The Galaxy - Is its size now considered to be a barrier to gameplay by the Developers?
- Thread starter Robert Maynard
- Start date
Again, you checked the main discussion thread? Most people would be fine with a reasonable time delay... it's still a far cry from a more immersive system where you have to hire a frieghter or pilot to deliver your goods/ship, but it's workable. Space magic isn't.
I'm rather of the mind that the appeal of Jaques is precisely that it is out of the way, far from the maddening crowd.That was what was unique about it. People went there precisely because it requires dedication and Open Play there isn't overshadowed ed by brainless hordes of Corvettes.
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Then prove it during the beta.
I don't think people should expect to much from the cost balance wise. As any meaningful cost that might make somebody not do it goes against the stated reason why they are implementing it in the first place. A little fee to have a little money sink more, you may feel a bit when you poor but otherwise probably not.
I can be wrong of course, but implmenting something to make life easier so people can quickly have what they want and then introde hughe cost resulting in incentiving mindless grinding would be rather strange.
I can be wrong of course, but implmenting something to make life easier so people can quickly have what they want and then introde hughe cost resulting in incentiving mindless grinding would be rather strange.
As far as I'm concerned, the game is already broken and rendered unplayable in any meaningful way for, various reasons. Removing just one of those reasons, is a move in the right direction.
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Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Is anyone even going to pretend to discuss the galaxy size being an inconvenience for the devs? No? Just a mysteriously permitted duplicate of the threadnaught? Which already has another mysteriously accepted duplicate with almost the same name anyway. Nice to see good impartial moderation being applied
Not that I really care that much but the heavy handed moderation that is normally applied does get on my which quite often so to see it suddenly suspended when it's a topic the moderators generally seem interested in sticks in the throat a little.
WeirdWizard:
Moaning about a thread that has been started by a moderator, because they are a moderator is petty.
Moaning in public about moderation actions on the forum isn't permitted under the forum rules.
Either submit a formal complaint about this thread or a complaint about the moderation actions you disagree with, according to the forum procedures, but please stop making these posts.
Thank you.
With all due respect, those players are playing the wrong game then. I play casually (probably less than 5 hours a week most weeks) and I accept that within that time frame a significant portion of my playing time will be spent travelling. It comes with the game. I set aside 2 days of playing time to fly a stripped down Diamondback from LTT 4961 to Ix, to sell it there, buy and equip a Fer de Lance and then fly that back to Conway again so that I would have an FdL for bounty hunting. That was a personal choice and represented not only an investment of money, but also of personal time in order to achieve that goal.
Now, I would need to do is fly the stripped down Diamondback the 5 jumps to Ix, buy and equip the FdL, fly the Diamondback back to Conway and insta-move the FdL. If that's the kind of instant gratification people are looking for, then I suggest that Elite is not the game for them.
What about all the players who have invested considerable time, money and effort getting upgraded FSD's in their Anacondas in order to do long haul runs to Sothis and Jacques. Again now all you need is a stripped down Hauler, go to Jaques and insta-move your mining Anaconda 22,000 light years with little or no effort. This is a kick in the teeth to those players.
Basically, they might as well just give all players a fully fitted Cutter or Corvette as a starter ship so that I don't have to "spend a significant amount of my playing time" working towards achieving one.
EVE has an excellent ship transfer mechanic where you have to hire another player to move the ship for you (and run the risk of them simply stealing it). Let's put something like that in place, let's have NPC haulage firms that move the ship for you. Anything other than instantly teleporting it anywhere in the galaxy. Even as a casual player I feel this completely destroys whatever realism the game was trying to achieve.
Yes I've heard all the arguments about cargo being instantly loaded, or repairs being instantly done or refuelling being instant, and if we were going for 100% realism, yes, those things should take time, but if you can instantly move thousands of tons of starship across thousands of light years that becomes ludicrous.
No-one will ever put an FSD into a combat ship again. I would replace the Class 4 in my FdL with a Class 2 D. All it needs to be able to do is supercruise. Why would I care that the jump range is < 0.5LY when I can get it instantly transported anywhere in the galaxy?
Once again the FD team seem to have pandered to the demands of the "instant gratification" crowd, at the expense of the multitude of voices calling for some element of realism to remain. By all means let's have ship transfers, but make it take time. Even the casual player should be able to see this, otherwise I would humbly suggest Elite is not for you.
I think given Sandro's explanation, the scale of the galaxy is an inconvenience. The CGs and perhaps to a lesser point PP are the playgrounds of the time-rich, committed, skillful CMDR. The chance for time poor CMDR to engage in them and make a difference is very low and FDev's data on participation proves this.
If Winter is really coming, an agile and committed defence force will be needed, or FDev will be forced to Hand of Dev it into a glacial pace to make up for the inability for the majority of players to get involved in a meaningful timeframe and make a difference.
If Winter is really coming, an agile and committed defence force will be needed, or FDev will be forced to Hand of Dev it into a glacial pace to make up for the inability for the majority of players to get involved in a meaningful timeframe and make a difference.
Counterpoint: I don't play for nearly the amount of time per day as some of the dedicated players. Luckily for me CGs generally go on for a pretty good period of time so a few hours or whatever getting to the CG is largely inconsequential - especially if I try and "trade on the way" and arrive at a few-mil in profit.
Basically, FD noticed a few years in, that the game "they wanted to make" might not be as mainstream as they thought it would be... who would have funked?
I don't bother logging into the Beta's.
I rather play the game where what I do actually matters.
I don't need to play the Beta to foresee what these changes will bring the game. You defend aimlessly everything FD does and yet, if I were to suggest dismissing FSD size importance on ships or poo pooing the balance mechanics that FD themselves have installed in the game,you would be defending that instead!
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
< facepalm >
I say provide some evidence.
Answer: "I don't need to, because I Forsee it already, therefore I don't need to prove it."
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Thank you sir.
Just responding to the OP with one of my usual 'angry rant' posts (even though I'm not angry just filling in time while garlic bread cooks).
Yes. Of course it's a burden to the Devs. They've pulled out a vast canvas, but there will never be enough paint to fill it. See any procedurally generated game that claims to have upteen bajillion stars. There may be umpteen bajillion, but if your procedural ruleset is only selecting from 50 or so objects, then there's going to be patterns and repetition - and humans are quite good at spotting that quickly. Remember, allegedly Elite '84 could have had trillions of systems, but ended up with 8 x 256, just because people wouldn't 'believe in in', and there was too much chance of systems getting named after rude things.
They've then thrown in a simulation of a galactic economy of trillion of people. Result? The simulation is very abstract both politically and economically, and only allows player agency in corner cases (or should) - i.e. low population worlds.
Then you've thrown in multiplayer. And that the biggie. Spaceships with lazzors that pew pew attracts one crowd (who have a valid playstyle), the galaxy sim attracts another, possibly different crowd - space is cold and lonely. Space action movies, like any good fiction, chop that bit out - if you aren't dealing with the most exciting moments of your protagonists lives, why are you showing it or writing about it? If you have space and multiplayer, something's got to give. Frontier and FFE had 'realistic' acceleration, but used time compression to shorten distance. E: D doesn't have that luxury, I can't compress time whilst you remain in reality. And space is so large, with orders of magnitude involved in scale and distances, so whatever you do, the corner cases come calling (flying to Proxima Centauri was a pain in Frontier, and is still a pain in E: D).
Plus, you can't have a server for every system, so we go the p2p route, and p2p is a security and persistency nightmare. You've got to ask yourself why Elite's missions are only 'adequate', with obvious spawns or events triggered at points in the mission, and half of the time those triggers don't seem to work. Or why ship transfer is instantaneous? Is it because the Devs are idiots? No, I'd like to give them some credit - there just isn't the time and resources to do everything well, and the underlying system was a nightmare.
But through all that Elite seemed unique, 'cus it stuck to its 'pseudo-realism' guns (apparently) through the last two games - and that was what attracted at least some of the backers. Now it's sliding towards the usual MMO/FPS tropes (rhetorical question: why do I accept instant access to my weapons in The Division, don't mind changing my class as necessary in BF4, but hate ship transfer in Elite?) Trouble is, griping and moaning about realism in sims, and saying 'I'm not going to play this', is pretty much what killed the '90s sim factories (Digital Integration, DiD, Microprose) - the devs moved on to more grateful audiences in other genres and probably made more money, and were happier people because they no longer had to put up with people on the forum moaning, and calling for their jobs.
Oooh! Bread's done. Where'd the humus go? Ah, there. C'Ya!
TL/DR : 'Quick 5 minute blast with friends' and 'deep space sim' CAN. NEVER. MIX. (PROBABLY) Frontier tried (and are still trying) - and bless them for doing so.
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This is what also doesn't make sense in the design.
What's the point of having or not having time sinks and credit sinks from a cohesive design perspective.
Some may or may not like the flight or supercruise mechanics, but at least it has a level of consistency.
Maybe the mechanics need to be explained better, but currently the info so far doesn't make sense and have clear exploits like getting a ship where it normally couldn't go based on the limitations imposed by the overall game design.
![[VR] Frank_G](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/59/59394.jpg?1553527111){kind=avatar}
While i welcome the function of ship transfer, it was always like coming home after a long journey... back to the station where i have all my stuff. Moving to another station was always a little pain, so yes, transfer would be nice. However the instant transfer takes all necessity for choosing a home port obsolete... Yes, my ship is my home, but sometimes coming back to a port you feel attached to is really good. Like the end of a big adventure. With instant transfer there is no need to keep your stuff together, as it summons as you need it, wherever you are currently docked. Not good.
I have intentionally missed as many threads of that ilk as possible. I regard them as a time sink and really don't like grinding through all the similar posts.
Personally, I don't mind much either way on the time traveling of ships . What I am growing to despise is the endless arguments over ever little aspect of game play. It won't drive me away from ED, it might drive me away from the forums.
Which is a shame.
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Well said indeed!
FD. wake up, pull your head out of your rear and stop pandering to kiddies who are going to play today and be gone in a month. You have lots of very dedicated and long term fans and you are dumping on them from a height with this utterly crazy notion. it goes against everything that DB has been saying for the last 2+ years.
Stop it and return to your roots. No more dumbing down please, because the casuals you crave to pander to won't be here in a few months time, they'll move on to the next 'flavour of the month' game. This game is VERY good, please do not ruin it.