Still as Inconvenient as Possible to Play

[Noobilite]

Uh, no it is completely implausible. In-universe galaxy-wide communications are a thing. Look at Galnet. The warrant system. And the fact you can get system data that includes all services offered among other things. There's no way people would not be able to find out what ships are commonly offered at a dealership, much like today. Hell they'd probably have commercials!

That is possible. The only other thing that could be happening is if teh data is on the ship somehow and part of it's in ship programming. In which case it's odd pirates don't disble it or similar. If the governments control the manufacturering and have strict rules about the systems being enabled and auto detect it when in systems or other difficult in ship means like the ship disabling itself it would be possible for this not to be from remote communications. You could simply be asking the ship itself for the data. But it depends on how this works. There could be limits so even pirates in the most extreme circumstances don't want to disable it. Like sneaking through normal system to steal and act like non pirate ships and what not.

.

It's a self confirming circle... We have limited information in game for a number of mechanics. Most of us use third party tools to get that information freely and quickly. It's therefore a truism to say the game would be improved with enhanced tools to get that information. To claim otherwise is only valid if we assume no one uses the third party tools.

The only valid argument against the OP is to say FD shouldn't prioritise in game tools because we have third party tools. But there is no valid argument against the OP's opinion that it's counter intuitive to their enjoyment of the game that they use third party tools.

If that is the case. Welcome to the world of linux. That is the same problem we have with getting linux support... If games had supported it decades ago it would be a thriving gaming platform. It also would have been written differently to support those games a long time ago and most issues would probably be gone or version would have popped up changing that. That will be funny and ironic if that becomes the normal complaint in windows software. ><

 

[B1rdy]

A lot of this stuff you can find out in your work lunch break. There is no need to look up stuff while playing in VR. I find a lot if these statements odd.

This is a workaround at best, which simply does not work if you did not plan to play the game. Most of us already know the workarounds, but are unhappy about the situation.

 

[Crook]

I agree with OP. There are a LOT of 3rd party tools and apps that have developed into the ED universe. Most should be rolled into the base game. But you should be able (for a nominal fee?) to get some information on remote systems, be it trade or ships available. Trade I believe is coming - what about ship inventory, or facilities available, or modules available?

I fly to Shinrata Dezhra literally every time I need to upgrade, as I know that everything is in stock there. What about a stock checker, where it will tell you a list of stations that have what modules you want? Does it hurt gameplay at all? I don't think it does - it might encourage people to fly to unknown places as well.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

right, so again: at this point we're not even talking about a system to tell you where to buy modules or ships. we're simply talking about an engineer requirement - alloys - in terms of where to obtain them. or how to start the engineer quest. you admit yourself it's an inconvenience - there's no logical reason why we have these paid content fetch quests, with no way to begin the fetching without leaving the game.

if i don't want to dig around on a bunch of random forums, or search posts on here, or reddit, or fly around aimlessly forever until i hit darnielle or the guardian quest station, or if you have no idea the game doesn't include this stuff but don't know about third party website tools or where to find them - and i regularly see people who land on some of those sites and then clog up forums still further with "how do i use the thing" alongside the endless stream of "where's the alloy" posts - their only available option is "stop looking and probably play something else".

and when it gets to the point of "download this program, plug this tool into that website and use the data to..." my goodness, no. ask fdev why they won't put one line of text on the requirements page that says "available from this port, or go hunt bug bases", or flag the starbase for guardian missions on the map instead.

as i said earlier, there seem to be two stances on this. "just use the tools", or "tools aren't needed".

if you're in the middle and think the tools *are* needed because you don't want to fly around hunting for a class 3 cargo rack, but you also object to having to break immersion from the gameworld to do so, there's no room at the inn.

As I have stated a number of times in this thread, I am all in for information to be in game. For instance when an engineer wants rare items to open them up, it would be logical that they tell you where such item is to be found, but as they don't you may want to look it up before you start playing in VR as it is more convenient. I had already found a lot of the rare goods (not all though) and have them bookmarked before I started with engineering my ships.

I am also happy if info on ships stock or modules was done in a similar way to the new trade tools, but to be honest I have never found it difficult to find the correct modules or the ships I want, just look up economy type, population, government type, tech level etc. The information is in game, but it is vague.

I found out about some stuff from other commanders when online or had already stumbled upon them, but I accept I was lucky with that.

As for trade, I am happy using the tools in game, and will be even happier using the new tools when they go live.

Now do you understand my stance on things, I am not sure I can make it any simpler?

This is a workaround at best, which simply does not work if you did not plan to play the game. Most of us already know the workarounds, but are unhappy about the situation.

I agree. That is all it is, a work around. It aint perfect and never said it was and It really shouldnt be like that for something like engineer requirements.

 

[B1rdy]

as i said earlier, there seem to be two stances on this. "just use the tools", or "tools aren't needed".

Regarding Engineers I would even state, that the latter isn't even true. The number of mats and blueprints and the ability to pin only one BP per Engineer makes you use tools, even if it is just a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet (,which this game isn't about according to DB - lol).

 

[Alodia]

As I have stated a number of times in this thread, I am all in for information to be in game. For instance when an engineer wants rare items to open them up, it would be logical that they tell you where such item is to be found, but as they don't you may want to look it up before you start playing in VR as it is more convenient. I had already found a lot of the rare goods (not all though) and have them bookmarked before I started with engineering my ships.

I am also happy if info on ships stock or modules was done in a similar way to the new trade tools, but to be honest I have never found it difficult to find the correct modules or the ships I want, just look up economy type, population, government type, tech level etc. The information is in game, but it is vague.

I found out about some stuff from other commanders when online or had already stumbled upon them, but I accept I was lucky with that.

As for trade, I am happy using the tools in game, and will be even happier using the new tools when they go live.

Now do you understand my stance on things, I am not sure I can make it any simpler?



I agree. That is all it is, a work around. It aint perfect and never said it was and It really shouldnt be like that for something like engineer requirements.

no, i agree with much of what you and most folk here have said, even if i disagree with a few of the other points raised. i do feel that the middle ground on this particular issue seems to fall by the wayside in favour of the two - well, they're not "extremes" but the two opposite ends of the spectrum, if that's a better way of putting it - which i find interesting, because usually for a game it's the outlier or "extreme" stance on something that tends to receive the most scorn. whereas with this it seems to be "i need the tools, but i don't want to break my immersion in the gameworld" appears to receive the bulk of the kicking.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Regarding Engineers I would even state, that the latter isn't even true. The number of mats and blueprints and the ability to pin only one BP per Engineer makes you use tools, even if it is just a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet (,which this game isn't about according to DB - lol).

I never understood the pin one blueprint thing. If you have that grade opened up, you should be able to see the requirements so you can effectively plan your engineering.

 

[Zak Gordon]

This is part of why MMO's are just some of the worst designed games ever. Sure a bunch of people love them, but my god they can frustrate the hell out of you with all the non-sense that comes with them by design.

I find them the most immersion breaking games to try to play, to a fault. Great for killing and looting and maybe having some giggles with your buddies, but anything deeper is really hard to pull off.

They are the 'Michael Bay' of video games.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

This is part of why MMO's are just some of the worst designed games ever. Sure a bunch of people love them, but my god they can frustrate the hell out of you with all the non-sense that comes with them by design.

I find them the most immersion breaking games to try to play, to a fault. Great for killing and looting and maybe having some giggles with your buddies, but anything deeper is really hard to pull off.

They are the 'Michael Bay' of video games.

That depends on the MMO.

 

[B1rdy]

I never understood the pin one blueprint thing. If you have that grade opened up, you should be able to see the requirements so you can effectively plan your engineering.

It is beyond me, too. I absolutely can't think of a reason why you can't access the info from everywhere. If unlocked, you basically have it anyway. But being only very limited available in-game forces you to save that info in some way, because you can't even be expected to remember hundreds of combinations of mats and data.

 

[Noobilite]

It can be pulled off. They just don't do it. Wow originally created the cheap trinity system because they didn't want to deal with things like real time travel. The reality of limiting things to pre determined equal speeds reduces natural strategy down so that the healer is needed(beyond what it could be if it was in a more natural system where it was optional or rare.) and then balancing naturally revovled around that reducing game design complexity for mmo's for decades. When they could have struggled through it and got better servers designed and made. Which engineers would have gladly helped them make to be able to play better more interesting and fun games... But sadly Blizzard took the easy route. A little bit of laziness(or the easier path) impacted game design in the long run. SWG did the same thing using them as an excuse instead of doing real time travel with vehicles and working through the slight delay until hardware could be improved. The other necessity, when you cut out those aspects, is that they have to shrink maps. This condenses the entire map size out of realistic proportions. This in turn affects specific character design aspects in turn making the numbers simpler meaning there are less counters making strong things stronger and weak thing weaker, creating power creep, instead of weak things becoming counters to strong things... Power creep is literally an issue caused by oversimplified game mechanics. Natural strategy involves weak things being faster or whatnot to counter strong things making a circle of counters(A complex circle or circles.). All games suffer from this to this day in mmo's because they followed things like wow and possibly everquest. Although everquest was probably old enough to have a real excuse at the time. Wow and SWG were on the brink of feasibility in design and chose to not do the extra work and establish what they should have and could have done at the time.

Any time you scale down terain you reduce strategy. Especially for long range combat. As most games mix those, it's a huge impact. Snipers and NPC's instead of having better AI(which could have been written easily at the time. And could be run practically. it was not as resource consuming as some people say to make it work minimally.) have to act dumber. Melee is then stronger along with many other problems(A huge amount of them actually.). This creates endless unnatural realities which stop natural strategy. natural strategy is what makes what we think of naturally. It is what makes counters to leave room for a better combination of tactics so the game is not overly simple and certain things don't become overly powerful strategically. The more dynamics the more counters the less impact the point of the game has where one things becomes, "meta." That issue is solely a modern problem. One that should have been gone by time WOW came out, but because game design has stagnated it has never been done properly and people now attack it because they think realism is bad now... Mostly because they are defending what they see and not from a detailed understanding of the subject.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Max....... this has to be your best one yet....

Did you REALLY just tell people to "do your ingame research at work, in your lunchbreak, so you can take that information home to play a game"

You are advocating (presumably in all seriousness) that a player uses thier lunch break to do thier homework***, so they don't have have an issue while using a VR headset, because the game they are playing with VR headset has NO MECHANISMS TO DELIVER SUCH DATA IN GAME.

and just to hammer the point home - IN A GAME THAT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO BE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY AROUND VR!!!!!!!!! holy mother of deus.......

Not allowed to state what I think of such nonsensical statements, or I'll get another timeout.

***You are also making the monumentally naive assumption that they even have access to a computer in their lunchbreak, because everyone uses a computer for work.... or works where there is an internet connection... right?

(Plumber - "'scuse me love - I've not finished fixing your washing machine, but I'm just gonna take a quick break to eat my Panini (he's a posh plumber) - can I have your wi-fi password so I can look up some information about a game I play?"

"what do you mean GET OUT!!!!!? I just want to look up the trade data for Tionisla? " *shrill shouting in the background*

It might be news to you but there are a lot of places of work where there is a HARDLINE internet connection for business purposes, but NO WI-FI, and NO HARDLINE CONNECTION TO THE INTERNET FOR STAFF USAGE- for security reasons, and to prevent staff "lounging about" using their phones to browse crap instead of working.

Maxfactor - living in the modern world since.. err never.

The amount of mental gymnastics used around here to try and make valid arguments is rather odd. Having played well over 2000 games in my life it's certainly odd to find people defending extremely poor design when other games have no issues getting it right.

 

[Whitehair]

Having played well over 2000 games in my life it's certainly odd to find people defending extremely poor design when other games have no issues getting it right.

Assuming one game a day, thats a different unique game every day for the last 5.48 years. WOW.

No, really. WOW.

Have you spent as much time offering your expertise to all those other games as well? You must be a very busy man!

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The amount of mental gymnastics used around here to try and make valid arguments is rather odd. Having played well over 2000 games in my life it's certainly odd to find people defending extremely poor design when other games have no issues getting it right.

The rather stupid thing about Rafe Zetters post is that I wasn't defending anything but trying to make a suggestion to minimize the inconvenience of having to take off your VR headset all the time while playing.

I find it odd that people keep putting 2 and 2 together and make 500 like Rafe did. He still hasn't replied to me, probably because he feels rather embarrassed about his silly outburst. But hey.

 

[choobs]

I find it absolutely disgusting that this game has been out for years and Frontier STILL won't send someone round to my house to play it for me. <eyeroll>

 

[2Karl]

I think a neat feature would be some sort of advert on Galnet - ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A NEW SHIP? COMBAT, EXPLORATION, TRADE, WE GOT YOU COVERED! COME ON DOWN TO JONES ESTATE IN THE GROOMBRIDGE 34 SYSTEM! - something like that. Another thing to do is make a note of what stations sell what ships as you visit. also helps with trade routes that. I guess I'm saying don't expect the game to do all of this for you. It's not that sort of game.

 

[Ydiss]

Assuming one game a day, thats a different unique game every day for the last 5.48 years. WOW.

No, really. WOW.

Have you spent as much time offering your expertise to all those other games as well? You must be a very busy man!

Which is only really amazing if you ignore the fact that the average age of a gamer around here is over 30-40 years

2000 games in a lifetime isn't a stretch. But whether those 2000 games were all online with a forum or not is less obvious.

Either way, let's assume he's exaggerating and not miss his point. He's visited a lot of games forums and finds it odd this one seems ready to defend basic bad design.

He's sort of got a point (this community is unique when comes to defending awkward, obtuse "game play" because a lot of this community grew up with it) but when it comes to games forums, I find people will argue about anything, so I don't share his confusion quite so much.

 

[Noobilite]

Assuming one game a day, thats a different unique game every day for the last 5.48 years. WOW.

No, really. WOW.

Have you spent as much time offering your expertise to all those other games as well? You must be a very busy man!

Video games have been around for 40 or more years. Those 2000 games could be over 4-5 decades or more depending on if the individual had access to earlier games or pre PC games in the form of older console like games in the 70's or earlier or older computer system. If you assume 50 years he could have played 2000 games out of a total of 18250(365*50) for a game every 9.125 days(30*365=10950/2000=5.475 if you started in the 90's which is already a little late to the game. Pun intended.)... Now you have to look at how long the games were to play. or how good he was at playing them and how long it took him over the average player. Alot of older games were also ones you sat down and played for a few hours. Ones that you could play against each other or the computer and not longer more drawn out games like adventure games or RPGs. It's very feasible. On top of this add the 80's and 90's when the internet became more common. There were a lot more free games available to download and play.(I don't mean pirated or illegal. I mean legitimately free games from up and coming developers or hobbyists.) Many of those were shorter quicker games. But some very fun and very well done and some influential on game design. It becomes easier and easier to do that. Especially if you consider there were periods when everyone and their brother were making short games and game design was more in fashion compared to other times.

 

[Cmdr Scorpion]

With all the changes - and the Chieftain - on the way, I figured now would be a good time to take another look. Especially since I was excited to learn about a combat CG. In a High Tech, Empire system, no less.So I fly there. Only 3 jumps from my home base. Figured I would buy a combat ship when I get there. I mean...high tech. And Empire. Maybe grab a Courier. Or Imp Eagle...

But no. Of course not. Neither of these are available. Nor are Vultures.

so I alt+tab out...try and remember the name of the website I normally use to find information Frontier should have made available in the game literally years ago...and then I have a sudden realization:Its Friday night, and instead of playing a game, I am looking stuff up on a website, trying to get to a point where I CAN play.

Then I logged out, and loaded up a game that actually WANTS me to enjoy it.

I just thought I would come here and leave this. In the admittedly vain hope it will make a difference. Enough is enough with the intentional obfuscation of information.

The deliberate inconvenience. I can order a car online in the 21st century. And yet in Elite...I cant even see what ships a station has for sale without flying there. Its patently absurd, the degree to which technology has apparently regressed in the Elite universe. Not to mention: Its intentional inconvenience for the sake of inflating time spent "playing" the game.

Let me know when FDev actually care whether we enjoy this mess of disparate, unrelated mechanics masquerading (badly) as a game.Also...I would love to use paragraphs on the forum again. Alas, in Chrome at least this is apparently no longer possible.

Edit for Paragraphs, and: Turn Script Blocker off before posting here. Who Knew?

Goodby again.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Which is only really amazing if you ignore the fact that the average age of a gamer around here is over 30-40 years

2000 games in a lifetime isn't a stretch. But whether those 2000 games were all online with a forum or not is less obvious.

Either way, let's assume he's exaggerating and not miss his point. He's visited a lot of games forums and finds it odd this one seems ready to defend basic bad design.

He's sort of got a point (this community is unique wuenit comes to defending awkward, obtuse "game play") but when it comes to games forums, I find people will argue about anything, so I don't share his confusion quite so much.

Who is defending bad game design?

Remember a lot of these (bad game designs) are pretty much subjective.