Great, that's why I suggested a lot of non-combat features
Bring more danger to Elite Dangerous?
- Thread starter norlin
- Start date
-
- Tags
- dangerous not dangerous
@TiberiusDuval,
Sure you can save scum, it's an old tradition. The point is the game itself, the world you were in and how it made you feel and how you learned just how different an 'Anarchy' system was to another less dangerous system.
Hey if i wanted i could have a great 'safe' time just shuttling robots back to Sol from Barnards Star, but that safety made internal game logic sense, it was a safe route right in the heart of Federation space with strong system security, and it was pretty dull especially if you wanted to grind that route at full speed (max time compression) until you got enough for a panther clipper!
The thing is in ED so far, my immediate impression after 7-8 years of this games development, is that cash is too easy to come by vs what you can spend it on and the 'Dangerous' in the games title is frankly a joke. There is none to very little danger present in the games internal world, there just is not, even when visiting an Anarchy system with a mission warning i might get interdicted by enemy ships (mostly this does not happen). It's weird, it pulls me out of the game world and causes me to doubt the games internal logic and cohesion. It's the only Elite game where i've had that impression (even if resorting to save scumming in the older games when i needed to, i was doing that exactly because the 'danger' was too much to handle for me at that point).
Elite, Frontier, Frontier: First Encounters were all games where you felt the danger in different degrees depending on where you were (in an Anarchy or not) and if your current mission said you 'might' encounter enemy ships that meant you probably would.
Elite: Dangerous is just lacking that 'danger' despite the games title! How (when/why?!) has 'Dangerous' become kind of ironic?
Sure you can save scum, it's an old tradition. The point is the game itself, the world you were in and how it made you feel and how you learned just how different an 'Anarchy' system was to another less dangerous system.
Hey if i wanted i could have a great 'safe' time just shuttling robots back to Sol from Barnards Star, but that safety made internal game logic sense, it was a safe route right in the heart of Federation space with strong system security, and it was pretty dull especially if you wanted to grind that route at full speed (max time compression) until you got enough for a panther clipper!
The thing is in ED so far, my immediate impression after 7-8 years of this games development, is that cash is too easy to come by vs what you can spend it on and the 'Dangerous' in the games title is frankly a joke. There is none to very little danger present in the games internal world, there just is not, even when visiting an Anarchy system with a mission warning i might get interdicted by enemy ships (mostly this does not happen). It's weird, it pulls me out of the game world and causes me to doubt the games internal logic and cohesion. It's the only Elite game where i've had that impression (even if resorting to save scumming in the older games when i needed to, i was doing that exactly because the 'danger' was too much to handle for me at that point).
Elite, Frontier, Frontier: First Encounters were all games where you felt the danger in different degrees depending on where you were (in an Anarchy or not) and if your current mission said you 'might' encounter enemy ships that meant you probably would.
Elite: Dangerous is just lacking that 'danger' despite the games title! How (when/why?!) has 'Dangerous' become kind of ironic?
Last edited:
Your missing the point. Your looking at all of this from a veteran perspective. At the time I wasn’t sure how the insurance thing even worked. I was a few weeks in max, had not watched a single tutorial, and the only friend that played pretty much knew nothing beyond mining in a single system.
exactly, and even with zero effort from you to understand what was going on (in the game) you were ready to 'rage quit'. That's all on you and the thousands of others just like you that have shaped the development of ED so it is what is is right now, and the point of the discussion in this thread.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
DBOBE explained, long ago, that the name of the game relates to the rank. That it has a second meaning is obvious, however.
I guess Elite: Elite would be weird, and Elite: Harmless not as catchy 
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Quite.I guess Elite:Elite would be weird
Regarding challenge posed by the game, this is the first in the series to have Elite ranks other than combat - and three of the five in-game Elite ranks don't require the player to fire a shot in combat - which may well mean that there are players of this version of the game who have little or no interest in the combat side of the game.
Danger being mainly random (meaning basically unavailable), or pain in bottom stuff, like need to get ship back to civilisation for regular maintenance...
I m 100% with VR] Bulbulunufus that rank locking missions would be good idea, this way we can increase variety of missions and give some more demanding ones, currently if you are taking missions from settlement, you have like 40! only combat ones avaiible for you, but only challanging ones are "another great idea Fdev..." wing assasiantion missions that have random difficulty level, could be lone fdl that can be killed even by small ship, but also it's possible wing of 4, where not all pilots in fully engineered mediums succeed alone, OTOH there is plenty of locked great content, Goiaths that are fun and challanging are underused, a lot of later added ships not spawn as mission targets, no kraits, mamba, no cutters, always same builds of condas and vettes, planetary attack wing missiosn are very rare too, it's another opportunity to give engineered imperial/fed navy ships to protect installations and make big battles over them, asteroids are underused too, no missions deep inside them, Fdev not use even half of assets at their disposal to make intense gameplay, and it's a mistake, becouse it's open world game, if you dont like increased challange dont take them, and a lot of people quit elite becouse pve is just dull, lacking challange, and pvp is not easy to get given that even CG's and Power play can be done in solo/pg, and of coursse instancing is still far from perfect.
Cash is easy to come if you play some credit meta stuff. Comparable to Barnard Sol run in FFE. Otherwise game seems to be rather stingy with money.
Yeah, i'm one of those players that has the smallest interest in my combat rank (i think i just got 'mostly harmless' after i got one of those rare mission encounters as warned about in the mission description (transporting a rich tourist)) and am happy to focus on my trade and exploration ranks for the most part.
However this does not detract from the concern about ED's overall internal game world logic and the aspects that break that system. 90% of the game is great and a pleasure (to me) to experience, it is the remaining 10% around ease of too much cash too soon, early game progression being too fast, a bunch of GUI issues (add keybinding screens in this section) and this general disconnect in relation to traditional Elite threats.
There is the key difference between a single-player game and a persistent game. The single-player game can be hard because you have nothing really to lose. A persistent game has to be easy enough to not put new players off. Sorry, but ED isn't designed for us Elite players, it's calibrated for noobs. It has to be.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
As this iteration of the game is the first multi-player version it is perhaps unsurprising that the challenge is different - as a single player game can tailor its challenge to the progress made by the only player in the game whereas players of vastly different skill and experience share the same play area, at the same time, and can instance together in this multi-player version.
I don't see that, i had thought my initial rush through the starting half-dozen ships (in my first week of playing) was down to the 'starting area' i was in and it maybe being extra generous in the in-system trade routes (i was hauling biowaste in one direction (for small profits) and food in the other direction for what seemed like big profit as it got me to an Asp X pretty quick).
Then i flew to Sol and was able to think about my next ship during the next week. I got the money for a Krait Phantom and headed towards Alliance space and the system of Alioth.
Now this is just after a few weeks of playing, so i certainly have not seen everything or know the best most efficient ways to make money, but in all the systems i've been in for any length of time (so starter system LHS 3447, then Sol, then around Alioth) i've not been able to stop the cash pouring in, just doing trade and board missions for the most part. I think in another few weeks i could be in a Python if i wanted that, but i might head to Imperial space and see about going for the Clipper? But yeah money is not a concern at all, and i know whatever ship i want, i can have it pretty easily, especially if i looked at a few guides on how to make money quickly.
So some systems are in a bad economic state and trade is difficult, so you avoid those and find the 'boom' economies and the usual connections around to feed the 'Agriculture to Industrial to Refinary' type trade routes. So much money everywhere and believe me when i say a decent cargo hold (like 100 tones upwards) of silver bought and sold in the right markets will get you the ships you want soon enough.
Last edited:
Yes. I had concerns from the start of the Kickstarter what the MMO aspect would do to game balance, but Sir David seemed to understand that in the majority of the KS video's so my concern was downgraded.
Edit: And to a go a little deeper. I think overall (considering ALL the issues an MMO brings to a game like Elite) Fdev have done an incredible balancing act, it is a bit like those amazing plate spinners from the Chinese State Circus. Mostly they have created specific zones for players of specific abilities and that works (from my small experience of it) very nicely to give newbies a safe starting zone to get a handle of some basics.
However the problem seems to be that when these new players (new to Elite even) leave these zones they arrive on the boards and demand less danger and more cash, so they can get to the Anaconda's they have seen others flying etc. There is a very odd player>dev loop here that has sort of lost sight of probably the most important part of Elite, the game world and how that works in relation to creating a believable experience. Without cohesion here you or more less could (in theory) just give people an 'I win' button in the cockpit somewhere that when pressed gave the player the best engineered top ship and 100 Billion credits, i mean that is more or less the design path we are seemingly on? (i'm being a little OTT here off course).
Last edited:
Keybindings?
That screen is enough to put off veterans. Plus many other GUI issues like it get in the way more than a logical internal game world would for newbies. All us old Elite players were newbies too right, we all started somewhere (usually getting plastered over the hull of a Corolis space station!) and we all grew in experience and ability by facing the challenges of the game. It never even occurred to me to send Frontier (dev) a letter asking them to make the AI ships 'easier' or to give me more 'credits per hour'. I adapted to the games challenge and that WAS the beauty of Elite.
Last edited:
Elite: TripleI guess Elite: Elite would be weird, and Elite: Harmless not as catchy
probably I should've avoided to use the word "random". Rather it's randomized, procedural, etc. Meaning it's not 100% predictable by player and have different chances and triggers.
As for the maintenance - we already have wear & tear semi-hidden parameter, which does have some effect to the ship, but a minor one and it's definitely not a thing players considering for anything but "repair all -> advanced -> repair all completely"
There is a great concept in game design - "easy to learn, hard to master". I believe ED should follow that concept, instead of the current one "hard to learn, easy to master"
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
It maybe should have - however with over 12M copies out there, it's probably a bit late to make significant changes in that regard.