I have to agree it was NOT their finest hour. I thought Sandro gave (unusual for him) very poor responses. I wondered if he was trying to defend something he didn't agree with.
2.2's Instant Ship and Module Transport - Yay or Nay?
- Thread starter Kintch
- Start date
- Status
This'll do wonders for Lakon sales
Welcome to the galaxy full of Asps.
Clearly you haven't given this enough thought. You think is about convenience, but really this change will make it so instead of flying fighters with non-painful range and jumping quickly into combat, we'll be shuttling in long range "explorer buses" and then going to stations (which takes about 5-10 extra minutes anyway) then mucking about with some annoying magic genie menu (another several minutes) then paying a huge fee (representing another hour or so of earnings) and then finally flying to CG from a dead stop inside a gravity well.
Why not just fix fighter jump ranges so they aren't quite so painful? Cut out all the station diving and busy work and time wasting expense?
Absolutely true! FD says they want to "lower the barrier of access" to the game. That's all nice and dandy, but a normal ship transfer with reasonable delivery times would achieve exactly that! That's what players have been asking for all the time! If you search the forums for this specific topic, absolutely everyone has been asking for ship transport not being instantaneous when it comes!
I admire the devs for their intention to make the game more accessible, but they clearly overshot the target here!
Last edited:
While i'm firmly in the camp of it should require the same time it would take to travel yourself, you seem to be oblivious to the the 22% in the poll that say it should be instantanous and another 22% who think it should take a fraction of the time.
So, while you and me think its not a great decision, there is almost 50% of voters in this thread who disagree.
So, when a dev thinks something is a good idea, and almost 50% are saying they agree, then you might be tempted as a dev to think "Wow, 50% agree, not bad at all. If we change it, then 50% will hate us for it, and 50% will love us, so we can't win either way. Keep it as it is guys".
As usual, there are the extra clauses about forum polls not being representative, FD have other sources of feedback as well, and the fact that they are not even back in the office yet, and probably still not had time to analyse all the feedback yet. Its no surprise they simply stuck to their guns for the period of the convention.
Feedback has been generated now, a lot of it, and i'm sure, if you were a fly on the wall in FD's offices, you would get to witness a number of discussions on this very topic over the coming weeks.
Therefore, you have your chance to give feedback, as do others (some who will disagree with you), and ultimately, FD will make a decision.
My guess is, if beta rolls around, and instant transfer is still in, then it will make it to live and stay there. If not, then great, i'll be happy.
My prediction (if anyone cares), is that FD will look at the feedback, decide they want to stick with instant travel, but having listened to the community, make the cost for ship transfer very high indeed, and scale exponentially based on size of ship and distance. You want to transport that Corvette to Sothis? Sure! Just pay a billion credits!
I hope they don't do that... but let's see.
Based on the results in the poll, ship transfers should take even longer than piloting the ship yourself, presumably for the convenience of not having to play the game.
No need to beat around the bush. Having instant ship transfers is a bad idea and it seems that a significant majority of us agree with that.
Now Frontier just needs to acknowledge that and implement a system to transfer ships which makes more sense. There are easy enough ways to viable accomplish this, some of which I've already mentioned in the thread.
Instant ship transfer is a GOOD idea and this forum only represents a vocal niche of the community and has always had a strong bias. Many people that play Elite but never post here will love this new feature and many people who don't play Elite yet will probably be more easily drawn in with this added incentive of less pointless timesink.
Anyone that doesn't like it can create their own "immersion." It's what you did in 1984 right? Lol.
I think you're missing the fact that when doing it manually, you have to fly tour-retour, whilst when transferring your ship, even with realistic flight times, the ship has to fly only retour and thus requires just half the time to get to you.
In other words, even with realistic flight times, you get your ship more or less twice as fast than normally, and you get to do whatever you want until it arrives (play the game or log off, it's up to the player). I wouldn't call that completely irrelevant, it's still pretty much QoL to me.
Yaffle
Volunteer Moderator
What makes it such a good idea compared to some form of arranged delivery?
ED Is built in a foundation of a 1:1 galaxy recreation with the Stellar forge.
On that was placed the background sim and then player means to move around in space.
Even with a sci-fI FTL mechanic. The immense size of the Galaxy has always been front and center. The Hutton run or the travel to Beagle Point really strikes it home.
The size of space is measured with one thing, time. Real time. The time it takes a player to travel A to B.
This is the first update feature that really shrinks the Galaxy and takes away from that awe inspiring foundation.
Refuel, repair, mods. The time on those things don't diminish the size of the Galaxy. Instantly moving a ship does.
This is the first update feature I'm actually feeling a little let down by. I hate that, I'm a positive player and I try not to get sucked into the negativity seen with most threads. It's kind of a bummer, but I'm sure we'll live.
On that was placed the background sim and then player means to move around in space.
Even with a sci-fI FTL mechanic. The immense size of the Galaxy has always been front and center. The Hutton run or the travel to Beagle Point really strikes it home.
The size of space is measured with one thing, time. Real time. The time it takes a player to travel A to B.
This is the first update feature that really shrinks the Galaxy and takes away from that awe inspiring foundation.
Refuel, repair, mods. The time on those things don't diminish the size of the Galaxy. Instantly moving a ship does.
This is the first update feature I'm actually feeling a little let down by. I hate that, I'm a positive player and I try not to get sucked into the negativity seen with most threads. It's kind of a bummer, but I'm sure we'll live.
Bloomin' Realism Carebears! Comin' in here! Ruining our PvP ship-a-changin' fun! Grrr!
Even if it takes the same amount of time that it would take you to fly your ship to your destination, it's actually still only taking half the amount of time it would without this feature (i.e having to buy and outfit a hauler, jump to destination, sell, get in ship, jump back). Instantaneous should be a huge no-no.
I for one am not part of a vocal niche. This is the first time with any game design choice in my life that I've felt compelled to make it known that I can't get on board with their decision.
If I may make a suggestion:
I think the point has been made clear to FD, there's no way they don't know that this is a divisive topic. However, even implementing a small transfer time means quite a bit of work, they would essentially have to implement a scheduler on the backend, and if we want to see our ship coming in to the port this would have to be implemented as well, essentially spawning a specified ship into your instance.
I'd say this is something that can be added later. They still have a lot of work and I don't think that delaying 2.2 for this is worth it. We'll no doubt generate lots of feedback playing 2.2 and given the way they incorporated feedback on Engineers, I think it's reasonable to do the same here.
If it really turns out to be a bad thing to have instant transportation (and I do believe there absolutely needs to be a transfer time, even if it's just a short one) then we'll have to be vocal enough about it. But probably after 2.2 is released, not before. Or at least not before the 2.2 beta is running.
I think the point has been made clear to FD, there's no way they don't know that this is a divisive topic. However, even implementing a small transfer time means quite a bit of work, they would essentially have to implement a scheduler on the backend, and if we want to see our ship coming in to the port this would have to be implemented as well, essentially spawning a specified ship into your instance.
I'd say this is something that can be added later. They still have a lot of work and I don't think that delaying 2.2 for this is worth it. We'll no doubt generate lots of feedback playing 2.2 and given the way they incorporated feedback on Engineers, I think it's reasonable to do the same here.
If it really turns out to be a bad thing to have instant transportation (and I do believe there absolutely needs to be a transfer time, even if it's just a short one) then we'll have to be vocal enough about it. But probably after 2.2 is released, not before. Or at least not before the 2.2 beta is running.
Yeah, because swimming in a pool full of turds is loads of fun if I just pretend hard enough.
Fortunately there seem to be enough that agree we me that it might not be the best idea.
FYI: I never played the original Elite. I might mess around in it one of these days though, having it on my Frontier downloadable content list.
That's the point exactly. Ships having different ability's, including travel times, was part of the balancing. With all due respect, I think the new feature will render Frontiers own work ad absurdum in this regard.
[h=1][/h]
Because you would have to wait for an arranged delivery and all that does is add a wait time for no reason.
To be fair, they aren't going to say 'oh yeah! we've got major dissent going on in our playerbase' at a press event?
And that's even if the people reading these forums represent the playerbase, which they don't. People like me, I've got a lifetime pass, Frontier have got their money, therefore I'm not really relevant. What they need is all the people put off by the 'grind' of Elite to come back for instant gratification, and start buying ship skins, and having the confidence to pre-order season 3 again, hence the move to make the entire galaxy CQC. (Yes, yes, at least two of my opposition forum warriors are now reaching forward to make a post about hyperbole.
)
when will people understand that time is the real currency in ED?
- Status