Where Elite Went Wrong, or: How NOT to craft a Sandbox Experience

[Dooguk]

Right, I expect to chop down a tree and get an armload of random woodland creatures, small rocks, and occasionally a small amount of wood. Thankfully FDev has given us a lumberjack trader who will happily give me 1 cord of wood in exchange for 1265 badgers.

Badgers? We don't need no steenkin' badgers

 

[crushdepth]

There are very few actual ideas or proposals ever given - mostly it's just whinging and demanding to get them by doing what you were doing already - hence the dismissal.

Completely untrue.

 

[frostypaw]

You seem to have a reading comprehension failure; or unwillingness to understand the point. Letting players actively seek the materials they want is not short cutting; it is player agency.

Nobody is stopping you or saying you can't, but be prepared for it not to be designed such that doing so is as much fun as playing along as intended. In fact be prepared for it to be designed in such a way as to discourage you.

 

[Sylveria]

Badgers? We don't need no steenkin' badgers

Repped for the UHF reference.

 

[Humannoyed]

At least for me, the sandbox is my imagination, and E is the rake, the shovel and the bucket. Or something like that. It's probably a matter of perspective.

tl;dr: I have sand in my head.

 

[Raumfahrer Spiff]

I feel pretty much the same. For me, as an RP experience, Elite is basically the playing field for an elaborate Spaceship Pilot "reenactment" experience, or like a digital version of LARPing in space. I'm used to a lot of games where part of the gameplay happens in your head, so it feels natural and satisfying for me in this context. not that there aren't things that could be improved, but I ultimately love how my entire experience from lift-off to landing is determined purely by me and what I can bring to the table--my successes and failures. Which in my experience has always been the best part of a good sandbox.

More variety is always welcome, more persistence is always welcome, and more refinement is always welcome. But it'll all be gravy on top of the great immersive RP experience I am already enjoying.

 

[NMS]

Imagination...here we go again

"Imagining" should not be a driving force in a game. I love Elite, but come on. To anybody looking to buy a game, the selling point shouldn't be "You can imagine yourself doing all these things". It should be "The game mechanics let you do all these things"

 

[Vasea Azure]

Imagination...here we go again

"Imagining" should not be a driving force in a game. I love Elite, but come on. To anybody looking to buy a game, the selling point shouldn't be "You can imagine yourself doing all these things". It should be "The game mechanics let you do all these things"

Yeah when I was young I used old cardboard box as my spaceship - imagination worked well in this case too

 

[NMS]

Yeah when I was young I used old cardboard box as my spaceship - imagination worked well in this case too

Sorry but I could not lose the joke

ED worked well thirty years ago, too.:x

 

[B1rdy]

ED worked well thirty years ago, too.:x

Most games have evolved since then.

 

[Enderby]

Some imagination is always a good thing by which to immerse oneself in a game-world but there is too much need for imagination in this game.

 

[Kicks]

Whilst the OP's comparison to Skyrim wasn't 100% spot-on - and the mistake about when the BGS ticks, I kind of see what he or she is getting at.

Whilst people can have dissenting opinions on what he wrote, I read one post where the author felt he'd feel sorry for OP's children should he have any. Wow. Just, *Wow*. You're free to disagree but attacking someone on their ability as a Parent based on his analogy of sandbox to the galaxy of Elite is reprehensible.

Back on point, I understand grind in games. Lots of my favourite games have grind.. Skyrim, World of Warcraft (Oh my lol), Guildwars 2, and Elite. The major difference *I* see, is that the other 3 games I mention, in my humble opinion, kind of disguise the grind to some extent as there's so much to do. Sure, if you want to get your smithing up quickly, or you want a particular faction's rep in WoW and do nothing else but activities designed to further you in that agena - yeah it feels like a grind.

Now, you can kinda do the same in Elite. Nobody is forcing you to just do activities relating to raising your faction rep - you can do if you want it badly. It's the filler content and things to do, that makes me put this game down until the next update, when I inevitably pick it back up and see if I'm blazing my own trail yet. It's a wonderfully visually stunning, with amazing sound design - I love flying the ships, I love docking, I love going to planets. I (and again, this is just my personal opinion) - I just don't have anything to do that I find interesting.

I hope they include more "things to do" that aren't place-holders.

o7

 

[sorcer3r]

But complaining about it's flawed design (at this point in it's life cycle) is going to have roughly zero effect. Right or wrong, it's design ethos is firmly set in stone, and the best we can hope for is tweaks to existing mechanics.

Unfortunatley yes... I grinded to get my ship I wanted and enginnered it to the point where I was happy with.
Always hoping that someday elite will get some great gameplay where I can have fun with my ship.
But 2.4 the return has shown that elite is lost in its uninspriring signal source gameplay.
Thurgoids and the invasion of the sygnalsourcians...
Just staying now in the forums because there might happens something great with the thargoid narrative and I don't want to miss that. Hope dies last...

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

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.

===================
Hand Holding vs. the Sandbox
===================

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.


====================
Rebuttal - What about the BGS
====================

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.


=========================
Rebuttal - You just dont Put in the Effort
=========================

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.


=======================
Loot and Elite - Why its Not Working
=======================

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.


==========
Can it Be Fixed
==========

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.

ED is FAR from perfect... but i have seen the posts explaining the game you want ED to be, and, it will be a cold day in hell before i play THAT game...... I will take ED warts and all over the game you want i am afraid.

 

[lysan]

For fans of his oeuvre I can heartily recommend:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/350536-Intentional-Inconvenience-is-Killing-Fun
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...s-Design-Intent-Why-the-design-Creates-Tedium
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/400698-Still-as-Inconvenient-as-Possible-to-Play
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ns-Three-Years-in-Still-a-Terrible-Experience
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/350543-Why-Does-Elite-Intentionally-Waste-Our-Time



Anyway, OP is deeply flawed as anyone who played Skyrim knows. As a TES fan with 1000+ hours in Skyrim alone, you dont get all stuff you need for crafting 'playing it your way'. You dont get all the cool loot by just hacking people in half. Or by being just a miner. It is simply not true. Which is fine. Because it allows you to replay in a totally different role and get different rewards. OP just doesnt like a ton of stuff in ED. Which is fine, but he is just posting over and over very lengthy OPs that basically just say "I dont like stuff that isnt fun to me, FD should add more stuff that I like so ED is more fun to me." Not that there is anything wrong with that notion...

Any game need to make the core mechanics as open as possible, however there are limits and those limits determined how the game is played.

GTA V style heist: Get Money from bank.

Option:
1. run and gun or gun and run
2. hack computer system and transfer to account
3. get sleeping gas and use the vent system to deploy it, walk into bank and get money

 

[frostypaw]

Imagination...here we go again

"Imagining" should not be a driving force in a game. I love Elite, but come on. To anybody looking to buy a game, the selling point shouldn't be "You can imagine yourself doing all these things". It should be "The game mechanics let you do all these things"

It does let you do all those things.

The problem for er... some people... seems to be that it doesn't hold your hand through it all, congratulating you at every turn then telling you where to go next. You can absolutely do them you just have to blaze your own trail rather than follow the dungeon map and the achievements.

 

[PS4gamer]

Okay, so what specific improvements do you suggest?

Let me make one so you can see what I mean: where a mission has a material/s as reward, let the player select which material/s (of the same 'worth', or 'grade' as offered) they receive.

+1 rep, purely for the Bleep and Booster avatar

 

[Blackcompany]

I wouldn't change it, I don't think it's crap - I think it's funny seeing kids get all impatient because they can't get what they want immediately.

Remember you're not meant to be out specifically farming these things. That was never the intention. You're meant to find loot as you play: flying somewhere "ooh look a USS, oh it's a thing - hey exciting I can do a mod now" - instead y'all are determined to turn it into one big grindfest to get to Level 100 and 10,000XP with the fairy sword THEN play - it's madness.

So...you don't WANT an interactive, skill based system. You're fine with low effort, crap RNG.

Got it. To the ignore list you go. Thanks.

 

[Blackcompany]

The first two are shortcutting, markets are never ever going to happen with how people are with cash exploits and avoiding real-world value being applied to in game things, more mat rewards for missions are coming.

3 is only a chore because you're specifically trying to farm one mat.

Because for rare mats there is, as you yourself have pointed out, only one way to get them. So we are forced to farm specifically for them. Which adds to the Tedium and is entirely the result of deliberate game design.

That's a problem that needs fixed, as it's fostering burnout.

 

[frostypaw]

So...you don't WANT an interactive, skill based system.

I've not seen anyone anywhere with a suggestion for a skill based system. They've all been "buy scanner, scan, go there" or "go there, press button"

If you could give an example of a skill based system let's hear it

And I've not pointed out that there's only one way to get rare mats, I've been saying the opposite. Where did you even get that from?