There's a difference between constructive criticism and whining.
If they could speed up loading screens trivially I'm 100% sure they would do so. If only to stop the whining.
Travel Needs to be Fun and Engaging
- Thread starter Blackcompany
- Start date
There's a difference between constructive criticism and whining.
If they could speed up loading screens trivially I'm 100% sure they would do so. If only to stop the whining.
Oh, you should have.
Civ5 is a bad game though and the hardcore fans agree. :^)
Besides, if people hadn't pointed out the bugs and badly implemented mechanics Firaxis would never have changed the game to the (somewhat) better.
Impossible. If others like something more than me they are white knight apologist defending an overrated game.
God forbid I have to go to bed thinking my opinion is not the Ultimate Truth.
Yep, pretty much this. I'm fully prepared to admit that the Civ games are works of skill, beauty and wonder, wherein is contained hours and hours of absorbing gameplay. It's just that to me they appear to be a dice game with better graphics.
"Buys spaceship flight simulator, but hates flying the spaceship."
The only one if your recommendations I agree with is Frontier doing a better job at predictive matchmaking. If I've targeted a system, get the instancing ball rolling already. Don't wait until after I arrive to do the server work.
As for your Supercruise recommendations, Infind it to be the best part if the game. The first iteration in premium beta was a joy to fly with. You had to be engaged if you wanted to fly anywhere quickly. The initial escape, actively plotting a course away from mass shadows, and your final planetary braking maneuver were a lot if fun.
The current iteration isn't nearly as much fun. The escape is easy, and there's little need to plot a good course. Only the final braking maneuver is good, since the braking keyhole is so narrow, and the speeds so quick, you have to get clever to bleed off enough speed to thread the needle.
Sterling MH
Banned
Still nothing to do with what I'm saying.
All your comment is saying is that you wouldn't mind a 70ly jump using all your 32t of fuel. That's not possible because you have a 2T limit on the biggest FSDs. Ask to remove that limit and you get to jump further.
ALL of which has NOTHING to do with why you won't get an autopilot.
You won't get it because currently you can get 900ly and 15 jumps or 9000ly and 45 jumps. Autopilot means you jump 45 times ALWAYS.
Think different? You hve to go 9000ly.
How many jumps is that at fastest (hint: 10x15 = 150). How many jumps is that at economy (hint: look just before "ALWAYS" = 45).
Sure, but in ed you get to Sag A* by watching netflix.
That is the level of gameplay involvement we are talking about here. While navigating, there is no serious dangers or surprises*. When the
navigation gameplay loop is 25% scoop / point / jump and 75% wait, that is *really* barebone.
I'm not saying traveling is too slow, I'm saying it's too tedious/boring. Making it slow and interesting is the goal that FD should aim for.
*except close binaries and not paying attention to neutron stars.
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Thats a choice you make for yourself, that is why we have two versions, it's called choices.
Then don't use economy mode for that journey. Break it up by exploring a few planets on the way, or scanning a system. The gameplay is there (yes it does need improving).
The jump ranges are not short, far from it, they are in fact massive.
That is if you do nothing between jumps, but again I have said there needs better exploration mechanics.
All long distance travel is a choice the player makes. I am on my way back from a long distance scientific passenger mission. I could see the distance that was need to go before I decided to take that mission, I decided to do it. Nobody forced me to do it. It was my choice. But as I like long distance travelleing and exploration I didn't have an issue with it. There are plenty of missions and other things to do in the bubble that doesn't require long distance travel.
The game gives you choices, you choose what to do with the tools you have. If you do not like long distance travel with the tools we have availbale at the moment, then don't do it.
Space, the infinite void; the are the voyages of the star ship [your ship name here]. It's ongoing mission - to reach [your destination here], before Captain [your name here] succumbs to birthday toxicity.
We've grown up with generations of space-travel TV, and something we don't ever really get to appreciate is the vastness of space, and how much nothing there really is out there.
Enterprise captains give orders, helmsmen set courses, warps drives engage, we cut scene to 10 Forward to see who's being Too Forward and not getting a date tonight, cut back to the Captain's Ready Room where a First Officer stops in to inform the captain they're sill two days away from where ever they were going, fade to commercial, come back to a little sickbay segment of someone getting queasy from a malfunctioning inertial dampener, cut back to the bridge just as they drop out of warp and in to orbit - still two days later.
In Elite, we have no commercial interlude or cut segment - we get the full two days of travel.
Because space really is big.
Engaging? No, not really. Were the Apollo astronauts engaged during their three day trip to the moon? Not particularly.
So why should we have it any easier? ;-)
I'm inclined to think, or at least optimistic enough to hope, that once we are freed from our chairs, we might be able to engage in some other activities that do not involve simply waiting for our ships to drop out of hyperspace so we can grab the controls and not fall into stars to steer around and start the process all over again.
I will say this is one area that Mass Effect did well in - as Commander Sheppard, you gave the order, your crew flew the Normandy, and when there was Time to Pass in transit, you walked around the ship, flirted, discovered, discussed, tinkered with things, even took a nap (or recreational horizontal activity), while you waited to arrive.
I think we could "meet somewhere in the middle" between the repetitive drop, circumnavigate and jump and the cut-to-commercial oh-we're-here to come up with a happy medium that everyone could enjoy all the more.
We've grown up with generations of space-travel TV, and something we don't ever really get to appreciate is the vastness of space, and how much nothing there really is out there.
Enterprise captains give orders, helmsmen set courses, warps drives engage, we cut scene to 10 Forward to see who's being Too Forward and not getting a date tonight, cut back to the Captain's Ready Room where a First Officer stops in to inform the captain they're sill two days away from where ever they were going, fade to commercial, come back to a little sickbay segment of someone getting queasy from a malfunctioning inertial dampener, cut back to the bridge just as they drop out of warp and in to orbit - still two days later.
In Elite, we have no commercial interlude or cut segment - we get the full two days of travel.
Because space really is big.
Engaging? No, not really. Were the Apollo astronauts engaged during their three day trip to the moon? Not particularly.
So why should we have it any easier? ;-)
I'm inclined to think, or at least optimistic enough to hope, that once we are freed from our chairs, we might be able to engage in some other activities that do not involve simply waiting for our ships to drop out of hyperspace so we can grab the controls and not fall into stars to steer around and start the process all over again.
I will say this is one area that Mass Effect did well in - as Commander Sheppard, you gave the order, your crew flew the Normandy, and when there was Time to Pass in transit, you walked around the ship, flirted, discovered, discussed, tinkered with things, even took a nap (or recreational horizontal activity), while you waited to arrive.
I think we could "meet somewhere in the middle" between the repetitive drop, circumnavigate and jump and the cut-to-commercial oh-we're-here to come up with a happy medium that everyone could enjoy all the more.
Sterling MH
Banned
Nope, technically I'm right.
This is why you don't get games where you press Q to win. You aren't interacting with the game when waiting your turn in Hearthstone. Try playing without waiting: can't be done. And if the game were changed to do so, it would be broken badly.
EVERY turn-based game has waiting as its gameplay.
Every single one.
Try playing chess without waiting for your opponent to have their turn, or them waiting for you. See how much fun the game is then.
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No, if you want to get what YOU consider gameplay in and remove what YOU consider not gameplay out, then you need to write the game.
1. Download chess app
2. Start game with random friend
3. Make your move
4. Put away phone until he finishes his move
5. Look at game app again
6. Rinse, repeat.
One of these does not involve interacting with the game.
The modern world eh? .. you can play chess without an app btw
Thinking about your next move isn't waiting.
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Well, in a real world match of course you can still engage with your partner or think about your next move. In ED I can't even access my ship data while in witch space.
Now there is something that can be improved .. I never liked the fact that all ship data is out of action during the jump, but then again it is a loading screen.
So I say its not gameplay someone else says it is gameplay and because i havent made my own game (with all this gameplay) the obvious truth (that it is not gameplay) is in fact not 'right' cos the fanboys dont like it?
Anyway lets not dwell on this but get back to topic! -
Jumping is boring
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Sterling MH
Banned
Yup. But there is grind and efficiency to play off against each other. Which is gameplay involvement as much as levelling up your phlanx of Roman Archers vs getting them out there and offsetting enemy advancement is. Do you optimise one aspect (time to target) or another (cost) or even add a secondary bonus (honk each system you pass through, to be sold later at a profit)?
There's also the gameplay of "I will stay within the bubble so I don't have to jump too frequently" vs "I will visit this other bubble, but it's two solid days of jumping and honking".
There is also the gameplay of "I will plan a proper route and pick up some goods here, sell them at this intermediate station where I will buy this, and then move to this station to sell some more and buy more, thenmove on to the final station where I will empty out my hold and plan my next run where I don't just spam-chain from A to Z skipping the rest of the alphabet".
Admittedly, one of the problems with E|D is that the tools to make just such a satisfying route is not possible with the ease it deserves. But there's no reason to go 6 jumps from a hi tech to agri world selling tractor parts and not bother trading at any of the 4 intermediate stations. The choice to spam-link those 6 jumps is one YOU TOOK. And you're complaining about it?? You're playing it wrong
Player initiated missions where you "phone ahead" and arrange a trade then plan ow to get there without an empty cargo hold IS the trading game E|D is currently missing. Maybe that's in Season3, along with the "Science Expeditions" that will make Exploring more interesting. NOTE: just spitballing there: I have no insight other than WWID.
But you definitely can currently work on a route plan that takes you from A which sells abc to B which wants b and sells ad, to C which wants ab and sells e which B wants along with d, as does A. You now have a route where you have something to do at nearly each stop. Game play to the gills!
But you never considered that, did you. Simple A sells a B buys a, sells b, A buys b. Find an A and B that is satisfied, complain that there's 12 jumps in a row doing nothing but looking at the wibbly wobbly loading screen timey wimey stuff.
And, yes, that IS some lovin' that Trade could do with in E|D.
Currently they're concentrating on Combat, since that's where everyone will spend SOME time in. They're also adding carrots to make people play in open and forgive the lack of the single player standalone system. And adding this trading scheme requires a heck of a lot of UI work, especially on the navigation map, but also new entire "notepad" screens to jot down possible goods to trade, and methods to inquire of places to sell or buy each of those goods. That's a hella lot of work to do, and all the while none of the rest of the game will get any loving.
This may not be what they ARE doing, nor their reasoning, but it explains what they've done to date, and what I'd do if I were Braben and the entire team.
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Increasing jump ranges or adding autopilot are both band-aids that don't address the problem directly, which is that hyperspace is a giant nothing with no interactivity whatsoever. This is what needs to be addressed. Yes it's all technically one big loading screen but we could play Galaga during the loading screen for Ridge Racer way back in the PS1 era so there's no reason we can't have some kind of minimal interactivity which makes those 15-30 seconds into an engaging play experience.
Minigames are as good a way to add interactivity as any. They should be optional in the sense that there is no penalty for ignoring them, but the potential rewards for skillful play should be something that makes engagement worthwhile. Ideally you don't have a binary success/failure for the activity, but rather a continuous curve of reward which scales to progressively higher levels of success. The actual rewards can be anything - saving fuel, skipping jumps on your route, overcharging your jump range for the next jump, reducing cooldown or spin-up time for the next jump, making your FSD wake undetectable, making your ship undetectable (and non-interdictable) for a period after you drop out, boosting your fuel scoop speed for the next star you scoop; anything so long as its tangible and valuable to the player.
There are 3 big time sinks with Hyperspace travel: the FSD charge time before the jump, the Jump animation itself, and the FSD cooldown time after the jump. All three of these are opportunities for gameplay and should be dynamic systems rather than static timers.
What if each time you jumped to a new star, you had an opportunity to use timing and skill to reduce your spin-up time into hyperspace, then as you were in the hyperspace tunnel you could perform some test of skill which upon arriving would reduce or eliminate the FSD cooldown time? What if, alongside the reduced cooldown time, your skillful engagement with the hyperspace tunnel would slowly allow you to build up a reserve of surplus FSD energy, which would allow you a one-time "boost" of acceleration during supercruise? You'd have an incentive to "chain" together as many successful interactions as possible during your trip, both to reduce the trip time and to build up the Supercruise boost charge for when you arrive at your final jump point. This is just a sample idea off the top of my head, but hopefully it illustrates the potential value added interactivity would bring.
There are a million ways to address these moments, so I don't want to propose any particular solution, but the point is to treat these moments as opportunities for meaningful play rather than dead, inert, meaningless timers. The interactions can be as simple as something inspired by the "golf swing" timing mechanics seen in Gears of War's "active reload" minigame, or something a little deeper like a re-skinned interdiction minigame, or it can be a fully fleshed-out layer of interaction with as much depth and moment-to-moment decision making as combat spaceflight; the point is to have *something* rather than nothing, and for there to be a tangible incentive to engage.
Minigames are as good a way to add interactivity as any. They should be optional in the sense that there is no penalty for ignoring them, but the potential rewards for skillful play should be something that makes engagement worthwhile. Ideally you don't have a binary success/failure for the activity, but rather a continuous curve of reward which scales to progressively higher levels of success. The actual rewards can be anything - saving fuel, skipping jumps on your route, overcharging your jump range for the next jump, reducing cooldown or spin-up time for the next jump, making your FSD wake undetectable, making your ship undetectable (and non-interdictable) for a period after you drop out, boosting your fuel scoop speed for the next star you scoop; anything so long as its tangible and valuable to the player.
There are 3 big time sinks with Hyperspace travel: the FSD charge time before the jump, the Jump animation itself, and the FSD cooldown time after the jump. All three of these are opportunities for gameplay and should be dynamic systems rather than static timers.
What if each time you jumped to a new star, you had an opportunity to use timing and skill to reduce your spin-up time into hyperspace, then as you were in the hyperspace tunnel you could perform some test of skill which upon arriving would reduce or eliminate the FSD cooldown time? What if, alongside the reduced cooldown time, your skillful engagement with the hyperspace tunnel would slowly allow you to build up a reserve of surplus FSD energy, which would allow you a one-time "boost" of acceleration during supercruise? You'd have an incentive to "chain" together as many successful interactions as possible during your trip, both to reduce the trip time and to build up the Supercruise boost charge for when you arrive at your final jump point. This is just a sample idea off the top of my head, but hopefully it illustrates the potential value added interactivity would bring.
There are a million ways to address these moments, so I don't want to propose any particular solution, but the point is to treat these moments as opportunities for meaningful play rather than dead, inert, meaningless timers. The interactions can be as simple as something inspired by the "golf swing" timing mechanics seen in Gears of War's "active reload" minigame, or something a little deeper like a re-skinned interdiction minigame, or it can be a fully fleshed-out layer of interaction with as much depth and moment-to-moment decision making as combat spaceflight; the point is to have *something* rather than nothing, and for there to be a tangible incentive to engage.
Economy routes are usually around 5ly per jump, they ARE short jump ranges and that is what Im talking about.
If all the timers and loading screen would be able to be reduced so there is less wait time for a jump and faster jump sequence people might actually choose economy route.
But having 80 jumps between the Bubble and Maia on an economy route means 30 minutes where you do NOTHING but wait.
Which means that there is a fair chance a complete aspect of hyperspace jumps (economy route) will not be used simply because of TIME.
When you spend 6 out of 8 hours to colonia waiting for a TIMER to tick just to arrive at the next system then something is wrong - And that is a FAST route to Colonia.