Update on Communication

[ubermick]

I don't know. Do you and don't you?

You haven't answered any of the questions/examples from my post.

If I understand you correctly, for it's not whether parts of this game are grindy, you deny the existence of the concept of grind in the first place. So I guess it's no use getting into Elite specifically.

Yes I did. You asked if I was around for engineering v1, and I said yes I was.

In terms of your other stuff, you seem like you're conflating "grinding" and wanting an "easy mode". Yes, various things in the game are difficult and time consuming because otherwise they'd be boring and not worth doing. Did I end up with 15 SDPs? Yes. Did I do so by sitting at a skimmer and relogging for hours on end? No. I picked them up through missions (where the mission is to download a Settlement Defence Plan), through general scavenging, and even got a few from a user on here who had some spare, which worked out nicely since I play with them off and on in the game now. Does scanning a plant three times make more sense than just once? I dunno, ask someone from the scientific community. By the same token, how come we have to shoot ships more than once??!! Why can't we just one shot kill everything?!?!

Is there also a name for the mentality that the game is never at "fault", it's just always the players who are too stupid to play the game correctly?

You've CLEARLY not read many of my posts then if you think I believe the "game is never at fault". Its just that my tolerance for Elite's bugs and quirks is slightly highter than incessant whining.

But yeah, if people are spitting the dummy because they believe they absolutely must have a Clipper unlocked this weekend along with getting it fully engineered, then yeah its their own fault for being too stupid to play the game correctly.

 

[zimms]

[...] you seem like you're conflating "grinding" and wanting an "easy mode". [...] how come we have to shoot ships more than once??!! Why can't we just one shot kill everything?!?!


You've CLEARLY not read many of my posts then if you think I believe the "game is never at fault". Its just that my tolerance for Elite's bugs and quirks is slightly highter than incessant whining. [...]

Easy mode... such a cop out to this discussion. If you think I want an easy mode you clearly haven't read many of my posts either then.

I simply strongly disagree with the sentiment that there's absolutely no form of grind in Elite and it's all just brain washing from Youtubers.

 

[zimms]

There is no forced grind. That's a huge difference. And that's no youtuber who's washing your head right now.

Did I talk about forced grind?

And of course you can always log off and walk away.

 

[ubermick]

Easy mode... such a cop out to this discussion. If you think I want an easy mode you clearly haven't read many of my posts either then.

I simply strongly disagree with the sentiment that there's absolutely no form of grind in Elite and it's all just brain washing from Youtubers.

Settlement Defence Plans, since its the example you brought up.

Do you need them to play the game? Do you NEED them?

No you don't.

Settlement Defence Plans unlock Wellington Beck. There is no service Wellington Beck provides that can't be done by another engineer. His only relevance is to refer you to Uma Lazlow. Who also does nothing that can't be done by another engineer, with the ARGUABLE exception of headshot damage which I'd argue VERY few people actually use, and even so can be obtained by one of the engineers in Colonia.

So why do people focus, whine, moan, complain about them?

Exobiology. You have to take three samples instead of one. So? Are you FORCED to participate in exobiology? Does the game MAKE you do it? No, people CHOOSE to do it - most of the ones I've spoken to who are into exploration and that side of the game seem to not have a problem with it.

Original ship engineering. The game is actually quite good at matching NPCs or opponents that match your skill level. As such, are you FORCED to have your ships fully engineered up to G5? The Corvette and Cutter requires you to rank up in the relevant navies. Are you MADE to fly those? Does the game, at some point, come to a complete halt and say "Nope, go do those ranks, and get them done by the end of the week."? Is there ANY facet to the game which forbids you to play it without a ship that requires unlocking? Have you ever encountered a mission that says "Nope, you can't deliver these things in a T-9, you can only do it if you have a Cutter" or "Massacre these pirates, but you can't do it in an Anaconda or a Type 10, you HAVE to do it in a Corvette, and by CHRIST your build needs to follow whatever's meta right now."

I've got every engineer in the game unlocked. The final one happened just a month ago. I have two dozen ships sitting on my fleet carrier, and billions in the bank. About half my ships are unengineered, most of the other ones are a mix of G3/G4/G5 because I've found not everything has to be G5. I don't relog to get what I want done in a weekend, because I'd rather have fun playing the game and doing what I want in there, and as such if it takes me a fortnight to accumulate the materials to do something instead of an evening pulling my hair out relogging at Jameson's Crash Site or High Grade Emissions, then I'm not pushed. I have both a Corvette and a Cutter, the ranks for which took almost a year of doing. They happened as I played, often with an "Oh look, I'm a squire now. Oh hey, I just noticed I'm an Ensign now and can get a Gunship. Meh." I didn't buy my Corvette until over the Christmas break we just had.

So yep. The grind is self inflicted. You're not going to convince me otherwise unless you can provide compelling evidence of the game putting a gun to my head and MAKING me do something I choose not to.

(And if it did? I'd probably give it the finger and go play something else)

 

[nemolomen]

Settlement Defence Plans, since its the example you brought up.

Do you need them to play the game? Do you NEED them?

No you don't.

Settlement Defence Plans unlock Wellington Beck. There is no service Wellington Beck provides that can't be done by another engineer. His only relevance is to refer you to Uma Lazlow. Who also does nothing that can't be done by another engineer, with the ARGUABLE exception of headshot damage which I'd argue VERY few people actually use, and even so can be obtained by one of the engineers in Colonia.

So why do people focus, whine, moan, complain about them?

Exobiology. You have to take three samples instead of one. So? Are you FORCED to participate in exobiology? Does the game MAKE you do it? No, people CHOOSE to do it - most of the ones I've spoken to who are into exploration and that side of the game seem to not have a problem with it.

Original ship engineering. The game is actually quite good at matching NPCs or opponents that match your skill level. As such, are you FORCED to have your ships fully engineered up to G5? The Corvette and Cutter requires you to rank up in the relevant navies. Are you MADE to fly those? Does the game, at some point, come to a complete halt and say "Nope, go do those ranks, and get them done by the end of the week."? Is there ANY facet to the game which forbids you to play it without a ship that requires unlocking? Have you ever encountered a mission that says "Nope, you can't deliver these things in a T-9, you can only do it if you have a Cutter" or "Massacre these pirates, but you can't do it in an Anaconda or a Type 10, you HAVE to do it in a Corvette, and by CHRIST your build needs to follow whatever's meta right now."

I've got every engineer in the game unlocked. The final one happened just a month ago. I have two dozen ships sitting on my fleet carrier, and billions in the bank. About half my ships are unengineered, most of the other ones are a mix of G3/G4/G5 because I've found not everything has to be G5. I don't relog to get what I want done in a weekend, because I'd rather have fun playing the game and doing what I want in there, and as such if it takes me a fortnight to accumulate the materials to do something instead of an evening pulling my hair out relogging at Jameson's Crash Site or High Grade Emissions, then I'm not pushed. I have both a Corvette and a Cutter, the ranks for which took almost a year of doing. They happened as I played, often with an "Oh look, I'm a squire now. Oh hey, I just noticed I'm an Ensign now and can get a Gunship. Meh." I didn't buy my Corvette until over the Christmas break we just had.

So yep. The grind is self inflicted. You're not going to convince me otherwise unless you can provide compelling evidence of the game putting a gun to my head and MAKING me do something I choose not to.

(And if it did? I'd probably give it the finger and go play something else)

Mr. Gazbini, that is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out post.

Might even be the most relevant post I've seen in these forums since I joined last year.

 

[Fizzatron]

Not all.

TBH, when you explain the level of hardware needed to get Odyssey running somewhat smoothly (certainly based on various YouTube videos I've seen) a lot of people do realise the scale of the problem and many won't bother posting here about it because what's the point given that there's no news.

You'll always get the die-hards though.

"Going by youtube videos" is like citing wikipedia for a masters degree.

 

[ubermick]

"Going by youtube videos" is like citing wikipedia for a masters degree.

True, but you don't need a master's degree (or even a certificate from the library) to see that Odyssey will make a PS4 or Xbox burst into flames in its current state.

 

[Darth Ender]

True, but you don't need a master's degree (or even a certificate from the library) to see that Odyssey will make a PS4 or Xbox burst into flames in its current state.

I have a PHD in SToG so let me see if i got this right (hint: i do).

Does it need 60fps though to play the game? No, frames per second is just something we're inflicting on our machines ourselves. The game can obviously be played at significantly lower frames per second, depending on what you're doing, even lower than 30. Effects consuming too much power? there's nothing that fire and smoke provides that you can't get elsewhere looking at static rendered scenes for your awe and immersion. Higher resolution is just making your video card grind on data at an unsustainable rate that makes it tired and hot and not have fun. The solution is to just play at a much lower resolution with a good amount of your gameplay consisting of nothing so the periods of strenuous graphical activity can be sparse and give the graphics card time to rest between them to avoid overheating. Poor performance sounds an awful lot like a self inflicted problem some players give themselves. Playing at 640x480 is working fine for me.... other players are being unreasonable in expectations and I'm not sure why they're on here getting all bent out of shape instead of just deleting the game and installing something that works at their unreasonable performance requirements like no man's sky.

In fact, this way of looking at critical judgement works pretty much everywhere you aren't having a gun pointed to your head. Its weird why anyone discusses displeasure with almost anything in the world. Reading a bad book based on sparkly vampires? you shouldn't bring it up because it's optional to have read it and there are other books you could have moved to. Watch a movie that's centered around a love story with an undead 200 year old pedo and a unlikeable high schooler and dont like it? keep that crap to yourself, you're just being a masochist because you have other things you could do instead. Any negative thing you're experiencing, you should just bail before it bothers you too much and abandon it. Significant other being annoying? there are other people in the world, no point in wasting your life discussing issues with them, just get a new one. In a car that has uncomfortable seats? Your feedback is unwelcome because you could have taken a shorter trip like me, or just stopped the car and walked the rest of the way, leaving the car forever.

grind burnout is self inflicted, but the idea that grind is a problem in this game in particular is not because grind is not defined around how much you are doing a thing, but in the activity itself. Whether you do something fast or slow, it could still be the same grind loop. And that gameplay (or in elite's case, only having that limited set of game loops) is really at the heart of most complaints about grind here...because if it was varied or engaging or fun, the fact that you're doing it a bunch or not wouldn't really be a problem. And being on a forum to talk about it is why the forum exists... Expecting others to just peace out instead of participate in a forum you had to sign up for and are posting to is an impossible expectation. They're posting because they dont want to quit, so your proposition will never be true to the commenter, and there is no way to illustrate how many may have taken that route, because those people aren't sticking around to post. It's a pointless throwaway troll statement like "if you dont like it here, move" ... ignoring that there is an option where "here" can change and elsewhere may be too different and less liked or you have a lot invested in "here" and dont want to let it go yet easily.

if a person comes up to you and says everyone they meet is rude to them, at some point we have to consider that the problem isn't everyone, it's that person. So if this game has had half a decade of players "playing it wrong" ... is it not more likely that the game is doing the game wrong than the tens of thousands of players who have played plenty of other games successfully are suddenly incapable of playing this one right? Blaming the player is really only something that might work if it was much more limited in scope than what this all is.

 

[Fizzatron]

True, but you don't need a master's degree (or even a certificate from the library) to see that Odyssey will make a PS4 or Xbox burst into flames in its current state.

Fair enough, but it's one set of specs (each) to optimize for and the target is a steady 35 fps, I think it's closer than the 'you need a 3090ti to get decent performance' crowd would have anyone believe. Are there any videos on youtube that show what a relatively xbox specced PC fares with Odyssey?

 

[SmileyDank]

What does this even mean?

I'd imagine certain plans might require approval from marketing, or even Braben directly. An understandable concern if you ask me.

 

[Cmdr Kellett781]

Fair enough, but it's one set of specs (each) to optimize for and the target is a steady 35 fps, I think it's closer than the 'you need a 3090ti to get decent performance' crowd would have anyone believe. Are there any videos on youtube that show what a relatively xbox specced PC fares with Odyssey?

I keep wondering how or what makes my machine different, except in that I knew going into Odyssey that my rig was not the best. But even running things on medium to low foot on foot solo mode conflict zones, I get a solid 40-60 fps barely noticing the drops. If it pro level? By no means but it’s enjoyable when I care to do it. As for my rig…. i7 second generation, Nvidia GTX 960, 8 gigs DDR, 500 gig clean ssd. Clean in that Elite sits on solo with nothing else. In space… everything odd on ultra, and the game looks and performs fantastic.

Other than the slight differences in “stuffs” between Odyssey and Horizons, due to a lot of switching back and forth for material gathering purposes, I am starting to see the differences in the graphics. I make these switches because the geological filters on the planet scanner mean absolutely nothing to me when I can manage to pull them up, and when I do, I absolutely see no difference between any of them. Horizons geo signals for the win! Other than material gathering, I prefer to be in odyssey.

having said that, I really don’t see why they can’t just port over the things they have so far for odyssey, leaving out the graphics “optimization” over to console. I think console players might be a bit sad that the cup they are expecting is only half full, but it’s better than no cup at all, I say.

 

[Yuri John]

Yes, the communication has been criticized several times since October 2021. It's a sad old hat now. For me, the motto is: drink tea and wait. Cheers...

 

[Rat Catcher]

I disagree. A conspiracy theory is just way sexier than the obvious observation I guess.

I really don't think one could argue away that parts of this game are needlessly repetitive and, well grindy. I don't know when you joined Elite, have you been around for Engineers v1? That really was something, even Frontier agreed and overhauled it numerous times by now.

Or some more recent examples, what would you say are the benefits of having to point&click plants three times instead of one? Or why is collecting 15 Settlement Defense Plans so much more interesting than collecting 5, or just one for that matter?

Is there also a name for the mentality that the game is never at "fault", it's just always the players who are too stupid to play the game correctly?

I'll walk up that hill you have chosen to die on...

I to have made a point many times since joining in with this forum's maunderings that I do no 'grind' and would not play if 'forced' to do so.

Yes, everything in the game is repeating everything one has done since the first day of play - launch ship, fly ship, land ship - rinse & repeat an infinite number of times.
Take a mission, complete a mission, take another mission, repeat...
Jump to a system, scan a system (first the ADS, now the FSS), jump out to another system, scan a system... It never ends!
Drop SRV, chug about on a body, return to ship, go to another body, drop SRV... Yeah, do it all over again.
Mine an asteroid, collect some commodity and mats, move to another asteroid, mine an asteroid..
Shoot some ships, collect mats, shoot some more ships, unending...
Now some of us play the EDO expansion, so...
Disembark, walk a bit, embark, rinse and repeat... (take mission, do mission, return, take mission...)

The whole game is just doing the very same things continually, nothing else one could possibly do...

I guess that sums up the way some might perceive playing EDH / EDO, just doing the same stuff, dasy in and day out, having boredom grind one down, spirits crushed by the mindless tedium...

Hey, are you dead yet?

 

[CardioTherapy]

Big doesn't matter, provided, as we have been told, that it contains FC interiors and further optimisation (preferably significant).
We are still awaiting further details on the new anti-aliasing module mentioned in Q4 last year, an update on that would be good too.

No doubt one of the CMs will communicate both the arrival time and content of U11 nearer the time.

Fleet carriers were already announced and shown. It is a nice immersion. I am expecting new gameplay loops after the science.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Fleet carriers were already announced and shown. It is a nice immersion. I am expecting new gameplay loops after the science.

Expecting based on what though? Personal hope in that surely something needs to come?

Because Frontier have not confirmed anything concrete beyond FC interiors (though, interestingly enough, Arf did call it "one of the biggest aspects of 2022", make of that what you will). There's been some hints about "things we are supa-excite!! about but can't share nope lol" but nothing in any level of detail so I consider that vapourware until they do.

Personally, I don't expect anything at all now, until they tell me otherwise. Although I secretly still believe we'll get on-foot AX combat, as long as the Goids don't die of old age beforehand.

Not a great outlook perhaps, but what did we actually get over the past 8/9 months? A midly entertaining/gimped SRV, and some e-motes that barely anyone actually uses (in my own experience in Open in busy places). And both most likely items that simply didn't make it for launch and have been added since as FDev got around to it.

 

[Rat Catcher]

The constant hostility is really getting a bit much.

I agree... It goes hand-in-hand with the rest of the drivel spouted here, always has done... Of course, some make their hostility much less obvious to avoid the wrath of the moderators, a learned skill, no doubt.

Frontier will cave to pressure, look at the excellent change to the drag experimental that was challenged, principally, by SDC - and unpleasant things threatened if it was not reverted...

So much whining on "want it now" when it comes to engineering has had a response from Frontier, true, but, amazingly, it suffers the same as most of the communication given, just not been followed up on, will it ever be?

It is fascinating that players will endure mass repitition of amazingly boring loops, hating every minute, because they perceive that something must be had rapidly. Then complain here that their own actions have embittered them to the game...

So many straw persons, so much moopoo...

 

[StevieG]

2 months today with no Elite stream from any of the 4/5 community managers right?

Building hype is one thing but this is now in maintenance mode territory......

Well atleast some fdev games get some love from the CMs, yet another week of streams for them...

Weekly Streaming Schedule - w/c 14/02/2022

Heyo Frontier Fam! It's a new Monday and you all know what that means: time for us to post a new streaming schedule! We hope you're looking forward to another fun week of streams. We know we are! Join our streams on our official Frontier Developments Twitch channel, or on the YouTube channels...

forums.frontier.co.uk

This is NOT the way...

 

[Greybeard Seawolf]

The longer the lack of meaningful communication goes on the more it feels like ED is the black sheep of the Frontier Fam.

 

[Cohen the Worrior]

Black Sheep nebula, I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

 

[Rat Catcher]

The longer the lack of meaningful communication goes on the more it feels like ED is the black sheep of the Frontier Fam.

The intimation from Arf's original post might be interpreted that 'big things' are afoot... (Even the only youtube channel I watch had some amazing 'reading between the lines' over that.

ED comms have been cut to the bare minimum since December 2021, with nothing that could possibly be questioned or misinterpreted (bar the pedantry over 'hotfix' in Zac's thread) posted since.

Something is surely coming, whether it is good or bad we do not know, ("we" as used here being an indication of all who are not part of Frontier Development staff, as one kind poster recently had difficulty with such an inclusive) so all that is possible to do is to wait, as patiently as possible, for an announcement to be made.