Frontier - please stop work on any new expansions and focus on your core gameplay.

[babelfisch]

It wasn't free, you paid for it, people forget this very easily. Its not a free game, its a paid game in development.

Nope, legally you paid for ED 1.0, everything else is free.

 

[LuciusEsox]

I think its the fact that nobody has any clue what you are actually talking about. Why do you need to leave the game to raise the landing gear?

No, my landing gear is bugged. I have a CH Hotas which I have been using since beta. The button that I have used on the joystick to raise/lower the gear doesn't raise the gear when I try to leave a planet. I have found to raise the gear I have to come out of the game and then go back in to clear the bug, then the gear is raised. I tried assigning the command to one of my axis on the hotas and it seemed to work for a short while but then the bug returned. This appears to be a known issue if you look on the bug forums and is one that for some has been around for quite a while.

Do people have a clue now ?

The reason I declined to answer earlier is because I thought it obvious in the context of this thread what I was actually eluding to, i.e. concentrate on what is NOT working now (and that includes game play gripes) rather than using obviously finite resources on releasing new content.

Am just another Joe who likes space sims but my cash is as good as yours and to keep telling people that its their fault if they are not satisfied with the game, especially considering how much is said along those lines is just blindness and I really can't see how anyone thinks FD deserve fully the praise many seem to want to heap on them, but hey am just one voice.......... err :x

 

[Mengy]

No, my landing gear is bugged. I have a CH Hotas which I have been using since beta. The button that I have used on the joystick to raise/lower the gear doesn't raise the gear when I try to leave a planet. I have found to raise the gear I have to come out of the game and then go back in to clear the bug, then the gear is raised. I tried assigning the command to one of my axis on the hotas and it seemed to work for a short while but then the bug returned. This appears to be a known issue if you look on the bug forums and is one that for some has been around for quite a while.

Do people have a clue now ?

Strange, my CH Hotas doesn't have any such issues. I have landing gear mapped to the "up" direction of the front 4-way switch on the throttle, never once had any issue with any of the buttons or axis.

 

[Karunamon]

Eh, I think it’s a tad premature for sentiments like that. It’s not too late yet, Elite is still doing okay despite a lot of the playerbase being very upset right now. While I’m sure some people have left the game, others still buy paint jobs and bobbleheads. I’m sure Elite is just fine for now.

That said though, FDev are continuing to burn the love and good will gradually, and at some point they are going to have to earn it back or they will risk the game dying and fading away. That’s why many people feel that FDev needs to stop implementing new features and spend some time fixing up what they have right now, to earn that good will back before it is too late. No amount of new and shiny features will make up for the lack of core content, not in the long run.

You wouldn't be able to tell from looking at their Steam reviews page. If I didn't know anything about the game and encountered that, I'd quite rightly NOPE my way out because literally every other game with that pattern of reviews is a steaming pile.

I've gotta give a +1 to OP as well. At this point, I would be quite happy if the next major release (i.e. post-horizons) was nothing but bugfixes and tweaks with not a single new feature.

 

[V'larr]

Sorry but the GAMEPLAY is not complex at all, in fact is the most simplistic and arcade.

Lol. Having played arcadey vehicular games for years, no. You are flatly wrong.
Go play World of Tanks or MWO, and compare the complexity of simply controlling the ship and weapons and equipment to those games.
That's just flight & combat. Niether of those games have anything to do with exploration, trade, or other various forms of activities to be found within Elite Dangerous.

And most certainly they do not exist in a persistent game universe.

The game launched 18 months back and the gameplay is exactly the same.

...So is every other game that's ever been 'launched'? Name one game to me where the core gameplay "changed". It doesn't exist; I'm loathe to make an exception even for EVE or WoW, games that have been around longer than many people have been alive.
Hell, most games these days are just the same re-hashed garbage with (sometimes) better graphics, different characters, mildly deviating storylines, and so on.

I find you to be totally unreasonable.

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

I've gotta give a +1 to OP as well. At this point, I would be quite happy if the next major release (i.e. post-horizons) was nothing but bugfixes and tweaks with not a single new feature.

I confess, quality of life and bugfixing updates to any game I play, by and large, are my favorite.

 

[Sysmon]

The core elements of Elite should be prioritised over any new development I can agree with that.

However, the core elements, as shown to us in the three previous games of the series, include planetary landings, alien life, atmospheric entry and landing, and thargoids. There are ships missing, such as the inscrutiable Moray Starboat, Krait, Constrictor and Cobra Mk I. We are also 7 galaxies short of keeping up with the original Elite.

Tongue-in-cheek aside, OP should remember that the core gameplay is still under development. The Season Pass model that FD is using is quite popular with developers these days as it keeps revenue coming in. The great thing about ED is that rather than just add new areas and push an artificial level cap ahead of the players, they are constantly tweaking all aspects of the simulation, while trying to balance realism with gaming aspects.

Please, stop posting these pointless "fix everything first" posts!

S

 

[Cydramech]

I'm going to have to agree with OP myself.

QOL is an important feature of any games that require such a significant investment of time to play, it certainly can prove to be the difference between a decent game and a bad game when everything else is equal. My two cents, anyways.

 

[Sans Daring]

It's frustrations in players operating short-term in long term development project. Stuff will change, improve, refine, but over time. If you don't accept this as a long term development, the game is damned either way. If they focus on tweaks to improve game mechanics for players who have hardcore played it to the point the gaps are apparent, the development slows, the game doesn't change much, people get bored. If they focus on broader changes, planetary landings, engineers, getting out of ships etc, they are damned for not progressing some of the core elements already implemented.

Only way they are not damned is to be patient, work with development and let the Dev lead and the community respond. The is the system of a long term development. You have to accept shortcomings as the project is slowly expanded to its broader goal over time, and help the Dev mop up problems along the way with feedback.

 

[odinmaster]

I agree with some of the OP. Some of the other posts too and especially some other ones.

FD should do some stuff to the core game to make it better like things and stuff so it'll be fleshed out. The core game I mean, it needs to be fleshed out more. Maybe add a little bit detail to the core stuff like, depth and some fleshed out mechanics.

Many people seem to have some issues with especially the gathering of materials for engineers and I think this should be made better too, so please FD, make the engineer content better, such as adding storage. Before moving on to the next major feature update 'passengers and ship launched fighters' in case you don't know what your next update is about and flesh out trading and exploring for example. You can make exploring more fleshed out and interesting by fleshing out the scanners so we can scan different areas on the planets and some ancient civilizations would be nice. Nothing too drastic but a few million types of ancient ruins or things like that could be interesting to find out there. Don't overkill it of course, if there are ancient civilization remais on every other planet will ruin immersion but make it enough so everyone has the chance to find out about three or four per playing session. Otherwise people get bored.

I have some ideas to make trading interesting. The most important thing to me is that trading isn't as simple as buying from somewhere and selling somewhere else. There should be some interesting things and depth to it. You can definitely enrich the gameplay of a trader by making trading more engaging with interesting, fleshed out gameplay.

Since all we do is essentially fly around in spaceships, flying could be more interesting too, and combat. We merely shoot the other ships until they explode. Well, to be fair we have to manage pips, keep our position vehemently, mind out heat, avoid shooting friendlies and if the fight proves too tough know how to bail but I think it could be more fleshed out but without extra features. You also shouldn't make it too hard that all the depth comes out. It has to be deep but easy deep like a knee deep kiddie pool but feel like a diving pool.

So, to summerize, here are my ideas to improve the game before moving onto the next feature;

Trading and exploration should be fleshed out more,

Also flying around should be more interesting like with interesting stuff and things.

PP should be looked at too and the BGS, because they don't have enough interesting things and need fleshing out.

Thanks for reading FD, I hope this helps you flesh out your game before you move onto the next feature.

rofl, this has just made my day please tell me you wrote this after smoking 2 joints of some good stuff

 

[Cynaqq]

rofl, this has just made my day please tell me you wrote this after smoking 2 joints of some good stuff

It's been too long since I last smoked some good stuff but I guess I have a perpetual high from the times I was in a college band. Glad you liked the post, just some lighthearted observation of the thread on my part

 

[LuciusEsox]

Strange, my CH Hotas doesn't have any such issues. I have landing gear mapped to the "up" direction of the front 4-way switch on the throttle, never once had any issue with any of the buttons or axis.

Well all I can say is I do. I have CH manager installed although I am not using a map in Ed. My system is sufficiently maintained with up to date drivers/defrags/virus checks etc to run my other flight sim/game software acceptably and ED is by far the least demanding in terms of commands out of any of them. As I say don't just take my word for it check out the bug forum. Anyway this is but one issue surely there are enough other bugs/issues that need working on that aren't being fixed because of the need to get out more new stuff or is this in reality just another veiled accusation that it is the user (i.e. me) at fault ?

 

[Viking84]

It's frustrations in players operating short-term in long term development project. Stuff will change, improve, refine, but over time. If you don't accept this as a long term development, the game is damned either way. If they focus on tweaks to improve game mechanics for players who have hardcore played it to the point the gaps are apparent, the development slows, the game doesn't change much, people get bored. If they focus on broader changes, planetary landings, engineers, getting out of ships etc, they are damned for not progressing some of the core elements already implemented.

Only way they are not damned is to be patient, work with development and let the Dev lead and the community respond. The is the system of a long term development. You have to accept shortcomings as the project is slowly expanded to its broader goal over time, and help the Dev mop up problems along the way with feedback.

The problem is that you don't really have to play for long before the cracks start to appear. The game is visually beautiful, and the initial feeling of freedom is great. And then you realise that it doesn't matter where you go, because everywhere is the same. And it doesn't matter what missions you take, because you will be doing the same 4 basic things over and over and over again. Which would be fine if the tasks weren't so trivial, and instead required some thought, and had some depth to them.

The only reason I fire up this game now and then is to enjoy that "I'm a pilot flying in space" feeling that no other game seems to give me yet. But the moment I think about doing a mission, or trading, or bounty hunting, I just think "why bother, I know exactly what I will be doing, and I will be bored".

In my eyes Elite at the moment is a bit like MineCraft would be if you weren't allowed to build anything. Huge world, but the basic things you do are pretty dull (nobody revels in combat, or walking around in Minecraft), and only make sense because they are a part of something bigger, i.e. building your great masterpieces. In Elite we have no such bigger goals to achieve that actually allow us to create something, so the things we do MUST be intrinsically entertaining and worthwhile. And currently they aren't, which is a shame.

 

[lysan]

I agree with some of the OP. Some of the other posts too and especially some other ones.

FD should do some stuff to the core game to make it better like things and stuff so it'll be fleshed out. The core game I mean, it needs to be fleshed out more. Maybe add a little bit detail to the core stuff like, depth and some fleshed out mechanics.

Many people seem to have some issues with especially the gathering of materials for engineers and I think this should be made better too, so please FD, make the engineer content better, such as adding storage. Before moving on to the next major feature update 'passengers and ship launched fighters' in case you don't know what your next update is about and flesh out trading and exploring for example. You can make exploring more fleshed out and interesting by fleshing out the scanners so we can scan different areas on the planets and some ancient civilizations would be nice. Nothing too drastic but a few million types of ancient ruins or things like that could be interesting to find out there. Don't overkill it of course, if there are ancient civilization remais on every other planet will ruin immersion but make it enough so everyone has the chance to find out about three or four per playing session. Otherwise people get bored.

I have some ideas to make trading interesting. The most important thing to me is that trading isn't as simple as buying from somewhere and selling somewhere else. There should be some interesting things and depth to it. You can definitely enrich the gameplay of a trader by making trading more engaging with interesting, fleshed out gameplay.

Since all we do is essentially fly around in spaceships, flying could be more interesting too, and combat. We merely shoot the other ships until they explode. Well, to be fair we have to manage pips, keep our position vehemently, mind out heat, avoid shooting friendlies and if the fight proves too tough know how to bail but I think it could be more fleshed out but without extra features. You also shouldn't make it too hard that all the depth comes out. It has to be deep but easy deep like a knee deep kiddie pool but feel like a diving pool.

So, to summerize, here are my ideas to improve the game before moving onto the next feature;

Trading and exploration should be fleshed out more,

Also flying around should be more interesting like with interesting stuff and things.

PP should be looked at too and the BGS, because they don't have enough interesting things and need fleshing out.

Thanks for reading FD, I hope this helps you flesh out your game before you move onto the next feature.

I agree, especially this part." FD should do some stuff to the core game to make it better like things and stuff so it'll be fleshed out. The core game I mean, it needs to be fleshed out more. Maybe add a little bit detail to the core stuff like, depth and some fleshed out mechanics."

You had one of these moments of enlightenment.

 

[NeilF]

It's frustrations in players operating short-term in long term development project. Stuff will change, improve, refine, but over time.

You're right, but if we consider FD have a finite amount of development effort/time, what's frustrating is, over and over we are seeing it allocated to projects that seemingly make little/no effort into moving the game forwards.

I'll use an example I've put elsewhere to try and highlight this.

If we consider The Engineers, this IMHO has been a waste of development time in that for all the work done, in truth it's really added no new more involved gameplay or depth. Instead it's rather cynically just thrown a huge easter egg hunt into the game based no little more than RND-sponge mechanics. All so ultimalte you can gain 25% pewpew (or the like).

And then we had CQC which threw a bucket of development time into a "different game".

So, consider if those two efforts had instead introduced:-

1 - Missions/tasks piloting a fighter for a Capital ship/platform/station.
2 - Convoy escort missions and the like (see 2).
3 - NPC wingmen for hire (or assigned for duration of mission/task) that you can give simple attack this/defend that commands to (see 1 & 2).
4 - Wing missions (see 1 & 2).
5 - Station blockade mechanics, so under the right conditions (background sim?) a station can go into full blockade where you exist SC further out. The blockade can be enforced, broken or run (to trade at better prices). (see 1 & 2 & 3 & 4)​

Now consider what 2.2 is bringing to the game, an additional fighter you can deploy from your ship, and consider what 2.3 is bringing, multiple CMDRs on a single ship. Now ask yourself, when you're playing 2.2 & 2.3 what will bring more value and interest to it? The 25% more pewpew power of The Engineers? The RND-time-sponge easter egg hunt of The Engineers? Or would the kind of more involved, layered, deeper kind of mechanics listed above?

In short, when you're sitting in your ship in 2.3 with a group of CMDRs, is going around collecting the new materials going to enhance the experience? Or would the layer list of the kind of gameplay mentioned above? eg: Trying to escort a convoy, even with one of the CMDRs controlling a number of NPC wingmen (attack this, defend that). etc?

Also consider, Powerplay and CGs... Has more materials and 25% more pewpew offered anything to them? Consider the list above, and then how some of those could have been leveraged to bring more depth and variety to them.

Now consider if/when the Thargoids appear? What will enhance the gameplay there? Fighter patrols for a capital ship? Or stations falling into blockade mechanics as Thargoid ships enter the system? Escorting civilian convoys out of systems under attack? Or as FD seem to think, collecting more meaningless materials and 25% more pewpew?


In short, we need more new depth and variety in the gameplay, ideally that build on each other, even combining with the background sim. But for some reason FD don't seem interested in investing development time in doing this. If we look at The Engineers, they actually instead seem quite willing to spend large amount of development time simply adding pretty low-brow stuff IMHO.

 

[lysan]

+1 to OP.

TotalBiscuit said it well when he talked about Skyrim.



There's a massive world there.. but very little to actually do in it.

The mechanics that are there.. the gameplay that is there.. is very minimal with almost no substance at all. Most of it is actually extremely strict and 'gamey'; the antithesis of being a simulation.

I believe the only people enjoying E are the ones that want to live in a different world. The people not enjoying E.. are gamers, who want to play a fun game with swaths of content and actual ingame goals rather than personally created ones.

The fun in E stops after the first few days when you realize there's only a couple of activities to do; only with many different hats.


Sadly, money rules the world, and FD don't seem to have a lot of it. Adding content to the base game for free is a death sentence.. and so is charging people for it.

There's no way out anymore unless they get funding from some place. Planet Coaster will bring some.. but then what? E's business model was not well thought out, at all. Horizons failed and they were forced to change it. But doing something like changing it to a subscription game now will fail even more.

Our time is limited, their time is limited..

I honestly don't see what future Elite: Dangerous has. By the time they can even fix and vastly improve the game.. most people will have already left for something else.

Sky is falling ecetera ecetera.

 

[serialsid]

You're right, but if we consider FD have a finite amount of development effort/time, what's frustrating is, over and over we are seeing it allocated to projects that seemingly make little/no effort into moving the game forwards.

I'll use an example I've put elsewhere to try and highlight this.

If we consider The Engineers, this IMHO has been a waste of development time in that for all the work done, in truth it's really added no new more involved gameplay or depth. Instead it's rather cynically just thrown a huge easter egg hunt into the game based no little more than RND-sponge mechanics. All so ultimalte you can gain 25% pewpew (or the like).

And then we had CQC which threw a bucket of development time into a "different game".

So, consider if those two efforts had instead introduced:-

1 - Missions/tasks piloting a fighter for a Capital ship/platform/station.
2 - Convoy escort missions and the like (see 2).
3 - NPC wingmen for hire (or assigned for duration of mission/task) that you can give simple attack this/defend that commands to (see 1 & 2).
4 - Wing missions (see 1 & 2).
5 - Station blockade mechanics, so under the right conditions (background sim?) a station can go into full blockade where you exist SC further out. The blockade can be enforced, broken or run (to trade at better prices). (see 1 & 2 & 3 & 4)​

Now consider what 2.2 is bringing to the game, an additional fighter you can deploy from your ship, and consider what 2.3 is bringing, multiple CMDRs on a single ship. Now ask yourself, when you're playing 2.2 & 2.3 what will bring more value and interest to it? The 25% more pewpew power of The Engineers? The RND-time-sponge easter egg hunt of The Engineers? Or would the kind of more involved, layered, deeper kind of mechanics listed above?

In short, when you're sitting in your ship in 2.3 with a group of CMDRs, is going around collecting the new materials going to enhance the experience? Or would the layer list of the kind of gameplay mentioned above? eg: Trying to escort a convoy, even with one of the CMDRs controlling a number of NPC wingmen (attack this, defend that). etc?

Also consider, Powerplay and CGs... Has more materials and 25% more pewpew offered anything to them? Consider the list above, and then how some of those could have been leveraged to bring more depth and variety to them.

Now consider if/when the Thargoids appear? What will enhance the gameplay there? Fighter patrols for a capital ship? Or stations falling into blockade mechanics as Thargoid ships enter the system? Escorting civilian convoys out of systems under attack? Or as FD seem to think, collecting more meaningless materials and 25% more pewpew?


In short, we need more new depth and variety in the gameplay, ideally that build on each other, even combining with the background sim. But for some reason FD don't seem interested in investing development time in doing this. If we look at The Engineers, they actually instead seem quite willing to spend large amount of development time simply adding pretty low-brow stuff IMHO.

I completely agree with all this. I can appreciate the time and effort that went into the engineers but the game needed so much more first. Maybe in season 8 it would have been a nice little extra but not now. Not when so many things are crying out for attention and depth.

 

[DAOWAce]

Lol. Having played arcadey vehicular games for years, no. You are flatly wrong.

The ships control like an earth plane; not a spaceship. They should control like a helicopter.

If anything, those 'arcadey' space games are more realistic than E's flight model.

...So is every other game that's ever been 'launched'? Name one game to me where the core gameplay "changed". It doesn't exist;

Final Fantasy XIV.

Complete 180 on the design after the game's release. It actually ruined the game for me and I quit playing. Didn't need to be completely overhauled; needed to actually be finished, polished and had much more content added to it..

..Kind of like, oh I dunno, Elite: Dangerous.

In my eyes Elite at the moment is a bit like MineCraft would be if you weren't allowed to build anything.

That is a fantastic analogy. Agree 100%.

I've actually gotten far far more enjoyment and gameplay out of Minecraft than I have E now that I think about it.. and I paid 5x more for E, not including the x52 I bought for it..

 

[babelfisch]

You're right, but if we consider FD have a finite amount of development effort/time, what's frustrating is, over and over we are seeing it allocated to projects that seemingly make little/no effort into moving the game forwards.

I'll use an example I've put elsewhere to try and highlight this.

If we consider The Engineers, this IMHO has been a waste of development time in that for all the work done, in truth it's really added no new more involved gameplay or depth. Instead it's rather cynically just thrown a huge easter egg hunt into the game based no little more than RND-sponge mechanics. All so ultimalte you can gain 25% pewpew (or the like).

And then we had CQC which threw a bucket of development time into a "different game".

So, consider if those two efforts had instead introduced:-

1 - Missions/tasks piloting a fighter for a Capital ship/platform/station.
2 - Convoy escort missions and the like (see 2).
3 - NPC wingmen for hire (or assigned for duration of mission/task) that you can give simple attack this/defend that commands to (see 1 & 2).
4 - Wing missions (see 1 & 2).
5 - Station blockade mechanics, so under the right conditions (background sim?) a station can go into full blockade where you exist SC further out. The blockade can be enforced, broken or run (to trade at better prices). (see 1 & 2 & 3 & 4)​

Now consider what 2.2 is bringing to the game, an additional fighter you can deploy from your ship, and consider what 2.3 is bringing, multiple CMDRs on a single ship. Now ask yourself, when you're playing 2.2 & 2.3 what will bring more value and interest to it? The 25% more pewpew power of The Engineers? The RND-time-sponge easter egg hunt of The Engineers? Or would the kind of more involved, layered, deeper kind of mechanics listed above?

In short, when you're sitting in your ship in 2.3 with a group of CMDRs, is going around collecting the new materials going to enhance the experience? Or would the layer list of the kind of gameplay mentioned above? eg: Trying to escort a convoy, even with one of the CMDRs controlling a number of NPC wingmen (attack this, defend that). etc?

Also consider, Powerplay and CGs... Has more materials and 25% more pewpew offered anything to them? Consider the list above, and then how some of those could have been leveraged to bring more depth and variety to them.

Now consider if/when the Thargoids appear? What will enhance the gameplay there? Fighter patrols for a capital ship? Or stations falling into blockade mechanics as Thargoid ships enter the system? Escorting civilian convoys out of systems under attack? Or as FD seem to think, collecting more meaningless materials and 25% more pewpew?


In short, we need more new depth and variety in the gameplay, ideally that build on each other, even combining with the background sim. But for some reason FD don't seem interested in investing development time in doing this. If we look at The Engineers, they actually instead seem quite willing to spend large amount of development time simply adding pretty low-brow stuff IMHO.

Sorry, I agree with the need for NPC wings and escort missions, but this is just another additional feature instead of a "fundamental redesign of the core gameplay". Anyway, they are working on NPC wings since quite some time now, so I expect to see them soon.
I am not interested in multicrew and passenger missions but it's just as important as other features I would like to see in the game, both features are part of the DDA, everyone says they should look at it and when they finally decide to implement features that are part of it everyone tells them they are doing it wrong.

 

[Bzek]

In my eyes Elite at the moment is a bit like MineCraft would be if you weren't allowed to build anything. Huge world, but the basic things you do are pretty dull (nobody revels in combat, or walking around in Minecraft), and only make sense because they are a part of something bigger, i.e. building your great masterpieces. In Elite we have no such bigger goals to achieve that actually allow us to create something, so the things we do MUST be intrinsically entertaining and worthwhile. And currently they aren't, which is a shame.

That is such an apt comparison. Especially now that the AI is dumb again. Couldn't think of a better way to put it. Rep to you!

 

[cmdr_Havalok]

The problem is that you don't really have to play for long before the cracks start to appear. The game is visually beautiful, and the initial feeling of freedom is great. And then you realise that it doesn't matter where you go, because everywhere is the same. And it doesn't matter what missions you take, because you will be doing the same 4 basic things over and over and over again. Which would be fine if the tasks weren't so trivial, and instead required some thought, and had some depth to them.

Now see everywhere I go I see something different and often amazing, and I take the simple things available and use them to build more complex things.

In my eyes Elite at the moment is a bit like MineCraft would be if you weren't allowed to build anything. Huge world, but the basic things you do are pretty dull (nobody revels in combat, or walking around in Minecraft), and only make sense because they are a part of something bigger, i.e. building your great masterpieces. In Elite we have no such bigger goals to achieve that actually allow us to create something, so the things we do MUST be intrinsically entertaining and worthwhile. And currently they aren't, which is a shame.

Actually there are plenty of people that just like to roam around in Minecraft and explore the environments and there are quite a few things in ED you can participate in to become part of something bigger, build something of your own. If you haven't noticed them or figured out how to participate, then fundamentally, at this point I don't think you ever will.