Multicrew flaws: Unfocused feedback thread

[BDelacroix]

When my wife and her sister suddenly and inexplicably decided they wanted to play this game, too, we started out with some multicrew activities.

It was used as a way to do some introduction to the game while being safe for a new player. Here are my observations:

1) It was ok for gaining them some money in a safe-ish way.

2) It introduced them to some of the game mechanics. Fighter pilot could fly around as one would a ship. Gunner could aim kind of like one might in a ship, though not exactly. They got to watch how one gets from location to location. Observe some landings etc. etc.

3) Very limited in use. It is only for "pew pew" as they say. Yea, you can sit in a seat and watch the stars go by but you can't see what the pilot is really doing so you can't learn that way. You can't hop out on a planet surface and go looking around regardless of how many SRVs the ship might have. You don't make money any way except by bounties. No trade, no exploration sharing, no mission sharing, etc.

Never really ran into the connection issues. One of the two crew members is in Australia, even and I am in the United States (florida).

One thing to point out, we did often run into weird issues where a target would show as wanted for one but not others. This lead to confusion as some players would be seeing a bounty assessed for murder. When we ended, though, nobody had any such thing happen.

So there are missed opportunities, but it does fill a small niche.

BTW - we have all moved on from multicrew as it served its purpose. They each have their own ships and such. We did wing missions for a time but now they aren't worth the effort when we can take individual missions to the same place for more value, but that is a different subject for another thread.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

The payout schemes killed it on arrival. You can't really explain players why time spent is more worth by one player and less by the other. It's like telling the player who earns less: "You suck!"

 

[kpmop]

2, The Third-Person External Camera

This should be an option, not an Only Means. We've seen first-person mounted weapons operations in plenty of other games - Dead Space did a nice job of this with the incredibly frustrating Asteroid Shooter segment in the first game. We could still maintain the 360 degree viewing using a first-person Gunner role that would feel a lot less hokey.
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I can imagine this would be fun for people who wanted to make ED films - someone can concentrate on flying the ship meanwhile someone else operates the external camera. Might also be useful for undocking: a co-pilot can keep an eye on where the ship is relative to the slot etc. Or mining make sure there's clearance for the drones ... yeah not massively exciting, but I reckon it could be a usefull (and fairly easy addition).

It seems pretty simple actually. The science officer/first officer would simply look into a scope and say something like "there's some form of pure energy eminating from the planet's surface, captain".

They could also have an loud audible alarm that they could trigger to wake the captain up... I think the exploration mechanics need some work before trying to multi-crew it.

 

[Vorxian]

I have no issue with telepresence for the sake of gameplay reasons.

I mean, had CQC been put into the core game as content (instead of a huge wasted development on a stand alone 'dust collector'), and you could undertake a mission (or Powerplay task) to undertake a fighter your of duty for 20-30mins, operating for example from a Capital Ship, trying to defend a location, or attack a location etc etc, and that had been explained by instantly appearing at the location via telepresence, I'd have been fine with that...

I wouldn't mind it if you were there in a station in the same system, wouldn't mind if you were in the same system (if no station) hauled up somewhere... then you'd have some lore of remote controlling a turret, or fighter drone... but to do it 2000 ly away is a little bit too 'out there' for me. I'd like to insta-port to colonia via TP, and affect a CG there then, maybe remote control a freighter, or, a capital ship turret for some instant shoot-a-poo without ever having to leave Eravate. Maybe some Thargoid action to

 

[B1rdy]

Multicrew was added at the wrong phase of the game... It should have been added later, when more core gameplay had been improved...

At least MC should have been integrated to missions and Wings. But instead they made the bare-bone game mechanics even more simple with MC.

It is not hard to have good ideas about MC, it is hard to make them work with the current game mechanics. And btw. it is beyond me how FDev thought it would be a good idea to add a feature, exclusively for co-op play to a game, which basically has no co-op, just playing alongside each other at best.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

2. Agreed, mostly. Some things are simpler, if you have a full 360 degree view of the surroundings, and doing full 360 would be very difficult to do from a first person perspective. Others feel better from a constrained viewpoint. This is why I suggested the gunner role be modified into a version similar to what we have, as well as operation of dedicated manned turrets (with a similar viewpoint mechanic to the SRV turret)
How would a first person full 360 work? Do you hop the viewpoint from turret to turret as target circles the ship? Is your ship rendered transparent, other than weapon mounts? If you keep viewpoint in gunner seat, how would you combat the skew between the gunner position and the possibly quite large distance to the turrets? Would you use a viewpoint in the ship's center of mass, and if so, how would that be better than 3PV we have now? Not criticising, just asking how you'd tackle the challenges a FPV gunner role would face.

Since you asked... You pin the external camera to a turret. Now wait, I know, you might have 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 or 7 turrets, so which one do you pin it to? All of them, and you allow the gunner to select which one they are viewing from at at point in time. Just as we can bind a control to "Next Target" or "Previous Target" a "Next Camera" or "Previous Camera" option allows the gunner to view from whichever location is most suitable.

Or, option 2, you pin the camera at the highest point on the top of the ship.

This also would allow for another potential option - multiple human gunners on multi-turreted ships. A little trickier to pull off, as you'd need some way to divide them - either left side/right side, or first gunner gets all the guns, and then start dividing them for additional gunners - or they can be helm-assigned (probably the better option).

No need to change the ship appearance though - if the ship is blocking the view, the ship is blocking the view, which also means it's blocking the shot, and you wouldn't want to shoot your own ship - and certainly wouldn't want someone else to do the same. Turret controlled by the ship's systems already do this - if they don't have "line of sight" on a target, they don't fire.

 

[Gryphorim]

Since you asked... You pin the external camera to a turret. Now wait, I know, you might have 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 or 7 turrets, so which one do you pin it to? All of them, and you allow the gunner to select which one they are viewing from at at point in time. Just as we can bind a control to "Next Target" or "Previous Target" a "Next Camera" or "Previous Camera" option allows the gunner to view from whichever location is most suitable.

Or, option 2, you pin the camera at the highest point on the top of the ship.

This also would allow for another potential option - multiple human gunners on multi-turreted ships. A little trickier to pull off, as you'd need some way to divide them - either left side/right side, or first gunner gets all the guns, and then start dividing them for additional gunners - or they can be helm-assigned (probably the better option).

No need to change the ship appearance though - if the ship is blocking the view, the ship is blocking the view, which also means it's blocking the shot, and you wouldn't want to shoot your own ship - and certainly wouldn't want someone else to do the same. Turret controlled by the ship's systems already do this - if they don't have "line of sight" on a target, they don't fire.

I do like the idea of PoV fixed to a turret, hence my suggesting a role that is just that. I can see what FDev were trying to achieve, though, with the 3PV. Jumping from turret to turret manually in the midst of a firefight would become tedious, and if it were automatic, it'd be potentially nausiating. That said, I'll reiterate, that I like the idea as you have suggested, has a very WWII bomber feel to it, however with a crew restricted to 4, I'd just like to see it with fewer, larger gun mounts than a slew of class 1 and 2 guns dotted over the ship.

That said, if they implement better gunnery modes, and expand telepresence mechanics, there's potential for a full reworking of missions as we know them. There could be CQC in game, just see the stations CQC agent to telepres' to the arena. Military propression could be expanded to include crew roles on a battleship (or a range of smaller ships yet to be added) or flying fighters, or crew on military ships as a way to unlock them. Or a range of civil contracts that could act as tutorials for various roles, or operating ships ahead of purchase.

 

[GilliganTX]

Honestly I would be stoked to have a navigator and to be able to take the SRV out with multi-crew. That's all I'm asking for.

 

[Drelthar]

It needs things that are unique to multicrew.

 

[Muetdhiver]

On top of my mind :

• Allow for MC/Wing combos, while keeping the overall limit of 4 players.
• Ability to do Ship+SLF+SRV for base assault it would be really neat.

Then as far as mechanics & stuff go :

• Directional temporary shields commanded by the gunner.
• Manual torpedo / big missile control for the pilot when not driving the SLF.
• Ability to use scanners 360° for the gunner.
• A way to direct AFMU repairs, maybe give the ability for crew members to repair modules without shutting them down (aka no grief)
• Maybe increase the efficiency of repair limpets when controled by the gunner/pilot

In other words : more stuff to do, and both the gunner and the pilot should be a able to play ship engineer in addition to their primary role.

 

[h347h]

Multicrew is following the path of CQC.

With all the things that they could implement they went for a stupid 3rd person camera hahahaha.

What else you can expect for a game that still doesnt have basic game mechanics and features for smuggling, mining, exploration since more than 3 years.

The 3rd person camera is a way better option than turret view.

The problem was a lack of need for it and how little use it has for things other than combat.

The best way around it would be to make it much harder to man larger ships and drastically change how large ships work.

 

[Punished Mobius]

The fact that people are saying the exact same stuff they were when MC was introduced is depressing.

What progress has been made on MC? It doesn't crash as much as it used to...But it still does...

 

[Chorda]

The best way around it would be to make it much harder to man larger ships and drastically change how large ships work.

I'd be for that, but I can't see it happening. Imagine the outrage from shipkit and paintjob owners who can no longer fly their favourite, fully engineered big-3 that they spent so long 'grinding' for.

As someone previously said, MC is . FDev's flawed approach was to introduce it with basic functionality and then "see what the uptake [was] like" (I believe these were Braben's exact words). If you introduce something that's half-baked, it'll be left to go stale.

 

[Vorxian]

IN PERSON proper multicrew and multiple commander multicrew roles is one of my dreams for ED. I really crave that 'star trek' style companionship. Space legs, and transporters.... and stuff to do on foot.

not asking much I know

 

[ZeroAi]

If FDev is worried about a new player making millions being a crew member for a few hours, they can just rank lock his max share of the income / disbursement %.

In other words, if a new player jumps in with an Elite player, you could limit the new players max payout and rep gain to 5% (or whatever the right percent is) of the total ships haul during that MC session.

I do agree a new player shouldn't split an Elite players income 50%, but that's no reason not to add more roles for MC as there are many simple solutions to solve that problem.

BUT! More roles means more depth and stuff to do! The game needs core gameplay improvements FIRST to deepen gameplay, to then allow Multicrew to make use of those elements.

FD have done precious little to deepen gameplay. Then allowed a ships operations to be split up via Multicrew. Meaning, that the result experience is a small slice of a pretty empty pie...

And worse still, they've now needlessly created a development rod for their backs such that all onward development needs to carry multicrew with it. eg: With the mining and exploration improvements coming Q4, development effort needs to go into ensuring it doesn't break multicrew.

Multicrew was added at the wrong phase of the game... It should have been added later, when more core gameplay had been improved...

I totally get what you're saying - you make a very valid and good point!

That said, since MC is in the game now, I know I would enjoy having more roles added today ALONG with "profit" sharing for the crew.

 

[cmdr kruzer70]

Sorry, just going to state again, that IMHO, the only way Multicrew can be made more interesting/useful, is for the gameplay, mechanics and depth to FIRST be improved.

You've nailed it. IMO it is one of two things. Either FD lacks the talent or the will to implement a feature like multicrew or, the structure of the game as it stands isn't capable of supporting multicrew to its basic potential. This is something those clamouring for space legs should be carefully considering.

 

[krylite]

Unfortunately, I'm guessing multicrew won't be revisited until proper spacelegs. With multicrew using cmdr avatars, it would make much more sense with spacelegs in the ship to work together as a developed environment. I think they did the first stages of spacelegs with multicrew and holo-me where parts of the avatars move and express as well as "standing" in your ship in the holo-me creator as advertised in the 2.3/ps4 trailer. Then they had to cut multicrew dev off for the priority of finishing the PS4 port release. Then they started Beyond and got rid of the beige. For now, I'm fine with FDev continuing to work on mc stability with each update and have faith eventually spacelegs, expanded multicrew + npc crew will come.

 

[NeilF]

At least MC should have been integrated to missions and Wings. But instead they made the bare-bone game mechanics even more simple with MC.

It is not hard to have good ideas about MC, it is hard to make them work with the current game mechanics. And btw. it is beyond me how FDev thought it would be a good idea to add a feature, exclusively for co-op play to a game, which basically has no co-op, just playing alongside each other at best.

I just think FD have spent year after year bolting on dead end (shallow) assets, instead of investing in deeper core gameplay assets. As it is, gameplay is so shallow that trying to break it up into individual sub roles means what you have left is dull/nigh on pointless.

If FD had spent the last couple of years instead investing development in making core gameplay more varied and deeper, Multicrew might have actually have had something to utilise.

eg: A post of mine from a year ago - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...s-now-coming-back-to-bite-ED-in-the-boosters!

 

[Qohen Leth]

Is it working yet? :O

 

[Cmdr Quit]

My suggestion is to remove multicrew in it's entirety from the game, to clean up the codebase and make enhancing core game features easier to implement. Multicrew should be regarded as a prototype experimental feature which has failed acceptance. Luckily, removal of multicrew isn't going to hurt anyone, since it's not like you had 'earn' it somehow.