clue on these things and don't understand what you are giving such informed opinions about.

This isn't politics, being totally uninformed doesn't make you the best candidate for the job, it removes you from consideration totally.

 

[SnowyNI]

Well tedious to you, clearly, as you, one assumes, do not recognise the perceived lack of depth that others do. It's subjective, of course.

But one gets the impression that anyone that comments that the game does lack depth or is boring is derided by those who think that it is not - and their retorts often seem to come down to deriding the commenter as being somehow sub-human or lacking generally.

It's like a magic wand... Say something, anything about the precious or it's faults, or indeed it's makers and............

 

[bfgm]

Well, no, see end game content literally means the game ends, I mean, it's right there IN the phrase itself after all. And that also means there's a limited amount of things you can do, which is true of all games with end game content, you get to that and..well..that's all folks!

Elite Dangerous has no end game, so it needs no end game content, there IS no end to the game. There are other games like this, Minecraft for example, or over half that list of top 10 games that was posted, no end game in them. And since those games have all done very well on the market, I'd say that there is no need for an end game or end game content, especially since the top 6 games have none....

Elite has no storyline that drives you forward, it's up to you to figure out what you are going to do and why, it simply gives you a framework to play with. This is something that many people can't quite come to grips with, they don't get it, they NEED to be told what to do and where to go, otherwise, they are lost. For those people, this game may well awaken them to the joys of free form gaming, or it may not and they need to move on to a game that leads you around by the nose and has a set start and end. That's why so many threads about lack of depth come up, some people NEED to be told what to do in the game or there's nothing there to them, simple as that. They aren't meant to play free form games, it's not for them, and that's fine, it's not for everyone, no shame, no harm, no foul. I don't particularly like some games that others love, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those games, they just aren't for me. My grandson loves Minecraft, I don't see the appeal at all, even though it's a free form game like Elite Dangerous, it just doesn't do it for me, he loves it, he also loves Elite Dangerous. I'll watch him play both of them and he's having fun, so who cares if I don't see the appeal in Minecraft, HE does, and that's all that matters when he's playing it, HE enjoys it.

If you don't enjoy Elite Dangerous, you don't enjoy it, simple as that, the game is what it is, there's more coming but it's not what so many who say there's no depth think is required to give it depth, a storyline, a campaign, those aren't in the 10 year plan because those require a start and finish point, which isn't what Elite is.

world of warcraft has endgame content. It's called PvP, and Arena. Does the game "end" because you've made it to that level? nope...It just means you still have content to enjoy.

What does Elite Dangerous have after you own every ship and A-rated them all?

 

[SnowyNI]

Elite's endgame is CQC! /sarc