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Is the lack of real content why FD have sacrificed galactic scale?
- Thread starter CMDR Pugwash
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None.
It may be selling well, but that's due to the insane hype. It's falling from grace in the same way Spore did and with such a bump, many people won't bother going back to it. My lad has it on the PS4 and its a shell of a game, strangely fun but I don't think it has long term appeal. Having said that, I have been disappointed with the direction that Elite has taken - amazing start but powerplay, engineers, meh.....
Space Sims......come back in 10 years time maybe!
Space Sims......come back in 10 years time maybe!
Ahhhhh THIS!
no, the problem IS exactly that, that the galaxy is too big. It's so big that it's impossible to fill it with stuff. or at least, anything meaningful. It would take a 20 person team like 10 years to even flesh out the bubble and surrounding space, let alone all the other places in the galaxy. They could randomise and automise it, but then it would be "full of stuff but empty", like No Man's Sky. Each thing, feature, ruin, has to have thought behind it, it has to be modelled, placed, programmed, featured in lore/Galnet/Story. 2p
There is enough content, but it requires a lot of ship swapping. FD has taken the logical course of action and is making our lives easier. I dont want to spend half my game time swapping ships. I want to be shooting ships or mining or trading.
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Maybe it is because people realize that you dont need Steam to play Elite. I bought Elite and Horizons without resorting to Steam. Why do I want a middleman? I would rather do business with FD directly. That way my money goes on to further the development of Elite and not into the pockets of Valve's shareholders.
If you listen to Sandro on Lave Radio, its quite clear its not a knee-jerk solution. They thought long and hard about it before deciding on this. They probably knew full well many players would not like it. But it obviously fits with their long term goals for the game's design, and it seems they are willing to accept some forum rage in return for implementing things the way they want.
There again, they changed their minds on engineers and other stuff.
I'm also thinking your other conclusions are off. They are addressing local content as well.
And nope, the cowboy is not in charge. David is in charge. Sandro might come up with the designs, but DBOBE is the one who signs them off.
I find it ironic, that during the livestream, it was something in the game to trigger this instant travel bizzo. A CZ. Because every truck driver zipping along the freeway sees a gun range off in the distance and thinks "well sure, I fancy having a shot so I'll drop this load off, then zip back in my personal car that I can just hop into because it's suddenly moved across 4 states, when I drop the load off and go back to shoot at targets." because this is a thing everyone does all the time?
Sure, CGs are something that would be a good example of expedited arrival (even if they go for as long as a week so it's not like we have to turn up in the first five minutes); but there are often maybe 2-3 at most active at once generally (eleventy seems to be the very rare exception) and we end up with half finishing early so even those suddenly stop and there is nothing in that department until the next cycle.
As you say, we have a giant universe, and apart from a bunch of canned areas, there's basically nothing to do. So people endless grind engineers, or run endless missions or shoot endless ai or endlessly shoot each other. Give me some life to the universe and I'll shut up and never speak of it again.
That will probably coincide with the military career stuff FD have mentioned from time to time. I would not be surprised if it then becomes impossible (or a pain in the rear) to be part of both navies, and the rank-locked ships get some other unlock mechanism instead.
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space is big- i don't know how else to put it. and there isnt always something "happening" for someone to see. But, when someone DOES find something, it causes a ripple that makes people get out there and play. For me, that makes it compelling.
I don't think this is something some are prepared to believe judging by the comments and threads I've seen about Sandro v David. It's a bit like a kid not wanting to accept that Santa Claus isn't real because it makes them feel better to believe he is.
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I certainly hope so.
I think it is all about accepting that ED is a game, and not ultimate 'living space life yo in all grainest detail' game, but something regular people can try to play too.
I think biggest two design issues this year - Engineers and now instant travel - isn't Sandro problems at all. It's community. And no, it is no victim blaming. Let me explain. First, Engineers were created to do two things - provide tweaking mechanism to give boost to already existing modules *and* mitigate meta mechanism prevalent in modern gaming, thus making people try new different things (thus double dice roll). While there's heat meta, it is not dominant. With instant travel it's even easier - people tend to lock themselves into grind. FD seems to think - most likely for good reason - that people don't stray off their path because they are afraid to lose everything, including credits per hour. If ship transfer would be simple management issue, I think FD wouldn't mind delays. But it has to serve gameplay purpose as well.
Sandro vs. David allows to ignore these issues prevalent with playing community of ED, and boil down to "sim" vs "arcade".
It is funny how "avoiding tedious and mindboggingly boring stuff" always seems to be translated as "instant gratification" by some players.
As someone who plays Elite may 5-10 hours a month, i played less and less because it all came down to boring in between stuff (fly here, fly there) instead of interesting stuff with my player group.
Everything consisted of
1. Leave area of former operations and go to homebase
2.grab ship suited for task at hand
3. Fly to outfitter in target area for süecial modules
4. Join up and do fun stuff.
If steps one and two are removed from the equation, this is a big step forward.
And in case the galaxy gets filled up with additional content (second bubble, alien areas), this gets even more important to prevent ghost areas where noone ever goes because the stuff you can do there isnt suited for the ships that can get there.
As someone who plays Elite may 5-10 hours a month, i played less and less because it all came down to boring in between stuff (fly here, fly there) instead of interesting stuff with my player group.
Everything consisted of
1. Leave area of former operations and go to homebase
2.grab ship suited for task at hand
3. Fly to outfitter in target area for süecial modules
4. Join up and do fun stuff.
If steps one and two are removed from the equation, this is a big step forward.
And in case the galaxy gets filled up with additional content (second bubble, alien areas), this gets even more important to prevent ghost areas where noone ever goes because the stuff you can do there isnt suited for the ships that can get there.
I think in open world game major issue is that those parts are sometimes enjoyed and cherished by quite a number of people. Where you see tedious and boring, they see strategy.
Just curious, would waiting for ship to arrive would be huge deal breaker? Just curious.
I would mostly agree with your post but when I read that section I said to myself: ''well, why not join Powerplay then, and have this sense of locality or of attachment to a large faction?''. I once joined powerplay for a few days but I figured out the interdictions were just too much for me because not only I had the pirates but also the opposing powers chasing me. Yes I would agree that power play needs some re-balancing or fine-tuning maybe but what you essentially ask here is to bring something like super-power play into the main game. Sorry but No.
I think that Frontier has put (and continuous to put) a great effort in trying to satisfy as many players as possible. At the same time they tried to offer a realistically scaled universe and make it blend well with the gameplay. But this is inherently very very difficult. I really admire and respect there effort even though it doesn't seem to work very well for everyone yet. But it will get better.
It should have been expected by us, the players, that, by having a 1:1 representation of our galaxy and so many number of star systems, the game was going to be difficult to balance between realism and gameplay. Still, now that No Man's Sky has been debunked and Star Citizen has a minimum of 2-3 years of development (if not even more), Elite Dangerous is the best space sim game out there and the indisputable leader in the genre.
PS: ''A Cowboy is in charge'' is a bit too harsh don't you think
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One of the best selling german video games is thd "farming simulator" where you drive a truck over a field over and over again. So yes, the enjoyment of some is the equivalent of hell for others.
That depends. When my child is in bed it is 9. I have two hours of time. I fire up Elite and Discord (5 minutes), find out wherr the party is at, go there (5-10 minutes in my Asp), fly to and land on a station (5 minutes).
I order my ship to be transfered. Now if you factor in that I have to fly back to the station, I am ALREADY doing 20 minutes of nothing at all, or 1/6 of my total play session.
Why wait more? When my ship gets destroyed I am somehow transfered to the nearest station and my ship 3d printed by the insurance company.
If you want to create a limiting factor, do so via credits. I can choose how to earn credits and maximize my fun that way, but waiting is.. not good gameplay.
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An addendum:
I could live with a travel time for my ship ( like ... 50 ly an hour ), if i had an app and could order my ships to go somewhere from my phone.
At 50ly an hour i could have my ships on the other side of the galaxy in 5 weeks. And on the other side of the bubble in half a day.
So I could order my ships to the party when i am on the way home and login being there already.
That'd make sense.
I could live with a travel time for my ship ( like ... 50 ly an hour ), if i had an app and could order my ships to go somewhere from my phone.
At 50ly an hour i could have my ships on the other side of the galaxy in 5 weeks. And on the other side of the bubble in half a day.
So I could order my ships to the party when i am on the way home and login being there already.
That'd make sense.
"Space" needs to be interesting, anomolies (fact AND fictional), rifts in space and time that need to be found and scanned and marked on maps as a warning to others, asteroids/meteors/stellar matter being threats to planets, comets.
FD need to open up mining on planets as well.
How about FD release a "Mission Creator", there's bucket loads of role players and role playing groups that could create mission and release them as downloadable packs for others to play (obviously vetted by someone at FD (which is the sticking point of this idea I think), I'm certain some of the book writers could create a few missions and intertwine them amongst their fiction. I would imagine it would be cool to read a book and have a story link to a mission that someone has actually played.
Bascially FD would get a large supply of handcrafted missions for free.
downside is the manhours needed to sift through all the inevitable crap to get to the gems.
FD need to open up mining on planets as well.
How about FD release a "Mission Creator", there's bucket loads of role players and role playing groups that could create mission and release them as downloadable packs for others to play (obviously vetted by someone at FD (which is the sticking point of this idea I think), I'm certain some of the book writers could create a few missions and intertwine them amongst their fiction. I would imagine it would be cool to read a book and have a story link to a mission that someone has actually played.
Bascially FD would get a large supply of handcrafted missions for free.
downside is the manhours needed to sift through all the inevitable crap to get to the gems.
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Which is whay the spitted on Immersion people say is stupid is so important: Without immersion its just lots of Grinding and Farming and spending pointless time jumping around doing nothing.
Yeah but HG still made their money out of it, so they are not going to care. And if it pushes more people over to ED in the process then so much the better.
When I travel from one location to another, there's literally nothing stopping me from simply jumping immediately to another system; there's no amazing astro-anomalies to explore, or randomly generated events (being interdicted doesn't count and not what I'm talking about):
eg: Info panel: "Notice: Anomaly detected. Deneb V."
Scenario A: After approaching the planet, the CMDR finds an asteroid on a collision course with the planet, and can watch as it strikes the planet.
Scenario B: Or perhaps he finds a capital ship in a decaying orbit around the planet. The CMDR can then explore the ship as it slowly starts to come apart. Perhaps find survivors, or materials or tech or whatever.
Scenario C: CMDR stumbles across a pirate base. Or a smugglers rest. Or SOMETHING.
There is SO much space to explore, but nothing to see. Star systems are huge, but they're empty. The whole galaxy feels stagnant and unmoving.
FDev need to implement much more content to make the galaxy feel alive instead of relying on randomly generated generics (USS for example) to fill it out. The game is still growing, new things are still coming but as it stands now, ED really is -for me- a mile wide and an inch deep. No Man's Sky suffers from the same problem. It's huge and amazing, but shallow with limited activities; once you've done all those activities .. the wow-factor dies rather quickly.
For me the biggest problem is that it feels like whatever content is there is stuck behind instancing so I only get to truly experience it once I'm out of SC; which is, for me, a mood breaker because I detest this "bubble of activity" that surrounds my ship. It detracts from my immersion as it feels like I'm going from one loading screen to another to experience content. A system-wide instance would have removed the need for that horrid blue loading screen (which FDev won't admit actually IS a loading screen) for a start, and would have allowed for some interesting events as you traverse a system; such as shooting past an actual space station which you can eyeball (if you're going slow enough) instead of a bright spot beside a planet (only to be rendered when you drop out of SC once the asset as been loaded). I understand why it was implemented, of course; but I feel FDev's (imo, horrific) P2P instancing design limits what they can do, and that for me is a shame.
Anyway, minor rant over. :>
eg: Info panel: "Notice: Anomaly detected. Deneb V."
Scenario A: After approaching the planet, the CMDR finds an asteroid on a collision course with the planet, and can watch as it strikes the planet.
Scenario B: Or perhaps he finds a capital ship in a decaying orbit around the planet. The CMDR can then explore the ship as it slowly starts to come apart. Perhaps find survivors, or materials or tech or whatever.
Scenario C: CMDR stumbles across a pirate base. Or a smugglers rest. Or SOMETHING.
There is SO much space to explore, but nothing to see. Star systems are huge, but they're empty. The whole galaxy feels stagnant and unmoving.
FDev need to implement much more content to make the galaxy feel alive instead of relying on randomly generated generics (USS for example) to fill it out. The game is still growing, new things are still coming but as it stands now, ED really is -for me- a mile wide and an inch deep. No Man's Sky suffers from the same problem. It's huge and amazing, but shallow with limited activities; once you've done all those activities .. the wow-factor dies rather quickly.
For me the biggest problem is that it feels like whatever content is there is stuck behind instancing so I only get to truly experience it once I'm out of SC; which is, for me, a mood breaker because I detest this "bubble of activity" that surrounds my ship. It detracts from my immersion as it feels like I'm going from one loading screen to another to experience content. A system-wide instance would have removed the need for that horrid blue loading screen (which FDev won't admit actually IS a loading screen) for a start, and would have allowed for some interesting events as you traverse a system; such as shooting past an actual space station which you can eyeball (if you're going slow enough) instead of a bright spot beside a planet (only to be rendered when you drop out of SC once the asset as been loaded). I understand why it was implemented, of course; but I feel FDev's (imo, horrific) P2P instancing design limits what they can do, and that for me is a shame.
Anyway, minor rant over. :>
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