Big Elite Streamers Giving Up On Streaming Elite?

[Rubbernuke]

At the risk of incurring the wrath of a mod for keeping this off-topic, the prequels had the potential for good stories to be told but they were woefully executed by poor writing and directing. The sequels allegedly had a story structure great JJ Abrams but that was chucked out by Rian whatshisface and the guy they originally hired for Rise of Skywalker walked when he saw what a mess he had to fix.

Responding to the topic particularly:
IMO ED does not lend itself greatly to streaming play due to the long travel times (and yet lets play make up the bulk of the CM content ). However notable streamers/influencers leaving should be a concern for given their "strategy" of using them to bring in potential players.

great JJ Abrams

Oh dear god no. JJ is the kiss of death and was the worst possible person to do Star Wars, Trek and I shudder to think what he'll do with the franchises he takes control of.

On topic, ED is horrible to watch because a lot of its action is really a gestalt of grindy smaller loops (such as the BGS, Powerplay etc) that can only make sense as a tactical picture inside your mind, and that only fighting (CZs, PvP, CQC) have any real immediate presence. Exploration is kind of OK, but its a case of postcard syndrome where most of the time its finding that vista and the rest bouncing over rocks.

 

[VR jefranklin18]

Oh dear god no. JJ is the kiss of death and was the worst possible person to do Star Wars, Trek and I shudder to think what he'll do with the franchises he takes control of.

I am not disputing that at all - a number of content producers refer to him as Jar Jar Abrams. It should have sat with Jon Favereau from the outset (the Mandalorian shows what he is capable of).

On topic, ED is horrible to watch because a lot of its action is really a gestalt of grindy smaller loops (such as the BGS, Powerplay etc) that can only make sense as a tactical picture inside your mind, and that only fighting (CZs, PvP, CQC) have any real immediate presence. Exploration is kind of OK, but its a case of postcard syndrome where most of the time its finding that vista and the rest bouncing over rocks.

No arguments from me

 

[Montgomery Dog]

Well off topic .. just a modern fable about being careful what you wish for.

And ignoring the deliberate technical (film-making) innovation, stylistic choice towards the Republic, fixed story destination (Episode IV) and the fact that kids - under the age of 40 commenting on them - absolutely love them. Me too as it happens, Darth Maul? Sand People slaughter? Faust?

Digital cameras and CG backdrops / characters ARE a technical innovation -- neither of which benefited the final product from a film making perspective. In terms of actual craft, it's mostly horribly executed.

The scripts are amateurish, bafflingly plotted with little understanding of character or narrative. Your generational comment is just as rude as the comments you are decrying and Faust? Faust! That really is laying it on a bit thick.

Back on topic: Defending the indefensible is perhaps a noble pursuit - but it doesn't actually transform the thing itself. One can't make Elite better by wishing for it -- and one cannot in all earnestness blame it's failings on a 'vocal minority'.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I am not disputing that at all - a number of content producers refer to him as Jar Jar Abrams. It should have sat with Jon Favereau from the outset (the Mandalorian shows what he is capable of).

No arguments from me

Apologies, JJ just gets under my skin and I'm glad Lucasfilm and Disney are purging him and (after Indy 5) Kathleen Kennedy.

Back to happier things, my best ED streaming 'event' was watching Salome streams all at the same time (albeit after). It was very cool because you could see the various strands pop together in real time, like 24

 

[Erei]

I must confess to watching a youtube of a player session in Star Citizen just once, that was enough. The guy was traveling from one place to another, to where his home was I think, I don't really care where, that's not the point, but I found myself fast forwarding miltiple times to get to the end of the Super Cruise...oops sorry Quantum Travel session, then he arrived at his destination port, went down some steps and just missed his train...so he found a bench and sait down to wait for the next train....for 6 minutes.....that was indeed the last time I ever tried to watch a video from SC and indeed almost any video game, watching someone sat down waiting for a train? Nah! I did read somewhere they had made the trains more frequent but I still never bothered to go back and watch more.

Both elite and SC are bad for entertaining value, for streaming IMO. Long travel and waiting.

Youtube is better for that, since they cut the "boring" part. The SC planet thing from OA was quite nice for example.

 

[Montgomery Dog]

It should have sat with Jon Favereau from the outset...

Good grief. He's a hack - just like JJ.

The Mandalorian was thin gruel indeed.

Give it to a real screenwriter and a real director who understand the genre, have some talent, a few good ideas and a little stylistic flair.

Back on topic: Do the same sort of thing for Elite.

 

[Winterwalker]

On topic, ED is horrible to watch because a lot of its action is really a gestalt of grindy smaller loops (such as the BGS, Powerplay etc) that can only make sense as a tactical picture inside your mind, and that only fighting (CZs, PvP, CQC) have any real immediate presence. Exploration is kind of OK, but its a case of postcard syndrome where most of the time its finding that vista and the rest bouncing over rocks.

Problem I have with this analysis, especially as I'm trying to crowbar on topic streamers into it, is this is what ED always has been and always will be, it's what Elite is. I'm amazed it comes to anyone's surprise that the game has a number of tactical tools but never has tried to impose strategy on you. I'm mining to get a bigger ship to engineer up for PvP .. I'm supporting this faction because I want to see it expand .. I'm getting a group together to save the Bark Mounds, none of these are imposed by the game (except the - endangered - Bark Mounds obviously).

It's not that the game has changed, so it's not fair of streamers to suddenly blame the game they've been exploiting to date when finally they work out how it works and, that if you have quests to save a princess, if 50,000 players want to do that, there have to be 50,000 princesses making none of them special. This is why we have some injected events I'm sure but why they're all optional unless it's your homebase that gets set alight by Thargoids. These events are only to stir your own ideas up though to help you find a new strategic goal, when you've achieved one and need another.

 

[Amanojaku]

I am not disputing that at all - a number of content producers refer to him as Jar Jar Abrams. It should have sat with Jon Favereau from the outset (the Mandalorian shows what he is capable of).

I'll never forget when JJ Abrams appeared on Jon Stewart's talk show. They were talking about Star Trek (another franchise he killed by turning it into Die Hard in Space), and at one point Abrams ACTUALLY said he never liked Star Trek before he started working on it, and that it was "too philosophical" for him. He continued babbling on about it for a bit.

Stewart told him, "I'm sorry, I stopped paying attention when you said you didn't like Star Trek".

I like to call "Star Trek Into Darkness" "Star Trek Into Obscurity".

Abrams is proof that modern day Hollywood doesn't give a damn about what made an original movie or series good, nor do they care about continuity. They just want to put more behinds in seats, so they remake everything into an emotion-tugging action-drama that is safely re-cast as to not offend a single person on the planet. Then they add the censor cherry on top so they don't lose the Chinese market. They're spineless, kowtowing cowards who could give two flying Asp Scouts about nostalgia.

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

It's not that the game has changed

I don't want to point out the obvious but EDO was, by most definitions of the word, a 'change'. A pretty big one if you consider that the planetary tech is due to be ported to Horizons.

 

[Montgomery Dog]

JJ is the kiss of death

All of new-Trek from the films to Discovery and Picard are just horrible, horrible abominations.

if you have quests to save a princess, if 50,000 players want to do that, there have to be 50,000 princesses making none of them special.

This is just straw-manning the idea of having any kind of meaningful mission system. Nobody is asking for space wizards and sassy royalty as far as I'm aware.

The idea of having engaging, plausible mission chains that leverage the underlying BGS, span multiple activities and present a few interesting wrinkles, outcomes, risks and rewards is hardly demanding to be the chosen one.

 

[Winterwalker]

I don't want to point out the obvious but EDO was, by most definitions of the word, a 'change'. A pretty big one if you consider that the planetary tech is due to be ported to Horizons.

That porting won't be happening until console realease and 6 weeks ago people were bellyaching about that, too !! lol

Bugs and optimising notwithstanding, the surfaces are a million times more interesting in EDO anyway imho. I've seen stratification in rocks and haven't even been looking yet.

 

[Erei]

All of new-Trek from the films to Discovery and Picard are just horrible, horrible abominations.

Discovery was OK in the first seasons IMO, but it gradually grew into JJ style where it goes more and more far fetched until you completely lose touch with "reality". I honestly don't know why I should care now TBH. It's too far fetched.

It was never a star trek show. And neither was Picard. They were Sci fi show, and should be treated as such.

Star trek was about confronting real life issues in a sci fi settings, to put some distance, and have character interactions and the like. Also asking difficult ethical and moral question. The whole "trekking" around the galaxy was the medium, not the goal.

 

[Winterwalker]

The idea of having engaging, plausible mission chains that leverage the underlying BSG, span multiple activities and present a few interesting wrinkles, outcomes, risks and rewards is hardly demanding to be the chosen one.

At which point people will say (because the missions use procedural systems) all you did was say "pick up this package from a guy (kill him), deliver it through pirates (killing them) to someone and the package, being a bomb, kills them" .. all you did was put several things that are in the game already, together .. well, yeah! Meanwhile in the game now, Fuel Rats is a quest, recording barkmound sounds, is a quest, undermining a power is a long term quest. There's no difference.

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

I'll never forget when JJ Abrams appeared on Jon Stewart's talk show. They were talking about Star Trek (another franchise he killed by turning it into Die Hard in Space), and at one point Abrams ACTUALLY said he never liked Star Trek before he started working on it, and that it was "too philosophical" for him. He continued babbling on about it for a bit.

OK, totally off topic, but what the Hell...

The problem is that a lot of what Hollywood is doing, of which Abrams is a key offender, is grabbing old, beloved franchises and attempting to ride their coattails to box office success, typically also 'updating' them with some woke slant that's probably popular around Hollywood social circles. At best this means the first movie ends up a success, as people go to see it on the basis of nostalgia, then the franchise might squeeze out one, maybe two more, by which time people don't bother going, having realized that they're not really adding anything to the franchise and what they're being offered is a pale imitation of whatever they were nostalgic about. Younger generations who are not affected by the nostalgia will also go to the first movie out of curiosity, then seeing there's nothing of substance there, similarly don't bother with the sequels. Presuming they even do well enough to have sequels, in the first place - there's been a few that crashed and burned on takeoff (cough Terminator cough).

 

[Montgomery Dog]

I've seen stratification in rocks and haven't even been looking yet.

Ooh... I took some interesting screenshots of exactly this a few weeks ago.

It did look very nice, I must admit.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Problem I have with this analysis, especially as I'm trying to crowbar on topic streamers into it, is this is what ED always has been and always will be, it's what Elite is. I'm amazed it comes to anyone's surprise that the game has a number of tactical tools but never has tried to impose strategy on you. I'm mining to get a bigger ship to engineer up for PvP .. I'm supporting this faction because I want to see it expand .. I'm getting a group together to save the Bark Mounds, none of these are imposed by the game (except the - endangered - Bark Mounds obviously).

It's not that the game has changed, so it's not fair of streamers to suddenly blame the game they've been exploiting to date when finally they work out how it works and, that if you have quests to save a princess, if 50,000 players want to do that, there have to be 50,000 princesses making none of them special. This is why we have some injected events I'm sure but why they're all optional unless it's your homebase that gets set alight by Thargoids. These events are only to stir your own ideas up though to help you find a new strategic goal, when you've achieved one and need another.

ED features like the BGS / Powerplay campaigns- how do you communicate that? The short is, you can't, not in a stream. A stream is just a tiny snapshot.

Working the BGS is a pyramid scheme of smaller missions that only make sense in your head. Its a shopping list of things to do- kill x sec, smuggle y amount of land mines etc etc that builds into a picture that only you can see or know. A casual streamer audience can only really ever see the dull shopping list, and not the overall exciting outcome.

Its why people find talking about ED better than playing it, because you have the exciting goal and the grindy path getting there putting you off.

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

That porting won't be happening until console realease and 6 weeks ago people were bellyaching about that, too !! lol

Can you blame them? EDO remains broken and soon you wont be able to avoid that broken mess even in Horizons.

Bugs and optimising notwithstanding, the surfaces are a million times more interesting in EDO anyway imho. I've seen stratification in rocks and haven't even been looking yet.

Sure, let's ignore the fact that it's borderline unplayable for many. And the surfaces are a million times more interesting? LOL. Welcome to fantasy island.

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

Star trek was about confronting real life issues in a sci fi settings

Are you suggesting that non-binary gender representation isn't real life? You fascist!!!!

 

[Winterwalker]

Can you blame them? EDO remains broken and soon you wont be able to avoid that broken mess even in Horizons.

Only in your mind - and in the perception built by streamers, who passed snap judgement before they'd thought for five minutes about what can be done with the new tools, stuff which evolves over time and only with familiarity. I played it all weekend. Not broke. Don't believe everything you read.

ED features like the BGS / Powerplay campaigns- how do you communicate that? The short is, you can't, not in a stream. A stream is just a tiny snapshot.

Agreed. Not easy to capture. Arguably still fairer to talk about what you can do with the game than what you can't though. ED can't wash my car or cut the grass but is that objectively bad game design? (Come on devs, pull your finger out! ;p)

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Except when the (D2EA) tutorial is says, "Need manufacturing instructions? Get from impact site and menu log. Get more from impact site. Menu log again". That's no better than combat logging imho, is cheating the game. No wonder you're not going to enjoy 'the game', YOU AINT PLAYING IT! I'd be asking for my terrarium back .. and banning the guy.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.