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

[Marian87]

Sorry I just don't get why there is any form of economy that involves hauling any form of machinery or advanced technology around as a commodity if it can just be printed by any outpost or facility. Resorting to 'licensing' as an explanation is unsatisfactory, because the technology is so useful (and supposedly ubiquitous), everybody and their dog would be clamouring for licenses, or competitors would be filling the market with other licenses that make roughly the same thing (can't license a Hoover? I bet Dyson would sell you one!) or they would be pirated left right and centre.

Worms. Can. Of.

Alien Isolation's vibe worked because it kind of stuck to the '70s retro sci-fi feel of the film. Elite's fiction worked better sticking to its '80s roots.

+100000000000


This instant information transfer, 3d printing, licensing mumbo jumbo across an infinite distance just makes absolutely no sense in the ED universe as many have already pointed out and it is just mind blowingly out of place. So out of place that explaining it in the lore is completely silly and useless.

Plus, lets not forget that according to the increasingly less important lore, human civilization had regressed somewhat losing various types of FTL drive technology, admittedly less useful than the FSD in some cases. How does any of this stuff make sense?Nothing adds up to a civilization that is able to transfer absolutely anything instantly anywhere.

And on the gameplay side I understand the reasons but to me the outcome doesn't seem to be worth it. Just shelve it until it can be tied with some future gameplay mechanic or replace it with remote selling + build template saving.

 

[fennster]

How does it break Mission. It's pretty obvious really. Basically mission restriction on cargo and combat become meaningless. Flying certain ships mean that there are consequences to what is available for you to do in missions. At the moment I am flying a Cobra mk4. This is my choice noting it will limit me on certain activities and missions. Now there will be no limit as I can instantly summon the big trade ship to do that lucrative mission. It trivialise' the whole mission system. It's an easy instant gratification button. It's a get rich quick button.

I remember the kaushpoos CG it was over a 100ly away from my home system, but after the trade CG, still managed to get back and get my Vulture, and I only play a few hours a week, but it felt like an achievement. Now it will be just easy.

Not only that, but it will boost ceos/sothis/robigo mission stacking. Start in a python, stack all the missions to outposts until the cargo is full, switch to cutter/anaconda, fill to the brim with large pad missions. Fly out all the large pad missions, switch back to python, finish the remainder.

 

[Hajile]

There are no consequences any more to your choices ... thanks for highlighting another way in which ED has trivialised itself

this!

 

[Julio Montega]

But by introducing a 'half-baked' feature you set a precedent for its use, which is then difficult to rescind later. Why not consider other options (actually, I'm sure other options were considered), such as increasing jump range on FSDs on all ships, that would preserve the balance in the game, would not be potentially as disruptive, and don't require contortions of fiction to justify? (I could see one drawback, and possible explanation for not tweaking FSDs, if longer ship ranges broke the route finder).

Not the first negatively recepted precedented feature...
POIs
Engineers
Powerplay
SCBs
HRPs
Missiles in 1.0 (took nearly 2 years to rework)
Cargo amount in station instances (limit was introduced, limit was removed...)

The list is becoming a scroll,
an elder-scroll...

*cynism*
Seems the people need a patch.
*/cynism*

 

[Jypson]

There are no consequences any more to your choices ... thanks for highlighting another way in which ED has trivialised itself

I've only been around since 1.0 so forgive my ignorance, but when did our choices ever have real consequences?

 

[jprelph]

So it breaks missions...by allowing people to....play more missions? Come again?

It breaks missions because it devalues them - there's no downside to your ship choice, you can take any mission you like so the game loses all consequence for ship choice and you can always take the most profitable option. It's the equivalent of an MMORPG where you can suddenly change class at will. If you stumble into a sticky situation with your healing priest in WoW you can't suddenly instantly become a combat class character because it gets you out of a tricky spot or lets you take a particularly juicy quest.

Having no consequences for player choices reduces player involvement in the long term - it doesn't increase it.

 

[Cosmos]

But the jury's still out on whether it's an overall win.

Frontier says the gameplay it enables is worth it, while others are saying it messes up the gameplay.

We will see.

'Catering to the casuals' (not exactly a flattering term but accurate), at the expense of your hardcore, core, playerbase, has been the death knell for many a game, and it will be true of ED if they repeat the same mistake. Yes on quality of life improvements, bring em on, no on the massively immersive breaking change that trivialise existing game concepts and make no sense.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

So it breaks missions...by allowing people to....play more missions? Come again?

It does by making the constraints irrelevant. Why have cargo restraints in the first place then. Starting in a sidewinder means I can't do certain lucrative missions, why can't I start in a fully decked out Python.

Can you really not see the issue here.

It makes ship choice irrelevant as well.

 

[rootsrat]

Nanites disassemble, and instantaneously reconstruct at destination. Nanites operate on an instant quantum level, so it really is disassembly and reassembly over an arbitrary distance.

Nothing is truly getting printed, nor is anything getting destroyed. It's quantum nanite molecular reassembly at its finest

If I had to come up with a lore explanation I'd either somehow tie it to quantum entanglement or explain that in order to create an exact copy of the object molecule by molecule in order to keep modifications intact require much more than a scan, it has to be broken down as well. The materials aren't destroyed so much as recycled for other ship building.

still, no reason you couldn't make two or more copies of the same ship after that (licensing and IP rights could make that illegal, though)

As stated above I don't like the printing transfer idea, but that's how I'd explain it if I had to.

What if they sold the old ship to partially cover the cost? Would also explain the low cost of the transfer

#geniusatwork

Oh well, guess we'll need to live with a bit of magic in Elite. It could turn out to be a fun feature after all and it may as well be tweaked or even entirely changed in beta. Right, that's it, I'm past all the stages now. Back to life

 

[Shar]

Adapt or leave i guess. personally i,m not going to let this feature spoil my enjoyment of the game. The game is evolving resistance is futile.

 

[Mephane]

Guys, please, everyone talking about how the 3D printing of entire ships is incompatible with the ingame world at large - I don't think FD will budge on the instant ship transfer. But I suppose they are open on the lore about it, so let's just ask them to leave it unexplained, like the instantaneousness of repairing your ship. It is much more realistic to get that at least.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

I've only been around since 1.0 so forgive my ignorance, but when did our choices ever have real consequences?

Well, there are no real consequences as it's a game ... don't like what you see - switch it off.

Oh sorry, you were being serious ? Please, forgive my ignorance - couldn't tell over your attitude

(Plucked out the air : Take a mission - abandon it - consequence .. there are more, but you weren't really asking to find out ...)

 

[Jypson]

It breaks missions because it devalues them - there's no downside to your ship choice, you can take any mission you like so the game loses all consequence for ship choice and you can always take the most profitable option. It's the equivalent of an MMORPG where you can suddenly change class at will. If you stumble into a sticky situation with your healing priest in WoW you can't suddenly instantly become a combat class character because it gets you out of a tricky spot or lets you take a particularly juicy quest.

Having no consequences for player choices reduces player involvement in the long term - it doesn't increase it.

1. The transfer costs money, so you're not exactly robbing the bank here.
2. The Mission Board re-roll exists, so you can just roll the dice until you get what you want anyway. Also, if I see a mission I want but don't have cargo space or whatever, I just go to the shipyard and pick a ship that does.
3. There has never been any consequences in Elite: Dangerous. I'm a Duke, a Vice Admiral, and Ally to all the powers? I'm a serial killer in one system and a sheriff in the next? I'm allied with every faction in my home system? Oh yeah, and I have dirt cheap insurance that replaces the exact same everything if I die, instantly? Consequences, eh?

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Guys, please, everyone talking about how the 3D printing of entire ships is incompatible with the ingame world at large - I don't think FD will budge on the instant ship transfer. But I suppose they are open on the lore about it, so let's just ask them to leave it unexplained, like the instantaneousness of repairing your ship. It is much more realistic to get that at least.

I personally can buy them being tansported if delay is very symbolic and there's hard limit. I already laid down 3D printing issues...so yeah, no 3D printing lore explanation for ship transfer, please. That feels out of place.

 

[GraXXoR]

Sad person takes his Conda of many lightyears to Jack. Transfers his FDL of many guns and starts blasting explorers. When bored, buys sidey, suicides to bubble and transfers all ships back.

In effect this feature tells explorers to stay in private or solo for ever since 2.2.

Even if they cap distance and Jaques is excluded, this exact same thing will happen at CGs located on the fringes, at Maia, Sothis and other outlying stations.

The vast majority of PvPers have already maxed their bank balance or don't give a flying fig about return on investment because PvP never gives the big payouts anyway, so pretending that cost will help is a false premise.

 

[Privata]

Guys, please, everyone talking about how the 3D printing of entire ships is incompatible with the ingame world at large - I don't think FD will budge on the instant ship transfer. But I suppose they are open on the lore about it, so let's just ask them to leave it unexplained, like the instantaneousness of repairing your ship. It is much more realistic to get that at least.

3D printed fighters : okay , they are kits and still need plastics , metal and all that but I can belive they can be printed.
However normal ships : NO ! if thats possible trading makes no sense

 

[Lightspeed]

In this instance the convenience was the overriding factor. That and keeping the feature within a sensible budget - complicating it unnecessarily introduces more points of failure and for a relatively small quality of life improvement, it's not worth the risk. The instant transfer also provides positive aspects to how players can interact the game - it gives them greater freedom to participate in wider aspects in what's going on. We did of course consider the downsides, and other ways of doing it - Sandy in fact was very much in favour of a delay, but it was felt that this weakened the utility of the feature. The point was to allow more freedom with ship use, not add additional barriers.

Michael

This sounds very much like public-relations-speak that comes from large corporations (or even the railway or bus company) trying to make excuses for shoddy service ....

words like "convenience" for the customer (they like to imply that this is better for us, and they know best)

"sensible budget"- (you don't want to be paying too much for it, now do you ? - we have your pocket in our foremost thoughts - but Michael really means they are hardup to pay developers to fix stuff !)

"points of failure"- (enough said, we know about those and there are too many - it seems you don't want to be tracking them down, and it costs too much in manpower - ok understandable, just admit it and we can move on)

"quality of life improvement"- (are we talking some kind of life insurance sales, here ?)

"weakened the utility of the feature"- (what precisely does that mean, behind the words?)

So what do I, personally, take away from this statement? "We wanted to introduce a cheap and cheerful game mechanic that lets you use lots of ships, never mind how it affects the galaxy simulation."

Granted, you didn't have to respond, and are on a hiding to nothing when you do, and I should feel grateful we have an official response on this subject - but I can't help feeling very disheartened by that response.

I guess I shall just have to be patient and see how all this might affect my gameplay out at Jaques, and the bigger game in general [sad]

 

[Lobstris]

In effect this feature tells explorers to stay in private or solo for ever since 2.2.

That's sort of my take on it. We'll see in beta. Though again, given the lower proportion of players *IN* beta, and Frontier have a habit of making the betas unrepresentative to allow testing of other features (i.e. lowering ship costs so people can try out new things - like the Beluga for instance) it may be very possible that the true effects won't be know till things go live, without some planned phases to the beta.

 

[Leo Sagan]

3. There has never been any consequences in Elite: Dangerous. I'm a Duke, a Vice Admiral, and Ally to all the powers? I'm a serial killer in one system and a sheriff in the next? I'm allied with every faction in my home system? Oh yeah, and I have dirt cheap insurance that replaces the exact same everything if I die, instantly? Consequences, eh?

Which is one of the main problems in E : D at this point. Let's hope it gets addressed at some point in the future ...

 

[Parmo]

They shouldn't worry about saving face because from what I saw re 2.2 patch much of the new content coming looks amazing. But its these shortcuts they make from time to time that undermine much of the great work they do in other areas. On this insta transfer issue they have it seriously wrong and need to reconsider. The vast majotity of people seem to be against how they want to implement it, and its actually us who are going to live with the result. Despite what Frontier say about making a game they want to play its nay on impossible to believe they spend all week putting in long hours to the game only to get back home and boot it up for the night or weekend.

How do you know or why assume, it's the vast majority? Just asking.
...
I have to say I am a bit passionate about this game. I love to play it, live it: I too think ED has got it seriously wrong with ship transfer as proposed. I feel the same for Powerplay and the RNG Engineers. The CQC was a waste of effort, effort that should have been re-directed to the game ED: having to see it in my GUI is rubbing the salt in my wounded eyes.
But it does have lot going for it that I continue to enjoy. Most of the new 'content' is good but it seems that each upgrade is being filled out with plastic microbeads.