Frontier has abdicated their progamming responsibilities to Elite: Dangerous

[amadeus1171]

ED's user interface is horrendous! There are many things missing in the game that third party developers took upon themselves to add what FD would not but should be in the game.

Brett even said himself that it's necessary to implement things in the game because third party developers already did it.

Seriously?! Seriously?!?! So instead of putting things in the game that should be there the responsibility is abdicated and not the users are left to fend for themselves.

So, what am I talking about? Well here is an incomplete list:

• Finding material traders - The interface is just broken
• Finding commodities - I should not have to click out of the game to get this.
• Finding Recipes - The current method of just pinning one recipes is ridiculous. You mean to tell me that in 3304 our computers can't hold more than one recipe per engineer? That's ridiculous!
• Determining the nearest planet to get certain resources. Why isn't there a resource search option in the galaxy map?

Remember, this is an incomplete list. FD needs to pick up their game and give Elite: Dangerous the attention it deserves. I know FD is working on other games, but at this point it *feels* like the game is on a skeletal crew and in survival mode.

What do you think?

 

[Flimley]

We’re on fire tonight. [haha]
...The game would feel enriched with more information integrated.

Flimley

 

[Lestat]

I rather have Frontier add stuff over time and have a playable game. Then buy a game that been in alpha for 4 years.

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

There are countless numbers of examples of this nonsense, Frontier are consistently trying to peddle busy work, or awkward and lazy/incompetent feature implementation as gameplay. Hunting for a material trader is just dull, not gameplay, scrolling through menus to figure out what materials you have is dull, not gameplay. The finding of commodities could br considered gameplay, but makes no logical sense within the games setting. No galactic wide commodities trading platform in 3304? Not convinced. If it wasn’t for the wonderful 3rd party tools, I would have stopped playing a long time ago. The designers seem to want me to spend vast amounts of my time doing meaningless and generic tasks, this is made even more egregious by the fact none it fits within the high tech science fiction universe.

It’s almost like the gameplay designers think this is game set in the age of sail.

I still like this game it has many great points and tons of potential. I just feel Elite has become a secondary priority for fdev, on their quest to gain new IP,licensing deals and becoming a publisher. Every feature just feels rushed, barebones and like it got the absolute minimum amount of the shared resources allocated to it.

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

I rather have Frontier add stuff over time and have a playable game. Then buy a game that been in alpha for 4 years.

I agree and I’ve had many hundreds of hours of great gameplay in Elite. The problem is how iterative the design process is, even most of the minor GUI features they implement are barebones, fdev are just creating the worlds longest ‘to do’ list and it gets longer with every update.

 

[Madrax573]

This isn't anything new though. CCP did it with EvE for years as well. They did improve their tools a lot then they just switched off the one tool that help integrate everything with the in game browser.

Maybe thats what ED need and IGB?

 

[nanite2000]

No, it’s OK.

I’ll just keep using whatever tools are available to achieve my goals, thanks.

 

[House0fDerp]

This isn't anything new though. CCP did it with EvE for years as well. They did improve their tools a lot then they just switched off the one tool that help integrate everything with the in game browser.

Maybe thats what ED need and IGB?

To be fair over the years they integrated the agent finder, fitting tool, market history and other things into the game.

I still miss the IGB though.

 

[Straha Yeagar]

I am rather fond of the choices and options the third parties provide.

 

[Lanceor]

It would be awesome if we could simply pull up an in-game menu, click on the type of thing that we are searching for (e.g. material traders or commodities), type in what we need and the search results would be displayed.

Oh wait, that would require a keyboard and mouse. Back to the drawing board then.

 

[kiario]

ED's user interface is horrendous! There are many things missing in the game that third party developers took upon themselves to add what FD would not but should be in the game.

Brett even said himself that it's necessary to implement things in the game because third party developers already did it.

Seriously?! Seriously?!?! So instead of putting things in the game that should be there the responsibility is abdicated and not the users are left to fend for themselves.

So, what am I talking about? Well here is an incomplete list:

• Finding material traders - The interface is just broken
• Finding commodities - I should not have to click out of the game to get this.
• Finding Recipes - The current method of just pinning one recipes is ridiculous. You mean to tell me that in 3304 our computers can't hold more than one recipe per engineer? That's ridiculous!
• Determining the nearest planet to get certain resources. Why isn't there a resource search option in the galaxy map?

Remember, this is an incomplete list. FD needs to pick up their game and give Elite: Dangerous the attention it deserves. I know FD is working on other games, but at this point it *feels* like the game is on a skeletal crew and in survival mode.

What do you think?

I agree that there is huge potential for QOL improvements in ELITE.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

ED's user interface is horrendous! There are many things missing in the game that third party developers took upon themselves to add what FD would not but should be in the game.

Brett even said himself that it's necessary to implement things in the game because third party developers already did it.

Seriously?! Seriously?!?! So instead of putting things in the game that should be there the responsibility is abdicated and not the users are left to fend for themselves.

So, what am I talking about? Well here is an incomplete list:

• Finding material traders - The interface is just broken
• Finding commodities - I should not have to click out of the game to get this.
• Finding Recipes - The current method of just pinning one recipes is ridiculous. You mean to tell me that in 3304 our computers can't hold more than one recipe per engineer? That's ridiculous!
• Determining the nearest planet to get certain resources. Why isn't there a resource search option in the galaxy map?

Remember, this is an incomplete list. FD needs to pick up their game and give Elite: Dangerous the attention it deserves. I know FD is working on other games, but at this point it *feels* like the game is on a skeletal crew and in survival mode.

What do you think?

I have no issues finding material traders and when I do I bookmark them.

Commodities, well I use The in game trade tools, there are a few minor issues with it, but it seems to work 99% of the time.

Knowing the blueprints of the mods I agree.

As to materials on certain planets/systems, surely that is what bookmarks are for.

All these things can still be improved upon though. The Codex may help with some of that too in the Q4 update.

While I agree some things can be improved upon, it's not that bad at the moment.

 

[amadeus1171]

It would be awesome if we could simply pull up an in-game menu, click on the type of thing that we are searching for (e.g. material traders or commodities), type in what we need and the search results would be displayed.

Oh wait, that would require a keyboard and mouse. Back to the drawing board then.

Silly; that's only for steering. lol

 

[amadeus1171]

I have no issues finding material traders and when I do I bookmark them.

Commodities, well I use The in game trade tools, there are a few minor issues with it, but it seems to work 99% of the time.

Knowing the blueprints of the mods I agree.

As to materials on certain planets/systems, surely that is what bookmarks are for.

All these things can still be improved upon though. The Codex may help with some of that too in the Q4 update.

While I agree some things can be improved upon, it's not that bad at the moment.

You shouldn't have to bookmark them. There's an interface in game to find them but it simply doesn't work.
There shouldn't be issues with the trade tool. It's been broken for a while and not fixed.
Again, you shouldn't have to bookmark to find materials. It should be searchable in your ship's computer.

And it is bad. Remember the frog in hot water? When the water got to boiling the frog said, "It's not that bad."
Things have slowly, progressively, been getting worse and we adapt, so that when things get untenable we say, "It's not that bad."

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You shouldn't have to bookmark them. There's an interface in game to find them but it simply doesn't work.
There shouldn't be issues with the trade tool. It's been broken for a while and not fixed.
Again, you shouldn't have to bookmark to find materials. It should be searchable in your ship's computer.

And it is bad. Remember the frog in hot water? When the water got to boiling the frog said, "It's not that bad."
Things have slowly, progressively, been getting worse and we adapt, so that when things get untenable we say, "It's not that bad."

The interface has a LY range from what I can gather, hence the reason why I bookmark them.

Regarding the trade tools, myself I haven't experienced the issues, I know others have hence why I said it, but it does work. It is not broken and unusable.

As to materials, isn't that what bookmarks are for. If everything was easily findable within the UI, what is the point in bookmarks. Bookmarks are the solution, use them or not, the choice is yours.

I am not saying that they are fine as they are, it all could with some improvements, but what I am saying is that there are tools within the game that you can already use.

I am hoping the codex will have some of these improvements.

I use bookmarks to get to the information quickly in ED like I do in a web browser. It's the best and easiest way to do things. What they need to do though is update the bookmarks section.

 

[amadeus1171]

The interface has a LY range from what I can gather, hence the reason why I bookmark them.

Regarding the trade tools, myself I haven't experienced the issues, I know others have hence why I said it, but it does work. It is not broken and unusable.

As to materials, isn't that what bookmarks are for. If everything was easily findable within the UI, what is the point in bookmarks. Bookmarks are the solution, use them or not, the choice is yours.

I am not saying that they are fine as they are, it all could with some improvements, but what I am saying is that there are tools within the game that you can already use.

I am hoping the codex will have some of these improvements.

This is 3304. We shouldn't have to work this hard for such simple things. Our hard work should be put into higher endeavors.

There is a common seed where all of Elite's problems sprout. The game is stuck in 1984.

 

[Vasious]

Still waiting for the OPs Kickstarter since they clearly can do everything better quick and cheaper, even with the contradictory demands.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

This is 3304. We shouldn't have to work this hard for such simple things. Our hard work should be put into higher endeavors.

There is a common seed where all of Elite's problems sprout. The game is stuck in 1984.

I really do not find it that important to complain about to be honest. There are far bigger issues then this in the game in my view.

 

[znôrt]

I really do not find it that important to complain about to be honest. There are far bigger issues then this in the game in my view.

yeah, that's why frontier gets away with that. note that in this case i say this as a praise more than criticism. they haven't invented shameless profiteering on opensource or community work, it's a common phenomenon. they have just embraced it well (specially now that the biggest api problems seem more or less settled) and even show it off as an 'amazing community' factor (which it is). and yes, given current state of matters their time would be better spent on other stuff.

now, how's the 'other stuff' going?

 

[Eymerich]

yeah, that's why frontier gets away with that. note that in this case i say this as a praise more than criticism. they haven't invented shameless profiteering on opensource or community work, it's a common phenomenon. they have just embraced it well (specially now that the biggest api problems seem more or less settled) and even show it off as an 'amazing community' factor (which it is). and yes, given current state of matters their time would be better spent on other stuff.

now, how's the 'other stuff' going?

Wait wait : now we can hide in the hold of a ship ?