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

[Muetdhiver]

For players with balances in the billions, cost is meaningless.

So ?

Really, the "yea but this guy can have it an me not" argument ? Should we give up free anacondas while we're at it ?

And yeah, I someone has billions in banks I hope for consistancy sake that he can just dish out some money and gather
his fleet. After all, time is money.

 

[Lobstris]

Also I would like to point out that we already have "instant transportation" situation with us in escape pods after ship gettng blown up. We bought that - we will buy ship hauling in mere seconds.

<Glares at Pecisk> How many times? Different situation. Realistic consequences for death prevents gameplay completely. Transfer doesn't.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Come on, Yaffle - it's not nearly that bad if you consider that we already have instant cargo loading, repairing, refitting, reloading, and refuelling. All of these things should take time, probably quite a lot of time in the case of repairing and refitting, and no-one complains about them so far as I know. On top of that we don't know yet what conditions will be attached to ship transfer - personally I'd like a shipping/printing cost, even if it's instant - so cranking up the hysteria before anything is finalized seems a bit premature all things considered.

We really should agree a rota for who replies to this topic, since someone raises it so often. My turn, but can we have a volunteer for the next one? Probably sometime in the next half hour.

No one complains about instant refuel, refit, etc., because if they were not instant there would be nothing do do other than sit and watch a cut scene. That would not be fun after the first couple. That is quite different to it taking time to transfer a ship, because you do not have to wait for it. You are sitting in a perfectly good ship, and can do lots of things. Such as play the game.

OK, if you were able to send your ship off to be repaired, and get in another one (either one of yours, or a loaner, or one you rent - for gameplay reasons it must work for the noob in his sidey with no other ship) then it would be fine for it to take some time to do repairs. Eventually you will be able to go walkies in the station. When that comes, taking time to repair the ship would also be OK, as long as there are things to do when you go walkies. But at the moment, with nothing to do, having repairs take time would not work.

 

[Robert Maynard]

So ?

Really, the "yea but this guy can have it an me not" argument ? Should we give up free anacondas while we're at it ?

And yeah, I someone has billions in banks I hope for consistancy sake that he can just dish out some money and gather
his fleet. After all, time is money.

The justification for instant transfer is that it the removal of the "fetch the ship you need" barrier facilitates an immediate gameplay opportunity - to then gate that behind a credit paywall leaves a secondary barrier in place.

 

[Kitster]

For players with balances in the billions, cost is meaningless.

If cost is too high, some players still have an insurmountable barrier to immediate gameplay.

I think Micheal was also referring to the 10Ly range limit he posited in an earlier post.

 

[Robert Maynard]

I think Micheal was also referring to the 10Ly range limit he posited in an earlier post.

He was being mildly sarcastic in suggesting a 10LY summoning range limit, I think....

 

[Dipso]

That isn't the same thing at all - there is a cost (and perhaps other limitations) to transferring ships, having them follow you automatically is very different.

Michael

But with instant transport you leave yourself with a single vector of balance, giving an even larger advantage to rich players over players just starting. If you add both time and cost as factors you have more ways to balance the function if it turns out to be exploited in some unforeseen way. Not to mention you spare yourself the impossible effort of explaining the transporting the ships.

Also i can't quite buy the explanation that its technically difficult to implement. In its most simple form you can use a timer, like you already have for missions. you "transfer" the ship instantly. But mark it as "in transit" until the timer has elapsed. And only then can the player switch into the ship.
(Yes i know its always more complicated then it seems, but it should be possible to do)

I honestly think you are shooting yourselves in the foot here. Its better to ad a slight timer to it first and then if it turns out its just in the way remove it. If you launch with it instant, and then suddenly realize you have to add a timer for gameplay reasons you had not considered, its going to be a sh*tstorm like no other.

 

[Kicks]

He was being mildly sarcastic in suggesting a 10LY summoning range limit, I think....

Absolutely he was.

10ly would be pointless for ship transport.

 

[Mephane]

I honestly think you are shooting yourselves in the foot here. Its better to ad a slight timer to it first and then if it turns out its just in the way remove it. If you launch with it instant, and then suddenly realize you have to add a timer for gameplay reasons you had not considered, its going to be a sh*tstorm like no other.

I still remember the anger over the 10% loss on selling modules...

 

[Muetdhiver]

The justification for instant transfer is that it the removal of the "fetch the ship you need" barrier facilitates an immediate gameplay opportunity - to then gate that behind a credit paywall leaves a secondary barrier in place.

Jeez, really. That is the best argument you can come up with ? That is very weak strawman*. I hope you realize this.

Fetch the ship you need is removing a barrier for coop play. The price tag on a ship is not a barrier for co-op play. I've done many sessions with one player in a python and
the other one in a Cobra and guess what, zero problem. Why ? Because ED is well balanced for Co-op PvE in that regard as the Cobra is not useless with regard to a python.

*Though baiting you with a slippery slope argument worked, guilty as charged

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

But with instant transport you leave yourself with a single vector of balance, giving an even larger advantage to rich players over players just starting. If you add both time and cost as factors you have more ways to balance the function if it turns out to be exploited in some unforeseen way. Not to mention you spare yourself the impossible effort of explaining the transporting the ships.

Also i can't quite buy the explanation that its technically difficult to implement. In its most simple form you can use a timer, like you already to for missions. you "transfer" the ship instantly. But mark it as "in transit" until the timer has elapsed. And only then can the player switch into the ship.

I honestly think you are shooting yourselves in the foot here. Its better to ad a slight timer to it first and then if it turns out its just in the way remove it. If you launch with it instant, and then suddenly realize you have to add a timer for gameplay reasons you had not considered, its going to be a sh*tstorm like no other.

A agree with this. In beta have with a delay. I will happily admit I am wrong if it turns out I am. But if it goes in without a time delay, then putting one in if it does break features will be impossible as there would be such a massive outcry and you could be left with a load of broken features.

But not my choice to make in the end.

 

[Kitster]

He was being mildly sarcastic in suggesting a 10LY summoning range limit, I think....

Yeah. He was definitely joking about the 10Ly bit but possibly not on a range limit as an idea.

 

[hammerreborn]

We really should agree a rota for who replies to this topic, since someone raises it so often. My turn, but can we have a volunteer for the next one? Probably sometime in the next half hour.

No one complains about instant refuel, refit, etc., because if they were not instant there would be nothing do do other than sit and watch a cut scene. That would not be fun after the first couple. That is quite different to it taking time to transfer a ship, because you do not have to wait for it. You are sitting in a perfectly good ship, and can do lots of things. Such as play the game.

OK, if you were able to send your ship off to be repaired, and get in another one (either one of yours, or a loaner, or one you rent - for gameplay reasons it must work for the noob in his sidey with no other ship) then it would be fine for it to take some time to do repairs. Eventually you will be able to go walkies in the station. When that comes, taking time to repair the ship would also be OK, as long as there are things to do when you go walkies. But at the moment, with nothing to do, having repairs take time would not work.

Except you could buy a sidewinder at the station while you wait for refuel, or get a loaner one, if you don't want to wait.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I would definitly be for a range limit, like 300 lyr or so. That or, past some range the cost of moving increase to a large fraction of the ship cost and takes time.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

But with instant transport you leave yourself with a single vector of balance, giving an even larger advantage to rich players over players just starting. If you add both time and cost as factors you have more ways to balance the function if it turns out to be exploited in some unforeseen way. Not to mention you spare yourself the impossible effort of explaining the transporting the ships.

Also i can't quite buy the explanation that its technically difficult to implement. In its most simple form you can use a timer, like you already to for missions. you "transfer" the ship instantly. But mark it as "in transit" until the timer has elapsed. And only then can the player switch into the ship.

I honestly think you are shooting yourselves in the foot here. Its better to ad a slight timer to it first and then if it turns out its just in the way remove it. If you launch with it instant, and then suddenly realize you have to add a timer for gameplay reasons you had not considered, its going to be a sh*tstorm like no other.

Unfortunately the answers to these are:

It is not technically difficult to implement, but this is a QoL, and thus a low priority feature. Because it is low priority, they can only afford to do it if it is very cheap. If it is more expensive than very cheap, they could not just 'slip it in', they would have to drop a higher priority feature to free up the resources. Instant transfer is very simple and cheap to implement (a minor tweak to the UI, and a database record change). No timers needed, no need to link to the galaxy map to select the from and/or to of the transfer, and so on. Very cheap. As I said elsewhere, they have probably got to the point where they have spent more time and energy doing feedback, etc., that the coding would take / took.

Now the instant genii is out of the bottle, they will get your storm whatever they do. Indeed, they are seeing one now from all those that dislike the implication of the feature. If they drop the feature, those that are on the 'instant' side will be up in arms, and certainly blame those that argued against instant, leading to more hostility. Where we are is not a good place to be.

 

[Cosmos]

For players with balances in the billions, cost is meaningless.

Particuarly the hoards of players who exploited their way to billions whom Frontier did sweet nothing about.

If cost is too high, some players still have an insurmountable barrier to immediate gameplay.

I really hate this new fangled expression we have now.. 'immediate gameplay' ugh.. Removing barriers to play.. That worked out well for WoW [haha]

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Except you could buy a sidewinder at the station while you wait for refuel, or get a loaner one, if you don't want to wait.

Gosh, what a good idea. I must go and edit my post. Do you want me to put that before I suggest a loaner or rent, or afterwards?

 

[knowles2]

I wonder Micheal Brooks have you thought about how this feature affects trading CG, with this feature people will only need to fly there slow Type 9 to the CG receiving station with the goods on board, then they can use a vessel with a longer range FSD to fly themselves back to where they acquired the required goods, teleport the T9 back to that station load it up with the require goods and fly it back to the CG receiving station, rinse and repeat.

This also eliminates half the risk of flying around in a slow an cumbersome T9s. An would drastically cut down on traveling times for CGs.

Would love an explanation on how you plan to balance this up, especially with you wanting this feature to be easily accessible to people, which suggests limited to amount of copying licenses issue per ship or attaching huge credit cost to each instant teleportation seem unlikely solutions that fit with the design goals of this feature.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Jeez, really. That is the best argument you can come up with ? That is very weak strawman*. I hope you realize this.

Fetch the ship you need is removing a barrier for coop play. The price tag on a ship is not a barrier for co-op play. I've done many sessions with one player in a python and
the other one in a Cobra and guess what, zero problem. Why ? Because ED is well balanced for Co-op PvE in that regard as the Cobra is not useless with regard to a python.

We are not talking about co-op play only though are we - the feature is for all players.

The feature has been billed as removing barriers (travel time in this case) thus facilitating the player to take on any kind of gameplay that they have a ship for anywhere (with a suitable dock) at any time - if the cost is too high then that barrier to gameplay still remains.

 

[Luniticisi]

Set the cost of ship transfer accordingly, set the range cap to 100ly and remove a third of all the shipyards in the bubble ... solved