Engineers Showerthoughts on ED game design...

[Karl Agathon]

I recently picked up The Art of Game design (pretty educating read, even if you have nothing to do with game development) and one of the first things the authors put out there is that "the game is not the experience; it enables it, but it is not the experience".

Usually, what most people complain about is "lack of depth" and "grind" even though most agree the game is visually stunning. Thinking about the experiences in ED, we have career progression - be it Naval or Rank, exploration, trading, Power Play, CQC, piracy/bounty hunting/merc.
Some, like exploration and piracy/bounty hunting/merc, are fairly good experiences but woefully under-supported by the game.

The rest are fully (or at least more) supported experiences, but unfortunately, most agree they are "grindy" and/or meaningless (PowerPlay, Naval/Rank progression, CQC, trading).

At least to me, it seems FD can't strike the golden middle - have a game that perfectly supports the experiences it wants to provide, and provide experiences that are meaningful or satisfying.

It helped me come to terms with my own disillusionment of the game...

 

[Derath]

You don't have career progression, that is exactly why it gets called grindy you do the same activity and periodically it tells you your name has been changed from harmless to novice that is literally it there are no gameplay mechanics at all associated with rank apart from available missions, which are not different than basic missions they just have higher rewards to reach the next new title.

Its identical to cookie clicker but with much better gameplay for the clicking, but the rewards are the same (text popup with nothing else) - you can make this experience yourself by writing a new title on a piece of paper and sticking it to you, eaten breakfast? Novice chef, made a sandwich? Cheftimus Maximus, cooked your family dinner? Cheftimus Prime

Meaningful tasks come from meaningful rewards or it gets called a grind when the gameplay becomes repetitive because that is 100% of whats there.

 

[Karl Agathon]

eaten breakfast? Novice chef, made a sandwich? Cheftimus Maximus, cooked your family dinner? Cheftimus Prime

I have a sudden urge to start putting titles for accomplishing menial tasks now Mostly harmful gossiper, Elite paper stapler, Godlike toilet flusher

 

[Damonwex]

You don't have career progression, that is exactly why it gets called grindy you do the same activity and periodically it tells you your name has been changed from harmless to novice that is literally it there are no gameplay mechanics at all associated with rank apart from available missions, which are not different than basic missions they just have higher rewards to reach the next new title.

Its identical to cookie clicker but with much better gameplay for the clicking, but the rewards are the same (text popup with nothing else) - you can make this experience yourself by writing a new title on a piece of paper and sticking it to you, eaten breakfast? Novice chef, made a sandwich? Cheftimus Maximus, cooked your family dinner? Cheftimus Prime

Meaningful tasks come from meaningful rewards or it gets called a grind when the gameplay becomes repetitive because that is 100% of what's there.

Sadly I have to agree. Career progression is one area where frontier could have done something new and added a new avenue to escape the procedurally generated monotony of ED. For example they could have added some hand crafted missions that helps you progress through each rank and added a something like a commander journal to record your progress. This is also a great opportunity to expand the game lore. Also adding new contacts with interesting backstories that you unlock with each rank that gives you minor benefits like weapon discounts, limited basic material purchase or you can request favors from them like asking them to help you track down difficult to get materials.....*sigh. So many missed opportunities...

 

[metatheurgist]

I have a sudden urge to start putting titles for accomplishing menial tasks now Mostly harmful gossiper, Elite paper stapler, Godlike toilet flusher

Or you could just call them Achievements.

I dunno about the claims that this game has no depth.

Just the other day I was thinking should I put Mlitary Armor with Light Armor mod on my iCourier or Heavy Armor mod with Light Armor? Maybe I should give up on enhanced thrusters because optimal mass is so low or should I just take the maneuverability hit for some speed? Can I live with being just over optimal mass or should I go back to normal thrusters? Maybe I should go with light weapon mounts instead of efficient to reduce mass. Would the maneuverability gain be worth the loss in firepower?

Its depth is hidden.

 

[Karl Agathon]

Or you could just call them Achievements.

I dunno about the claims that this game has no depth.

Just the other day I was thinking should I put Mlitary Armor with Light Armor mod on my iCourier or Heavy Armor mod with Light Armor? Maybe I should give up on enhanced thrusters because optimal mass is so low or should I just take the maneuverability hit for some speed? Can I live with being just over optimal mass or should I go back to normal thrusters? Maybe I should go with light weapon mounts instead of efficient to reduce mass. Would the maneuverability gain be worth the loss in firepower?

Its depth is hidden.

The problems rear their ugly heads the longer you play. To refer to your example, last year I would have had no problem in that particular scenario - I love tinkering with ships.
Now, however, I hate how obfuscated info is in the UI. Maneuverability - it's a number, does it mean? There is no explanation for any of the mechanics involving your ships components. That is even more apparent with the rngineer UI - you roll on things, but there is no way to know how specifically those numbers affect your ship performance (hence EDShipyard) when the parameter is non-intuitive (like optimal mass).
The longer you play, and hopefully get better ships, you'll find that those choices won't matter - the Corvette is such a fine multi-role ship you'll feel hard pressed to pick another ship.

FD choose, intentionally or through lack of resources, to obfuscate a large number of game mechanics, and even when they try to explain it (PP) it is a horrible mess.

 

[Derath]

Or you could just call them Achievements.

I dunno about the claims that this game has no depth.

Just the other day I was thinking should I put Mlitary Armor with Light Armor mod on my iCourier or Heavy Armor mod with Light Armor? Maybe I should give up on enhanced thrusters because optimal mass is so low or should I just take the maneuverability hit for some speed? Can I live with being just over optimal mass or should I go back to normal thrusters? Maybe I should go with light weapon mounts instead of efficient to reduce mass. Would the maneuverability gain be worth the loss in firepower?

Its depth is hidden.

Theres depth there occasionally in the outfitting but most of its wasted its just a giant pile of unrealised features, for example grades E/C/B why do they exist? Roughly 1/2 of the weapons at any time are only used because they give somebody satisfaction, statistically they are useless - the engineers can lead to interesting questions just like your posing but most of them don't even come down to that :/, over half the engineer mods will never be used they have no reason to even exist (usually the integrity ones)

Its like there is room for a great depth of builds there, but everytime they set themselves up to take advantage of it they balance things in such a bizarre way that most of the choices are removed again

Edit: Also i don't think it universally lacks depth, careers lack depth as the OP originally referred to they are about as shallow as you can make a wrapping for a mechanic be it trading, pewpewing or exploration etc. The gearing is probably deep enough even with its current flaws, plenty of people experiment and can come up with decent variations on what they want to operate. I just have a hard time with this as i can't help min/maxing which is when it becomes shallow in that regard.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Theres depth there occasionally in the outfitting but most of its wasted its just a giant pile of unrealised features, for example grades E/C/B why do they exist? Roughly 1/2 of the weapons at any time are only used because they give somebody satisfaction, statistically they are useless - the engineers can lead to interesting questions just like your posing but most of them don't even come down to that :/, over half the engineer mods will never be used they have no reason to even exist (usually the integrity ones)

Its like there is room for a great depth of builds there, but everytime they set themselves up to take advantage of it they balance things in such a bizarre way that most of the choices are removed again

Edit: Also i don't think it universally lacks depth, careers lack depth as the OP originally referred to they are about as shallow as you can make a wrapping for a mechanic be it trading, pewpewing or exploration etc. The gearing is probably deep enough even with its current flaws, plenty of people experiment and can come up with decent variations on what they want to operate. I just have a hard time with this as i can't help min/maxing which is when it becomes shallow in that regard.

I agree on outfitting really needing a bit more depth to it. E-grade stuff I don't mind, it's so very cheap that it makes a great baseline for players to upgrade from and in-setting it makes sense for it to be the cheapest stuff that ship manufacturers can preinstall into their ships and still claim to sell a functioning ship. C-grade stuff is in the terrible place where it is not cheap like the E-grades and not high performance like the A-grades, while also not offering anything special; C-grade stuff might be more interesting if they reworked them into the "efficient" designs, offering great thermal and energy efficiency while still having middling stats in other areas. B-grade stuff is great in theory, heavy and durable and with a pretty solid price/performance ratio, but in practice the extra mass and loss of performance compared to the A-grade stuff is just too crippling.

I think in a way they shot themselves in the foot by trying to make A>B>C>D>E while also trying to make each one special in their own way; specialness often doesn't beat out raw stats unless said stats are pointless (such as sensors and life support). If they made each module come in basic, efficient, light and heavy variants, each with E-A grades, then we might have seen a lot more variety.

 

[Krieger]

Just my 2cr.

The team responsible for designing and implementing the Elite gameworld have done a very good job. Unfortunately the team responsible for gameplay design is foundering. The classic Elite gameplay -inherited from Elite, FE2 and FFE- still works fine but every attempt to add something new stumbled (PP, Engineers, Storytelling via CGs and riddles).

Two years have passed since the game was released and we've seen a lot of tinkering with the new stuff but no real improvements. I think the gameplay team needs a new direction with fresh ideas. That usually means: new people. Until that happens I'll concentrate on the classic gameplay.

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

As people slowly found out (or rather quickly find out in the case of NMS), it is very difficult to populate a procedurally generated game with intimate, engaging content, story lines, or player agency (purpose). Tasks tend to quickly become redundant because there is only so much time and willingness to try to fill 10,000 populated systems with purposeful content.

It's the reason why something like Star Citizen will probably feel much more "alive". Only a finite number of places you can go means a concentration of energy put into a certain number of locations that can all be filled out. Systems, planets, and NPCs will not feel "samey" in Star Citizen where they will always feel samey in ED because they are also procedurally generated from a limited pool or combinations of names, faces, hair styles, features, etc. and a finite number of comments and activities. It's unrealistic to expect anything else from a nearly fully procedurally-generated universe.

I think ED would be wise to find a way to make certain core systems "hot spots" where most of the direction and action emanates from. Focal points from which you go off into the rural systems and the frontier to do things. That would allow FDev places where NPCs can be unique with special scripts (even voice lines) and truly unique and exciting things can happen. Until then...