Braben’s Vision and It’s Implications
- Thread starter Delilah
- Start date
I share this sentiment 100%. I rarely play ED anymore, because the very basic, core mechanics of one of the advertised professions, my favorite profession, piracy, are borked. Piracy is a joke.
Missions? A joke.
Exploration? honk point jump. rinse and repeat until you kill yourself.
Mining? Even more tedious exploration.
Trading? move from a to be to a again for hours on end until you have the best ship ever, the Anaconda, and then stop playing. or go exploring and kill yourself.
If they can fix all of this, and hopefully add social mechanics to the game, I'd definitely spend a lot more time playing. This game has such an absolutely rock solid flight model and beautiful universe (besides the beigification), and I don't want it to fail. But i think it might, if these things don't come to fruition.
Not quite. I think Frontier have a proven track record of producing games we can play, in what appears to be a timely manner. ED for one, Planet Coaster for another.
What I'm saying is, the pace of development seems to be too slow, for pretty much all us old timers, to get ED to that "vision". New players wont notice of course.
Now, what in heaven could speed up this pace of dev? More pizza, probably for a few days maybe.
But in the long run, Id guess more office space + more developers, artists and producers might do the trick. And that takes £££.
Frontier may not really want to do that of course. After all, those people, ideally need to be employed into the future. And more office space, is a drag on £££.
Sustainability might be an issue. I mean, post the big push, what are all those new people going to do? Another game I guess...
But... it seems to me, that unless something changes. We might all have to wait until 2020+ until we see Atmospheric landings. And thats just too long to wait, considering when the game was launched...
Cripes, by then, SC might actually be launched already, with Atmospheric landings +++. You never know...
Looking at the credits of the main menu of ED, my optimism is bolstered that Frontier has been working hard at the game with long term improvements and goals that will one day come to light. Development seems slow because of the general acclimation of the players to their high bar setting achievements where there are still massive limitations and challenges to further improvements and goals due to the sheer scale of the gameplay world and ambition.
I have a feeling if SC is ever released, or even forced to be released early, it'll only be a textured or fleshed out planet or two, a few moons, in another made up cluster of a make believe galaxy of a few stars that every other loose sci-fi game world has fallen back on with the usual painted unrealistic backdrops. There could be initial marvelling at all the textured details and objects, but soon enough it will wear off real quick like the next CoD game or transformers movie. Those demo engine scripted demos will remain as they were, yt video demos.
I have a feeling if SC is ever released, or even forced to be released early, it'll only be a textured or fleshed out planet or two, a few moons, in another made up cluster of a make believe galaxy of a few stars that every other loose sci-fi game world has fallen back on with the usual painted unrealistic backdrops. There could be initial marvelling at all the textured details and objects, but soon enough it will wear off real quick like the next CoD game or transformers movie. Those demo engine scripted demos will remain as they were, yt video demos.
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It's not a case of whether the player base is ready for it or not (hint: no) it's that that should be how it is and was. For a living universe to prosper and for the game to have lasting impact, things have to change over time. Large groups tend to resist change over time, because they subconsciously want the status quo to be maintained. When it's not, it becomes a conscious demand.
The trick is to have very small degrees of change. So that from a daily basis? Nothing really seems to change, but there is none-the-less minor shifts; this builds up over subsequent cycles until changes slowly appear.
Right now, that's entirely artificial, driven solely by frontier. Instead, I think the actual simulation, and BGS should be recording trends, and generating a series of minor changes, that again build over time.
It's very important that these changes occur in very small increments, but can build on each other. It creates an actual, dynamic universe where there are long-lasting outcomes to various inputs. This could still well be artificial, but the key is that if something happens for a considerable period of time, it should have flow on effects. That then might require considerable effort to shift back. It's not an easy thing. I get that. Because the BGS still has to function. And it's a sandbox, so there has to be limits.
But, over months of timescale, we should see trends result in changes, that essentially stick until something else builds as a trend, that say reverses it, or shifts it again.
We're not connected to any of that as it stands, because everything just snaps back to whatever the default is at some point. Remember Emperor's Dawn? This is the mob a sizeable chunk of the player base sent packing - http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Emperor's_Dawn - this was about the last time anything players did, that had lasting impact; everything else has just been random hand-of-god from Frontier based (sometimes) on CG outcomes or simply arbitrary choice.
Remember when Jaques reappeared? And players scrambled to get the crazy old fool's station up and running again? And nothing happened? And then Frontier held some random CGs that essentially didn't do anything either? And then they sort of just enabled some stuff at random? That was an incredible opportunity to do exactly as I suggest; massive effort from a bunch of players just self-organising and getting on with it, leading to actual change. Functionality being restored progressively as we delivered much needed supply. But no. Let's just ignore all of that and make it the result of a handful of random CGs for random crap.
And this now gives me great pause and concern for 'the return'. If it's all just set pieces and nothing we do, fundimentally defines how our encounter with another advanced species will end up. This is what I mean about player agency; nothing anyone did, to try and help out 'ol Jaques meant anything. It was just pointless. That's a pretty good allegory for how the game stands at present. Will 'the return' just be the same as jaques; a bunch of irrelevant CGs with random goals and some materials drops, with nothing we do, meaning a darn thing?
If it's just like Jaques and a ton of effort from players generating trends that could trigger changes, is essentially ignored, then that's probably going to put the nail in the coffin, I suspect. The flower people are a big ticket item for a lot of people.
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That's how I see it, it's come a long way since it came out, but my god it has an even longer way to go. I really hope the core game stuff that's been talked about sorts out a lot of the monotony that the game has now. So many things need improving its an uphill task one I dont envy the FD team for having but with luck the game will get to where it's meant to go.
it's never going to please everyone I'm still on the verge of coming back but again its the thought of honk and jump or running the same old missions, that I haven't got passed logging in and messing about with some ship fits and adding some nameplates etc.
Yes - there's a little bit of that already with the (net) transfer of systems from Federal and Imperial control to Independent and Alliance control - but then that's too subtle on its own right now and doesn't drive anything wider. That should be putting massive political pressure on Hudson and Duval.
CGs are one of the more disappointing bits of the game for me in terms of how they've gone.
When CGs first came in with 1.1 there was a bunch of things like "build a new station" or "complete terraforming" or "upgrade system economy" ... and at the time, that was great - the system wasn't fully in place to have player activity do that sort of thing automatically, so this is a quick fix to let dynamic things happen in the short term.
I assumed the direction would be towards making them more automated and driven through the BGS - so "complete terraforming" goals just appear at Terraforming systems if particular conditions are met, and so on.
What's actually happened is that they've become more formalised and generally about creating a hotspot for player collaboration and competition - itself a good aim, but with the side effect that it's very rare for the result to actually matter (a good half of them at least don't do anything visible at all, and those that do it mostly only matters that they reached the virtually-guaranteed Tier 1) so it's purely about the money.
But even as a placeholder implementation, they could still work *if* Frontier had the staff time to invest in making them work. Okay, the BGS can't auto-generate the CGs if the starting conditions are met, and the global effect has to be implemented manually afterwards. But they _could_ pay someone to basically work full-time on just querying the BGS and starting mini-CGs off it. There'd be too many CGs for all of them to pass (which is fine) and this could still coexist withthe existing mega-CGs. It'd also get them good data on thresholds and so on for when they did automate it further.
Understandable that they don't, though - while lots of people agree the galaxy feels a bit flat and lifeless, the demands for change are for now around the day-to-day mechanics rather than the month-to-month ones.
You've got a real problem then.. without Missions, Mining and Trading, there would be nothing for a Pirate to attempt to steal.
Which leaves you with "Fly around and go 'Arrgh' until you kill yourself." That sounds like fun.
I admire DBOBE's vision for the game and I like the idea of a virtual world which we inhabit, but for me to inhabit his virtual world he has to make it more interesting than the one that lies outside my door. While I do have a modest fleet of spaceships at my command, that's pretty much all I'll ever have. I need more agency than that before I can move in.
I wouldn't want to compare a existing and working game with SC. This is like comparing reality to wishful thinking. If you look at how much trouble SC has implementing even a fraction (less than a percent!) of what they promised and how much trouble they have with seamless transitions and their space legs, I would not hold my breath on seeing much more narrative ("content") or space legs implemented. I do think, by and large, ED is abut the best you can get for a reasonable prize and for this size of the galaxy.
I'm not happy that ED is mile wide and an inch deep, but narrative is hard creative work that cannot be multiplied acroos 300 billion stars. The best way IMO is to strenghten player interaction, and this means curbing gankers, enhancing communication between players and give them more possibilities to interact than before (I don't know exactly what). Power Play is too abstract and too grinding.
Things like module storage and ship transfer have done more to the gameplay experience than anything else.
I think the target rich environment isn't so target rich any more. Hardly a surprise, I'd imagine people are thoroughly done being killed on sight, which is generally how most players operate these days. AI pirates, now those guys still have a bit of class, they won't toast you if you drop something for them, but human players? They'll toast you regardless.
I haven't played in over a month.
I tried to play and get an engineer upgrade for my FSD. After spending an hour flying to get whatever alloy the engineer wanted, I had to fly another hour to get to the engineer. I just shut the game off. It's so tedious.
I think FD likes tedious grind games and I think a lot of players like those too.
Want to go to Sol?
Can't until you tediously grind Federation rank. Then make a long tedious flight to get there. Yay.
Great universe, great ships but horrible game design. I would be shocked if it improved.
Does the model involve selling our data in the future?
I've always dreamed of making a successor to Frontier Elite so I kind of had semi realistic plans by now. The idea was basically, given finite resources, to get limited aspects of the game going, then work towards the full idea while you have something to build on.
In that respect it makes sense to me that they made the universe the foundation, and focussed on combat first because....well that's what the games market is all about and the most likely thing you will find paying players for. It also makes sense to me that they made a "sim" universe/setting and then put "arcade" gameplay in there because you basically want the game to be open to mass market players and not just niche sim addicts because there just aren't enough of those to fund this. So all in all, I get the logic. But I really wish there was a way to mod the game because I fear we're stuck with this flight model and it's really irritating me with it's arbitrary blue zone. And how you can't have warehouses full of goods but have to keep everything aboard your ship. And how software (drone controllers, docking computer) weighs more than a ton (even though it could probably be done with a Raspberry Pi today) and at the same time a fuel scoop installation weighs nothing.
And how we can magically 3D print fighters but not drones or SRVs or guns for our own ship. Or repair our hull (which is, of all the parts of our ship, the least complex), but we can magically repair every module, even something as complex as an FSD, using generic supplies in an auto field repair unit.
A lot of this is just arbitrary, for gameplay reasons. There's no coherence. And at the same time the universe is an incredible sim that is super coherent and logical and scientifically sound. We need a "Frontier Dangerous" that takes the science to the flight model and ship building like frontier Elite 2 and FFE etc did, if you ask me.
In that respect it makes sense to me that they made the universe the foundation, and focussed on combat first because....well that's what the games market is all about and the most likely thing you will find paying players for. It also makes sense to me that they made a "sim" universe/setting and then put "arcade" gameplay in there because you basically want the game to be open to mass market players and not just niche sim addicts because there just aren't enough of those to fund this. So all in all, I get the logic. But I really wish there was a way to mod the game because I fear we're stuck with this flight model and it's really irritating me with it's arbitrary blue zone. And how you can't have warehouses full of goods but have to keep everything aboard your ship. And how software (drone controllers, docking computer) weighs more than a ton (even though it could probably be done with a Raspberry Pi today) and at the same time a fuel scoop installation weighs nothing.
And how we can magically 3D print fighters but not drones or SRVs or guns for our own ship. Or repair our hull (which is, of all the parts of our ship, the least complex), but we can magically repair every module, even something as complex as an FSD, using generic supplies in an auto field repair unit.
A lot of this is just arbitrary, for gameplay reasons. There's no coherence. And at the same time the universe is an incredible sim that is super coherent and logical and scientifically sound. We need a "Frontier Dangerous" that takes the science to the flight model and ship building like frontier Elite 2 and FFE etc did, if you ask me.
That's some damned mobile, if it can run this game!
Can we leave this particular topic at the door? There are a ton of threads on that; this one has started off a bit shaking but is capturing a lot of feedback, that's not actually just screaming but actual debate and healthy discussion.
Let's try to continue that, instead.
This may just be me but some of the decisions surrounding the way the in game universe is built make it hard to look at it as logical outside of some strong but entirely unexplained (in game) background reasons.
I mean, it's 2300 years in the future and I'm carrying emails by hand to become an admiral in I'm not even sure what naval organization for the Federation. The basic gameplay mechanics work, but half the complete systems in the game have me questioning if the human race hasn't lost it's mind and is functioning despite its best attempts to fail and go extinct.
