Collection of Ideas for Elite 4

[Sir.Tj]

Oh no I do agree - a WOW environment would be rubbish but depending on how good the game is I would seriously consider paying a subscription to it. There is more than enough proof out there that the pay as you go model works, but it does not have to be all doom and gloom - as I suggested a partial online component could have its advantages.

From the crowding situation the problem would not arise from there being an overcrowding of ships rather from the server lag involved in sharing information with several thousand people at once. There are several systems in EVE that most people avoid like the plague - it would not be cool if SOL became like that.

I wouldn't be adverse to paying either (depending on the cost of course)

I would like the option to multiplay in the same way as games like Call of Duty 4 MW. which goes to show how good games can be. and gives you additional depth without having to wait for some "orrible little nurk" to waste you when you least expect it!

Its a very exciting time for us though, computer technology is advanced enough for most if the ideas posted on here in theory to be implimented.

I again don't envy you guys at FD in deciding what you are going to do to create E4. it's going to be one of the biggest releases in a long time. I would think the media hype would be pretty big as well.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I think I would like to see a decent avatar creation process similar to Oblivion or more recently Mass Effect and tying that in with any real player social interaction on space stations and the like.

 

[JohannStrauss]

Yes, definitely social interaction. But I need my 99% secure sector and some anarchy systems to fly through. I'd love to have my home planet with my village or city I can come back home where I can virtually meet with my buddies. Perhaps build a community or so called "corp".

But I'd like to see Elite 4 conceptualizing the frontier idea comparable with the old gold rush times.

And the economy MUST be NPC dominated - everything else would lead to a collapse sooner or later.

A trading system like the old European "Hanse" would be perfect.

In fact it could be possible to adopt economic structures like they are in "Patrizier" and "Anno" into Elite 4.

I love those bulletin boards. And I have nothing against corps if you like. But it still HAS TO BE POSSIBLE to master the game alone. And I can tell you that it was possible to become rich and powerful at the old Hanse times (working more or less alone), it is still now and always will be. I am not against interaction - but I am against the force of joining big corps to get really successful.

Look at those strategic ideas:
Look at facebook, youtube, google. Look at Carlos Slim, Warrent Buffet, Donald Trump. Yes, they are highly dependent on interaction but 100% independent as agents in their own company.

In Elite 4 that could mean, that you perhaps take the risk of a very long jump in unknown territory and build a outpost alone. You have to carry the supply (perhaps you can place some orders for other real life peers to help you) and the material to build up f.e. a small space station.

If your system is strategically good chosen, why not handling a well financed company by supplying the local planets with - let me say: luxury goods from Mars?

You take the risks of transport the goods to your base - you can hire NPC's to escort you. That would costs some credits.

And so on...

 

[Glyndo]

I'd love to have my home planet with my village or city I can come back home.

I'd love to be able to create my own city/spaceport, and be able to call it whatever I chose. If it was an uninhabited system, I'd be able to specify the illegal goods and depending on the type of industry that develops to have that dictate imports and exports.

I love those bulletin boards. And I have nothing against corps if you like. But it still HAS TO BE POSSIBLE to master the game alone. And I can tell you that it was possible to become rich and powerful at the old Hanse times (working more or less alone), it is still now and always will be. I am not against interaction - but I am against the force of joining big corps to get really successful.

Definitely agree. The bulletin boards were one of the things I enjoyed the most about FFE. I'm sure there are ways to improve them slightly, perhaps having a pop up list of the relevant bulletin ads and their respective port. e.g. You have 45t of robots and you've just hyperspaced into Sol; the trading computer (registered trademark! ) would display a list of all bulletin posts that mention robots - specifically robots being wanted.

 

[JohannStrauss]

We do speak the same language!

We need more ingame advertisement, by the way!

There is a nice picture of a advertisement-droid cruising around a station around here in the net.

I LOVE that.

I love all those small details in Elite.



And I love you idea of creating your own system politic.

You found it - you name it (if you could control all those nasty local habitants - masters of orion...)

Perhaps you even transported some settlers (why not freeing some 10 mio. slaves there who you bought at the empire?) to your new discovered planet and start a farming site?
Some mining?
You'll need more workers!
Feed them!
Your system develops?
Go get them some luxury goods! (welcome masters of orion, again...)
and sooner or later some other traders will help you to supply.
This isn't hard to program: Patrizier II works exactly that way - even with some pirates - or even pirate fleets disturbing trades and even attacking cities. Just put it into space.
But back again to EvE: it all a matter of DEGREE: A strong military in the area could lead to high security system and all would be fine.

Well, and IF you think your ship is strong enough to do the big jump (perhaps you are able to control a small fleet - the rest of the ships are driven by very expensive androis) - then leave it and EXPLORE - settle, build.

This COULD work as a massive online game - depends all on the grade of local military strength.

But I'd love to play it on my system WITH interactive possibilities.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I, like many other people, have been closely following the development and eagerly awaiting the release of the game 'SPORE'. There are many aspects of this game that I could see contributing in some way to the online structure for E4 especially this bit:

Source:http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/882/882100p1.html

One of the really intriguing aspects of Spore is that it is described as sort of a massively multiplayer single-player game. That's because though you can only play Spore by yourself, the game is always connected online. That means that when you create a creature it gets uploaded to the Sporepedia, where people can find and download it for their own game. Not only that, but in certain stages of Spore the game will go online and pull other user-generated content to help populate the huge galaxy in your game. You can even choose content your friends made, or stuff someone around the world has created.

Taking this idea and transferring it to an online E4 driven environment (within limits of course - we don't want someone wiping out all the space stations and ports just because they can) but as I've mentioned before some of the interactions and also markets could well be online influenced if only from the BBS perspective.

From a character generation perspective; you all of a sudden have thousands of players randomly generating their own characters - why not use those generated characters to populate the space stations and Bulletin Boards thus providing a significantly lower chance of running into the same person all the time.

 

[JohannStrauss]

I, like many other people, have been closely following the development and eagerly awaiting the release of the game 'SPORE'. There are many aspects of this game that I could see contributing in some way to the online structure for E4 especially this bit:

Source:http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/882/882100p1.html


Taking this idea and transferring it to an online E4 driven environment (within limits of course - we don't want someone wiping out all the space stations and ports just because they can) but as I've mentioned before some of the interactions and also markets could well be online influenced if only from the BBS perspective.

From a character generation perspective; you all of a sudden have thousands of players randomly generating their own characters - why not use those generated characters to populate the space stations and Bulletin Boards thus providing a significantly lower chance of running into the same person all the time.

I think this idea should be transferred 100%.

Concerning the problem of "wiping out all the space stations" due the firepower of some players: That ISN'T a problem that can not be solved.
It is the question of the military/police firepower or the firepower of the planetary defense: Imagine a massive device on every planet that CAN wipe out every major ship (even a titan - speaking in EvE voice) with one shoot then we wouldn't have a problem at all.

Or the possibility of police drones jumping out of hyperspace at numbers of several hundreds ships if necessary... No corp would risk an total wipe out and the losing all the money and RIGHTS to mine in the area.

That would make the universe a much safer (in areas needed) but still very interesting place - like earth: you CAN run Amok, build a paramilitary unit and try to revolt - or raid a bank. Perhaps you could succeed once - but you will be hunted down by every nation after all.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I think this idea should be transferred 100%.

Concerning the problem of "wiping out all the space stations" due the firepower of some players: That ISN'T a problem that can not be solved.
It is the question of the military/police firepower or the firepower of the planetary defense: Imagine a massive device on every planet that CAN wipe out every major ship (even a titan - speaking in EvE voice) with one shoot then we wouldn't have a problem at all.

Personally I think that would be at the loss of realism - I think there should be a real set of consequences for your actions that forces you to take responsibility for your actions but getting blown to kingdom come is a little extreme. But the example was more of an over exaggeration of having to deal with irresponsible players.

I seem to remember talk of the multi player being of a limited nature of a set of computers rather than being from a centralised server.

 

[JohannStrauss]

Personally I think that would be at the loss of realism - I think there should be a real set of consequences for your actions that forces you to take responsibility for your actions but getting blown to kingdom come is a little extreme. But the example was more of an over exaggeration of having to deal with irresponsible players.

I seem to remember talk of the multi player being of a limited nature of a set of computers rather than being from a centralised server.

I've just seen some SPORE videos on Youtube. As far as I can see it now this could be a great game coming out in September.

Elite 4 should have an more automatic alien generator at the beginning of the game.

But the interior of the ship should be 100% customized.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I've just seen some SPORE videos on Youtube. As far as I can see it now this could be a great game coming out in September.

Oh I very much agree - Spore has been a long time coming.

Elite 4 should have an more automatic alien generator at the beginning of the game.

That could have a curious outcome - Elite has historically not had much in the way of alien life other than the Thargoids. I am curious if there is going to be further 'alien life' added to the Elite 4 universe. Mass Effect has shown that there can be a very interesting implementation of aliens in a game environment and the characterisation of those were very convincing indeed. If alien life were to be generated at the start of the game I would question their ability to actually contribute in a meaningful manner to game play. Generating things like languages and interactions might be a little beyond the scope of Elite 4 but if not - it could have some exceedingly interesting outcomes.

But the interior of the ship should be 100% customized.

Do you mean that each ship should have it's own individual layout? If so I agree - the work involved would be quite a bit but definitely up for that.

 

[Glyndo]

Elite has historically not had much in the way of alien life other than the Thargoids.

Depends really on what you would use to define "alien". If it takes the broad view (other than Earth origin) then there are a lot of alien worlds! But I see the point you're trying to make regarding the Thargoids as the alien race.

It would be great if there was some sort of continuation from FFE - the Soholia virus now has a vaccine (which unscrupulous traders can make a fortune from every outbreak ), the Thargoids have made peaceful ventures into our galaxy although some people are suspicious - perhaps some high-ranking military missions involve sneaking on to a Thargoid mothership...

 

[JohannStrauss]

Oh I very much agree - Spore has been a long time coming.



That could have a curious outcome - Elite has historically not had much in the way of alien life other than the Thargoids. I am curious if there is going to be further 'alien life' added to the Elite 4 universe. Mass Effect has shown that there can be a very interesting implementation of aliens in a game environment and the characterisation of those were very convincing indeed. If alien life were to be generated at the start of the game I would question their ability to actually contribute in a meaningful manner to game play. Generating things like languages and interactions might be a little beyond the scope of Elite 4 but if not - it could have some exceedingly interesting outcomes.



Do you mean that each ship should have it's own individual layout? If so I agree - the work involved would be quite a bit but definitely up for that.

The script-work and the programming would not be too big since they could use a "sim-like" auto-architecture program only usable to the fixed size of the ships interior. I'd like to see the variations of things - especially arts - added to the walls of the ships.

 

[turwhitt]

The script-work and the programming would not be too big .

Yes, especially if you consider that due to their algorythm, David and Ian fitted the whole of the Elite universe into 800 bytes.
No-one bothers with clever stuff like that now though, as we all have so much space on our computers...

 

[Steve O B Have]

Cleverness aside, I personally would like for there to be some sort of parallels betweenmy gaming experience and others - running into another alien race is in my opinion a fairly monumentous even - I think I'd like to be able to share that with other people. Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick but there are some things that I'd like to remain similar.

 

[JohannStrauss]

Cleverness aside, I personally would like for there to be some sort of parallels betweenmy gaming experience and others - running into another alien race is in my opinion a fairly monumentous even - I think I'd like to be able to share that with other people. Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick but there are some things that I'd like to remain similar.

There is enough space in space to share it.
Anything that involves trading, talking and relaxing should be a mass player base.

 

[Steve O B Have]

There is enough space in space to share it.
Anything that involves trading, talking and relaxing should be a mass player base.

LOL typing boozed doesn't seem to help my ability to make sense

What I meant was that I'd like to be able to come back here online and say "hey guys, the other day I came across this odd looking chap..." and for you guys to be able to say "Yeah I've seen that one as well." In my opinion it's quite nice to have some game experience parallels.

 

[JohannStrauss]

LOL typing boozed doesn't seem to help my ability to make sense

What I meant was that I'd like to be able to come back here online and say "hey guys, the other day I came across this odd looking chap..." and for you guys to be able to say "Yeah I've seen that one as well." In my opinion it's quite nice to have some game experience parallels.

I get it NOW!

Yes, some sort of basis point from where the alien species start would be nice. Perhaps the same races for all - but a different social evolution? But your recommendation of SPORE does not make sense then...

Perhaps the same EVIL alien species?

There should be an unique development in every players universe, starting at the generating of the "outer rim" sectors of the stars- while NOT ignoring the origin of ELITE's idea of implying the original milky way structure. That should be fixed - but the social development of the systems should be unique- perhaps the "far-away" outposts could get random inhabitants/orbital space stations and political structures. In would be very boring (like in EVE) when the whole Universe is shared by every player - no secrets left then. Randomization at the beginning and creative development of the political events may be solution - with fixed alien races set.

 

[Steve O B Have]

Ah I see where the confusion came from. The SPORE suggestion was based on general characters that populate bars and the general people that you might walk past in the hallway on a space station or at a space port. Just so there is some real variation on the faces and build of the people you see all the time in game. Also the people that you talk to when you deal with a black market person or passengers to carry - all generated by real people and then synchronised online to other peoples games.

 

[The Space Pirate]

Another date from play.com, but this one seems a lot more realistic:

http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/680942/-/Product.html?searchstring=Elite+IV&searchsource=0

 

[DraQ]

Multiplayer means no huge newtonian systems, means no buy.