When will it become a game? Will it become a game?

[Enderby]

...A slack non stressful space sim where they could escape their wives for a few hours a night and relive their childhood space camp fantasies.

This seems to have the ring of truth to it. It's just a shame that it falls so short when it looks so good. Oh well, I guess the people you refer to are happy, so that's something. That's something I suppose.

Those that embrace mediocrity if it comes gift-wrapped in nostalgia.

 

[Ninj]

Doomed, dead, life support etc.

Yawn

Oh - and repost.

 

[Enderby]

Doomed, dead, life support etc.

Yawn

Oh - and repost.

No! Naughty! Not doomed to fail. Just worried that it's doomed to not be particularly good. Which is a shame.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

And the usual suspects start showing up.

Quite, Hello Suvi.

I can understand the OP's feelings - as "a game" can mean a lot of different things to people - hence the incredibly diverse genres and diversification within those genres.

I've mentioned several times now that I've been playing a survival game, Empyrion (shamless plug) for the first time and really enjoying it - but it has no story to speak of, minimal quests that are extremely basic, wooden NPC's with no interaction except for a rare few - it is still EARLY ALPHA BTW.

But the gameplay areas are incredibly engaging - you start literally with just a few survival rations and supplies and that's it, no instructions, no "go here, do this".

The game basically says "ok you're here, you've got 2 hours worth of oxygen and 2 hours worth of *food* before you starve to death, here's a pistol and a handful of rounds - now get on with it, kthanksbye". PS it's going to be night soon and you should find shelter before that happens.

(my first night was spent cowering in a hole in the ground - and it takes 1.5 RL hours for that to pass - the second night I spent on top of a big rock with a creature trying to kill me, no you can't outrun them, yes they will follow you forever.

Literally a blank slate, as blank as I've ever come across in a game for a great many years - few tooltips and virtually zero handholding - as an example in the first few hours I managed a longrange kill of a food creature..... and then spent the next ten minutes looking for it to loot before giving up. So I tried again, and made a good note of where it dropped, still couldn't find it (I should mention the undergrowth is quite thick). I googled and found out you have just 5 minutes to loot before despawn; no tooltip markers, or guiding arrows, nothing.

Some people might be pretty peed off by that but somehow it just added to the urgency of the situation, and the whole - surviving, 5 minutes at a time, feel of the game until you get established.

250 hours in I'm still enjoying it, and what makes it enjoyable is it has the tools to interact with the surroundings - the question "what can I do next" is always forefront in your mind, alongside "what should I do next?"

I think the point I'm making is one that's been made before - the player's feeling of agency in a game is probably the most important aspect - even games with heavy and complicated storlines can feel contrived if it's too "on rails" with little player choice.

While I acknowledge that ED does give the player a feeling of agency - it's still very disconnected from the larger universe - and the tools to interact are still quite basic.

 

[Ninj]

No! Naughty! Not doomed to fail. Just worried that it's doomed to not be particularly good. Which is a shame.

I'm having fun, this is all a game to me. I'm not sure why anyone would think it isn't.

If it's not, then don't do it. Find something else. No-one is forcing you.

Kind regards from Naughty Ninj [big grin]

 

[Rafe Zetter]

I could argue that skill isn't necessarily required for it to be a game (Snap! anyone?), but instead I'd like to ask what kind of thing you'd like to actually DO, in supercruise (I'm discounting jumping because that's a loading screen) which requires skill.

Bear in mind that ED already has a steep learning curve, so adding too much complexity to the basic acts of navigation is going to run the risk of making the game unplayable for a newbie.
Also, consider that a subset of the playerbase has little to no interest in what takes place between point A and B, where A is where they are and B is where the activity they want to do (trade, bounty hunt, PvP, griefing) and will not welcome anything that makes that A-B transition any more time-consuming.

I have to agree here, the SC situation can't really be improved upon other than possibly somehow shortening some of the very long ones - (some sort of beacons that allow a minijump - such as was in the original Elite).

But having things that can be activities done DURING those SC such as remote trading info localised to the surrounding sytems - galnet news on those same surrounding systems to read, updates to the state of play regarding your faction of choice - things that make the galaxy feel "alive"

It would be pretty cool to have an ingame MP3 player, or eReader - or both

 

[Thalion Solarstorm]

Is this a Thread about Star Citizen? ^^

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

I'm having fun, this is all a game to me. I'm not sure why anyone would think it isn't.

If it's not, then don't do it. Find something else. No-one is forcing you.

Kind regards from Naughty Ninj [big grin]

Unfortunately, there is this small faction of gamers that need to have their hand held, that require a linear based design of a game or a COD/Halo type style of game and they want this game to be that. So they that hang around trying to change this game. Complaining and moaning "ED is not a game boo hoo." "FRONTIER FAILED!!!" They either have missed the boat on what this game actually is, or they know but think if they cry enough, Frontier will change it and turn it into Space Grand Theft Auto meets Call of Duty.

 

[lokvette]

I turn on my PC, I click the short cut to EDFX, that boots up the ED launcher, I click play. I play the "game" that is ED.

It might well not be everyone's cup of tea or the most indepth story telling swash bukleing tale of adventure, to save the Princess or become over lord of the galaxy.

But its still a game, I enjoy it when I play it, when I dont enjoy it anymore I play other games I do.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I have to agree here, the SC situation can't really be improved upon other than possibly somehow shortening some of the very long ones - (some sort of beacons that allow a minijump - such as was in the original Elite).

But having things that can be activities done DURING those SC such as remote trading info localised to the surrounding sytems - galnet news on those same surrounding systems to read, updates to the state of play regarding your faction of choice - things that make the galaxy feel "alive"

Anything that turns GalNet into a useful resource will get a thumbs up from me.

I posted elsewhere, in a discussion about NPC scaling how station info boards could be used to provide information about surrounding systems - warning about pirates if neighboring systems are anarchy/low security, about war/famine/outbreak/etc states nearby - but this could just as easily be available from SC.

 

[wstephenson]

It'll become a game when they add gameplay to the activity that most people spend almost all their time doing when they're not afk using a third party website or watching tv, Jumping and Supercruise. When those two activities become something that benefits from skill and includes activities for the player to do in order to partake in them, then it'll be a game.

2 mechanisms need adding to those activities for them to provide what you request: Sneaking in Supercruise. Visibility to Jumping. With the ability to evade a pursuer in Supercruise, and the ability to track* and predict a target's movements over multiple systems, or vice versa know that you are being pursued, the game board gets a lot more interesting.

You can experience the latter by getting a friend, in game, to try to shift an amount (more than one load) of a given rare cargo over about 150LY to a named destination. Unlocking an engineer would be optimal. You then try to pirate them as often as possible, using a ship with a slightly lower jump range, and their location on the galaxy map.

(* Wake scanners are too limited for this)

 

[Darth Ender]

I could argue that skill isn't necessarily required for it to be a game (Snap! anyone?), but instead I'd like to ask what kind of thing you'd like to actually DO, in supercruise (I'm discounting jumping because that's a loading screen) which requires skill.

Bear in mind that ED already has a steep learning curve, so adding too much complexity to the basic acts of navigation is going to run the risk of making the game unplayable for a newbie.
Also, consider that a subset of the playerbase has little to no interest in what takes place between point A and B, where A is where they are and B is where the activity they want to do (trade, bounty hunt, PvP, griefing) and will not welcome anything that makes that A-B transition any more time-consuming.

well a couple years ago i had ideas and countless others have had ideas regarding this put into threads that can fill up encyclopedia sets.

But off the cuff... Here are a couple ideas of things to do or add to the process to make jumping (load screens!) and supercruise more entertaining and perhaps rewarding of skill.

It's important to note that the learning curve of Elite Dangerous isn't high if you've played other space combat games. What leads to players falling off isn't because ED is hard, it's because ED is boring and grindy. There is a lack of skill-based gameplay outside of dogfighting. Not too much.

High Jumping / Loading Screen: We already have hyperdiction. This was an idea that was requested from day 1 but has only recently been implemented in the form of thargoid interdiction. This can be expanded to include malfunctioning jump drives due to damage or engineering. This makes every jump a potential mini-game. You could avoid the malfunction through a sort of mini-game similar to interdiction evading or you could make what happens when the jump fails part of the "game". If going that route, you'd dump the player into some sort of quasi-system. This system can be implemented a number of ways to offer options to a player (fix fsd and continue to intended destination system, jump back to origin system, or attempt to make a blind jump and get put in a random nearby system). Lots of options here. Also a good idea is to change high jumping to always dump you into normal space rather than into supercruise. This increases the chances of meeting up with other players and/or npcs and makes exploring the system more of an intentional action the player has to take vs simply passing through the system.


Supercruise: This is a bit more difficult to make into an aspect of engaging gameplay. Mostly because I demand that supercruise be changed to hide the system's true look because I would like supercruise to be as if you are not entirely in normal 3d space so your view of that 3d space should be extremely altered. So that ads a fog of war aspect to the system that doesn't currently exist other than not being able to see certain poi's if out of range. So pretend that your view of space while in SC is significantly different than if you dropped out of SC and looked around.

So while in SC, your ability to navigate to one poi to the next (planets or stations...everything that can be detected while in SC) can be made into a game. A puzzle that is augmented by modules you may have installed and turned on along with skills such as piloting and in understanding the FSD data you're seeing. For instance, pretend when in an SRV you couldn't see anything on the screen except the SRV sonogram. And you had to navigate just using that sonogram. Something along those lines but way more visually engaging than a sonogram. Then things can be hidden in the system that you could discover in SC if you are good at interpreting the FSD visual data you're seeing while in-system. Your infinite range scanner may give you a list of things in a system and their position in 3d space, but supercruise is not in 3d space and so you have full freedom on how those items are arranged and how you travel to them. but we dont take advantage of that fact in the game. We simply represent them the same in SC as they are in real space and that's a wasted opportunity.

Lots and lots of ideas other than these are out there. But i think so long as the activities that most people are spending most of their time doing equate to sitting and doing nothing, you can't have a game. These activities must be made part of the game to link your activities you do before traveling and once you have completed traveling. Or you might as well not be traveling. If the journey isn't part of the game, then it becomes nothing but a roadblock to gameplay and I dont think anyone wants space travel to be the roadblock to gameplay - and it's obvious that it has been so far. Nobody enjoys supercruise or the repetitive waiting for high jumps to complete and that's the bulk of what you do in the game.

That's incredibly stupid. Like day 1 fleshing out the game stupid.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

No! Naughty! Not doomed to fail. Just worried that it's doomed to not be particularly good. Which is a shame.

Not good for you? Well, but that's a life. It moves on. So should you.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

well a couple years ago i had ideas and countless others have had ideas regarding this put into threads that can fill up encyclopedia sets.

But off the cuff... Here are a couple ideas of things to do or add to the process to make jumping (load screens!) and supercruise more entertaining and perhaps rewarding of skill.

It's important to note that the learning curve of Elite Dangerous isn't high if you've played other space combat games. What leads to players falling off isn't because ED is hard, it's because ED is boring and grindy. There is a lack of skill-based gameplay outside of dogfighting. Not too much.

High Jumping / Loading Screen: We already have hyperdiction. This was an idea that was requested from day 1 but has only recently been implemented in the form of thargoid interdiction. This can be expanded to include malfunctioning jump drives due to damage or engineering. This makes every jump a potential mini-game. You could avoid the malfunction through a sort of mini-game similar to interdiction evading or you could make what happens when the jump fails part of the "game". If going that route, you'd dump the player into some sort of quasi-system. This system can be implemented a number of ways to offer options to a player (fix fsd and continue to intended destination system, jump back to origin system, or attempt to make a blind jump and get put in a random nearby system). Lots of options here. Also a good idea is to change high jumping to always dump you into normal space rather than into supercruise. This increases the chances of meeting up with other players and/or npcs and makes exploring the system more of an intentional action the player has to take vs simply passing through the system.


Supercruise: This is a bit more difficult to make into an aspect of engaging gameplay. Mostly because I demand that supercruise be changed to hide the system's true look because I would like supercruise to be as if you are not entirely in normal 3d space so your view of that 3d space should be extremely altered. So that ads a fog of war aspect to the system that doesn't currently exist other than not being able to see certain poi's if out of range. So pretend that your view of space while in SC is significantly different than if you dropped out of SC and looked around.

So while in SC, your ability to navigate to one poi to the next (planets or stations...everything that can be detected while in SC) can be made into a game. A puzzle that is augmented by modules you may have installed and turned on along with skills such as piloting and in understanding the FSD data you're seeing. For instance, pretend when in an SRV you couldn't see anything on the screen except the SRV sonogram. And you had to navigate just using that sonogram. Something along those lines but way more visually engaging than a sonogram. Then things can be hidden in the system that you could discover in SC if you are good at interpreting the FSD visual data you're seeing while in-system. Your infinite range scanner may give you a list of things in a system and their position in 3d space, but supercruise is not in 3d space and so you have full freedom on how those items are arranged and how you travel to them. but we dont take advantage of that fact in the game. We simply represent them the same in SC as they are in real space and that's a wasted opportunity.

Lots and lots of ideas other than these are out there. But i think so long as the activities that most people are spending most of their time doing equate to sitting and doing nothing, you can't have a game. These activities must be made part of the game to link your activities you do before traveling and once you have completed traveling. Or you might as well not be traveling. If the journey isn't part of the game, then it becomes nothing but a roadblock to gameplay and I dont think anyone wants space travel to be the roadblock to gameplay - and it's obvious that it has been so far. Nobody enjoys supercruise or the repetitive waiting for high jumps to complete and that's the bulk of what you do in the game.

That's incredibly stupid. Like day 1 fleshing out the game stupid.

I can tell you most of those ideas sounds very vague and most likely would be very boring in actual game.

As for SC it is quite easy - I can explore system and explore points in it - either signal sources, either combat zones, stations, and so on and so forth.

It seems you are looking for something constantly challenging you.

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

well a couple years ago i had ideas and countless others have had ideas regarding this put into threads that can fill up encyclopedia sets.

But off the cuff... Here are a couple ideas of things to do or add to the process to make jumping (load screens!) and supercruise more entertaining and perhaps rewarding of skill.

It's important to note that the learning curve of Elite Dangerous isn't high if you've played other space combat games. What leads to players falling off isn't because ED is hard, it's because ED is boring and grindy. There is a lack of skill-based gameplay outside of dogfighting. Not too much.

High Jumping / Loading Screen: We already have hyperdiction. This was an idea that was requested from day 1 but has only recently been implemented in the form of thargoid interdiction. This can be expanded to include malfunctioning jump drives due to damage or engineering. This makes every jump a potential mini-game. You could avoid the malfunction through a sort of mini-game similar to interdiction evading or you could make what happens when the jump fails part of the "game". If going that route, you'd dump the player into some sort of quasi-system. This system can be implemented a number of ways to offer options to a player (fix fsd and continue to intended destination system, jump back to origin system, or attempt to make a blind jump and get put in a random nearby system). Lots of options here. Also a good idea is to change high jumping to always dump you into normal space rather than into supercruise. This increases the chances of meeting up with other players and/or npcs and makes exploring the system more of an intentional action the player has to take vs simply passing through the system.


Supercruise: This is a bit more difficult to make into an aspect of engaging gameplay. Mostly because I demand that supercruise be changed to hide the system's true look because I would like supercruise to be as if you are not entirely in normal 3d space so your view of that 3d space should be extremely altered. So that ads a fog of war aspect to the system that doesn't currently exist other than not being able to see certain poi's if out of range. So pretend that your view of space while in SC is significantly different than if you dropped out of SC and looked around.

So while in SC, your ability to navigate to one poi to the next (planets or stations...everything that can be detected while in SC) can be made into a game. A puzzle that is augmented by modules you may have installed and turned on along with skills such as piloting and in understanding the FSD data you're seeing. For instance, pretend when in an SRV you couldn't see anything on the screen except the SRV sonogram. And you had to navigate just using that sonogram. Something along those lines but way more visually engaging than a sonogram. Then things can be hidden in the system that you could discover in SC if you are good at interpreting the FSD visual data you're seeing while in-system. Your infinite range scanner may give you a list of things in a system and their position in 3d space, but supercruise is not in 3d space and so you have full freedom on how those items are arranged and how you travel to them. but we dont take advantage of that fact in the game. We simply represent them the same in SC as they are in real space and that's a wasted opportunity.

Lots and lots of ideas other than these are out there. But i think so long as the activities that most people are spending most of their time doing equate to sitting and doing nothing, you can't have a game. These activities must be made part of the game to link your activities you do before traveling and once you have completed traveling. Or you might as well not be traveling. If the journey isn't part of the game, then it becomes nothing but a roadblock to gameplay and I dont think anyone wants space travel to be the roadblock to gameplay - and it's obvious that it has been so far. Nobody enjoys supercruise or the repetitive waiting for high jumps to complete and that's the bulk of what you do in the game.

That's incredibly stupid. Like day 1 fleshing out the game stupid.

^^^^This. Well said and repped.

 

[Achilles7]

.... going to try and multi-crew this CG (if someone will have me), looking forward to it!

Ahhh ignorance is bliss!

Good luck with your m/c experience. Btw, it's not 'if someone will have you', it's if you can *actually* find someone; if by a miracle you do, well, I'm afraid it all goes downhill from there!

Enderby....you should have another turncoat in...oooh, a couple of days, by my reckoning!

... unless you've had a discernment-ectomy, of course.

 

[seko]

2 mechanisms need adding to those activities for them to provide what you request: Sneaking in Supercruise. Visibility to Jumping. With the ability to evade a pursuer in Supercruise, and the ability to track* and predict a target's movements over multiple systems, or vice versa know that you are being pursued, the game board gets a lot more interesting.

You can experience the latter by getting a friend, in game, to try to shift an amount (more than one load) of a given rare cargo over about 150LY to a named destination. Unlocking an engineer would be optimal. You then try to pirate them as often as possible, using a ship with a slightly lower jump range, and their location on the galaxy map.

(* Wake scanners are too limited for this)

Exactly - using your imagination

 

[Gun Star]

No! Naughty! Not doomed to fail. Just worried that it's doomed to not be particularly good. Which is a shame.

I think it is a pretty good game with how small the the studio is and it being funded by a kick starter. Considering I have played some big budget titles from AAA developers with the muscle of multiple studios to design and make a game and either being a bug ridden fiesta or super high budget college projects that needed to be held back from release till a actual worthy product was ready.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

well a couple years ago i had ideas and countless others have had ideas regarding this put into threads that can fill up encyclopedia sets.

But off the cuff... Here are a couple ideas of things to do or add to the process to make jumping (load screens!) and supercruise more entertaining and perhaps rewarding of skill.

It's important to note that the learning curve of Elite Dangerous isn't high if you've played other space combat games. What leads to players falling off isn't because ED is hard, it's because ED is boring and grindy. There is a lack of skill-based gameplay outside of dogfighting. Not too much.

High Jumping / Loading Screen: We already have hyperdiction. This was an idea that was requested from day 1 but has only recently been implemented in the form of thargoid interdiction. This can be expanded to include malfunctioning jump drives due to damage or engineering. This makes every jump a potential mini-game. You could avoid the malfunction through a sort of mini-game similar to interdiction evading or you could make what happens when the jump fails part of the "game". If going that route, you'd dump the player into some sort of quasi-system. This system can be implemented a number of ways to offer options to a player (fix fsd and continue to intended destination system, jump back to origin system, or attempt to make a blind jump and get put in a random nearby system). Lots of options here. Also a good idea is to change high jumping to always dump you into normal space rather than into supercruise. This increases the chances of meeting up with other players and/or npcs and makes exploring the system more of an intentional action the player has to take vs simply passing through the system.


Supercruise: This is a bit more difficult to make into an aspect of engaging gameplay. Mostly because I demand that supercruise be changed to hide the system's true look because I would like supercruise to be as if you are not entirely in normal 3d space so your view of that 3d space should be extremely altered. So that ads a fog of war aspect to the system that doesn't currently exist other than not being able to see certain poi's if out of range. So pretend that your view of space while in SC is significantly different than if you dropped out of SC and looked around.

So while in SC, your ability to navigate to one poi to the next (planets or stations...everything that can be detected while in SC) can be made into a game. A puzzle that is augmented by modules you may have installed and turned on along with skills such as piloting and in understanding the FSD data you're seeing. For instance, pretend when in an SRV you couldn't see anything on the screen except the SRV sonogram. And you had to navigate just using that sonogram. Something along those lines but way more visually engaging than a sonogram. Then things can be hidden in the system that you could discover in SC if you are good at interpreting the FSD visual data you're seeing while in-system. Your infinite range scanner may give you a list of things in a system and their position in 3d space, but supercruise is not in 3d space and so you have full freedom on how those items are arranged and how you travel to them. but we dont take advantage of that fact in the game. We simply represent them the same in SC as they are in real space and that's a wasted opportunity.

Lots and lots of ideas other than these are out there. But i think so long as the activities that most people are spending most of their time doing equate to sitting and doing nothing, you can't have a game. These activities must be made part of the game to link your activities you do before traveling and once you have completed traveling. Or you might as well not be traveling. If the journey isn't part of the game, then it becomes nothing but a roadblock to gameplay and I dont think anyone wants space travel to be the roadblock to gameplay - and it's obvious that it has been so far. Nobody enjoys supercruise or the repetitive waiting for high jumps to complete and that's the bulk of what you do in the game.

That's incredibly stupid. Like day 1 fleshing out the game stupid.

I've seen various suggestions for supercruise changes over the years, but mostly they've consisted of mini-games or 'remove it completely'.

However, yours is definitely interesting - but I think it's something that would/should mostly apply to explorers. Inhabited systems would surely have beacons/markers that allow you to immediately navigate to stations, major planets and other points of significant interest, but outside the Bubble/Colonia then a fog-of-war aspect would potentially serve to make things more interesting, though it would need to be balanced against making exploration only interesting to people who REALLY like looking for a needle in a haystack.

You'd probably need to rework interdiction and a lot of the engineers materials gathering functionality too - though if I recall correctly, you'd be happy to lose the latter altogether

I'm against purely random jump failures, but some kind of risk/reward mechanism for longer distances would work okay for me. I'm hoping hyperdiction becomes a thing outside just a few systems in the Pleiades.

 

[Enderby]

I don't know why some people suggest that I want a game to hold my hand and guide me through it. I don't see for a moment how that correlates to my view of the current 'game' elements being under-par. This has nothing to do with hand-holding.

I suppose if you're into that sort of thing (the 'game' play in ED) - and are easily placated or pleased- then it may well seem quite nice but I suspect that such types enjoy the blandness of ED because it is bland - and good luck to them I say! Nothing better than finding a game that appeals to your sensibilities.

I'll keep looking in, of course, and contributing to the forum when I can.