2.2's Instant Ship and Module Transport - Yay or Nay?

[lysan]

A) that's not what it's doing

B) it serves many people's benefit. Like busy people who don't have hours to kill just looking at witchspace and otherwise will find and support other games, leaving Elite Dangerous without much needed revenue based support and growth.

That is all fine, then Frontier should make that Ironman mode, where these mechanics are left out.
That way the instant crowd can have all the arcade mechanics they want, and the SIM crowd can have a more simmy game, this way everyone will be happy.

SOLO just got a lot more interesting now, just a shame it's SOLO.

 

[Noogillim]

From database POV if you don't do instantly, you have to create special layer of transfer management - which can and will go wrong on many accounts. It's another subsystem they have to support which they had no plans to in nearest future.

Really, that's really really interesting, how on earth do they manage missions with time limits? Or any timed function in game that thousands of players are involved in like CG's?

Just waffle to explain away inadequate design decisions.

This can be be managed client side with some hooks to the system.

 

[Cmdr Cheese Wedge]

thats not fair... there are a lot of us who would have that more believable as well... but just because 1 thing is unbelievable in the game and has been that way before launch does not mean that an equally unbelievable mechanic which negates a large tactical part of the game should be embraced imo.

I am all for more complexity in most areas of the game. Waiting is fine for all things, so long as we have stuff to do whilst waiting imo.

And IF we are going to embrace the notion of the 3D printer makes it all happen (a notion i hate btw but its not my game so if FD want to make them a thing, then it is what it is) well, it should at the very least strip all engineer options as they are meant to be unique. (and before you say it, yes i agree in advance, this also means i do not think they should be covered under insurance either, we should have to go to the engineer to get a new one, and in the interests of "game" the compromise for me would be, he has made it once so can make it again - at least until FD implement ship salvage so we can go and get our stuff back a la dark souls).

The main issue for me is, whilst all this fantasy is happening.. and it IS fantasy, DB is STILL selling it as a plausible science fiction game. Listening to the devs sometimes I actually think that 1) they often do not know the lore themselves and 2) do not know, (or care) that whilst they show 1 thing, another dev is selling the game as something entirely different.

I wonder how Michael Brookes - who seems to be the lore man - felt about Sandro laughing off the perfectly valid and lore accurate questions about slaves in passenger modules (ok he didnt stipulate imperial slaves but the inference was obvious). I know its a tangent but its all linked up.

ED is a game which is (I thought) built around its lore.

3D printers, I like to call them nano printers sounds a bit more lore-based, stuff like that including tele-neural tethers to fighter drones, sit just fine with me, this teleportation magic dosen'y unless there's some reasoning behind it.

 

[Cynaqq]

You know what will be awesome?

When we get multicrew...

You know why?

Because it'll surely be instant teleport into the host commander's ship, even if it's on the other side of the galaxy. Then, when the session is over, everyone will be teleported back to their own ships. It won't make sense otherwise.

Will it be OK then, to suspend realism for gameplay reasons?

 

[T1-Jafo]

FD originally planned to implement jump points within systems. It was only because the backer niche (which comprised the whole community at that time) vehemently argued against it based on the same "realism" arguments you see popping up all over this thread that this did not come to fruition. That's how we got Supercruise in the first place. As for it being here now, it's probably here to stay. In most cases, it's not that big of a deal except in a few systems where travel times can be quite long... but in most it's under 5 minutes. I don't think that's going to change.

Seriously this isn't worth questioning everything over. People are really going overboard with their reactions to this feature. It allows people a major convenience of being able to circumvent multiple back and forth trips of nothing but jumping in witchspace, just for the luxury of being able to play in a different area of inhabited space-- that they already had to travel to in the first place in order to transfer anything there.

No one knows how it is going to play out, (looks like we will very soon), but in the original Elite, jumping through witchspace included the risk of being pulled out by Thargoids. Instant transfer would by-pass this and other dangers.

 

[Ziljan]

Considering exploration data most likely won't cover cost of transporting Anaconda from Jaques...moot point. Try again.

Really guys, 'long time teleportation' is weak argument. You have to travel to destination to summon your ship. That's really enough if you go to Jaques.

You think people explore for money? Ha!! They explore for 6 reasons only: rank, rank, naming rights, rank, curiosity, and rank. Most players will gladly part with 50 or even 100 million credits to keep their data and save a 22000 LY trip.

You forget, Jaques is pretty much smack dab in the neutron fields, an ideal place to quickly grind exploration rank.

Money.... pffft.

If this trick works for Jaques you can bet your patootie it will work for Obsidian Orbital, Sothis, or any billionaire CMDR who is too lazy to even make 4 jumps within the bubble.

 

[Ozram]

No it's not, and that argument has been defeated multiple times in the thread. All ship roles remain intact. The only difference is inter-station travel (for the sake of exclusively moving empty ships to engage in short range activities) is made instant and convenient for people that don't enjoy spending an hour looking at witchspace and fuel scooping. That's not a bad change. Those minutes/hours are pointless other than to make someone bored and not want to play. It does not hurt other players that people do not have to do this when this feature is released.

Nobody has refuted this because it cannot be reasonably refuted.



So difficult to deal with the wilfully obtuse!

 

[Winterwalker]

As I say it's a work in progress. So how about:
The blueprint is created after the modification by the recycling rebuilding technology. So there's no blueprint until the wheel of fortune is spun.

Yeah, I don't know. Am not against the 3D priniting of ships in principle necessarily but the argument then might go, every time the wheel is spun, that's another known blueprint (with known positives and drawbac) that really would go into the engineer's database, of blueprints to choose from. That is stretching the point I recognise.

As I say, not necessarily againt the print idea but .. when it comes to ships .. many people name them? Making them a totally disposable asset kind of loses the idea of "me and my ship have been through a lot together". That's for the sake of a two minute delay, a minor inconvenience really, that at least sells an idea that we're much more used to in the physical world, of your ship being brought to you (without the need for describing more complex 3D printing of ships).

I think a mistake to make the ships disposable .. but also think the transfer system (as described at Gamescom) won't be FD's finished idea of the mechanic .. Willing to let it slide for sure, in terms of giving FD space to build the mechanic from scratch, and integrate into the game in stages.

Personally would like to see ship quarantines though. Any station that allows you to have your (imported) ship immediately is surely much more likely to see an outbreak of Spanish Flu / Ebola / Zombies.

 

[Weps]

For those who are crying realism, then we should be queuing to get into starports, and exiting, just for starters for the "realism".

We are! Lol Have you been to a 10+ player instance around an outpost?

It's not that bad really, people get to chat with one another, we discuss the game, make jokes about the traffic, flash our light at the guy on the single medium pad which apparently has run to the loo, then some prankster starts rubbing ships with him...

 

[Bomba Luigi]

FD originally planned to implement jump points within systems. It was only because the backer niche (which comprised the whole community at that time) vehemently argued against it based on the same "realism" arguments you see popping up all over this thread that this did not come to fruition. That's how we got Supercruise in the first place. As for it being here now, it's probably here to stay. In most cases, it's not that big of a deal except in a few systems where travel times can be quite long... but in most it's under 5 minutes. I don't think that's going to change.

Seriously this isn't worth questioning everything over. People are really going overboard with their reactions to this feature. It allows people a major convenience of being able to circumvent multiple back and forth trips of nothing but jumping in witchspace, just for the luxury of being able to play in a different area of inhabited space-- that they already had to travel to in the first place in order to transfer anything there.

Why? Why is "My time is precision so make it instant" a valid enough reason to implement one instant game-thingy but not a valid reason to implement another instant game-thingy for the same reason to achieve practival the same?

Skipping supercruise or making system jumps can be just as optional as instant ship deliver, so people whos time is precious and all that can skip it and people who like it can still do it.

 

[lysan]

You know what will be awesome?

When we get multicrew...

You know why?

Because it'll surely be instant teleport into the host commander's ship, even if it's on the other side of the galaxy. Then, when the session is over, everyone will be teleported back to their own ships. It won't make sense otherwise.

Will it be OK then, to suspend realism for gameplay reasons?

Yes that is ok, (to me) because that is for game play (valid) reasons and can't be exploited. I got no problem with a Matrix Agent mechanics here.

 

[Verax]

Is it really?
There's a basic principle going on. In order to get what you want, where you want it, you need to play the game, even parts of the game that aren't as much fun as other parts.

Now, the people who don't like travel (core gameplay) get insta-transport.
So, for people like me that don't like credit or rank grind, I want insta-ship.

I mean, let's face it, why should I wait years to get a Corvette (yes I mean years).
It's the 'best' ship in the game and I want to have the 'best' fun now.

You're begging the question but the question is invalid. These two things are nowhere near the same even if you can use similar language to describe them. Get over it.

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Yes that is ok, (to me) because that is for game play (valid) reasons and can't be exploited. I got no problem with a Matrix Agent mechanics here.

Lol, ohwow. Such contradiction.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Oh, so you accept a location based limitation on ship transfer then?

I even accept that people plain out cheesed Robigo before by going there in an Asp, stacked missions by selling the mission cargo, jumped back, switched to some python, rebought the mission cargo and delivered it.
If they think that's fun, more power to them. I think it's silly, but I'm not the gameplay police.
And I still got a vette and over 500 million in assets by simply playing the game and without grind. Took 600 hours .. so what?

Going to teleport your conda back from Jacques? Awesome, you missed the exploration data of nearly 1k jumps and had to pay for the transfer. Since I don't sit here watching anyone but myself do the trip back and forth, taking 3 real life weeks and 40 hours to do it, why exactly does that affect me? I'm no the gameplay gestapo either.

And there's players who play as much a day as I play a week, so what took me 3 weeks real time to accomplish, takes them 3 days and they could do the cg trip 10x or more, while I did one run.
Why exactly am I to question that or be overly unhappy about it.
They could transfer an entire fleet of FDLs to Jacques and back in the time it takes me to get there once. SO WHAT GAMEBRAKING IS REALLY DONE HERE?
.

 

[Shar]

Mr Verex

Pull your head in your coming across like a total DH, i get the sense that your overcompensating for something, however more to the point several of the players your attacking are very experienced and knowledgeable with regard to how the game balance functions as well as being polite, generally helpful and moderate in there views I'm not referring to myself I'm a crude venomous      . Several very real problems have been outlined in this thread that you choose to ignore or just gloss over then run around patting yourself on the back for winning some non existing argument.

We all want ship transfer we just wont it implemented in a way that maintains the balance that is so carefully crafted into the game. There are several undeniably negative effect to the implementation of this feature, just because your limitations prevent you from comprehending them does not solve the problems nor mitigate our concerns.

Anyone can use insults like "your coming across like selfish brat" but that wont help to move the conversation forward so I'll take that back, I think your a bit of a forum noob so I'll suggest you try a little harder to explain your objections to what others say without dismissing them out of hand, you may find you get a better hearing and more reasonable responses.

Personally i could not give a flying f.... what you think i,m more concerned what the devs make of this 174page 2600post thread which is 75% negative about there feel good feature.

 

[Mungrul]

Yeah, this is one area where verisimilitude of simulation loses out to practicality of gameplay. While a lot of people are saying "Instant, boo!", I'm sure once it's implemented, if there were delays between transfers people would just end up getting frustrated with the system.
I reckon this is definitely a case of "game designer knows better".

 

[Verax]

Why? Why is "My time is precision so make it instant" a valid enough reason to implement one instant game-thingy but not a valid reason to implement another instant game-thingy for the same reason to achieve practival the same?

Skipping supercruise or making system jumps can be just as optional as instant ship deliver, so people whos time is precious and all that can skip it and people who like it can still do it.

Maybe you should ask for that then... although the difference is you're asking to skip all travel and I'm just embracing them allowing us to skip redundant travel. But whatever floats your boat. I wouldn't turn down the option to skip Supercruise in some scenarios. The only problem is that a lot of the gameplay is built around Supercruise (though it probably wouldn't be if FD had gone their original route) like interdictions and so on. As for mindlessly jumping in witchspace with no other intention than getting to a system 400 Ly away, there are far fewer chances for that type of gameplay, as literally most of that time all you're doing is staring at the game's loading screen. That's not really gameplay-- at least not as much. I'm not really taking a position there though, but I can say if that's the reasoning FD took, I can completely understand.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

You're begging the question but the question is invalid. These two things are nowhere near the same even if you can use similar language to describe them. Get over it.

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Lol, ohwow. Such contradiction.

You're right, they're nowhere near the same.
A Corvette requires many many hours of grinding effort to obtain compared to jumping across the bubble.

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

Yeah, I don't know. Am not against the 3D priniting of ships in principle necessarily but the argument then might go, every time the wheel is spun, that's another known blueprint (with known positives and drawbac) that really would go into the engineer's database, of blueprints to choose from. That is stretching the point I recognise.

As I say, not necessarily againt the print idea but .. when it comes to ships .. many people name them? Making them a totally disposable asset kind of loses the idea of "me and my ship have been through a lot together". That's for the sake of a two minute delay, a minor inconvenience really, that at least sells an idea that we're much more used to in the physical world, of your ship being brought to you (without the need for describing more complex 3D printing of ships).

I think a mistake to make the ships disposable .. but also think the transfer system (as described at Gamescom) won't be FD's finished idea of the mechanic .. Willing to let it slide for sure, in terms of giving FD space to build the mechanic from scratch, and integrate into the game in stages.

Personally would like to see ship quarantines though. Any station that allows you to have your (imported) ship immediately is much more likely to see an outbreak of Spanish Flu.

Good point, I'll have to think on that.

I'd really like ship transport to be a real time equivalent. I just don't think we'll get that, so I need to have an explanation that'll work at least for me. It might be as leaky as a sieve, but if it helps me not going every time I visit a shipyard it'll be working at least for me.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Maybe you should ask for that then... although the difference is you're asking to skip all travel and I'm just embracing them allowing us to skip redundant travel. But whatever floats your boat. I wouldn't turn down the option to skip Supercruise in some scenarios. The only problem is that a lot of the gameplay is built around Supercruise (though it probably wouldn't be if FD had gone their original route) like interdictions and so on. As for mindlessly jumping in witchspace with no other intention than getting to a system 400 Ly away, there are far fewer chances for that type of gameplay, as literally most of that time all you're doing is staring at the game's loading screen. That's not really gameplay-- at least not as much. I'm not really taking a position there though, but I can say if that's the reasoning FD took, I can completely understand.

Any Gameplay should have the option to skip it, so everybedoy can get what he wants when he wants. We could have cats or so, so its important to skip it (Yes yes, I'm not serious right now so don't take me too serious ^^ )

 

[Marian87]

B) it serves many people's benefit. Like busy people who don't have hours to kill just looking at witchspace and otherwise will find and support other games, leaving Elite Dangerous without much needed revenue based support and growth.

Look at all those time sinks. Better turn Elite into a complete arcade game with ultra fast or instant travel, completely automatic docking everytime, automatic or instant space to ground travel, Bubble to the core should only take 10 minutes tops.

Why are people complaining that they have work to do and don't have time to "grind" in Elite? Such is life, you don't always have the time to do what you want when you want. Deal with it!
If that's the case then you should look at other games that better fit your schedule. Not everyone likes or has the time to get involved with Eve Online for example, but I don't see them devaluing their own game so that some people can achieve anything they want in a short amount of time. Eve has managed to stay alive with a relative stable player base for 10 years, why does Elite have to get dumbed down?

The transfer should be made in a way that is both internally consistent and balanced. Transfers are needed, but not instant, maybe add some mechanic or mission that is attached to the transfer something that engages the player while the transfer is happening. The time it should take to transfer the ships should be something FDEV pays very close attention to and should do a lot of testing for.

Maybe the transfer is not possible to every location with a station for various reason, or big ships take longer to prepare for the transport or something, I don't know. All I know, instant is going to suck big time for everyone.