Frontier could add optional story-driven gameplay as DLC, however. Spider-Man on PS4 gives players this lovely "world" to explore and interact in, and there is always crime to fight and good deeds to do and things to see. However, its the narrative-driven missions that really give the player purpose. Of course the game comes with a huge story to complete, but after that you can download additional DLC with new stories that take place in NYC using your customized Spider-Man "build".Thing is you can do what you want - but if you are looking for a direct narrative to guide your gameplay towards an 'end game' then do not hold your breath.
It need not be so grandiose. I don't think OP wants to be Luke Skywalker blowing up the original Death Star. We don't need to save THE princess, but in a galaxy with over 22,000 inhabited solar systems, surely we could each save A "princess", metaphorically-speaking. I often enjoy side-quests as much or more than main quests in Open-world games, as long as the story behind those quests are good.The main problem is that for any part of the game to be relevant/good it has to effect the game environment in some way - you know a mission will end up with you blowing up a station or some such.
It need not be so grandiose. I don't think OP wants to be Luke Skywalker blowing up the original Death Star. We don't need to save THE princess, but in a galaxy with over 22,000 inhabited solar systems, surely we could each save A "princess", metaphorically-speaking. I often enjoy side-quests as much or more than main quests in Open-world games, as long as the story behind those quests are good.
FWIW, when I first started playing Elite, missions were these "quests", and I enjoyed them because they were fresh and new. However, it didn't take long before I realized there is just a handful of mission types that are reused over and over again, with no actual story or narrative behind them. This is different than a game like Skyrim, where I felt a personal attachment to different NPCs after helping them, and I also felt closer to the game world in general as I progressed through the numerous story lines, adventures, quests, etc.
Oh, and those adventures and quests were almost always fun. The only grinding I did was to level up certain skills, and that was my fault.
What kind of gameplay are you looking for. Give some examples of some mechanics you want in the game.I think ED could become much better if some kind of game-play was added. The space-flying bit is really good (apart from the FSS, of course) all it needs now is the game to go with it. Hopefully this will be part of the New Order in 2020.
Fingers crossed!
Thing is, there's in-game rewards and then there's gameplay rewards. For example, I've been playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider recently. I've already unlocked and improved all the weapons and skills I'm interested in. I don't need any more in-game rewards, but I still get great pleasure exploring and solving tombs, talking to people and learning their stories, finding artifacts and documents and learning those stories - all things that don't "reward" me in any way except the experience itself.In games like Skyrim, sidequests are things you do that take you to places or make you do activities that you wouldn't normally do. You're then rewarded appropriately for the time and effort you put in.
However, in ED, missions are used primarily to earn large amounts of money for doing the thing that you were already going to do. The rewards are (generally) vastly out of proportion for the effort involved.
Thing is, there's in-game rewards and then there's gameplay rewards. For example, I've been playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider recently. I've already unlocked and improved all the weapons and skills I'm interested in. I don't need any more in-game rewards, but I still get great pleasure exploring and solving tombs, talking to people and learning their stories, finding artifacts and documents and learning those stories - all things that don't "reward" me in any way except the experience itself.
Now I suppose I could go to every abandoned INARA base and generation ship in the game and download the audio files, but for some reason this gameplay is nowhere near as fulfilling for the amount of work (when are we getting a mega ship taxi to the Formidine Rift?) required to visit them. As for puzzles, I much rather solve a Tomb in ROTR than solve a Guardian puzzle (I usually just cheat by looking it up) or worse, doing pen and paper cryptography on unregistered beacons and looking at audio files using Audacity.
Anyway, you get the point...