The Open v Solo v Groups thread

[ethelred]

What sort of challenge to exploration could be added that is not just busywork (i.e. continuous repairs required) or a fait-accompli (i.e. destroyed immediately on arrival in system)? (and that is not already covered by the ship heat due to stellar bodies, etc.)

Exactly. What could be added that isn't just busywork? I think modules deterioration is busy work - even now you "just" need to add an AMFU to mitigate it. That's not much in addition to gameplay. Same for a "food/water/oxygen" bar (except the screen popped countdown timer).

Or like as we discussed is it even needed? Walking simulator in the game design sense is indeed contentious, but that doesn't mean we can't think it's good or bad. I liked "Dear Esther" and some of my best times in gaming has been walking around Liberty City, or New Hanover (check https://youtube.com/c/OtherPlaces for more )

 

[Brrokk]

So, I'm genuinely wondering, is there anyone playing here who does a lot of exploration and who also wants greater risk or repair complexity? I strongly suspect the answer is "no" and all the calls for it are just in the "Change other people's gameplay" category. TBH I find that hard to respect. It would be a bit like me suggesting that PvP ships should be gimped in jump range or cargo capacity a bit more.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

So, I'm genuinely wondering, is there anyone playing here who does a lot of exploration and who also wants greater risk or repair complexity? I strongly suspect the answer is "no" and all the calls for it are just in the "Change other people's gameplay" category. TBH I find that hard to respect. It would be a bit like me suggesting that PvP ships should be gimped in jump range of cargo capacity a bit more.

Well I would like some more fail states for ships than destroyed or fully operating. And I do explore.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Especially scenario where you need to keep ailing ship working to return to civilisation would be nice...

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Something like busted coolant circuit causing way faster thermal effects, or busted fuel tank causing your fuel usage to rise, FSD causing problems, perhaps navigation computer having problems...

 

[Rat Catcher]

How long does it take to learn how to fly? It's been awhile since I've played any flight sim.

Nice deflection: I make one point to illustrate that other games are tedious, you ask the price of cheese.

Flying in those wasn't monotony.

10-15 minutes of flying (with no other 'interest' bar watching the target slowly approadh) to reach the first target is not unusual, but I do know others who think this is amazing - but also complain that a 5 minute SC flight is boring...

You almost always have environmental and mechanical concerns to watch - else there wouldn't be so many dials.

Ah, try it, it is free, no better way to comment than by personal experience.

Do you think flying in a flight sim is equivalent to flying in ED?

No, ED is interesting. (unless one makes a point of always delivering to Hutton Orbital, of course)

 

[ethelred]

Nice deflection: I make one point to illustrate that other games are tedious, you ask the price of cheese.

My point is that it isn't tedious to fly in a flight sim because it takes a lot of time to get to the level where you can fly straight/to a way point/takeoff. Even in a Cessna there's loads to do and once your up in the air, you've got to think about trimming, stall watch etc etc.

As a player, because the challenge is high, exercising your skill is not a tedious activity. Maybe it does after repeating many times.


Compared to Elite, where there's a <5 min tutorial to take off and land, the challenge is very low. Or it was for me. I'm aware there were many threads back in the day that people found it hard to do the basic tutorials.

Is that clearer?

 

[Rat Catcher]

My point is that it isn't tedious to fly in a flight sim because it takes a lot of time to get to the level where you can fly straight/to a way point/takeoff.

I was flying the first of the training aircraft in a couple of minutes (but, that is probably thanks to playing ED for a lot of hours) but they are designed to be quick and easy to play with.

Even in a Cessna there's loads to do and once your up in the air, you've got to think about trimming, stall watch etc etc.

Or you can just get trim set, be at the 'correct' altitude and airspeed and watch the world crawl by.

As a player, because the challenge is high, exercising your skill is not a tedious activity.

Challenge only exists in tiny bursts...

Maybe it does after repeating many times.

I gather some people enjoy such tedium, because it is a 'simulator' and in RL most of the time spent flying a combat aircraft is getting from A to B and back to A.

Compared to Elite, where there's a <5 min tutorial to take off and land, the challenge is very low.

Indeed, the whole of ED holds no challenge, does it?

In my own experience, flying 10 minutes or so to a target (or at least to be in range of defenses that make things 'interesting') doesn't require much brain input... Tedium, nothing is happening bar the ground slowly creeping by.

Or it was for me.

Me too...

I'm aware there were many threads back in the day that people found it hard to do the basic tutorials.

My RL friend too several hours to complete the 'new pilot' scenario before getting his Sidey. He has never played any kind of flying game previously. (and overthought it!)

Is that clearer?

An improvement, yes...

I'm sure we can dance around the debate for many months, as avoiding the topic appears to be a speciality for both of us.

 

[Rat Catcher]

But, it all comes down to why I play games: to be entertained... Which some people feel the urge to have 'entertained' explained as it can't possibly be because recreation, in itself, is unique to each of us.
Some enjoy a sloth-like pace, others fast action, others a halfway point.

I play games that entertain me, if they don't, I don't play them. How much less tedious this forum would be if others observed the same logic... but for some obscure reason, they don't, as if being confrontational over minutae is, in itself, their own entertainment.

 

[ethelred]

I'm sure we can dance around the debate for many months, as avoiding the topic appears to be a speciality for both of us.

I think there ought to be more challenge in the game as the only challenge in exploration is versus tedium.

However, if exploration is (for want of a better word) a walking simulator then that's slightly more palatable, but still a waste of potential in my view.

What's your opinion?

Edit: see it above, thanks

 

[Rat Catcher]

What's your opinion?

If it isn't entertaining, I don't do it. Which may explain why I spend a lot of time playing around in CZs and Haz Res sites in space using ships that can be threatened by NPCs - and playing on foot in mostly G3 unengineered equipment. I ensure that I am being entertained by things I enjoy that way.

Opinion of your comment - if 'challenge' is a requirement, and ED isn't providing it, why would one play it? 'Potential' is just that, and highly unlikely to develop at this stage of the game. Something else may provide 'challenge', until skills get high enough for this to no longer be true.

(I'm not an 'explorer' - but have still been sightseeing a little and have over a million Ly travelled on my primary account - but then, I will do whatever is fun for me at the time)

ETA: I've just been replaying Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (VR game) and having a ball, it is challenging as well as very entertaining. Looking forward to Chapter 2 coming out later this year.

 

[Wasp0]

To get more Targets, opps sorry of course i meant Players, to play in open i think there should be a 15% - 25% bonus of all credits you earn whilst playing in open!

 

[ethelred]

Quite.

This is why I run cargo in the bubble in Open.
Exploration isn't fun for me, hence why I don't do it.

Ditto mining - though that's on me as I haven't done it since before the mining update that feels like 6 months ago but was probably 2+ years ago.

I'd like it to, hence the suggestions here, and my looking at the gameplay involved. I don't think it's particularly well designed hence my points above.

Isn't a forum a place to explore ideas?

 

[ethelred]

To get more Targets, opps sorry of course i meant Players, to play in open i think there should be a 15% - 25% bonus of all credits you earn whilst playing in open!

Double post, yay!

The best way to get more targets in Open is to ask players who don't currently play in open what it would take for them to play in open.

The premise the open lacks targets is also false.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Isn't a forum a place to explore ideas?

Indeed, but as exploration is tedious.... (sorry, couldn't resist it!)

Gameplay is interesting as a concept, wouldn't you agree? There is plenty to do in ED, some of it I find less interesting (e.g. mining - even with the new tools) in general, or engaging only when I wish for a particularly relaxing time.

Discussing 'potential' is truly a dead-end street, only what already exists can be discussed, as the 'what-if' is wishful thinking. Things get added as and when Frontier deem it, then 'discussion' can include those additions.

Maybe I am too logical, only seeing what exists rather than what could be?

 

[Morbad]

Of all challenges, this is the worst. You're happy with this?

I'm sure sure not.

"Duane Dibbley, I dont wanna be Duane Dibbley" lol

Duane was a pirate who used to fly a Python:

Source: https://youtu.be/g4j6EvNH1uQ?t=211

I'm the opposite - I fly paper ships with very small or no shields when exploring. It forces me to fly extra careful, and it's way more immersive than bouncing off the ground at 100 m/s and surviving.

I can't consider handicapping myself immersive. By and large, people who don't stack the odds in their favor as heavily as possible prior to any sort of meaningfully risky endeavor are fools or madmen. I don't like being limited to playing such characters.

Not that it would matter anyway. My first long range exploration trek was back in 1.2-1.3 with an FDL to Sag A* (it was also an Open-only Buckyball A* attempt). ~5600 jumps round trip; fuel tank held two 14ly jumps and about 30 minutes of SC; route plotting limited to 1000ly and I had to accept routes with unscoopable stars between arms; no synthesis; no repair limpets; no stations outside of the bubble. Over the course of the whole trip, my CMDR's ship took ~14% of hull damage and I found it prudent to expend two of my three heatsinks when I jumped directly into the second star of a binary. It was done on a whim, without me fully grasping what was entailed, but the risk was essentially non-existent, and every jaunt since has been even less risky.

It wouldn't matter if I was in a shieldless ship with 1% hull integrity, there isn't anything out there to make success less than a virtual certainty. I'm not going to willfully not pay attention and if I pay attention I'm virtually never going to allow a ship to be damaged. Even if I couldn't log-off (except for server resets), even if I live streamed the whole thing, even if I stayed in Open...the risk would be trivial in a beatup lemon of a ship, because the environment poses no threat, and the CMDRs that do can't be bothered.

I do think some tedium in exploration is ok. As is attrition. But the bulk of all gameplay should be skill based and in a game like Elite, every long distance journey trip should be an uncertain one. We have this massive galaxy, but it's only imposing in exact the same way the amount of hair that comes of my dog is...it can't hurt me (or my character as it were), and it's neither really time consuming nor difficult to deal with, just a bit annoying. That's what distance in ED has been reduced to...a minor annoyance. That's what they squandered 400 billion star systems on.

The problem with introducing new risks to exploration would be the sheer lengths of time and numbers of jumps involved. For example, even if there was only a 0.1% chance of any jump going wrong in a new way, it would be almost inevitable that all explorers would be struck by the problem in a round trip to Sag.A*. Even a tiny new risk of destruction would just render exploration impossible.

Ideally, a veteran explorer who knows exactly what they are doing should need six months to get to Sag A* and have a bout a 50/50 shot at surviving the round trip. My own CMDR should have came back in an escape pod, if at all. That would be reasonable to me for 26k lightyears in a period where the bulk of humanity is confined to a 500ly diameter bubble.

 

[ethelred]

Maybe I am too logical, only seeing what exists rather than what could be?

Perhaps this is it. I see an activity with archaic game design (though ofc that can be debated) and I'm looking at ideas of how to improve it - if I understand correctly you'd just move on to something else.

 

[Darrack]

I think there ought to be more challenge in the game as the only challenge in exploration is versus tedium.

However, if exploration is (for want of a better word) a walking simulator then that's slightly more palatable, but still a waste of potential in my view.

What's your opinion?

Edit: see it above, thanks

I really don't see why everything has to be a challenge.
As many folks have said exploration offer's plenty of challenge if you want to head out in a non exploration vessel and if you get complacent a few mistakes can get you plotting a course to some far off station and crossing your fingers.

Once (and im sure we have all done it) i misjudged the gravity on a planet and came out of the experience with 10% hull, it took me over 15K LY of nerve wracking jumps in a 30LY jump Cobra to get to a station in Colonia.
Was that an experience i can tell the kids? yes, would i want to do it again, no chance, i always take an AFMU/repair limpets now.

If you want a challenge ED offers it in many ways, its really not rocket surgery to make up your own challenges.
But the game (as all games) is like life, you learn from mistakes and next time things are (should) be easier, now i explore in fully kitted out Annies or Luga's, risk mitigated, relax and fly!

Now the festival season is over im back out in my truck a little bit, do you think i should forget to clip in my fifth wheel, leave the suzies unattached and set the truck height in the sat nav down to 13ft 6 for a challenge?

Yeah i think not

O7

 

[Brrokk]

To get more Targets, opps sorry of course i meant Players, to play in open i think there should be a 15% - 25% bonus of all credits you earn whilst playing in open!

That would be the end of instancing. Giving Solo players an actual credit incentive to play in Open while adding every hollow square they see to their block list. We'd all be playing in "Solo" then.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

My point is that it isn't tedious to fly in a flight sim because it takes a lot of time to get to the level where you can fly straight/to a way point/takeoff. Even in a Cessna there's loads to do and once your up in the air, you've got to think about trimming, stall watch etc etc.

As a player, because the challenge is high, exercising your skill is not a tedious activity. Maybe it does after repeating many times.


Compared to Elite, where there's a <5 min tutorial to take off and land, the challenge is very low. Or it was for me. I'm aware there were many threads back in the day that people found it hard to do the basic tutorials.

Is that clearer?

Depends on if you had flight sim experience before, or even have flown real stuff. For total noob straight flying can be challenging, for experienced sim flier, getting to new sim is just setting controlls right, see if game has some special quirks and of you go.