Sorry but what does this have to do with Multicrew? Do the Devs play in a way that makes Multicrew somehow advantageous or preferable over a Wing?
Isn't the real problem with Multicrew that it only has niche usefulness to Explorers who want to help a bubble friend that somehow doesn't know anyone else with their own ship in the bubble? That's a pretty small target audience. MC needs to be more broadly useful and appealing imo.
Sorry. Sometimes I'm in a hurry, and don't fully flesh out what I want to say.
During the Kickstarter, Frontier Developments said they were making the game
they wanted to play. Based on what they published in the DDA, it was going to be a game with considerable depth, one that would require three dimensional thinking, and a certain willingness to delay gratification. If you wanted big payoffs, you had to be willing to put a certain effort into it.
Even as early Alpha and Premium beta, this was intolerable to the
Veruca Salts of the player base. Need to haul biowaste and fertilizer to an agricultural station in order for tea to replenish faster? Unacceptable! Supercruise requiring careful plotting and a certain willingness to take chances to go anywhere fast? Horrible! AI were able to outfight you? Not Fair!
Personally, during Season One, I felt I was watching what was going to be a great game, the type of game I enjoy most, fill in most of its existing depth, and shy away from adding more. It was still a very good game, and also the ONLY space ship game in a genre I enjoy, but the game became a shallow reflection of what it could've been. Power play is a good example of this. There were hints of this type of "Game of Thrones" in the DDA, but what actually came out didn't reflect at all what was going to be. It's very much one dimensional, which is why it fell flat.
If Season One was Frontier pulling away from their original vision of this game, Season Two was Frontier trying to cater to
different vision for this game, but one that was filtered through their own preconceptions of what makes an enjoyable game. Which is why, in my opinion, the player base has gotten so unpleasable. By trying to cater to
everyone, they're appealing to no-one.
Engineers is a classic example of this. I very much enjoy Engineers, primarily due to it requiring out of the box thinking to get good results without grinding away at it. It could've been much better, though, especially if Frontier had stuck to their guns and required prospecting on planets to figure out what their material make up would be, as opposed to revealing it all with a detailed surface scan. To the Veruca Salts of the game, no matter how fast this process could be , was still an intolerable time sink, especially if they insist on perfection. And of course, this was exactly what the PvP combat community
didn't want.
Instant Multi-Crew is pretty much the culmination of Frontier's attempt to cater to the Veruca Salts of the community. It has absolutely no depth, and is all about instant gratification... assuming that the only thing you enjoy is shooting NPCs. There is no sharing ships, where one player can hand over control to another player, allowing the ship to be controlled by a group of players over time and share the fruits of their labor. There isn't anything to do besides combat, disappointing the larger player base for whom combat isn't the primary reason they play this game. The only
real incentive to spend any time with multi-crew is a way to earn money without actually playing by providing an extra pip to another player. And the Telepresence explanation for why we can't hitchhike aboard other players ships fit with established worldbuilding.
