Patch Notes Update 2.3 Beta 5 Change Log

[This Forum Sucks]

Cross-posting for clarity.

I wouldn't really call it "clarity" when the system he's describing doesn't match the one people are posting evidence of:

BUT WAIT, THERE'S ALWAYS MORE!

Deadly Helmsman:
http://i.imgur.com/aGVkhL4.png

Novice Gunner:
http://i.imgur.com/HETrs05.jpg

The Actual Value
http://i.imgur.com/LAdkRNJ.png

You now get paid less if you are multicrewing, regardless of your position on the ship, unless you are Elite ranked.

I guess we're left to assume that the system as it was implemented was bugged? It'd be nice if they'd actually explain how it's intended to work because this sounds a lot like they're making it up as they go along.

 

[Citizen Joe]

If they tire of it, surely that would most likely be because they don't enjoy the feature or because they find the time spent vs reward factor too low?

Really obsidian? You're talking crap one one major count here. Fun and progression should not be mutually exclusive. There shouldn't be a "balance" separating the two to begin with. Dissuading players from even using a development heavy feature like multicrew is absolutely ridiculous as well, especially considering the wing reward changes.

 

[Xender]

Argumentation is insane: "New players need to be poor because they need to learn". Just give players story tutorial campaign for 10 hours, they will learn and they will have great fun.
I think Frontier come with idea to tangle rank with reward because they are scared about that it will kill big part of the game - grind.

Just think about it how Elite is designed. If you remove necessity to grind (for example thanks to multicrew) players can much faster reach endgame. Add to it that not everyone one like exploration of procgen/similar planets, boring ruins and weak random combination minigames. After that you will find that skipping grind part of Elite removes 80% of game content/gameplay. It is scary for Frontier, it may show how shallow Elite is and they need to avoid that.

Ship owner should decide on their own much crew receive, similar to buying Humble Bundle...

 

[dreampage]

To be honest, the gameplay in Elite is the grind itself. You're right that if we remove the grind what remains is basically nothing. But this has been the case from the beginning. People often ask me: "What is the goal of this game? What do you do in it?" And my answer is: "Whatever you want." There's no real story in Elite or any clear goals. No endgame because there's no start either. You do the same after 1000 hours that you do at the beginning. Travelling, missions, combat, etc. And if you set out a goal to yourself then it will be a grind to reach it. It's sometimes enjoyable, sometimes a chore. I'm always switching between those two feelings myself. Strange. If someone doesn't absolutely love space and astronomy then, to be honest, there's not much of a game to be found here for him. So it's true that grind itself is the meat of the game and if there would be a way to remove or drastically decrease it, there wouldn't be much longevity to it. And I think that's why Frontier is always trying to nerf everything, not to provide a shortcut to reach anything too quickly. We either love it or hate it.

 

[Darth Ender]

I haven't been keeping up.

Are the following bugs still present?

* Fighter hull not launching at 100%

* Y-Dwarf stars overheating your ship despite being colder than 0C.

* UI live-locks due to graphical update race with network callbacks (you're clicking thru the menus before the UI callbacks waiting on network updates can update the UI..leading to a locked UI in the station)

* Powerplay NPC's behaving like stupid pirates

* Powerplay NPC's behaving like you're not pledged to their power

* NPC's pirates not aware of the context of your cargo, making their actions and text make no sense (all they care about is quantity of cargo)

* NPC's not visible on radar but talking in LOCAL, in range, and/or interdicting you.

* Station you're allied with says they have a place reserved for you sometimes - yet you still have to request docking and this saying in no way guarantees a place is actually available if players have occupied all available spots.


That's a start.

I really could not care less about multi-crew. I dont want to spend half my online gaming time trying to juggle instancing issues or look for people to man my ship or vice versa. There's already enough dead wasted time in the game watching loading screens.

 

[Emp]

I play since several month now, and i barely own 30M credits. Bounty hunting, trading are my main activities. Exploiter will never be my style.

 

[sighup357]

No, it's not an issue of other people making more credits compared to me. It's an issue of game balance for the majority.

If one sector is making credits too easily, others complain about the need to inflate their income: mining, exploration and trading being the big three. The game becomes unbalanced because the one easy-money feature creates a credit inflation problem for everybody else.

Furthermore, a sudden raft of new players making easy credits to advance through the game quickly to purchase bigger ships without the accompanying piloting skills will make for easy target practice, because they won't have learned sufficient tactics to handle those ships well. So that's not a problem for me.

It does, however, become a problem for me later when they start whining the game is too hard, the AI are too difficult, and other pilots are causing them grief.

Then the whole game suffers because it has to be rebalanced once again to satisfy their woes.

Let me paraphrase to make sure I understand you: if one way of earning credits significantly outpaces another, it's a problem because people will complain. Furthermore, if new players earn too many credits, then they will fly expensive ships without knowing how to stay alive, and this is a problem because they will complain when they get creamed. And ultimately, these complaints are a problem for YOU because FDev will listen to their complaints and act on them in a way that diminishes the game. Do I have it right?

If so, I really struggle with this line of reasoning. Your worries seems to be blown way out of proportion. What I mean is that you're giving too much weight to a potential outcome that may or may not even happen (an undesirable balance pass). At the same time, you don't give enough weight to the real and immediate problem of this game being inaccessible and frustrating to new players and casual players. This is important to me because those players are the ones who leave bad reviews on Steam, which ultimately gives FDev fewer resources to work with.

I invite you to read these negative reviews: http://store.steampowered.com/app/359320/#app_reviews_hash

At no point will you read a review that says, "I made rapid progress in this game, and I was able to buy and outfit the ship I wanted... but I still got killed sometimes. 0/5 stars." What you will read is a lot of, "Making progress in this game is slow, so I decided to play something else instead."

So from my standpoint, your worries about a potential bad outcome in the future are dwarfed by the problems that new players experience today. And this is a problem because it diminishes the number of active players in our community. Do you understand?

 

[Darth Ender]

progressing in this game is not slow. A couple buddies can help get a brand new player into an FDL in under a month easy without cheating/exploiting and without playing all day every day.

Your progress is very much dependent on what you choose to do in the game. If it's too slow for you, then you're doing it wrong.

That being said, if you want quick instant gratification, pick a different game. You're ruining this one and you're a horrible person for it.

Not everything is supposed to be within any player's grasp. some things are supposed to take a long time to acquire.

The problem isn't in how long it takes things. It's in how much fun you have during the time. FDev has done a horrible job at fine tuning the basic aspects of the game and it shows as "boredom" or complaining about how long things take. Instead of content or interactivity, many things are simply sitting behind repetitive menu clicks and loading screen time sinks. 2+ years after release, these things simply stick out worse and worse to players. So far all the new features dont seem aimed to address any of that. Just an attempt to distract you and it's a weak one at that since it relies on other players and schedule conflicts will reduce the impact this has on what a player experiences day to day in the game.

 

[Nanoid]

Yep. Knew it was too good to be true, you guys were surely going to drag it down with something.

 

[ifthisworks]

Hmmm, devs keep removing features I like and leaving in the crap. Like the comms panel being easier to read with portraits (though portraits were mostly blank) it still looked and read better. Now it's almost back to it's old boring cluttered self. Hopefully, at least the almost impossible to read red text has gone.

Cameras now only show shots of ships instead of what is behind you (on asp at least). Why? What use is a camera that just shows your ship? Are there that many self-centred who just want to look at their ship all day? Or is it because they have the biggest mouths?

 

[sighup357]

That being said, if you want quick instant gratification, pick a different game. You're ruining this one and you're a horrible person for it.

Is this comment addressed to me? If so, that hurts my feelings, Mr. Darth Ender. Either way, I think you're getting a little too worked up -- you're blowing a minor disagreement way out of proportion.

 

[CMDR Kyle Donovan]

NPC crew still progress in rank faster than human crew, and make a higher share of profit.

I want the people I fly with to progress in rank. I want to give them a share of what the ship makes for profit. I want to be able to explore with a friend and get equal credit and rank progression out of joint discoveries.

 

[Darth Ender]

Is this comment addressed to me? If so, that hurts my feelings, Mr. Darth Ender. Either way, I think you're getting a little too worked up -- you're blowing a minor disagreement way out of proportion.

not to anyone in particular or i would have quoted. It's to the people in general who demand this or that with an amount of effort that you expect on a casual game or a game meant to be completed in 10 hours. Not a game meant to be played for years.

But you're right. The blame isn't on the gamers who prefer the game this way or that way. It's in the people who are running the show who dont seem to have a solid vision of what they want the game to be and the drive (or maybe ability) to make that happen regardless of the noise this or that kind of gamer make.

 

[Lngjohnsilver1]

Your progress is very much dependent on what you choose to do in the game.

That being said, if you want quick instant gratification, pick a different game.

Not everything is supposed to be within any player's grasp. some things are supposed to take a long time to acquire.

ditto this.

 

[This Forum Sucks]

That being said, if you want quick instant gratification, pick a different game. You're ruining this one and you're a horrible person for it.

I disagree, I put it to you that people who actually enjoy doing fun things aren't harming you in the slightest and that you and your super tedious ilk are the ones constantly trying to get the game ruined because you know you'll be the undisputed kings of a game that's so boring only dullards like yourself would put up with it. So why don't you pick another game?

 

[Raven Blackwood]

Thanks! Hurray... Pause menu loads quicker!!

 

[Trilyden]

To be honest, the gameplay in Elite is the grind itself. You're right that if we remove the grind what remains is basically nothing. But this has been the case from the beginning. People often ask me: "What is the goal of this game? What do you do in it?" And my answer is: "Whatever you want." There's no real story in Elite or any clear goals. No endgame because there's no start either. You do the same after 1000 hours that you do at the beginning. Travelling, missions, combat, etc. And if you set out a goal to yourself then it will be a grind to reach it. It's sometimes enjoyable, sometimes a chore. I'm always switching between those two feelings myself. Strange. If someone doesn't absolutely love space and astronomy then, to be honest, there's not much of a game to be found here for him. So it's true that grind itself is the meat of the game and if there would be a way to remove or drastically decrease it, there wouldn't be much longevity to it. And I think that's why Frontier is always trying to nerf everything, not to provide a shortcut to reach anything too quickly. We either love it or hate it.

^ this right here is probably one of the most accurate descriptions of the game that I've ever seen.

 

[sebinator]

it would be nice if a crew member could handle the module that repair modules .. since the helm is busy at pilot the ship

 

[CMDR IPL Victim]

it would be nice if a crew member could handle the module that repair modules .. since the helm is busy at pilot the ship

That would be the job of the Quartermaster. You know, the one who also manages the mining gear, and cargo, and limpets... you know, the one that is AWOL from the commanders update?

 

[Ian Skippy]

Hmmm, devs keep removing features I like and leaving in the crap. Like the comms panel being easier to read with portraits (though portraits were mostly blank) it still looked and read better. Now it's almost back to it's old boring cluttered self. Hopefully, at least the almost impossible to read red text has gone.

Cameras now only show shots of ships instead of what is behind you (on asp at least). Why? What use is a camera that just shows your ship? Are there that many self-centred who just want to look at their ship all day? Or is it because they have the biggest mouths?

You can set up custom cams dude...