They weren't just "tanking more damage". They were being a lot more clever in their combat tactics back in 2.1 beta & even during initial 2.1 release. Then the casuals whinged about the drop in their credits per hour. Whinged about the fact that they couldn't always run un-shielded trade ships anymore.....& then FDev capitulated & lobotomised the AI. Heck, they even refuse to make Anarchy Systems dangerous, for fear of upsetting the credit-obsessed casual players.
What is plaguing Elite: Dangerous the most??? Content? Player Agency? Reward Balance?
- Thread starter TrailBlazer 143
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They weren't just "tanking more damage". They were being a lot more clever in their combat tactics back in 2.1 beta & even during initial 2.1 release. Then the casuals whinged about the drop in their credits per hour. Whinged about the fact that they couldn't always run un-shielded trade ships anymore.....& then FDev capitulated & lobotomised the AI. Heck, they even refuse to make Anarchy Systems dangerous, for fear of upsetting the credit-obsessed casual players.
I don't recall much about video games after I'm done with them. I only enjoy the moments when I am playing. There are some memorable times though, that first VR ride, seeing a capital ship enter a CZ for the first time, seeing Jaques for the first time, etc... but overall the experience is indeed tainted by relying heavily on the mission boards and station hopping to find deals, and realizing that the game has funneled me into one type of playing because everything else feels too expensive from a Cr/min sacrifice standpoint. I think plenty of us play for the feeling of monetary gain, as if we were actually looking for the best deals all the time, but will take on a low paying/no paying mission if there's some gameplay involved (like station rescues).
I recall those days when suddenly the large ships stopped spawning in res sites. Maybe that was before 2.1.
Everyone is a casual player unless you're a professional. Just because you might play 20 hours a day doesn't mean your preferences are more important than those who want Cr/hr gains. Many people feel like the KS/founder types got headstarts on exploits and easy money before it was nerfed, and they sat on it. Then today these people claim to not care about credits. Meanwhile newer players who cannot afford a big ship but want one are trying to build their bank accounts, and being told to scan planets and do tedious things that make them want to quit.
The reason people are chasing credits is because everything you do revolves around it. You can decide to ignore it and go out star gazing, but the hardpoints on your ship, the shield generator, the cargo holds... they aren't for star gazing.
Though Player Agency is the thing most lacking for me-as I explained above-I do think there is more they can do regarding depth. The biggest issue for me is that they have *so* many in-game assets, yet nearly 90% of them are very rare & seemingly hand-placed (Mega Ships, CQC assets, Outposts, very large ship wrecks, Capital Ships, Ruins, Thargoid Bases). They really need to loosen the reins a bit, & allow these assets to be "drawn" in a procedural fashion, either as random encounters in space, and/or tied into Missions & Power-play. Likewise, with assets that are currently Procedural Generated (like Surface Settlements), they need to loosen the reins in terms of how varied-in size & complexity-these assets can be. If done right, more frequent appearance of assets like these....in various sizes & shapes....can help to ensure that a player's in-game experience is never 100% the same from one day to the next.
Dare I say it, but I feel that people like Schmack are a huge part of the problem. Complains that the game is lacking in depth & variety, yet then refuses to countenance anything being added to the game that might improve depth & variety. Makes me feel sorry for the developers, because they're trying to please two very disparate player groups.....& ultimately failing to please either.
Wrongly equating More Challenging NPC's with "more tanking", or equating More Challenging Missions with "more grind/more tanking" reveals a great deal about the complete lack of imagination of a certain part of the player base. A salvage mission can be made more challenging by *hiding* the salvage within more varied location types, or by having you competing with other ships to get the salvage first. More challenging Assassination Missions can be when the target refuses to stand still in the open & die.....but instead will lie in ambush, or flee & force you to chase them.
Wrongly equating More Challenging NPC's with "more tanking", or equating More Challenging Missions with "more grind/more tanking" reveals a great deal about the complete lack of imagination of a certain part of the player base. A salvage mission can be made more challenging by *hiding* the salvage within more varied location types, or by having you competing with other ships to get the salvage first. More challenging Assassination Missions can be when the target refuses to stand still in the open & die.....but instead will lie in ambush, or flee & force you to chase them.
I think the OP is a cogent and well-reasoned analysis, as far as it goes. However, The one thing I would take issue with is the characterization of the "progression".
The problem isn't that the only progression is credits and this detracts from player agency, it's that there are so many ways to "progress" in ED. Dedicated PvP combat pilots "progression" is to be the biggest baddest cranky ol' whatsit in the galaxy and for that to be known, either by a rep in the community where folks get out of Dodge when they see you jump in or for it to be acknowledged by in-game mechanics. Explorers progress by getting their names on a lot of star systems with nice, interesting and high value planets in them, or by gaining community rep for consistently grabbing that perfect screenie which makes everyone go "wow" as you show 'em a place where nobody has been before. For a trader, there's a real feeling of "progression" when you can consistently ferret out routed that the 3rd party tools and in-game data can't hand to others on a plate, where your profits come from your superior skill at using the same data everyone else has got. Progression for a smuggler is becoming more and more the guy who can honestly say "I can get anything into anywhere, no matter what the law says or who might be in the way". Etc etc etc.
Players who value "progression" in a game have been strongly conditioned to expect this to be reflected in things like "rank", "level", "badges", or "achievements", or by becoming an ever more significant participant in an in-game story. Compared to other games ED has barely a whiff of that. You CAN find routes to that kind of "progression" in ED but they are all grindfests as if FD were waving their hands in a Jedi mind trick gesture and saying "this is not the progression you're looking for." And yet rather than valuing the progression that is engaging and rewarding in ED, folks gripe about the lack of the kind they've been conditioned to expect by other games and keep asking FD to introduce it.
Similarly, ED lacks "features" that exist in (according to folks on here anyway) "every other MMO" and yet it has other features that those "other MMOs" don't. Maybe trying to play it like "every other MMO" isn't the most rewarding approach to ED?
So to answer the OPs question of "what's plaguing Elite Dangerous", my answer would be "Players that want the game to be less 'Elite' and more 'generic MMO but with spaceships'" ED has plenty of flaws but, IM(not so)HO, going that route isn't the way to fix them. Better to keep on improving the best Elite game ever than to turn it into something else.
The problem isn't that the only progression is credits and this detracts from player agency, it's that there are so many ways to "progress" in ED. Dedicated PvP combat pilots "progression" is to be the biggest baddest cranky ol' whatsit in the galaxy and for that to be known, either by a rep in the community where folks get out of Dodge when they see you jump in or for it to be acknowledged by in-game mechanics. Explorers progress by getting their names on a lot of star systems with nice, interesting and high value planets in them, or by gaining community rep for consistently grabbing that perfect screenie which makes everyone go "wow" as you show 'em a place where nobody has been before. For a trader, there's a real feeling of "progression" when you can consistently ferret out routed that the 3rd party tools and in-game data can't hand to others on a plate, where your profits come from your superior skill at using the same data everyone else has got. Progression for a smuggler is becoming more and more the guy who can honestly say "I can get anything into anywhere, no matter what the law says or who might be in the way". Etc etc etc.
Players who value "progression" in a game have been strongly conditioned to expect this to be reflected in things like "rank", "level", "badges", or "achievements", or by becoming an ever more significant participant in an in-game story. Compared to other games ED has barely a whiff of that. You CAN find routes to that kind of "progression" in ED but they are all grindfests as if FD were waving their hands in a Jedi mind trick gesture and saying "this is not the progression you're looking for." And yet rather than valuing the progression that is engaging and rewarding in ED, folks gripe about the lack of the kind they've been conditioned to expect by other games and keep asking FD to introduce it.
Similarly, ED lacks "features" that exist in (according to folks on here anyway) "every other MMO" and yet it has other features that those "other MMOs" don't. Maybe trying to play it like "every other MMO" isn't the most rewarding approach to ED?
So to answer the OPs question of "what's plaguing Elite Dangerous", my answer would be "Players that want the game to be less 'Elite' and more 'generic MMO but with spaceships'" ED has plenty of flaws but, IM(not so)HO, going that route isn't the way to fix them. Better to keep on improving the best Elite game ever than to turn it into something else.
Do not agree.
Playing Elite IS the reward, credits, ships, stuff is a by product.
Playing Elite IS the reward, credits, ships, stuff is a by product.
![Afterglow [SecB]](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/38/38904.jpg?1659821716){kind=avatar}
the worst is the missing story. A message in the galnet per week is simply not enough to tell a story, as well as the Ganet audio function does not help.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
All jokes and moaning aside, this thread is a perfect example why Frontier will never please everybody. Just look at the variety of opinions here. They fix one, all the people for whom others are more important will go all berserk on the forums. Then something else gets fixed/improved and those players are now praising FDEV, while all the others are claiming the game is surely doomed 
Why can't I jump (holo-me) into a fighter, stationed at a capital ship, either with a Wing of friends or a Wing of NPCs (giving simple attack this/defend that commands), and undertake a mission to escort a convoy of civilian ships through an asteroid field to an asteroid base far in the distance. During the jouney I'll come under attack from Thargoid scouts and we (my Wing) need to scout and defend to try and get as many of those ships in the convoy through.
Why in 2018 can't I even undertake that level of simplistic combat scenario in Elite Dangerous?
And imagine if that gameplay was there right now! Imagine if those assets were in the game... Because then, with Squadron Fleet carriers we might then be talking about re-using them for PvE gameplay, and shock horror maybe for Powerplay/Faction PvP gameplay...
But instead, for 3+ years now all we've generally had is shallow simplistic bolt on after shallow simplistic bolt on few of which actually add much gameplay depth, and an alarnming number of which generally just collect dust for most CMDRs.
What's plaguing ED? The lack of desire or ability to actually implement some deeper more involved gameplay mechanics...
Why in 2018 can't I even undertake that level of simplistic combat scenario in Elite Dangerous?
And imagine if that gameplay was there right now! Imagine if those assets were in the game... Because then, with Squadron Fleet carriers we might then be talking about re-using them for PvE gameplay, and shock horror maybe for Powerplay/Faction PvP gameplay...
But instead, for 3+ years now all we've generally had is shallow simplistic bolt on after shallow simplistic bolt on few of which actually add much gameplay depth, and an alarnming number of which generally just collect dust for most CMDRs.
What's plaguing ED? The lack of desire or ability to actually implement some deeper more involved gameplay mechanics...
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The reason im not playing and play as little as i do is the engineers. Not only are they terrible game design, but every time i encounter a flashing outpost or multiple ships parked on top of each other or a mission goes south because of lack of dev effort or resources or any one of seemiingly hundreds of little bugs in the game, the first thing that occurs to me is that rather than actually developing the game, they decided to screw the player base with the engineers.
BOYCOTT THE FRONTIER STORE UNTIL SOMETHING IS DONE ABOUT THE ENGINEERS.
Hit them where it hurts and maybe they will devote some actual effort fixing the bugs and doing something about the engineers.
A lot of the games i play have small flaws and i forgive them, because i feel the devs were acting in good faith and trying to produce a quality game. The biggest flaw in ED is deliberate, was foisted on the playerbase to keep them spending money in the store, and rather than good faith, was specifically introduced to bilk and manipulate the playerbase.
Oh and OP, you forgot the third type of player:
Almost never plays because of the engineers grind and the time and effort FD wasted on developing the engineers when they could have actually been developing the game.
Personally, i log into the game about every couple of weeks for a few minutes and after taking a buggy mission or running into the next step in the engineers grind, log out.
No more money from me FD until you actually spend some dev effort on fixing the existing issues and eradicating the engineers. No more store purchases and no more money for FD games.
BOYCOTT THE FRONTIER STORE UNTIL SOMETHING IS DONE ABOUT THE ENGINEERS.
Hit them where it hurts and maybe they will devote some actual effort fixing the bugs and doing something about the engineers.
A lot of the games i play have small flaws and i forgive them, because i feel the devs were acting in good faith and trying to produce a quality game. The biggest flaw in ED is deliberate, was foisted on the playerbase to keep them spending money in the store, and rather than good faith, was specifically introduced to bilk and manipulate the playerbase.
Oh and OP, you forgot the third type of player:
Almost never plays because of the engineers grind and the time and effort FD wasted on developing the engineers when they could have actually been developing the game.
Personally, i log into the game about every couple of weeks for a few minutes and after taking a buggy mission or running into the next step in the engineers grind, log out.
No more money from me FD until you actually spend some dev effort on fixing the existing issues and eradicating the engineers. No more store purchases and no more money for FD games.
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Agree with the OP.
Let's take a look at CG rewards:
I got to top 10% with 25 mil. To get to top 10 cmdrs, you needed about 110 mil.
That results in 8% reward increase, for 4 times more effort.
To get to top 75%, you need about 1 million. So, further effort increases your reward up to 5 times for doing 109 times more.
And that is about the same everywhere. Why the game tells everyone that it is fine to be a potato inside a Corvette stuffed with turrets and docking computers?
Cause with those payouts, there is literaly zero reasons to improve yourself. You are way better just doing 3 units of basic stuff instead of doing a Goid assassination for instance, as you will get more money and will be done with it faster.
There is some kind of diminishing returns curve. Which is completely out of place, because there is no outstanding gear like in WoW or something. It is a simple precaution, which poisons gameplay instead of making it better. And returns are diminished into nothing not long after you are able to dock your Sidey fast enough.
They should really assemble some test team, make them do missions of all types, and let them evaluate expected payouts. While giving some regard to investments required.
Let's take a look at CG rewards:
| Current Progress: Global Progress: 47,301,787,009 credits earned Contributors: 6,253 Reward Tier: 7/8 Global Reward: None listed | Current Participation Rewards: Top 10 CMDRs: 25,893,504 CR Top 10%: 23,901,696 CR Top 25%: 17,926,272 CR Top 50%: 11,950,848 CR Top 75%: 5,975,424 CR Top 100%: 700,000 CR |
I got to top 10% with 25 mil. To get to top 10 cmdrs, you needed about 110 mil.
That results in 8% reward increase, for 4 times more effort.
To get to top 75%, you need about 1 million. So, further effort increases your reward up to 5 times for doing 109 times more.
And that is about the same everywhere. Why the game tells everyone that it is fine to be a potato inside a Corvette stuffed with turrets and docking computers?
Cause with those payouts, there is literaly zero reasons to improve yourself. You are way better just doing 3 units of basic stuff instead of doing a Goid assassination for instance, as you will get more money and will be done with it faster.
There is some kind of diminishing returns curve. Which is completely out of place, because there is no outstanding gear like in WoW or something. It is a simple precaution, which poisons gameplay instead of making it better. And returns are diminished into nothing not long after you are able to dock your Sidey fast enough.
They should really assemble some test team, make them do missions of all types, and let them evaluate expected payouts. While giving some regard to investments required.
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In my opinion its plagued with lack of focus, and not knowing if the game is SP/Coop/MP or what not - it results with mix of underdeveloped features that really dont work as a whole experience.
I suspect most players tend to fall into fairly narrow gameplay loops, doing the same things over and over.
Perhaps Steam-style achievements could help encourage players to diversify and try out some of the different offerings (pirate a ship, earn 500k by mining, reach Sag A, join powerplay, etc)? They could bring the xbox achievements to Steam and, ideally, non-Steam accounts as well.
Weakest point to me is "narrative", which I only occasionally watch on Youtube or elsewhere. I'd like personal narratives or storylines, e.g. with our hired NPCs and their personal missions, a nemesis system like Lord of the Rings, more unique missions that only fire under specific circumstances, etc. Military progression could be so much better.
Perhaps Steam-style achievements could help encourage players to diversify and try out some of the different offerings (pirate a ship, earn 500k by mining, reach Sag A, join powerplay, etc)? They could bring the xbox achievements to Steam and, ideally, non-Steam accounts as well.
Weakest point to me is "narrative", which I only occasionally watch on Youtube or elsewhere. I'd like personal narratives or storylines, e.g. with our hired NPCs and their personal missions, a nemesis system like Lord of the Rings, more unique missions that only fire under specific circumstances, etc. Military progression could be so much better.
This mode switching is poisoning the game for everyone who is outside the Mobious. It is either you are playing PvE, or you have kill your immersion for increase of efficiency, or you have to accept handicaping yourself to other players for the sake of your experience. Those modes really should be separated, with different BGS/PP for Open at least.
Cost of doing anything with probability of PvP is overwhelmingly higher than cost of doing it without such. Which is not covered by anything. As a result, we have Open with only usage as a weird PvP arena with FFA matchmaking system, and by no means as a legit gaming mode.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Engineers is the biggest plague of ED.
This "huehue - I saw you already unlocked stuff to deal with the environment, so we buff the environment so you have to grind your basic stuff this new feature" killed the game for me.
Not even mentioning the useless power creep and what comes with it.
This "huehue - I saw you already unlocked stuff to deal with the environment, so we buff the environment so you have to grind your basic stuff this new feature" killed the game for me.
Not even mentioning the useless power creep and what comes with it.
The answer "the problem is the users" is always the wrong answer. It's obvious many of you never rolled out a product or had to support one. There are sporadic cases of users just being cranky and impossible to satisfy, but when you have a lack of participation in something yet you have a seemingly huge user base, you either didn't do your research or you just ignored the results of it.
I add my suggestions in the proper forum. There's no need for me to hash out offerings here. I am not a game designer and the question was asked about the problems plaguing the game, not how to fix it.
Adding suggestions here doesn't seem to do much. Besides, they can easily be inferred by my comments:
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