You are right. I misinterpreted your first post. Sorry for that.
However: i don't see a problem with the 400 Billion stars. Only about 100.000 of this stars are influenced by the dev team. And by influenced i mean: created on base of astronomical data provided by the nasa and so on. I don't mean there are 100.000 hand crafted systems. All other systems are completly automatically generated. So i see no problem to reach this number. The bigger problem for Frontier will be to make this systems interesting and diverse.
The problem with the current beta is in my eyes the missing motivation to play in cause of missing content. There are just a few basic missions. Trading. And a exploration mini game(looking into unknown signal sources) that has nothing to do with the DDA. The only things we can do gameplay-wise at the moment is basically hauling cargo, fight ships, scooping containers and flying around with hyperdrive and supercruise.
So what we need in my oppinion is:
- Much more star system diversity. They get boring very fast because reality is not as interesting as you may think. There is a sun and there are tons of rock-planets and gas giants circling around this sun. At the moment they don't differ much. If you've seen one or two, you know them all.
- A part of this missing immersion is that we can't get closer to the planets. You just see mediocre textured balls from a distance that is to high to get a real feeling how the planet surface is looking. There are also no POIs like comets, diverse asteroid fields, nebulas, dark matter and such things. There are only balls surrounding the sun. Some planets come with a ring(with asteroids in them). And thats it.
- another part of this missing immersion is that we don't have a star system map atm. If you look at the preview of this maps they just look gorgeous. Take a look at this to get the idea. They have more text for the planets to read and are very beautiful presented
- Factions need to come alive. At the moment they are just static names. But they need to follow targets like colonization and war to become alive and to create missions for the players to reach this targets. Like: "We want to Colonize Ross 9123153. We already have a build-flottila in the system. Please help us with protection/exploration/supply and logistics".
- For me the exploration content ist very important. They talked about scanning, probing and many facets to find hidden stellar objects and even complete "dark" system. planets without a sun. They also told us that it will be possible to trade this exploration data with other players and the factions. If this is done good, with real signal procession and triangulation and such things, it will be a very interesting part of the game with real gameplay(not just flying to automatically scanned objects). I have high hopes but i agree this will be not easy to do. But if they don't do it, i'm gone. I will not play this game if exploration is as meaningless and boring as it is now.
- Mining. Combined with exploration mining has the potential to be very interesting. They need to add much more types of minable objects or asteroid fields. Atm there are only rings around planets or gas giants. But i've already seen a star system map were asteroids field were placed in other locations.
- Missions. There need to be much more than hauling cargo and shooting enemies. But this is already on the way.
- Influence on the universes factions. There where whispers of ways to influence the factions. For example the exploration of possible systems to conquer or colonize. Or to make an real impact on trade routes. For example cutting the supply of ore for a system to increase the prices. A much more interactive universe would be very good to have some long term motivation and base for player generated content.
- Much more ways for player interaction. Interdiction, trading, bounty hunting with real gameplay and not only dialogues to read. Such things. Also communication needs to get much further. Atm you can only talk to people in the same instance as yourself. There needs to be some kind of global communication.
- Galactic News. This would bring some life to the universe and is a necessity to communicate events like supply shortages, conflicts, wars and such things.
- Faction Ranks. Things like ships, weapons, special missions, intelligence and ship systems should be only available if your rank is high. you need something you can spent your money at or to work for. Its basically a grind, yes. But if this is done with all the planed gameplay features it would be a nice and necessary reward system for all your work.
Thats all things that come to my mind. I know this sounds like a lot of work to do. But if you look at the way elite has taken from alpha 4 to beta 1 i think they already achieved a lot of things. Like the nice trade system and the trade maps. If they do something similar for all other parts of the game this could work out.
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