The current crop of FSD powered small ships has been in use for enough years that it will be reliable, and space ships in the ED universe have transporting goods and people and opeing up new areas for over 1000 years, you really think we should be comparing current exploration to mans first landing on the moon or mars, or sailing ships exploring the globe for the first time?1,000 years, think about that, if you can't make a realiable spaceship after 1000 years of practice maybe you shouldn't be making them at all!
Bring more danger to Elite Dangerous?
- Thread starter norlin
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The current crop of FSD powered small ships has been in use for enough years that it will be reliable, and space ships in the ED universe have transporting goods and people and opeing up new areas for over 1000 years, you really think we should be comparing current exploration to mans first landing on the moon or mars, or sailing ships exploring the globe for the first time?1,000 years, think about that, if you can't make a realiable spaceship after 1000 years of practice maybe you shouldn't be making them at all!
Your looking at this all from a veteran perspective, OP. My self, when I was new, I almost quit this game because I kept losing interdiction by NPC in a type 9 by 2 anaconda while trying to do a transport mission in a war zone. I was on the hook for MILLIONS in lost goods that I could not replace because I didn’t know how to locate anything, and I was flying with no rebuy toward the end, I didn’t know how to repair my ship. In the end I was left floating in space with no thruster control, no cargo, no way to replace it, and no idea what to do. I shut the game off and walked away for a few hours.
when I logged back in I was just as damaged but had some thrusters and made it to port. I repaired and hauled butt back to a system I knew far away… still with no rebuy, and mines my butt off in that 9 till had tons of credits to never come that close again. Got the F out of that 9 asap too as something that flies so bad shouldn’t cost so much to replace.
my point is…. Your looking at it from a few months to some years experience. You want more excitement? Gimp your self. Fly no shields in open with tons of cargo where ever you go.
when I logged back in I was just as damaged but had some thrusters and made it to port. I repaired and hauled butt back to a system I knew far away… still with no rebuy, and mines my butt off in that 9 till had tons of credits to never come that close again. Got the F out of that 9 asap too as something that flies so bad shouldn’t cost so much to replace.
my point is…. Your looking at it from a few months to some years experience. You want more excitement? Gimp your self. Fly no shields in open with tons of cargo where ever you go.
Don't think the 20km zone made it into the full release, I do remember it in beta.
First, if you are flying without rebuy in expansive ship you are gambler, if you lose it, it's up to you, especially if ship is not engineered and easy to kill, you were just greedy grinder, trying to advance in game financially ASAP without building skill set to outfit and fly big ship, btw even t-9 can evade interdiction against npc.
Second, Fdev is not making good job with tutorials, soem parts of the game are not mentioned, i was quite advanced in game before someone told me that 4 sys pips increase shield strength, in game training missions not mention this.
I've been to Sgr A* and back and the only gameplay I could see is the motivation to keep on going.
Jump, scan, scoop, repeat.
Maybe some checking of the system scan for anything of interest.
That's very much 1984 gameplay.
It's probably too late to add any sort of mechanic to exploration now (without a salt inducing discovery reset) as plenty of explorers didn't have to manage whatever we want to implement to get their "firsts"
Then we come to what could actually be added - consider the challenges faced by explorers in the age of sail:-
1. Food/drink. Do we want bars running down that adds a busywork mechanic to replenish them?
2. Wear and tear. As a above.
3. Getting lost. Seems unlikely given the power of computing our ships have
4. Hostile natives. Well - I'm game.
Lorewise if exploration was as "easy" as it is in game, Humans would be everywhere.
But adding any of the restrictions above seem to be adding more grind - none of the above could be termed interesting gameplay loops.
Jump, scan, scoop, repeat.
Maybe some checking of the system scan for anything of interest.
That's very much 1984 gameplay.
It's probably too late to add any sort of mechanic to exploration now (without a salt inducing discovery reset) as plenty of explorers didn't have to manage whatever we want to implement to get their "firsts"
Then we come to what could actually be added - consider the challenges faced by explorers in the age of sail:-
1. Food/drink. Do we want bars running down that adds a busywork mechanic to replenish them?
2. Wear and tear. As a above.
3. Getting lost. Seems unlikely given the power of computing our ships have
4. Hostile natives. Well - I'm game.
Lorewise if exploration was as "easy" as it is in game, Humans would be everywhere.
But adding any of the restrictions above seem to be adding more grind - none of the above could be termed interesting gameplay loops.
That's about utilizing the only danger source I described in OP.
And yeah I'm only playing in Open
Probably I was not clear in OP, there are two different aspects:
1. chance of facing an encounter
2. complexity of the encounter
The second point is about how hard for player to pass the encounter and keep their ship not destroyed.
The complexity should challenge both player skills and the preparation measures (things player can do in advance, but can't do when facing the encounter)
Food and drink seem to me kind "meh" stuff. In ED era humans been in space well over 1000 years. Not having full recycled life support seems to me kind of anachronistic. And even then what prevents explorer putting say some tens of tons worth of food into Krait or Annie, and not worry for a long time. Unless said feature is made "gamey" like our totally pathetic spacesuits.
Wear and tear, well if we compare to ocean going ships of nowadays, they have rather long sailing times between major dock overhauls. And some owners even skimp on that.
Google for "easy to learn, hard to master" concept.
ED is the opposite - hard to learn, easy to master because of the shallow mechanics.
I'm suggesting to add more depth into the existing gameplay, that's all.
Consider this, to many players combat is obligatory meh stuff. And current game acknowledges this. Offering you various ways to avoid most of it. And if it still happens, ways to get out of fight. (Otherwise ships like T9 and so on would unusable even in PVE game.) I don't care much about combat play. When not exploring I fly heavily shielded and armoured Cutter and stomp NPC's with raw power and no finesse. When exploring I don't carry anything that interests NPC's. In both cases I submit to interdiction.
I have NO interest to train combat stuff at all.
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It occurred to me that perhaps the question here then is how do you mitigate against someone making a sequence of bad decisions in the early game (buying an expensive but highly vulnerable ship, getting lost in the sea of info in the early game and missing the "elite" description of the mission, and the huge liabilities involved). Rank lock the T9? Have a sort of soft lock on missions based on rank, similar to reputation (which even makes sense since why would a faction see the water behind your ears and send you on a death chase with their most valuable stuff)? Even an "are you sure?" popup. But then again the Elite way is to give the sandbox and let people make their own mistakes and learn.
And then I realised the whole situation you describe is brought about by the easy availability of credits. This imbalance means you were able to get in a T9 before being able to fly or were comfortable with the UI. And if you make one part of the game too easy, guess what, people then want you to make the rest of the game easier as well to match; it introduces a progression design failure, leaving them vulnerable to parts of the game they really shouldn't yet be exposed to for their own good. Then again, none of the bad things happened to me despite being (pre Elite anyway) a casual gamer, so maybe there isn't a problem.
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For me the answer has several areas (off the top of my head)
Make all NPCs have RNG weapon loadouts and ships / wings
Make C+P more random based on proximity to major stations rather than time
Make ATR random past a threshold
Make C+P scan based (so on scan you can wind up in a whole world of trouble)
Make station dropzones larger (based on BGS state criteria)
Make criminal gameplay pay more than legal gameplay, and locked / unlocked via notoriety
Leverage the BGS more, making anarchy / certain gov types criminal friendly at the expense of more democratic ones
Make SC more of a puzzle, with areas zoned off for non allied ships (so SC agility matters)
Declare support for wars like CGs, and that you can't swap sides (making the whole system tricky)
Make superpower rep and rank mean something- by being a King you can't be an Admiral, and that flying Imp ships in Fed space (for example) draws attention and rival spower kill squads
Lower engineering to G1 levels for select areas such as weapons, shields, powerplants
Make all NPCs have RNG weapon loadouts and ships / wings
Make C+P more random based on proximity to major stations rather than time
Make ATR random past a threshold
Make C+P scan based (so on scan you can wind up in a whole world of trouble)
Make station dropzones larger (based on BGS state criteria)
Make criminal gameplay pay more than legal gameplay, and locked / unlocked via notoriety
Leverage the BGS more, making anarchy / certain gov types criminal friendly at the expense of more democratic ones
Make SC more of a puzzle, with areas zoned off for non allied ships (so SC agility matters)
Declare support for wars like CGs, and that you can't swap sides (making the whole system tricky)
Make superpower rep and rank mean something- by being a King you can't be an Admiral, and that flying Imp ships in Fed space (for example) draws attention and rival spower kill squads
Lower engineering to G1 levels for select areas such as weapons, shields, powerplants
Remove all engineering on ship destruction. If you manage to get blown up in a significantly engineered ship I personally wonder how you'd have let that happen in the first place.
Unless it came from another player of course- PvP being the end game for a significant number of players.
Unless it came from another player of course- PvP being the end game for a significant number of players.
While I may not be a fan of more hyperdiction and additional NPC's to come get you, I am actually surprised that black holes DON'T kill you. I kept playing it safe in case they did. Funny to find that I didn't have to be that careful.
I can see it with some of the environmental hazards, like planets, stars, black holes... the fact they don't kill you is almost more surprising.
I can see it with some of the environmental hazards, like planets, stars, black holes... the fact they don't kill you is almost more surprising.
Only way to make that kind of loss palatable would be to significantly reduce the cost of engineering, or radically increase the opportunity to come across materials.
The OP is saying that there's a lack of risk in the game which basically comes down to the fact that you never really stand to lose anything. If you made it a trivial matter to get back your g5 engineered ship, things would be back to square one.
Granted it's not a complete solution, because as I said previously it doesn't take care of how you would lose a G5 ship in the first place.
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This is not to pick on you specifically, as your post sums up many 'newbie to Elite' players, and while i am new to ED, i'm a veteran of Elite games in general. But what you described above is actually all your fault, and your impulse to drop the game and walk away was all down to you not preparing yourself properly. Your gaming life would not have thanked you if you had indeed just put the game down, because you would not have had a chance to experience what makes the Elite games kind of awesome.
And your concerns expressed above are exactly what has shifted the game to be in the state it is in today in terms of how inappropriate the 'Dangerous' moniker has become. And this is not just your fault, but the thousands of players just like you that either did not do enough pre-playing training, or maybe had no experience of the previous games (that are by default much more 'dangerous'), or had not read a few forum guides or watched a few of the youtube newbie guides to give the information going in that would have avoided your frustrating experience. See this process (of 'learning' through failure) IS the very heart of the Elite games. We have all bitten of more than we could chew, or just been surprised and unprepared at some point in our Elite journey's.
Here is an important difference though, back in 1985 when i was unhealthily obsessed by the game, and luckily having a good friend that did not mind me spending a few hours a weekend on his BBC Micro to play the game; All the failures never made me want to quit and walk away, it just fueled my desire to get better, and so i did. We did not have the internet back then so we would crowd source tips and strategies in the school playgrounds, we would buy magazines that had play guides and we would practice and learn from our mistakes.
ED in it's current form (as is sadly the norm with many current games in this modern era) just removes the challenge and the ability to learn from mistakes by making it safe, too safe. It becomes boring and easy to progress through the gameplay, and even with the situation you mentioned and the loss you would have endured, in the game as it is now, you would have made all your lost money back in about an hour or two.
Complaints (and maybe concerns from Fdev over player retention?) from newbies have pretty much emasculated the game and made a mockery of the Elite 'Dangerous' game title. This is the easiest and safest game of Elite ever made, and it damages what made the game the classic hit it was imho.
Robert Maynard
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All that could ever be lost, in the previous versions, was progress since the last save-game - and multiple saves could be kept with the player able to revert to any one at any time. In this version there's no reversion, losses are not reversible in the way that they were in the previous versions of the game.
True, but the current levels of cash flow are such that it more less gives you a permanent 'autosave' that you recover from easily enough (so far in my experience).
And just to be clear, i'm not a 'Git Gud' guy, i rarely do combat but i want to FEEL the game world is dangerous (which currently it does not). Elite Dangerous has diluted the danger to a point that IS actually dangerous (to the game in that it interferes in the games ability to make you 'believe' in it and therefore 'care') imho. Luckily the galaxy looks amazing and is fun to explore and take part in, but yeah zero feeling of dread of danger or even a threat of personal loss as i know i can make any loss back super quick.
Edit: Heck i might even be forced to play in Open, and i detest MMO gameplay more than any other game format. I really can't say i would enjoy that, but so far this 'too newbie friendly' game design stuff is probably my number one concern as i discover ED and play the game, there is just so very little challenge to everyday normal ED life where you are not focused on combat exclusively (so as a pirate/bounty hunter etc)?
And just to be clear, i'm not a 'Git Gud' guy, i rarely do combat but i want to FEEL the game world is dangerous (which currently it does not). Elite Dangerous has diluted the danger to a point that IS actually dangerous (to the game in that it interferes in the games ability to make you 'believe' in it and therefore 'care') imho. Luckily the galaxy looks amazing and is fun to explore and take part in, but yeah zero feeling of dread of danger or even a threat of personal loss as i know i can make any loss back super quick.
Edit: Heck i might even be forced to play in Open, and i detest MMO gameplay more than any other game format. I really can't say i would enjoy that, but so far this 'too newbie friendly' game design stuff is probably my number one concern as i discover ED and play the game, there is just so very little challenge to everyday normal ED life where you are not focused on combat exclusively (so as a pirate/bounty hunter etc)?
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Previous games were not exactly more "dangerous". In FFE when I managed to get destroyed, all I did was to load older save. No credits lost, no ship lost, just some time.