The Galaxy - Is its size now considered to be a barrier to gameplay by the Developers?

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Consensus is transfer is a good idea, instant isn't.

Emotions are going to be at boiling point because this is a game we love and don't want to see wrecked by a self-important dev decision

To be fair, reading all info, this dev has made right decision. Decision that some people will strongly dislike at first, but I am ready to bet with credits involved there will be less effect in general.

World didn't stop with Engineers. People said it would. Its the same. This is even less universally panned. Considerable amount of people want it to be instant. Considerable have problems with it.

 

[Cynaqq]

...(skipping gameplay and not having to think about ship builds)...

This is a logical fallacy.

We still have to think about ship builds as much as ever. The actual reason for the builds is to make the ship suitable for whatever you want to do with it.

The only area this change is affecting (other than play time) is the switching between fast travel builds and heavy armored combat builds. This isn't an important consideration. It's a very basic set of brainless motion between two obvious outfits for a given ship. Taking out the heavy stuff and getting a fuel scoop instead of HRPs and SCBs is a no brainer which just takes time.

Otherwise, we still have to make sure we have the right outfit for any particular job we want to do with the ship. We still have to know what a maxed out or a safe trade build is. We still have to know how to outfit an explorer ship for max jump distance. We still have to pay attention to power management for combat builds and still have to decide between types of lasers and gun mounts.

The only things we won't have to do is to actually switch between two builds we obviously decided beforehand AND to do the same switching twice for every long distance event.

This is not skipping gameplay for convenience. It's just being convenient in a previously tedious part of the game.

 

[trollson]

I do agree that its detremental to make players have to wait before they can continue playing, but short-cutting to negate the scale of the game also seems counter productive.

FD could use some variant on the "cooldown" mechanism - where action and result are simultaneous, but cannot be immediately repeated. This could be applied to module health - with repairs instant, but health then recovering to max over a (short) period. You could then say the the transported ship has, say, 0/100% health which gradually recovers. This does not stop a player taking their transported ship out immediately - but it might take 5min before it is at 100%, so avoid trouble!

However I am a bit concerned with the design decisions being promoted over the weekend - which seemed to look to quick-fix "arcade-y" gameplay rather than the deep immersive and "realistic" galaxy. Memories of LOTRO - the fun faded when insta-travel dominated and game mechanics changed to pander to lazy players (who didn't hang around in any case).

 

[Cervantes01]

We should now just skip the whole materials gathering part and just be able to buy them at any station.

Justification: Driving and flyng around pinging rocks is a bit boring. I need to get to my pew pew faster.
Lore: There are giant 3D printers at every station, to support that every station has enormous stocks of raw materials.

I agree with the sentiment of this, but I'd add that if this was the case the every shipyard should be able to sell every model of ship and all equipment and subsystems making every shipyard the same.

i'd like to be able to buy/sell materials from the commodities market for my own syntheses needs, which is a better crafting system than the Rngineers if you ask me.

Ed needs the emergence of microprofessions, resource gathering could be one of them.

 

[Siranui]

If you chose to travel that way instead of your beloved lower jump range ship, then surely you want to skip on ship ferrying time too? Or would you just be envious of others now travelling across the bubble that way?

You're making a lot of assumptions there, bud.
I have a 51LY ASP for exploration. I also use it for flitting around the Bubble when I'm doing flitting around stuff... predominantly engineers. I do a lot of flitting around because I actually enjoy travelling quite a lot. It is a ship for going places fast for when I want to go places fast. I have a range of other ships for other jobs, which I happily hike about in; the FDL went to Maia the other day and it was fun.

Not going to fly a fat vulnerable tin can to get 50 ly.

You won't, many, many other people will. What you say you will do has no influence on the direction of the paradigm shift.

The desired game play in that moment is entering the conflict zone in your Vulture. Not crossing the entire bubble to fetch it - and maybe getting to enter the conflict zone two days later, when it or your desire to partake might already be gone (assuming limited play time per day).

I think this covers it:

FSD range is a factor in ship design. If a CG is a long way away, the smart money is on either buying something local after ferrying there, or having something longer range and more practical because practicality should be a consideration. I don't run military grade hull in my FDL because... jump range. I do distant CGs in an Asp because... jump range. It's a practical consideration which is apparently not worth retaining in the game.

 

[LameoveR]

Shrink the galaxy ASAP!

 

[Vasious]

We will be given the ability to transfer any of our ships to our current dock in 2.2 - there will be no delay in this transfer as the Developers have done some testing and any delay at all was considered to be too much of an impediment to gameplay.

In the recent Gamescom streams a recurring theme was that of "lowering the barriers to gameplay".

It would appear that travelling back to the location of a stored ship to fetch it back to one's location takes too much time and is therefore a barrier to gameplay that is unacceptable in the eyes of the Developers (and a large number of players, of course).

In a game where we have been given, to the best of the abilities of the Developers, a 1:1 interpretation of the our galaxy - with hundreds of billions of stars it seems that the size of the galaxy itself would now appear to be a problem to solve in the eyes of the Developers.

It will be interesting to see what further concessions to convenience we are given in future releases that will facilitate the multi-player aspect of the game.

I do not see how this thread is any different from the "Cmdr teleport" one as it covers the same topic in essence.

Size of the Galaxy is not an issue.

When Wing locks could take you from the arrival point to a wingmates in station instantly, people used it as the 2 minutes was too long to wait.

Are we to say systems are too large in SC?

When you could select undock then log out then in to be free of the station, avoiding the 1 minute to launch, people used it

Are we to say Stations are too large?

They had to double the speed of the Hanger lowering and raising, so that it more feels unnaturally fast for the mass of it on the rollers, as people said it was too long to wait.

Are the Hangers too large?

You now longer have to wait for the blast shields to owner as the 5 seconds was too long to wait.

We could reduce everything back down the the Alpha Bubble and there would be complaints about how long the 5 second count down for the jump is -> we do have that sometimes.

People want to play, now. They don't wnt ot wait even if it is 5 seconds.

The 1:1 galaxy is not a factor in that what so ever.

 

[Mephane]

You assume trading is boring, so you wouldn't do it. One rather assumes that someone who had purchased a T-9 would feel differently and hence have no issue filling that time.

Heh, no, you misunderstood me. My point was that travelling is an essential element in the first place. If you are in a T9, that means you have already agreed to travelling, because trading equals travelling. But suddenly travelling is bad because it stands in the way of "instant action"?

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

With all my ships for different activities i made myself a "home". The place where i live, the place where i make changes to the world.
If i'm able now to use all my tools at every place at the same time......sry but this gives players a force they shouldn't have. So 1 player can on the same day trade in sothis while fighting in the pleiades and missioning in sol. The main aspect of the game, the travel, get lost because people will only use high-jumprange explorers to get around in the galaxy to their target destination very fast just to switch their to the combatship.
The extreme negative point of combat ships and their small jumprange get just....removed.

Combat CG in the pleiades? I would need a good combat ship? This takes long? Naah i just go to there with my 60ly anaconda and switch than there. Having the mighty huge corvette in 5 minutes in the pleiades and 5 minutes later in sothis.
I thought that this is an important balancing aspect. But they wanna tell us about 1 fighter and no additional core slot for them because of "balancing".

I hope they change their mind and make a great delay to ship delivery (about 1 minute per needed hyperjump) or remove it complete

 

[Tuub t Tute]

The Karana Plains possessed an enormous sense of scale, and even playing a bard, it took considerable time to cross them. It actually felt like vast savanna. It took me over eight hours to travel from Erudin's Hole to Feydwyr on foot once, and it was an amazing journey.

It stuns me that a twenty year old fantasy MMO conveyed that sense of scale so well, while a game about space set in a representation of our actual galaxy is moving in completely the other direction; seemingly at odds with the word of the guy at the helm, who is genuinely passionate about the science and richness of his creation.

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You assume trading is boring, so you wouldn't do it. One rather assumes that someone who had purchased a T-9 would feel differently and hence have no issue filling that time.

+1 for the old School EQ hat tip. I remember when the Spires came in, then PoK, then Guild Halls, then campfires. EQ could be an inconvenient game (My wife and I were 3-boxing a hydra each to make a group in the end), but the inconvenience (however masochistic this may sound) gave a sense of achievement.

Once fast travel came in, the game lost something intangible, a sense of being attached to Norrath. For all the fun I had in it, WoW couldn't capture that for me. Instant isn't always good.

 

[StiTch]

To be fair, reading all info, this dev has made right decision. Decision that some people will strongly dislike at first, but I am ready to bet with credits involved there will be less effect in general.

World didn't stop with Engineers. People said it would. Its the same. This is even less universally panned. Considerable amount of people want it to be instant. Considerable have problems with it.

I would never pretend the "world would stop". Games will always go on as long as it's earning money. That doesn't mean you can't make a poor decision that makes the game far less involving.

FD should be improving on the immersion and the sense of scale. That's why this (supposedly) a space sim. If you want to do nothing but fight constantly, well, set up camp in a system with good resources around it and stick to it. Having "gameplay reasons" is one thing but this is an almost deliberate attempt to strip away believability. If you can't make the game fun to play, make it fun to play rather than taking away as much of the gameplay as you can.

 

[Soulstain]

I think right after the log in screen the galaxy map should pop up. Pick which station you would like to log in at that you have a ship stored at. This way at least you have to fly the ship to your destination but at least if my Asp is at Jacques I can still fly my Vulture from the bubble over to the CG in Pleiades.

multiple commander slots would have fixed this issue and I'm still waiting for mine.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

Shrink the galaxy ASAP!

They will, in 2.2

 

[YinYin]

You're making a lot of assumptions there, bud.

Made sure to package them as questions and you answered, so thanks

You won't, many, many other people will. What you say you will do has no influence on the direction of the paradigm shift.

Absolutely true and I'm fine with that shift.

FSD range is a factor in ship design. If a CG is a long way away, the smart money is on either buying something local after ferrying there, or having something longer range and more practical because practicality should be a consideration. I don't run military grade hull in my FDL because... jump range. I do distant CGs in an Asp because... jump range. It's a practical consideration which is apparently not worth retaining in the game.

And here is why you will still have to consider this: transfer cost will scale with ship value. Bulk heads are super expensive. If you want to keep your transfer costs down, you will not have those equipped.

Depending on your balance it will still be practical to strip ships and reequip them on site. Or still manually ferry them.

And is it not practical to have more options for your distant CG? Do you enjoy only ever doing them in your Asp because "jump range"?

 

[Kicks]

+1 for the old School EQ hat tip. I remember when the Spires came in, then PoK, then Guild Halls, then campfires. EQ could be an inconvenient game (My wife and I were 3-boxing a hydra each to make a group in the end), but the inconvenience (however masochistic this may sound) gave a sense of achievement.

Once fast travel came in, the game lost something intangible, a sense of being attached to Norrath. For all the fun I had in it, WoW couldn't capture that for me. Instant isn't always good.

Fast-Travel in Guildwars 2 completely negated any sense of scale the game had. Luckily World Of Warcraft, even with mounts, still requires you to do a whole bunch of flying - the world still seems vast. And I like it.

 

[Ian Phillips]

Shrink the galaxy ASAP!

What even more? It already fits inside your computer.

 

[StiTch]

+1 for the old School EQ hat tip. I remember when the Spires came in, then PoK, then Guild Halls, then campfires. EQ could be an inconvenient game (My wife and I were 3-boxing a hydra each to make a group in the end), but the inconvenience (however masochistic this may sound) gave a sense of achievement.

Once fast travel came in, the game lost something intangible, a sense of being attached to Norrath. For all the fun I had in it, WoW couldn't capture that for me. Instant isn't always good.

Perfect summary of it Corpse runs were difficult but they were part of the fun. Finding the correct spell vendor for your spell was a task, but it was fun. Starting new characters with a bud but in different zones because you refused to pick an inferior race for the class, and then hugging the wall to get your lv 1 noob-o-zoid past some shadow men, was fun.

PoK killed it. Get where you want with no effort and just buy every spell you need there while you're at it. Corpse runs? What are they again? Companies are developing an obsession with this idea that people need in-their-face action 24/7 or a game can't be fun. If you are fundamentally unable to make the in-between bits enjoyable that's a design problem. Re-visit that rather than stripping it all away and being left with what you do at the end, because that's all enjoyable for the best part of a week until you realise that now you're just doing the same thing on repeat and there's no flavour, depth or believability.

 

[Comrade Error]

Really wish that the devs would hurry up and get ''inconvinienced'' by a lot of other things.

 

[StiTch]

What even more? It already fits inside your computer.

And StiTch!'s completely uncoveted, unheard of and unprestigious "comment of the day" award goes to...

 

[orfeboy]

We will be given the ability to transfer any of our ships to our current dock in 2.2 - there will be no delay in this transfer as the Developers have done some testing and any delay at all was considered to be too much of an impediment to gameplay.

In the recent Gamescom streams a recurring theme was that of "lowering the barriers to gameplay".

It would appear that travelling back to the location of a stored ship to fetch it back to one's location takes too much time and is therefore a barrier to gameplay that is unacceptable in the eyes of the Developers (and a large number of players, of course).

In a game where we have been given, to the best of the abilities of the Developers, a 1:1 interpretation of the our galaxy - with hundreds of billions of stars it seems that the size of the galaxy itself would now appear to be a problem to solve in the eyes of the Developers.

It will be interesting to see what further concessions to convenience we are given in future releases that will facilitate the multi-player aspect of the game.

No. I don'y think so. I believe the strongest motivation behind this is to encourage players to move around. Moving around makes the BGS tick. Your interaction with it is what makes the game world change. When FD decided to allow players to own more than one ship, what they effectively did was encourage players to stay in one area so they could go back and forth and change ships. DB has even said this himself on occasions that players tend to stay in the same place.

This insta-travel has been introduced to stop this habit.

What it has effectively done is introduce fast travel to the game because everyone will simply go everywhere in an Asp now and just pop into their ship of choice on arrival.