Today's Word is Legs

[[VR] Merkir]

Until we can actually "roam" on legs I'm afraid that everything will feel like an imaginary roaming. A ship or SRV can only interact so much with an environment. At some point it's going to have to be humans doing stuff.

Yes, we'll all have different viewpoints. I'm quite happy with roaming in space and on planet in a somewhat real sense as we do right now (in VR especially) and "imaginary roaming" in other ways, as you aptly put it. I don't really need to see my arms and legs, or need to see my body move somewhere to imagine that I'm doing tasks and achieving goals. But as I said, everyone will see this aspect differently.

I mean a ship can't colonize, only people can do that... Or text on a page I suppose. But again, the point is to go beyond imagining and into a realm of seeing yourself in a galaxy.

The Civilisation franchise didn't need "legs" to colonise. They still only use portraits for interaction (like ED right now) and I believe they've been reasonably successful. Again, I can imagine these interactions, as well as triggering the events that result in colonising and many similar actions. I don't need space legs to imagine that. I just need good gameplay options. In some ways space legs are just extraneous fluff - but very pretty and nice fluff I'm sure it could be! - if done well.

Neither of us are wrong. Just different ways of wanting to do things and different ways of using our own imagination.

 

[SpongeJim]

Unfortunately, legs are not happening anytime soon. Sandro has as good as said that.

This might be the only verifiable thing you said.

He mentioned it to David recently, who said it would be a nice idea one day maybe.

No he didn't, he said David mentioned it to him and he had to push back and say it will take more time. David has said multiple times in many interviews that his vision is that it be a full-blown "life in space" game, and has said other than exploration something he wants most is to be able to do things like "big game hunting" on atmo planets. Even in the clip you're mentioning, Sandro had to admit that it is part of David's vision. What you're missing is that Sandro is trying to downplay something that David really wants because unlike David, he has to actually make it happen.

Its not even on the roadmap. Its just a potential idea written on a planning board. Theres no concept art or code written for it.

Blatantly false, the ad for PS4 has commanders walking on the bridge , and we've seen plenty more, if you're actually paying attention. Hell, again, in that same clip you're referencing Sandro says it's on the roadmap!

I would imagine season 5 or 6 before they start planning it. The devs themselves told David it would be an effective whole other game to write, and thus a few years of work. The games current engine and framework simply do not support it, and it would be a LOT of work to even attempt it.

Complete through and through here. You know absolutely nothing about the engine or what it can do, otherwise you'd know they have other games with people walking around using the same in-house engine. The devs "told" David? Go watch the video where they ask a handful of devs, artists, designers and David himself what they are looking forward to most about the future of the game. Nearly EVERY ONE requires SPACE LEGS!!

Ok, f-it, I'm going to show you and all the paranoid goons who think that space legs is a "never was" and their beloved Elite doesn't need legs, or require legs, or should ever be sullied with the mere MENTION of legs - and especially those that think the devs are with them on this.

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yd-m9AR7mY

Here, in chronological order from the video, are what each person said they want to see in the game:

Jim Croft - "Get out of my ship and WALK around a station"
Braben - "Land on a planet, GET OUT of my ship"
Michael Brookes - "WALK around space stations; lots of gameplay to explore"
Sandro (yes, that Sandro) - "Players RUNNING AROUND THEIR SHIP"
John Kelly - "More ships... the ability to WALK around inside them, especially the large ones"
Jo Taylor - [talks about the fact they've fully designed the ships, IN GAME to WALK AROUND IN, with an elevator shaft and everything]
James Avery - "I'd like for the players to be able to get out of their ship and WALK around the hangar"
Selena McCabe - "What I'm looking forward to is when you can actually GET OUT OF YOUR SHIP AND WALK AROUND..."
Dan Davies - "What's really exciting is zero gravity... being able to FLOAT AROUND YOUR SHIP..."
Matthew Florianz - "I'm really looking forward to zero-G COMBAT... GETTING OUT OF YOUR SEAT..."
Tom Kewell - [Talks about actually using user's ideas from the DDF]
Eddie Symons - "Space station destruction"
Joe Hogan - "Giant space aliens.."
Adam Woods - "Planetary landings"
Ben Parry - "Planetary landing expansion"
Braben - "walking around the ship..."

So by my count, 16 little segments of asking what an actual employee wants to see (two of them Braben), and ELEVEN of them REQUIRE SPACE LEGS. So please, everyone who gets on their holier-than-thou, "I know Elite better than you and there are no legs" , THIS IS WHY WE EXPECT LEGS!! We ALL want this game because THE DEVS SAID THEY WANT IT TOO!

Now, feel free to be skeptical about whether targets have changed, or that you don't have confidence in their ability to deliver, etc and so on, but DO NOT say that it is NOT part of the roadmap or that it's something people are daydreaming about! They said over and over again that's the target, I've now shown you that the employees themselves want this stuff, so please please get off this ridiculous and insulting band wagon!

/rant

 

[jasonbarron]

I signed on to be a person...flying a ship. Don't get me wrong, I do think someday in the hazy future it might be fun to walk around, but for now I'd just like to see more additions and refinements to spaceship-y content plz. In the meantime, if I really have a hankering for something more leggy I'll try once again to get into Mass Effect Andromeda.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

[all that]

A lovely bit of ranting, thank you, and a video to boot, even better.

One of the nicest aspects of Elite is that we do have so many options already - you can be a deep-space explorer, or freighter commander, bounty hunter, pirate scum, scavenger, or so many different things already and do them in so many different ways - well, two ways really, either in a ship or in an SRV, but I'm sure the point here makes itself.

There's certainly nothing at all wrong with more ways to do things. And while this will likely be something in the far-off future, it will be a great day when this finally bears fruit. I might even dig in my wallet to paida test for this.

 

[RamirezKurita]

For me it's pretty simple ..
What starport services would have a button to access the blackmarket?
The shady contact. The bribable deck officer. Undercover cops. The femme fatale.
Blackmarkets are about people.

People does not necessarily mean talking a stroll around on a station to meet some contact in person, it could be about referrals and actually forming a network of contacts rather than simply rocking up and talking to everyone who wears sunglasses.

Black markets could be expanded to things like obtaining encryption keys, dummy transaction IDs, finding hidden IP addresses on stations, forming working relationships with influential figures and generally getting involved in the underworld. None of these things require you to leave your seat.

 

[CMDR-AD]

I'm not all that excited at walking in Elite. I'll explain some thoughts as to why.

Firstly, my feeling is based on what we have now. Last night a mission took me out to a few surface outposts. One was pretty darn good looking while making approach in my Cobra. Ships, lights, skimmer traffic, and some interesting structures. So I stow my Cobra in the hanger, and drop out for a ride in my SRV. The sense of scale was immense, and looking up at that outpost from the ground was an impressive site. But looking down at my level in the SRV, for a moment I was sorry to think that there was nothing there for me to do. All of those fantastic looking building structures just stood there. None of them had places to visit in my SRV, an SRV repair shop (for some repairs beyond synthesis), a materials traders market (to trade/exchange prospected materials), a medical center (to drop off recovered Escape Pods), and with just a single added mining SRV, a Caine-Massey miners outfitting post (to buy and outfit my miner SRV with stuff like surface auto-mining equipment, SRV mounted mining lasers to gain improved material collections, etc.). With a single pilotable Skimmer, a skimmer outfitting shop (to buy stuff like weapons and faster thrusters).

Actual things to drive up to, park/dock, and do some play. Those fantastic surface buildings are already there, all we need is store fronts and signs, a proprieter's face to head the UI for whatever services they offer. Visually not much more than that, but creating little out of the way places I can only get to in the SRV or Skimmer... Not in a ship.

That paragraph above, all alone, would open up vast, vast levels of interesting things to see and do. Stuff that might not all be designed around earning millions of credits per hour... But sometimes just getting out and having some fun. Gearing up SRVs and Skimmers for racing, for mining, for raiding... All kinds of things. Where we are now, I can't think of a single thing to actually do with an SRV inside a landable outpost, outside use the docking garage to enter/leave my ship. All the interaction is out with a rock, and outcrop, a beacon. And I can't help but feel that that's a huge hole.

I just don't see how walking will do anything to bring greater life to this aspect of play, in the "SRV" level between the ship and walking. A richness that could actually bring a basic flow to the streets of popular surface outposts, where players are hitting the materials outpost or mining outfitters. Nevermind walking out on those streets, watching the SRV traffic to these mid-level hubs, down below the ships.

But if a large amount of the walking interaction/gameplay elements are instead focused indoors, in fairly concentrated and more controlled areas of play, then all that stuff will simply never be a focus. And I say this because as great as all the above sounds to me, in actual practice it would be a murder fest for some CMDR to park his ship overhead and rain missiles down into the streets for laughs, CMDRs in SRV (and even on foot) just wasted and we're back to the barren empty street I drove on last night. That's going to mean Solo mode, and from there, the need for NPC traffic to fill those streets.

The second point regarding why I'm not too interested in walking, relates to something that will need to come with a first person experience: NPC talking. I've done it in plenty of other games, super immersive types of settings, with well done voicing of the NPCs that guide through a story. But the problem is that Elite is an open ended play experience. And once I've heard a piece of recorded dialog, in particular one which is related to a story or mission, I don't need to hear it every time I run that mission. And I don't want to come to the point where I'm pressing B to skip through the NPC dialog and animations to reach the "Accept Mission?" prompt. In games where you play through it once and have the memory, yea, but Elite and it's missions aren't like that at all, and I feel would just become stale very quickly.

And a last thought on walking is how I think it would require a fundamental change to how Elite currently functions, for lots of the requested first-person play to even exist. The biggest examples are things like moving around the ship to manage damage, and doing boarding/raids on disabled ships. The thing is, right now a ship dies so fast that I don't think there would be enough time to run/float back to the engineering station to put out a fire. Certainly not for a lone pilot, and for multicrew without artificial gravity, it's going to be a rough ride while the pilot is maneuvering in combat. And like where videos on YouTube have ships being destroyed in 30 seconds or less, well I'm not sure how much walking gameplay can be fit into 30 seconds time, nor whether even bothering to do that walking will have some miracle chance to do what beneficial action? Restore enough damage points to make the ship survive another 30 seconds?

And this same applies to boarding/raiding ships. If I've disabled another CMDR's ship and am preparing to board it, how safe will this near wreck hull (or my own ship) be if another CMDR shows up and pow-pow-pow? They could easily zap the disabled ship I'm raiding and kill me and everyone else inside, in seconds. Certainly before I can get back down the corridor to the hole I blasted in the hull, spacewalk back to my own ship (hoping not to eat a railgun round while doing this) and then back through my own ship's corridors to the helm...

Somehow if feels like some major part of combat and destroying/disabling ships would need to change, in a huge way.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Clearly this isn't impossible stuff, but the scale of work will be huge even with the great starting point of assets already in Elite. I'm fine with walking in games, of course, and if it comes to Elite I'm sure to give it a try. But I do also kind of enjoy the "piloting-my-ship" perspective on what I do and expect with Elite.

 

[Morbad]

[video=youtube;eUDcTLaWJuo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUDcTLaWJuo[/video]

And a last thought on walking is how I think it would require a fundamental change to how Elite currently functions, for lots of the requested first-person play to even exist. The biggest examples are things like moving around the ship to manage damage, and doing boarding/raids on disabled ships. The thing is, right now a ship dies so fast that I don't think there would be enough time to run/float back to the engineering station to put out a fire. Certainly not for a lone pilot, and for multicrew without artificial gravity, it's going to be a rough ride while the pilot is maneuvering in combat. And like where videos on YouTube have ships being destroyed in 30 seconds or less, well I'm not sure how much walking gameplay can be fit into 30 seconds time, nor whether even bothering to do that walking will have some miracle chance to do what beneficial action? Restore enough damage points to make the ship survive another 30 seconds?

And this same applies to boarding/raiding ships. If I've disabled another CMDR's ship and am preparing to board it, how safe will this near wreck hull (or my own ship) be if another CMDR shows up and pow-pow-pow? They could easily zap the disabled ship I'm raiding and kill me and everyone else inside, in seconds. Certainly before I can get back down the corridor to the hold in the hull, spacewalk back to my own ship (hoping not to eat a railgun round while doing this) and then back through my own ship's corridors to the helm...

Somehow if feels like some major part of combat and destroying/disabling ships would need to change, in a huge way.

Ideally, I'd like to see something along the lines of The Expanse and Das Boot when it comes to boarding and damage control...but I'm not holding my breath.

That said, even if this ideal isn't reached, I'd still find stuff to do with legs...and even more to do with arms, hands, and opposable thumbs. And guns. I like guns.

 

[Crank Larson]

I signed on to be a person, not a ship.

Elite was always about the ship, not the person. This is still the case, though I also look forward to the distant future when I can get out of my seat...

 

[Dbrn47]

I like legs. Legs are fun.

However, I tend to prefer legs with a little more meat and depth. Let's have Frontier work those legs out before presenting them, eh?

 

[Kaocraft]

People interact with heads, not legs. Legs are a distraction. The most important plot points in Star Trek occurred over what is basically Skype. We need better faces, we need facial animation. We need something other than static portraits. We need lip sync and head tracking and voice acting. Not legs. This is what you should want if your emphasis is going to be on humans and their interactions.

 

[zarrazee]

Get your mind out of the gutter
Thats where I found mine as well.

Great minds...

 

[W4rSkuLL]

Everything inside ships are built to accommodate space legs. It will come. We now have the commanders. Now they need to walk. Its coming. I think they are working hard on it and it is great.

 

[Infidel Deity]

Space; The final frontier!

Legs; Well, it's sort of the FIRST frontier. [yesnod]
After we tumble out from between our mothers legs or get cut out of her tummy; we just crawl around.
Much like very drunk people.

But after only a short while, we know we have a mission.
Get up on those legs.
And; we want to know how to use them! (A reference for VERY old people!)

In Elite, it's the other way around, of course.
Let's start with final and end with the first.

That said; I do look forward to walking in Elite. [yesnod]

 

[Eshackleton]

Space legs needs to come soon. I would love to see player made movies. Hopefully Someone will continue the Firefly series. That SC game already has player's starting this and it's still in Alpha.
https://youtu.be/JwPict7rYF4

 

[Zyr1987]

The only walking I'm looking forward to (and probably the first to be implemented) will just be walking around my ship. I want to see if my mental image of the living space of my wonderful Asp is at all accurate

For those wondering, I imagine it being a small bedroom with a bunkbed and a separate bathroom on the top floor, with the bathroom having the sink on top of the toilet, and a shower, while the bottom, behind the copilot's chair having a small kitchenette (though with a large area for storing food cubes, for long journeys, like it's designed for) and the rear exit of the ship, with a ladder connecting the two floors, all utilitarian as possible, as Lakon would do