It feels like someone is doing their job wrong

[Lana]

They may still be placeholders, just perhaps that they're waiting for the overhaul of military careers before changing Conflict Zones into something more solid.

Once a feature has been in place for over 2 years it's not a placeholder, it's just the reality of what that feature is. Also that is just one example, I could rattle off dozens more at this point from all aspects of the game.

 

[babelfisch]

Once a feature has been in place for over 2 years it's not a placeholder, it's just the reality of what that feature is. Also that is just one example, I could rattle off dozens more at this point from all aspects of the game.

Not if the game is meant to be developed over 10 years.

 

[Blackcompany]

Lots of people have talked about how improving existing features receives no attention because it isn't something you can market.

I disagree.

Imagine the possibility:

Prolific miners being invited at high rates of pay to y their trade in service to the building of capital Ship yards, new bases and stations. Seeing these things evolve because you contribute.

Traders and merchants receiving invites from persistent NPC characters for lucrative, sometimes risky, unique hauls. Building a rep with the brokers - or the scoundrels - of the galaxy. And seeing that rep follow you in the form of cheap loan offers, lucrative hauls, bounty hunters and underworld bosses.

Bounty Hunters being stalked by persistent pirate Lord's and henchmen. Attack their base and defeat that. Or damage a henchman's ship sufficient that they fleee and track each one back to a base filled with enemy ships, and maybe a treasure trove.

Receive invites to Bounty CG events, with offers of additional pay. Maybe those who've done lots of hunting are nodded on, have their ships relocated a t a discount or free, in exchange for collecting X bounties over a generous time period.

Record our successes, and failures. Let them chain to other offers and events. Let parts of the game interact with one another.

Then.go back to market with a real, dynamic, evolving galaxy in which you are the feature character in your personal story, as that story evolves based on your actions, with real allies, enies, brokers, supporters and foes.

The people who cheered at the vaunted Nemesis system in Mordor will eat this up. And they will praise it to the heavens as the player centric evolution open world games need.

But ONLY if it works. And.only if you don't hide the experience behind hours of RNG grind to get the best stuff, and hours of waiting on straight line SC "flight" while watching Netflix.

Fix the core. Then market the fixed state as the next evolution of Elite, now featuring a truly living, breathing galaxy. It will sell, IF it works as advertised.

 

[Lana]

Not if the game is meant to be developed over 10 years.

So it's ok that all these parts of the game are not very interesting or compelling for years because *maybe* they will be fixed up later at some unknown future date? That's silly.

 

[Blackcompany]

Not if the game is meant to be developed over 10 years.

I shouldn't take this bait...

But...

They don't HAVE ten years. They probably don't have TWO years. So much good will gone now. Bored players frustrated with placeholders and shallow Mechanics.

It might not be fair. It.might not suit their neat little ten year whatever. But the REALITY of the situation is that, without major, sweeping improvement, this game won't make it FIVE years. More less ten.

Right? Fair? Maybe not. But it's the truth regardless. When you.invite people to play an early version of your game you risk driving them off with shallow, Early Access mechanics still in development. Frontier chose that risk, and it's bitten them now.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

They also said it will take years to get there, and that they are going to sell expansions to achieve that.

Exactly. When I first found out about E: D, back in early 2014, I read all the newsletters & Dev Updates I could find, & watched every video abouf the game that I could get my hands on. All of that info left me with no doubt that we'd be getting a pretty bare bones game at release....but I still felt it was well worth pre-ordering-a decision I have never regretted

Funny, though, that far fewer people complained during season 1, even though it definitely added significantly less to the game fhan season 2 has, so far. I may not agree with all their decisions in regards to feature release priorities, but I am still glad those features are now in the game.

 

[Walth_r]

clean up on table 2.4

Lots of people have talked about how improving existing features receives no attention because it isn't something you can market.

I disagree.

Imagine the possibility:

Prolific miners being invited at high rates of pay to y their trade in service to the building of capital Ship yards, new bases and stations. Seeing these things evolve because you contribute.

Traders and merchants receiving invites from persistent NPC characters for lucrative, sometimes risky, unique hauls. Building a rep with the brokers - or the scoundrels - of the galaxy. And seeing that rep follow you in the form of cheap loan offers, lucrative hauls, bounty hunters and underworld bosses.

Bounty Hunters being stalked by persistent pirate Lord's and henchmen. Attack their base and defeat that. Or damage a henchman's ship sufficient that they fleee and track each one back to a base filled with enemy ships, and maybe a treasure trove.

Receive invites to Bounty CG events, with offers of additional pay. Maybe those who've done lots of hunting are nodded on, have their ships relocated a t a discount or free, in exchange for collecting X bounties over a generous time period.

Record our successes, and failures. Let them chain to other offers and events. Let parts of the game interact with one another.

Then.go back to market with a real, dynamic, evolving galaxy in which you are the feature character in your personal story, as that story evolves based on your actions, with real allies, enies, brokers, supporters and foes.

The people who cheered at the vaunted Nemesis system in Mordor will eat this up. And they will praise it to the heavens as the player centric evolution open world games need.

But ONLY if it works. And.only if you don't hide the experience behind hours of RNG grind to get the best stuff, and hours of waiting on straight line SC "flight" while watching Netflix.

Fix the core. Then market the fixed state as the next evolution of Elite, now featuring a truly living, breathing galaxy. It will sell, IF it works as advertised.

That are some good visions, you got me drooling over the possibility elite could be one day... I hope at least one of your points makes it in someday

 

[Soopyyy]

I shouldn't take this bait...

But...

They don't HAVE ten years. They probably don't have TWO years. So much good will gone now. Bored players frustrated with placeholders and shallow Mechanics.

It might not be fair. It.might not suit their neat little ten year whatever. But the REALITY of the situation is that, without major, sweeping improvement, this game won't make it FIVE years. More less ten.

Right? Fair? Maybe not. But it's the truth regardless. When you.invite people to play an early version of your game you risk driving them off with shallow, Early Access mechanics still in development. Frontier chose that risk, and it's bitten them now.

More than that, it shows no real sign of improving what so ever.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I've said for ages now that we need obvious links between Factions & Powers. Helping a Faction should aid its affiliated Power.....& Vice Versa. Likewise, if you're pledged to a Power, then certain Faction Missions should carry the Power-Play symbol....meaning that completing said mission should help your Pledged Power (or hurt an opposing faction) in some specific fashion (Preparation, Control, Fortification & Undermining) as well as earning you extra merits. In a similar fashion, systems that are in turmoil (Famine, Outbreak etc) should be much easier to take control of than strong systems (Boom, Expansion etc).

As a working example-lets say that there is an uncontrolled system that is currently suffering from an outbreak, & your pledged power has an affiliated Faction in that system. Such a system would require fewer points to prepare, & there might be donation missions & missions for delivery of medical cargo that have the Power Play symbol next to them. Completing missions like this will help your power to prepare that system for takeover, & earn you merits in the meantime. This would create much greater synergy between Power Play & the rest of the game, IMHO.

I have been calling for something like this for some time now. I would also expand powerplay a bit with more powers. There are just no enough of them at the moment to make it interesting.

Should be at 4-6 powers per major faction make them smaller then they are now and keep other independent powers.
The alliance only having one power at the moment is a bit rubbish to me.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

So it's ok that all these parts of the game are not very interesting or compelling for years because *maybe* they will be fixed up later at some unknown future date? That's silly.

Speak for yourself. Though I think they could be better, doesn't mean I don't find them interesting or compelling in fheir current form.

 

[dannysquid]

I hope Thargoids will change everything. I'm assuming (possibly wrongly) that some sort of Powerplay-style wider territory control will happen, but unlike Powerplay it will visibly effect the actual station-to-station gameplay in a way you can't ignore. It would add purpose (in a way I hoped Powerplay would).

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I have been calling for something like this for some time now. I would also expand powerplay a bit with more powers. There are just no enough of them at the moment to make it interesting.

Should be at 4-6 powers per major faction make them smaller then they are now and keep other independent powers.
The alliance only having one power at the moment is a bit rubbish to me.

Powers need to be more dynamic. A faction that has expanded to enough systems should be able to automatically rise up to be a power, & a power that becomes sufficiently weakened should get demoted to a faction.

 

[VR jefranklin18]

End of the day, he is lead designer...

But my point is that the initial designs were fine (most people would love to see 10% of the DDF stuff implemented), the issue is on the translation of them to development activities. I don't know enough about who does that in Frontier but normally it is on the Dev side.

 

[Para Handy]

................... I would also expand powerplay a bit with more powers. There are just no enough of them at the moment to make it interesting.

......................

Powerpants is obviously not loved by F D - I mean, seriously, only one picture for each of the "leaders"? Crikey, it doesn't take much effort to at least put together a few different images of each. No, there just isn't the same emphasis on "involvement" as there is on "oh look another thing for combat, yeah let's do that!".

 

[VR jefranklin18]

Not if the game is meant to be developed over 10 years.

But didn't Michael Brookes say a long time ago that he considered exploration as feature complete?

 

[Whitehair]

He said it was 'Solid'

 

[Soopyyy]

But didn't Michael Brookes say a long time ago that he considered exploration as feature complete?

Really????

 

[Comrade Napoleon]

Latecomer here.
Op puts it bluntly. Op points out omissions that are evident to everybody. Op is right. I agree.
+ rep. And again if I could.

Cheers Cmdr's

 

[verminstar]

You mean this one?
http://imgur.com/a/fOFli

Aint seen that one and no thats not it...it was a headline feature from microsoft which, at the time got buried under the scorpio hype. Ill dig around later when I have time...and a pc cos searching stuff on the bone is tiresome ^

 

[BurnyBurns]

I hope Thargoids will change everything. I'm assuming (possibly wrongly) that some sort of Powerplay-style wider territory control will happen, but unlike Powerplay it will visibly effect the actual station-to-station gameplay in a way you can't ignore. It would add purpose (in a way I hoped Powerplay would).

Tell me, how would the introduction of new things to pew at fix "everything"? How does it add lacking social features? How does it redesign RNG mission generation promoting board refresh, because anything else is an insult to player time? How does it fix that apparently hour clocks for inventory management were considered acceptable by Frontier? How does it fix that they have so far failed to introduce Wing support for missions? How does it fix that missions revolve around shoving loading screens in your face and looking for RNG things with poor directions? How does it fix that a new shiny coop feature is gimped, because Frontier apparently cares far too much how new players progress in the game (read: Oh noes! Newbs can get credits fast without playing a 1000 hours first? Better duck up multicrew payouts even for veteran players. That'll fix it!) How are Thargoids fixing that Frontier has deviced three different loading and restocking mechanics for the similar launchables: limpets, SRVs and fighters, with limpets being just about the most overconvoluted implementation for drones they could've gone for. How are Thargoids fixing lack of game mechanics in multicrew besides shooting turrets and controlling fighters?

Hoping that Thargoids are going ot fix anything seems a bit starry-eyed to me. New nice things to look at. Probably entertaining things to shoot at. Same barebones fundament.