Who loves well chastises well.It turns out that a lot of people who post on here seem to hate the game
Interiors, why?
- Thread starter Gunther_Bladderburst
- Start date
Which is...?
The OP sees the huge ressource sink about to happen and sincerely wonders why you think it will be worth the effort.
The op thinks it is a bad idea because he knows what is involved and never saw a good implementation. In Silent Hunter 5 you had to physically roam the submarine and it made the gameplay worst.
I think that Elite should be more focused and polished instead of throwing itself in every direction.
So that’s why I asked why do you people long to do this when efforts could be put into polishing the already present features like making better missions and more varied content... like instead of remembering how this ship is the top 1% maybe spend a day filling a text file with more radio coms and then a week translating them...
I'd love that. I've been asking for revamps to core mechanics and placeholder content for years. The mining rework was nice, if a bit late. Most of the other reworks have been lackluster.
Odyssey is a major paid expansion meant to achieve one of the major milestones established by Frontier during preproduction. It's been 5 years since Horizons, we're past due for another big update. So what milestone expansion would you rather have them work on?
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It doesn't make much sense to discuss it, you will come up with another perceived problem anyway.
Your problem was: 'ship boarding would take more time and is more dangerous than hatch breaking, therefore it is a waste of time.'
Right?
Well the obvious solutions is, and it really takes less than 5 seconds to think about it, you could manage it as well...
Simply make it fun and rewarding. The fun part is probably difficult because some people don't like FPS gameplay. I guess there isn't much you can do about it.
Making it rewarding is pretty easy. If you board the enemy ship, you can steal it. That's what pirates always did.
What happens if your ship gets stolen?
The same thing that happens when it gets destroyed, insurance pays for it.
Isn't that too much easy money for the pirate?
He can only sell it for 5℅ (or whatever our current insurance cost is), because the ship is wanted.
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I think ED appeals to a lot of different gamer demographics and they (/we) all enjoy different parts of the game. As such it is quite expectable that many of us enjoy different features and dislike others (one persons meat is another's poison etc).Well, in my misguided start to this forum, I actually came here to discuss a game I love with likeminded people. It turns out that a lot of people who post on here seem to hate the game
Not aimed at anyone specifically but I don't think cart blanche telling someone their ideas are objectively rubbish is that helpful. Equally an argument over what is better land legs or EVA /space legs is never going to be resolved.
(Which is not to say we should not discuss which we as individuals would prefer ).
Me personally I would prefer space legs as well as ship interiors 1st because
1) I would rather FD fleshed out existing content expanding on it (and finishing it off?) Rather than new features potentially bare bones
2) I would say the bar is far higher for land legs. There are heaps of games which do land legs really well already.
3) I just feel spacey stuff is more suited to my vision of elite
But each of the above are just my view and there are perfectly sensible counterpoints to both the above. Ultimately in time I hope to get all the things
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The whole GTA in space idea is a nice thought experiment but probably a bit too controversial a rabbit hole to head down.
But, with the 5% rule actually might be worth running with.
You're right though. The typical person with the mindset I talked about will just say "how do you get it back to sell it, it's a terrible idea" so a bit futile to discuss it with someone with that mindset.
But then the obvious answer to that rebuttal is "you don't, you leave it where it is, go to the contact and they'll pay you 5% and they go get it.... That's why it's 5%"
But then they'll say "why would I want 5% of a Sidewinder" and so it'll go.
If you keep going long enough, they'll end up arguing points for the sake of it. To the point where it gets easy to say...
"why bother with scooping a ton of rutile now then?"
But that's not important to them. Logical fallacy isn't a problem. The fact they probably don't really love the game play we have now doesn't really matter either.
You hit the nail on the head with your comment about not liking fps games. It doesn't matter how cool a new feature could be. If the core game play isn't interesting to them they'll argue against it.
Usually by saying "fixing my ship on foot? That's a no from me"
But then maybe fdev lowered the expectation bar low enough to warrant that.
Anyway, we can talk about it. So stealing a ship would just be called "ship bonds" and pirates would need to sell theirs on a black market version. But bounty a hunter can also "impound" a wanted ship. The local authorities would pay the ship bonds instead.
I'm just going to say that boarding a ship to have a shootout where the prize could be a few million credits and you'd not need cargo space to store that prize would be a lot of fun.
I'd suggest 5% might need to be tweaked a bit. Or 5% plus a flat base rate per ship type. Because "why Sidewinder".
PS, the answer to that is "gotta start somewhere!"
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So, I'm running with it
Stealing a ship could have a difficulty associated with the size (or I'd say the cost) of the ship, roughly.
Let's say "death" in fps isn't death. I think that's a safe assumption. Death in our ships isn't death.
Let's say death is when our suit's integrity = 0%.
If that happens on our ship, we're out of action (Incapacitated). But medium or large ships can have suit regeneration suites (not small, they're too small to support). After x seconds, your suit will regenerate (or you respawn, whatever) and you're in the fight again.
The pirate has to hack the ship's computer to steal it. The time it takes is longer depending on the ship value (or just size).
The pirate can't regenerate their suit. Death for them sends them back to their ship, breaking the tether and freeing the target ship.
That tips the scales of balance quite a lot in favour of the defender. But that's important here.
Stealing a ship could have a difficulty associated with the size (or I'd say the cost) of the ship, roughly.
Let's say "death" in fps isn't death. I think that's a safe assumption. Death in our ships isn't death.
Let's say death is when our suit's integrity = 0%.
If that happens on our ship, we're out of action (Incapacitated). But medium or large ships can have suit regeneration suites (not small, they're too small to support). After x seconds, your suit will regenerate (or you respawn, whatever) and you're in the fight again.
The pirate has to hack the ship's computer to steal it. The time it takes is longer depending on the ship value (or just size).
The pirate can't regenerate their suit. Death for them sends them back to their ship, breaking the tether and freeing the target ship.
That tips the scales of balance quite a lot in favour of the defender. But that's important here.
By 'perceived problem', you mean, 'massive fundamental flaw', I assume? Hmmmm.
This has nothing to do with disliking fps gameplay, btw. I played about a thousand hours of Overwatch. So stop coming up with ridiculous reasons why I must be some sort of anti-fps prude. In fact, I think it could be quite good, IF it's done in a reasonable and efficient manner. On board ships simply fails to qualify for either of those metrics.
It takes more than just fun. It must be fun AND rewarding, or people will do it rarely if ever. CQC is very fun, for example, but also very rarely used. I personally only do it when I have 7 friends to do it with, and that only happens very rarely.
And besides that, there's zero reason why boarding a ship is a requirement for fun. The exact same player activity is going to be happening on the ground - fps combat - so who cares where it takes place? Except of course, doing it on board active ships causes a huge number of potential problems that a ground based arena does not, and requires an exponential increase in dev time, most of which would never even be relevant. Who's going to board an adder or a sidewinder? 90% of the ships in the game would have content that would never see use.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, stealing ships is just never, ever going to happen. It raises a huge number of problems. Can you just steal engineered modules? If not, why not? If so, you've just created a way to duplicate engineered stuff, which is insane and never going to happen. And even if it's only 5% of the total sell cost, many ships are worth over a billion credits. You're talking about giving players an exponential leap in income for 10 minutes of fps combat. Who cares about cargo piracy at that point, the money's in selling the ships.
The biggest reason why NOT to do ship interiors, especially in regards to fps combat, is because you don't have to. FPS combat works far better, and with far less issues to address, in new, purpose-built areas for this to take place. Trying to force it to work on ship interiors is forcing a square peg into a round hole. Even if you could potentially get it to work, it'll be ugly and not very practical.
I already mentioned NPC crew earlier, if Frontier added them your copilot could bring the ship to the next station.
Or you simply use the auto pilot function that is already in game, programming the ship to jump to the next station.
Both options would work similar to ship transfer. I actually like the idea of flying stolen ships, as soon as you get killed in it you lose it because no insurance company is going to pay for it. You would also be wanted in many systems, sounds like a good opportunity for gameplay. And the former owner could try to get it back...
Simply making it a bond as you said is another valid option though.
So your argument is that it's not rewarding enough but it's too rewarding. Well it's just like I said, a perceived problem. If I manage to steal a ship worth a few hundred millions and get 5% for it, why not? It would probably be a non trivial task to board a Corvette, involving defenses and maybe overcoming the ships crew. The whole process could easily take an hour. But in the end, you get a payout similar to mining or trading. People always say that crime doesn't pay in Elite, sounds like an ideal opportunity to address this problem.
That it involves effort is another non argument. Creating games requires effort. Following your logic Frontier should've never designed the cockpits because a simple HUD would've been enough.
By the way, overcoming problems is the integral part in design. And it doesn't matter if we are talking about games or designing a chair. You come up with an idea, identify the problems and find solutions for it. The way you address these problems is what shapes your product - you could say that the problems are the product because they are what dictates the final form. If desingers would be afraid of problems they would never get done with something, problems are inspiration.
Half if not most of the big ships in the game are owned by newbies. Facing AI and an inexperienced pilot will be gankers paradise.
You've not really addressed anything just excused the problems raised.
Even if you ignore the issues of raw income, you're missing the more fundamental problem; it's the fact that it's a simple replacement that renders another aspect of gameplay irrelevant. It's the exact same reason people are worried feet will just be SRV+; if it doesn't offer anything new, it'll either dominate and the old activity will be rendered obsolete, or it'll be inferior and the new activity will be irrelevant. Either way, the game remains the same size, and the effort was wasted. Worst of all, people who enjoy one will feel forced to do the other to achieve the best results.
FPS content should exist in its own distinct realm, where it can be outside of competition with other fields. It should expand the game, not just replace certain parts of it.
It'd be worth having fun discussing this with you with some ideas, come up with solutions but...
I guess that's not what you want.
By the way, your "problem" already exists in the game right now and has done since it began. Why would this be any different? Right now, an experienced player can find, interdict and destroy a newbie in a conda with relative ease. Odyssey will give us FPS combat and the suggestion is that there will be PVP elements. Perhaps Odyssey should be shut down because newbies will get killed? No, I think fdev will handle that "issue". Ship boarding would require an entirely different set of skills, an event where the "murderer" will have to take your ship.
I'd suggest the other "problem" that gets raised (why would anyone board a ship, why not just blow it up like we can now?) can be thrown back at you here. If no one would bother boarding ships, won't they just blow you up still, like they do now? Are you suggesting there might be a reason to board a ship based on what we suggest?
If you come up with constructive critiques, or at least come up with valid problems, with the intent to talk about it then that's one thing. But just "nah, that's a no from me" is pointless. Particularly when you back it up with "but you'll get gankers" as your leading "problem".
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But the amount of work required is largly irrelevant, Elite's major problems are not going to be solved by 3d artists are they? As mentioned new spacecraft add no new gameplay, other than (quelle suprise) a different looking interior cockpit and a different looking craft for screenshots. So why not put those 3d artists to use on interiors and ADD new gameplay elements, that fact you don't want those new elements is also largly irrelevant, just as my dislike for engineers is. I think I've spent around an hour tops faffing around with engineers, so all that work FD did was wasted for me personally. Others love engineers, others just use Engineers....same thing with Interiors, some will hate, some will love and some will just use.
As a newbie you could simply give up which would be the same result you have currently when facing a ganker. You didn't even raise a (new) problem.
My main worry is FD "adding gameplay" like the FSS regarding interiors, personally I don't "need" mini game stuff (other than repairs) other than just the ability to get out the cockpit chair and move around "my" ship. Having a real "Armstrong" moment, not some weird "teleport" to the surface. The option to skip all that should be there for those who don't care, but I still want it. At the moment the only real gameplay in Elite is get money as fast as possible, I think the game needs to slow down and give us more gameplay that is slower and on a smaller more detailed up close and personal level.
But I'm someone who likes flicking the switches in virtual cockpits, best part of Falcon 4 for me was learning the F16's start up sequence, I enjoy manually starting up the trains in Train Sim World.
Consider the huge volume of work fdev 3d artists undertook to give us varied station interiors years ago. Before that, they were all just the same.
Absolutely no functional difference but better now? Massively so.
Based on some arguments against ship interiors, fdev should have just kept station interiors as a grey box like in Frontier