I want my own land !
- Thread starter CMDR Arni Sigurdsson
- Start date
Here's the thing, we are in a fortunate position to watch a game be developed that offers all the things the players ask for, it's called Star Citizen. Games need to restrict what they do and what the player can do in order to have some focus. Without focus, the game is no longer enjoyable. I used to cheat at Gran Turismo on the Playstation 2. I'd give myself all the licences so I could do any race. I once tried also giving myself all the money and all the cars and the game instantly lost the point of playing. I had to restrict the game for myself in order to enjoy it.
Yes I know it might seem like the ideal game, let's have Gran Theft Auto V but with space ships and claiming land and building like in Minecraft. It might seem cool to do those things in Elite Dangerous, but every time I see a thread asking for these things, all I see is yet another player that does not understand what Elite "is".
It's like trying to have cars in Minecraft, it might seem like a cool idea, but when you try a mod that adds cars, they are rubbish. Minecraft simply isn't designed to have cars. With Elite Dangerous, we are stretching things just wanting to have walking around. I am more nervous about that than anything else, simply because it's something that may actually happen with Elite Dangerous.
One of the worst things Frontier did with Elite Dangerous was allow players to have factions in the game. With that one act, they gave players the illusion of ownership. You or a group you play as part of, does not "own" anything in Elite Dangerous, yet you'll hear many talk as if they do. "Our player faction ... " This is how arguments start.
I'm not against the idea of you building a thing in the game, I'm just against the consequences that would bring.
Yes I know it might seem like the ideal game, let's have Gran Theft Auto V but with space ships and claiming land and building like in Minecraft. It might seem cool to do those things in Elite Dangerous, but every time I see a thread asking for these things, all I see is yet another player that does not understand what Elite "is".
It's like trying to have cars in Minecraft, it might seem like a cool idea, but when you try a mod that adds cars, they are rubbish. Minecraft simply isn't designed to have cars. With Elite Dangerous, we are stretching things just wanting to have walking around. I am more nervous about that than anything else, simply because it's something that may actually happen with Elite Dangerous.
One of the worst things Frontier did with Elite Dangerous was allow players to have factions in the game. With that one act, they gave players the illusion of ownership. You or a group you play as part of, does not "own" anything in Elite Dangerous, yet you'll hear many talk as if they do. "Our player faction ... " This is how arguments start.
I'm not against the idea of you building a thing in the game, I'm just against the consequences that would bring.
ARK in space. You are so right. I want to build a base and claim my own moon or planet somewhere. And I want persistent NPC wingmen which develop traits.
AND so we have it...some players are annoyed they occasionally have to PAUSE their Netflix show to land/take off supercruise...while binge-watching their way to 100Bn Credits...Wouldn't Elite be SO much better if we could do that without even needing to turn the computer on?
Maybe then Frontier could ditch the whole cr*ppy business of Spaceflight/Navigation/Combat/Interdictions/Missions/Cockpits etc and concentrate on IMPORTANT stuff liek Spacelegs/Space bars etc etc...
I do understand what you're saying but I have to question how much the 'this is what Elite is' line of thinking should be prevalent.
I know what Elite was, back in '84 and '92 and that seems to be where much of that set-in-stone concept of what the game is seems to be rooted but the fact is gaming has moved on dramatically in the intervening years. Many of the things that games presented as 'features' back in the 80s and 90s were nothing more than contrivances to explain away the fact that the technology of the time couldn't have supported additional layers of content regardless of whether there was a will to implement them in theory or not. It's much easier to say (for example) 'Our game isn't about you being at the centre of the game universe' than it is to acknowledge 'We're pretty hot coders but we're working with 8 colours and 48k of memory here, there are limits on what we can do with it.'
Even so, the overarching concept of Elite has always been that you are not the star, you're just a regular Joe - I agree with you completely on that. It was always the antithesis of games like Wing Commander (actually Freelancer is probably the defining example) where you're an ordinary Joe who becomes embroiled in galaxy-changing events and suddenly finds himself working alongside heads of state and secret military organisations before ultimately changing the future of humanity. There's a place for that kind of gameplay but historically it's not been in Elite and I don't believe it ever should be.
That's not any kind of argument against players owning things, running corporations and most of the other things that get decried as being somehow not in the spirit of the game though.
For a start, we're all business people already. Every one of us starts the game as a sole trader and it makes no effective difference whether we role-play that we're a jobbing pilot taking any work that we can get, a freelance bounty hunter working for the highest bidder, an explorer getting paid by Universal Cartographics for valuable mapping data, an independent tour guide or whatever, we're all providing a service of some kind and getting paid for it.
The idea of you not being the star in Elite is that it's more representative of 'real life' where you exist as a relatively unimportant cog in the world. Thing is, there's a vast space between being Joe Bloggs with his own ship, only answerable to himself and presumably exhibiting some kind of social anxiety such is his determination to do everything alone forever, and the point where you hit the Edison Trent absurdity singularity.
With reference to this thread's topic, in real life I'm a low level government employee and pretty much nobody outside my house gives a toss what I think about anything. I'm certainly not hanging out with world leaders and changing the world. That doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to live in a house though, or to own one. I don't have to be influencing humanity to have a roof over my head.
Equally, in the game I've been pretty successful in my time as a sole trader so far. I've managed to acquire a fleet of 19 ships and I have total assets of over 3 billion credits. By anybody's standards, I'm doing OK. Thing is, there aren't any laws in the Elite Dangerous universe that prevent private ownership of assets and property (well apart from in the commie systems presumably...) and as far as we're aware there are few or no restrictions on who can start, own or operate a company. In the real world some successful sole traders will continue to work that way because they like it but others will want to expand their business. They may take on staff, they may go into partnership with one or more former competitors, they might even end up floating and becoming public companies.
Not only is there nothing in the Elite canon to suggest that these things don't still happen in 3304, there is evidence all around us in the game that they do. Have a peek at this https://inara.cz/galaxy-minorfactions/ and see just how high a proportion of them are X Inc., Co., Ltd, Partnership, Group, Industries, PLC, Holdings, etc.
They aren't all mega-corporations with interests spanning 250 populated worlds; some of them are mom and pop mining operations based in systems with populations of 10,000. If you consider a fairly high level player in this game, someone with assets approaching the 5 billion mark and a few Imperial Cutters in his or her hangar, it's almost impossible to conceive of a situation where they have less assets than the owners of the Turd Mountain Mining Corp based in the back end of nowhere, so there's no argument in logic, derived from the internal consistence of the game world, that players shouldn't be allowed to run corporations, own a base of some kind (even if it's just the equivalent of a lock up round the back of the market) and indeed do anything else that would be expected for a relatively wealthy business person.
At that point a fairly uncomfortable thing happen to the 'We can't have these things because Elite is about you just being a person in the game world' line of thinking. It steps outside of the constructed game world and becomes wholly meta because the game world itself can no longer plausibly explain the restrictions that are being imposed on your character. No matter how successful you may be, you will never own anything but a ship, never work for anybody but yourself and never be able to call a place your home, despite the fact that the entry bar for those things within the context of the game world must be sufficiently low that you passed it ages ago.
If the game suddenly started offering me a set of 10 missions at the end of which I've killed the previously undiscovered Thargoid Queen, uncovered a conspiracy in the Federal government and started dating either Aisling or Patreus depending on character gender and/or preference, I'd be the first to get on here pointing out that if I wanted to play a 2018 Freelancer I'd just
If it gave me the chance to build a pre-fab base like Dav's Hope with inflatable habitats on an unoccupied moon and maybe to officially join up with a couple of like-minded commanders, in a way that is recognised in-game, to operate a small haulage business, I'd actually think that was entirely in keeping with the ethos of the game over the last 30+ years because it's small-scale, relatable to most of us and plausible within the context of the game world.
So yeah, like I said I'm not actually advocating for any of this stuff but if there's an argument against it I really do think it needs to be a better one than 'but it's just not Elite'. Not because it's an unimportant consideration, just because it doesn't really seem to be true. End of the day, it's all just opinions though obviously.
(Also I didn't really want to mention St*r C*t*z*n again because it does tend to summon the mods but yes, that game is obviously over-reaching itself by a factor of 10 because it's trying to be about five game genres at once. I'd never support this game going down that route, regardless of the specifics of the content, because as you said the problem is spreading yourself too thin and losing the focus of the game. I wouldn't see base-building and some degree of player organisations within what will always primarily be a cockpit-based space sim as delivering that problem though.)
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I think we should be able to establish a base, and the purpose of the base would be for ship, module, material, and commodity management.
It'd be okay with me if the base was only visible to you while in solo, or if it was indestructible (because otherwise, griefers). I just think there's some interesting gameplay possibilities that come from having a central inventory that you can fiddle with. Anyone ever play Diablo? For some reason, it was kind of enjoyable to fool around with your inventory.
I think they should bring back the commodity requirements to engineer upgrades - but, if we had a place off-ship to store stuff, and a way of managing it that simulated moving it around and categorizing it (that is to say, not just an alphabetical list, but like, you'd be able to take specific items and put them in a bin labeled, "stuff to upgrade the Cutter") that'd be a lot of fun.
There could be three base sizes (as opposed to you just building a custom base), one for each pad size, and perhaps a few variants. There'd be a maintenance cost (because you have to keep the electricity on). You'd have to stock fuel if you want to refuel there. You could stock the materials to synthesize ammo.
...and the most expensive base option would be a megaship. And there'd be a menu item for selecting a jump destination, with the jump taking place at server restart.
It'd be okay with me if the base was only visible to you while in solo, or if it was indestructible (because otherwise, griefers). I just think there's some interesting gameplay possibilities that come from having a central inventory that you can fiddle with. Anyone ever play Diablo? For some reason, it was kind of enjoyable to fool around with your inventory.
I think they should bring back the commodity requirements to engineer upgrades - but, if we had a place off-ship to store stuff, and a way of managing it that simulated moving it around and categorizing it (that is to say, not just an alphabetical list, but like, you'd be able to take specific items and put them in a bin labeled, "stuff to upgrade the Cutter") that'd be a lot of fun.
There could be three base sizes (as opposed to you just building a custom base), one for each pad size, and perhaps a few variants. There'd be a maintenance cost (because you have to keep the electricity on). You'd have to stock fuel if you want to refuel there. You could stock the materials to synthesize ammo.
...and the most expensive base option would be a megaship. And there'd be a menu item for selecting a jump destination, with the jump taking place at server restart.
Space legs, so we could walk around it
You're crossing Elite with Farm Town
Deleted member 110222
D
Totally neutral here. For the same reason I'm not bothered by squadron carriers.
My ship, which is a puny little Cobra, is my country.
It's all the "base" I need.
My ship, which is a puny little Cobra, is my country.
It's all the "base" I need.
Why speak for others, when instead you can speak for yourself?
Personally I would love to be able to construct some sort of modest home base.
I would love it to be something similar to the game Planetbase.
I think a modular subterranean system would work well and might have relatively little impact on framerates.
We would buy prefab modules and connect them to create our base.
Possible modules: powergen, defenses, living quarters, medical bay, hangar, armory, control room etc. etc.
FD could sell cosmetics to finance further development
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My thinking was to discourage 3,382,163 bases popping up in the founders system or Sol, Achenar, etc overnight. Lol
Assuming there's any kind of sense behind the local factions, they would have "claimed" the planets for themselves, and then lease out land for bases and whatnot. Especially since all landable planets have valuable resources. No company in their right mind would leave a valuable resource unclaimed.
Undiscovered or empty systems are not claimed, so they're free to build on.
Of course there are better ways to force people to not pile bases up on top of eachother, but the main one simply allow each landable planet a limited number of bases, first come first serve. Otherwise, find a new planet.
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
I guess Planet Bases are OK on three provisos...
1. Frontier don't waste any time that could be spent developing the GAME on implementing them (and it doesn't then lead to progressively more ridiculous calls for things like Space Legs)
2. They aren't allowed to "leverage an advantage" to Players that own/Control them...so no storing ships/modules/cargo/mats/data...no way of generating unearned income...no defences so they can't be used for anti-access...area-denial
3. They're restricted to the Bubble...so it doesn't detract from the "wilderness experience of the Galaxy...leave out the bubble stations to Frontier for careful, considered experience we don't want any...here I am at Sag A, jsut going to stop off repair my hull, restock on AFMU/Limpets/Heat Sinks and cash in my exploration data...
Other than that...fill your boots!
1. Frontier don't waste any time that could be spent developing the GAME on implementing them (and it doesn't then lead to progressively more ridiculous calls for things like Space Legs)
2. They aren't allowed to "leverage an advantage" to Players that own/Control them...so no storing ships/modules/cargo/mats/data...no way of generating unearned income...no defences so they can't be used for anti-access...area-denial
3. They're restricted to the Bubble...so it doesn't detract from the "wilderness experience of the Galaxy...leave out the bubble stations to Frontier for careful, considered experience we don't want any...here I am at Sag A, jsut going to stop off repair my hull, restock on AFMU/Limpets/Heat Sinks and cash in my exploration data...
Other than that...fill your boots!
Yeah!
I want that too.
And space legs to walk in that base. [yesnod]
And I would like to see my npc crew.
Does it matter why some people like X? Building stuff is popular, just accept it.
"So you've flown your spaceship, nowxwhat?"
Quotation will be needed on this one I am afraid. Fact it is loudly asked along with 'emergent gameplay' does not mean it is popular. More than their proponents are just very loud
Owning land? Nope, it is something of civilization and I doubt you would want that.
What you want most likely is sort of base. Well, I don't find it required to enjoy ED, but I wouldn't say no neither.
Frontier, please do everything the opposite of this.
this is literally the first thing I would do.
My ship has ASCII bewbs on it.