Wow- this thread has legs!
Thanks to everyone who replied- I ran out of rep pages ago, so everyone have a +1 until I recharge.
I've got a few rejoinders, if anyone is still interested?
It's a valid argument, and one I personally sympathise with: we could all do with being less goal oriented when gaming, and enjoy the journey as well as the destination.
However, a well designed game accommodates both players who consciously aim for good gameplay experiences, and those that want to achieve personal progression goals.
Indeed, it is my opinion that the best games are the ones that utilise their progression systems so that gameplay oriented players end up experiencing meaningful progression inadvertantly, and that progression oriented players experience good gameplay by the same mechanism, thus meaning that players get enjoyment out of something they didn't necessarily plan.
This is where I feel elite fails: those who value progression will not have a good gameplay experience, and vice versa. Part of the balancing process (and the reason I advocate buffs to underpaying professions and missions) is to bring those positive experiences together, not separate them as Elite does currently
Things can always be done better and I sincerely hope FD will improve every aspect of the game in the coming years. However, as the game stands, if only in my opinion, it's doing a stand up job of the part in bold. I have a fleet of ships, cash in the bank, rank with both Empire and Federation and I'm even closing on those oh so shiny shiny Pilots Federation ranks. It all feels very natural to me- I deserve these rewards because of the things I did to earn them. More on that below.
If you're happy with the current state of the game and you've found activities that you enjoy then that's great. Some of us want to experience flying the endgame ships or have a fleet of ships. The only way for us to eventually get to that point is a ton of credit and rank grinding. For a supposed sandbox game where you can blaze your own trail I find it unacceptable.
I'm sorry you feel that way mate, I really am. I also want to experience what the game has to offer, including those end game ships. The differance is I know that I'll achieve my end game rank and privilege at the end of a long and eventful path, having 'blazed my own trail'. The journey to that end game is what I bought the game for, not the end game rewards themselves.
Well, no. The game does lack depth. If you think of a game's logic as a flow chart, you could define the game's breadth by the range of actions/choices available to the player; and the depth is the length of each decision tree, the number of branching decisions, and the impact of each decision on the player and/or his or her environment.
In ED, there are many things to do (breadth); but with no consequences, few follow-on choices. Take exploration, jump into a system, honk, point at a star/planet until you know its name. Then what? What consequences are there to that action? What new decisions has it opened up? How has it improved/disimproved the lot of the player? What has the player learned? It has improved a bit with Horizons (ability to detect which planets can be landed on, can approach and land on them, find points of interest, mine resources) so you're not just finding and tagging randomly coloured balls, but it still has a way to go.
Note - I'm not say the player needs to be some 'hero' that affects the entire galaxy, but there should be more impact from his/her actions and consequent decisions/actions arising from them.
If you need me to explain the attraction of exploring in Elite then you're not going to understand the answer. I'll stick to the benefits for everyone else. We, as members of the Pilots Federation, get a small cash payment for survey data. This benefits the rest of humanity who don't have to buy, man and maintain fleets of survey vessels. It also benefits us in game- I can't be the only person on this thread who's ever bought survey data, surely? Time is precious, but a few hundred credits aren't, when you're deciding on your evenings plan and realise it involves 'here be dragons' gaps in your galaxy map. The ability to purchase the data goes from 'handy to know' to 'prety much vital' when following certain paths, such as the recent pristines CG. And as you say yourself, we're at the start of the process- there's more to come on the exploration(or space tourism!
) front. Personally, I've wanted to fly inside the atmosphere of a Jovian since I was a small boy and Arthur C Clarke told me a tale of vast flying creatures living their clouds. Off topic, I know, but ED might allow me to do that at some point. I'm not aware of any other game that's even considered it.
Well, that's certainly not what I am looking for. I'm after more of a Middle Ground. We have the underlying "narrative" of the galaxy (as described by System States, Galnet stories etc), & players can *choose* the level to which they wish to immerse themselves in that narrative. So, if you want to fully immerse yourself into the narrative, then you can settle in a small group of systems to help <Faction Name> become the dominant power in that region, via the upgraded mission system. Or you could just casually help out <Faction Name> from time to time, as a sideline to your regular "Pirate/Smuggler/Trader" career.
Also, sadly, the military officer path still needs a lot of work before it is a truly viable option (though it is definitely on their "to do" list).
Agreed on the military progression part, but I've actually spent the last two years pretty much doing the rest. More below.
Assassination with depth: you're given a target, a location or contacts that could tell you were this target is. You need to track it down through various contacts (trustworthy or not), spend hours if not days getting used to that target's schedule, until you can seize the opportunity to kill it.
The reward mirrors the amount of work that was required to take it down. You might now have some sworn enemies that will track you to the end of the galaxy.
Assassination in Elite: you're given a target, and a location.
You get there and fly around in circles until it conveniently shows up or a NPC tells you about it, or find it in an USS like you'd hunt Pokémons. You kill the target, collect the reward and change some vague numbers in the BGS.
______
Exploration with depth: you want to travel to an unmapped system, to do so you first need to run parallax and gravitational based computations in order to even vaguely guess the hyperspace coordinates. Once there you go to various planets and retrieve various samples, map surfaces, look for that one asteroid that contains a real goldmine.
Once you get back to civilization those you sell the data to might decide to launch an expedition, and their enemies might hear of it and try to get in their way. (Hey wait, isn't that basically the DDA?)
Reaching Sg A* requires months to years of works for a hundred of coordinated players. (Hey wait, wasn't that what the FGE was about?)
Exploration in Elite: Jump! Honk!
Sg A* reached within 4 days of Gamma.
I could go on for a while.
As much as I'd like more complex 'quests', it's worth pointing out that they all basically involve going to a specific location and carrying out the designated task, no matter what game you play. Right now we don't have a mechanism for interacting with the 'he went thataway' NPC, so a multi stage mission has the potential to be considerably duller than 'turn up at the RV and slot the bad guy'. See below for more on that theme.
Exploration has already been covered earlier in the thread, so I won't labour the point, beyond stating my liking and approval of what's already in place.Making exploration more difficult just for the sake of it doesn't strike me as a particularly worthwhile goal- any more than making it easier would be. Right now you're encouraged to close with whatever you're surveying, showing you the stunning visuals, emphasizing the great distance between planets and teasing you into popping down for a closer look. The vids posted up earlier were breathtaking and will leave lifelong memories with the guys taking part. Making what they're doing more difficult to achieve, or requiring better piloting skills, or demanding spreadsheet planning between landings, or whatever else you have in mind, wouldn't add 'depth' to their experience, only complexity.
DO yo honestly think grinders like to grind? , the fact they grind in the first place is evidence of lack of depth, doing the same thing over and over just for money isnt game play, thats just a RL job sim, ild love to know why i was hired to kill some random npc, i want to know why this npc has such a high bounty and if it would be right to kill him,
See below.
rich *in* game mechanics, i.e. a lot of stuff that you *can* do, just no interaction between them, and no real reason (risk/reward/narrative/<insert your own personal motivation here>) to do them
the BGS is exactly that - background. For all the impact it has on the game, it might as well be a matte painting sitting at the back of a theatre stage, nice to look at, adds a bit of colour, but has minimal (at best) interaction with any player. I'm not suggesting that I should be able to conquer the galaxy single-handed, but if I am going to do a bunch of missions/gain rep/increase elite ranking/etc - there should be some sort of change, even if it is just down to how different governments, npcs, markets, stations etc interact with me - hence the reason I hope the upcoming npc and mission changes will be a step in the right direciton
See below.
I think it's just a matter of 'why?'.
If you can imagine a 'why?', then the game has lots to do to reach the intrinsic reason you asked the question.
If you want the game to provide the answer to your question, 'Why should I play the BGS?', 'Why is it important that I kill this NPC?', 'Why does it matter if I....<fill in the blank>? then the game will come across as shallow.
Not sure it there is a right or wrong here...it's just a matter of personal feelings towards what a game does. This game does not give you any reasons for 'why?' whether you enjoy creating those reasons or not is entirely up to you as a player.
See below.
Been thinking about this a bit lately. I think those who find ED 'shallow' are those who treat it like a game (that's what it is after all). They see a thing that needs to be achieved and go about achieving it a quickly and efficiently as possible. Unfortunately this often involves 'grinding' and rather dull, repetitive actions. Others though, treat ED more like a hobby (I am one of those and I suspect the OP is too). What I see is interesting things to do, so I go and do them. It keeps me entertained, but for the most part does not achieve much in the way of advancement. Personally though, I don't much care about that. I'm having fun.
That's pretty much my experience too, mate!
On depth. A common feature in many of the posts on this thread seeems to be that some things are simple to achieve in Elite. They should be harder, or more complex. This would add challenge and require greater skill. While that's true enough, it wouldn't add depth. You would still be doing the same thing, but while it might take more effort and you might enjoy doing it more as a result, there wouldn't be any fundamental differance to the activity or it's effects.
I'm not sure some of us understand the effect we already have on the game, though.
Apologies in advance to Jex =TE= . None of this will impress you in the least... [haha]
Consider a simple mission. Assassinate an NPC, reward 100k. It's RNG, the mission will come and go, although the name and ship might change. So far, so shallow and grindy.
Commander Kudont Kareliss takes the mission, gets 100k for a little pew pew and goes on his way. About a month later he comes back to the same station and runs a few charity missions. His impression is that the game hasn't changed in the slightest. He has no idea he kicked off a four week civil war, or that the charity missions he's now farming are a direct consequence of that war. But what if another player got there first?
Commander Kare Bare arrives in a system and checks out the bulletin board. He's up for a bit of pew pew and the 100k looks like easy money, but before he accepts the mission he takes note of the faction wanting one of their own terminated. He looks at the system status board and is appalled to see that they're only 6% from their closest rival- incresing their rep by a single percentage point would plunge the system into civil war! There's no time to lose, he stacks both the BB missions showing for the other faction and boosts like a bat out of Hell. Feeling a little calmer he decides to abandon his earlier plan for the evening and sets himself to increasing the rival faction's influence. Each mission he sucessfully accomplishes increases his standing with the rival faction; pretty soon he's Friendly, then Allied. Now they're offering him high value missions, with rewards of well over 100k. His standing with their Patron State increases too, albeit at a lower rate, but it's just enough to get him his next rank- he was pretty close before. When he powers down for the night, he can sleep easy, he knows that his actions have created a safe buffer between the factions, he's averted a civil war that would have killed thousands and impacted on the lives and well being of millions. His impression is that the BGS is working as intended, because by chosing to let a powerful dove in the ambitious faction live, while strengthening their rival's position, he has had a solid and positive effect on the system's future.
You can always posist a Commander Darth Grizzly, if you prefer a darker, bloodier outcome!
But what if our player isn't remotely interested in role play?
Commander Album Equae is a PvPer with a player group that enjoy protecting and teaching new pilots. She has a novice wing she wants to teach co-operative dogfighting tactics to, but knows most of her group won't be available until the weekend. She visits nearby systems until she finds ours, with two factions close to civil war. She takes in the bulletin board and selects the assassination mission, knowing that as a high value mission it will have a small but significant effect on the sponsoring faction's reputation. She returns and monitors the faction spread; she doesn't want to over egg the BGS and have 'her' faction overtake their rivals by more than 5%, a possibility in busy systems where Commanders are accepting missions willy nilly. She's in luck, no major changes effect the BGS and the following morning the system is at war. Over the next few days she and her wing alternately declare for both factions, keeping the BGS at a stalemate. With careful monitoring she knows she can keep the war and it's CZs going for 28 days before the game will end the conflict, giving her a potential four week window to use her self generated training aid. She doesn't much care whether this was FDs original intention; she needs to bring her trainees up to speed and a large number of AI opponents to practice on helps enormously.
Now adding some whistles and bells to the BB, putting faces and names to those offering missions, increasing their complexity and so forth, wouldn't be a bad thing in my book. But I don't think it'd increase the depth of play available. On the other hand, right now, with the game in it's current state, you can control who rules systems, increase and decrease your standing within them, change the mission board you see, eventually make mortal enemies and steadfast allies, with an impact in every other system they visit. Like I said at the start, it's not the best way to grind up to an end game ship or a fancy title, but I don't see that as a problem when chosing a different path can give you real power and influence. Lore claims the Pilots Federation are known as the Knights of the modern era, accomplishing great things for the benefit of all humanity- the reality is we can do that, or we can do something else. We're the Elite equivalent of Templars; this sanbox is a world we control, or chose not to, as our mood or conscience takes us.
Now I think that's pretty deep...
