Dear All,
I'm a big fan of this game, and happy with the mechanics. That said, I don't think anyone with any sanity has ever said it is multi-player friendly. Even us fanboys (I hope), realise that it is severely lacking in multi-player options. When DBOBE gave a speech (source, I can't be bothered to look up), multi-player was point #2 after point #1 (moment-to-moment game-play).
Colour me confused, as I believe many would be happier if the multi-player mechanics were more fleshed out. Rather than whine, I'm going to suggest the very basics.
Text Chat Is Terrible
It is, really. In most MMOs I can hit "/r" and reply to the last person who talked to me. I can't in Elite, and if you have more than one friend online who you want to converse with, it's a ball-ache. I understand you want to put the experience in to the HUD to increase immersion (and I'm a big fan of this!), but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how people talk in online games. It doesn't work.
Give players an easy way to communicate in an ad-hoc manner. I don't think system-wide chat is the solution, but a station-wide one would suffice... more coming on this point...
P2P Isn't the problem, it's match-making
Whenever I enter an instance with someone on my friends' list, it works flawlessly. Other commanders? Doesn't happen. I am alone unless a friend happens to drop by. 15,000 commanders visited a station in the last 24 hours and I saw none. This isn't P2P (it works), it's your match-making system. I don't want to see NPCs if possible, I want to see CMDR Thrust and whoever else wants to try and interdict me. Evidently my router and UPnP set up is not the issue.
Wings won't solve everything
As it stands now, I can't even tell a friend on my radar. He won't appear green. I'll just know there is a player, and through voice-comms understand where he is. What if I have two friends in a conflict zone? Can't we tell them apart? Perhaps we could make Thargoids purple.
The reasons why Wings won't solve it all is because they service "guilds", which is all well and good. But...
What about ad-hoc grouping?
Yup... So I meet some guy and we want to go do stuff together. I can follow his wake for sure, but you could make it easy with a "party" mechanic. Why can't we do co-op missions? Just some suggestions:
* Destroy Fleet of 6 (Those wedding/funeral barges must have a purpose, right?)
* Co-operatively, deliver 2000T of X to station Y
Wings won't solve all the issues, you have to be able to do this with anyone.
GIVE US THE TOOLS TO DO SO!
And then the universe will be so much more vibrant!
I love immersion, and I truly understand what you're trying to do. It won't kill the game, but you really need to make the player-to-player action as important as the moment-to-moment gameplay.
I'm a big fan of this game, and happy with the mechanics. That said, I don't think anyone with any sanity has ever said it is multi-player friendly. Even us fanboys (I hope), realise that it is severely lacking in multi-player options. When DBOBE gave a speech (source, I can't be bothered to look up), multi-player was point #2 after point #1 (moment-to-moment game-play).
Colour me confused, as I believe many would be happier if the multi-player mechanics were more fleshed out. Rather than whine, I'm going to suggest the very basics.
Text Chat Is Terrible
It is, really. In most MMOs I can hit "/r" and reply to the last person who talked to me. I can't in Elite, and if you have more than one friend online who you want to converse with, it's a ball-ache. I understand you want to put the experience in to the HUD to increase immersion (and I'm a big fan of this!), but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how people talk in online games. It doesn't work.
Give players an easy way to communicate in an ad-hoc manner. I don't think system-wide chat is the solution, but a station-wide one would suffice... more coming on this point...
P2P Isn't the problem, it's match-making
Whenever I enter an instance with someone on my friends' list, it works flawlessly. Other commanders? Doesn't happen. I am alone unless a friend happens to drop by. 15,000 commanders visited a station in the last 24 hours and I saw none. This isn't P2P (it works), it's your match-making system. I don't want to see NPCs if possible, I want to see CMDR Thrust and whoever else wants to try and interdict me. Evidently my router and UPnP set up is not the issue.
Wings won't solve everything
As it stands now, I can't even tell a friend on my radar. He won't appear green. I'll just know there is a player, and through voice-comms understand where he is. What if I have two friends in a conflict zone? Can't we tell them apart? Perhaps we could make Thargoids purple.
The reasons why Wings won't solve it all is because they service "guilds", which is all well and good. But...
What about ad-hoc grouping?
Yup... So I meet some guy and we want to go do stuff together. I can follow his wake for sure, but you could make it easy with a "party" mechanic. Why can't we do co-op missions? Just some suggestions:
* Destroy Fleet of 6 (Those wedding/funeral barges must have a purpose, right?)
* Co-operatively, deliver 2000T of X to station Y
Wings won't solve all the issues, you have to be able to do this with anyone.
GIVE US THE TOOLS TO DO SO!
And then the universe will be so much more vibrant!
I love immersion, and I truly understand what you're trying to do. It won't kill the game, but you really need to make the player-to-player action as important as the moment-to-moment gameplay.
