News 2.3 Dev Update

[STARB0YY]

Christ, frontier tries to implement a social feature that will allow people to easily play with each other and use multicrew and people on here of course complain about ''muh imurshun!!!!!''.

At some point you have to stop sacrificing fun gameplay for the sake of the people who scream about immersion. And frontier seem to have realized this now, I voted delay on ship transfers not because of immersion but because of balance, the jumprange stat would have been made irrelevant within the bubble. But with this feature I really don't see a reason for it not to be instantaneous. It's simply the best way to go about this feature because it will give everybody a chance to easily experience it, regardless of time constraints or location in the enormous galaxy.

Seriously if it hurts your imurshun so much don't use it, or just realize that telepresence is a thing in Elite.

 

[Kyokushin]

Yes, because they are doing it wrong.

 

[Ozram]

Christ, frontier tries to implement a social feature that will allow people to easily play with each other and use multicrew and people on here of course complain about ''muh imurshun!!!!!''.

At some point you have to stop sacrificing fun gameplay for the sake of the people who scream about immersion. And frontier seem to have realized this now, I voted delay on ship transfers not because of immersion but because of balance, the jumprange stat would have been made irrelevant within the bubble. But with this feature I really don't see a reason for it not to be instantaneous. It's simply the best way to go about this feature because it will give everybody a chance to easily experience it, regardless of time constraints or location in the enormous galaxy.

Seriously if it hurts your imurshun so much don't use it, or just realize that telepresence is a thing in Elite.

Immersion is not a dirty word. It is also not mutually exclusive from fun gameplay. If you disagree, please argue the point rather than burning this particularly charred strawman. On a side note, the majority of us are quite happy with the immersive choice of making ship transfers take time. This issue is no different. For some of us, being immersed in the game is a strong aspect of its appeal.

 

[TenakaFurey]

Same reason you explore instead of just watching streams or youtube videos to see the sights. Not much substance in the complaint, to be honest. I don't know if I'll ever make it to Sagittarius A*, but I can load up a full-screen YouTube video and experience it for myself. How is that different?

Because YouTube videos aren't part of the game. Because by being multicrew, you get the full experience of being there without the bother of actually going there.

OTOH - there isn't really any way around this with multicrew, so the big issue is that there is nothing for a multi crew explorer team to do. Nor any sign that will ever change.

...excellent question. I suspect FDev has something up their sleeve for a future update that will cover a lot more than just real-time price listings.

Leaving aside everything else, the game needs EDDB as part of its features. Let you buy updates, and let it get out of date but the very fact EDDB exists shows it is needed.

As it is, I think the Telepresence idea is a bit silly in the context of the game. If you are that far away from your friends anyway, then you aren't engaging in wings or that sort of activity with them. A better solution would perhaps be to allow for different CMDRs on the same account, or simply state that the "Multicrew experience" is simply taking over an existing crewman. An ideal one would be limiting it to ship expressly designed for multicrew but those don't exist yet

Not to mention that if you are already existing in a Wing of 4, this feature neatly forces you to drop one player from the crew. And if you are in a Wing already, why would you want to join up as a multicrew? The extra pips make the MC ship more powerful, but unless there are more buffs around, they likely won't be as good as a Wing of ships.

I'm not entirely sure the 'extra pips' is what people think it will be. A separate slot that the crew can subdivide pips the helm has already allocated, rather than 'more power!'...? We have no information one way or the other, so there's no reason to get worked up about it.

You pay money and your ship gets to be extra capable. That's what "Pay to Win" is. And there isn't any other way to take the comment"Every crewmember also has access to a power distributor pip that they can assign dynamically. This is in addition to the standard pips that the helm controls. This extra power distribution allows the ship to operate more effectively, increasing its capabilities in combat. "

Especially that part about the extra pip being in addition to those controlled by the Helm.

FDs implementation affects immersion...it affects game balance...it affects gameplay...it adds in a "Pay to Win" system....its mechanics seem to be designed to encourage griefing, it is open to abuse, it doesn't appear to fit in easily with the existing Wing system and it undermines what is supposedly one of the core pillars of the game.

This is not a good multicrew design. Yes...a lot will depend on the actual implementation but this is not a good design. It's difficult if not impossible to point out anything of value that it adds to the game. A Turret control station is about it.

 

[Winterwalker]

Christ, frontier tries to implement a social feature that will allow people to easily play with each other and use multicrew and people on here of course complain about ''muh imurshun!!!!!''.

At some point you have to stop sacrificing fun gameplay for the sake of the people who scream about immersion. And frontier seem to have realized this now, I voted delay on ship transfers not because of immersion but because of balance, the jumprange stat would have been made irrelevant within the bubble. But with this feature I really don't see a reason for it not to be instantaneous. It's simply the best way to go about this feature because it will give everybody a chance to easily experience it, regardless of time constraints or location in the enormous galaxy.

Seriously if it hurts your imurshun so much don't use it, or just realize that telepresence is a thing in Elite.

Don't think you can argue like this very realistically. For a start "muh immersion" is pejorative but secondly the rules define the game. Your argument is like saying Pawns should be able to move like the Queen in Chess but if you don't like it, don't do it. Of course you will do it because of the tactical advantage and the aim of the game, is to win. But does it make a better game, not to work the puzzle, within the constraints of what a Pawn can or cannot do? I think no.

Now I can see a case for instant crew in the short term. It will make it easier to test as a mechainc in beta for a start but I hope the aliens fill the galaxy with a radio signal limiting telepresence, or the EPF outlaws it maybe at later date, when in-game tools for meeting up with people develop, because while there are some areas where ED has to break the constraints of realism (faster than light for example) for me this is not essential, as one of them.

If you look up from your cockpit seat and see other Commanders on your bridge (not telepresence but really there) even though they last docked 30kLy away, 30 seconds ago, ED is on very shaky ground in one of it's core attractions, that it essentially respects Physics. Reserving judgement, but might as well 'give everybody a chance to easily experience <owning a corvette> regardless of time constraints or location in the enormous galaxy'. Good thing? Maybe not right?

 

[TenakaFurey]

Christ, frontier tries to implement a social feature that will allow people to easily play with each other and use multicrew and people on here of course complain about ''muh imurshun!!!!!''.

Immersion is what makes games different from a bunch of pixels on screen. It is important. It is sometimes even more important than gameplay.

At some point you have to stop sacrificing fun gameplay for the sake of the people who scream about immersion. And frontier seem to have realized this now, I voted delay on ship transfers not because of immersion but because of balance

Then you should be worried about the way FD intend to implement Multicrew. Because it affects game balance, and not in a good way.

 

[STARB0YY]

For all you people talking about your immersion I think you should read this, it was posted on reddit by user ''ArcaneEyes'' so all credit goes to him.

''I see a lot of people talk about how Realism of the game impacts their Immersion. I was initally replying to a guy in a thread, but it got a little out of hand, so i'm turning it into a post instead.

I'm going to make the statement that the two are not connected, and present arguments, in lack of proof. I believe we should be talking about Gameplay, Balance and Fun, and that "Immersion" is something we experience when having fun with balanced game mechanics - when we mentally submerge ourselves enough in something we do to forget reality - not in a pseudo-reality simulator. There are so many things in this game that are non-logical even by the standards of a highly advanced setting, or even especially in a highly advanced setting. I'm gonna ask a series of questions to highlight these shortcomings by their lack of realism-based answers.

When you die, how do you instantly teleport back to LHS 3447, or anywhere else, when you die? what's that body in the pilot seat really?

how can Colonia stations repair any module i bring - they must have spare parts for everything, so why can't i buy everything there? i get that you can't reproduce engineered equipment and thus sell your mod in the bubble and reconstruct at Colonia, but then how do you re-acquire this unique equipment when your ship blows up? i'm not seeing any "my immersion"-proponents removing their hard-earned G5 upgrades after blowing up "'cause it should be unique", and if they're not "unique", why do we have rolls for them, why not just say "hey, i want this", as long as it's already been made (it has, statistically).

How can my ship turn faster if i have a movement vector, even if i have flight assist off and my main engines are not producing thrust? i get rerouting of thrust, but then i would always turn slower with my forward thrust turned to zero, but that is not the case, it is all about how my absolute speed is. For that matter, why do i lose speed after i boost when i turn off flight assist? there's no air drag to slow me down - we can't even land on approach atmospheric planets.

same in FSD-mode, why would my non-relative movement (turning) be tied to speed? if anything, it should be completely un-relative, just like in normal space ('cause that's what it is - normal flight, with a distorted reference frame). For that matter, the lore behind the Jump-drive is that it locks a trajectory and only exits you when you force-exit near a high-mass celestial body. Given this pseudo-fact, it should be entirely possible to jump to any star of sufficient size in-system unless we impose a minimum jump distance, which is mentioned nowhere.

What really grinds my gears is that people cry "immersion", while perfectly disregarding newtonian physics, thrust mechanics, the fact that physical projectiles cease to exist after about 3 kilometers or that more than 4 people can't work together, that authorities can magically tell apart commodities you received from a friend from those you bring yourself if someone wanted to help you with a CG, that you get a fine for shooting a wanted criminal because you didn't wait to get told just how wanted he is, or that authorities will always switch fire to the newest accrued bounty, instead of focusing the murdering criminal in the 500k bounty FDL, that's shot down two Eagles and a Mk 4 viper of the system security detail already, they switch to murdering the Vulture that accidentally scratched the Anaconda flagship with 3 rounds from a MC while hunting said FDL, the way your life support is magically tied to the ship canopy and oxygen, when the ship can obviously recycle the air you breathe already and thermal chill and cosmic radiation should be a much more dangerous factor at this point or that travel mechanics make no sense even within the rules set by the lore.

There are so many things that should grind your gears already, that you should not be able to even boot the game without dying from high blood pressure, yet somehow you only cry wolf when it's something that would help people with low amounts of time on their hands access game features more readily, when there are so many affronts to realism already in the game that it should be unplayable by "relistic sim enthusiasts".

One of the main arguments is that "this is a realistic spaceflight/trade/exploration simulator", but it's not, this is just what you want it to be - there's a difference between being set in a "realistic approximation of our own galaxy" and being realistic in every aspect.

This game is not a spaceflight simulator - it is a grand-scale arcade shooter, there are no newtonian physics, no realistic spaceflight model, no realistic weaponry implementation (missile bays turning into turrets with multicrew does not help any argument you may have against this)

This game is not a space trade simulator - the market has no real supply and demand, there is no production to take into account, rares are even locked on a per-pilot cap and "trucking" is even less involved as a gameplay aspect than just about any truck or train simulator out there.

This game is not a space exploration simulator - large amounts of the galaxy is procedurally filled with stars that are not real and systems are not organized by body mass, orbit sizes don't correlate to orbit speed and neither correlate to body mass, even tidal locking as a function of orbit distance seems to be off.

If you actually build your immersion on realism, there isn't a whole lot to build it upon. Suspending your disbelief and immersing yourself in the game is something you are in charge of, 'cause with the way this game is made, there's not a lot of actual realism to rest it on. You may tell yourself so, but there's not a strong case for it.

The Witcher 3 gets a lot of credit for being immersive, but it is highly unrealistic. Likewise Mass Effect was one of the most immersive stories i've played in a long time, but has some serious realism holes even with the pseudoscience they make up to explain their biotics. Then again, i don't need realism to immerse myself so i don't have a problem, but if you do, you have a lot of problems with this game already, to the point where i have to wonder "why bother". I know why you bother though, you bother because this is the only actual game in this genre right now and because it at least tries on a lot of levels to come close to realism and you want this, but can we please take the discussion back to "fun", "balance" and "gameplay", since "realism" isn't actually in the game to begin with?''

So do you purists not have issues with these things? The game not even following newtonian physics? It's a game people, i'm all for immersion when it doesn't come in the way of gameplay. And what you are arguing for will severely limit the amount of people who will use the multicrew feature, and in the end frontier wants as many people as possible to be able to enjoy it.

 

[TiberiusReynolds]

Yes, because they are doing it wrong.

Because they're doing something. Doesn't matter what it is they do, half of this community will say that because half want a fully realistic/immersive simulation (Whatever your preferred term is) and the other half want a game they can jump in and play and if some friends turn up, they want to be able to play with them too because this game is HUGE.

I admit I'm a big advocate for immersion and making the experience feel as real as possible but out of my real life group of gamer friends — I'm the only one that plays this consistently. So when they finally decide to hop back into the game (Which they always do eventually) I'll likely have to tell them that I'll not be able to meet up for a few hours up to potentially weeks because I've decided to go on a voyage. Then they stop playing after one or two nights because they're bored of spending all night jumping from system to system to meet up halfway or just play by themselves until I turn up.

They won't enjoy their experience because they decided to play a game to have a good time with friends and have spent their time waiting to have fun. But that is essentially Frontier's target audience at the minute. We already play the game and most of us have probably paid for some extras. They still need to bring in new customers though and their best hope of doing so is by making an enjoyable experience for people who already have an interest in the game, probably already own the base copy without horizons but were instantly turned off playing because playing with friends in Elite has always had some sort stigma attached to it (early Matchmaking issues, bounty dissatisfaction, spawn rates, etc...).

TL;DR

In short, Frontier need to and are trying to attract new/existing+inactive players and address the concerns/issues that audience had with the game.

 

[Winterwalker]

For all you people talking about your immersion I think you should read this, it was posted on reddit by user ''ArcaneEyes'' so all credit goes to him.

Which is one .. opinion.

He doesn't talk about the effects of crewed wings for instance. Where it is precisely those players with lots of time (able to meet at any time) who will gain advantage of wings with extra fighters, without even the small inconvenience of docking at the same station. SDC types need only spread themselves out in groups of four and, able to instantly transport themselves, are within range to disrupt any CG in minutes, when the individual player (the casual, with less time on their hands) will .. rightly .. have to travel.

There are times when there's a good case for 'bending' realism. Flight mechanics being one (FTL, so crossing the galaxy doesn't take the player 10,000 years and speed limits that reduce jousting, creating meanigful dogfights).

But bending the terms of reality, within reason, is in the longer term not the same, as disregarding it. Telepresence? Short term? OK I get it. Long term though, as well as further disadvantaging the noob, ED models the mechanics of 'space' .. it's a big risk (and imo devalues ED) to undermine that model by deciding that the integrity of that model counts for nothing.

People should be able (and do) play ED for other reasons than 'grand scale arcade shooter' as the quoted reddit argues.

 

[LKx]

"Commander will log out of their current vessel and transfer to the multicrew vessel, regardless of distance"

Very disappointed by this design decision.

That's the only possible way for this feature. Any attempt to make it more "realistic" would be doomed to inconsistencies anyway, due the nature of a multiplayer game.

I just don't like justify it using "telepresence". It's way over the boundaries of immersion at those distances, and i guess it wouldn't allow crew interaction.
I'd prefere they just get over realism and just say: "ok, now this commander is here, bear with it"

 

[TenakaFurey]

For all you people talking about your immersion I think you should read this, it was posted on reddit by user ''ArcaneEyes'' so all credit goes to him.

And he is wrong.

Immersion isn't the same as realism. Immersion is acting within the existing constraints and rules of the universe. Sometimes, for the sake of gameplay, its wroth breaking.

At other times, it isn't.

Allowing players to drop in and out, even when the ship is many LYs away, is a good idea.
Describing such interaction as "Telepresence" is bad because it implies and indicates all sorts of issues that the game universe says can't happen.

Is it worth breaking immersion for this gameplay? In some ways yes. It will allow players to meet up easily. It will attract new players to the game. It might attract old players back.
But at the same time...the questions to be asked is "Is there a better way"?

I can think of a couple. The player taking active control of an existing NPC - to be Commander Ryker instead of Captain Picard - for example. Limiting multicrew to dedicated vessels is another.

Immersion isn't based upon realism. It's based upon the rules and constraints inherent in the setting. And that includes how it handles spaceflight and the rest.

 

[Taurocen]

So random people can hop in your ship without your permission and possibly incur punishment and fines against you? I hope thete is a switch that turns off the option for people to enter your ship freely or I'm done with this game.

 

[Winterwalker]

That's the only possible way for this feature. Any attempt to make it more "realistic" would be doomed to inconsistencies anyway, due the nature of a multiplayer game.

Expand on these 'inconsistencies' please?

 

[LKx]

Expand on these 'inconsistencies' please?

One example: suppose you have to meet a cmdr at a station, you jump on his ship and together go away for a 1000ly trip.
Now he logs out.... What about you?

Then he logs back. What now?

 

[CMDR PlungedSphere34]

Hi.
I don't like the teleportation thing. Elite is loosley based on a real galaxy with real-ish physics. But instant teleportation has a point.
Why don't they put 2 modes of multicrew. One with teleportation (via teleprescence and holograms) and one where you dock at a station to load and unload your crew. The second one could have extra benefits.
It's only an idea though.

Love CMDR Creator idea. Can't wait.

 

[Winterwalker]

One example: suppose you have to meet a cmdr at a station, you jump on his ship and together go away for a 1000ly trip.
Now he logs out.... What about you?

A good point .. so, "You have the Con" .. ? Awesome!

But no .. you're teleported back to your ship under the current design.
(I think 2.3 is interim personally but we only know what we know)

 

[TiberiusReynolds]

Has anyone made the suggestion of having instant transfers between specific stations that have the right facilities? (Similar to the existing broker network). Player B goes to their nearest Teleportation facility and player A picks him up to join their crew from their nearest teleportation facility. That doesn't solve things for explorers but neither does zero transfer.

I've tried reading through all the reactions on Reddit and the forums and the main suggestion cropping up is a timed transfer system similar (I.e. Ship transfer) — so apologies if I've overlooked someone suggesting this somewhere already.

 

[LKx]

A good point but .. "you're now at the helm"? (awesome!)

Then you now own his ship (or the doom of it)?
In an ideal world it would be cool, but in reality couldn't bring anything good.

But.

Bearing with it, let's say you then log out.
Anything could happen in the meantime what's supposed to happen when you log back?

 

[S3B4ST13N]

One example: suppose you have to meet a cmdr at a station, you jump on his ship and together go away for a 1000ly trip.
Now he logs out.... What about you?

Then he logs back. What now?

My thoughts:
With handwavium you'd appear back at your ship where it was docked from and then jump back to his ship when he's online again.

If you are physically in his ship (no telepresence), I'd suspect you would spawn in space in your ship.

Alternatively, you could take temporary ownership of his vessel until he returns ( with limited capabilities: can't sell it, change load out etc without permission ).
With a permission system ( for example, trust between friends ), the owner of a ship could allow another Cmdr "ownership rights" to the ship in the event he gets DC'd. These rights could have different levels of permission ( can change load out, can't self-destruct etc ).

 

[mossfoot]

Allowing players to drop in and out, even when the ship is many LYs away, is a good idea.
Describing such interaction as "Telepresence" is bad because it implies and indicates all sorts of issues that the game universe says can't happen.

Very true. This is one instance where no attempt to explain the mechanics in a lore like fashion should be attempted. It just won't work. The mechanics may be necessary, but an explanation is not.