Has MultiCrew gone the way of the Dodo too?

Mengy

Mengy
verminstar said:
Zero interest before it was launched...zero interest after it launched. Its a pvp and combat orientated affair so I glance over it but dont dwell on it because neither pvp or combat interest me very much. As a non combat player, mc is about as big a fail as it gets Im afraid because it offers absolutely zero options ^
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I was actually interested before it launched, but that was when I thought it would be a feature for all styles of players, not just the combat players. I was really looking forward to what could be done from the engineer seat. Of course, that seat was cut and multicrew turned into more combat only content, so it's not much use to me unfortunately. I've tried it twice since it went live, the first time I lost connection when the ship went into hyperspace, the second time it was just a tedious boring experience. Oh well.


K-Rose said:
Just reaffirms my belief that they should've started with NPC crew that everyone could benefit from, everyone could have fun with, everyone could feel like they could invest time in their crew.


It could've been so much more, now with FD and their "if no one uses it then we won't touch it" mentality it means it's never going to get looked into again.


In the previous elite games you needed many crew for a single ship. Even if I should had a couple of bodies on the ship that I could level up to Elite, even if they only increased my scan range by 1% I'd be happier than I am now.


This is the game of missed opportunities, I really hope they pull it together with the "Core Fixes" coming after 2.4
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Yep, I've always felt they should have implemented NPC crews first, THEN mulitcrew. ONE, everyone could have used the feature, and TWO, it would have provided a much better explanation for multicrew than "galactic telepresence". Players could simply take over for existing NPC crew members in a players ship, no more need for magic multicrew!


I guess Frontier just wanted that tick box for the marketing team rather than a well developed mechanic.
 

CapuchinSeven

CapuchinSeven
sollisb said:
Now add to that is the cheating.. NPC cheating.. Oh look a Python! where'd it go? Oh it's silent running... Well wait.. How can it do that and come back suddenly with full shields? How can it do that while firing?
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Dropping a heatsink will give a very short moment of stealth without the need to close radiators and silent run.
 

Genar-Hofoen

Genar-Hofoen
If you look at games like Artemis - this is basically what Multicrew should be like. It's what players kind of expect a feature like Multicrew, to be more like.

The trouble is that Artemis-type gameplay is a full-on game in itself.

So imagine the amount of developer time/resources required to code something like Artemis as a new module for this game. Then we have Frontier, who only seem prepared to assign <this> much dev time to <that> particular sub-part of the game.

The end result is a very much cut down version of what a feature might have been like, if sufficient developer time had been allocated to it.

The overall result is that due to having to pare allocated developer time & resources down to a bare minimum, you end up with a bare minimum feature. Such has been this game's history since inception.

Then again, patches adding new features and content would have had even longer periods of time between them. So obviously Frontier's chiefs have had to make decisions in attempts to form a balance between dev time/assets towards new (and existing) features & bugfixes, and the length of time between new content patches.

The question is - have they gotten this balance between length of time between new content and amount of dev resources flung towards new features right?

Now, everyone is going to have their own ideas of what Frontier should prioritise their resources on. So for me I'd really like to have seen Exploration fleshed out much, much more than it is right now, and I'd have loved that to have happened a year ago.
 

CylonSurfer

CylonSurfer
No MC missions - No MC game play other than RES and CZ farming. No SRV gameplay. Yeah it was still born.

I use it from time to time to jump in a real life friends ship, I also don't do third person in VR so the gunner role is complete waste for me. When I weigh it up I may as well take my own combat kitted ship to a RES.... So yeah, unless I just wanna chill in the co-pilot seat of my mates ship while we chat there is no real reason to use it. Completely wasted feature imo, which is sad as it was one feature I really looked forward to.

It was sad to see it released in the state it did, I feel it was mostly box ticking to provide the bare minimum of the content they promised.
 
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amigacooke

amigacooke
Miklos Atreides said:
Developers are often a strange kind of people. In FDs case they seem somewhat combat centric and miss to see the wider more peacefull options of a feature. Maybe its also because combat has
a clear bordered line they know very well, Starting to discover the unknown purpose is a bug trap and avoided.

Regards,
Miklos
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To be fair, there's not a lot of combat in Planet Coaster.
 

CMDR Ofan

CMDR Ofan
Globusdiablo said:
Imagine what they could have done to core gameplay benefiting all, had they not spent all that ressource on features for the few.
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They have a construction schedule to follow. the development will always be like this where they add features sequentially then take a break to tie them all together. TBJ I think this is a good place for them to stop adding things once the goids get there to spend some time pulling it together otherwise the game would have very little scope of action when they do polish it all up.
 

Nazdakka

N
I've tried it, it's fun flying someone else's SLFs, and I'm going to try to build myself an SLF mothership for MC purposes.

I hope it works!
 

verminstar

Banned
verminstar
Mengy said:
I was actually interested before it launched, but that was when I thought it would be a feature for all styles of players, not just the combat players. I was really looking forward to what could be done from the engineer seat. Of course, that seat was cut and multicrew turned into more combat only content, so it's not much use to me unfortunately. I've tried it twice since it went live, the first time I lost connection when the ship went into hyperspace, the second time it was just a tedious boring experience. Oh well.
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The moment I heard it was multiplayer only with no npc options at all was the moment where I literally lost all interest. There might have been possibilities before with showing lazy cmdrs who couldnt be bothered exploring the sights they would otherwise miss, but I lost all motivation to even consider such a thing after the non npc thing. That killed it as surely as anything else fer me...from the perspective of a loner explorer, it wont make the slightest bit of difference to me and offers zero gameplay options.

And thats assuming it even works because judging from some the complaints, it doesnt appear to work well even with the stuff it was aimed at...laughable really ^
 

CMDR Carbo

CMDR Carbo
One of the main problems with MC in my opinion is that all the ships we currently have in game are designed so that they can be easily handled by one pilot.
The whole MC would have been more interesting if they would have:

- Introduced NPC-crew first (requirement for point below)
- Release 2-3 new big ships together with MC that are specially designed for MC / NPC-Crew in mind. Like the Helm has all the capacity over piloting/energy management, and control over some front weapon hardpoints, but there are like 1-2 powerful gun turrets that the NPC-Crew or MC member has exclusive control over. Each gun turret would have 2 hardpoints the gunner could switch between (e.g. can multi-canon and laser) or something like that. Plus each of these big MC ships could launch 1-2 SLF.
 
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Lightspeed

Lightspeed
I'm not interested in multi-crew as it currently is implemented. If they just put the project on "hold" for a moment and worked on kicking away this concept of "telepresence" which has interfered with the logic of being physically present in the SRV.

If real physical presence were introduced into multi-crew, they could run CGs or similar events where it becomes necessary to join a ship to share in engaging activity to achieve an objective, even if it is to shoot x amount of a faction in a CZ or mine y tons of a material. Something which gives advantage to all participants in the multi-crew concept.

But with physical presence, we would have to fly to a certain port or system and join a ship from there.

It could work well with fighting an invasion of Thargoids. Pilots could fly to systems near the Tharg land, to join ships that fly off to do battle with the enemy. The multi-crew presence gives the commanders an edge in the battle, that single pilots cannot achieve. (I know, solo v open again, but something has to give here !)

But unless they remove the idea of telepresence in someone else's ship over long distances, the logic of the SRV and maybe space legs is going to be in conflict continually. That would, of course, damage multi-crew for explorers, but would that be a loss at all in the game? Explorers are mostly solitary beings, anyway, and who wants to sit for hours watching someone else fly a ship in nice places ?

So I say, keep the multi-crew concept for development with real crew, and real events. It could be made to work for special events, at least.

EDIT - And I should add, also work at removing teleprescence from the SLF and put real NPC pilots in our ships !
 
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PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
....all the multicrew have been killed by hungry sailors... for food....?

....and I thought smuggling slaves was the dark underbelly of ED.....

...the horror, the horror....
 

wrmiller

W
Wasn't interested when it was announced, and never bothered to try it when delivered. I've no interest in learning to 'play well with others'. ;)

Give me ships designed with functions that can be manned by NPC crewmembers. Like engineering. Or navigation. And NPC piloted ships both for the Big Boys as fighters and as an option for forming wings with smaller ships.

Yea and get rid of the slave nonsense now that you mention it...
 

Heater

Heater
Well if they can get the network issues sorted out, I can see it being fun, but as it is now, it's not worth the time / effort to use it.
 

Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy Stardust
If the glorious combat people don't think it's fun, Frontier have already stated that they won't expand on it and waste time on trying to make it work for inferiour professions.
 
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