2.3 dev update feedback mega thread

[Aussiedroid]

From my view, I still do not have a ship with SLF and rarely use turrets on most of my ships (I dont see myself adding them just to have an occasional drop in from a random player). Being limited to these roles will mean mostly I will not be participating in multicrew directly from what I read unless I want to be a gunner etc joining another. To me it looks like players will need to create a specific build just for multicrew activities. Is this the intent? Feels too limiting to me that it will become a novelty. Will this be expanded?

If I did use it, I would also like to specify only players with a mic could join my crew or those of a certain rank if I choose. I do not have easy access to keyboard while playing so communication with randoms dropping in to play would reduce the fun from the experience if they didn't want to be social and chat. Likewise it would be good to allow only players speaking the same language as you. Such filters to find the suitable crew member would be beneficial rather than just any random dude joining your crew. If we are not interacting then I do not see much point in allowing access to my ship. I would also like to specify the combat rank they need to join.

There should also be a limit on the range you can join a ship. Maybe a few 100lys at most.

Peer to peer rating system would also be good. If you have fun with someone, and they are nice then you should be able to give them a commendation, and likewise if they just camp a spot on your ship for credits or are abusive/rude etc then you can rate them down. Maybe keep count of the number of times players kick them out too. Will encourage players to be civil, cooperative and help weed out those players that just want to ruin others fun. There could be a priority queue that gives good players better ship placements or first dibs on ships if limited.

Also, will this be region restricted like I believe CQC is? Am I going to get someone from the other side of the world with a 1000ms ping joining my crew causing a laggy experience for me?

I am interested in what this brings to the table, but I must admit I am skeptical if this will become something I will use regularly.

Thanks Frontier.

 

[Muetdhiver]

The problem with requiring everyone to be at the same station is that'll never happen unless they are 3 people who already know each other and planned it out. The odds of sitting in a station and finding a ship docked with the "looking for crew" flag on are slim to none. With Wings at least we can hit a combat zone or RES and see some other random guys playing and wing up. How long do you sit in a station doing nothing? Clearly Frontier wants this feature to be heavily used. That won't happen if you severly limit when it can be activated solely because it satisfies the OCD of the hard core immersion folks.

Well put.

If only FD could put a way to do the same for wings. Maybe via MC :

join a ship as crew, and call your ship to come to you (if say the distance is 150lyr or less), like from the SRV. Wait a little while and voilà,
ships there and shut down the telepresence and hop back into your ship, turning MC in wing. The add the option to dismiss the ship and
reactivate MC. Like for the SRV.

In other words, a way to do MC => wing

 

[Ignition]

Those were the days

But really and truly ... there's not a lot for the Engineer and Tactical Officer to do on the ship .... tweak this ... adjust that ... and that's it .....

I suspect FD realized that and pulled back from proceeding further.

Thats the problem, Elite is a relly basic game that can be played with a very few buttons. Its the job of FD to make the game invoving and complex.

 

[TenakaFurey]

I'm not convinced by people who suggest it reduces the accomplishments of finding some of the hard to get to places. Just because I can already do that. It's called Youtube. Sag A and Beagle Pt are already at the touch of a button. And honestly, watching a video of someone "exploring" those places is the exact same experience of doing it yourself. The exploration mechanic in Elite is so shallow.

Maybe so - but even in Elite, there is a big difference between watching and doing. Do you get the same thrill watching the alien encounter on YouTube that you did whehn/if it happened to you? No
Do you get the same feeling of accomplishment of going to Beagle point or Sag A* watching it on YouTube or going there yourself? No.

YouTube can show you...but it won't take you there. I can see the Grand Canyon on YouTube...but that doesn't equate to actually being there. Instacrew however, will take you there. It won't be the YouTube experience....it'll be the real thing. Except - you won't have to put in the work, won't have to rise to the challenge and getting there will be as simple as accepting an invite.

Frankly I see multi-crew as just an extension of Wings. It's just another way to interact and play with your friends, which is a good thing, and it is useful when you have a pilot like myself, who flies a pimped out Anaconda, and my son, who flies a piece of junk Cobra, as soon as 2.3 comes out we'll be using it quite a bit.

And do what? You won't be MCing the Cobra, and for every weapon you give your son, you lose one. It's an extension of Wings, but you also won't be as good as two ships. Useful, in this case, seems to be not having any need for you two to rendezvous and form a wing. To duplicate the rewards instead of sharing them. To have one pilot and the other occasionally get to use a gun or SLF. To avoid CQC.

I'm happy FD are adding Multicrew, but the implementation provided here is - IMO - very poor and raises a lot of questions wrt gameplay, balance, abuses and exploits. And most of these are obvious and have been discussed here and elsewhere. It isn't enough to be able to do something in this game...the activities need to have meaning. Rising to the challenge and travelling to BP is a trip which has meaning. It's an achievement within this game for many players, and one which will be devalued by the ability to teleport to any ship. Would Distant Worlds have been a good if it needed one ship willing to travel and have the rest just instacrew in. If I can sit back on a ship and do nothing and rake in millions of credits, how will that affect trading?

And the upside of Instacrew? The advantages? The advantages isn't that I'll be able to play with friends or family. I can do that now - via Wings. The advantage is that I won't have to travel to meet up with them.

Is there any reason why CQC could not be added to provide the same "dropin" aspect? Or increase the speed limit or jump range? What about jumpgates? In short, if all you want to do is remove the travel form the game so you can play with friends (or strangers who simply want to blast things), is Instacrew the best solution?

 

[akaliel]

Maybe so - but even in Elite, there is a big difference between watching and doing. Do you get the same thrill watching the alien encounter on YouTube that you did whehn/if it happened to you? No
Do you get the same feeling of accomplishment of going to Beagle point or Sag A* watching it on YouTube or going there yourself? No.

YouTube can show you...but it won't take you there. I can see the Grand Canyon on YouTube...but that doesn't equate to actually being there. Instacrew however, will take you there. It won't be the YouTube experience....it'll be the real thing. Except - you won't have to put in the work, won't have to rise to the challenge and getting there will be as simple as accepting an invite.



And do what? You won't be MCing the Cobra, and for every weapon you give your son, you lose one. It's an extension of Wings, but you also won't be as good as two ships. Useful, in this case, seems to be not having any need for you two to rendezvous and form a wing. To duplicate the rewards instead of sharing them. To have one pilot and the other occasionally get to use a gun or SLF. To avoid CQC.

I'm happy FD are adding Multicrew, but the implementation provided here is - IMO - very poor and raises a lot of questions wrt gameplay, balance, abuses and exploits. And most of these are obvious and have been discussed here and elsewhere. It isn't enough to be able to do something in this game...the activities need to have meaning. Rising to the challenge and travelling to BP is a trip which has meaning. It's an achievement within this game for many players, and one which will be devalued by the ability to teleport to any ship. Would Distant Worlds have been a good if it needed one ship willing to travel and have the rest just instacrew in. If I can sit back on a ship and do nothing and rake in millions of credits, how will that affect trading?

And the upside of Instacrew? The advantages? The advantages isn't that I'll be able to play with friends or family. I can do that now - via Wings. The advantage is that I won't have to travel to meet up with them.

Is there any reason why CQC could not be added to provide the same "dropin" aspect? Or increase the speed limit or jump range? What about jumpgates? In short, if all you want to do is remove the travel form the game so you can play with friends (or strangers who simply want to blast things), is Instacrew the best solution?

The sense of accomplishment comes from that 15000 jumps it took you to get there. Not seeing another brown planet that looks like all the other brown planets. It's from spending weeks and months tiptoeing across the galaxy. I can't see anyone feeling a sense of accomplishment jumping into a ship that's already there. Seeing the grand canyon in real life trumps youtube because you are ACTUALLY there, seeing it in all it's actual glory, you can smell the desert air, watch a small stone tumble a hundred feet down. Elite is a game, played on a monitor, and it looks exactly the same on youtube, at the same resolution, at the same frame rate, on the same monitor. It's not the real thing. Nobody is at Sag A. It doesn't even have an accretion disk for pete's sake! I can see these systems on youtube. But that doesn't take away from making the trip yourself. That's why I don't feel this hurts the accomplishment

No, not the cobra, we're going to be in my Anaconda. And when that Vulture pops his chaff repeatedly 15 times, I'm going to laugh at him this time, cause I have a human being working my turrets and we don't care about no stupid chaff, we're going to be much more effective than 2 ships. And we both get the rewards now. Instead of me doing 99% of the work and my son getting off 1 shot and the game splitting the reward 50/50.

The implementation is small. It's barebones. It offers some neat combat enjoyment with a couple guys, but that's about it. It needs more. But first the game needs more. There's no point in adding an Engineering role if all we're doing is jumping 10 times, pointing towards a dot and waiting 15 minutes.

I would have loved to experience the alien encounter in game. But after over 300 jumps in and around the nebula I gave up. Whatever triggers the event, I clearly have not met the conditions.

 

[TenakaFurey]

The problem with requiring everyone to be at the same station is that'll never happen unless they are 3 people who already know each other and planned it out.

Which is different from Wings...how?

Clearly Frontier wants this feature to be heavily used. That won't happen if you severly limit when it can be activated solely because it satisfies the OCD of the hard core immersion folks.

This isn't really a problem with immersion. But simply because you want the convenience for personal reasons doesn't make the immersion crowd wrong.

Suppose you get into a PvP fight in your souped up Anaconda. Suppose you start to lose. Would it then be fair for you to call upon your son and ask him to hop into your ship for a few minutes, to give you a second fighter and an extra power pip? Now, we can hope that FD will add a restriction that says you can't instacrew while in combat...but that would be adding a restriction. A barrier to the system. Suppose your combat for whatever reasons lasts 10 or 15 minutes? What then?
And do you think it fair that your son could just sit in your Anaconda, do nothing, and get rewarded with millions of credits? Not saying that you would do that, or that he wouldn't earn it via his turret skills....but there are plenty of others who would see that. Even if you think missions or trade is too generous or not generous enough, at least you need to do something to justify that pay. And with the prosed implementation...you don't.

There are many problems and issues with this implementation and it is difficult to think of any actual pluses.

- - - Updated - - -

The sense of accomplishment comes from that 15000 jumps it took you to get there.

And others have disagreed. And will disagree. If you don't like exploring fine. Buit others do. They like these types of challenges. And Instacrew will instantly devalue them.

No, not the cobra, we're going to be in my Anaconda. And when that Vulture pops his chaff repeatedly 15 times, I'm going to laugh at him this time, cause I have a human being working my turrets and we don't care about no stupid chaff, we're going to be much more effective than 2 ships. And we both get the rewards now. Instead of me doing 99% of the work and my son getting off 1 shot and the game splitting the reward 50/50.

And that too is an issue. Rewards should be shared and they should be worked for. They should be earned. That multicrew offers the option of people getting credits by doing nothing is a problem.

 

[Xender]

Immersion is only part of the problem. I can be solved by:
- Accepting telepreence.
- Using NPC crewman instead of telepresence
- Being docked at the same station in order to engage multicrew.
- Being docked at the same station in order to engage multicrew with addition of jump gates and station to station fast travel.


The biggest problem is simplicity, amount of roles and shallowness. It is good that multicrew will easily accessible however this is very simple and temporary game mechanics. I was hoping that it will more permanent and advanced - when I join the crew I will be part of it until I leave, even after logging off. I had hopes that I will participate in adventures like from Star Trek, instead of this it will another shallow content. I think the more interesting is commander creator and other QoL changes and smaller content additions.

 

[akaliel]

Which is different from Wings...how?



This isn't really a problem with immersion. But simply because you want the convenience for personal reasons doesn't make the immersion crowd wrong.

Suppose you get into a PvP fight in your souped up Anaconda. Suppose you start to lose. Would it then be fair for you to call upon your son and ask him to hop into your ship for a few minutes, to give you a second fighter and an extra power pip? Now, we can hope that FD will add a restriction that says you can't instacrew while in combat...but that would be adding a restriction. A barrier to the system. Suppose your combat for whatever reasons lasts 10 or 15 minutes? What then?
And do you think it fair that your son could just sit in your Anaconda, do nothing, and get rewarded with millions of credits? Not saying that you would do that, or that he wouldn't earn it via his turret skills....but there are plenty of others who would see that. Even if you think missions or trade is too generous or not generous enough, at least you need to do something to justify that pay. And with the prosed implementation...you don't.

There are many problems and issues with this implementation and it is difficult to think of any actual pluses.

- - - Updated - - -



And others have disagreed. And will disagree. If you don't like exploring fine. Buit others do. They like these types of challenges. And Instacrew will instantly devalue them.



And that too is an issue. Rewards should be shared and they should be worked for. They should be earned. That multicrew offers the option of people getting credits by doing nothing is a problem.

It's different from Wings cause with a Wing you can find guys anywhere. You can be fighting out in a combat zone or RES, see a couple other guys doing the same thing and throw out an invite. Done it a bunch of times. But if you make it so we can only join a ship from within a station another ship is docked at, it's never going to happen organically.

It doesn't make the immersion crowd right either. They want the feature to make sense as if they were really there. I want the feature to be fun and frequent.

If I'm in a PvP fight and start to lose, I wouldn't have time to get my son to fire up his computer, log into the game, wait for the spinning ship to stop and jump in a fighter. Because when you start to lose a fight you have about 25 seconds before you're dust. And even if he did make it in time, I doubt it would make much of a difference. And extra pip isn't exactly like popeye eating his spinach. It would just delay my death by about 5 seconds. And if I magically did survive. Why that would be awesome! And I'd come on here and say, "OMG guys you'll never believe what happened!" It would be a great story. It would be fun. Stop trying to make elite not fun.

I don't have a problem with the duplication of rewards because bounty hunting pays pretty crappy anyway. If we wanted to make money there are far more lucrative ways to do it. If they split rewards all they'll accomplish is relegating the feature to the trash. It'll be used a fraction as much. Doesn't sound like a good feature.

If explorers want to keep their accomplishments to themselves then they simply do not need to ask for crewmates. But if someone spent the time going way out there, and wants to show their friend, that's their right.

 

[zackmck]

...
The problem with requiring everyone to be at the same station is that'll never happen unless they are 3 people who already know each other and planned it out. The odds of sitting in a station and finding a ship docked with the "looking for crew" flag on are slim to none. With Wings at least we can hit a combat zone or RES and see some other random guys playing and wing up. How long do you sit in a station doing nothing? Clearly Frontier wants this feature to be heavily used. That won't happen if you severly limit when it can be activated solely because it satisfies the OCD of the hard core immersion folks.

Maybe another simple but, at least from my point of view, immersive solution to this problem would be: scheduled ship transfers.
Before i log out, i let my "auto-pilot" know that i want to be, for example at sol's Abe-station by tomorrow afternoon. It's like regular ship transfer with the exception that my alter-ego cmdr is transferred with it, in suspended animation, watching youpron or whatever. You can log in at any time, being spawned in a system somewhere between start and end point. You might as well send your cmdr to colonia for some weeks, while you are on holidays.

Every RL 31 business-executive-bot with 2 families and no time to play, will be able to arrange a meeting with friends at a specific time and place, without seeing dozen of loading screen at all. The implementation would be eezee as pie, because half of the work has already been made. In the end, i'll bet, it's just some SQL fiddling anyway.

 

[akaliel]

Maybe another simple but, at least from my point of view, immersive solution to this problem would be: scheduled ship transfers.
Before i log out, i let my "auto-pilot" know that i want to be, for example at sol's Abe-station by tomorrow afternoon. It's like regular ship transfer with the exception that my alter-ego cmdr is transferred with it, in suspended animation, watching youpron or whatever. You can log in at any time, being spawned in a system somewhere between start and end point. You might as well send your cmdr to colonia for some weeks, while you are on holidays.

Every RL 31 business-executive-bot with 2 families and no time to play, will be able to arrange a meeting with friends at a specific time and place, without seeing dozen of loading screen at all. The implementation would be eezee as pie, because half of the work has already been made. In the end, i'll bet, it's just some SQL fiddling anyway.

That sounds overly complicated, a lot of us have no idea when we can log in next.

To be honest I think they went with the insta/looking for crew lobby bit because of the upcoming ps4 release. They want as many people playing together as they can. With Elite they made a game with a world that's too big. And then included a solo mode. We barely see each other. I think this is an attempt add some community

 

[Lightspeed]

And that too is an issue. Rewards should be shared and they should be worked for. They should be earned. That multicrew offers the option of people getting credits by doing nothing is a problem.

The opportunities for an inexperienced crew to rank up quickly without achieving any piloting experience is indeed a serious problem if it remains part of the next update.

Clearly, the crew have to receive some benefit.

I suggest the rewards should be proportional to the crew member's rank. A noob crew member receives only a small percentage of the spoils, with an increasing proportion for higher ranks.

Something similar is already adopted for the NPC pilots .... a "competent" pilot takes less percentage from the total credits compared with an "elite" pilot.

 

[dynamicbob]

we need outposts to be upgradeable to accomodate at least one large pad.

 

[Blaize Meduenin]

The opportunities for an inexperienced crew to rank up quickly without achieving any piloting experience is indeed a serious problem if it remains part of the next update.

Clearly, the crew have to receive some benefit.

I suggest the rewards should be proportional to the crew member's rank. A noob crew member receives only a small percentage of the spoils, with an increasing proportion for higher ranks.

Something similar is already adopted for the NPC pilots .... a "competent" pilot takes less percentage from the total credits compared with an "elite" pilot.

In a wing the get the benefit of multi ships - shared reward
In multicrew they get the benefit of only one person needing a good ship, that ship being made more powerful (extra pips/fighter and ignoring chaff) and the fun of playing together. The reward should be shared just the same.

They don't and shouldn't have the bribe of free duplicated credits just to try and force the use of the feature. If its so bad that all the bonuses aren't worth using then it isn't worth implementing.

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

The opportunities for an inexperienced crew to rank up quickly without achieving any piloting experience is indeed a serious problem if it remains part of the next update.

Waiting for the first Elite pilot who has never left Trevithick dock.

 

[Dsign]

To put it simple: too much focus on combat. Would be nice to see FD actually pay attention to other play styles. Multicrew could bring so much more than just pew pew...

 

[Robert Maynard]

Immersion is only part of the problem. I can be solved by:
- Accepting telepreence.
- Using NPC crewman instead of telepresence
- Being docked at the same station in order to engage multicrew.
- Being docked at the same station in order to engage multicrew with addition of jump gates and station to station fast travel.


The biggest problem is simplicity, amount of roles and shallowness. It is good that multicrew will easily accessible however this is very simple and temporary game mechanics. I was hoping that it will more permanent and advanced - when I join the crew I will be part of it until I leave, even after logging off. I had hopes that I will participate in adventures like from Star Trek, instead of this it will another shallow content. I think the more interesting is commander creator and other QoL changes and smaller content additions.

It would appear that it's already "solved", from Frontier's perspective - they have chosen option 1: "Accepting telepresence".

.... which has the advantage of not, in my opinion, breaking the whole game by introducing fast travel (as, when the telepresence session ends, the player is placed back in their own ship where they were before they signed on as crew).

 

[dynamicbob]

if Fdev would give us another dev blog with other features apart from multicrew and avatars, i think the discussion might shift a bit

 

[Robert Maynard]

if Fdev would give us another dev blog with other features apart from multicrew and avatars, i think the discussion might shift a bit

Hopefully the upcoming live streams will flesh out some of the rest of the details.

 

[dynamicbob]

Hopefully the upcoming live streams will flesh out some of the rest of the details.

when is the next one due up ?

 

[Miklos Atreides]

if Fdev would give us another dev blog with other features apart from multicrew and avatars, i think the discussion might shift a bit

You are right, it tuely will. Only my fear is...
there is no or almost no other really fancy stuff they think they can provide just now.

We have to wait for the release notes and I have to draw my experience from it because I am not that exicted by Multicrew.

Regards,

Miklos