Has MultiCrew gone the way of the Dodo too?

[Enderby]

This is why the game is in the state it's in - silly, badly-thought out additions - pp, cqc, engineers and now mc...

And yet people still have faith that FD can 'turn it around'. On what basis do you think they will do this?

Think of the all that time and money wasted developing these un-asked for, and aside from rngineers, unused 'additions'. Whoever is planning stuff like this maybe needs less yes-men around them.

And then there's the terrible 'if you use it we'll make it usable' line from FD. Good one! Waste time making something rather rubbishy that the majority won't touch... it really is quite astounding.

I get the feeling Brabers is only interested in his alien story.

 

[defekt]

"Build it, and they will come!"

Except FD seemed to think that thousands of people would show up to (nearly) nothing and FD would 'build it' whilst they all stood around waiting for whatever 'it' was.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, this story couldn't have ended any other way.

 

[Mengy]

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.

Yeah, the way Frontier stated that rubbed me the wrong way too. It really was belittling to me as a non-combat player, and it gave me no hope that multicrew will ever be turned into something other than what it is today. Which is a real shame.

 

[defekt]

ED is very rapidly turning out to be a case study in how not to do this sort of thing, and you can bet your last Wellington boot that the folks over at robertsspaceindustries.com are taking notes.

 

[Globusdiablo]

ED is very rapidly turning out to be a case study in how not to do this sort of thing, and you can bet your last Wellington boot that the folks over at robertsspaceindustries.com are taking notes.

One can only hope.

 

[Muzz UK]

Yeah, the way Frontier stated that rubbed me the wrong way too. It really was belittling to me as a non-combat player, and it gave me no hope that multicrew will ever be turned into something other than what it is today. Which is a real shame.

Frontier have apparently taken note on the combat/grind thing I'm sure Obsidian Ant or another streamer mentioned that part of the reason they are going back to look at the core game play after 2.4 is to try and do things for that part of the player base.

 

[verminstar]

ED is very rapidly turning out to be a case study in how not to do this sort of thing, and you can bet your last Wellington boot that the folks over at robertsspaceindustries.com are taking notes.

Compared to their open ended approach, frontier simply aint even in the same league anymore. That could end up being their loss further down the line...FD I mean. They have always said they wanted to do things their way...so far "their way" hasnt exactly been a resounding success but whatever...

Was a time when playing other games was just timefillers until frontier sorted their game out...now ED has become the timefiller while others sort their games out. Gives one time to get the dream pc uber expensive rig built fer that other game ^

 

[Thetele]

The problem isn't the ideas behind the multicrew. The problem is that elite wasn't build to be game with multicrew from the begining. You can't turn game that is about being alone in your ship doing stuff to game were multiple people operate the same ship. Its impossible task. When they released elite first versions to public more than 3 years ago they set what kind of the game elite is and would be. They build every system and function in game around that idea that became elite dangerous. Update like multicrew can't re shape what the game is. Elite never was space game were multiple players operate one ship and it will never be one as it would be same as turning elite to game that is not elite. At this point its too late to reshape how players see elite.

And same thing with space legs or walking around. Thats not what elite is, it wasn't at the core of elite experience or design when they started building this game 4-5 years ago. Like multicrew If they ever wanted to add space legs it should have been done from the start and not add later, hole game should have been build differently if there was plans for walking around, everything from ships, how stations, missions, systems etc. work needs to be re done for walking around and that would mean they have wasted many years with elite. Its too far in to be done, you can't re shape the core at this point. Elite can't be everything. They need to realize what elite is and how they can add to it and make elite better.

 

[K-Rose]

Well come on, I believe both FD & SC are making a tidy profit, more space games is only a good thing.

FD have bowed to public pressure on things before, we just have to stay vocal and keep reiterating that we want Multi-Crew to be properly expanded to other professions & to have NPC functionality for the solo players.

I think among the "core gameplay" improvements that should be coming after September, NPC Crew & NPC Wingmen should be high on the list. They add depth to every style of gameplay and can be used by everyone to feel more involved with their ship, their crew & their wingmates

 

[CMDR Mayhem]

If it is true that FD said something along lines of "if people dont play it, we wont try making it better". Then that's a giant warning sign, & that the future of this games content may not be as good as what was initially suggested. If that content falls flat, you can expect this same excuse to be spewed out.
It sounds like what someone would say that if they had no intentions on "making it better" in the first place i.e. "a cop out".
Hopefully FD prove me wrong.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

The big downside to multicrew is of course lack of NPC multicrew and lack of non-combat stuff the multicrew could be doing. Now I'm an explorer and when I'm buzzing around the galaxy there aren't any tasks I'd like an NPC crewmember to do, except supply a steady stream of strong coffee. So for me to have any interest into mutlicrew it would need exploration mechanics to be expanded. For instance when I'm going through my usual: enter system, align for scooping while honking, fly out of the corona and fire up the FSD, check out the system map, align for exit point, my NPC multicrew science boffin could go: anomaly detected on 3A Sir. Because I put them in charge of the anomaly detector which you place in a hardpoint and acts like a turret. And the more skilled the boffin, the more skillful (s)he is in detecting weird data.

Or something like that.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I used MC to show a friend a few things I stumbled across, without the need for her to fly several hundred Ly.
I also joined someone else's ship, and that was pretty dull. Lol

Wings trump MC every time.

 

[K-Rose]

If it is true that FD said something along lines of "if people dont play it, we wont try making it better". Then that's a giant warning sign, & that the future of this games content may not be as good as what was initially suggested. If that content falls flat, you can expect this same excuse to be spewed out.
It sounds like what someone would say that if they had no intentions on "making it better" in the first place i.e. "a cop out".
Hopefully FD prove me wrong.

It is true, I can't cite the source whether it was a Live Stream or a Forum Post, but I personally spent a lot of time and made a huge fuss about it in the 2.3 Beta.

There's also precedent for it, see Powerplay...

All we can hope for is that we make enough noise that we'd like to use it, but not in it's current format, and hope they'll listen.

 

[Bertrand Du Guesclin]

Reasons I'll probably never touch multi-crew :

- I often fly single seat ships
- My RL friends don't play ED
- My few good in-game friends don't play at the same time as me, or don't necessarily have the same interests
- Multi-crew is only for combat activities
- I use fixed weapons almost exclusively, and I won't downgrade my firepower to put turrets
- I don't trust strangers
- I can't have NPC crew in my cockpit

Until some of those things change, I really don't see the interest of multi-crew.
Some of those points apply to SLFs too. NPC crew is too expensive, or useless at low levels, and SLF hangars take usefull slots

 

[LKx]

Looks like it. Instead of working to improve existing things FD gave us what no one asked for. Again.

Not really, it's not that no one asked for it, it's that it's not anything near what it was asked/hoped.

They had some pretty ideas, but they couldn't do it, so they had to put together what we have now because they already sold it, instead of dropping it.
I'm glad they dropped the season model, this
shouldn't happen again.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I use Multicrew to teach new commanders regularly. I also use it with newer commanders who are looking to make some credits - either through trade runs or combat operations.

Overall, I think it's a feature with standard-issue Elite: Potential - that is, it has tremendous potential but is under-featured.

It would also be a great feature if we could multi-crew TO an NPC ship in a chosen field, though I'm sure this would require a great deal of backend work to make work well.

 

[verminstar]

If it is true that FD said something along lines of "if people dont play it, we wont try making it better". Then that's a giant warning sign, & that the future of this games content may not be as good as what was initially suggested. If that content falls flat, you can expect this same excuse to be spewed out.
It sounds like what someone would say that if they had no intentions on "making it better" in the first place i.e. "a cop out".
Hopefully FD prove me wrong.

Thats more or less exactly what they said...not exactly very confidence inspiring when its said before its even released. It suggests things that perhaps frontier dont want suggesting...like a very uncertain future. And if they not certain about their own future...sometimes reading between the lines isnt always a good thing but thats how I read it. Thats why I ddont see this as a long term game anymore...just a timefiller until someone else makes something shinier ^

 

[MottiKhan]

I haven't tried Multi Crew and have no interest in trying. For me, it's kinda like CQC. Just a somewhat shiny trinket on the edge of the game. I gave 15 minutes of my life to CQC. Time's too valuable to do this sort of thing again.

 

[Leo Sagan]

Zero interest before it was launched...zero interest after it launched.

As anticipated : this feature was doomed the day they announced NPC crew was a no go. Given the player base and the netcode, it was a new CQC fiasco waiting to happen.

Meanwhile, I"ve been circling an ammonia world while watching netflix to get an unknown probe so I can access the new "content". With zero success of course ...
I'll probably end up watching OA last vid to experience it instead.

What a shame, such a great game, so many missed opportunities ....

 

[Weps]

ED is very rapidly turning out to be a case study in how not to do this sort of thing

One of my other concerns besides Elite lies with the whole genre. For years we have had sort a dry spell of space sim games with nothing but game journalism articles motivating why the big players in the industry don't take up the challenge.

When Star Citizen, Elite and No Man's Sky were announced, everyone was acclaiming the dawn of a new age of space sim video games. 5 years later and one proved to be a letdown, one is stuck in development hell, and the last one comes dangerously close to resembling a port-to-all-platforms cash grab business model.

If all end up failing in the end, what will take their place? Will others be willing to fill in the gap?