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

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.

All aboard the rep train.
 
any other MMO game world I've played....

Ah, but alot of folk aren't playing it as an MMO... In Skyrim and Oblivion you could fast travel across the entire game map once you'd visited the relevant destination before. This is kind of similar - you still have to do the initial trip, just not do it over and over again.
 
Ah, but alot of folk aren't playing it as an MMO... In Skyrim and Oblivion you could fast travel across the entire game map once you'd visited the relevant destination before. This is kind of similar - you still have to do the initial trip, just not do it over and over again.

There are very popular Skyrim mods that disable fast travel precisely because it destroys all sense of scale and distance in the game world.
 
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.

You seem to be missing the point.
Those min/max build decisions aren't particularly complicated and now they are universally available and you only need to think about it once.

Previously, you might need to compromise on them.
For example, I once saw a CZ while I was trading, so I bought a Viper III locally and outfitted it very poorly because that was all the station had available.
That CZ ended up being considerably more challenging and quite a change of pace than if I'd just been able to insta-summon an optimal ship.
 
This is a good point. If any ship can be instantly replicated anywhere on demand by 3D printing technology, then all ships and all components should be available from all shipyards to buy.
 
It´s just a completely daft decision. With just a bit of common sense you could make both sides happy and still deliver good gameplay. No need whatsoever to jump from extreme to extreme.
 
i guess it is more about "make it possible to experience size where there is any experience to get".

playing elite:shiplogistics didn't add to my experience of size at all, exploring the galaxy, or backing minor factions or trading rares with stations >50 ls out does. waiting for MM to spawn let me not experience size of planets, cruising above a surface and looking for pois does... etc.

movies and books do know cuts. and still allow you to experience space/size.

2.2. also includes supercharged jumps from white dwarfes, though.
 
As daid, SC solved this problem in a very elegant way.

After 18 months of playing this game, I cant stand the endless jumps anymore. It s a game blocker and demotivation. Cant think of a better way to waste my spare time jumping around for hiurs. Jumping is not gameplay after a while, it's simply a frustratung experuence.

I m happy that Fdev goes into this direction. Less time sink, less frustration, more actual gameplay tume.

It's also not emerging breaking. If my Vorvette can hover hads up on a platet s surface, that is weired.
 
i guess it is more about "make it possible to experience size where there is any experience to get".

playing elite:shiplogistics didn't add to my experience of size at all, exploring the galaxy, or backing minor factions or trading rares with stations >50 ls out does. waiting for MM to spawn let me not experience size of planets, cruising above a surface and looking for pois does... etc.

movies and books do know cuts. and still allow you to experience space/size.

2.2. also includes supercharged jumps from white dwarfes, though.

Supercharged whatnows? Might be off-topic but could you explain in PM?
 
Just for comparison:
Naval Action models the Carribean and it can take you like 3 real time hours to get from edge to edge. A simple sail from Kingston (pretty much center map) to Honduras takes at least half an hour (depending on ship).

You either had to be highly organized to join any fleet battles (PvP i.e.), be lucky to be in the right place at the right time or stick to a region hoping the enemy and your friends would turn up.

They implemented teleports to outposts you can create, too, fiddling around with cooldowns, maximum amount of teleports / day and such. I've always had the impression they were going mostly for realism but in the end playability is what counts for most of the players.
 
Or you can just not use it... Which is what I do, does anyone seriously need a mod to prevent them from using something they don't want to use?!

No. They need that so they don't have to watch others using things they don't want them to use.

This is once again equally about some feeling forced to do things optimally (whatever is possible) as well as dictating how everyone can play.
 

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Funny thing IMHO is :

David Braben is obviously very fond of maximizing realism whereever possible and add science if possible.

Then on the other hand we see an (overdue) QOL improvement, but (deja vu) one that currently would be bound to suffer from *drumroll* sub-par Implementation.
Does that ring a bell with anyone?

Frankly, I was surprised to see some of the Design Decision Makers suddenly make what looked like a 180flip on a dime.
Things that were strongly advised or suggested/requested - but put down - over 2 years now, suddenly come along. Presented with comments like "we're super excited we can do this now... Core Game and Quality of Life!".
Hearing that during the LiveStream almost made me spill my Coffee to be honest.

But not only that, but (as Frontier often goes) we now're headed from the old "invent a workaround and cherish it if you find one" no, you can't do that... no you will not be able to do that to a fully digital switch.
Oh sure, you can do that now and it'll be instantaneous for maximum convinience.
That's literally digital going from 0 to 1.

IMHO it looks like something's up. Like they realized something terrible and now throw everything and the kitchen sink at to stop and (whatever it is) hope they turn it around.

But maybe this is just a very difficult major Update.
Main selling point of V2.2 is "Fighters" which doesn't look so 'major', neither do the many other small nice things although they naturally accumulate (I take it Station interiors took alot of Resources).
[speculation]Maybe it's because the actual major Update happens to be the one they can't showcase without major Spoilers - but exactly that being the one that consumed the vast majority of their Dev Resources. Like Aliens maybe ;) [/speculation]
 
On the actual topic of the Galaxy size, I do think that Frontier made a massive rod for their own backs with the 1:1 scale galaxy. Or perhaps more accurately the size of the inhabited bubble. It would of been one thing if the game had been single player because by definition then the action is were the player is at. But to do it in an online massively multiplayer game is asking for trouble. One of the key components of an MMO is a degree of player density and the ability to get where the action is with as little inconvenience as possible.

To begin with ED ignored this principle entirely and it could be argued was really a massively singleplayer online game, but so many compromises had to be made for the (underused) online part to work it was a shadow of the singleplayer experience that it arguably needed to be for that to work. I think Frontier recognised this pretty early (prior to launch) and made the call to move towards a more typical MMO game model, unfortunately they were already stuck with the galaxy at that point. So yes I think it is an inconvenience now and barring a massive player rebellion I expect them to continue to ease getting to where you want to be with who you want to be with. For an MMO that's really not a bad thing.
 
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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.

And this is what i fear. Our playerfaction has chosen a place a bit outside the bubble so that NOT everyone can interfere our BGS and because we WANTED to have a place we can call our home.
I just can't be happy about the idea that someone can just "beam" his FDL to a system to hunt players and 5 minutes later after a few jumps with a 60ly conda he "beams" his FDL to a place he normally would need 2 hrs for only to hunt players there.
Espacially trade ships like the T-9 are used to make a great impact on the BGS and they shouldn't be just beamed around the galaxy.
 
Then on the other hand we see an (overdue) QOL improvement, but (deja vu) one that currently would be bound to suffer from *drumroll* sub-par Implementation.
Does that ring a bell with anyone?

It resonates with me. It's like FD take an idea then, either due to budget/time constraints - or a false sense of "reducing barriers to game-play" the actual implementation of a cool idea is lack-lustre. When you think what all these features *could be*, it can be very depressing.

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Can i invoke Betteridge's law?

No, you can't :p
 
i guess it is more about "make it possible to experience size where there is any experience to get".

playing elite:shiplogistics didn't add to my experience of size at all, exploring the galaxy, or backing minor factions or trading rares with stations >50 ls out does. waiting for MM to spawn let me not experience size of planets, cruising above a surface and looking for pois does... etc.

movies and books do know cuts. and still allow you to experience space/size.

2.2. also includes supercharged jumps from white dwarfes, though.

The majority of people don't have an issue with the feature they're introducing.

It's the "instant" aspect of it that removes the sense of scale and effort. If you had to wait a short time and do something else in that time then cool. You're still saving time, you're still getting to play the game.

And from a believability level...

Right now...I have to manually transport DATA, over a thousand years in the future, for a client mission giver. But...we can instantly teleport a several hundred tonne ship...

WOOOOOOO LOGIC! ;)

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Then on the other hand we see an (overdue) QOL improvement, but (deja vu) one that currently would be bound to suffer from *drumroll* sub-par Implementation.
Does that ring a bell with anyone?

Exactly the point.
 
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