The in-game store is (almost) useless in its current form

Old Duck

Old Duck
So here's my afternoon - I wanted to edit my holo-me, and missing the glasses I had for free on PS4, I checked to see if they were back. They are! They're not free anymore, but 20 Arx isn't a bad price, so I decide to earn some Arx to buy these. I fly to the local RES, shoot up some ships, and come back to the station to cash in my bounties. Of course the lovely blue STORE icon is in my face, but can I buy anything from in the game right now? No. I have to log out to the main menu in order to earn my gameplay Arx.

So I log out to the main menu, get my new Arx, and then I figure I'll use the store from the main menu before signing off for the day. Strangely, while the store is in my face in the station menu, it's not so obvious in the main menu, but I do find it. After scouring the store for a bit, I come to realize that there are no Holo-me cosmetics in the store. And while we do have a Livery available from the main menu, there is no Holo-me. This means that I have to log back into the game in order to activate the Holo-me editor to purchase my glasses. After all of this bouncing back and forth, I am finally able to sign off.

At no time did I (or could I) use the STORE icon to achieve my goal of purchasing cosmetics....

Does this seem intuitive to you?

Old Duck.jpg
 
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Schmack

Schmack
Instead of getting the big blue triangle in the middle of your screen when you complete a mission, have the "ARX GAINED" big blue square spam the canopy, then immediately give you an option to access the store. You have to click "err.. not right now, I don't have enough Arx" at which point you'll be redirected to "buy more Arx" option. You have to click "No thanks" then "yes I am sure" then "no I don't need to reconsider" then "yes I am sure I don't need to reconsider" then you'll be back in your ship after Covas says "fine, just don't complain about lack of content".
 

VR Jay Le Chardon

VR Jay Le Chardon
And then; after you log out, you are reminded how many arx you arened, which automatically draws your eyes to your current tally of ARX, both of which create more temptation moments.As someone who has given the store a lot of money, for me to be complaining about and rebelling against the current omnipresent posturing of ARX, it must be in really bad taste...
 

znôrt

znôrt
Old Duck said:
I have to log out to the main menu in order to earn my gameplay Arx.
Click to expand...

i agree it's messy, clumsy and ... just dumb.

however, it's just about arx and cosmetics. now image for a moment (and try to correctly factor in frontier's level of technical prowess in this field) that whatever fix is implemented for this to have arx tracked seamlessly just introduces more lag, load or even bugs and any kind of awkwardness in general to, you know, actual gameplay ... is that really what you want?

my suggestion: just let it be.
my disclaimer: my suggestion might be biased since i can't be arxed to give an arx about arx.

Old Duck said:
Does this seem intuitive to you?
Click to expand...

it doesn't look like an old duck for sure! epic avatar fail. get back to pssssland and come back when you qualify! :p
 

Schmack

Schmack
m0rl0ck said:
I propose we coin the term arxed up to describe the current state of game, store, and arx.
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"Did you say coin? That reminds me, we offer Arx which is the ED form of coins in the game! Just head on over to the Store and buy your Arx now!" -Alexa
 

Hacker#451563

Hacker#451563
You lot are so spoiled, my chinese gf plays chinese mobile games all the time and when she finishes a battle or match or whatever, she has to go through about 6 or 7 different screens offering her various power-up skins or gems or something and every few matches she has to sit through an unskipable advert for another game entirely (but still made by...yup, 10 CENT) if she wants to carry on playing.

Then she is so suprised that I actually pay for games and don't just download free ones.
 

Shiro Akai

Shiro Akai
I'm really amazed how FDEVs manage to code things that are that unintuitive, weird and sometimes plain dumb. It's just mind blowing and I start to think it's made with lots of actual effort - take simple thing like in-game shop. Simple indeed - add new button to UI that opens new window in which you can browse items and actually buy them if you have funds (Warframe, SWTOR, hell - even WoW to some extent).

Now I believe FDEVs have some truly skilled developer who takes that simple thing and sit for days trying to make it as hard and difficult to use as possible. So simple shop UI... let's make Arx being applied AFTER you log out. And let's hide shop icon in menu behind Extras. Oh... what a great idea - lets' put just paintjobs there. For holo me it will be accessible via holo me menu WHILE being online...

And let's not forget to add obliogatory shop camera bindings. Because trivial LMB hold to rotate is too easy - players MUST bind additional commands just to rotate ship model. Ofc it will break shop scrolling ability but that's just bonus.

Oh, you wanted to preview paintjob from the middle column and rotate ship? Well, tough luck as you must move cursor to the ship area and whioe doing so you'll hover over paintjob you didn't want to preview so in the end you see what you did not want.

Because click to select to preview with separate button to buy is too simple.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
znôrt said:
i agree it's messy, clumsy and ... just dumb.

however, it's just about arx and cosmetics. now image for a moment (and try to correctly factor in frontier's level of technical prowess in this field) that whatever fix is implemented for this to have arx tracked seamlessly just introduces more lag, load or even bugs and any kind of awkwardness in general to, you know, actual gameplay ... is that really what you want?

my suggestion: just let it be.
my disclaimer: my suggestion might be biased since i can't be arxed to give an arx about arx.
Click to expand...
My suggestion isn't to make Arx even more integrated into the game itself, but rather move the store completely out of the game and make it more of a focus of the main menu. Along with this, Holo-me items should be in the store, and a Holo-me editor should be available from the main menu just like our Livery is.

At this point, I'd even recommend moving the Livery and Holo-me out of the game, since all these things are external to gameplay anyway. The fact that our ship has a button on the control panel that changes our face is kinda immersion-breaking itself if you give it any thought. While we're at it, rename "Holo-me" to "Character design" so that I'm not confused to think myself a hologram!
 

CMDR Carbo

CMDR Carbo
Shiro Akai said:
I'm really amazed how FDEVs manage to code things that are that unintuitive, weird and sometimes plain dumb. It's just mind blowing and I start to think it's made with lots of actual effort - take simple thing like in-game shop. Simple indeed - add new button to UI that opens new window in which you can browse items and actually buy them if you have funds (Warframe, SWTOR, hell - even WoW to some extent).

Now I believe FDEVs have some truly skilled developer who takes that simple thing and sit for days trying to make it as hard and difficult to use as possible. So simple shop UI... let's make Arx being applied AFTER you log out. And let's hide shop icon in menu behind Extras. Oh... what a great idea - lets' put just paintjobs there. For holo me it will be accessible via holo me menu WHILE being online...

And let's not forget to add obliogatory shop camera bindings. Because trivial LMB hold to rotate is too easy - players MUST bind additional commands just to rotate ship model. Ofc it will break shop scrolling ability but that's just bonus.

Oh, you wanted to preview paintjob from the middle column and rotate ship? Well, tough luck as you must move cursor to the ship area and whioe doing so you'll hover over paintjob you didn't want to preview so in the end you see what you did not want.

Because click to select to preview with separate button to buy is too simple.
Click to expand...

To me this shows a lack of supervision and coordination. Not mainly the individual developers fault, but poor leadership.
Seems like dev A does something in that part of the UI, dev B does it completely different in another part of the UI, there is no coordination, no cross-talk, it looks like different things put together. When deploying the patch dev A's code probably breaks something in dev B's code and vice versa, because nobody ever looked at both of the devs changes and how they interact, ergo parts of the game break completely.
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
CMDR Carbo said:
To me this shows a lack of supervision and coordination. Not mainly the individual developers fault, but poor leadership.
Seems like dev A does something in that part of the UI, dev B does it completely different in another part of the UI, there is no coordination, no cross-talk, it looks like different things put together. When deploying the patch dev A's code probably breaks something in dev B's code and vice versa, because nobody ever looked at both of the devs changes and how they interact, ergo parts of the game break completely.
Click to expand...

I suspect they're precious or political about their own work too. Evidence:

  • Seems noone was able to provide feedback to Sandro about how fun crime and punishment was.
  • Seems noone was able to provide feedback to X dev about how awesome screen tinting is.

Either that or they just work off requirements documents, ie, someone is given something from whatever a game design version of a business analyst is and they have to just design / build what they're given without any scope of change.

You have to assume that all people involved are working the best they can, but somehow stuff like this actually makes it into the game.. curious.
 
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