So, how much realism is too much realism for Elite: Dangerous?

[Schmack]

A few notes on this:

1. Grinding anything gets boring fast, so we switch up when we see something interesting
2. Ship builds aren't friendly to doing that, sometimes you can spend more time getting your ship straight than actually flying it
3. #2 often leads to a sub-grind that also causes us to shift our attention elsewhere
4. After a few of these attention switching walls we encounter, we exit the game because we're basically where we started.

Basically many of us don't have a lot of time to grind. I get it, we shouldn't get different treatment for that and I agree, but the outcome is generally that we grow disinterested for the night and call it early when we could be doing what we like to do. Those times when we do finally get everything in order and start reaping the rewards for it, the game gets nerfed or something in the BGS changes to make it no longer worthwhile. The grind starts again with the ship moving and all that. Some folks stay ahead of it. I probably have more time than most, but even I don't have time to peruse every sub forum for hints about things until I get to that point in the game where I've decided to go that direction.

If anything, instant ship movement would cause people to never accept any amount of a challenge for Cr or rank or anything else, because they'd just pull up and move instantly. At least the time required is a deterrent to that, but I don't know if that's good or bad, or that it matters at all to anyone else's game play. I suppose it depends on how the developers want the game to go. With the module storage and ship transfer mechanics, it seems that there's at least acknowledgement that player movement is stale otherwise. So how stale is it now? Would reduced times (by half) perhaps by being allied with both stations you're transferring between make more players move more often? Would ghost town systems become more popular?

If I could get to Colonia and have my entire fleet shipped there for an affordable amount, I'd go. There's no reason to charge that much for it or for it to take that long, when nothing in the game pays you that much to complete a mission and you could fly the ship there faster than they transfer it.

 

[EdzUp]

... lol ... "Yo, f00d rats? I's outta pizza. Where I am? Some 65KLy outta bubble. When's yo delivery here?"

if it's not there in thirty minutes it's free

 

[Arthur Shappey]

It takes 30 minutes to move a ship 150Ly between stations.

It takes 2 seconds to sell / remove 500 tonnes of cargo, and another 2 seconds to load 500 tonnes of new cargo.

If you die, you have to have your ship loaded into the last place you docked, even if that was hundreds of Ly away, instead of going to the closest station and filling in paperwork for an insurance claim.

/thread

And your insurance premium never rises... And the space stations don't charge for storing dozens of ships, or indeed anything - and there are no taxes...

Wait! Aren't these good things?

 

[EdzUp]

there was a 1Cr to 4Cr tax in FFE per day imagine that chipping away at ya profits per ship?

 

[smiths121]

Well not sure about low credits.

Double Elite account allied with most factions in the area, making 10MCr+ occassionally 20MCr an hour, seems about right for covering insurance risk. This is about the only use for money after the first couple of billion. Starter Pilot Mostly Harmless to Poor cross the board about 1MCr an hour. This is all on missions, primarily chosen for BGS worth,with trade to fill in empty cargo. Make more with passengers.

Onto realism, well I probably put myself in the realism camp, having argued for the FE2/FFE flight model during DDF times, basically from the realism point ofi view. Quite like the hybrid model we have now though, and it is not too far away from the FFE modes. I have since refined my views on Realism to aspects that sop me suspending my belief, which I think gives me a more balanced view. Only thing in the game that grinds is Holo-Me and insta-teleport for Multi-crew. This is still a feature I do not use much, mainly because I hate the premise. Wish it was more popular as the debates got pretty much to the point "if you do not like it play something else", wich I nearly did. Seems a waste of good hated that no-one like it.

My coomment therefore to the OP is, if you do not like something decide if you can put up with it, avoid it or ultimately play something else. Seems to be fitting for this forum's community.

Cheers
Simon

 

[[VR] Deggial]

First of all, the game is not about realism (and this is by FDev's own words). It has as much realism as possible (Stellar Forge, the planets composition and the effect on their visuals), but dips heavily into fantasy, if better suited to create an enjoyable gaming experience. (Shields as mentioned above, FTL travel, lasers being visible, ... the list is endless!)
The game settings have to be believable, not realistic.

Regarding instant ship transfer, I would love, if people would stop relating to it as the proponents desire for more realism. It was never about realism! But it was all about balance and how not to make certain design aspects/game mechanics (the ships different jump ranges) pointless. But this horse is long dead and should be left alone ...

Regarding food and water consumption ... well, for the "in-bubble gameplay", it is indeed rather pointless, as we would be able to restock at every station. Managing our catering would just be an annoying chore without gameplay value soon enough.
For explorers however, I could very well imagine some interesting gameplay possibilities. A touch of survival game, if you want. FDev already started to do so with heat sink synthesis. (And I actually like, that there are materials needed which are not available outside the bubble. This makes preparing an expedition an actual thing.)
But heat sinks are (or should be) rarely used. Maybe the introduction of other consumable supply might be a worthwhile consideration. Something that needs deep space material for synthesis and makes mining stops in planetary rings or material hunts on planet surfaces necessary every now and then. Not too often, but enough to give explorers something meaningful to do in order to break the daily routines. Not because of realism - but in order to make the game more interesting.

 

[zarking]

There was this curious little game called "star trader" on the Commodore 64 in 1984.
It was basically an elite clone with a different vibe.
You traded between planets and tried to avoid or fight pirates.
The cool thing was that when you docked, you had to buy food, you'd have to visit the shops to buy the goods you sell and depending on the time of day, you'd book a hotel to sleep in. Higher quality hotels meant less chance of being mugged and more health regen. The longer you spent in space, dodging pirates or whatever, the more your health goes down.
You could even buy a pint in a bar lol, and there was witty chat with the barman, customs officers and traders.
Sure all of that got old pretty quick, and I'm not suggesting ED adds in an eating or sleeping mechanic, but the little interaction with the traders and barman and customs guys was cool, it did feel good when you could afford to book a high quality hotel and spend the evening chilling out in the bar safe from muggers lol.

It was about immersive as you got in 1984 to be honest it wasn't the best game, but I spent many happy hours with it.

What we could take from it, is the feeling of more personal involvement. Forget space legs for a moment, but what if the station menu had different options "visit the lounge, the rec room, local bulletin boards", they could be text and graphic based, maybe a different way to come across special missions, find rare goods, maybe you could leave messages to say your looking to join a wing or have items to trade.
Or add it to the installations, at the space bar, you can dock, have some silly chatter, pick up unique missions, meet shady npc's offering slaves and rare goods.
The medical installation could have doctors that offer increase life support time if you do a few missions, or missions such as "return injured slaves, sick or injured" people, military installations could offer pre-enginnered or powerplay style weapons if you do some covert, dangerous missions for them.
All of this with loads of flavour text, custom visuals, and possibly link access to your power play faction or allegiance, so that there's a way to add meaning to your rank without removing any of the existing mechanics from new players.

I dunno, I'm just babbling, but there's some potential there...

 

[A D]

IMO realism for the Stella Forge takes trumps. When I jump into a ship I want to "feel" like (read believe) I'm in deep space. Happy to cut corners on everything else so the game is playable and enjoyable for all.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

The ship transfer argument for example has nothing to do with hard-line realism and is entirely a question of what kind of game we want to play and how we want it to work.

Don't include me in your "we". 33% voted against delayed transfers.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

There was this curious little game called "star trader" on the Commodore 64 in 1984.
It was basically an elite clone with a different vibe.

Another 80s game, rogue, your character had to regularly eat. The best way to solve this was to get a canning kit and can all of the monsters you killed. We could do this with NPCs, plus some already come nicely canned for us.

 

[Pumabear8]

I'm not a fan of ship transfer delay, especially when I can make the same trip in half the time or less, there is no mention that a carrier medium is being used, so I presume the ship being transferred is being piloted, I bet the pilot is chilling out drinking up my supply of coffee, lazy git.

 

[Weps]

There has to be Logic to a game because without it, it wouldn't be understandable. But there's a difference between Fantasy Logic and Real-Life Logic. And when you try to apply real-life logic to a game like Elite: Dangerous that's based 1000 years into the future, there's going to be a break of Immersion and is going to raise more questions than answers.

I don't think there are different types of logic, logic is universal when you break down the topic it refers to a set of rules and analyze only the relationships between them.

English isn't my mother tongue, nor did I study logic, so I may be talking gibberish here, but what I'm trying to say is that regardless of how scifi Elite is, it has a set of rules established in game (simple rules, like the price of a commodity or that of a ship) but then it breaks them in so many places, and that's when it starts to feel "unrealistic" and people start complaining.

And by the way, I feel that realism is not the correct word here, but people tend to use it because it's more common. Better words would be verisimilitude or coherence.

One other aspect which I believe the OP touches on, is gameplay mechanics which cannibalize on each other. And I'm gonna use the instant ship transfer story, because I feel that this argument has been lost in that discussion, by overuse of the "realism vs. gameplay" tagline. Instant ship transfer could have been used as a quasi fast-travel-ship-transformers mechanic, and then the question isn't so much about how believable that feels, or if it fits logically in the game world, but about the reason in having a video game about space travel, and a lot of other mechanics built on top of that (interdictions, station approach etc.) and spending resourced to maintain them, when it would have been reduced to a selection of scenarios (choose system -> choose mission -> choose ship -> choose loadout) which would have felt more natural, even to the player, in a menu form.

 

[Vasious]

Don't include me in your "we". 33% voted against delayed transfers.

But you did vote, so you accepted the social contract to accept the out come.

This whole, the losing sides of votes never letting go, and getting upset with not getting their way.

Yes we get it, voting only works when you win, if you lose it is broken and wrong and not fair, blah blah blah.

 

[Siranui]

But instead a portion of players have resulted to doing other tasks they find boring or tedious just to get the module or ship that they want just to see that task get a nerfed in a patch. The game should revolve around the player not the player revolvling around the game, especially in an Open-World, Playground-Style type game.

I know, right. I want to roleplay the son of the Prime Minister who is a rebellious type who just wants to go on adventures with his girlfriend [who is Miss Galaxy] and so daddy gave me a Corvette to adventure with and assigned me a wing of Elite pilots to protect me. But I can't do that and have to start in a Sidewinder with no hot holoperson sat next to me, and it's totally ruined my roleplaying and mah immershun....

 

[anikaiful]

I know, right. I want to roleplay the son of the Prime Minister who is a rebellious type who just wants to go on adventures with his girlfriend [who is Miss Galaxy] and so daddy gave me a Corvette to adventure with and assigned me a wing of Elite pilots to protect me. But I can't do that and have to start in a Sidewinder with no hot holoperson sat next to me, and it's totally ruined my roleplaying and mah immershun....

D'oh, use your imaginashun! She's right there, or are you intentionally ignoring her presence?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But you did vote, so you accepted the social contract to accept the out come.

Ah, yes, the old Catch-22 of democracy

"You didn't vote, therefore you can't complain about the outcome."

"You did vote, therefore you can't complain about the outcome."

 

[anikaiful]

Ah, yes, the old Catch-22 of democracy

"You didn't vote, therefore you can't complain about the outcome."

"You did vote, therefore you can't complain about the outcome."

In essence saying, democracy does not exist - never had, never will. True democracy is like every atom, boson, lepton and whatnot dancing Moonwalk in harmony - very unlikely to happen (possible, but ...).

 

[Ryan P Bodfirst]

Yes with you on this one - nice post.

My view has always been that with any sci-fi or fantasy creation it’s about believability rather than realism.

Now this is a grey area to some extent - but for example it wasn’t believable that the police would destroy you for a minor parking offence - which used to happen...

It’s more about making what’s in the game make sense within its own framework of rules/laws rather than making everything in it realistic. It’s this consistency in creating a world I can believe in that makes sci for so immersive and compelling - same as in a book, film or ed.

Will we ever have spatial frame shift drives, shields - no idea and I don’t really mind if this is proved impossible, scientific views can change drastically with one new discovery so who knows....
But, if they did exist then I think the way frontier have implemented them is believable and consistent. It might not be everybody’s idea of how they would work but its consistent in its application.

Other parts of the game do need improvement in this regard, for example is it believable that I can rank up with both major factions and neither care? - for me it’s not - and this distracts from gameplay for me as it means I don’t really care about them - but frontier have mentioned they want to change this so I’m confident in frontiers vision of this and Ed going forward.

I do think believability in Ed generaly leads to better gameplay because it adds richness and weight to the the game and provides consequences for my actions that make sense which all leads to me believing I really am flying a space ship in a living breathing galaxy.

 

[uliando]

Ships in ED don't have simulated thrusters, space is full of air and drag forces. Pitch/roll/yaw rates are pulled out of an... weight also. Basically this game is a game nothing more. Realism is not in FDEV dictionary. Enjoy your flight I guess?

SRV does NOT obey laws of gravity on planets! Ships for some reason do until you hit terminal velocity... on a frigin planet without an atmosphere. Man I'd love to play kerbal with damageless aerobraking on every planet, that would be easy?

 

[anikaiful]

Ships in ED don't have simulated thrusters, space is full of air and drag forces. Pitch/roll/yaw rates are pulled out of an... weight also. Basically this game is a game nothing more. Realism is not in FDEV dictionary. Enjoy your flight I guess?

SRV does NOT obey laws of gravity on planets! Ships for some reason do until you hit terminal velocity... on a frigin planet without an atmosphere. Man I'd love to play kerbal with damageless aerobraking on every planet, that would be easy?

If 'realism' was in the picture, we'd not be yet even at Alpha Centauri, even less at Hutton Orbital ...