Bring more danger to Elite Dangerous?

[Zak Gordon]

Indeed it is, and understandably so. (Fortunately for us) ED actually does decent sales numbers for an 8-year-old game, but this does mean that FDev is in no small part going to cater to a population that is vastly less experienced than the old hands who hang out in comment threads like these. After all, attracting those new players gives FDev a big chunk of free money selling a game they've already developed, and are more likely to give them more free money buying cosmetics since they don't have any yet.

If you browse the subreddit or the newbie subforum here, it's clear that new players really do have a lot of trouble with game challenges most of the experienced hands consider trivial - NPC interdictions, flying into stars, heck just avoiding blowing up while using the docking computer everywhere. There's really only two obvious ways to make challenges that scale with experience: have events with difficulty that scales with your "level", or have opt-in locations for advanced players to visit. ED does both already. We could probably stand for Elite NPCs to be a bit harder (including better at forcing interdictions), but changes that make e.g. exploration or landing more challenging across the board probably aren't going to fly. Closest thing I can think of - really a missed opportunity, since this ship sailed long ago - would be if higher grades of FSD/drives/etc engineering also made them more prone to "interesting" failures.

The danger here though is that you simply turn the game as it has always been (a fairly unforgiving space ship sim) into something it was never designed to be. I see just as many comments from longtime cmdrs saying stuff like they rarely play anymore, or nothing they do really matters to them anymore as they have more credits than they know what to do with, as i do comments from not just new cmdrs, but new players to this genre (what this is not like minecraft/Fortnite?! why is it hard to fly a space ship? etc), and for many of them they will not enjoy what the game is at it's core.

I don't think you can 'casual game' Elite (although we have seen that Fdev have certainly been trying) and turn it into something like Fortnite, it is just a totally different beast. The biggest reason might be what was different about gamers in the 80's vs gamers in the 2000's? Because there certainly will be differences that explain the lack of stickiness of Elite today vs the more popular titles. Even if we look at Star Citizen and compare the ability of Chris Roberts focused on an American centered dev and release to our UK ED Kickstarter, you can see all manner of things come into play in determining how 'popular' a certain game will be.

Personally i'm not looking for Elite to become Ironman-like in terms of difficulty and challenge, just a slight ramping up on the dial in relation to a systems security rating, just so i can at least expect to be interdicted in an Anarchy system, which currently i do not feel is the case, which just feels wrong.

For the total new player (i was one a week or so ago) we have the safe starting area's and very decent tutorials these days to show us how to play the game better, we should not be diluting the experience for the better more experienced cmdrs out there imho.

Here is the big concern, longer-term, that if ED keeps aiming for the lowest common denominator in terms of ease of access for a new player on the path to 'I win!', it will simply end up with a rather boring game that long term players will stop playing as they have no challenge to overcome or face.

 

[ArchEmperor]

Choose difficulty level: The further you go from the bubble, or deeper into caves and gas giant atmospheres - the more lush, volatile, and fantastic the environment and danger will become.

Perhaps.

I remember a time when we did Poop runs from Sothis to the Bubble and stacked dangerous missions, then we were hunted by random quest villains the entire way back. That was anxiety - but also great rewards.

 

[Florenus]

Being able to willingly choose dangers to participate in was part of this game design from the start, so I wouldn't count on it to change.
This isn't that bad, even if it makes the game feel like big theme park, where you can relax an choose the rides to take.

But I think it could be interesting to have some regions where those rules don't fully apply - like for example Thargoid controlled region, where you might get interdicted and attacked by Thargoids while supercruising in the system, making entering such system really dangerous for random pilot.

I wouldn't say no to some kind of dangerous plants too. Exobiology collector game is rather boring as it is.

And basically, there should be more dangers during exploration, but also ways to avoid them (or to diminish negative effects) if player is skilled enough or prepared for all contingencies. Dropping too fast from SC on the planet resulting in crash to the surface seems too harsh if nothing could be done during the drop to avoid total destruction. Or the crash shouldn't end in ship being destroyed, but rather maybe damaged and in need of repair before being able to take off again.

 

[ethelred]

I'd like the team at FDEV to watch this 8 year old video.

Source: https://youtu.be/ea6UuRTjkKs

 

[Riverside]

I'd like the team at FDEV to watch this 8 year old video.

Source: https://youtu.be/ea6UuRTjkKs

This.

 

[ethelred]

This.

Yeah.

I love the game and the setting but the game play and design is shocking.

I'm pessimistic that this will improve as they seem to think that grind or gatekeeping = difficulty.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Right now, there is literally ONE (ok, one and a half) case when a player can face a danger unwillingly.

Look:

• PvE interdictions can be evaded in 100% of cases, on any ship against any NPC interdictor. So any fight in that case is a player's decision.
• Stars, Black Holes, Planets - all does not bring any danger, even if you fly directly to a star or a black hole - you will just get dropped from SC with minor damage and can safely fly away.
• Hyperjumps are 100% safe (except for Hyperdictions - I'll talk about this below) - no emergency can happen during the jump or when arriving to the star. Even jumping to a close binary/multiple star system will just heat you a bit, nothing more.
• Even during any unexpected PvE combat you can, at least, fly away

Hyperdictions can add some danger, but only if you're hauling a goids parts and they are very rare if you're not flying close to the goids systems - so this is kinda expected by such player.
And it stil can be avoided if you'll drop the cargo right away, so that's counted only as a "half".

PvP interdictions in Open game is the only "unexpected" danger we have in the game. And we all know how players love it, yeah?

My suggestion is:
Add more random dangerous encounters which players can't always avoid.

Possible examples:

• Make PvE interdictions more complex to win (to get NPCs at least some chance)
• Add Hyperspace jump emergencies (FSD malfunctioning mid-jump dropping you to a random system along the jump, arriving right inside the "hot" zone of the star, etc...)
• Make stars and especially black holes to be really dangerous. Such as if you're flying into the "hot" zone and dropping from SC, you're ship will be seriously damaged, you will continue to get the heat damage in normal space and there is a high chance of FSD malfunctioning when tryint to SC/Jump out of the star.
• Planets landing should crash your ship right into the surface if you're approaching quick enough in SC, instead of just dropping into the normal space
• Add intergalactic NPCs, maybe rogue Guardian AI bots, who can hyperdict you in the vast blackness.
• (Odyssey) Possible bacterias/diseases for the pilots themselves, which start to affect you mid-flight, adding visual dizziness or damage-over-time, so you have to visit a medical center or gather some mats & synthesize a cure on board.
• ... your ideas?

About every idea in the list aside from harder interdictions would basically render exploration unplayable.

When one does LONG trips, even pretty minimal chance of malfunction will happen. Likewise that "disease gameplay" would be "fun" far out in black. And combat stuff is highly unliked deep out there.

When it comes to PVE combat, its challenge level is calibrated on what is median of ALL players. Not with PVP edgelords abilities.

 

[ethelred]

About every idea in the list aside from harder interdictions would basically render exploration unplayable.

When one does LONG trips, even pretty minimal chance of malfunction will happen. Likewise that "disease gameplay" would be "fun" far out in black. And combat stuff is highly unliked deep out there.

When it comes to PVE combat, its challenge level is calibrated on what is median of ALL players. Not with PVP edgelords abilities.

Yeah and that's poor design.

You need to scale threat to the player ability, or have "tougher" areas for players above median ability.

Number one is Skyrim, number two is Fallout New Vegas

I'd prefer option 2.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

There are few things that have to be done to even think about game being at least a bit difficult and somehow reward skill/planning
1. OP started with this, and it's most important thing IMO- make interdictions harder to avoid, some people will not like it, but you shouldnt be harmless in unengineered shieldless t-9, and it's currently the case for 95+% of palyers, npc's interdictions should be comperable to players. It's correlates with making system security levels more relevant
2. Add running cost based on ship cost liek landing fees and decrease insurance, this should make game economy a bit mroe realistic, but also give smaller and cheaper ships or faster/more evasive a bit more purpose
3. Give npc's realistic builds, this one is interesting becosue you should have noticed that some npc's like pirate vettes have fixed builds (2 huge plasmas always), but huge majority is random, when i see wing assasiantion target fdl with multiple point defences, it's like WTFdev... it's not difficult to do, now i have impression that devs treat me like an idiot incapable of doing anything seeing those builds, role playing npc's utilities are fine, idiotic utilities setup and weapons given ship is really bad, after so many years it's easy to make a list of each ship with some good weapon setups real players use, of course this woudl scale with npc rank
4. Plenty of assets are wasted/unused but would make a lot of parts of the game more intense, like goliaths in Ody ground CZ's, this wold be difficult but randomly spawning them as reinforcments would be super cool, occasional "Oh , only not this" during CZ would make game better, especially that we not lose bonds after dying anyway
5. Give hi ranked npc's experimental effects that are real game changers like feedback cascade rails, scramble and emmisive lasers, drag munitions, i would add reverberating effect weapons, but npc's dont use torps, so implementing those would be a too much time consuming for devs i think and maybe too game breaknig for unawere people in big ships

Last point is not about difficulty, but rather completely broken risk/reward system, currently eveyrthing is random and not cleaned by fdev after Ody realese, we have difficult on foot missions that pay practically nothing for experianced cmdr, but take 30 mins of time, all those missions are low inflaunce missions too, but this is top of the iceberg, all old horizons missions risk/rewars are mess, we have plenty of 5 infuance trivial planetary/megaship/datalink scans along low risk cargo runs and wing assasiantino that require engineered combat ship to succeed, or even just rare goliath kills or megaship turrets attack missiosn, last 2 oft hose are low paid, low inf most difficult missions, same with wetworks that at best, pay as much as pirate lord, but are more difficutl, becouse we are against security forces very soon

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

I'd like increased environmental peril. Space seems pretty domesticated in 3308.

 

[norlin]

About every idea in the list aside from harder interdictions would basically render exploration unplayable.

Why so? It's kinda opposite - those options will make explorations (especially the longs ones) are much more interesting and enjoyable because of adding at least some flavor to the gameplay

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Meh, personally i don't want or need random danger like OP suggests, but black holes being more dangerous, sure. That's not random, you make your choices, you live with your decisions. However, i would like anarchies to be dialled up to Ridequat levels as they were in the original. However, that might make life too much of a pain for the Anarchy PMFs, and we should be thanking those guys for their service to the galaxy... so.... tricky one.

The idea about random diseases, absoloutely not, not unless they add NPCs of negotiable affections to starports!

The Anarchies in the original weren't so much dangerous as time consuming.
Whilst you could get from the jump in to the station in a couple of minutes in a Corporate or Democracy, blasting through the waves of pirates in a an Anarchy would take well over half an hour. As such the calculation was; how long do I have?
Of course in the current version Anarchies are probably the safest systems in the Bubble simply because no blighter goes there.

 

[Fizzatron]

The easiest way to bring more danger to your game is to do all your trading in the Deciat system, in open.

 

[Brrokk]

About every idea in the list aside from harder interdictions would basically render exploration unplayable.

When one does LONG trips, even pretty minimal chance of malfunction will happen. Likewise that "disease gameplay" would be "fun" far out in black. And combat stuff is highly unliked deep out there.

When it comes to PVE combat, its challenge level is calibrated on what is median of ALL players. Not with PVP edgelords abilities.

Yes, I'm suspicious here. It's obvious that even a tiny chance of random mishap on a jump or when nearing a planet will become a certainty if you do enough jumps or planet scans. Any explorer on a months-long trip out in the black will be destroyed eventually by such a feature. Exploration would only be possible if reduced to frequent short trips out from handy stations, or carrier-based.

In this thread I'm pretty sure that the people asking for more danger in exploration aren't actually explorers. It's yet another example of the tedious "do X to other people's gameplay" thing that seems to afflict this forum. I find it seriously weird in a sandbox-type game in which we're told to "blaze your own trail".

 

[Felix DiCestria]

About every idea in the list aside from harder interdictions would basically render exploration unplayable.

When one does LONG trips, even pretty minimal chance of malfunction will happen. Likewise that "disease gameplay" would be "fun" far out in black.

Is that like dying of dysentery in Oregon Trail?

 

[CMDR Junagu]

As far as exploration goes - the simple way to make it more challenging that allows the player to manage risk is to make the integrity of the ship mean something i.e. when it gets to 0% thou shalt fall apart completely, and nearing that things start dropping off or failing. There is some element of that already, of course, but it should be the case that ships can't stay out in space indefinitely - they need to have maintenance, and not something that can be done by an AFMU. But I do suspect that that ship has sailed and no going back now. The trope of - 'explorer pushed it too far, didn't heed the warnings as the ship started to complain, and never came back' - should be something that we can play out. Most explorer casualties are of the 'I'm totally bored of this, think I'll explode and go back to the bubble" variety, I suspect.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

As far as exploration goes - the simple way to make it more challenging that allows the player to manage risk is to make the integrity of the ship mean something i.e. when it gets to 0% thou shalt fall apart completely, and nearing that things start dropping off or failing. There is some element of that already, of course, but it should be the case that ships can't stay out in space indefinitely - they need to have maintenance, and not something that can be done by an AFMU. But I do suspect that that ship has sailed and no going back now. The trope of - 'explorer pushed it too far, didn't heed the warnings as the ship started to complain, and never came back' - should be something that we can play out. Most explorer casualties are of the 'I'm totally bored of this, think I'll explode and go back to the bubble" variety, I suspect.

Ya, the biggest danger of exploring seems to be the heightened risk of falling asleep at the wheel.

 

[varonica]

Thank you, CMDR Obvious, but what's the reason it was added to the game?

It was a test to see if a task that was entirely time wasting and of no use at all would be used or ignored by most players, since most of them ignore it entirely they know not to put that sort of thing into the game, which is why we don't have ship interiors!

 

[varonica]

Yes, I'm suspicious here. It's obvious that even a tiny chance of random mishap on a jump or when nearing a planet will become a certainty if you do enough jumps or planet scans. Any explorer on a months-long trip out in the black will be destroyed eventually by such a feature. Exploration would only be possible if reduced to frequent short trips out from handy stations, or carrier-based.

Yes, this is why cross country trucking is so safe and easy, apart from the danger of other drivers and the truck driver himself falling asleep. After hundreds of years of space ship flying and exploring all the dangerous areas of ship construction would have been long ago identified and put systems put in place to prevent any serious issues, random mishaps simply don't happen on a properly maintained long distance truck, if you take care of tire wear, service it regularly and drive safely there's no problem, long distance space travel in the ED universe will be exactly the same, as long as you take care of your ship it will take care of you. Reliability would be key in space ship construction and use in the ED universe, random things simply wouldn't go wrong.

But I have read threads here with players complaining about face planting stars and I simply don't see how that happens, even with black holes, WD and neutrons if you are at the controls and flying you should be ok. So damage from repeated doses of carelessness I am all for, they should make the damage from whanging into star and planet exclusion zones more serious at least, so after half a dozen you get to start worrying, at the moment it's around 2%, which is nothing really considering I flew 7kly in a cobra with 7% hull integrity!

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

@ Veronica, nobody proposing here that player should die and game should allow you to run into star, but comparing exploration with trucknig is completely out of place, you should rather compere lr travels with 16 centaury sail ships explorations or current exploration of Mars, it's anything but safe, simple mechanic that would add hull damage after crashing into planet evebn with shields, simialr to SRV would give not only exploration, but whole game a bit more challange or rather skill reward, for me peersonally landing cutter by boosting into ground/station being most efficient landing methos is plain stupid, unrealistic, boring, game not even punish palyerfor bumping into station during docking liek it should, not even mentioning that most palyers use DC anyway, siriously, ED Dengerousnes level is strong 2/10, and it's not even abotu dying, it's very ahrd to faile missions, longtimeago scavanging missions were failed when we struck mission objective, it's not lie this anymore, we practically cant fail assasiantion missions if target hi wakes, carebear level-extreame for whole nig gameplay, and if somebody tell me that if game is easy why u use engineered ship, i say game is easy even without engineering, all planetary horizons stuff for example. even CZ's are difficult becouse cmdr need ammo synthesis for all those uncancelable scb's without FC effect, not becouse he is thretened, after 20h player usally can finish mid level assasiantions against medium ship in own not engineered mission running cobra or similar, curennt difficulty balancing is made around weakest 1-5% of players, on top that whole difficulty level in ED is terrrible, becouse while player progress, he should be able to "open more doors" rather than be intouchable