A Message To Elite Dangerous Developers

[Karlos Ploryman]

WOW... I can see a lot of effort in writing this OP!

I really like your idea how the game should work PASSENGER transportation vise...

SUPPLY:
Commanders letting the world know about their planed route and price of the ticket, willingness to deviate from course
DEMAND:
customers (passengers) buying tickets

Its much more logical then current state.

Karlos


added:
Now here’s the kicker about all this. The one thing that can be said about having to reload manually, and manage ammo like that, is that it’s realistic. That’s its biggest defense, and it’s the only reason one might want to have it in a video game… Now... Is it realistic to fly a multi million dollar spaceship with ZERO automated flight methods?...

DAMN YOU GOT ME ON THIS ONE! Exactly!


added:
here’s a spot of unused UI space to the upper right in the cockpit… I think a multimedia player should go there. I think it should have the ability to detect MP3s and MP4s stored on the player’s hard drive, and play them. I think it should also have the ability to connect to the player’s internet connection, so the player can search google, play youtube videos, and watch netflix, or use spotify, all INSIDE the game. No need for windowed mode, or multiple monitors, etc. It could actually be really immersive, it could be done up like you’re using GalNet while you’re surfing the web or something. When combined with the autopilot system, people who go on really long trips in this game could treat it like a proper road trip or airline flight. Just relax and enjoy the movie, while the stars of every shape and size go by… Personally, I think that sounds really relaxing, and would make super long trips less off-putting.


OH MY GOODNESS!!! Especially for VR this is a MUST!

 

[Rampant]

Props to OP for taking the time to write such a well worded essay.

I read *most* of it and really do agree with you on several of the discussed issues.

Sorry about the juveniles with their TLDR jibes - which were entirely inaccurate assumptions. Remember what Assume does, right?
Right.
Yeah, *that*.
Donkeys.

Anyway, back on topic - I would like to think Frontier will read this and consider incorporating some of your suggestions for improvement. And I really do feel there is a lot of *improvement* that could be made. Even for the people who are "happy" enough with the status quo, these improvements wouldn't *detract* from their own game enjoyment and would ultimately probably improve it for them as well as those who are busy like you (and I).

Bottom line: well thought out suggestions that would improve the game for *everyone*. (Even those who bad-mouth your suggestions.) Right on CMDR.

Yours Aye

Mark H

 

[the100thmonkey]

I haven't read all of your post yet, so this reply is partially so I don't forget.

While I agree with you on some points regarding missions, I found a great many of your criticisms related to them to come from not knowing how the game works.

For instance, you could always go exploring without taking on a mission. In fact, if you do a deep range trip you'll almost certainly make more from the scan data than you will from the mission. A first-discovery of an earth-like world is worth something like 600kcr, and that's without the other bodies in the system. Terraformable high metal content and terraformable water worlds are worth significant sums, and there are decent multipliers for first discoveries - about 80% extra, IIRC. In the case of passenger missions, I feel they're about encouraging players to see some of the more interesting/attractive spots in the galaxy that they might otherwise never see - many of the destinations were derived from player submissions. My last exploration trip never took me more than 6,500LY from Asellus Primus, and I made over 70mcr from the data. It took me about 20 hours of game time. In short, you don't need a mission to go exploring.

Actually, you can do pretty much everything in the game without taking missions and still make plenty of money.

With the assassination missions, your criticism is based on the assumption that you can only access the target by interdicting them (or them interdicting you). If you read the mission description, you'll see that the faction rep tells you that you can scan the nav beacon or use a discovery scanner to locate the mark. Doing this will spawn an inbox message from the faction rep with a precise location, which will be displayed as a mission marker in the navigation tab. You travel to the body and wait for a mission USS to spawn. In the USS, you will find your target. Every time.

The missions system ties into the BGS. I often take small fry courier missions because doing so helps me push the factions I want in the directions I want. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this. It would be nice to earn more for them, sure. No one would complain about that, but that's not why I take missions. Massacre missions offer up to 24mcr (the highest I can recall ever seeing) for killing 104 ships in a conflict zone, and while those areas are not for the faint of heart, they are survivable in a vanilla ship, provided the pilot knows sensible CZ strategies. Nevertheless, I agree that missions could be more varied, complex and more challenging.

With regard to faction rep, combat is a far quicker way to get into a faction's good books than running. It's possible to go from neutral to allied in two or three hours in a RES (about 4.5mcr in bounties cashed), even in a starter Sidey. Something seems to be off with your cr/hr estimates.

More later. I have a massacre mission to finish.

*edit*

It just occurred to me that the game does do a poor job of communicating its intricacies.

 

[Karlos Ploryman]

HOOOLLLY HELLLL WALL OF TEXT!!!!!!!!!! are you serious?! thats like a 100page book....

I stop reading after i found out what happened lol..... and frankly i dont even need to read the 100 pages to know its not worth reading.

you messed up, end of story ..this is a simulator....

if you wana buy a Ferrari in real life and not insure it get ready to lose everything if you crash and even potential jail time.. lol dont blame the world for your mistake.


and in ALL honesty . i think i make more cash in 2-3 hours then you have made in your entire CMDR career. sooo stop crying and go do next weeks CG and you will have back every thing you lost...


come talk to me when you cant rebuy a 1.3BILLION *A* graded Cutter or even a 700M Corvette.... but honestly a wall of text for a few million bones?! HAHA

Good Luck CMDR
o7

TL;DR - OP wants to fly big ships now.

Gentlemen, you apparently did NOT read the OP...

IMHO the rant about Beluga loss could have been excluded, but the rest of the text is pure truth, many very valid and thought-through points and many excelent suggestions.

 

[robbyp]

That has got to be a record post! Well done.

I'm sorry you lost your ship and money. But that the rules of the game, clearly stated in the game showing you the rebuy cost.

A few points:

"The grind... IT'S UNREAL." - one man's grind is another persons enjoyment. Take minecraft - you spend ages doing repetitive digging. But a lot of people like that.

"IRL Mission Timers" - I like the real time nature of the game and the fact you need to do something in a certain time. Adds tension.

"They should be player specific. Why are you showing me missions I cannot even accept? " - clearly to indicate to you what you could get if you worked on your rep/rank. Its a teaser.

Exploration - a lot of people like the sense of scale the fact it takes a significant time to get anywhere. I don't want magic transport thanks.

Autopilot. No thanks. Done that in Flight simulators, once you've set it up your bored silly.

Ran out of energy.

 

[Karlos Ploryman]

HOOOLLLY HELLLL WALL OF TEXT!!!!!!!!!! are you serious?! thats like a 100page book....

I stop reading after i found out what happened lol..... and frankly i dont even need to read the 100 pages to know its not worth reading.

you messed up, end of story ..this is a simulator....

if you wana buy a Ferrari in real life and not insure it get ready to lose everything if you crash and even potential jail time.. lol dont blame the world for your mistake.


and in ALL honesty . i think i make more cash in 2-3 hours then you have made in your entire CMDR career. sooo stop crying and go do next weeks CG and you will have back every thing you lost...


come talk to me when you cant rebuy a 1.3BILLION *A* graded Cutter or even a 700M Corvette.... but honestly a wall of text for a few million bones?! HAHA

Good Luck CMDR
o7

TL;DR - OP wants to fly big ships now.

Yes.... quite.



The short version is: Fly without insurance and you risk all.

Blaming the game mechanic(s) because you choose to fly with that risk is not a very valid argument at all.

This type of scenario happens regularly around here:

https://i.imgflip.com/h9wvs.jpg

That being said I thank you, OP, for not paraphrasing your comments as if you speak for everyone.... much appreciated but really tl:dr.

Dear comander Manticore.

This wall of text is actually not a typical rant "I flew without insurance, lost everything".
Take your time, read it, think about it... how these suggestions would affect (probably improve imho) your elite experience and then come back to discuss...

 

[Ryan P Bodfirst]

Hi Hat Man,

A lot of interesting points in there - yes I read it all! (have some rep).

For me Elite has always been about creating a believable and living sci-fi world. Visually and sonically, and in terms of the Galaxy its does this brilliantly (its really is world class in these respect), but the mechanics behind it don't back this up yet (But I think 3.0 is where this will change)

Missions: Agree about the risk reward, it's never really been right - though this was looking better in the latest beta and the missions looked the best they've been so far to me in terms of fitting in with the world and making it feel believable. (No longer could I take a box to another system and get paid more than I could make trading in most of the ships and with less danger....).

Certainly higher reward missions with real risk (i.e. I really can get wasted 40% of the time!) - missions with real genuine difficulty to contrast with the other missions. Furthermore, I think actually scaling the difficulty to some extent (more in this below) to your ability would be a good move just because it would make the game challenging to better pilots and its believable - after all if a faction is sending someone to take you out they would assess what they need to send to have a reasonable chance of getting the job done wouldn't they?).

Factions
Yes factions need some work - from my perspective what I'm waiting for is for being an ally has some consequences. Currently I'm just friendly or neutral with all minor factions - and it doesn't make a lot of sense or portray a real cut throat world. Having to make choices with consequences that affect my gameplay would take this game to another level IMO. Then tie some assets (like the shjps we currently have for major factions) , Engineers etc to these allies - so we feel some real affiliation with these factions and what we do, who we cosy up, to really changes things for the better in some ways but for the worse in others. Of course you still have the choice to stay neutral-ish to all if you really want..

Ships
I think Frontier have shown they do want to add specialties to ships - like they did with the dolphin - and this is the way to go IMO. Trade ships should be able to hold more cargo with specific trade slots, that can only hold cargo modules etc. You could have mining specific slots, passenger, etc - it could really make each ship have a unique selling point - much more interesting.

Other areas I'm personally struggling with - though I know its not affect everybody:

NPC Interdictions
Since about Feb NPCs are simply unable to interdict me in my ASP or any other ship I fly - not a single one - nada. This means I'm under no risk at all in Anarchy systems, or when Deadly assassins are sent after me. For me at the moment its a bit like playing say - UFO enemy unknown and just running to the mission point knowing they can't catch you on every mission. Ok I'm mostly a solo player, which is why I see this more but it's still not there yet for me in terms of balance.

Suggestion: Scale the difficulty based on your history of performance against NPCs. So for example have an entry in the database that stores how many interdictions I escape (how good I actually am) as a percentage and scale accordingly (taking other factors into account) based on the mission difficulty. This makes sense in the game world because as I mentioned earlier, enemies want to send people which have a chance of interdicting me don't they? - and they would probably know my reputation if I've been around for a while. Of course you'd want some random variation around this but as a general trend it would make for a richer world experience IMO. You could perform a similar thing with combat difficulty also to help balance difficulty and make it more believable.

NPC Behaviour
When NPCs interdict me to pirate me for a few tonnes of food.... This needs sorting I think, again - make it believable and give me an advantage for carrying or trading in low value goods at the same time.

There's also C&P, but that's a large topic in itself and we know that's going to get a lot better soon!

Thing is though, many of these arguments only really apply greatly if you're interested in Elite being a believable Sci-fi world (in the spirit of Sci-fi being fiction of course) that you can immerse yourself in as perhaps you want in your favourite Sci-Fi novel or Film to be. If ED its just a game to the player - in the same way Blade runner "is just a film?" or say is Dune is "just a book?" then well it's not that important I guess. But its always been much more than "Just a game" to me.

 

[krisuus]

While I think there certainly is room for improvement and balancing in the game, I am not sure that all of the improvements you suggest would help. Elite does require a lot of experience (or reading helpful guides on the internet) to learn how to efficiently earn credits and reputation. Having recently started a new CMDR on PS4, it was quite easy for me to earn my first 40-50m credits and become allied with my favorite factions. ObsidianAnt had a some great comments on how to gain credits more easily, and there have been several other helpful posts.

I can see the benefits of changing the mission board so that you could offer services instead of picking up missions, but I think this goes a little against the spirit of Elite since to me that sounds more like setting up a company than being a lone pilot running odd jobs. I think it would be better to focus on building on and improving the chain-mission functionality and adding bigger variety in the available missions. You also suggested that the board should only show you missions which can pick up. This could be a problem since you would not find out why certain missions are not shown. New players could easily be in a situation where they see no missions on the board and never know why. Now you can easily see that there are eg. tons of import food missions available because the system is in a famine state, but since you have no cargo hold you can't accept them. You can also decide which faction you want to become friends with - do you start supporting the pirate gang to get smuggling missions or do you want to support the corporation for cargo hauling missions - since you can see what mission types would be available if you were allied.


I don't think we need autopilots or in-game media players, but I think we could add more in game things to do during some longer journeys. I would like to see a better interface to access Galnet, perhaps some kind of light overlay-menu, especially if we could go back to having some actual content there, instead of the autogenerated BGS/PP reports that dominate the news feed today. I would also love to create multiple waypoints when route planning both in the Galaxy map, and ultimately also in system map if we ever get an orrery view.


I hope you stick with the game - there is still much more to discover out there!

 

[AnotherVoice]

Well, i've finished reading it entirely. All i can say is that i totally agree on some of your points, partially on others, and i do not disagree with any of the matters that you've emphasized.

About your credit earnings, they indeed seem pretty low, especialy while using cash making methods like scans mission. I can't help but think that you were probably not doing things in the most efficient ways.

 

[coca_fr]

Don't you know how to make titles, paragraph... Can't you sumurize your wall of text ?

I don't know who is going to read all of that seriously...

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

 

[Pinchsmokey]

I personally love to read, so i thought "I'll see what this person has to say". I got as far as beluga and not enough for insurance and illegal passenger and had a very loud laugh.

Did you haul illegal passengers beforehand? Did you practice silent running landings? Did you not realize flying that ship without insurance was VERY stupid? And at every point you state your knowledge that you were taking HUGE risks. But you did it anyway. Thats on you.

As for issues, yes the game could be improved in many areas. But in your case, you made soooooo many blunders.... its just a jumping off point for a rant.

Edit:
After reading everything, you some make valid points about improvement, but you also make many mistakes with your misunderstanding of current game mechanics.
Could i go though bullet points on my thoughts on improvements to ED? Sure, i have quite a few. Could i go on about my wait for ED for 30 years? Sure. Would it be listened to? Would itREALLY be listened to and weighed by its feedback? My experience with game feedback will say "no"

Honestly i would keep playing if i were you, ED has alot to offer now, and hopefully more in the future.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Owwww my fingers hurts OP - I think I must have scrolled an acre on my mouse wheel and don't expect a response from the devs anytime soon because who has a free month to read all that!

That being said you spelled "risk" as "riks" in paragraph 1056, subsection 0H, line 8409

First FTL;DR post I've come across though!

 

[GJ51]

Shoulda bought an Orca...

 

[playfuldreamer]

Eight pages demonstrating how toxic the Elite Dangerous community is. I wish I could say I'm surprised by the responses to the OP, but I'm not.

 

[Zambrick]

Good read and all valid points that I have to deal with. I am afraid to turn the game on lately because I know it will take me an hour just to fly out of a station and make the decision as to where I want to go. Then I have to go to bed. Honestly if I dont have a 5 hour stretch to sit down and play this game, then I wont turn it on. Its gotten progressively worse since launch. Especially with the egregious and excess use of RNG to determine every aspect of the game.


Also for the people complaining about the wall of text. Its a good read and makes valid points guarantee you will find something in it you agree with.

However for the OP, If you want to make the post more palatable for people. Then leave the headings for each section and role each individual section up into a spoiler tag. It will allow people to absorb each topic one at a time in a more focused manner. They can pick and choose which parts they want to read. At least the parts that they think might apply to them.

 

[GoStu]

TL;DR

> OP grinds up money for Beluga
> OP flies Beluga without rebuy; in fact, a mostly stock Beluga without rebuy
> OP takes an illicit passenger, knowing the risk of dying if scanned
> OP gets scanned
> RIP OP.

You even admit you knew exactly what you were getting into. You made a dumb decision, took a risk, and lost.

 

[zimms]

TL;DR

> OP grinds up money for Beluga
> OP flies Beluga without rebuy; in fact, a mostly stock Beluga without rebuy
> OP takes an illicit passenger, knowing the risk of dying if scanned
> OP gets scanned
> RIP OP.

You even admit you knew exactly what you were getting into. You made a dumb decision, took a risk, and lost.

But it's 2017! Ingame actions shouldn't have consequences.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

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.

About 4 hours a night on weeknights, some marathon Saturdays, and the occasional week-long break to do something else.

 

[Hat Man]

Hello all.

I have taken many criticisms about the WAY I wrote this OP into consideration. I fully understand it's a long read, and even put a disclaimer in the OP about this. I do not expect you to read it if you do not want to. Generic TL;DR comments aren't exactly helpful. However, a few of you have honestly made some good points about how it could be better formatted or written, and I will be editing it to include such suggestions. These are valid criticisms, as a good argument can be undermined by bad writing, and even those who agree with me on a lot of points seem to think it could have been better made.

Firstly, a few of you have suggested that I add a table of contents. This makes good sense, and I will be adding one. The OP is essentially about 2 dozen topics, all of which could have INDIVIDUALLY been made into their own threads, so having this would better allow people to skip to the parts they are most interested in, and at least read those, even if they aren't interested in reading its entirety.

Secondly, some have requested better formatting such as titles... I HAVE included a format, with titles and bullet points. However, this is still a valid criticism, as these do not pop out. One would still have to read the OP in its entirety to even notice such titles. As such, I will play around with the formatting options this forum provides to make them easier to spot.

Thirdly... the story about the Beluga was clearly a horrible idea. I know how it comes off, and even stated in the OP that I'm fully aware these were my own stupid mistakes. However, since it is the FIRST thing people read in this OP, for those who aren't willing to read it's entirety, especially based on how the first 10% reads, then it is fully understandable a significant number of posters would simply assume it's a rebuy rant... My original intention with making it the introduction was to give people context for my frustration prior to my suggestions, and honestly, for comedic effect... It is a very silly situation, as one reply stated, "like watching scientists be idiots in horror movies". However, it seems this entire idea has utterly backfired, as people seem to think the "don't buy if you can't afford rebuy" point isn't already well apparent to me.

I should not have put my proper argument behind this rant, as it makes it more inaccessible to people. Thus, I will remove it from the OP entirely, and give only a very short summary of it in the "Ship Recovery" portion of my critique, near the very bottom. I may decide to quote it in a reply, for those who want the context of the previous 8 pages of replies.

Doing this should help people to more quickly get into the meat of the critiques and suggestions, which is the better part of the OP.

Furthermore, I plan on adding a few things here and there that I forgot to mention that would have already addressed some of the replies I've recieved. However, that's for new readers. For brevity's sakes, I will reply to people who made such replies individually, so as not to waste their time with a partly rewritten OP.