Drew Wagar's Thoughts

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
The game itself, and most of the mission chains are well put together, both city and wastelands are well done - it, like Odyssey for you - just couldn't give me something to stay interested in! I don't think it is a bad game, far from it, just not one that kept me involved, which is all down to me.
But you didn't feel the need to hang around on the forums of a game you didn't enjoy for month after month saying the same thing over and over? Weirdo ;)
 

Deleted member 182079

D
As a role-player, I never use the "insta-cockpit" key because it feels too gamey, but I did do the work to discover and unlock teleporter technology, and I'm not afraid to beam down to station and back to my ship again. However, I avoid the trans-system teleport, because again that feels too gamey.

Even with the teleporter, there are times I'm just in the mood to land at a station the "old fashioned" way, get out of my seat, walk down the ramp, and look up at my ship in wonder. I also find walks between my ship and a specific office on a space station the perfect opportunity to interview and hire new crew members.
Yeah same here really, though I use the skip-to-cockpit on occasion - though because the stations all look different and while they're pretty vast, there are so many QoL features (those long escalators are very convenient, Frontier take note) that I rarely feel I need to use it as I won't save all that much time anyways. They really thought this through from the beginning when they designed it and it shows.

I unlocked stage 2 teleporting, and also use it now and then - just to save a bit of time travelling if I'm in a rush. I still enjoy the trip itself more than getting bored (since I can usually either use the UI/map to manage my fleet while doing so, or because it's not a simple timer but you pass lots of objects on the way).
 
I do kinda get drew's gripe on lore even the stuff he did not do like https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Jaques
it just lacks any real cohesion I find
is that important to me or really relevant when I am playing not really no...……………...
would have been nice to see a robot bar tender there that said our last converstion was precisely 11 years 4 months 8 day's 0 hours and seven seconds ago nice to see you again would you like the same double lavinan?
lore only becomes relevant if its in game and curently relevant in the exact same way as raxxla isnt ATM;)
(if we all use witchspace why is the control setting for hyperspace me wonders?, anyhoo my tictac will put any craft in game to shame which we don't fly as such but plot on a map and distort time(yes up to two hours) relative velocity & bearing etc)👽
raxxla1.jpg
 
Last edited:
I can't see Star Citizen doing anything but collapsing under the weight of hundreds of unnecessarily simulated systems and the inherent pay to win nature of the game.

That being said, their fitting system is leagues better than Elite: Dagnerous system and allows for much more player choice. The addition of ships designed for multi-crew is also nice. But yeah, I just can't see it succeeding. There are definetly some things Elite could learn from it though.
 
I mean, this is some of the new lore of the year:



When you compare it with X4, NMS, Space Engineers or whatever none of them has as much story/lore development as ED have, thats pretty much a fact.
It is a different kind of story-telling. More episodal in nature. Maybe a bit hard to get an overview of. Like the collecable lore bits in some RPGs. X4 has the data vaults to collate the past timeline together and there is a couple novels alongside afaik.
 
to be clear, I'm not saying the writing is bad. Honestly, the whole illegal-now-legal casino thief, and the never ending Marlinist stuff is GREAT. It really is. Kudos to the writer.

But to put into perspective these great articles within Elite universe, is akin to..... admiring beautiful little handcrafted arts in the middle of an empty, rundown shopping mall in a third-world country currently in civil war.

And some of you guys are like; the people will be fine. Life needs art and there it is. We have art. We may not have a dedicated art gallery and there are people dying on the streets, but to say we have no art at all is a bit disingenuous isn't it?
 
If we're discussing writing then again I might include the fact that I'm a little tired of the actual in-game narrative that players can interact with always involving something that happened hundreds of years in the past. The majority, if not all, of the Thargoid narrative is something that has happened hundreds of years ago and the further developing player interaction involves finding messages about this from all those years in the past. While that can be fun in itself, it feels substantially empty to see no further developments in this for the current timeline other than "here's a few Thargoids you can kill."

If I may be so bold as to suggest putting words in Drew's mouth, perhaps he also feels this lack of real and current narrative is never going to change and any further effort on his part is just pointless as he would be supporting a game that lacks the sort of engaging player-based story that he's interested in.

We never got to see the promised Tionisla graveyard that Drew is so fond of, so even when it comes to past events in the past lore, it's still lacking.

Yes, ED appears to be somewhat of a sandbox MMO and player-based narrative is difficult in this context but with some passion, ambition and community engagement I believe this is possible. Drew tried to do some of this with the Salome story in-game events and yes it ended in tragedy (for some) but at the same time it was bold and should be praised.

It has been long enough in the life-cycle of ED for us to see where Frontier wanted to take the game and I think some of us (myself included) are having to face the fact that ED is simply not the game we had hoped for and to some extent what was advertised in the Kickstarter campaign. Yes it is a game and it not being what we wanted does not invalidate it but some of us, Drew included, are respectfully departing. I make my own decisions and even though I'm not really playing much now due to my own design complaints about Odyssey, I have yet to decide where my future is with this game.
 
think some of those (such as Jaques) are somewhat covered in tourist beacons, but I'm no fan of the entire concept of them. It would've been better if the station UI had a "local history" section where you could read up on local lore, instead of travelling from beacon to beacon most of which are dumped within a planet's gravity well so a massive chore to get to.
Sirius is my home base for 1500 hours and until I found the above page I never read those beacons.
It changed from RPG to Action game somewhere, I just didn't enjoy their choice of storyline, is all.
They originally had 3 storylines you could go down, the Silverhand storyline being one of them and Arasaka being a second (inc I'm guessing variations due to life path), but when they got Keanu Reeves, the entire storyline was cannibilised to give most of the lines to him (he even says so in some interview that his lines were doubled or tripled because he was enjoying himself so much).
I think that's where a lot of the choice & consequences were lost and it became this linear action game (nearly 300 hours and still having fun <with lots'a mods> so not complaining - just wondering what-could've-been).
 
And some of you guys are like; the people will be fine. Life needs art and there it is. We have art. We may not have a dedicated art gallery and there are people dying on the streets, but to say we have no art at all is a bit disingenuous isn't it?

There could be pictures, sure. There could be CG's .. and in fact there HAVE been CG's. Colonia Bridge recently will have a direct result, from player actions and if you participated, you'll have a story to tell. The megaships will be added by hand - and maybe the ambition could be for global lore to generate itself some time - but the games Drew harkens back to .. back when Elite did apparently have it's soul .. had none of that. Maybe First Encounters had some in game lore (the only one I didn't play) but all you're seeing in ED today is the Dark Wheel (lore/ novel) being delivered digitally.

That doesn't mean it's not there and while Galnet is still delivering I don't think it's helpful to dump on Frontier for doing something else for a bit (EDO) or saying it's disconnected from the space game when clearly EDO is not done with either. NPC's to interact with are going in (today I think) and they're another tool the game can tell stories through. Probably the most effective yet. The Codex is cool and all but is very, very dry relatively speaking.
 
Last edited:
If he finds lore in NMS then clearly he goes towards very thin lore. NMS lore is purposely thin to be more accessible.
It's a sandbox. The main story sets up the universe and is good enough to explain why you are and why you do, it's pretty good actually - I expected way less. The Long Dark isnt very thicc with lore either. The story mode reveals bit by bit but I can't really play it - they tend to shove the grind and annoying stuff in there. Funnily enough the hardest survival is actually the best. You roll the dice with loot but get sparse, strong and quite meaningful wildlife encounters.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom