Has MultiCrew gone the way of the Dodo too?

[Arkadi]

I've been trying to embrace this new feature. Equipped my boat for a small gunner role, and opened a seat. After hours of gameplay I think 2 commanders have joined my ship only to exit again shortly after without any kind of comms.

And if I look to see if others have a MultiCrew opening on their ship? Not a single one.

Has MultiCrew already gone the way of the Dodo, much like CQC and PowerPlay?

Don't put MulitCrew in the same boat als CQC and PowerPlay dear Sir. Those are totally different. CQC is an entirely detached game mode and powerplay is an semi-detached game-mode. Multi-Crew finally is a real addition to basic gameplay or would be, if it was implemented with more features...

I must say I also don't see a shining future for multi-crew since it is so limited in its usefulness. I did try it twice out of curiosity and .. well that was that. If multicrew would be in addition to wings and also useable in powerplay (earning merits) and having more features and roles on board of the ship ... maybe I'd give it another try. But as it is, it is very much a dodo for me.

EDIT: also I would have liked to have the possiblity to park and deploy my small ship (sidey, eagle, viper class) inside and out of an friends big-as8 ship (conda, cutter, corvette class) and not only paper-print fighters... (but that's another story of another feature not being what it could be...)

 

[peteuplink]

Multicrew didn't interest me at all. I think the time wasted on developing it could have been spent on non-Earth like atmospheric planets.

 

[SuBSynk]

Not quite sure what people were expecting from multicrew though tbh.

When the devs announced 6 months before 2.3 dropped that multi crew would have 3-4 roles including navigation and engineering i think most people understandably expected that to happen...

The very last thing many of us expected was a stripped down gunnar role with a 3rd person targeting system, especially when Fdev have always stated we could not have any form of 3rd person gameplay since the early kickstarter days

 

[Ziljan]

You are wrong.

The most useful multicrew feature isn't exploration - it's additional pip.

Most useful for those who have multiple accounts and the ability to run them all at once (Or at least two or three at once).

Like me - I have three accs, and I am able to run them simultaneously on one PC (quite a feat, eh? Poor thing, it's melting...).


What I would like is ability to turn off 3D rendering while in multicrew. You get black screen a-la "transaction server error" with "Resume game" dialogue.
Come on FD, give us multi-acc users this simple QoL improvement. After all, we bought not one, but several copies - we deserve something for our dedication.

An extra pip is more useful than a wing with a whole extra ship (with 6 extra pips and double the guns/shields/hull + flanking + healing + ping ponging aggro + double influence gains + faster money gains)? I think you need to recheck the math on that one.

The only thing a Multicrew is better than is being alone. And that's only ever a roadblock if you are too far away to meet up for a wing, hence: Exploration pew pew breaks.

 

[SentineI]

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.

IMHO FDev isn't the problem, it's the network model (P2P) that has proven incredibly complex to make it do anything that's not really simple. P2P sounds great on paper (low server costs & low ping), but in practice I think it's made development progress incredibly slowly, and the bugginess (complexity) of it has made FDev even more reticent to make too many changes in one go (hence partly why MC's features were probably cut).

I also suspect that other technical decisions (like using a variety of different database models) has also greatly complicated (and thus slowed) the development of other aspects of the game (e.g. mission variety & complexity). And if this thing had been single-player-only, there'd be no databases to worry about at all, so that mission complexity would have gone far past that achieved 22+ years ago by David Braben (on his own!) with Frontier Elite 2.

 

[SentineI]

(I've removed this post, as I thought I was being a bit unfair....)

 

[LKx]

When the devs announced 6 months before 2.3 dropped that multi crew would have 3-4 roles including navigation and engineering i think most people understandably expected that to happen...

The very last thing many of us expected was a stripped down gunnar role with a 3rd person targeting system, especially when Fdev have always stated we could not have any form of 3rd person gameplay since the early kickstarter days

To be honest i don't see how the gunner role could be any different, beside a few minor tweaks.
The problem is that the multicrew is overall very limited and underwhelming by itself, regardless what they planned (actually if i didn't know they planned something more, I'd be even more critic, because i'd have assumed that they thought that what we got was a good idea)

 

[Vasea Azure]

Multi-crew as fun first 10-20 times but with out real navigation/exploration roles I just don't see myself returning to it. Pew Pew gets boring very fast.

 

[NeilF]

Am I right in saying while you have a multi-crew member you (as the owner of the ship) can't deploy an SRV?

 

[UnhappyDev]

To be honest i don't see how the gunner role could be any different, beside a few minor tweaks.

Well I was quite disappointed when it became clear that the gunner wouldn't be manning a *real* gun turret, with telepresence magic-ing the extra dev effort away. The gunner role as it stands gets old quite quickly, at least it does for me. I tried it and got bored after ten minutes or so. Luckily, the SLF role is much more fun.

 

[LKx]

Well I was quite disappointed when it became clear that the gunner wouldn't be manning a *real* gun turret, with telepresence magic-ing the extra dev effort away. The gunner role as it stands gets old quite quickly, at least it does for me. I tried it and got bored after ten minutes or so. Luckily, the SLF role is much more fun.

That would be cool ideally, but extremely impractical to use, it couldn't have worked for real.

Am I right in saying while you have a multi-crew member you (as the owner of the ship) can't deploy an SRV?

Correct, multicrew suffers a lot of technical limitations (probably that's also the reason why they couldn't do what they wanted and it's so barebone)

 

[UnhappyDev]

That would be cool ideally, but extremely impractical to use, it couldn't have worked for real.

It works in Star Wars, how much more real do you want?

 

[Vasea Azure]

Am I right in saying while you have a multi-crew member you (as the owner of the ship) can't deploy an SRV?

Yup, I think you cant get the SRV going in MC session.

 

[Lobstris]

Multicrew was much the same. I think a lot of people stacked their hopes on it changing the game for them, but in reality, with ships that are designed to be operated by a single commander, what did people expect?

Well, first of all larger ships shouldn't really be crew-able by one person, but that aside, I think people thought, based on what had been said previously, that the other crew stations might be more system oriented, bringing possible depth to the gameplay (e.g. balancing shields depending on attack direction, using scanners to determine mineral deposit/asteroid locations, scanning for USS, fixing systems on the fly), rather than just being combat-oriented.

Now we know Frontier have said that they just couldn't make the other positions 'fun' - which could be partially correct (who want's to sit babysitting shields out of combat), but also it could show a lack of understanding of, or unwillingness to devote resources to, of some of their (ex) target audience, such as the 'study' flight/space-sim junkies. Of course, you are right - it could also be partly the fact that as everything is designed around the single-player controlling the ship, meaning loads of ship tasks (engineering, navigation) are far too trivial, and would actually put a multi-crewed ship at a disadvantage over a single-player ship, due to the additional complexity and coordination required to make the MC ship work.

Or it could just be they can't get anything complex to work in the multiplayer framework they've built without excessive drop-outs, or excessive resources to put right. <Speculation hat off>

You are right, in that we're all being somewhat delusional, expecting each patch to make the experience 'better', when past experience shows it's just short-term 'meh' heaped upon more 'meh'. And that said, I've been having an absolute blast with 2.3 segueing into 2.4 - running around finding secret bases, lost survey ships and alien wrecks and ruins (oh my).

 

[NeilF]

Yup, I think you cant get the SRV going in MC session.

Crazy thing seems to be... Even after the multi-crew have left... You still can't...

A group of us went to the Thargoid base. Three in ships and one as a multi-crew.

The amount of issues/hiccups/problems we hit was painful to say the least.

An hour after getting there we'd still made no progress.

It took 1h45m to get the machine to work... with only two of us remaining at that point.

 

[NMS]

Multicrew didn't interest me at all. I think the time wasted on developing it could have been spent on non-Earth like atmospheric planets.

That would be too good to be true.

Maybe just adding something that's worth it to the current planets would already be a good thing.

 

[Enderby]

They should try adding good things.

 

[SentineI]

Now we know Frontier have said that they just couldn't make the other positions 'fun'

Are you sure about that? I thought they just ran out of time/resources? If you are right, then I could have told them that when they first announced Multi Crew a year or two ago... (I'm not even convinced the gunner role is particularly fun, but I haven't tried it.)

 

[starman]

Dodos were hunted to extinction because they were too trusting of humans. This is more like just pretending dodos didn't exist. The game development paradox use it or we wont develop it.

 

[Lobstris]

Are you sure about that? I thought they just ran out of time/resources? If you are right, then I could have told them that when they first announced Multi Crew a year or two ago... (I'm not even convinced the gunner role is particularly fun, but I haven't tried it.)

I'm sure it came up - but can't remember where? (Here? Livestream?) I'll apologise if I've misrepresented something or someone though.

*Edit* See here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhsH5U7tz4A&t=36m15s

Sandro starts with the answer as 'we ran out of time and resources', then changes the answer saying 'that's a bit of a lie'. He then talks about 'accessibility and longevity' of features 'out of combat', which is where I get my interpretation from, but that is 'reading between the lines'. But then there's a lot of 'reading between the lines' going on with Elite. Saying something needs to be 'accessible and usable' for example, can be read as a noble UI design goal, and one worthy of requiring sufficient time and resources to do it justice, or it could be read as "we're dumbing things down as we think people wouldn't understand anything out of combat. Actually attempting to model fictitious ship systems in depth is just making things overly complex for our target audience. Hi PS4 users!" (j/k!)