This is not a salt post.
By now we have all heard the "Mile Wide, Inch Deep" description of Elite. But I want to say a few words about WHY we here it so much, common rebuttals and why they are (objectively) wrong.
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Hand Holding vs. the Sandbox
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Well, Elite doesnt hold your hand. We have all heard it. What is perhaps the number 1 rebuttal of the "inch deep" claim. But the problem is, no one is asking for hand holding. Quite the opposite, in fact. People are asking for something to do, and something WITH which to do it.
Consider a child in an actual, real sandbox. Put them in, and they will just sort of...sit there. Maybe kick the sand around a bit. But a child in an empty sandbox isnt going to get their hands dirty doing nothing. So throw in a bunch of really cool looking statues and static objects for the child to navigate between, and watch them...still sit there, now looking at YOU like the idiot you have proven yourself to be.
But throw in a shovel, a bucket and maybe a rake or two. Add a couple of other buckets...perhaps in different shapes...and watch the child go nuts with joy. They will play with those toys, because those toys allow them to SHAPE the sand. With such powerful tools, the child can leave an indelible impression upon the sandbox. They can make their mark, and see the results of their actions with their own two eyes. It is this ability to shape the contents of a sandbox to one's own whims that makes a sandbox so compelling, and it is this that Elite lacks.
Elite has sand. It has static objects around which that sand is piled. Those static objects are gorgeous. And getting from one to the other of them is even mostly fun and engaging. All of which is good...for a short while. But until - and more worryingly, unless - Frontier see fit to allow us to actually shape the sand in ways we can see and experience, its not going to matter. Because a game calling itself a sandbox while refusing to allow players to actually play with the sand, wont last long. It will gain players sporadically, and lose them quickly, once they realize just how off limits the sand in the box really is to their influence - and we have seen this already, with massive refunds following sales, and steady declines in the player base following purchasing periods such as the holidays.
tl;dr - Sandboxes: If you want people to enjoy a sandbox, you have to give them methods for interacting with the sand in ways that are clearly reflected, visible and affecting to their experience. The more unique to each participant the shaping, the more appeal your sandbox experience offers. Elite is severely lacking in this regard.
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Rebuttal - What about the BGS
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What about it? Even if one has the patience to wait on Elite's once weekly, manually induced "tic" it changes nothing. Alter all the systems you wish; your player experience might change superficially, if at all. A few different missions on the board. And...that's basically it. Nothing you do will change. Nothing you see or experience while out flying is in any way altered by altering the BGS...if you can fathom how to do it without spending entire nights "playing" the game using Alt+Tab and websites as opposed to, you know...the game itself. Good luck in your futile quest for influence over your own play experience in this "sandbox" environment. Whose sand is in fact glued to the floor, and completely unavailable for influence by you, the observer.
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Rebuttal - You just dont Put in the Effort
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If by effort, you mean endless nights of performing the same rote tasks while watching Netflix on my second monitor, you're right. I dont put in that. But "effort" isnt the word you are looking for time. That word, is time. Dont conflate time spent with effort. They are not even remotely the same thing.
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Loot and Elite - Why its Not Working
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People love loot, right? I mean, play the game, get rewards. That's a fun game play loop. Works all the time.
Why, then, is it NOT fun and engaging in Elite? I mean, Skyrim players LOVED obtaining material for crafting their "modules." So...why do Elite players NOT enjoy it nearly as much?
Easy: Skyrim awarded you for playing the game. Your own way. For shaping the sand in the sandbox to the greatest extent possible in the ways you wanted to shape it with the tools on hand. Tools including mods, of course. In Skyrim, a Stealth character, a warrior...even a mage or trader/explorer can obtain the materials needed to craft rewarding loot, by playing the game the way they choose to play it.
Moreover, they can ALSO obtain rewarding loot simply by playing. No go betweens. No time sinks. No delays. Kill enemies, get cool and immediately useful stuff. Condensing the loop to the minimum number of steps required to provide a fun feedback loop remains, after all this time, a smart play.
Unfortunately, Elite does NOT reward you for playing the game your way. Want to be a trader? An Explorer? Strictly a miner or combat pilot? You are going to miss out on key materials needed to improve your ships. Period. Because certain mats are locked behind mandatory play styles, playing your way means missing out on content.
And this is why people were just fine with needing to level every sword and shield in Skyrim from Tier 1 to the highest tier, one at a time...while (rightly) despising the same system in Elite. Because Skyrim awarded those players for playing their way, while Elite punishes them for doing the same.
While Skyrim awarded both the Stealthy thief/assassin and the fierce warrior with the materials they needed for high end weapons, Elite punishes strict combat or trader or role players by withholding key materials in a desperate attempt to justify play styles that otherwise would turn out to be the wasted dev time they in fact were. If people wanted to do it, you wouldnt need to make them do it.
Elite needs to provide all players with methods for obtaining the mats they require. Reliably. Regularly. Skyrim does this, and people love it. Elite...does not. And the Broker bandaid is not a solution for this broken design. Its an insignificant step in the right direction...but its also a tiny bandage over a gaping, festering wound of poor design. This needs to be rectified.
tl;dr - Loot Is Not Fun in Elite because Elite punishes players by forcing them to play in ways they dont want to. This is anathema for a sandbox game. Its a death sentence for a game like this. Play Your Way isnt just the appeal of Elite. Its the primary appeal. The main reason a lot of people enjoy the game. Rob players of this at peril to the longevity of your game.
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Can it Be Fixed
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More complicated than it sounds, whether Elite can be fixed is a...difficult, touchy question. Because it can be fixed. But not with the current design ethos.
Changing a design here and there isnt going to bail Elite out of the mess you can plainly see that it is in, if you pay attention to feedback and commentary about the game literally anywhere on the internet besides here. Because the underlying design philosophy of Elite is fundamentally opposed to good, entertaining, fun game design.
The underpinning foundation of Elite design is based on the increasingly inaccurate belief that time sinks retain players. While this might have been true in 1984, when, if you wanted a game to play, you put up with what happened to be available at the time...now, we have Steam. And Humble. And any number of Indie titles. Holiday sales. Gamers have more options now than ever before, and a whole lot of them will simply put down a boring, tedious time sink and find other games to spend their money on.
Until and unless Frontier decide that fun and compelling game play should be the focus of the game - as opposed to the occasional, happy, coincidental result of time sink design - Elite isnt going to change. And Frontier might well be fine with this. For some studios, fun is never going to be the driving force. The bottom line will always be the primary focus, and metrics, not fun, will drive design for those studios.
And those studios wont go under overnight. They may even hang around a while. Possibly even find a niche of gamers who simply like their time sinks and content themselves with living on the edge of the gaming world, feeding off the crumbs of their tiny niche of hardcore grinders. And that is fine, when those studios are honest and up front about what they are, and what they intend to do as a result.
But Frontier promised a lot more with Elite than we have received. A sandbox game. Wherein we could craft our own experiences. Hiding in other ships. Stealing them. Shaping the sand in the sandbox to craft our own unique stories. Playing our way, without missing out.
And we havent received that game. I still hope we will. But I increasingly fear that that has gotten lost in favor of grind, because grind drives easy to see metrics, while "number of players having fun" doesnt look nearly as good on investor reports.
