News 2.3 Dev Update

[neowan]

Hi everyone,

As long as their ship has enough seats (different ships have different multicrew capabilities) a Commander can directly invite players, or can set their vessel to allow multicrew access. Commanders looking to play as crew can either accept direct invites, or activate a new “looking for ship” feature, which will automatically place them as crew on a suitable vessel with multicrew access allowed, making the process quick and painless.

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This does take some immersion away but I don't see this changing until they add in the ability to walk around ships and stations.

All bounties and vouchers that the helmsman (ship owner) receives are duplicated for each crewmember, making multicrew a great way to have fun with friends without missing out on money-making opportunities.
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I wonder is this applied to missions as well...even if all players had to pick up the missions manually instead of a "Share My Mission" feature.

 

[ColdGlider]

Hey Rax! I've seen it... it's awesome. I like the telepresence aspect of it. It's all a lot of fun.

Geysers are already using telepresence!
https://youtu.be/h_3250rC9tU

 

[[VR] Goooost]

Actually no, that wasn't how it was described.

All non-helmsman will be given the option to dodge any crime penalties when they go back to their own ship, if they also sacrifice any credits they made while they were a crew member. If all you're doing is ganking people then you've basically lost nothing.

Honestly that decision needs to be removed. Let them keep everything, don't even give them the option to dodge bounties. If you got in someone else's ship and they started shooting up the police that's just bad luck. Dip out and find someone else to play with or next time join someone you actually know.

The problem is that a gunner can rack up a few thousand in bounties if he's good, but a pilot could stick someone with a few million in fines through missions. You say it wouldn't happen, but that would be the first thing I'd do if it were a feature. Set the invite beacon, and abandon a ton of missions. I can afford it. I don't give af.

 

[danteuk]

Frankly I'm unimpressed.
It's a tiny stepping stone to what people actually want, ie to get up and walk around your ship like a real person and eventually around stations too. Then multiple crew becomes slightly interesting.

So your lazy wing man that can't be bothered to fly out to a combat zone to blow up a bunch of random ships, can just teleport into your SLF, amazing.
This is not a headline feature. Why not just fix CQC so it's a bit better and people can get their fix of mindless combat there.

The story so far:
2.1 - The Engineers

95% combat: Engineer better weapons, better shields, faster engines; result: completely unbalanced combat and a grind to find stuff just to roll a dice.
5% other random stuff​

2.2 - The Guardians

75% combat: Ship launched fighters
20% Passenger missions ( cargo in cabins )
2% Ruins mystery ( mystery being to identify ANY part of it that's working as intended, answer: Nothing so far! )
2% Geyser, Fumaroles and Brain Trees! ( nice, good stuff, but damn hard to find without any proper ship based surface scanners!! )
1% more tweaks to combat to try and balance the problems introduced by 2.1​

2.2.03 - The Patch

95% combat: more tweaks to combat to try and balance the problems introduced by 2.1 and 2.2
5% other random fixes​

2.3 - Multi Crew

95% combat: Let another human player fly your SLF or man your turrets ( likely do a worse job of aiming than the automated systems )
5% Avatar creator, meh, if you never take another person on board your ship then it's completely pointless.​

I expect a few of the youtube content creaters will enjoy the Avatar creater, but the average player, not so much. ( I played and completed skyrim, spent 20mins with the character creator - can't for the life of me remember what I looked like - and don't care, same with fallout 4 ).

I'm more interested in the things FDev haven't announced but i hope to hell they are working on. ie:

• fixing networking
• fixing srv scanner
• adding actual exploration scanners ( I don't want to look for a 200m² ruin site on a massive beige desert planet with nothing but my eyes!!!! - it's 3303 for <expletive> sake !! )
• adding more planetary content
• ability to land on planets with an atmosphere
• any feature with more depth then point-n-click-n-wait
• any major feature that's not 95% focused on combat

 

[frostypaw]

What's the point of a commander creator when you can never see your own commander? xD
You can't walk around. You can't meet people. It tells nothing about you >.>

MUST LOOK LIKE MISUNDERSTOOD TOUGH GUY! I need to identify.

Can I be a cat person? OH no wait I totally am a cat person. Meow.

 

[jd5684]

Fdev, thanks for the update! Definitely looking forward to this update.

I'll admit that I didn't diligently read every single post in this thread, but in my skimming I've seen a whole lot of complaining about something that quite frankly players have a lot of control over. Yes, the idea of jumping across the galaxy into my buddy's cockpit to drive his fighter is inconsistent with the existing "logic" of the game. If we can use some quantum entanglement telepresence to accomplish this there is no reason for us to be in ships at all. That being said, there's a very easy player driven solution to this problem: don't fudging do it! If your sense of immersion can't adapt to you joining someone 500LY away instantly then travel to them to join up.

I'll go out on a limb and assume that FDev isn't going to force anyone to multicrew. At no point will you be forced to violate the laws of your immersion to join somebody else who isn't near you, the choice is entirely yours. I for one am happy that my friend out exploring 26kLY from the bubble can join me for a bit of bounty hunting if he wants to mix things up without having to abandon what he's doing. Likewise if he sees something really cool I can hop into his cockpit to have a look at it instead of relying solely on screenshots.

Bottom line, they're adding options, not forcing you to use them. E is a video game and if the new functionality upsets you that much, turn off the computer and find a good book (Might I suggest the Odyssey One series by Evan Currie).

 

[fennster]

The problem is that a gunner can rack up a few thousand in bounties if he's good, but a pilot could stick someone with a few million in fines through missions. You say it wouldn't happen, but that would be the first thing I'd do if it were a feature. Set the invite beacon, and abandon a ton of missions. I can afford it. I don't give af.

Even better... invite to ship, drop shields, boost into station wall, share out your rebuy with your crew members.

 

[Jarrek2002]

My only thought (echoing some in here already) is that being able to jump into somebody's ship even though your far far away might well lead to early burnout for some.

If it's TOO easy to go check out Jacques, Sag a and Beagle Point within a week, it takes the excitement away and (most importantly) takes away that part of a players journey. Admittedly folks would only really be cheating themselves out of things, but might it be considered to have a 500ly or 1000ly range you must be within in order to jump in? This way people can still play together generally, but there's no risk of somebody seeing all there is to see within a month and giving up on the game.

^^ My thoughts exactly!

 

[Blaize Meduenin]

Another problem is the exploitive free credits they are introducing. Profit from an action isnt shared, its duplicated, so just load up the game and join your friends crew and leave it running as an afk passenger and get free credits for nothing.

 

[PyrateLV]

The story so far:
2.1 - The Engineers

95% combat: Engineer better weapons, better shields, faster engines; result: completely unbalanced combat and a grind to find stuff just to roll a dice.
5% other random stuff​

2.2 - The Guardians

75% combat: Ship launched fighters
20% Passenger missions ( cargo in cabins )
2% Ruins mystery ( mystery being to identify ANY part of it that's working as intended, answer: Nothing so far! )
2% Geyser, Fumaroles and Brain Trees! ( nice, good stuff, but damn hard to find without any proper ship based surface scanners!! )
1% more tweaks to combat to try and balance the problems introduced by 2.1​

2.2.03 - The Patch

95% combat: more tweaks to combat to try and balance the problems introduced by 2.1 and 2.2
5% other random fixes​

2.3 - Multi Crew

95% combat: Let another human player fly your SLF or man your turrets ( likely do a worse job of aiming than the automated systems )
5% Avatar creator, meh, if you never take another person on board your ship then it's completely pointless.​

When you break it down like that, it sure seems that the HORIZONS Expansion, which by the name you would think it would involve more Exploration, was really more about Combat

 

[fennster]

Another problem is the exploitive free credits they are introducing. Profit from an action isnt shared, its duplicated, so just load up the game and join your friends crew and leave it running as an afk passenger and get free credits for nothing.

I bet they do something ridiculous like say you can only earn 1 million credits in one multi crew session, so you have to keep logging off and on the ship.

 

[who?]

Maybe the helmsman / boss shouldn't share out the profits evenly. Make Multicrew capitalistic! The boss pays out a fixed salary to the crew, so he's going to make damned sure he keeps them busy if they're being paid by the hour...

I'm not sure if they should get healthcare.. I think I'd just faceplant into a planet before the premiums were due.

 

[Commander_Brucitor]

Just wanted to add to the already many positive responses in saying thanks Frontier for this latest bit of news. I'm stoked to hear it's coming soon, I think the telepresence is great. For those immersion folks There is no other functionally effective way of implementing multi Crew that would allow people to easily join up together. If you didn't have a list of friends to join with you would have to scan down every last ship or hope for a response in chat there is no way to determine if anyone is in your system. There's also no global chat that I'm aware of or specialized chat channel to enable people to communicate. So how would you find anyone without a ton of effort then to finally land in the same station thirty minutes later. The result of that would be a select few people would use multi Crew and most people would not. If you're looking for a logical reason think quantam entanglement, it allows for your Galnet feed to be accessed and share information across the Galaxy it also allows for drone like control of someone else's ship from wherever you're stationed at.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Not ever, if Wings is anything to go by.

What would NPC crew even do? We already have an SLF pilot. Do you really need a gunner on self aiming turrets?

I'd much rather have an NPC Crewmember in a turret-with an option to swap with them & let them take the helm.

 

[Ignition]

I have to say, I don't think I've ever been this disappointed with update news before.

Practically everything I've dreamed of doing with multicrew—long range group expeditions, stranded SRV rescues, basically anything with any substance whatsoever—none of it is possible with this.

They're doing exactly what I feared they would: shallow, instant transport for nothing more than a quick little boost in combat.


Sad.

You must be new around here. Get used to it because its happening since 1.0 more than 2 years back.

With FD you need to lower your expectations, I was fool enough again to think that multicrew could bring something more complex and substantial but I was mistaken, again.

 

[Ignition]

I love elite , I love it so much.

But sometimes I feel that FD want to make the most simplistic game possible.

Explorers need more content.

Its clear that FD wants to do a simplistic game.

Not only explorers, the whole game needs more content, mining is as dull and simplistic as exploration. Its a very unatractive game.

 

[CMDR Dash Rendar]

How many seats on the type 9?

 

[Ignition]

Hmm this sounds good, but what happened to the talked about engineering role? One feature a lot of people assumed and wanted was the ability to divert shield power to different areas and also to repair the ship. Looks like this has been replaced with fighter con.. That functionality is already there so seems like an easy way out unfortunately.

And it would be usefull in EVERY ship instead of turrets and slf.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Geysers are already using telepresence!
https://youtu.be/h_3250rC9tU

I'm surprised that it didn't launch him into the air .

 

[Ignition]

I think we all need to give FD a chance to evolve this. This is a first release, and may be limited, but this does not stop them adding new features later on. I agree that multi-crew in it's first release has a combat focus, but that doesn't mean its the be-all and end-all.

For those who want to stop playing them go ahead and come back later when it works for you.

The thing is we gave them a lot of time flesh a little more the game, we have stupid exploration, mining, trading, combat mechanics since the game released 2 years back. The ONLY thing that got a little improvement was combat in 2 years of development.

FD say they come back and improve older content, thats true but the "content" they improve is minimal and this game needs MASSIVE game improvements.