Yeah. Somehow they need to add a more story like mode or mission system, where you take on a job in the game that's more than just fly here, pick up/drop of/scan, fly there. It needs some kind of interaction, decision making, learning about the lore from some NPC dialogue, that would start creating a bit more depth.
News Elite Dangerous 2.4 - The Return
- Thread starter Edward Lewis
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I couldn't face/enjoy anymore exploration until FD have thrown a bucket of love at it and added a bunch of new attributes, effects, depth and ideally mechanics... It loooong overdue IMHO.
Oh. I was reading it as Ilipeli.
"Soon" might be a bit too optimistic. Yes, the engine supports atmo and even third/first person legs, but to implement it in ED would require more than that. There are billions of planets out there, and there are thousands of different combination of atmospheric conditions like gas planets of different sizes and types of gas, planets with different land formations and types of atmo and gravity and ... And it has to be procedurally generated. And then flying the ship in and out of it, landing in it, how does the ship react to different atmos, and more. It's doable, but I don't think it's going to happen this year, so "very soon" might be a bit too optimistic.
I understand. After a while, you've seen it all. Now, I'm doing it for the challenge rather than the view. It's just something I want to be able to say, "I've done it."
If there were ancient cities/ruins procedurally generated out there, so perhaps one in every 10,000 planets had something interesting that you could find by chance, it would add a little bit more interest. It's the odd and unique things that can add to it. For instance, some nebulas are amazing, just to go there and see it.
In general though, it's difficult to add interesting content for explorers that will continuously excite and entice them. Anything unique added to the content will quickly become stale and common.
Very true - every game out there is very repetitive. They generally hide that repetition in various ways:
- Wrapping backstory & context around the gameplay. A "pick up item X and deliver it to location Y" is very simplistic and repetitive; but "kidnap Senator X's child and deliver him/her to Warlord Y for ransom" feels very different to "pick up thermonuclear device X and jettison it inside station Y". Same gameplay basics, completely different feel due to the context. This is fairly difficult for ED to do, without handcrafted missions. They certainly could do with massively increasing the number and variety of the mission story templates.
- Multi-stage missions, with multiple paths based on player choice and/or success. Doing lots of random collect/deliver/kill missions makes them all feel a bit repetitive and disposable; but connect them up into a more complex sequence and it feels like you're actually doing something worthwhile and meaningful. FD are going in this direction, but could go further.
- Same gameplay in different location feels different. In a RPG, fighting a bear on a mountain-top and fighting a bear in a castle hall feel would very different. This is one area space-sims suffer: space is space. Ok, the starfield might change (not that you'd notice), you might have differently coloured balls in the background, but it all feels the same. Until we have lots more surface gameplay (community goals, combat zones etc.) it's going to stay that way. Having random encounters in different locations helps the game too - in ED too much of the gameplay is built around visiting a station and loading a mission board. Random - or better yet - non-random encounters based on a player's actions/rep/wealth and/or current location would help spice things up.
- Same tasks with different equipment can lead to different gameplay. Doing a bank-job getaway in a fast car, or in a 18 wheeler, or an ice-cream van all lead to different options and styles of play. You don't get that in ED as you always choose the vehicle and outfitting.
- Different times of day, and weather add to the variety. Dawn missions / day missions / night missions all lead to a different ambience. Ditto with sunny, or storms, or strong winds, or foggy.. There are none of these in space - the ED galaxy is quite non-dynamic generally - and no weather patterns on the planets we can visit.
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So true. I just realized that with NMS and the latest changes. The missions you do for the hired guys in the base used to just be "got a signal of a ruin. Go there. Harvest blah blah, and come back." Now it's more like "I just received a strange signal from some ancient ruin, and I believe it could be something related to ..." Basically, more story like tie-in to the missions, which gives a little bit more of "Oh, I'm doing something important or interesting." It's all in the packaging, right?
Also true. Yet again, that's been added to NMS as well. A series of thing that you have to do to follow Artemis story line. It actually freaked me out a bit at one point when I was stranded on some unknown planet with a broken ship again. Luckily I had the stuff needed to repair it quickly without having to walk 10 min in some dangerous world that was killing me. Point is, it's a long mission of many different tasks and places to go to, which most definitely makes it more interesting.
Agree with all of it.
One thing more that needs to happen is more of dialogues with NPCs. More of talking to and making decisions that leads to different results.
Trouble is half the NPC's still interdict me saying they want what's in my cargo hold, errr nothing there me old pirate chum.
eat laser death.....
That all needs to be fixed along with giving them a lot more to say in general.
Being able to respond would be a start. Like hand over some of your cargo.... Click yes/no or on your bike son!! And then get a reaction based on that.
At the moment it's just as easy to ignore the chat window unless it's a message from another player, and just blast them out of the sky or take no notice at all.
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You can drop cargo now. They will ask for an amount. But it could be expanded upon. In NMS you can call authorities (which doesn't help you at all) or even make a deal with the pirate.
And yes, I pretty much ignore the chat window. It would be interesting if you could respond, even if it was with canned messages.
I do agree that the game needs more content, but I have to also say that it has come a long way from where it was in the beginning. A lot has been added, imo, and I just hope that they keep working towards more. Heck, even missions have come a long way, even if they are yet to feel complete. I am looking forward to finally having hull repair limpets and their synthesis blueprint, it means if I want to I can stay out in the black for as long as possible. Once they have space legs, atmo planets as well as a more fulfilling and interesting exploration system the game will feel a lot more alive. One thing planet coaster has shown me (and others) is that they may be able to implement NPCs sooner rather than later (that is one thing that has made the game feel empty, for me. No little ants walking around the docks or other non-player SRVs driving around on planets). Heck, holo-me is a precursor to our avatars for space legs.
Even if a lot of the stuff out there at the moment feels disjointed, to me it feels more like the foundations of what is to come. Something to build upon and make the game better. Even if their roadmap is likely going to turn into a 20 year one rather than a 10 year one. As long as they keep going I'll keep playing, even if I have to take breaks every once in a while. Heck, maybe in the distant future we'll have multiple galaxies (which they have done in previous games). Only time can really tell, but since it's their own engine the sky is the limit (as long as there's a playerbase to keep going).
Even if a lot of the stuff out there at the moment feels disjointed, to me it feels more like the foundations of what is to come. Something to build upon and make the game better. Even if their roadmap is likely going to turn into a 20 year one rather than a 10 year one. As long as they keep going I'll keep playing, even if I have to take breaks every once in a while. Heck, maybe in the distant future we'll have multiple galaxies (which they have done in previous games). Only time can really tell, but since it's their own engine the sky is the limit (as long as there's a playerbase to keep going).
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Originally Posted by aminode(Source)
I think they alredy have atmospheric planets, if you look at Planet coster and Jurassic World we can see the development status of the engine to generate planets, this games come from the elite Dev so we Will have atmosphere very soon
i'm agree, but the engine is ready and i think is more than 2 years that the palnets staff is workin on it, probably they will not give us all the lifeless atmospheric planets in one step and they will start with the simlpe ones but i bet that in a cuople of nonths we could lande on atmospheric worlds. if you remember the first statment of the Horizon you can read that this DLC is about planetary landing and they start with airless ones...
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Sure. One thing that impresses me with FDev is when they do get to work on something, they can get it done fairly quickly, and having the support of atmo in the engine already is a big step forward. My guess we'll see gas planets this year or early next year, and atmo planets next year. But who knows, maybe they're already working on it and it'll be done this year. It would be a great addition for sure.
Why? What makes your opinion three times more important than anybody else's?
What are you talking about? We all paid for it, some even before the game was ready.
Base game was 40-60E and each season pass 20-40E probably. This is AAA title pricing.
Each season was supposed to be 1 year, so tell me how paying 40-60E + 20-40E yearly is not paying for employees working on stuff.
Also, why would any one support the effort of running servers when it was clearly stated there wont be such thing as subsciption during kickstarter campaign?
Unless they deliberatly lied, they knew their buissness plan and calculated it will be enough to get it going.
Where did you get Horizons for 5-8E?
Or do you mean E per patch? Dont be silly, its called Season Pass for a reason.
20-40E for a season pass is in the upper price bracket for season passes...
So the right question is - what you expect for a 20-40E yearly season pass?
Assumption, never really explicitly stated by FD as being so.
For a starters, that is a drop in the ocean compared with the real cost of software development - you are not even covering a typical man-hour of work/year with that kind of money.
Besides which, what we pay for is limited rights to use the product not directly software development or support itself. None of us have rights to expect nor demand any given item or items get worked on in any given period of time.
Holy cow! How are all those studios releasing 1 game per year for 40-60E even exist?
Except the things promised in KS campaign... Or are we going to pretend it never happened?
Purely because they sell millions of copies world wide, and merch tie ins are worth a couple of quid.
where I used to work the budget for programming was millions per project, that wasn't even games, which is more intensive, they'd often spend that again on the electronics to run the program then more designing the box to put it in so customers would buy it.
Don't confuse promises with design goals, in any project things can change and while there are SOME things that have been promised explicitly as personal bonuses/benefits to kick start backers anything else is subject to change in circumstances - offline single player mode for example.
Everyone is forgetting to add in the cash-cow that is the store. Let's run some maths and assumptions... (I know the saying)..
Assumption: 100000 active players
Assumption: Average spend in shop per year £30
Assumption: £70 all in cost of ED + Horizons
Assumption: 50 active coders on a salary of £50000
Total on Game sales: £7000000
Total on Shop sales: £3000000
Total Sales: 10,000,000
50 Employees * £50000 = 250,000
Taking into account energy, premises, management salaries etc, you can't but think, they are cleaning up!!
And the best we get is buggy, untested, half-baked ideas, poorly designed with some scripted story thrown in for good measure. They're laughing all the way to the bank !
Assumption: 100000 active players
Assumption: Average spend in shop per year £30
Assumption: £70 all in cost of ED + Horizons
Assumption: 50 active coders on a salary of £50000
Total on Game sales: £7000000
Total on Shop sales: £3000000
Total Sales: 10,000,000
50 Employees * £50000 = 250,000
Taking into account energy, premises, management salaries etc, you can't but think, they are cleaning up!!
And the best we get is buggy, untested, half-baked ideas, poorly designed with some scripted story thrown in for good measure. They're laughing all the way to the bank !