Will I ever be able to get out of my ship?

[[DOOK] Droogie]

We're not arguing so neither of us can switch the goalposts. you said



Which is speculating - I just added to it

Yeah, but the question was what value could space legs add. I'm answering that question. We don't know how or if FD will deliver on it, but that's why I want space legs. I'm not saying it needs to happen right now, I'm just saying what it could add to the game.

 

[joshismycaptain]

It means we're actual people in this galaxy, rather than a tripod mounted in a seat.

Exactly...

I can't imagine, regardless of the developers intention or goal, or initial concept, or ability, or funding, etc etc etc., that there is anyone playing this game who would not enjoy the ability, or at a minimum oppose it.

 

[B1rdy]

Yes and we can go on all day long on all the cool things "we'd" like but reality is going to disappoint us. You need legs, you need ai, you need physics, AI needs AI to fight you, salvage needs adding and coding and added to the BGS as a sellable stock. So 3.0 will build on existing gameplay remember. Without legs means no ship exploration or things to fight and 3.0 will take 2 years at least.

People just don't get it. Although the base game still has some very basic mechanics, they demand more basic mechanics. For only to come back on the forum quoting "a mile wide, an inch deep" and so on.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Yeah, but the question was what value could space legs add. I'm answering that question. We don't know how or if FD will deliver on it, but that's why I want space legs. I'm not saying it needs to happen right now, I'm just saying what it could add to the game.

Yes I was adding to that and then I also added the work needed to do it as that's hugely relevant as well because it has to fit in somewhere and it has to generate revenue. Let's say they expect space legs to take 3 years but they've given ED 4.5 years left of life (FDev's own words on their annual report) - so we get space legs but nothing else?

I want space legs. I want to walk around my ship, lay on my bed in my cabin (a cabin you get to choose how you furnish it). I want a working shower, a wardrobe (like gta v i guess) I want a galley, a recreation room with access to CQC from a console in there. I want parts for my ship I can swap out when they get damaged or wear out. I want a cargo hold I can go and check on (maybe after a fight, some cargo might need settings to store it so need to check they're still set). I want to be able to play music in my ship, deck the interior how I want and we haven't even left the ship yet, let alone what else we can do with legs

 

[Lightspeed]

At least "Legs" is not a dead subject:

This from Zac Antonaci in https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/381918-Frontier-Expo-ED-Speculation/page10

"This is an awesome speculation thread. I’m not going to go into too much detail and discuss what we are going to discuss at FX17, if that makes sense! But I did just want to respond to this one specific speculation. Spacelegs (as the community are dubbing them) is something that David B and the development team are very excited by and it’s certainly high on the list of features they would like to make. However, as we’ve mentioned before, “Spacelegs” is something further down the line. After 2.4 we’ll be focusing on the core gameplay experience so it’s not something that we will be announcing at Frontier Expo. I do have to say though, I truly hope that the community are excited by the content being revealed at FX. Only 2 days to go!"

 

[Jack Schitt]

Yeah, I spotted that in the other thread. I'll say this for FD, they're getting better at weasel wording all the time. I got to "very excited by" and had a sudden surge of positivity, but then I read on to "high on the list of features they would like to make" (emphasis mine) and came crashing down again. Lovely bit of weaselling there. Imply that there's a sort of hierarchy of to-be-implemented features, then reduce it to a non-specific wishlist. Still, this is the most engagement we've had on the subject in quite some time so I guess we should be grateful for that.

And I hope Zac is right about the community response to FX. I can't speak for everyone, but excitement is high on the list of emotions I would like to have.

 

[Lightspeed]

Yeah, I spotted that in the other thread. I'll say this for FD, they're getting better at weasel wording all the time. I got to "very excited by" and had a sudden surge of positivity, but then I read on to "high on the list of features they would like to make" (emphasis mine) and came crashing down again. Lovely bit of weaselling there. Imply that there's a sort of hierarchy of to-be-implemented features, then reduce it to a non-specific wishlist. Still, this is the most engagement we've had on the subject in quite some time so I guess we should be grateful for that.

But then he said:

"However, as we’ve mentioned before, “Spacelegs” is something further down the line."

I have to try and imagine his body language in saying this ..... did he just wave his hand in a dismissive gesture when he said, 'further down the line' or did he nod approvingly. [yesnod]

I will go for the latter as it's more optimistic.

 

[Imgran]

I think one game that I've played really gives us a sample of how FD could easily throw in space legs without becoming a major distraction or detriment to gameplay.

The game Mount and Blade: Warband, an open world game in the medieval fantasy genre, gave you an option when you encountered a town or village. You could operate out of a menu, or you could walk around the streets. If you chose the latter, you were placed in an instance of the streets of the town in question, with various NPCs going about their business, and vendors on the street. If you stopped them to talk to them they'd have a brief conversation about who they were, the town they lived in and what they did for a living. They deferred to you if you were a noble and were much more inclined to simply ignore you if you were not.

The whole effect was quite atmospheric and you could use the street hub to access all the stuff you could access via the menu -- as well as a few unique options for those who bothered to explore these environments, a few quests that could only be done by exploring the town, and at least one set of unique gear.

Something very similar would work for the most part in ED. A "promenade" with all the merchant options, a cargo terminal where you could access the commodities market, a dockyard worker or kiosk, an office complex for the contacts to the various factions for missions, and an actual passenger lounge with NPC's queueing up to travel. Possibly even, like with Mount and blade, a few features you'd only ever know existed if you bothered to get out of the ship and go walkies.

After you get that basics down, then you diversity for economic type. An agri or industrial station might have blue collar people manning desks for contacts, Tourism or Service might have an attractive female or a dude in a business suit, military stations might have uniformed personnel, and high tech might have automated kiosks. That kind of thing. Similar to the way that the interiors of stations look different depending on their economic role.

None of it would be all that complicated since they snuck in a bit of modeling for randomly diversified people under the guise of the Holo-Me. Animation and dialogue are the biggest remaining hurdle.

Most of it would just be a different more immersive way of accessing existing features. It would exist for its own sake largely and the fun of the experience is simply having the experience.
However it would also open up mission opportunities, such as "covertly make contact with Agent X and hand deliver sensitive data -- don't get scanned, don't get caught by security." Boom, sudden space legs stealth mission. It would be limited to certain premade asset based locations, probably 1 for each kind of station and for each type of economic activity within that station. But that's OK, this isn't about how space legs ends, just how it starts. This feels like a way to do it that could be implemented within a reasonable time frame and get boots on the ground, as it were. It can be expanded from there.

 

[Fendalton]

Unfortunately that thread was lost as the OP requested his account to be removed and all posts he made to be wiped. Essentially it was a discussion regarding the feature being removed from EVE (if I recall the linked article correctly) due to lack of people using.

Why would someone ever request that?

 

[Fendalton]

As fun as it would be walking around, you have to ask, why?

I have all the interior cockpit / bridge spaces of ships and could easily throw them into Unreal4 (as they're .stl so can be objects) then boom, you have your space legs. But what's the purpose?

Because you can purchase commodities from the comfort of your ship, and have hundreds of tonnes of cargo loaded in an instant (not even going to go there) then what purpose, other than aesthetics, does space legs bring?

If you have space legs in stations, these would have to be overhauled as afaik there isn't any walkways.

The only way I see this working is if you allow walking around the exterior of your ship when it's docked and inside the hanger itself, as this provides an enclosed space to render the ship and removes any ramming from SRV's or what not.

I think I have a stations hangar in .stl format and a ship as well. I don't think I have the textures, but I can make your 'spacelegs' experience in a hangar bay. You'll only be able to walk around the ship, but yeah.

If you had to leave your ships to get missions from the start, then it wouldn't be such a drastic change. As it stands, people are used to clicking on a mission board rather than physically getting out of their ship, walking to an office and choosing missions. If this was introduced, people would complain that it takes too long to do.

 

[Imgran]

As fun as it would be walking around, you have to ask, why?

Because it serves as a hook to add new possible quests, adventures, and interest to the game. Add a Promenade to the stations for which it makes sense, and make it work like Mount and Blade:Warband's street view, and I think you could make that work as long as it was tested sufficiently and not completely riddled with bugs

 

[Bobbydylan]

That's really the crux of it, right? There's been extensive discussions about space legs all over the forums, and it's a difficult one to answer from our perspective. It's something we really, really want to do.... but if it doesn't add any long-term value, it's a lot of work for something that lacks meaningful gameplay. There was another thread on this that we were taking notes from with regards to the comparison to EVE's version of 'space legs'. Unfortunately that thread was lost as the OP requested his account to be removed and all posts he made to be wiped. Essentially it was a discussion regarding the feature being removed from EVE (if I recall the linked article correctly) due to lack of people using.

You mean long term value like CQC, Powerplay and Muti-crew?

Sorry, but with all due respects there's plenty of game-play on offer that ambulation will allow. Repairs are one, boarding is another, exploring derelicts, alien structures and abandoned colonies. Rescuing NPC's, social interaction between players, world building.... the list is endless. If FD don't have the imagination to conceptualize this, then just copy other games. Alien Isolation is a great example of how I'd envisage Ambulation to work in Elite.

 

[susume]

Until there is a compelling game play type for legs I think just having us move around the craft could be a QoL update with possible navmesh or loop animation similar to our current cockpit animation.

 

[Jack Schitt]

As fun as it would be walking around, you have to ask, why?

You've kind of answered your own question. Because the very mechanic itself would be (for some players) fun.

And the bit in parenthesis is key. ED is a uniquely mixed bag of gameplay elements. Cockpit shooter, space "simulator", strategy game, resource gatherer, driving game, arguably even a gambling game depending on your attitude towards Engineers. Some players embrace all of those activities, while for other people some mechanics are so onerous that they avoid them altogether. You might as well ask, "Why mining?", "Why exploration?", "Why SRVs" or even "Why combat?" You'll get a different answer depending on who you ask.

As an anecdote, I regularly park my explorer ship on an interesting bit of surface and use the camera suite and/or SRV to take a screenshot. The dullest "gameplay" imaginable to some players, I know, but I enjoy it and so do many others. If I could get my character out of the ship and walk up an escarpment to stare wistfully at the heavens like a cross between Matt Damon in The Martian and Brian Cox, I would get a huge kick out of it. I might do it a couple of dozen times in a single session, or I might go weeks without doing it. But the option to be able to do it is what would be important. The freedom. Any further interaction with the game that came along with it (what others would call "gameplay" even though to me the freedom would be the gameplay) would be a bonus, but not essential unless FD locked an Engineer or some other game aspect behind it.

Now the counter to that, obviously, is that it's a lot of effort for the development team to go through if it's only going to benefit a subset of players with leanings towards simulation and a shared galactic wanderlust. And it's a fair point, and one that FD have sort of skirted around in the vaguest of terms without really addressing it. "We won't add spacelegs without valid gameplay," is a distillation of the argument. But as I've said, for some players the mechanic itself would be the gameplay.

And this is where we come full circle to the problem FD has made for itself: some of those simulation-oriented players pledged at Kickstarter, or bought the game at launch, or bought a LEP, after FD explicitly stated in both the KS FAQ and the Newsletter promoting the LEP that we would be able to leave our ships eventually. Some of the words used could be interpreted as self-limiting; "planet surfaces" in the Newsletter could mean surface stations only, so my Matt Damon fantasy might remain just that. But they have to do something, or admit that they can't fulfil that goal. But they don't commit either way. They just continue to kick the idea so far into the long grass that it's almost over the horizon.

"Why?" is a perfectly good question, but it's a question that can be levelled at almost any existing feature of ED so it's not the best argument against spacelegs. The unique question for spacelegs should be "Why not?" given that people have already effectively paid for it. And that's something only FD can answer.

 

[Vasea Azure]

As fun as it would be walking around, you have to ask, why?

The exact same question was asked when ppl said they want an SRV Now I cant imagine ED with out it.

 

[[VR] Bac Ho]

It's an old vid I dug up from somewhere, but the commander who made this has the right idea, just imagine Alien Isolation game atmosphere in ED. If we ever get space legs Frontier MUST sit down and play Alien Isolation to get how space station environment and game atmosphere is done correctly.

[video=youtube;7Na16jGI6t0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Na16jGI6t0[/video]

 

[Kayweg]

It's an old vid I dug up from somewhere, but the commander who made this has the right idea, just imagine Alien Isolation game atmosphere in ED. If we ever get space legs Frontier MUST sit down and play Alien Isolation to get how space station environment and game atmosphere is done correctly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Na16jGI6t0

And that's the problem, imaginations running wild.
Folks imagine "Alien Isolation" style content in star ports and ground installations. "Subnautica" style content on water worlds, and "ARK" style content on earth-like planets.
That is plain and simple too much to ask for and impossible to achieve.
Try and investigate the time, work and money invested into each single one of those games.
And FD could just bolt them on as ED expansions ?
Of course they can't, and if they ever decide on adding "spacelegs", it will inevetibly fall short of those standards and of expectations.
It is exactly as sandro sammarco said: "It would be like adding a whole new game to ED".

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

It's an old vid I dug up from somewhere, but the commander who made this has the right idea, just imagine Alien Isolation game atmosphere in ED. If we ever get space legs Frontier MUST sit down and play Alien Isolation to get how space station environment and game atmosphere is done correctly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Na16jGI6t0

Exactly this. If people can't see what ambulation, Elite Feet, Space legs could add to the game after that video, then god help them. That is what I have been talking about. Look at Alien Isolation, look at Hellion etc. But what I don't want them to do is look at Star Citizen. That looks like a generic FPS bolted on to a space game. No thanks.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

And that's the problem, imaginations running wild.
Folks imagine "Alien Isolation" style content in star ports and ground installations. "Subnautica" style content on water worlds, and "ARK" style content on earth-like planets.
That is plain and simple too much to ask and impossible to achieve.
Try and investigate the time, work and money invested into each single one of those games.
And FD could just bolt them on as ED expansions ?
Of course they can't, and if they ever decide on adding "spacelegs", it will inevetibly

To be honest I really can't see why not. I hate to use a game as an example, but No Mans Sky plantary gameplay is pretty good. Needs a bit of refinement though. That has subnautica type of gameplay and ARK style content on the planets. Can it be done, of course, and I bet it can be done in a better way then what NMS does.

And when it comes to planetary abandoned bases, I can't see the issue there either. But I also suspect that it will be done in stages too.

 

[Jex =TE=]

To be honest I really can't see why not. I hate to use a game as an example, but No Mans Sky plantary gameplay is pretty good. Needs a bit of refinement though. That has subnautica type of gameplay and ARK style content on the planets. Can it be done, of course, and I bet it can be done in a better way then what NMS does.

And when it comes to planetary abandoned bases, I can't see the issue there either. But I also suspect that it will be done in stages too.

Because those games took years to develope, that's why you can't have them. Alien isolation is one game on one ship and is a linear story with finite playability. Where is the 4-5 years of dev time and funds going to come from to add each of these ideas?