MULTICREW: Adam Woods describing MC during the Horizons' launch stream.

[Monk]

dude, those missing features might still be planned for a future update for all we know. development is iterative

Based on the way Sandro answered questions in the previous livestream, I'm not too confident about this.

All questions regarding expansion were met with the caveat, IF it is popular, IF people are excited about it, IF IF IF IF


So that leaves us with this scenario...if you are hoping for the other roles becuase you are not exactly excited about the current ones...well, then you better play the heck out of feature you don't care for or else you won't get what you want at a later date...

 

[Starshoy]

Would anyone actually enjoy sitting in a ship you don't control except for managing the power and rebooting/repairing damaged modules?

It is also a great way to sabotage your ship. Do you want some more or less random telepresence commander to have this power?

Roles 3 and 4 would be good if you have some friends you know and trust who won't mind to help you even if it is boring. But I think it is very small percentage of players. I doubt even current easy mode multicrew will be all that popular.

 

[iFred]

Regarding the features mentioned in 2015: Shoot happens. It´s pretty normal that you either run out of time or out of ressources. I don´t care, this is daily business for me. The only thing I "hate" FD for is for NOT COMMUNICATING. The only way of communicating is "When there is something to announce, we announce it". We see the result: Expectations were set in 2015, the result is not meeting the expectations -> Everyone angry. If they dont communicate anything -> everyone angry. What about "Monthly dev updates"? 50 % angry once a month but at least we "feel" informed and the discussions are "channeled" in the devupdate-subforum.

Just as an idea.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Based on the way Sandro answered questions in the previous livestream, I'm not too confident about this.

All questions regarding expansion were met with the caveat, IF it is popular, IF people are excited about it, IF IF IF IF


So that leaves us with this scenario...if you are hoping for the other roles becuase you are not exactly excited about the current ones...well, then you better play the heck out of feature you don't care for or else you won't get what you want at a later date...

it alway boggled me that MC would be good for anything other than pew pew to be honest (aside from possibly co-ordinated exploration of a planets surfice with one in a ship and one in srv but even then it would be more fun doing planet raid).

this is why npc MC should always have been the primary goal imo, with optional multiplayer stuff extra. NPCs are there purely for our benefit to entertain us. they do not need to be entertained and can be trusted to do exactly what they are programmed to do, and if they do nothing for 90 mins whilst i fly to hutton orbital, that is fine.

this last month or so I have started to think the tin foil hat wearers may actually be right, and that things are NOT going well for the future of ED.

 

[Sasquatch_Punter]

I really don't care anymore. We won't be getting the Elite Dangerous that Braben talked about. Full stop, anyone who still thinks it's happening obviously hasn't followed many games through development before.

 

[Monk]

it alway boggled me that MC would be good for anything other than pew pew to be honest (aside from possibly co-ordinated exploration of a planets surfice with one in a ship and one in srv but even then it would be more fun doing planet raid).

this is why npc MC should always have been the primary goal imo, with optional multiplayer stuff extra. NPCs are there purely for our benefit to entertain up. they do not need to be entertained and can be trusted to do exactly what they are programmed to do, and if they do nothing for 90 mins whilst i fly to hutton orbital, that is fine.

this last month or so I have started to think the tin foil hat wearers may actually be right, and that things are NOT going well for the future of ED.

Pure speculation below....

I think FDev is running into multiple roadblocks in their coding for further expansion of the game. This is why scope of upcoming features always seems to be scaled back as release nears. Add to that, delay is becoming an expectation rather than a one-off concerted effort to get things "right"

Of course, speculation is all I have to go on so long as transparency with FDev remains as opaque as ever.

 

[lokvette]

Suppose 10% of people interested in multiplayer have an interest in trying MC when it goes live (which seems very conservative). That would mean that apparently every single cmdr interested in multiplayer, or even more than 100% of cmdrs with a more reasonable baseline estimate, would love to drive another dude's SRV. Its completely nonsensical.

I was plucking figures out of me rear..

I dont know if it would increase it 10 fold, 2 fold or even by a single commander. I know its something that has been asked for, but past that, if or when it happens I dont care if it ever does MC is not for me, but it might make it more appealing over all.

 

[knowles2]

The problem is that if the original roles as described go back "on the list" then you'll likely never see them again.
FD can't seem to revisit anything.
When you've got to flog new shinies to keep the money rolling in you've got to develop said shinines rather than improving the game you've already developed.
So expect them never to change.

They do revisit stuff, the galaxy have had a lot of work and features done to it over the last two years. They continue to add to and revise the engineers.

In one of the season 1 release they adding stuff for mining, mining limpets for example.

They went back to the stations interiors to add more.

They have done a tonne of work on the mission system.

Community goals got extra feature this time around.

They went back and gave navigation beacons a purpose.

 

[NMS]

I really don't care anymore. We won't be getting the Elite Dangerous that Braben talked about. Full stop, anyone who still thinks it's happening obviously hasn't followed many games through development before.

Pretty much this. Sad.

 

[knowles2]

It was the plan when Horizons announced.
Sandro basically said in the livestream that 2.3 is as it is because not enough time.
So they didn't have time to develop 2.3 to the level originally described so you we get this current cut down version.
Why they didn't have time in over a year I've no idea.
Maybe the character creator that will provide probably no more than 20 mins of entertainment was more important than a feature that could have added untold hours of entertainment. I dunno.
It's par for the course though, not enough time, not enough resources.

All those NPC faces you see in the game, well that all down to the character creator they built.

 

[DefiledDragon]

They do revisit stuff, the galaxy have had a lot of work and features done to it over the last two years. They continue to add to and revise the engineers.

In one of the season 1 release they adding stuff for mining, mining limpets for example.

They went back to the stations interiors to add more.

They have done a tonne of work on the mission system.

Community goals got extra feature this time around.

They went back and gave navigation beacons a purpose.

You forgot the part where they made 95% of the landable planets the same colour.

 

[Omega Fighter]

They did sell many copies of elite, but how many horizons expansions?

Possibly that horizons sales did not reach expectations and because of that we get longer season and reduced features.

 

[Ignition]

Would anyone actually enjoy sitting in a ship you don't control except for managing the power and rebooting/repairing damaged modules? I can sort of see the appeal of 1 person flying, 1 person shooting. But more than at most 3 players on the same ship will result in some very boring gameplay for one of them (or all of them if jobs were divided equally). More roles for players would be great if we had huge capital ships duking it out, but we have mostly agile dogfighters and combat with engineered ships lasts just a couple of minutes in most cases.
That said this entire multicrew update is wasted on me, since I doubt I'll ever use this feature as I don't play with friends. But I suppose I'm happy for the players who do look forward to it.

It all depends on how many things you can do in each rol and thats why complexity is important.

Do you enjoy a 3rd person camera to shoot? I don't. I think its really dull and simplistic.

Thats the problem of FD because they oversimplify the gameplay to a point that makes the gameplay trivial.

 

[Ignition]

This discussion supports my belief that FD are some of the greatest Visionaries in gaming. And also some of the worst coders.

They have great ideas.....but they dont have the programing skill to implement their vision (or make it run without crashing or disconnecting every 5 minutes).

They also have their priorities twisted. I read that FD had "a whole team working on the cmdr creator for over a year". This seemed like a gross misappropriation of resources considering how many other areas of the game could have benefited from that extra manpower(milticrew especially). But they saw the potential to make more money without actually providing anything meaningful or gameplay related(or fixing what was broken). So....dont worry......multicrew may be a shadow of what was promised......but they made sure you can buy a 5 dollar colored jacket for your cmdr.....and dont forget the tattoos.......SMH

Agree, I've seen this since the beta 1.0.

The ideas are amazing but the game designers are so bad implemeting engaging gameplay.

 

[Pine Tar Coffin]

I find Elite to be a game that you play and, wish it had all this cool stuff while you play it. Like man... The opportunity is crazy what it could become but it's not yet. Then you start thinking what the heck is going wrong lol. I guess money, time, and resources plus decision making can be one hell of a gamble.

 

[shadragon]

made explicit the caveat that once the feature is in full production (and once we get our hand in the beta), it might change.

Next time, lead with this.

 

[SaliVader]

This discussion supports my belief that FD are some of the greatest Visionaries in gaming. And also some of the worst coders.

They have great ideas.....but they dont have the programing skill to implement their vision (or make it run without crashing or disconnecting every 5 minutes).

They also have their priorities twisted. I read that FD had "a whole team working on the cmdr creator for over a year". This seemed like a gross misappropriation of resources considering how many other areas of the game could have benefited from that extra manpower(milticrew especially). But they saw the potential to make more money without actually providing anything meaningful or gameplay related(or fixing what was broken). So....dont worry......multicrew may be a shadow of what was promised......but they made sure you can buy a 5 dollar colored jacket for your cmdr.....and dont forget the tattoos.......SMH

People didn't believe me when I said FDev would divert resources into stuff that can be further monetized via microtransactions at the cost of gameplay...


WELL WHO'S LAUGHING NOW HUH

 

[Besensec]

Next time, lead with this.

Wasn't it clear that such fact was already a premise in my argument, as I explicitly said that things are expected to change? Is that your only objection? I would rather see an articulated refutation to my overall argument than a patronizing waste of bits whose only purpose is to oppose focused on a peripheral detail.

Plus, FD itself doesn't seem to be that worried about making the caveats clear anyway. However, this is not the main point. Please, focus on the central idea.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

This is a good example of why FD keep quiet about the details of planned expansions.

 

[NMS]

I believe they are quiet because they never know how to do what they set out to do.