Why can we only Land on Barren Planets after almost 5 years?

[IndigoWyrd]

True! I'd happily have forgone:-

• CQC: Why wasn't this time dedicated to creating fight based gameplay in the core game. eg: Holo-meing into a fighter in a mission/task to undertake some PvE (or PvP) combat within a scenario?

This died the moment they didn’t allow the import of over-engineered warvetts so people could just park them while enjoying themselves to the latest Piper Peri video while telling themselves what great players they are.

Engineers V1: Needless bar raising performance at the expence of game unbalancing to create shallow busy work.

So Engineers turned out to be nothing like I thought it would be. Ok. As for “busy work” it’s pretty much a staple of any game. You want upgrades, you spend time doing things to get them. That’s pretty much how games work.

Engineers V2: To try and take the rough edges off "the shallow busy work".

The results are better, the system’s worse. In all, zero sum.

Asteroid Stations: My email to some friends at the time of its release:-

These are the hub of all the new piracy mechanics where you can build up a piracy reputation and inturn gain access to these hidden nefarious location. You can then obtain new challenging piracy based missions and access to more rewarding black markets etc. Oh! I misread the release notes... They're just like normal stations...​

​

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Frontier is not responsible for whatever misinformation you send out via e-mail.​

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The Thargoid Invasion: A squandered opportunity! Wait until there's some actual more involved assets/features/mechanics in the game to leverage to make something of this invasion, such as more involved combat scenarios. As it is, the opportunity has been squandered on basically just offering mini-game boss fights as part of an invasion we can all but watch occur as a Thursday server tick.​

​

​

Didn’t care about them before, didn’t care during, don’t care now. They’re just NPC Pirates in tough artichoke ships. Wee.​

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Generation Ships: How many Generation Ships has your average CMDR been to? One? None?

Been to all of them.

Guardian/Thargoid Bases: How many of these are sitting there collecting dust?

Go check and let us know.

Multicrew: Probably the worst example of FD's poor management and design ethos. How this ever got out of design meetings I'll never know, let alone to the position of having hundreds/thousands of man hours thrown at little more than creating a development headache going forwards.

Aww, don’t they like you pew pew the big guns?
This is pretty much just urinating and moaning without even any substance. Like when one dog hears another barking and just has to join in. Multi Crew is just fine when you and those with whom you are connected have good connections. When one of you doesn’t, it sucks for everyone.

...if it had meant more involved meaty exploration via atmospheric worlds, at least of some types.

Come the big release end of next year, if a bucket load of time has been thrown at some more questionable designs/choices, I think I might just cry

Here’s a tissue.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

...

So Engineers turned out to be nothing like I thought it would be. Ok. As for “busy work” it’s pretty much a staple of any game. You want upgrades, you spend time doing things to get them. That’s pretty much how games work.

...

Well, other games don't outright nerf the stuff you collected with considerable time investment. Usually new content to grind for goes in new areas, so vanilla stuff isn't too badly outclassed. ED went the cheap route, however and spilled the stuff all over the place. Happy peashooting times.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Well, other games don't outright nerf the stuff you collected with considerable time investment. Usually new content to grind for goes in new areas, so vanilla stuff isn't too badly outclassed. ED went the cheap route, however and spilled the stuff all over the place. Happy peashooting times.

Since my Elite experience isn’t centered around who or what I can blow up, I’m not well qualified to speak to this. What was so badly nerfed?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Well, other games don't outright nerf the stuff you collected with considerable time investment. Usually new content to grind for goes in new areas, so vanilla stuff isn't too badly outclassed. ED went the cheap route, however and spilled the stuff all over the place. Happy peashooting times.

LOTRO crafting system is far worse then the engineers.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Since my Elite experience isn’t centered around who or what I can blow up, I’m not well qualified to speak to this. What was so badly nerfed?

Killspeed. Isn't fun wailing with peashooters on bulletsponges.

 

[Vandaahl]

LOTRO crafting system is far worse then the engineers.

No mans sk...
God, the thought alone.
"Units received"

thud

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

LOTRO crafting system is far worse then the engineers.

Haven't played that. The only MMO I played was SWTOR.
I guess you can count Warframe, too? At least it's a grind looter shooter. However, never seen my stuff outright nerfed to oblivion there. There is new stuff to grind for, but it's actually quite accessible.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I'll make an example of what I would expect.
IMHO at this point after all the speculations and the leak about space legs they should come up with a generic statement like:
"there were a lot or rumors in the past few months about Space Legs, I can confirm that the dev team started working on this and that there will be some EVA in the new era but at this point we can't say yet how much we can add to the game and how deep this will be, but be sure you'll be able to get up from your seat and explore places in first person, standing on your legs".
BOOM!

If they can't make any announcement about legs because they are not developing space legs then you can be sure that this silence will not save the game from a massive disappointment next year anyway.
Instead it would be better to say it now when most players attention is focused on other games, rather than waiting next year when the hype will be at much higher levels.

For my part, I prefer the atmospheric planets, but here too it is total silence.

If there are no planets with fauna and flora I will be very disappointed.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Oh, actually Warframe took away some stuff I collected. Some resource changes. But they gave me a compensation for it, so I could continue from there.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Not really. Lets say the community is split 33/33/33 between space legs, atmo and [everything else]. Saying it'll be space legs will immediately disappoint 66% of the community. The remainder will be split 33/33/33 between 'yeah but they will probably do spacelegs wrong so boo', 'man this is going to be awesome cant wait to [insert absurd expectation], and finally the more realistic folks. That means almost 90% will be disappointed by the announcement for various reasons and this will stay until FD can show something solid, something that gives the previous nay-sayers hope it is going to be more fun than expected and prevents too much theorycrafting.

If they just say 'spacelegs' it'll be two days of celebrating by the small happy group and then endless complaining and doomsaying from the rest.

They must do the three possibilities !

 

[NeilF]

So Engineers turned out to be nothing like I thought it would be. Ok. As for “busy work” it’s pretty much a staple of any game. You want upgrades, you spend time doing things to get them. That’s pretty much how games work.

True, but when considerable effort is put into a new feature for the game, which actually creates a system which IMHO seriously/needlessly unbalanced gameplay (PvE & PvP), and which for all that development time doesn't really create more involved/deeper gameplay, but instead urges/requires CMDRs to sit in existing grind loop gameplay... Then hmmm from me at least.

Frontier is not responsible for whatever misinformation you send out via e-mail.

True, but they are responsible for repeatedly choosing to design shallow bolt on development choices, instead of allocating that time and effort to creating more involved gameplay. Case in hand being after 5+ years, piracy is still a shallow/no-existent "career". But there's plenty of development time for numerous shallow bolt ons (many of which are collecting dust for most of the community now)?

It's as if for the past four or so years there's been almost no desire to move gameplay/mechanics depth into more involved/deeper areas. Instead we've seen more shallow bolt-on affairs being added (IMHO).

This is pretty much just urinating and moaning without even any substance. Like when one dog hears another barking and just has to join in. Multi Crew is just fine when you and those with whom you are connected have good connections. When one of you doesn’t, it sucks for everyone.

Not at all, and you're missing the point I feel - Multicrew was a significant mistake IMHO; Many areas of the gameplay in ED are already fairly simple, so as was pointed out when Multicrew was first mentioned by FD, breaking up a CMDR's roles into smaller ones, risks these resultant roles being very simple and shallow. And this is the reason why most of the community I suspect simply rarely, if ever, Multicrew. What is enjoyable about undertaking an extremely small/simple feature, when you could instead be controlling a whole ship?

And we need only look at things such as the new exploration mechanics and Mining 2.0, and how these (do not) add more depth and features for multicrew to utilise, to realise even FD seem to think Multicrew is seemingly best forgotten about now! These two developments could easily have added more feature/depth for Multicrew, but did not - It's as if even FD have forgotten it's there, or simply consider it "done" instead of taking the opportunity to bolster and improve it with a little effort and consideration!

Here’s a tissue.

EDIT: Apologies, I think I mis-understood your post... So edited!

Your comment was actually too clever for me and I missed its sarcasm.... So apologies again!

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Killspeed. Isn't fun wailing with peashooters on bulletsponges.

Shoot better bullets?

 

[Hanerib]

I tried multicrew once, it was someones warvette facetanking an artichoke and then FPS got so low nothing worked anymore, it was a strange experience.

 

[Vandaahl]

A certain other game launched 1 1/3rd years after ED and has 10000 times more variety in land-able planets. It has many different kinds of alien creatures, vegetation, you can even travel underwater in a submarine. The procedural generation of planets in ED is very basic comparatively.

Lmao, really? You really mean that train wreck NMS? After all this time, they still haven't paid back what they lied about and what was shown in actual game play before release. Every time I played that... game , I wanted to punch an elephant after 15 minutes, if you lick the screen it changes color, and you want FD to do the same ?

We, we're, we, We want...

No, you. If you want NMS II, have fun with the first, first.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

True! I'd happily have forgone:-

• CQC: Why wasn't this time dedicated to creating fighter based gameplay in the core game. eg: Holo-meing into a fighter in a mission/task to undertake some PvE (or PvP) combat within a scenario? Right now we could have been holo-meing into fighters at a capital ship to fight off Thargoid scouts as part of a mission/task/CG!
• Engineers V1: Needless bar raising performance at the expense of unbalancing the game (PvE & PvP) to create shallow busy work.
• Engineers V2: To try and take the rough edges off "the shallow busy work".
• Asteroid Stations: My email to some friends at the time of its release:-
  
  These are the hub of all the new piracy mechanics where you can build up a piracy reputation and inturn gain access to these hidden nefarious location. You can then obtain new challenging piracy based missions and access to more rewarding black markets etc. Oh! I misread the release notes... They're just like normal stations...​
• The Thargoid Invasion: A squandered opportunity! Wait until there's some actual more involved assets/features/mechanics in the game to leverage to make something of this invasion, such as more involved combat scenarios. As it is, the opportunity has been squandered on basically just offering mini-game boss fights as part of an invasion we can all but watch occur as a Thursday server tick.
• Generation Ships: How many Generation Ships has your average CMDR been to? One? None?
• Guardian/Thargoid Bases: How many of these are sitting there collecting dust?
• Multicrew: Probably the worst example of FD's poor management and design ethos. How this ever got out of design meetings I'll never know, let alone to the position of having hundreds/thousands of man hours thrown at little more than creating a development headache going forwards.

...if it had meant more involved meaty exploration via atmospheric worlds, at least of some types.

Come the big release end of next year, if a bucket load of time has been thrown at some more questionable designs/choices, I think I might just cry

Interesting list.

CQC i think (without any proof) that that was pushed on them by MS. On the other hand, it could have been their own idea. I'm not sure why anyone would think that a separate game (effecitvely) was a good idea though. Still, it is a good game in its own right, just no reason to play it. If they put a bit more effort into it, make earnings better, allowed queing from the main game, added bots, and (my personal favourite) allow your upgrades to be fitted to your SLFs, i'd be playing it a lot more.

Engineers is a tricky one. People were crying out for "crafting". You surely remember all the forum posts about people saying how the game needed crafting (because every MMO apparently has crafting, and how its essential, etc). I do actually like engineering, and i liked the original system as well, although prefer the new system overall. However, i could happily have waited years for that if it had meant other things more important for me came first.

Asteroid stations - love the visuals, i don't mind that they are just regular stations. At least it means they didn't have to spend any extra dev time giving them new mechanics. Just new visuals, but i'm fine with that. Quite happy they added them.

Thargoid invastion. I think this is one thing where they either needed to be at one extreme or another. Basically this very slow paced story with updates every few months, is frankly boring. I think they should have either gone all in, with weekly story updates, pushing us through the events in real time. A "DM" making events happen in real time. Server wide announcements as things happen. But, i'm willing to accept, that was probably too much, so in that case, the other extreme to me seems preferrable. Just add them as more static content. "The thargoids are out there, you might encounter them from time to time". Like NPCs and whatnot. ED isn't a single player story based game and they don't seem to want to make the dynamic like some other online games do for unfolding stories, so just have them as just another type of NPC and stop spending effort of a slow paced story that isn't particularly engaging.

Generation ships i'm fine with. Its mainly models, some flavour text, and something you can come across. I don't think it was a major dev effort.

Guardian/Thargoid bases i'm ok with in general. A nice addition, gave the galaxy some non-human locations. I've had some fun unlocking the bases and stuff. Should it have been done before atmospheric worlds? Hmm... i'd say no. For a start, it constrained FD in relation to lore. Thargoids only place their structures on airless worlds? Why? I thought they were ammonia based? Surely they should be there. Guardian bases? What, every single world they built bases on are were somehow transformed into airless ones because of their war? Come off it.

Multicrew. Yeah, it could have been handled better. Perhaps FD feel it could have been handed better. And where are my NPCs in my cockpit? Regardless, i think multicrew was a necessary first step, and better sooner rather than later. The gunner role i think could have been ditched until we get space legs. Just make it a SLF feature and sitting in cockput with basic features as a first step until space legs is a thing. But if space legs is coming, and we will be able to enter each other's ships, i think their work on multicrew was probably essential, as it would have taught them a lot about the issues relating to having multiple people in ships. Of course, we need to see how they handle space legs as well.

Now, i'm going to possibly upset Rubbernuke here (if he reads this), but i'm going to say i wish they hadn't spent time on Powerplay. Not only did it take development time to make, they then spent a lot of resources over the years trying to tweak it and support it.

Of course, even that amount of effort probably pales into comparison with the amount of effort atmospheric planets would take, but it might be a decent chunk.

 

[[VR] wi03016]

for now many players move to NMS and left ED behind

From what we have been told, ED has the biggest team at FDev Towers.

They have a big team but there's no essential outcome nor communication... Strange!

 

[Old Duck]

This is turning into another ADS vs FSS thread.

 

[NeilF]

Interesting list.

CQC i think (without any proof) that that was pushed on them by MS. On the other hand, it could have been their own idea. I'm not sure why anyone would think that a separate game (effecitvely) was a good idea though. Still, it is a good game in its own right, just no reason to play it. If they put a bit more effort into it, make earnings better, allowed queing from the main game, added bots, and (my personal favourite) allow your upgrades to be fitted to your SLFs, i'd be playing it a lot more.

Engineers is a tricky one. People were crying out for "crafting". You surely remember all the forum posts about people saying how the game needed crafting (because every MMO apparently has crafting, and how its essential, etc). I do actually like engineering, and i liked the original system as well, although prefer the new system overall. However, i could happily have waited years for that if it had meant other things more important for me came first.

Asteroid stations - love the visuals, i don't mind that they are just regular stations. At least it means they didn't have to spend any extra dev time giving them new mechanics. Just new visuals, but i'm fine with that. Quite happy they added them.

Thargoid invastion. I think this is one thing where they either needed to be at one extreme or another. Basically this very slow paced story with updates every few months, is frankly boring. I think they should have either gone all in, with weekly story updates, pushing us through the events in real time. A "DM" making events happen in real time. Server wide announcements as things happen. But, i'm willing to accept, that was probably too much, so in that case, the other extreme to me seems preferrable. Just add them as more static content. "The thargoids are out there, you might encounter them from time to time". Like NPCs and whatnot. ED isn't a single player story based game and they don't seem to want to make the dynamic like some other online games do for unfolding stories, so just have them as just another type of NPC and stop spending effort of a slow paced story that isn't particularly engaging.

Generation ships i'm fine with. Its mainly models, some flavour text, and something you can come across. I don't think it was a major dev effort.

Guardian/Thargoid bases i'm ok with in general. A nice addition, gave the galaxy some non-human locations. I've had some fun unlocking the bases and stuff. Should it have been done before atmospheric worlds? Hmm... i'd say no. For a start, it constrained FD in relation to lore. Thargoids only place their structures on airless worlds? Why? I thought they were ammonia based? Surely they should be there. Guardian bases? What, every single world they built bases on are were somehow transformed into airless ones because of their war? Come off it.

Multicrew. Yeah, it could have been handled better. Perhaps FD feel it could have been handed better. And where are my NPCs in my cockpit? Regardless, i think multicrew was a necessary first step, and better sooner rather than later. The gunner role i think could have been ditched until we get space legs. Just make it a SLF feature and sitting in cockput with basic features as a first step until space legs is a thing. But if space legs is coming, and we will be able to enter each other's ships, i think their work on multicrew was probably essential, as it would have taught them a lot about the issues relating to having multiple people in ships. Of course, we need to see how they handle space legs as well.

Now, i'm going to possibly upset Rubbernuke here (if he reads this), but i'm going to say i wish they hadn't spent time on Powerplay. Not only did it take development time to make, they then spent a lot of resources over the years trying to tweak it and support it.

Of course, even that amount of effort probably pales into comparison with the amount of effort atmospheric planets would take, but it might be a decent chunk.

Well, IMHO, Powerplay, The Thargoid Invasion and missions in general all suffer from FD not investing effort into make more involved/deeper gameplay mechanics, such as combat scenarios.

An example I've mentioned before was if CQC had been pushed into the core game, along with some basic combat scenarios - eg: You can undertake a mission where you holo-me into a fighter at a capital ship and you're given three NPCs in fighter who you can give simple commands to (attack this, defend that). You then have to escort a convoy of ships through some way points in an asteroid field to the safety of a final asteroid station. etc...

Consider those mechanics then being leveraged for Powerplay tasks. Consider the game even orchestrating specialised tasks in OPEN only where CMDRs in opposing Powers can undertake these scenarios as PvP? ie: Fighter vs fighter gameplay within combat scenarios to affect some Powerplay outcome.

Consider those mechanics then being leveraged in the Thargoid Invasion. Where you can can enter a form of Powerplay view specifically for the Thargoid position, and undertake tasks to affect the Thargoid's position. eg: The above scenario could be leveraged to escort goods (under attack from Thargoid scouts) for military purposes, or civilians to safety.

And other such mechanics and scenarios could be added and then leveraged across numerous areas of the game. eg: Stealth based gameplay using cold/silent running in order to sneak into locations for nefarious/tactical reasons. eg: Sneaking into an area being patrolled (by pirates, a Powerplay power, Thargoids) in order to scan/destroy a specific asset.

But over the past 4-5yrs, instead of creating these more involved gameplay elements and mechanics to then leverage across the entire game, we have numerous more shallow bolts developed instead, leaving the core gameplay still rather shallow, at the detriment of the entire game. ie: With years of time to get some mechanics and gameplay in place to make the most of the Thargoid Invasion, this wasn't done, so we now instead basically have some mini-games battles we can jump/spawn into, and a magical Thursday morning tick... But there was plenty of time for Generation Ships and Multicrew etc...

 

[sandkid]

I'm a rather big fan of said 'other title' OP mentions but I think it bears pointing out the obvious:

Elite is a flight simulator not a build-in-space explorer.

This distinction is important because Elite was built, from the ground up, to have you sitting in a chair 'doing stuff in a vehicle mostly in space'. Planetary environments carry several benefits that make development much easier than space:

• Gravity makes planetary development much more 2D in nature
• Planetary development has natural limits (circumference or 'fenced in' areas) that aren't immersion-breaking
• Base-building gameplay makes sense on planets as this feels natural

In space, you have different challenges that are more difficult to overcome:

• Momentum in 3D space affects design of structures with 'difficulty of traversal' mattering more than 'sensibility'
• For space to feel 'immersive' it general must involve large distances and thus creates time-sinks that aren't fun. The alternative is to 'dump assets' around space within relatively short distances but then space feels cluttered and the primary reason for developing 'in space' ceases: to capture its vastness.
• When developing with realistic flight physics, strong lighting effects, and vehicular combat as cornerstones, developing gameplay outside of these becomes difficult because the gameplay loops will not mesh well. It can be done, but it often requires significant code rewriting.

Now let me be clear: I, too, am disappointed in Elite's development thus far. It has come far, to be sure, but I do not think it has gone far enough. The sheer scale of development of said 'other title' implies two potential truths (emphasis on potential):

• The 'other game' was built with a much better foundation that enables it to be easily added onto and thus expedites development. The art is not 'simpler', it is just different. The movement mechanics, though, are simpler and this almost certainly helps.
• Elite's foundational code is poorly designed and not conducive to updates and additions. Much of the features missing from the game already exist in other gaming example (so the code is not 'new territory') but either cannot be or with great difficulty be integrated into Elite. Thus, development is slow, arduous, and barely profitable.

I like to point out that Sean Murray has an interesting point of view on developing his team's title: they have considered doing a 'version 2.0' and launching a new game, but felt that it made sense to keep working on the existing title. There are many reasons for this but it is important to remember that HelloGames can choose to do so. Most developers cannot for very basic, economic reasons. Everything we see today could have been in an earlier version of Elite with enough time, effort, and resources.

While I do not support a rewrite of Elite: Dangerous, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if 2020 brings us a DLC that is intended to push the game off into the sunset for the foreseeable future while the next generation of the title begins development. History shows this to typically be the smartest economic decision for a developer and, at the end of the day, most developers are what they are for economic reasons (just like we all have our jobs for similar reasons).

As such, this is where comparisons between 'the other game' and Elite ought end. I wish FDev treated Elite like HelloGames treats its own title, but this is wishful thinking that ignores the very real economic forces at play. When games like Destiny are rewriting the code for their storefront every six months, its time for us as gamers to recognize studios like HelloGames are few and far between.

 

[Vandaahl]

for now many players move to NMS and left ED behind

...separating boys from men, nothing wrong with that. If you can bear the first, you don't belong in the last anyway