My thoughts on where things are going.

[Manticore]

The Day of Reckoning is coming for the bean counters, and those that listen to them. The ones at Frontier. The ones everywhere in the AAA development side.

Could you please post the memo you got from FD that confirms this? It seems like you have some inside information that no-one else in this thread is aware of.

Do you work for them (FD or the bean-counters)?

If you could elaborate and fill in the details around your facts that would be great.

 

[VR Golgot]

Could you please post the memo you got from FD that confirms this? It seems like you have some inside information that no-one else in this thread is aware of.

Do you work for them (FD or the bean-counters)?

If you could elaborate and fill in the details around your facts that would be great.

Whispers: You won't get a reply. I don't think he's heard of the internet...

 

[Mengy]

All musings about 'progression', as clever they might be, are pretty pointless as long as there is no goal for any sort of progression. More credits for bigger ships is all what we get right now - but for what and why exactly? The only progression that feels kind of real to me is improving my skills like combat or self-imposed goals like mastering FAOFF which isn't even necessary for combat, speed docking in FAOFF or even oddities like self-imposed iron man. All of which isn't well supported nor encouraged by the game. Fortunately (for me) I'm bad or just untalented enough so that I have a long time to chew away on it and that's why I still enjoy the game I guess.

At least this sort of voluntary progress 'feels' rewarding in a way that learning to swim or riding your bicycle once did. Not sure if it's possible to get perfect at it but if in doubt you can still find new challenges after all, like e.g. FAOFF with fixed weapons. But what then?

To be fair to FDev, if they would install fixed goals that give progression a meaning or a deeper sense, what then once the player has reached such a goal? I'm afraid this also wouldn't work in an open ended game. This is by the way the same issue I have with EVE, though I enjoy the path to nowhere a lot more in Elite.

So unless someone comes up with a really good idea to fix this issue we are still at point zero.[where is it]

This is why game mechanics are so very important to an open world sandbox like Elite. The mechanics are what enable the free form gameplay, they provide not only the structure but the opportunity via that structure to experience unique and unexpected events simply by playing the game. Without a robust and thorough set of engaging and interactive mechanics, an open world sandbox feels limited and boring, mundane. Imagine Minecraft without redstone, enchanting, farming, and animal breeding.

This is what's currently plaguing Elite, the game's mechanics are undeveloped and too basic, and thus there just isn't much to allow a lot of interesting and emergent gameplay. The basics are there but they need development. Combat is really the only aspect that has it good, but even then while combat has gotten lots of great features added to it, it too still needs better mechanics, especially for both pirating and bounty hunting. Stuff like Power Play, CQC, and yeah even Multicrew do very little to improve the mechanics of the sandbox, which is what Elite has needed desperately since 1.0, and yet Frontier continues to develop shiny marketable new foundations rather than build upon the ones they already have that still need it.

With a robust set of core mechanics you wouldn't need grindy goals like Engineers and Power Play to keep commanders entertained, the emergent nature of the multiplayer sandbox itself would take care of that. It's Game Design 101, but Frontier continues to read from Marketing 101 instead for some unknown reason.

Probably because greed is good, and money. [hotas]

EDIT: To be fair, Frontier is a business, and from their development over the past three years I feel like making money is more important to them than making Elite be the best game it can be. I suppose they feel like they must develop big shiny features which sound attractive and marketable in order to keep the money rolling in, that's one design philosophy. I tend to think that actually making a great game can sell itself, irregardless of whether or not you have huge new marketable features with every single patch.

 

[MarcusKross]

No no no no no... OP no.

See.. combat is where the fun is at and the more flashy pews the more people buy the game. It is not about depth, its not about solid foundations or greatly designed gameplay.. it is all about Frontier making money and keeping the illusion that someday.. someday we will be getting the game which was told in the DDF.

 

[MrFailfactory]

This is why game mechanics are so very important to an open world sandbox like Elite. The mechanics are what enable the free form gameplay, they provide not only the structure but the opportunity via that structure to experience unique and unexpected events simply by playing the game. Without a robust and thorough set of engaging and interactive mechanics, an open world sandbox feels limited and boring, mundane. Imagine Minecraft without redstone, enchanting, farming, and animal breeding.

This is what's currently plaguing Elite, the game's mechanics are undeveloped and too basic, and thus there just isn't much to allow a lot of interesting and emergent gameplay. The basics are there but they need development. Combat is really the only aspect that has it good, but even then while combat has gotten lots of great features added to it, it too still needs better mechanics, especially for both pirating and bounty hunting. Stuff like Power Play, CQC, and yeah even Multicrew do very little to improve the mechanics of the sandbox, which is what Elite has needed desperately since 1.0, and yet Frontier continues to develop shiny marketable new foundations rather than build upon the ones they already have that still need it.

With a robust set of core mechanics you wouldn't need grindy goals like Engineers and Power Play to keep commanders entertained, the emergent nature of the multiplayer sandbox itself would take care of that. It's Game Design 101, but Frontier continues to read from Marketing 101 instead for some unknown reason.

Probably because greed is good, and money. [hotas]

EDIT: To be fair, Frontier is a business, and from their development over the past three years I feel like making money is more important to them than making Elite be the best game it can be. I suppose they feel like they must develop big shiny features which sound attractive and marketable in order to keep the money rolling in, that's one design philosophy. I tend to think that actually making a great game can sell itself, irregardless of whether or not you have huge new marketable features with every single patch.

While it is true that there is more than one successful business model, the reason that they read from Marketing 101 (as you say) is not unknown at all. Removing outliers and special cases, when it comes down to brass tacks, there are two solid methods of running a successful business; Retention Focused, and New Customer Focused.

If your product is something like laundry detergent, then you would use a Retention Focused approach. You want (and need) people to continue buying your product, ideally without thought or consideration for any other product. Additionally, there are always New Customers that will need said product, and you try to catch them using current, demographic-appropriate advertisements.

If your product is something that has a life cycle that can be projected with a high degree of accuracy (like video games), you do not use a Retention Focused approach. The percentage of players that will still be here one year from now can be projected with a relatively small margin of error - games are an entertainment medium, and as such, they do not entertain indefinitely, no matter what you add, or what experiences you create. At some point, everyone who started playing this game on launch day will no longer be playing the game, and the average tenure is a known quantity. If your product is a video game with on-going development, your best bet is to continually attract new players (who also have a known tenure), and the most successful companies maintain a development cycle that closely matches the player cycle. People coming back to a game like this are somewhat of a non-factor, because Frontier already has their money. They can perhaps get more money from this group, but the better bet is with a New Customer Focus.

This is why your cable/Internet/Mobile phone providers give new customers the great deals, but tell you, the tenured and loyal customer, to pound sand. This is common knowledge in the United States, and I don't understand why people are unable to recognize this when it appears in other forms.

New headline features sell more copies of the game, on all platforms. Putting the meat on the bones (even though I want to see them do it), does not. It's simply unrealistic (and foolish) to either think that Frontier should spend an update on something like that (even if they do need to), or expect them to do that at all. It will happen, but it will be over time, as a secondary priority, and this approach makes the most business sense.



To the OP and others who voice similar things:

I believe that your patience will be tested, but ultimately, rewarded. Even if you can't stick it out until then, put yourself in a good place in the game, and keep an eye out for when that day comes.

It's not like this game has a subscription that you have to pay - come back when it meets your expectations.

Riôt

 

[Mengy]

New headline features sell more copies of the game, on all platforms. Putting the meat on the bones (even though I want to see them do it), does not. It's simply unrealistic (and foolish) to either think that Frontier should spend an update on something like that (even if they do need to), or expect them to do that at all. It will happen, but it will be over time, as a secondary priority, and this approach makes the most business sense.

This is true, however, you need to have a good, well built, solid game first, before you start adding headline features to attract the new customers. You need a strong foundation to build upon, or the new houses you start building on the half finished foundations all come crumbling down.

This is Elite's problem: Frontier skipped fleshing out the base game for customer retention and jumped straight to the attract new customer mode. Now, they have anemic new features coming out due to a lack of core development first, and if they don't address this dilemma very soon they will end up losing both many original customers and any new ones who might have been interested in the future. No one wants to jump onto (or stay on) a sinking ship after all.

There is also the possibility that Frontier is pulling a fast one on the early adopters. They might have sold the dream game to the loyal fans of the franchise with all of the alpha and DDF promises, but since many of them bought the lifetime pass and would never need to buy an expansion ever again, Frontier possibly changed the roadmap post 1.0 to "attract new customer" mode to draw in the gamers who were not originally interested due to Elite being a niche game of sorts. It's possible they used the early adopters to fund attracting the instant action type and console crowds after release. Their development history post 1.0 does seem to suggest this somewhat, as they've spent dev time on new shiny marketable features that were never even mentioned during the alpha while ignoring many features that were promised to the kickstarters.

Either way, your post is a good one Fail, but the strategy only works when executed properly, if done wrong it can (and has) ended many a game prematurely. Gamers can be very loyal customers, but once developer respect is lost it becomes very, very hard to earn it back in this industry.

 

[X-Terminator]

So much is coming. If ur bored then get VR. I do want 5 Most Wanted Online Players plus Player Transactions to allow us to create our own missions we set out in trust. Then add more to do on planets, inc. Building and even allow Ship towe/steel to use or sell.
Tons of sandbox stuff to add.

 

[Kaltern]

What defensive posts are you talking about? Quote me one reply of someone defending FD for not delivering what was promised to kickstarter backers paying thousands of pounds....

When I say 'usual' I am referring to the posts inevitably made by the rabid defenders of Frontier, regardless of how illogical their standpoint is. And no, I don't feel the need to be specific on that.

There have as of yet, been no posts regarding the models, to which I am mildly surprised.

 

[Cobra1984]

When I say 'usual' I am referring to the posts inevitably made by the rabid defenders of Frontier, regardless of how illogical their standpoint is. And no, I don't feel the need to be specific on that.

There have as of yet, been no posts regarding the models, to which I am mildly surprised.

This is why I went to the trouble of identifying the three different types of ED players - time vs reward, risk vs reward and explorers. The time vs reward folks are generally happy with the time vs reward mechanics.

After I made that post 2 feature request posts popped up elsewhere and every single request was designed to REDUCE the amount of time in a time vs reward mechanic.

Even the folks who defend the game and enjoy the time vs reward nature of the tasks and progression system (for what it is) still make requests to reduce the time component.

The player retention vs new player modes of selling copies is a redundant argument - because the time vs reward mechanics are at the heart of 50/50 mixed reviews going back 2 years and that harms sales regardless of your strategy.

Frontier have a team of genius technical ability and amazing artistic talent and they have failed to produce something that even reviews well - so there's a problem.

 

[Muetdhiver]

This is why I went to the trouble of identifying the three different types of ED players - time vs reward, risk vs reward and explorers. The time vs reward folks are generally happy with the time vs reward mechanics.
...Frontier have a team of genius technical ability and amazing artistic talent and they have failed to produce something that even reviews well - so there's a problem.

Very good points, putting the finger right where it hurts. Just like to point out that time vs reward is what people usually call a grind game. But, and it's a big one,
most grind games are not just time based. Usually, skill/higher difficulty will help reduce the time part. In ED, not so much. Once the player knows to fly a ship,
as far as PvE is concerned, skill does not factor in and there is only one difficulty level. Only the gear (ship+fit) increase the "efficiency".

As a friend told me, past the initial learning curve and first ships, ED is like playing a very, very slow paced diablo 3 after the story mode is completed. Only without
the ability to crank the torment level up to match the player's gear and improve drops...

ED gameplay is 90% pure time vs reward.

To put risk back in, it would mean that players would face a significant chance of losing their ships doing "stuff". But past the Cobra mkIII, losing a ship in PvE is
just not going to happen. ever. (well, beyond boosting/landing accidents). IMO, attacking an elite ship (with equal setup) should be really tough and not something
that is "farmed" in CZ/RES. I would go so far as reserve the "elite" rank to persistant NPC's or something that should be used as witcher III hunting quests monsters.

Anyway. My hopes were that ED exploration would be something akin to the long dark in space, and Combat/Bounty hunting would be something like the monsters
hunts in the witcher in terms of difficulty / structure.

We got a very slow paced DIII with no torment difficulty setting instead. Very sad.

PS : do I need to point out how similar ED engineering and DIII crafting are XD ?

 

[henlo pigeon]

I really don't get all the whining about pvpers because mechanically this is one of the most pvp unfriendly games I've ever played. Why is being attacked a big deal when you're free to high wake away or log off with impunity? That's if they even manage to get through your engineered shield boosters before they run out of ammo. Not to mention that you can just play in a private pve group or go into solo before entering anarchy systems. Every mechanic in this game is in favour of the victim not the attacker.

 

[Cobra1984]

ED gameplay is 90% pure time vs reward.

To put risk back in, it would mean that players would face a significant chance of losing their ships doing "stuff". But past the Cobra mkIII, losing a ship in PvE is
just not going to happen. ever.

That's basically it in a nutshell.

There was a very prolific poster on this forum in the early days who consistently argued for high risk systems with high rewards, and communicate the risk front and centre to the player. This is a mechanic which limits the choices of the player based on lots of factors including player skill, ship, equipment, whether they have a friend with them etc.

What we have now is no limiting of player choice, you are free to go and do anything anywhere anytime. That's a deliberate design decision and I think anyone who has dabbled in game design in any era or format knows that something that limits player choice is generally referred to as a GAME MECHANIC or RULE.

Because there is no limiting of player choice we end up with this endless sliding scale of the credit rewards being moved up and down, which, and I'm sorry to say, has nothing whatsoever to do with game mechanics or game design.

 

[VR Golgot]

The player retention vs new player modes of selling copies is a redundant argument - because the time vs reward mechanics are at the heart of 50/50 mixed reviews going back 2 years and that harms sales regardless of your strategy.

Sure, but what's your solution to that bit? Just implying 'add more content' is easy to say, but as we know their energies are split between new shinies and current mechanics, and that grind walls are the easiest way to eke out content.

They can't add significant, structured risk/reward content in any kind of volume it seems, let alone in a way that matches consumption. (There may be a partial solution brewing in proc gen missions, if they finally scale over the next year, but it's only a partial one). And any form of deep exploration content also seems a long way off, most likely because it requires the underlying 'content' of a rich galaxy representation (finalised planetary surfaces, atmospherics etc) to be further realised before they can build meaningful mechanics on top of it.

Beyond time, what are your solutions?

I really don't get all the whining about pvpers because mechanically this is one of the most pvp unfriendly games I've ever played. Why is being attacked a big deal when you're free to high wake away or log off with impunity? That's if they even manage to get through your engineered shield boosters before they run out of ammo. Not to mention that you can just play in a private pve group or go into solo before entering anarchy systems. Every mechanic in this game is in favour of the victim not the attacker.

They're making the point that combat as a whole (not just PvP) has got the lion's share of the mechanics and additions. Which is probably true. (Personally I think explorer love will come, but they need the pew to pay for the increased dev which will provide it. That's not a very popular argument )

 

[Cobra1984]

I really don't get all the whining about pvpers because mechanically this is one of the most pvp unfriendly games I've ever played. Why is being attacked a big deal when you're free to high wake away or log off with impunity? That's if they even manage to get through your engineered shield boosters before they run out of ammo. Not to mention that you can just play in a private pve group or go into solo before entering anarchy systems. Every mechanic in this game is in favour of the victim not the attacker.

PvP suffers because it is just another purely optional game activity in which there is no real genuine risk either by accident or by design or by both.

Everything stems from a lack of risk because everything is designed purely as a function of the time you spend at it.

 

[Cobra1984]

Sure, but what's your solution to that bit? Just implying 'add more content' is easy to say, but as we know their energies are split between new shinies and current mechanics, and that grind walls are the easiest way to eke out content. They can't add significant, structured risk/reward content in any kind of volume it seems, let alone in a way that matches consumption. (There may be a partial solution brewing in proc gen missions, if they finally scale over the next year, but it's only a partial one).)

You couldn't come up with a solution without being in a room with all the folks and devs and programmers and money people sitting around a table upon which lies THE PROBLEM - described and precisely defined.

If you came up with a solution without all that info and input you'd be kidding yourself. I think the best thing the community can do is have input into the problem part whilst:

1. Appreciating that there are players who love things as they are (time vs reward)
2. Appreciating that there players who want more challenge and depth (risk vs reward)

 

[IamMe]

I should probably clarify my point on seeing 'Eve' in Elite right now.

I am talking about 2 things - the unbelievable worship of all things DPS, and the cult of players who do the worshipping.

The fascination with DPS and other combat stats in that game is pretty much the entire focus OF that game. It isn't called a Spreadsheet Simulator for nothing! There's nothing actually WRONG with that, it's the nature of that specific type of game, where MMO style timer combat is hidden behind a space battle game. It literally is WoW in space.

Elite isn't supposed to BE WoW-in-Space, it's supposed to have twitch/skill based combat as part of the whole game. IMO (and it really is my opinion), I don't think there should be ANY stats on weapons. Skill based games should overwhelmingly be based on the player's ability, not on their weapon rolls.

The other facet is the cult that follows Eve. Now, being a player of Eve in the distant past, I know what I'm talking about when I call them a cult. I've not been back for a long time, and I don't expect anything to have changed. CCP pretty much turned Eve into Lord of the Flies in Space. The tribal overtones in the game is obvious, and, while I'm sure being in a ... good ... corporation is wonderful, it also means that the PowerPlay framework WE have in Eiite, is pretty much Eve's only form of existence. (I am simplifying for the good of people's attention span!)

It also breeds the most aggressive breed of white knight - criticising the game is pretty much like painting a target on your head - literally and virtually. You get strike teams ingame who will gank the life out of you just for voicing an opinion they didn't like in the forum. I'm not joking.

I can see the same whiteknighting in THIS game, thankfully without the ingame assassins (afaik ). Of course, you get that in virtually every online game in history, but Elite wasn't originally billed as an MMORPG. I have an ignore list a mile long, so I have no idea how many replies I really have to this thread. I DO know that I HAD to start ignoring people because every single thread criticising PvP was infested with ridiculous posts with no construct whatsoever.

I should thank those who don't agree with my original post, for whatever reason, and have replied in a constructive way - it's good to know there ARE some out there who know how to have an opinion AND not be an idiot!

Anyway I appear to be on one again so I'll shush and stop hijacking my thread!

Pretty good described even i never played EVE or any other space game including WoW.
I have the same thoughts about weapons and skills, that is the reason for me to avoid Open.
I dont like RPG games (weapon and shield engineering in this case, i'm ok only with fsd engineers) i rely on skills.
Regarding white knights it is heavy forum, i also seen many of them eventually become haters.
Critic/opinion is good and everyone has right on it without being attacked, heavy hate or fanboism is not good.

 

[Muetdhiver]

...
1. Appreciating that there are players who love things as they are (time vs reward)
2. Appreciating that there players who want more challenge and depth (risk vs reward)

That+1.

Actually, there is nothing that would prevent having both at the same time and even if
suggesting a full solution to the issue is impossible due to incomplete information, there are things
that seems within the scope of what has already been delivered that could really help :

• Recognize that there is an issues with the compounding of engineers and fitting that make engineered ships way, way better than vanilla ones. This breaks the one size fit all/gentle slope PvE difficulty used so far. Seems FD is now well aware that the engineers are a bit too much of a good thing.
• Proc gen works well for some stuff, but fails (hard) to generate interesting/challenging missions. Mabye putting one update worth of content into a set of very challenging multistep missions/scenarios (escort, convoy attacks, pirate base attack, etc...) would be a really good idea. I'm sure that many players would rather do a 1.5h hard pirate base attack mission rather than 1.5h RES farming if the rewards where in the same ballpark. I.e. put content for the risk vs reward crowd, at least for combat, trading and PvE piracy (because exploration would need such a rework to even reach the state where such things would be possible that it's just unrealistic at this stage).
• Wing content and shared missions, especially if the above is implemented. I mean really, no wonder open is such dog on dog, there is all the possible hindrances possible to prevent coop play.
• Make low security a dangerous place, and anarchy a very dangerous place. Then up the trade rewards there. Want cash : do the usual milk runs (time vs reward) or try to trade in an anarchy system (risk vs reward).
• Seriously jack up the difficulty of High intensity res and Hazardous res along with the rewards. Haz res should be : might get a lot of cash, but might lose the ship. Heck, put some crazy painite/diamonds asteroids there and have miners
  try their luck or go in with friends. Get crazy, add level 5+ signal sources.
• Elite NPC's should be death to most and inspire dread to the unprepared, and be a serious challenge to good pilots and/or top gear. Not : farming material.

About exploration : it's so barebone and basic there is no way to even think about stuff like above. FD would have to do a full update about exploration just to bring it where it could be thinkable, and
even then I'm not sure. That would be like 1 exploration fondation update + 1 coop missions and difficult scenarios (non-exploration) update and then one more for challenging exploration stuff.

Yup, that is 3 updates worth of stuff (given the amout of stuff typically included in one). I.e. most of a season dedicated to polishing what already exists, instead of adding more disjointed mini-games.
It's a lot, and it's not fancy marketing material but if it came along with say one volcanism & cave update and one gas giant update with cloud cities, it might work (?)/ be marketable.

I would exchange three such updates for CQC+PP+ the ship update anyday.

 

[Blackcompany]

Well I for one have found this thread to be a good and interesting read. There's just one thing I'd love to know from the folks who are taking long breaks away from the game -

Are you not gripped on the edge of your seat by the unfolding storyline? How can you possibly take a break?

What story line? You mean the crap buried in galnet? The out of game puzzles that might or might not even work? Copy paste ruins?

No thanks. I play games for game play. I want stories, I read books, watch shows, etc.

 

[Sandmann]

(Disclaimer - I am fully aware that this post is going to cause a LOT of hate. I can only ask that, instead of directly attacking ME for having my opinion on, which is after all, an open forum, you direct your attention to the points in my post. They are made solely in the interests of the game, which I want to enjoy.)

[Snip]

Elite: Dangerous has lost it's way, in the eyes of the majority of it's original backers and players. This is not an arbitrary comment, it is based on the multitudes of threads and posts on this, and many other forums. It comes down to this. If this is the direction Frontier WANT this game to go, to be another Eve, with offensive and aggressive players in game and on the forums, and primarily about the combat and DPS, balance, etc... Can you please just tell us, so those of us who are tired of hoping for better things, can leave the game quietly, without the need to make the leaving posts that are apparently so disliked.

Can't argue with a damn thing here. Despite signing up as a premium beta I haven't played since 2.0 and have no intention on doing so till 3.0 at the earliest, depending on what it brings and if it even happens. Even when I DID play in 2.0 it was only coz of the effort to dislodge SDC from their system, and I haven't been back since that happened, prior to that it'd been several months without interest.

Simple fact: ED today is NOT the game we were promised, and it appears to be getting further from it rather than closer to it, and I - like so many before me who've left without rage quitting - have given up waiting.

 

[VR Golgot]

You couldn't come up with a solution without being in a room with all the folks and devs and programmers and money people sitting around a table upon which lies THE PROBLEM - described and precisely defined.

If you came up with a solution without all that info and input you'd be kidding yourself. I think the best thing the community can do is have input into the problem part whilst:

1. Appreciating that there are players who love things as they are (time vs reward)
2. Appreciating that there players who want more challenge and depth (risk vs reward)

Fair enough, yep . I'd describe it as 'ONE OF THE BIG PROBLEMS', but yep I do agree, identifying game issues is a key constructive thing players can do (and being aware of preference clashes while doing so can certainly help with the constructivity, ideally).

(My suspicion is that these years are the land of the 'times vs', and that slow content addition and a move towards 'risk vs' will slowly tell. Essentially someone's always going to be a bit miffed )