Would you buy a single player narrative DLC for ED?

[IamMe]

Elite doesn't have good gameplay mehanics or sandbox fetures to create quality campaign!
It would be boring and repetetive, only movie animations would make it look as a campaign.
Maybe some day if they add legs and atmos!

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Elite doesn't have good gameplay mehanics or sandbox fetures to create quality campaign!
It would be boring and repetetive, only movie animations would make it look as a campaign.
Maybe some day if they add legs and atmos!

Whats a good gameplay mechanic when you see one and what are sandbox features?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Elite doesn't have good gameplay mehanics or sandbox fetures to create quality campaign!
It would be boring and repetetive, only movie animations would make it look as a campaign.
Maybe some day if they add legs and atmos!

well I respect your opinion but i do not share it..... imo it does not take much to make a compelling narrative in what is otherwise an open sandbox.

i think back at all the space games i played back in the day, and they did not have planetary landing AT ALL let alone space legs. imo there is heaps FD could do with the existing content WRT a decent enough narrative lead journey. one day i would love the procedural tech to be up to it, but until then a hand crafted adventure could pass the time just fine. .... so long as not too expensive and fully optional.

i really hope that leaked video IS something and not just a development dead end which made it out to the wild.

 

[Old Duck]

Games like GTA V have a single player campaign in their open world sandbox. When you're done with the campaign it becomes a pure sandbox. They then sell a few DLC additional campaigns.

Is this possible in ED? Would you buy a DLC single-player campaign that had a story and was only playable in SOLO?

I'm stuck in Solo these days, and I would love to have "quests" that were story-driven instead of these cookie-cutter repetitive missions. If it's paid DLC, then it should have quality voice-acting and cut scenes similar to Frontier's promotional trailers. Give us proper NPCs with actual personality, not just RNG ships that all have the humanity of an ATM machine.. In fact, give us NPC wings to join up with and perhaps even an NPC copilot to bond with as part of the story.

Some people will say that we're not the hero of the story, but we can easily be the hero of a story. Drew Wager's first book Reclamation was set in the ED galaxy, yet it was relatively small in scope. I don't expect to save an entire planet, but it would be cool to be part of "someone's" story. Without a good story, ED is just another Michael Bay movie.

 

[CMDR-AD]

...imo it does not take much to make a compelling narrative in what is otherwise an open sandbox.

I tend to agree. A compelling narrative can be done in a text adventure, with only typing as the mechanic. The key is presenting story within which a player's choices have consequences. IMO, *this* is the biggest missing aspect in Elite Dangerous sandbox play. Little to nothing I do matters, or has repercussions on later encounters.

And yes, I do understand that by keeping "consequences" at little to zero, sure it makes doing anything, anytime, for any reason, more accessible and keeps the game "fun" and "light".

But some sense of consequence is what I'd want from a narrative based campaign. A feeling of personal or even moral choice in determining my path of action.

By comparison, if a paid narrative DLC was simply a set of follow the bouncing-ball type missions, separated by cut scenes, which all result in exactly the same result (yay, you get X and unlock Y), then no... no way I'd pay. Something like that would just be essentially a hand-holding path of encouragement to ease doing some otherwise dull unlock/ranking task.

 

[Sylow]

The problem I would have with such a concept is this: what would be the "point"? Would you, at the end of The Quest, receive some particular useful benefit - a special weapon mod, access to a new ship type, an NPC pilot with extra skills, or anything else really that you could then use in-game forever afterwards in the game, in any mode?

If the answer is "yes", then it really is a pay-to-win scenario.

If the answer is "no", then I get back to the "what's the point" question. You've basically paid FD some money to play a separate mini-game for a while. Why not pay FD, or some other software company, just as much money to play a completely separate game for a little while instead?

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I think you already outlined the point, although not mentioning it: Yes, it would be a separate game. Just on the same game engine and in the same universe. But as long as the other game would be fun, it would be great. I would buy and play it. I really enjoyed games like Wing Commander, Starlancer, I-Wars2, etc. in the past. Having something like that in the ED universe would definitely get the money from me.
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At the same time, it'd have a massive other advantage: it'd be less of a time eater. The mere size of ED and the time it takes to get to a bigger ship was enough for several of my friends to not even try ED. You can spend hundreds of hours here to buy, upgrade and especially engineer ships. It got better, but it's still a looong path for the new player.
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For those people, a campaign version of this game, with like 30 hours of playtime, looks much more interesting. Between work and family, that'd still last them for several weeks, but they'd actually appreciate it much more than the base game. So it could be just the way onto those peoples computers, who were scared away be the mere size of ED.
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Next to that, just when writing this, I realized another aspect: among my friends, we already agreed to get MechWarrior 5 when it comes out, and play through it together. After all, it promises that you can do all the campaign in cooperative mode. ED already has net code and everything. The P2P system, while still not being my favorite, is even perfect for that. So the "narrative mode" version of ED could very well come with coop. Being able to play through some story together would be awesome.
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Of course, that's all just dreaming and painting a picture of how great it could be. But hey, from a mechanical point of view, most of what a campaign mode of ED would need is already there. It would "only" require some good story writing and a lot of fine tuning in the presentation, voice acting, etc. (Whereas "only" probably would still require a year or more of dedicated work of a good team. But that's not my problem. I just dream... )
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