[O.A. VIDEO] Does Elite Dangerous Have a Content Problem?

Cheers! I'm on the verge of quitting the bubble for bit, having finally got round to trying neutron star jumping, so any encouragement is welcome.
I found neutron star jumping to be a nice change of pace, when exploring.

I've also changed my routine, to land on a planet and drive around whenever I get too bored of the jump, scan, scoop cycle. In particular, I look for planets that have a fair percentage of rare materials that I am relatively low on. I generally only hang around for 30-60 minutes, depending on the scenery and the density of materials.

I try to land near the most interesting features of a planet/moon and there is a fair bit of variance: color, hilliness, density of rocks and boulders, and such. If you have room for cargo, you might want to track down technology signals in the SRV. Lately, I've been finding a lot of gold and other valuables, which makes me wonder if FD has boosted the likelihood of finding lost cargo.
 
There are no caves or overhangs in PG planet surface right now, pretty sure due to tech limitation. No idea of FD ever talked about possibility of structures like that, would be pretty cool. As said alien structures looks amazing but those were hand crafted.
As a programmer, who long ago developed games, I can say that since FD can build bases on planets they could add caves if they wanted to. Basically, they could be handled similarly to Thargoid bases and might even need to be prebuild assets (like bases). That would mean they probably wouldn't be unique, but neither are bases or stations. Ideally, the would be colored to match the surrounding terrain. They could also mirror them and have various optional divisions (walls) which are enabled by the RNG which FD is so fond of. I know I could map out a single large cavern that with these optional areas could easily have dozens of variations, to minimize the repetition.

I assume caves are somewhere on the list of desired features, but I for one, would prefer FD work on stuff with greater impact, like greatly improving the mission generator.
 
Of course I always buy spaceship games based on the quality of their caves, its the first thing I think of. For FPS's I go purely by the pot plants in office based levels.

Hey, some of us like caves, want to explore and mine.

Then again, it would probably just be a honk mini game In the dark :(

There is enough content. There's not enough game mechanics.

Elite has a design team problem.

Buuuuuuuummmmppp!

:D
 
Game has SRV and landable planets its only logical from my point of view to ask if planets will have more things like caves - ED passed the stage of "only a space ship game".

Indeed. Also, it would be neat to have the ability call the ship to recover found canisters on the surface "sky-crane" style.
But yeah, true mining (Even better than cave, have specialized SRV's that can drill a mine and locate rich ore & minerals underground.)

You could also have Ice crevices and caves from hot water geysers & such. With a spider style walker SRV it could be quite epic. Diving
in deep Ice crevices to mine Low-Temp diamonds and exotic life samples.
 
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Indeed. Also, it would be neat to have the ability call the ship to recover found canisters on the surface "sky-crane" style.
But yeah, true mining (Even better than cave, have specialized SRV's that can drill a mine and locate rich ore & minerals underground.)

You could also have Ice crevices and caves from hot water geysers & such.

I like all of that. We need some good gameplay activities on planets. It's what they should have concentrated on in horizons instead of what we got. I would have much prefered that.
 
I like all of that. We need some good gameplay activities on planets. It's what they should have concentrated on in horizons instead of what we got. I would have much prefered that.

Yeah. Horizon feels like someone just finished pourring the fondation's concrete and called it a house.

I can't but feel that FD would be better off focusing on one or two things during a season, rather than trying to release 9 different featurettes suffering from terminal MVP symptoms and then finding themselves in an impossible place.
Season 2 should have been 60% fleshing out planet surface stuff, 40% something else (1 feature). The minigames scattershot approach does seem to be a recuring cause of problems down the line (IMO).
 
Yeah. Horizon feels like someone just finished pourring the fondation's concrete and called it a house.

I can't but feel that FD would be better off focusing on one or two things during a season, rather than trying to release 9 different featurettes suffering from terminal MVP symptoms and then finding themselves in an impossible place.
Season 2 should have been 60% fleshing out planet surface stuff, 40% something else (1 feature). The minigames scattershot approach does seem to be a recuring cause of problems down the line (IMO).

Agreed. It is frustrating when they seem to do that. Hopefully the Q4 update will fix some of those issues. Also the new DLC may also help if that is basic atmospheric planets, hopefully it will have new gameplay options for all landable planets.
 
Agreed. It is frustrating when they seem to do that. Hopefully the Q4 update will fix some of those issues. Also the new DLC may also help if that is basic atmospheric planets, hopefully it will have new gameplay options for all landable planets.

I hope that somewhere up in the foodchain someone figured the design problem out and is working to address the management issues. Q4 does seem like this is what is happening *I hope*.

Because if it does not change, the game will keep being a up-tier spacesim / sub-par adventure game hybrid. (which makes it dead average IMO, which is the real shame, as it could be a really top-tier game)
 
I've been saying this since the game released.

FD doesn't care at all. 3.5 years of empty development, placeholder over placeholder.

They want Elite to be mediocre.

Not sure "They want", but maybe, "They've made"...

The design choices have been baffling/worrying!
 
Not sure "They want", but maybe, "They've made"...

The design choices have been baffling/worrying!

They never even tried to make the game they advertised. Never. Not one mechanic has gone toward support of an.immersive universe with a lived in feel.

It's all been just numbers grind. And now it's maintenance mode to keep selling skins a little longer.
 
They never even tried to make the game they advertised. Never. Not one mechanic has gone toward support of an.immersive universe with a lived in feel.

It's all been just numbers grind. And now it's maintenance mode to keep selling skins a little longer.

I have a problem with FDs bizzaro-world view of content. It's straight out of the 90s.



As I posted a few days ago:-

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.​
 
As I posted a few days ago:-

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 I find hard to understand is how, after all the amazing community feedback they had with the UA and UP mystery, FD just gave up on that direction and started spewing out an endless stream of RNG spam.
 
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