***POLL NOW CLOSED*** IMPORTANT, OFFICIAL SHIP TRANSFER POLL

[Diomedian]

Great thanks to Sandro and the rest of FDEV for opening up this poll, and for continuing to hear the community out on this issue!

Anyway, sorry in advance if someone has already posted an idea similar to what I’m about to propose. I do understand the need to balance immersion with gameplay, and so I’m wondering whether this could be a compromise: when a ship is summoned, the amount of real-time required is one second times the number of lightyears traveled to reach the player.

For example, a player in Sol, summoning his or her ship from Achenar, would have to wait 139.45 seconds in real-time (or about two and a half minutes), as those systems are—if I recall correctly—139.45 lightyears apart. Similarly, a player in Sol, summoning from Jacques Station, would have a wait of over six hours for the 22,000-lightyear distance to be traversed; harsh, I know, but compare that with the slog involved in flying there manually.

Of course, my calculations assume a direct jump, as opposed to plotting a route between systems: unless it’s an Anaconda with Grade 5 Increased Range Modification and 100% FSD Injection, I doubt that any ship could cross 130-odd lightyears in one go. Also, I have not accounted for different classes and ratings of FSDs, or for different ship roles (such as fighters versus freighters). Currently, this is just a proof of concept.

Regardless, with such an approach, players within the Bubble should expect a delay of no more than ten minutes when summoning their ships; since some Supercruise journeys take even longer, I think that this is more than reasonable, and it could help to provide a semblance of realism.

 

[WhatGravitas]

For me, the big question is: can we remote request ship transfers?

Part of the reason why instant is so appealing is because it's easier to fit into a busy work schedule, so you can actually play instead of sitting around, waiting. If, however, you can order a ship stored elsewhere to another system elsewhere, you can pre-plan and it's something that can be done at the end of a game session - or even at the start, making sure the ship is ready when you finish your journey.

That would mitigate some of the waiting game and tediousness of non-instant transfers while keeping the "realism" non-instant has.

 

[Reina Kaede]

What about the "immersion" crowd who see Instants as whiners? Basically in this debate everyone has whined equally loud, so FD have put it to the vote. If the Brexit vote is anything to go by, whichever side loses will just step up the level of whining....

I don't see how people who want it to be Instant can be classified as whiners when the feature was planned to be Instant by the developers of all people. Does that make FD whiners too?

 

[Kurr]

You know, it seems kind of funny that most of the people arguing for instant here are Diamond Frogs...

What exactly are you insinuating?

 

[Ian Phillips]

.... BOTH of my accounts have voted....

Heh Mahddogg, did they both vote the same way?

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

And completely ignores that the percentages your are quoting for those polls aren't even 1% of the entire playerbase. Tell me, what is the worth of 75% of 1% of 2 million players? How exactly is that indicative of what the playerbase wants at large? This isn't representative and neither will this Official Poll be unless you are willing to apply proper statistical analysis including controlling for game owners with more than one player account, but that certainly isn't being done here because BOTH of my accounts have voted. So I get MORE say in this poll simply because I've spent more money...

actually that is a lot like modern national and international democracy at the minute anyway.

Extending on that, The pool on the oficial site i think is based on WHO has the game, diferent from this forum where people WHO DONT have the game can register and wreck havok here like a shadow....

So yeah, the pool in the oficial site requiring login is much more interesting!


DELAY OHAY!!!!

 

[Paramemetic]

I have a solution for people who want time-delay in the game so you don't have to uninstall if the poll goes towards instant. You guys could've done this before uninstalling like that one guy but it's too late for him.

Just put one of these next to your flight stick, and set it to whatever the most immersive amount of time you think would be, any time you use an instant ship transfer. When it goes off it means you can use that ship. That way you can be completely immersed for an adequate amount of time without wasting the time of other people.

 

[Alec Turner]

Now I need a beer.

Not delivered instantly to your desk tho! It's a beautiful day outside and something as wonderful as a nice cold beer (oh god, now I want one too) is definitely worth a short (but realistic) delay. Besides, have you tried 3D printed beer? it tastes like cat sick.

 

[Sylow]

Why won't you make both options viable with a price tag on the transfer depending on distance?

Longer distance = more expensive to instantly transfer.

Let players pick how long they want to wait and let them pay accordingly.

.
The answer on that is simple and was already answered at other times, but also is answered in the very first posting of this thread:
.
They have the no-delay transfer already implemented and ready to go. If we accept instant transfer, we will have this feature with the 2.2 patch. If we all want delays, then delays are exactly what we will get. The first delay is, when we might get this feature. Implementing it in a version with delay requires more effort, and no development time was planed for this yet.
.
We were given no timeline for the delayed version, but we could easily expect several months of delay before such a low priority quality of life improvement would be implemented. And if they go ahead and take the coding time to implement the delayed transfer version, then it would make absolutely no sense to still provide a high-cost instant transfer option. After all, you have do admit that a delay time would be more "realistic" within the "reality" of the games universe. The voting really boils down to this: do we want the already working version at the next big patch, or do we want a delayed version, which in turn is delayed till perhaps next year?
.

 

[MahdDogg]

Your point is valid, but what I feel is the "Immersionist" POV on this is that the game we play already has set parameters for ship travel that we all have to follow. So any additional features for players in the game should be built within those parameters. Instant ship transfer does not follow those already set and established for in game travel.

Explain how Escape Pods can travel instantly tens of thousands of lightyears while still fitting into the set parameters for ship travel...

I'll be sat over here. Holding my breath, turning blue.

 

[esxste]

<snip>

POLL: Should transferring ships and modules to your location take time?

OPTION 1: No, the transfer should be instant.

OPTION 2: Yes there should be a delay of 5 minutes minimum, 100 minutes to cross the human bubble, edge to edge.

Thank you for letting us have this say. I think the way you've set this poll up is a good example of how the designers vision and direction for their game can be followed through, with appropriate input on how that vision is realised from the people who play the game.

For the record, I went with option 2

 

[xyphic]

I'll give you numbers when Frontier give them to us. Point was, there are only like 100 players on this forum who regularly post in every thread about instant-transfer killing their game. Out of how many players of ED? 10,000? 2 million?

In the previous thread, out of ~2600 respondents, the overwhelming majority wanted ship transfer of some form. Of that majority only 25% wanted transfer to be instant. The other 75% were roughly evenly split on how long the transfer should take.

Statistically speaking, for a population of 2 million, a sample size of 2600 gives us (at a 95% confidence level) somewhere +/- 2% of the actual results of this poll. Basically what it says is that we can say with 95% confidence that if we polled all 2 million players we'd expect the results to be within a margin of about 2% either side of the actual results.

We'll never know if it's truly only a vocal minority who want a delay. What Frontier have done is make the assumption that the original poll was statistically significant, and make that the new intended behaviour. If it *isn't* correct (and there are many good reasons why not) then as long as this new poll is publicised, it gives the "silent majority" the opportunity to provide their feedback (i.e. if this poll goes overwhelmingly toward "instantaneous" then it invalidates the original assumption and the original poll results). So, if you're really *really* against transfers taking time and you believe others are too, start spreading the word.

 

[CMDR Ashpoker]

Also prevents potential defenders cruising around in victim ships from quickly hopping into their combat fitted ships to face griefers.

There are two sides to the coin.

srsly ? ok say you see me being interdicted ... by the time you land and change ships and get to the location i will be LY away because the most logical thing to do is to submit and boost away.
Also why would i face the griefers ? it's like feeding the trolls. they want to destroy you. just deny them the pleasure.

 

[Paramemetic]

You know, it seems kind of funny that most of the people arguing for instant here are Diamond Frogs...

Yeah man as one of the largest, most active player communities it turns out that we have an interest in playing the game, and having fun while doing it.

I know it's shocking that players who play a game might want the game to be fun, but that's what's happening!

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Neither does it for make any sense for the rebuy screen to appear instantly. Your commander's rescue capsule would have a travel time to your last docking location and you should be locked out of the game for that time.

Oh dear. Another. I can see I will have to avoid this thread or I will end up just repeating all the posts I made in the threadnaught.

What happens when you die happens out of the game. FD merely give you a means of restarting that is friendlier than having to start again. No magic capsule required, because it does not happen in the game. Locking people out of the game for a period of time is not fun. You are not locked out of the game when a ship is transferred, because you will have the ship you are in to do stuff in.

--------

Kudos and thanks to FD for running this. Whatever the result. I hope it is being advertised elsewhere, so that whatever the result is it is as inclusive as possible, and we can all accept that they got as good and unbiased a set of feedback as possible.

 

[Kurr]

Explain how Escape Pods can travel instantly tens of thousands of lightyears while still fitting into the set parameters for ship travel...

I'll be sat over here. Holding my breath, turning blue.

It's for gameplay reasons, obvs. It's actually probably for the best. A very sad fate awaits the contents of any escape pod I find.

 

[nrage]

The idea is that the delivery time can tick down regardless of whether you are playing the game or not.

Just like those terrible Facebook games, or games with micro-payments which force you to stop playing and come back later. Because everyone loves those [rolleyes]

 

[CMDR Redcrest]

So much talk of beer! I'm taking the Mrs to the pub quiz!

 

[TomR]

I think SRVs should require fuel so we can save someone in an SRV that runs out of fuel. Emergent game play in action!

 

[ROSS-128]

In the previous thread, out of ~2600 respondents, the overwhelming majority wanted ship transfer of some form. Of that majority only 25% wanted transfer to be instant. The other 75% were roughly evenly split on how long the transfer should take.

Statistically speaking, for a population of 2 million, a sample size of 2600 gives us (at a 95% confidence level) somewhere +/- 2% of the actual results of this poll. Basically what it says is that we can say with 95% confidence that if we polled all 2 million players we'd expect the results to be within a margin of about 2% either side of the actual results.

We'll never know if it's truly only a vocal minority who want a delay. What Frontier have done is make the assumption that the original poll was statistically significant, and make that the new intended behaviour. If it *isn't* correct (and there are many good reasons why not) then as long as this new poll is publicised, it gives the "silent majority" the opportunity to provide their feedback (i.e. if this poll goes overwhelmingly toward "instantaneous" then it invalidates the original assumption and the original poll results). So, if you're really *really* against transfers taking time and you believe others are too, start spreading the word.

If we're going to play the Silent Majority game though, I call dibs on them. The Silent Majority(tm) is always on my side, therefore they support timed transfers regardless of what any poll says.