Thanks for putting me onto that - indeed Kaocraft has succinctly put into words and paragraphs exactly what I think has been going on since initial release in December 2014.
I wish I could have +repped him more than once there.
My thoughts on where things are going.
- Thread starter Kaltern
- Start date
Thanks for putting me onto that - indeed Kaocraft has succinctly put into words and paragraphs exactly what I think has been going on since initial release in December 2014.
I wish I could have +repped him more than once there.
Umm, what new gameplay and mechanics would that be exactly? (genuine question)
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Indeed, this is exactly the problem. That and the "placeholders will do" mentality.
Anything to merit the inclusion of the the feature... But from the moment I heard about it, I could never really envisage what gameplay value it would really bring.
Combat? - The pilot loses some variety in his weapons, to dedicate some of the to a gunner, who has little to do but fire them?
Mining? - It's already a rather simplistic mechanic, so splitting it up doesn't seem ideal? Who wants to specialise in aiming at rocks and press fire?
Personally, I think we'll see the feature quickly get used less and less, until we generally see niche uses for:-
1) Friends/explorers just jumping into each others ships to look at something...
2) As per (1) but to video stuff...
3) Individuals using secondary accounts to simply sit in their primary accounts ship to get free additional pips...
I would rather the development time had gone in other directions... eg: Seen NPC ships/wingment appearing in larger missions/tasks, allowing us to give them simple tactical commands (attack this, defend this, stay here)...
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Ah, I see. And I concur.
What FD have in fact done is undermine a core design mechanic in the game, pip allocation, for no good reason.
Can't rep you enough.
As a solo player who refuses to buy XBL Gold just for Elite's multiplayer aspects (board flipping is what i miss), 2.3's lead feature is dead on arrival. Where are our NPC crew? Hell, i'll settle for being able to launch 2 SLFs. Where are our hireable NPC wingmen?
FD, i know you want us all in open cos Frontier store, but please give us solo players some options.
2.3 falls in line with a lot of other features already release in they way they all seem to be optional pursuits. PowerPlay, Wings, Planetary landings, CQC, SLF's, multicrew.... They're all nice components and fun to take part in, but at the end of the day none are really required activities and happily ignored by a lot of people. They all seem to be missing the next step to make them all worthwhile, other than the underlying drive to earn more credits. Wings and MC are a great example. It's nice to bring players together but unless there is actually group content made to take advantage of these things then what's the point? Battles/ instances made for player groups, group missions, things like that are the logical next step to these features that so far has not been taken, which (hopefully) will be sometime in the near future. We seem to be going in the right direction, I have faith that we are going to get there. Its just been a longer development cycle than some people seem to be be willing to tolerate.
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Absolutely. That is actually what brings all the personal 'hate' (no one actually hates anyone) to Sandro and sometime others. When FDEV answering some questions I am not too sure if they're trolling or they're serious. If they're serious, it's quite sad.
I remember during one of the streams Braben answered to mining question that he believes mining is quite nicely done as it is. I was personally shocked to hear this. If FDEV would confirm every time they know A, B and C is practically barebones at the moment, overall feeling for the game would be different. But then, again, we would moan on 'when' they're going to improve it
Every major game mechanics must be connected to a skill of a person playing. Only such mechanics that exists at the moment and quite nicely developed (but of course requires almost endless tweaking) is combat.
There's no skill involved in trading at the moment.
There's almost no skill involved in smuggling and criminal activities, since half of those mechanics do not work.
There's no skill involved in the mining, it's so meaningless (but calming) it's almost a pity. Omg, so much could be done here...
There's no skill involved in exploration, which es most of hard-core community the most. Hey, you've got a finger to press a honk button? You got it. That's about the only skill you might need.
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Ok, above is not as black/white obviously, but those mechanics require so much more skill based way of playing to be interesting... It's quite sad to see FD either keeps intentionally quiet about it, trolling us by saying "everything works as intended" or simply does not see point to improve those core things.
Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, something will start to move when 2.4 is done.
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I'm more of a positive bent to 2.3. I believe it's part motivated for the PS4 release and all its attached distraction. After all, as a company FDev is potentially making new sales from a different segment. I also see it as a demonstration of expanding on their "placeholder" framework. Since release ED has had these fine looking 3D cockpits. So now we're seeing the next beginning steps of new camera angles and basic multicrew around the cockpits so it's getting closer to stepping out of the chairs and entering through the door in the back to the other parts of the ship on spacelegs along with getting the first commander face creator implementation done. I don't quite believe the game is now primarily headed in a wrong direction of multiplayer pew, rather that as a mmo ED just happens to also encompass PvP combat for those who relish it. Frontier&FFE was not a paragon of balance either. After enough credits the player could just multistack shield units and install a gigawatt laser on a panther clipper or the Argent and be practically invincible and indestructible able to ram or blast ten or so smaller ships within a minute. ED still encapsulates much of FFE's gameplay wonderfully with the option to go solo or moebius-PvE if going along the single player style of Frontier&FFE. That said, I believe and have faith FDev are continuing to work on those goals from the beginning in the upcoming seasons 3 thru 10 of which everyone will likely be back for. After this sideroute for the new PS4 crowd, things will be back "on track" although it was never really off imo. It's just going to take a while, possibly even several years while we have to tolerate the lack of news,(until the next successive beta update springs up from the behind the bushes) but I'd still prefer it this way over the continuing promising the moon and selling yet more $25k ship designs of SC every progress "update".
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I need to cease being Don and be Frank for a moment.
I keep hearing about "spacelegs... Spacelegs!... SPACELEGS!" Everyone talks about how great it would be to get out of your chair and walk about your ship. I don't know how close we are to this, but without associated content I view it as another PP, Wings or MC. Good ideas that lay the foundation to even greater gameplay concepts that so far we've yet to see fully fleshed out. Without things to do, things to shoot, things to explore, I see walking around as nice but I perceive it's going to only be for checking the rat traps in the cargo hold or hanging in teh crew lounge with Charlie's Angels (my NPC SLF pilots). Jumping out of my chair while in combat to grab a hydro-spanner to quickly fix the hyperdrive motivator sounds nice, but death comes too quick in this game for stuff like that (would be a nice occupation on a Farragut though)
I get pigeonholed as a fanboy sometimes around here. Its not that, it's just constant bash threads get wearisome to me. They don't fall on deaf ears though, and I see the games flaws as well as anyone. Its still a GREAT game though and I hope it can live up to the promise of being so much more. But before we see new concepts run out, I'd like to see existing ones expanded upon. With 2.3 coming we've got a fantastice framework to build upon now. I've a feeling though we don't see more of this likely because FDEV may feel they can't charge for a new season of content that's just building upon or reworking current release material. I don't care about that. I'll pay for PP 2.0 if it includes wing missions, ground based facility assaults for merits, a series of CQC battles over which faction captures a station or system, better player integration with minor factions, and community tools to build player fleets. There's a lot more I'd like to see before we get spacelegs, unless they come with a laser pistol and Thargoids to shoot.
Yep absolutely fair play to you. I think everyone wants to see more big ticket improvements to the existing core stuff, and more synergy between the existing and the 'new additions' (which still float around like thought bubbles to some extent).
On Legs, I think their recent pronouncements suggests it's not coming anytime soon, so hopefully we'll at least see some scaling of the core stuff over time before then (missions, location use etc). And if the next big flagship is planetary again, some form of doubling-down on content on the surfaces. Fingers crossed
. We can only hope the Season rejig also finds a way to give the existing content some big flashy passes alongside the Expansion additions too.(I seem to take a similar approach to yourself in terms of ending up 'fanboying', although I don't see it as that. I see a metric ton of issues with the game for sure, but find a lot of criticism to be poorly framed, and feel the need to challenges those aspects. I do go full dream-head as well though. Click my sig if you want to roll your eyes at a ridiculously ambitious deep-time pitch for Legs
)
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Theorycrafting the future of Elite Dangerous, I will have to go fullblown White Knight and say that Frontier is still adding the basic framework for the overall game. Using their own analogy, they've built the house, and have gotten a lot of the furniture in, but there's still a lot of decorations and appliances to be added. And since there is still no real competition for the type of game they're creating, they continue to add all the bare-bone elements that will be fully expanded on later down the road.
I do think that many of the promised features that most of the original backers are pining for wont arrive until near the end of the 10 year developement cycle. Things like realistic nebulas to fly through, battling in the cloud layer of gas giants, big game hunting on alien worlds, and even a procedurally generated mission/storyline system are just too demanding for the current gaming systems.
ED released at almost the same time as the XBoxOne. If we estimate that the current generation of platforms will get a 6-8 year run before the next Nth Gen consoles are produced, that gives FDev plenty of time to get all the core structures in place. By then, all the PC owners will have also upgraded to the latest 128bit OS, and the rest of Mr. Braben's vision will finally be realized.
However, I personally hope that the depth to the classic games main career paths will be expanded long before then. With all the flashy graphics, sounds, VR and multiplayer metagaming going, there's still little more to do as a pirate, bounty hunter, trader, smuggler or miner, than there was in the game 20+ years ago.
I do think that many of the promised features that most of the original backers are pining for wont arrive until near the end of the 10 year developement cycle. Things like realistic nebulas to fly through, battling in the cloud layer of gas giants, big game hunting on alien worlds, and even a procedurally generated mission/storyline system are just too demanding for the current gaming systems.
ED released at almost the same time as the XBoxOne. If we estimate that the current generation of platforms will get a 6-8 year run before the next Nth Gen consoles are produced, that gives FDev plenty of time to get all the core structures in place. By then, all the PC owners will have also upgraded to the latest 128bit OS, and the rest of Mr. Braben's vision will finally be realized.
However, I personally hope that the depth to the classic games main career paths will be expanded long before then. With all the flashy graphics, sounds, VR and multiplayer metagaming going, there's still little more to do as a pirate, bounty hunter, trader, smuggler or miner, than there was in the game 20+ years ago.
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Yes i agree. To expect ED to programme a fully interactive galaxy with evolving species and civilisations to is entirely unrealistic. Unfortunately its where the thinking on the forums often seems to be with anything less being a huge disappointment. I predict some tears before bedtime...
Woah steady, they drew the line before evolving species & civilisations. Living and breathing ones will have to do
(Think Zarkon might be wrong on the gas giants bit. Could see that entering the possible in the next 12 months. Or at least, pursuing a further Planding expansion is possibly the 'least hard' direction for them to take next, and they seem to have been playing with the tech for a while now. Never know
).I think you've built a huge strawman there TBH, and as such being unfair to posters with far more grounded and realistic issues with the past 2+ years development ethos than you've given them credit for/
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Great post, Frank. I concur. Also, yes, I also would happily pay Fdev again for going back and layering in proper mechanics to the existing game without resorting to flashy new features in another season.
I just wish the Dev team decide to spend some time (re-)watching the old Start Trek series to draw some inspiration for future developments and not Star Wars (especially the most recent iteration).
And that's coming from someone less(edited for coherence) fan of the former than the latter.
More adventures, less Pew Pew, please!
EDIT -to give more insights on my gripes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2kFk5M9x4
And that's coming from someone less(edited for coherence) fan of the former than the latter.
More adventures, less Pew Pew, please!
EDIT -to give more insights on my gripes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2kFk5M9x4
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Woah steady, they drew the line before evolving species & civilisations. Living and breathing ones will have to do
(Think Zarkon might be wrong on the gas giants bit. Could see that entering the possible in the next 12 months. Or at least, pursuing a further Planding expansion is possibly the 'least hard' direction for them to take next, and they seem to have been playing with the tech for a while now. Never know
242 posts in before something like this came up, that's quite reasonable
Noone, in pretty much any thread I have ever read, including the above mentioned number of posts in this one, has ever asked for evolving species etc, that's a ridiculous statement to make. I'm still holding out on discovering the long dead ones, thank you!
Let's try to stick to provable facts, and not invent things to bolster non-existing arguments
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I agree, and my response was tongue in cheek. But perhaps you should be replying to the post that broached it as a topic?
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You make a valid point. All the series are running on a channel in the States daily. I think Star Trek Next Generation has the most relevant script for Elite, and I do feel some of the ideas developed in that series have found their way into the game (please don't ask me to list them !).
That series was deeper than the first, which tended to be serialised independently, whereas TNG had interconnecting plots, such as with The Cardasians, Romulans, Klingons, Q, The Borg ......
I suspect FD may be developing the Thargoids (or whoever they are) in a similar way to the Borg .... introduced very slowly, but with increasing drama. We may yet see the Guardians have further influence in the game. Although I didn't participate, I hope it was not just a flash in the pan.