Avago Earo
Banned
Sounds like another 'Silence them and we can pretend everything is ok' style statement. Do you work for Google by any chance
A Message To Elite Dangerous Developers
- Thread starter Hat Man
- Start date
Sounds like another 'Silence them and we can pretend everything is ok' style statement. Do you work for Google by any chance
17 Weeks, 2 Days, 23 Hours, 5 Minutes - that's 2,927 hours since 6/25/16, or 1.25 years.
I remember when I was just into the 3-digits of hours - I was terrible at most things, every interdiction was a nightmare and I lost ships, spent darn near my last credit covering my costs, and I learned, a lot.
And the one thing that sticks with me the most is - Elite Takes Time
Yes, there are ways to amass huge amounts of credits in relatively short periods, but in the end, you're really only shorting yourself.
I remember being utterly thrilled when I made my first million credits, and still couldn't comfortably afford an Advanced Discovery Scanner.
It came down to self-discipline for me - I have X credits, I will not spend more than Y credits on anything. It will still be here when I have Z credits.
And I still do the same thing.
I'm kicking around the idea of buying a second Anaconda right now. It'll cost me right about 400 million to buy, build and outfit the way I want.
So I'll be working for a couple weeks to bring my balance up at least another 400m, as I simply do not want to drop my balance below 10 digits.
And there's no grind here either - not to reach my goal, it's just something I'm working towards. I'm not competing with anyone but myself here.
There's no End Game to reach.
There's me.
There's space.
That's it.
Avago Earo
Banned
It's working. Saved me a lot of money on a quack.
Avago Earo
Banned
Exactly this.
Bob Lighthouse
Banned
I read the whole thing.
My first reaction as a fellow noob is to say my experience has been entirely the opposite.
You need to do better research it would seem.
I'm a noob too and this is a single sightseeing mission; it took less than 30 mins, and was done in an Asp.
That's less time than it took to write the OP I'd wager.
I've also never done missions at Quince etc.
But I have two Asp Xs, a Python, Anaconda, Courier, Cobra 3, T6, Vulture, FDL, and will buy an Orca right after I finish this post.
Making credits and acquiring ships is a little too easy if anything, imo.
You just have to be organized and focused.
My experience could not be more different than the OP and I've enjoyed it all.
(I also live on a tropical island fwiw.)
My first reaction as a fellow noob is to say my experience has been entirely the opposite.
You need to do better research it would seem.
I'm a noob too and this is a single sightseeing mission; it took less than 30 mins, and was done in an Asp.
That's less time than it took to write the OP I'd wager.
I've also never done missions at Quince etc.
But I have two Asp Xs, a Python, Anaconda, Courier, Cobra 3, T6, Vulture, FDL, and will buy an Orca right after I finish this post.
Making credits and acquiring ships is a little too easy if anything, imo.
You just have to be organized and focused.
My experience could not be more different than the OP and I've enjoyed it all.
(I also live on a tropical island fwiw.)
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Perhaps we might draw your attention to your own wisdom here.
The money in Elite is fake.
The fun in Elite is real.
Are you playing a game for fake money, or real fun?
And once you figure that out, you'll see why no Dev has to "reward you" - explore the game and determine what routes to earning you enjoy, and do those. You have already experienced the most common route to losing money, but it needn't be a penalty if you learn to enjoy the journey.
Several players start a new account periodically, just to experience the starting over sensation with no resources. It's not a sentence for them- it's a choice.
Frontier has an ongoing issue of understanding it needs to better telegraph important events to people. They have gone out of their way to make the experience a conglomeration of elements where consistency is the least viable definition to use at any point. If something is not consistent, it needs to be communicated, in some fashion.
I think the Op's post can actually summed up as one word - "frustration". Because this single word, is the one I hear most often. It's the single word that I hear on the end of sentences when talking to fellow players. ".. is frustrating." or ".. so frustrating!". Over and over and over again.
Sometimes I think this is because the developer has spent so much time building elite, that to them most of it is highly understood and of course it all makes sense. Anyone else? Varying degrees from "wut?" to ".. frustrating."
The term 'working as intended' is used far far more often in a cynical perspective, than not. Frontier try, they really do, but it's a huge area of weakness. This isn't "hand holding" or "easy mode", it's making sure people can understand cause and effect, so they can better interact with the experience.
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OP, I tried to read your post, but only got halfway through it. Yes, the missions could be better balanced. Try participating in some of the CGs or do the Alien Ruins mission. If you apply yourself, you can make good money (20-100+ mcr per week in rl).
I've very rarely flown w/o a rebuy; it adds true excitement to the game, but I try to avoid that situation. In fact, I make a point of having at least 3 rebuys remaining, before I buy and outfit a new ship. It's hard to be patient sometimes, but don't risk what you can't afford to replace.
I've very rarely flown w/o a rebuy; it adds true excitement to the game, but I try to avoid that situation. In fact, I make a point of having at least 3 rebuys remaining, before I buy and outfit a new ship. It's hard to be patient sometimes, but don't risk what you can't afford to replace.
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I have a similar issue when it comes to long distance passenger missions too. I have a family life and can't be in the game all the time. I always look at the distance and my schedule before doing anything like that. Also make sure you don't have any illegal passengers.
Having an autopilot in the game would neither harm nor help me, nor many of the things you mentioned in your opening post. Their presence in the game, in my opinion at least, would very likely have harmful effects on new players, transforming what I consider to be an exciting and stimulating space ship simulator into a rather dull and drab experience where you need to watch Netflix to actually enjoy the game. If they let the autopilot do all their flying for them, they'll never develop the skills necessary to fly close to the edge, taking advantage of the game's mechanics to cut their travel time in half.
Take, for example, Supercruise. I'm sure you use some variation of the Forum "wisdom" on how to arrive at your destination: "Keep it in the blue, so you don't overshoot;" "70% at 7" or other such nonsense. This is by far the slowest way to stop at the end of your journey, adding minutes to your braking maneuver. I much prefer take advantage of the natural mass lock effect close to planets to slow down your ship in a hurry. Not only is it a LOT faster, but I also find it much more fun and engaging. Click here to see an example of this in action.
I see this desire for automation time and time again on these forums. There are whole websites devoted to automating trading in this game. This forum panicked when these websites went "on strike," which I didn't notice until about three days later, because I never relied on those sites to begin with. The trading tools already in the game are more than enough for an experienced "vagabond trader" to make a good profit without those sites, and the best deals rely on you reacting to changing faction states, which often take days for those sites to learn about, by which time the window has already passed.
Not to mention how much fun it can be to engineer those changing faction states yourself.
I wince every time I see the topic of an autopilot of jumps come up, primarily because conventional forum "wisdom" is pretty bad as it is. If I'm making a multi-jump trip, I'm not about to take two minutes between jumps, while doing nothing in between. I'm going to take the minimum 45 seconds required between jumps, charging my jump drive even as I scoop fuel, in a ship designed and engineered to take the heat, with one eye on the my gauges, the other peeled for USSs that might have the chemical manipulators or other materials I might need once I can afford my next ship.
I sometimes do the same while exploring, only instead of the other eye looking out for USSs, its checking my navigation panel for planets in the Goldilocks Zone. One can cover a LOT of ground that way, and still find a lot of ELWs and terraforming candidates. Just make sure your ship's designed for it, and you know how much heat it can take.
You claimed in your opening post that you feel like Frontier doesn't respect your time. I feel the exact opposite. Frontier very much respects my time, and, more importantly, Frontier respects my ingenuity. There are very few "time sinks" in this game that cannot be mitigated, or avoided completely, through the applications of skill, knowledge, and a certain willingness to take risks. There is very little grinding required in this game if one is willing to pursue their goals in parallel, rather than serially, to keep their eyes peeled for opportunities when they find it, and know how to create them when there aren't any.
This I 100% agree with. Every single bit. This is what I pretty much do too. Makes the game fun, instead of the grind that people seem to thank that you are forced into doing.
And yet here you are...
Fair point. Still hoping 3.0 (or post 2.4 whatever) reinvigorates the game and applies some depth (plus they've got to do more planets at some point in the future); I also love flying spaceships! and I think fdev hearing why customers stop playing the game probably helps them somewhat.
I try to minimise the negativity but when a poster gets slammed for writing a well thought out opinion piece I have to chime in.
that's a lot of words to deal with a fly-without-rebuy incident you largely controlled yourself.
Maybe next time go for a run around the block.
Maybe next time go for a run around the block.
That's what...7 hours a day, every day for the last 14.5 months? ehhhh
That's...quite the commitment.
OP, just a point here: ED takes time...but not this time.
To the OP, congratulations for writing one of the longest walls of text I've seen posted on this forum in a long time, and i've been around here for about 4 years or so.......
the grand total of 56,122 characters typed with 12494 words in total.......
I read the first sections and then gave up with the rest - please can be be succinct when posting??
the grand total of 56,122 characters typed with 12494 words in total.......
I read the first sections and then gave up with the rest - please can be be succinct when posting??
It sounds to me like you are trying to get to the endgame as fast and joylessly as possible, except there is no endgame goal because it's a sandbox game at this stage of development.
Honestly, if you're rushing the process you're missing the only real enjoyment this game proivdes in its current state.
Also, endgame is far more lucrative that you appear to think:
You are right about many of your complaints - the real-world mission timers do not fit in with real-life, because most of the real-world timers are too short to permit you to come back in a couple of days and finish the mission, whilst clearing half a dozen stacked missions themselves can take more than a couple of hours, which is statistically (according to Steam stats) far longer than most Steam users can play for in one sitting. I'm afraid to say that at that point in your post I'd run out of patience and didn't read any further.
I think the problem with this game is that everyone wants it to be a rich, deep, meaningful, polished product; It's not.
It's a sandbox that's still in the early stages of development when it comes to content and purpose. Enjoy it for what it is now, not for what it hopes to become in the next decade. Nobody is stopping you from waiting and coming back to it in a couple of years if you're not happy with how it is now. I tend to play it for a week or so every few months now, because "I'm done" for the moment but occasionally want to pew-pew or see something for myself that has been mentioned on the forums.
Honestly, if you're rushing the process you're missing the only real enjoyment this game proivdes in its current state.
Also, endgame is far more lucrative that you appear to think:
- I can lazily stack 3 CZ missions without even mode-switching in a system at war, and get 50M CR for 90 minutes of combat.
- I can head out to a HAZrez in an ALD system while pledged to her and make 50M in an hour by just having 4 units of gold in my hold and making sure that the pirates always shoot first to increase their bounty value.
- I can grab my Cutter and pick a couple of systems via EDDB that net me over 2M profit per loop. If I was literally just watching TV at the same time, that's 25M/hour without even trying....
You are right about many of your complaints - the real-world mission timers do not fit in with real-life, because most of the real-world timers are too short to permit you to come back in a couple of days and finish the mission, whilst clearing half a dozen stacked missions themselves can take more than a couple of hours, which is statistically (according to Steam stats) far longer than most Steam users can play for in one sitting. I'm afraid to say that at that point in your post I'd run out of patience and didn't read any further.
I think the problem with this game is that everyone wants it to be a rich, deep, meaningful, polished product; It's not.
It's a sandbox that's still in the early stages of development when it comes to content and purpose. Enjoy it for what it is now, not for what it hopes to become in the next decade. Nobody is stopping you from waiting and coming back to it in a couple of years if you're not happy with how it is now. I tend to play it for a week or so every few months now, because "I'm done" for the moment but occasionally want to pew-pew or see something for myself that has been mentioned on the forums.
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/thread
I got past the point where you straight up lost your ship of your own accord and realised the phrase "wall of text" has been heavily misused until now.
Just wanted to chip in and say thanks to Hat Man for the feedback. I've just got into the office so will be spending a while going through the OP and the subsequent replies to put together some points from the discussion. There's a lot of text in the OP, but please refrain from attacking that if you're not interested in the discussion points. I urged this feedback be posted (and/or PM'd to me) and I'm glad that it was posted because hopefully it sparks some interesting discussion. Let's keep it civil and constructive, if only to make it easier for me to gather feedback and counter-points from you all. Thaaaaaanks!
I do find it ironic that the OP complains about not having enough time to complete timed missions.... I'm not trying to be rude (perhaps sarcastic in the vein of humor), but I could have made the trip to Colonia in the time it would have taken me to think through, write, and edit such a missive.
-- EDIT (NINJA'D) --
This came up after above post. Please know that I'm definitely not intending to attack writer of OP, as I'm hoping he himself can have a chuckle at it. And to be honest, a forum is meant to be a platform for discussion, which really means shorter posts should be encouraged (otherwise the OP itself should have been PMed to you).
-- EDIT (NINJA'D) --
This came up after above post. Please know that I'm definitely not intending to attack writer of OP, as I'm hoping he himself can have a chuckle at it. And to be honest, a forum is meant to be a platform for discussion, which really means shorter posts should be encouraged (otherwise the OP itself should have been PMed to you).
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Just wanted to chip in and say thanks to Hat Man for the feedback. I've just got into the office so will be spending a while going through the OP and the subsequent replies to put together some points from the discussion. There's a lot of text in the OP, but please refrain from attacking that if you're not interested in the discussion points. I urged this feedback be posted (and/or PM'd to me) and I'm glad that it was posted because hopefully it sparks some interesting discussion. Let's keep it civil and constructive, if only to make it easier for me to gather feedback and counter-points from you all. Thaaaaaanks!
I think even to those that want to be constructive, this is far too much of a massive mess.
Concision, or even proof reading, would have made it far better for constructive discussion. I don't even know where to start in talking over OP without writing my own essay. It's also heavily swamped in entitlement, which really takes away from what could have been otherwise valid points.
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