Update
General Multicrew is an unfinished mechanic that needs to be reworked!
- Thread starter badfellowman
- Start date
wishful thinking, that multicrew will get an update XD
My sentiments EXACLY!
How great a social experience would it be if MC was fully developed. If you didn't fancy flying alone in the black you jump on someone else's ship and take up a key role. I would take it is as far as allowing the ship commander to distribute functionality to each crew member. Set who of all the crew on board does the following:
Essentially players could "share" a ship!
Also, let an NPC sit in for a player - YES - merge the two mechanics. Why are they even separate??
Finally make it work along side wings. Sure set a limit on the number of players in the combined team but let it all work together.
And that's all I want - yeah not so much to ask is it?
How great a social experience would it be if MC was fully developed. If you didn't fancy flying alone in the black you jump on someone else's ship and take up a key role. I would take it is as far as allowing the ship commander to distribute functionality to each crew member. Set who of all the crew on board does the following:
- Pilots the ship (yes others should be able to too, if you let them)
- Navigate - use the system and galaxy maps to mark nav targets and plot routes
- Power Management - distribute pips (as per communication between crew mates)
- Manage utilities - countermeasures and other tools
- Pilot SRV as well as fighter so ground missions can allow for scouting and supporting
- Introduce Ship Launched Shuttles - for use in suplementary roles like assisting with mining, exploration and smuggling
- Allow the commander to set profit sharing with each crew member (fun negotiating that out)
Essentially players could "share" a ship!
Also, let an NPC sit in for a player - YES - merge the two mechanics. Why are they even separate??
Finally make it work along side wings. Sure set a limit on the number of players in the combined team but let it all work together.
And that's all I want - yeah not so much to ask is it?
I just got out of a multicrew session that was "just a bit" buggy. I was hosting in my Anaconda and my 2 crew members experienced bugging out chat panels and a flickering role panel which made it unusable.
It's honestly pretty depressing when you think of the potential with multicrew (and Teams or Wings) and the ability to easily group up and play with friends and how little actually works flawlessly.
These features (wings and multicrew) have been available for years now, and they have never been improved. Even with Odyssey and physical multicrew people are reporting all kinds of technical issues and unnecessary hurdles that are preventing people from using the features. In it's defence, it's still "Alpha", but that defence can go out the window come May 19th.
These are basic multiplayer features that many, many co-op focussed online multiplayer games have done and done well. It's baffling that it's in the state it is in Elite.
And I say this as someone who really loves the galaxy and game in general. Nothing has quite come close to that feeling of being in your ship for me.
It's honestly pretty depressing when you think of the potential with multicrew (and Teams or Wings) and the ability to easily group up and play with friends and how little actually works flawlessly.
These features (wings and multicrew) have been available for years now, and they have never been improved. Even with Odyssey and physical multicrew people are reporting all kinds of technical issues and unnecessary hurdles that are preventing people from using the features. In it's defence, it's still "Alpha", but that defence can go out the window come May 19th.
These are basic multiplayer features that many, many co-op focussed online multiplayer games have done and done well. It's baffling that it's in the state it is in Elite.
And I say this as someone who really loves the galaxy and game in general. Nothing has quite come close to that feeling of being in your ship for me.
It is kind of ridiculous the way Wings, Multicrew, Squadrons, and now “Teams” have been treated by the developers. They treat these like they are each individual “features,” like they are “one more thing to do” in the game just like mining, exploring, etc; when what they ought to be is a part of the overarching fundamentals of how the entire game works.
Like, this is a multiplayer game (and a forced multiplayer game at that); everything that you can do in the game should be something you can also do in a cooperative collaborative fashion with all parties involved having access to the entire suite of play mechanics risks and rewards.
Instead, it’s these dinky little playpen activities which are all siloed off from the “real” game, and it’s been an absolute disaster from a playability standpoint.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever expects multiplayer to work like this. For a new player it’s completely confusing and unintuitive, for everyone else it’s either disappointing or frustrating, depending on how willing you are to fight with all these fundamentally idiotic barriers to organic collaborative play.
Frontier: your game design ain’t that great. It’s a mixed bag at best. There’s some great stuff, and there’s some really bad stuff, and mostly there’s a whole lot of stuff where people complain about it on the forums and the best any of the white knights can say is something like “it’s not that bad!” or “well you used to have to do more of it but they changed it so you do less of it now, show some gratitude!”
But all these play systems, any play systems; the good, the bad, and the clunky; they become orders of magnitude more exciting when you can do them as part of a group activity with your friends, when all of you are allowed to share a goal and benefit from working together to achieve that goal.
It would be SO worth it for Frontier to build a proper, fully integrated cooperative multiplayer infrastructure into their game. None of this beaming into people’s ships and then being warped back to some random station if you log off, none of this taking three separate taxis to the same location, none of this “you can ride in the cockpit but you can’t control anything other than turrets” nonsense: make Elite into the game it keeps pretending to be: You play as a a guy in a space suit and you can get in and out of vehicles, stations, travel to different places with your friends, interact with the same objects and locations and experience the same shared world.
Like, this is a multiplayer game (and a forced multiplayer game at that); everything that you can do in the game should be something you can also do in a cooperative collaborative fashion with all parties involved having access to the entire suite of play mechanics risks and rewards.
Instead, it’s these dinky little playpen activities which are all siloed off from the “real” game, and it’s been an absolute disaster from a playability standpoint.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever expects multiplayer to work like this. For a new player it’s completely confusing and unintuitive, for everyone else it’s either disappointing or frustrating, depending on how willing you are to fight with all these fundamentally idiotic barriers to organic collaborative play.
Frontier: your game design ain’t that great. It’s a mixed bag at best. There’s some great stuff, and there’s some really bad stuff, and mostly there’s a whole lot of stuff where people complain about it on the forums and the best any of the white knights can say is something like “it’s not that bad!” or “well you used to have to do more of it but they changed it so you do less of it now, show some gratitude!”
But all these play systems, any play systems; the good, the bad, and the clunky; they become orders of magnitude more exciting when you can do them as part of a group activity with your friends, when all of you are allowed to share a goal and benefit from working together to achieve that goal.
It would be SO worth it for Frontier to build a proper, fully integrated cooperative multiplayer infrastructure into their game. None of this beaming into people’s ships and then being warped back to some random station if you log off, none of this taking three separate taxis to the same location, none of this “you can ride in the cockpit but you can’t control anything other than turrets” nonsense: make Elite into the game it keeps pretending to be: You play as a a guy in a space suit and you can get in and out of vehicles, stations, travel to different places with your friends, interact with the same objects and locations and experience the same shared world.
It's still a buggy mess that prevents people from playing together with friends well.
Trying to sell the game to friends is hard enough as it is without having to consider jumping through rings of fire to play together.
If the multiplayer aspects worked well, then Frontier would be able to sell more copies as it is introduced to friends, then we'd all buy more Arx...
Which is weird, given that the entire business model for their game amounts to “forced always-online multiplayer service, sell cosmetics and vanity items”.
Like, having robust multiplayer and lots of freeform organic interactions between players is pretty much the only thing that drives people to pay for cosmetic microtransactions. I’m going to be way more interested in customizing my ship and my spacesuit if I can casually meet people at a station and bring them onboard, etc; vs what we have now.
I am not an expert on ED's code but my understanding is its an issue with the instancing they use to run the local area around each player. Maybe this will get solved in Odyssey, but I doubt it. If there history is any indication it is likely this will be slapped onto the core system creating untold numbers of bugs and connectivity problems.
I would love multicrew to be fleshed out better and have many ideas about what can be improved, but its all a moot point if Frontier is unable - or unwilling - to improve the core programming of the game.
I would love multicrew to be fleshed out better and have many ideas about what can be improved, but its all a moot point if Frontier is unable - or unwilling - to improve the core programming of the game.
I see this so much with software in general. A great core product is created but some parts are not quite right, not what they should be, some work in these areas would create an absolutely stonking core product. But can you sell that? Can you bring more customers in by making things better? Nope you're just satisfying your existing customers.
Much better to spend time and effort on something new so you can pull more money out of your customers and attract new ones.
This applies to all kinds of software. New features trump making old ones better.
It's a real shame. But money is always the bottom line.
It's refreshing when you come across a developer willing to work on crafting the best thing they possibly can before moving onto the next thing. Oh well.
Much better to spend time and effort on something new so you can pull more money out of your customers and attract new ones.
This applies to all kinds of software. New features trump making old ones better.
It's a real shame. But money is always the bottom line.
It's refreshing when you come across a developer willing to work on crafting the best thing they possibly can before moving onto the next thing. Oh well.
Suppose if it is all about that $$$ then yeah, it's probably easier to wow players for 2 hours until they can't refund it. Then they get hit with all the shortcomings of teaming up. But that's me being a bit cynical, ha.
But the numbers must show that new players are (financially) worth more than existing players if that's the way it is. I do wonder what the split is between people who buy arx and people who don't. Me personally, I haven't purchased any arx, but I bought a load of ship customisation options before Arx was a thing.
Truly a shame though, because with a slick and robust multiplayer system I'd be much more inclined to buy arx customisation to show off to friends. Catch 22. Just like when Multicrew and CQC were released: "If the player numbers show they're using it, we'll spend more time building it out". Shame it was released how it was, so very few players did use it...
As a console player, I have the experience of having been fine with Frontier Points, where £1 = ~100 frontier points give or take your respective platform's store tax, but I refuse to buy Arx because of the obfuscatory nature of them. So I spent a bunch before the Arx switch and have spent nothing since. I even fully customised every cosmetic slot on my fleet carrier using Arx converted from my pre-existing Frontier Points.
I recently fell over the interior videos by Cmdr FRG. Some of his ships, like the viper got a crawlspace.
That is a role in multicrew I would absolutely adore.
The tech. During battles to resample stuff and if something breaks, to be able to repair is without AFMU.
And imagine you need to get into the crawlspace to repair it.
Like in the old Star Trek series.
That is a role in multicrew I would absolutely adore.
The tech. During battles to resample stuff and if something breaks, to be able to repair is without AFMU.
And imagine you need to get into the crawlspace to repair it.
Like in the old Star Trek series.
The amount of G's that get pulled during combat would probably break whoever draws the short straw to be crawlspace guy. There's no artificial gravity and everything is done with magnets or something in Elite remember. Probably why we can't leave our seats. If we were in the crawlspace during an encounter I would expect that we'd basically be holding on for life or face ragdolling to our deaths. Best leave in combat repairs to the AFMU robots...
Outside of combat, hell yeah EVA repairs! Add an Arc Welder secondary mode to the Arc Cutter tool the Maverick suit has.
Yeah we totally agree with you sadly my wife and I like to play MMO games together but we also have that space fantasy it we need to scratch now and then and Elite dangerous for these on Xbox is the best looking realistic space simulator out there we wanted to do missions together and explore the Galaxy.Just usual cmdr. I'm a big sci-fi fan and Elite Dangerous is one of my favorite games. There are several reasons: there is no colorful space of No Man’s Sky, the design of the ships is believable, the battles are deadly, and control requires skill, but allows you to finely control the movements of the spacecraft. It lacks the ability to get out of the chair, but it doesn't really impact the gaming experience.
Who am I?
I recently invited my best friend to play my favorite space simulator. Since the game has the ability to control one ship, I bought Python and we started flying. After two hours of playing, I was completely disappointed with Multicrew.
View attachment 210644
Pay attention to the co-pilot's interface: the gunner does not know which target is selected and where the ship is flying. The HUD on the cockpit glass is completely absent. In addition, there is no radar and clear indication of shields.
The role of the co-pilot has been curtailed so much that there is no room for role-playing. In fact, the only thing the co-pilot can be responsible for is turrets and external equipment. The rest of the time he misses. Here is a list of what the co-pilot cannot do, but logically he should do:
View attachment 210645
- See the ship commander interface
- See the target of the commander when selected
- Manage ship energy and fully distribute it between subsystems
- Enable and disable ship modules
- Enable silent running
- Open the cargo scoop
- Request docking permission
- Drive SRV
- Mark targets
- Make notes on the galactic map
- Take control as needed
This is what the gunner's interface looks like when controlling turrets. The gunner does not see the target of the ship commander, and the ship commander does not see the target of the gunner. As a result: shooting at different targets.
The correct distribution of functions between the commander and the co-pilot is a separate meta-game that would contribute to better player cooperation and more enjoyment of the game. The absence of these elements makes Multicrew mode useless and boring, although the very idea of joint control of the ship is intriguing. I haven't talked about the numerous Multicrew bugs here yet, but they are not important if the mechanics themselves are broken.
I really hope that Frontiers will pay attention to this issue in the future, because apart from Elite Dangerous, no game can offer such an immersive experience of space adventures. Perhaps this is not a problem at all, and I am making mountains out of molehills. Multicrew is useful for farming credits in wing missions, but is that really the only thing players want from that mechanic?
P.S.
Sorry for mistakes. English is not my native language.
Thank you for reading this!
Reddit discussion: Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/ludrbj/multicrew_is_an_unfinished_mechanic_that_needs_to/
The fecal matter part of it is my wife notice that I was getting 100% of the money the faction reputation and experience and she was getting very little money absolutely no faction reputation and almost no experience to make things worse there is nothing for her to do on my ship.
We are able to do a little bit of planetary Discovery together where she can use the waveform scanner, in fighting if I had multiplayer turrets she was able to use that and if I alt fitted a ship Bay she was able to fly a fighter other than that there's not much in multiplayer to offer.
Snother fecal matter part was even though I had 2-4 srvs she was not able to use any of them in the end she was forced to use her own ship join a wing and we try to stay together to explore the Galaxy and do Wing missions together but still we do not feel like we're cooperating we feel like we are separated playing a single player game with the ability to look over and see each other on our map other than that multiplayer Co-op is almost non-existent in Elite dangerous!
we have hope that when Odyssey comes out that there will be more to do in coop on foot with space legs and hopefully they might fix it we're at least two people can use one ship that has multiple srvs and everyone in the crew can use them.
Wow, so many new replies! Thank you guys for your support!
So much disapointment with multicrew. I was playing solo until I conviced 2 friends to play with me. One of them wanted to be my gunner/slf pilot, and the other wanted his own ship. Yes, I figured out: impossible to mix crew and wing ! I don't even understand why it's 2 separate features...
And now Odyssey is coming without ship interiors... How a game like Elite can BECOME an "unfinished game" after 7 years???!? No ship interior "because it's boring to walk the same corridor over and over, especially in big ships" (sic) lol... The only purpose to have a big ship is not to be alone inside it, so if there is a "pilot" role in multi-crew, his role isn't to disembark.
And now Odyssey is coming without ship interiors... How a game like Elite can BECOME an "unfinished game" after 7 years???!? No ship interior "because it's boring to walk the same corridor over and over, especially in big ships" (sic) lol... The only purpose to have a big ship is not to be alone inside it, so if there is a "pilot" role in multi-crew, his role isn't to disembark.
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