Why I quit Elite, and haven't come back yet

[JeffRyan]

I LOVE ELITE. I'VE PLAYED ELITE SINCE ALPHA. I TAKE OCCASIONAL BREAKS BUT ALWAYS COME BACK.

Really, there was no need for all my capitals, my point is I love this game, but I thought the level and detail of criticism in this case was very good. Though missions are no longer rank-locked, but overall a well thought-out and detailed feedback which I recommend EffDev at least consider.

 

[Tryst]

as you say, your opinion is yours, and there are some minor points i can't follow you (for exampel: npc spawns do take into account shiptype as well as outfitting of the ship you are flying afaik), but nevertheless...

Not so sure about that. I was flying a T6 with little more than a better grade FSD and got interdicted by a NPC Anaconda. My rank was novice and his was Dangerous. Yea, right, my T6 is really a match for Anaconda flown by a much higher ranking pilot. I wouldn't even go up against an Anaconda piloted by a Dangerous pilot in my trading Python and I've had a few of them too, I'm still a novice in combat since I don't go into combat that much if I can avoid it.

 

[Mordeth Kai]

I got about halfway through, could use some TL\DR.

I definitely agree that rewards for all the activities are seriously out of whack across the board. I don't think a difficulty setting menu toggle is necessarily the way to go, however. I think EVE had the right idea with their security ratings that altered from system to system (technically Elite has dynamic factors that tie into non-mission encounters, like government type and population etc. but their effects are neither significant nor noticeable), the easiest and smallest enemies in deep nul sec are a hell of a lot harder than the most difficult enemies of a 1.0 security system. Elite needs a more clear and consistent method for players to gauge difficulty. Personally I think a hard cap on how difficult an interdiction can be is needed, and engineer upgrades on NPC's need to be marked post scan.

Otherwise, I play a couple weeks each time additions to the game are made and then quit because reward vs. time and effort is terrible, when I see the endless and fruitless grind. I would personally agree that a serious overhaul of these things should be a top priority.

 

[to_boldy_go]

A bit too much for me to read all of it but, from what I did read, he has a point.

To sum it up, there are hardcore players, casual players and varying degrees in between. You cannot possibly cater for all of them with a fixed level of difficulty, even if it does scale with your characters abilities. Also, your combat rating is for your combat ship which is probably pimped to the hilt with engineering mods, not a poorly armed and set up cargo hauler that would probably have trouble killing a sitting duck.

A difficulty slider makes sense for offline games and it would make sense for solo or group play if the solo player or group owner sets the pace. We could then experience the level of difficulty we enjoy without it interfering with anyone else. Only open play remains hardcore.

However, to make it fair: If you set the difficulty level lower or mission rewards, trading profits, exploration profits higher than normal, you are forced to remain in solo/group from that point on or until you delete the character and start over and cannot play in open. Leave them as default or make the game harder for yourself and you are free to change modes as you wish, (open play would then be easier than your personal preferences). This would allow players to customise the game as they would enjoy it without affecting anyone else.

Coding would be really simple: Whatever the NPC difficulty level is (it WILL be numeric), subtract the percentage in the slider from it to lower it or add the percentage to raise it, it still shows as Dangerous for example but acts like a Novice. The same goes for trading, add or subtract the percentage from the sales prices so profits are higher. Rewards for bounties and exploration is the same.

We don't all want a hardcore game, some of us just want a casual game we can enjoy playing. This is one of the reasons I wanted an offline game, we can customise offline games how we please because if we cheat, we are only trying to fool ourselves.

Spot on Elite D cant be all things to all people - is like a strategy game and needs different levels. I play Civ a lot and it would be impossible as a game without lots of levels from casual players and newbies to those of us who like Civ to bite hard. Elite D needs to be the same. Modifiers wouldn't be difficult to implement and link to rankings/payouts of missions etc. It would keep players longer as they could ratch up the difficulty level with a new start. It would involve letting players have different accounts but why not?

 

[Kosmetas]

If you haven't come back how did you post and respond to others post??

 

[dubsdj]

I didn't quit but retired in Colonia. Played the game to death, went to SAG A and back and just ran out of interesting things to do in the game. I felt that retiring in Colonia in my Conda was a fitting end to the game.
However I keep checking in to see if there is anything new to do in the game, so far not much but I am still hopeful that something decent will arrive and I can come out of retirement. I want to thank FD for saving me a lot of money on rubbish steam games for 2 years.

 

[Lestat]

I didn't quit but retired in Colonia. Played the game to death, went to SAG A and back and just ran out of interesting things to do in the game. I felt that retiring in Colonia in my Conda was a fitting end to the game.
However I keep checking in to see if there is anything new to do in the game, so far not much but I am still hopeful that something decent will arrive and I can come out of retirement. I want to thank FD for saving me a lot of money on rubbish steam games for 2 years.

My suggestion is head back to the large bubble before the next update. I heading to Sag A then to the bubble. I don't think I will make it in 2 weeks :s

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

There was too much math in this topic to understand.... Lol

(Sorry!)

 

[Corbin Moran]

Some very constructive feedback from the OP. I agree with most of it.
Thank you for sharing your thoughtful analysis and lets hope FD take some of it into consideration.

(And seriously folks - to everyone who demands this post be locked - if a post like this should not be here in the "suggestions and feedback" forums, I don´t know what should be here at all. Give the guy a break )

 

[Tryst]

Spot on Elite D cant be all things to all people - is like a strategy game and needs different levels. I play Civ a lot and it would be impossible as a game without lots of levels from casual players and newbies to those of us who like Civ to bite hard. Elite D needs to be the same. Modifiers wouldn't be difficult to implement and link to rankings/payouts of missions etc. It would keep players longer as they could ratch up the difficulty level with a new start. It would involve letting players have different accounts but why not?

If the difficulty slider idea could be done, I'd welcome having two or more commanders on my account. One for times when I just want to have a casual game for a bit of fun and another when I want to be a bit more serious.

I honestly wanted an offline single player game but DB didn't keep that promise so I'm forced to play online only as a solo player. At least with single player offline, we could have as many different commanders as we want and it's limited only to our hard disk space.

I hate online only games really because too much relies on a good internet connection and those are few and far between these days Lag, (often due to overselling the bandwidth by ISP's), DC's for whatever reason and no internet because something's gone wrong at the exchange is a real game spoiler. There have been times like tonight when I see how laggy my internet connection is and realise it's not even worth trying to load up the game to have a bit of fun for a few hours. Oh well, looks like another boring movie night watching a movie I've seen a dozen times already, or maybe just an early night instead. Maybe I can dream of a day when the internet becomes a real peer to peer system with no ISP's at all.

 

[m0rl0ck]

Interesting read OP, lots that i agree with especially the RNGineers remarks.
If there were a way to get planetary landings and the rest without the RNGineers i would buy Horizons again in a heartbeat.
I enjoy the game and will probably always play the basic game, at least as long as its available to play, but will never buy any content that includes the engineers.
The RNGineers is hands down the stupidest, most grotesque (given the genre) game content i have seen in more than 20 years of PC gaming.

 

[Kevin Kyle]

Good post, good read, I agree with a lot of what was said. I hope that it was read by those that make the decisions and is considered as they continue forward with development. I also want to thank the devs for all they do, its a thankless job so often. I know its no easy task, so I will give them some time to move forward with their work. Good points from the OP though. Im sure most would agree.

 

[Rob Erstas]

I agree with most conclusions in OP post. Except, that my overall rating of the game is very good.

When I first time met RNG in Felicity Farseer I was negatively surprised, very much, but I thought that it is temporal solution. I think devs were not sure how to do it, so they did RNG. Engineering with RNG factor make this game totally impossible to balance.
The minning is too complicated, dangerous and unprofitable.
The exploration can't be the way for being rich.
For me it isn't problem, because I am a trader. From traders point of view on eg. I don't get why trade ships have worst dashboards. Look on new trucks, they have luxury cabins. FD could sell them like paint works. I would buy a better cockpit for my T6.
Also custom decals, I would like to make one with the name of the ship.
And many others...

Players always come and go. Nothing is for ever. Players get bored when they acchieve everything what the game could offer. The game is under development still. I treat it like this. Many things are not perfect, some of them are silly or frustrating. But it has huge potential and in time it will be improved.

 

[Wariamu]

Even if his idea was great. I think rude do that to promote his idea in this manner. I encourage the mods lock the topic. If the Op had any Decency he would of posted his idea in suggestion and a I quite in a different topic.

LMAO and we are gonna read that? no chance.

Another I quit topic.

I think rude to use it promote your ideas of how you think Elite Dangerous should be made.

Best idea is Make one topic called I quite on Dissuasion form and your idea here.

Seriously, if you're not going to read something because you're too lazy then just leave and please spare us your useless and completely nonconstructive comments. All those kind of comments just spark a discussion about useless stuff instead of what the OP was talking about which was way more interesting that what you had to say about how he's not going to play anymore or how you think he should have posted somewhere else. Moderators are there for a reason and they don't need you to try to do their job for them, especially if you're poor at it to put it mildly. On another note, I agree that it would have been more constructive to post this message in the suggestion section but, on the other hand, I think OP feels like he's done his share of suggestion and simply wanted to share a post and didn't give a .. about what FC would do with it because he feels that his past suggestions have not been successful in bringing what he thought would make the game better.

No one is forcing anyone to agree with anyone here and anyone can quit a game if they want and they can announce it if they want. if you don't like that then just don'T come here and read it. Nobody forced you.

 

[Cosmo]

Big wall of text, and I'm still playing. I like all the new stuff that's coming with 2.3.

 

[SeaFireliv]

I was thinking, "This appears interesting..." and then my eyes widened as it went on... and on... and on... And even looked like he had a couple of equations in there. Was this some kind of scientific paper?

Well at least its an indication it`s serious and I must respect that. I don`t think using NMS as an example was a good idea, though, as a lot of people hated it and even the hardore difficulty they still don`t like. And even hardcore treated the Player like a baby for the most part (can`t fly below a certain height over the ground because it don`t want you to be hurt). Personally, I felt NMS was a hodge-podge of a game that put bits togther on the fly and never, ever finished it. It is still considered one of the most anticipated and disappointing games ever.

Oh and Elite has a way more realistic Universe than the fake universe of NMs.

In fact I came to Elite because of NMS and Elite was much better. My only gripe is being stuck rigidly online and the somewhat nickle and diming of the game.

 

[Roybe]

I was thinking, "This appears interesting..." and then my eyes widened as it went on... and on... and on... And even looked like he had a couple of equations in there. Was this some kind of scientific paper?

Well at least its an indication it`s serious and I must respect that. I don`t think using NMS as an example was a good idea, though, as a lot of people hated it and even the hardore difficulty they still don`t like. And even hardcore treated the Player like a baby for the most part (can`t fly below a certain height over the ground because it don`t want you to be hurt). Personally, I felt NMS was a hodge-podge of a game that put bits togther on the fly and never, ever finished it. It is still considered one of the most anticipated and disappointing games ever.

Oh and Elite has a way more realistic Universe than the fake universe of NMs.

In fact I came to Elite because of NMS and Elite was much better. My only gripe is being stuck rigidly online and the somewhat nickle and diming of the game.

The Op makes some solid points...somewhere in those equations is my only issue with this game...I do not have the time in life to play it the way I enjoy it. On the other side of the equation is NMS and Diablo III, both games I can log into...and play for 30 minutes and feel like I accomplished something. I used to play E: D for 8 hours a day, being I was semi-retired at that point. I have since gone back to work full time+.

I don't blame the game for that...my time, my choice...but it is something that needs to be accounted for in a game of this type...and the expectations of the devs, the players, and those that purchase.

 

[Vitamin Arrr]

I want to commend and thank FD for apparently listening to my post. The small changes made to exploration in 2.2 and 2.3, like adding a few exploration-focused eng. mods, increasing cartographics payouts by 1000%, and improving the DBX, have made this game fun again for me, and I'm happy to report I'm back and playing again. Not that my girlfriend thanks you. LOL

 

[Jaylem]

I think your topic Give people the wrong idea. Every topic on here Give the idea what the suggestion about. Not "Why I quit Elite, and haven't come back yet". A better idea is have this topic Closed. Maybe make a few smaller topic on your different suggestions. People can talk about them separately and debate about it. So one suggestion dose not over power the other suggestions and the Devs or people don't see the use of a good idea and is hardly talk about and is never added. Also people don't care about calculations or numbers.

Well if you read some of the people post some are not reading your topic already because it too much about nothing and when you get the suggestion it like why bother reading it.

Well I don't think Frontier going to add nudity to their games. But what ever float your boat.

They are always looking for people for their jobs. I don't think number and such help people debate your ideas. If you are a game developer why not make your own game? I seen a lot of small companies make games. Some of those games are great. We can take Blind Mind Studios which made Star Ruler and Star Ruler 2. Both games are great but it a small company.

BAHAHAHA....Nice Mate!!

that's all I had to say apart from...What the Hell is with the ENORMOUS Original post??!! I got to the second sentence and gave myself a headache. Its more of a mental grind to read that than getting the corvette.

I really am getting sick of these "I quit" posts clogging forums. If you have a severe issue with the game then simply just don't play it...we don't really want to hear it otherwise.

 

[Konnivar]

Although a bit of a read you hit pretty much all the major points that have been floating around for a while now. I think the main reason we haven't seen any changes or expansion on these features isn't because they are being ignored but because other big features have been in development. Multi crew and HoloMe alone took a year+ to develop and features like an update to the professions and a reworking of power play would take some time and effort they simply couldn't spare while working on those features.

The feeling I get for season 3 is that it will focus more on improving features currently in the game and there's some pretty good evidence to support it. Sandro's improvements for exploration thread, and David Braben's Q&A saying "in a future season" for questions like "when are we getting new SRVs." If this isn't the case and they are focusing on adding more features I think they will fall a bit flat. Speaking for myself I would be more excited for an overhaul of the professions than for Space-Legs. All I can think about with space legs is: "I can stand up out of my chair and walk around my ship...now what?"