A Game At Odds with Itself and Why

[Jex =TE=]

I agree with the OP . This is basically what I also wanted to express as what I understand the game to be as I play it. Also to add on the point of why players do not want to move from system to system:

Once we have earned and bought a few ships we are rooted even more firmly to that system as there is the added burden of not being able to move our ships to a new system in a hassle free manner. I know this is Elite: dangerous and not Elite: hassle free. but I also think this is not Elite: Tedious. you want us to move from system to system? well give us the means i have an entire fleet scattered around the human bubble because I was trying to play exactly as you mentioned in your interview. and swapping from ship to ship is such a pain.

Of course it's a pain and it was an obvious pain. I can't imagine how the dev team meetings went but it seems they didn't bother to talk about what parts of the game might constitute boring and tedious. Why did they not discuss the scenario of having to jump over and over just to get back to our ships. On top of that, if they wanted to not have our ships scattered then why do we have to fly all over the galaxy looking for a dealer.

The game is at odds with it's own reality. Given that we have autopilots and people, it would be easy to hire someone to deliver a ship given that space travel in ED is so easy. Think about it. Your sat in your armchair at home, you press a button and ur armchair starts moving and then you press another couple of buttons and hey presto, you're a few trillion miles from where you used to be. Space travel in ED is trivial.

So they either talked about this problem of ship management and jumping over and over and over again or they completely forgot about the part in game development where you go over the mechanics and see how they might be so boring you might want to think about changing them.

What motivation is there to load the game up, log in and then fly 200ly to pick up a ship you suddenly want to fly knowing the state of the missions right now? I'd rather play something else.

 

[NeilF]

What motivation is there to load the game up, log in and then fly 200ly to pick up a ship you suddenly want to fly knowing the state of the missions right now? I'd rather play something else.

Indeed, it would be nice to have missions requiring a specific ship for example. ie: Use a Viper to deliver X to a system... But this really would (ideally) need ship transportation done. ie: So you can pay to have your Viper delivered to your current location in a short (realistic) time frame... eg: 150LY = 5-10 mins...

Be lovely to see huge transporter ships arriving/leaving stations regularly, ferrying ships around to/from stations. And in the case of one of yours being delivered, waiting outside, seeing a transporter arriving, and then seeing your ship flying into the station ready for you! - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=71102&p=1188301&viewfull=1#post1188301 (Proposal from back in 2014)

 

[Derath]

Im currently faced with the motivation of coming back to find I have to apparently churn through charity missions in order to be promoted so I can go mine in a corvette , not only have they not added any suitable piracy or mining ships while i've been gone they gated some of the new additions behind tedium

I mean it makes more sense for progression to be as it is now, but I think i miss the old oh hi! want a promotion? Sure! your universally hated by the federation? nahh nobody cares about that!

 

[Jex =TE=]

OK. Your example of the player becoming feared, and NPCs behaving in accordance to that I agree with. To be specific about the 'one man/one ship' thing I'm primarily talking about a) the impact of an individual on the overall economy, b) the fact that (intentionally or unintentionally) I'd imagine 90%+ of the overall gameplay in Elite is by solo individuals (i.e. in solo modes - which don't/shouldn't really have any business affecting the galaxy IMHO) or by non-winged players in open, and c) that not everyone in the galaxy will be 'Billy the kid', 'Han Solo', 'Spartacus' or the latest 'Smiling Dog Crew Terror of the Space Lanes'. The vast majority are 'Joe Schmoe - jobbing space trucker'.
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I'm also not going to dispute that a players actions could have a great deal of local impact (in small population, fringe systems), and that the universe needs persistence for actions to have meaning (i.e. with NPCs to reflect that impact, spaceship numbers that decline to reflect combat losses, or rise to reflect production/reinforcments, and static targets (bases, stations, PoIs, whatever) that can be damaged/repaired by actions to reflect conflicts/trades etc). I'm as big a fan of Falcon 4's missions and campaign engine as the next man - as you know I view it as the greatest PC gaming achievement so far, but ultimately what is driving that campaign engine of the best game ever made is still a form of procedural generation, albeit PG with more heart, rationale and intelligence than I fear E: D seems capable of mustering, based on past evidence and failings.
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(Leaving aside the multiplayer) Falcon 4 is still 'One Man, One Plane, One War' - but the design of the campaign engine and the missions it produces are light years ahead of E: D. Still, let's see what 2.1 brings.

90% of the players won't affect the galaxy. Take me for example, I'll be one of them where I don't play that often and haven't really done that much. I'm one of the majority of players that just fly around aimlessly in a universe where you can't make any friends. But that doesn't mean other players that are doing a lot more than I shouldn't be recognised for their efforts and it is wholly unrealistic to say that they wouldn't.

Even if you're a SP there's no reason to not get the same. Just because other players can't see you doesn't mean anything. ED universe as trillions of people in it and all players affect the bgs. If a SP is in system X and amasses a fleet of 100 ships and has killed countless thousands of enemy faction members then why is he treated the same as joe bloggs who shows up in his sidewinder?

 

[Deareim]

And why has the conversation turned to the future to prove that the game is fine? WE can all hope that the devs will fix things but then why would we - so far they've produced sub par mechanics that are so bad, it's confusing just how they managed to blunder so big.

Saying "it'll be ok once they fix it" is not an argument for the state the game right now. OK they're working on it like they have been for years - we'll see what they come up with but until them, we'll keep telling them to fix it.

When they try to fix, they create another loophole somewhere else....

 

[Jex =TE=]

When they try to fix, they create another loophole somewhere else....

And that's fine - it's game development and as long as they're trying to fix things, I don't care what they break. For me right now the game isn't worth playing and it's Early Access and not "seasonal" like everyone says. If it was seasonal, why is my v1 game not working then. That season is finished? Oh it's not because it's still not working and all the features aren't in the game? Right - it's Early Access.

Now that's we've established that as fact, I'm happy for the dev team to keep working on this Alpha until it gets to a point where it's feature complete or almost feature complete then I can't wait for Open Beta!!

 

[Ignition]

Now that's we've established that as fact, I'm happy for the dev team to keep working on this Alpha until it gets to a point where it's feature complete or almost feature complete then I can't wait for Open Beta!!

This made me remember when I played the beta, I said ok I'm sure they have a much more complete release for 1.0. And then 1.0 came and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I thought one of the pillars of this game was exploration but is obviously not! I remembered the probes and heat map mentioned in the DDA, missjumps, fuel quality and all the great things there. I thought I was playing bad because I couldn't understand why the gameplay was SO BASIC.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Braben was      ing that nobody goes anywhere.

Well hello you made a game the size of the galaxy, and no ability to impact it unless you grind away and try to figure out how the broken BGS works.

And then there are zero rewards for exploration. You can go out for a month and come back and earn a few million. There is no purpose to getting close to any planet, you can scan them magically from a distance. You give us a gong to automatically "win" and detect all the planets and information. No incentive really to do any exploration other than to try and find a good screen shot and share it with people.

Exploration literally = screen shot simulator.

You need to get people to go out by leading them with the carrot. People will always take the path of least resistance or will go where the rewards are. These rewards are visually, monetarily or fun. Jumping around in a moon rover was fun for a couple hours.

Find the right formula to lead people around the galaxy with the carrot.

Look at how successful the barnacle carrot worked!

 

[xondk]

To build on one idea that was given here, if we could do something during 'loading' screen, maybe if a jumps time was predetermined, so it wasn't just a loading screen but actually took x amount of time to go somewhere? course that might make getting anywhere troublesome, but maybe jump range could be extended to compensate?

also maybe if we didn't arrive at a 'random' location, but were given some kind of idea of where to land maybe even influence, maybe a wave scanner like interface but more, showing gravity fields as we approached a location? that way we could through doing something target a specific location in that gravity field, would give explorers a way to avoid the randomness of ending up between two stars for example? Maybe able to see the small gravity fields that other ships created and such plot to come out behind them? far away from them? interesting idea.

 

[Sans Daring]

Im currently faced with the motivation of coming back to find I have to apparently churn through charity missions in order to be promoted so I can go mine in a corvette , not only have they not added any suitable piracy or mining ships while i've been gone they gated some of the new additions behind tedium

By and large, I tend to disagree with grumbles on Elite being dull or lacking stuff, or lacking promised stuff, or lacking repairs for bugs and promised stuff. Game development is complex, and at this end of the scale, a little unstable and fluid. Time to fix, time to upgrade, time to change are not simple quantifiers, and they can't always be stacked efficiently. That being said, I think there is a lot of room to discuss and challenge some of the issues that present themselves, even if to some degree those issues are justified.

I can see why they gated a couple of the big ships, ultimate treasures, something that requires a little more than accrued cash, something that requires investment in something more than mining runs or res farming. That being said, I think, for me, one of the lacking features is the shipyard. When you've only got a fairly medium array of ships to explore a universe, and ships being one of the key gaming milestones the game relies on, it can be frustrating for players to have to graft through ranks to attain ships that are milestones.

The problem with games, and gamers, is there is a tendency to assume and identify the "right way" to play a game. If you don't grind for months, why should you get a top ship? If you're willing to do several thousand missions to get x ship, you're not playing "right". If you're not willing to accept that pirates are a free and dangerous force in Elite Open and willing to spend hours learning how to avoid the griefers and out of character attacks you're not "playing right". If you play in solo, "you're not playing right". Ultimately these are all bunk. Developers know this, playing right is subjective to a player and ultimately development looks to widen the net to allow for a variety of roles, milestones and focuses of play. Otherwise the user base narrows to everyone's loss.

I do feel the grind factor of ranking is probably a little too harsh to incentivize the best grinders. Is that a problem? Possibly. Ultimately you want to ensure Elite is open access for all sorts of approaches that aren't simply shooting or grinding. Does this mean I'm right and ranking is wrong? Of course not. I understand why its there, I can see the ludology of creating milestones and rewards that help push people into remaining in the Elite world. Sandboxing games always have that problem; the wider the goals the quicker it is to lose direction and get bored.

I do feel - rather than know - that with only a select few ships still, long term for Elite is hindered by a lack of ships. Elite plans to hold people on for at least 3 seasons for now, given their development updates - how do you keep people milestoning and staying on board when you've got a limited amount of ships that themselves are limited by Xtreme game play tactics? In the long term, if they're going to lock ships behind rankings, they need to be introducing new ships, or augmenting parameters on current ones to keep them fresh and exciting for the long haul.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Braben was ing that nobody goes anywhere.

Well hello you made a game the size of the galaxy, and no ability to impact it unless you grind away and try to figure out how the broken BGS works.

“There are missions out there I know almost no players have seen,” he says. “But we haven’t communicated it properly. There’s so much in there, and what we see from play patterns is that many do the same thing over and over. In that cycle, they just don’t get to see some of the variation. I’m not blaming players. We got it wrong.”

 

[dreamer1986]

I agree with you OP completely. +1 rep.

 

[Derath]

I do feel - rather than know - that with only a select few ships still, long term for Elite is hindered by a lack of ships. Elite plans to hold people on for at least 3 seasons for now, given their development updates - how do you keep people milestoning and staying on board when you've got a limited amount of ships that themselves are limited by Xtreme game play tactics? In the long term, if they're going to lock ships behind rankings, they need to be introducing new ships, or augmenting parameters on current ones to keep them fresh and exciting for the long haul.

Agreed, as the rest of what you said I just personally can't take something so blatantly repetitive i've always been somebody that advocates a more difficult route thats faster but it seems they've changed ranking to be do a monstrous number of missions, which basically means its grind or bust because i'd have died of old age doing some of these legitimately.

Like I'm a count in the empire, and a warrant officer with the federation who promoted me while i was kill on sight with them and i've probably completed less than 200 missions in the game total. According to the numbers on the grinding thread i'm going to have to complete an additional 1500 missions give or take a few hundred to hit rear admiral.

remove mode switching to refresh missions for a second and consider how long that would take you, its literally 3 to 400 hours and thats if you got relatively simple ones. I don't understand why you'd make your playerbase suffer that, its like putting a ship behind a tedium wall. I salute the people who sat down and crunched this out but i only just came back and i already want to quit

 

[Eldrazzi]

It may be too late...

“There are missions out there I know almost no players have seen,” he says. “But we haven’t communicated it properly. There’s so much in there, and what we see from play patterns is that many do the same thing over and over. In that cycle, they just don’t get to see some of the variation. I’m not blaming players. We got it wrong.”

But haven't we been saying that "they got it wrong" for over a year now? If it's taken him (DB) a year to finally acknowledge that they got it wrong, then hasn't FDEV already lost?

If you're not playing ED as an explorer then this really doesn't apply to you...

I'm playing space games for the thrill of exploration and finding new worlds and new life. ED exploration is something DB has already hung his hat on. He's happy with it as-is. I just don't see how anyone can be happy with the current exploration mechanic, DB included, given what's missing from the game. And while I know a great many pieces of ED exploration have yet to be developed I wonder how much longer it wil be until DB states "Exploration... we got it wrong". Maybe never. But even if he would make that statement tomorrow, he'd be too late.

June is fast approaching. While ED explorers are out pinging their interstellar fog-horns on various colored spheres physically anchored to the seats of their ships and SRV's, the NMS explorers will be hopping from planet to planet, exploring (on foot and by jetpack) plains, mountains, forests, and swamps, exploring under the water in lakes, rivers and oceans, exploring caves, caverns, and lava tubes, interacting with all manner of exotic plant, animal, and robotic life in a galaxy every bit as big as ED's (actaully bigger).

NMS as a game may indeed flop (who knows), but from what I've seen (art-style not withstanding, as you either like it or don't) it will be nearly everything a space explorer could want.

So, just how long will we need to wait for real "exploration" in ED? I think the answer is... it doesn't matter because it will be too long. I would happily eat crow on this.

 

[Demascus]

I remember seeing a very good video put together by vsTerminus. It was referenced to or linked by separate forum post a while back. I believe it ties in well with what the OP was stating and vocalizes a lot of issues I have with ED in its current state.

[video=youtube;qjOsK8gZ1vc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjOsK8gZ1vc[/video]

“There are missions out there I know almost no players have seen,” he says. “But we haven’t communicated it properly. There’s so much in there, and what we see from play patterns is that many do the same thing over and over. In that cycle, they just don’t get to see some of the variation. I’m not blaming players. We got it wrong.”

With a quote like that Braben could claim there is a giant planet sized spaghetti monster somewhere in the galaxy but just no one has seen it yet. XD

 

[Blackcompany]

But haven't we been saying that "they got it wrong" for over a year now? If it's taken him (DB) a year to finally acknowledge that they got it wrong, then hasn't FDEV already lost?

If you're not playing ED as an explorer then this really doesn't apply to you...

I'm playing space games for the thrill of exploration and finding new worlds and new life. ED exploration is something DB has already hung his hat on. He's happy with it as-is. I just don't see how anyone can be happy with the current exploration mechanic, DB included, given what's missing from the game. And while I know a great many pieces of ED exploration have yet to be developed I wonder how much longer it wil be until DB states "Exploration... we got it wrong". Maybe never. But even if he would make that statement tomorrow, he'd be too late.

June is fast approaching. While ED explorers are out pinging their interstellar fog-horns on various colored spheres physically anchored to the seats of their ships and SRV's, the NMS explorers will be hopping from planet to planet, exploring (on foot and by jetpack) plains, mountains, forests, and swamps, exploring under the water in lakes, rivers and oceans, exploring caves, caverns, and lava tubes, interacting with all manner of exotic plant, animal, and robotic life in a galaxy every bit as big as ED's (actaully bigger).

NMS as a game may indeed flop (who knows), but from what I've seen (art-style not withstanding, as you either like it or don't) it will be nearly everything a space explorer could want.

So, just how long will we need to wait for real "exploration" in ED? I think the answer is... it doesn't matter because it will be too long. I would happily eat crow on this.

This is a big worry of mine. Exploration was a hook for me. If NMS let's me use tools such as HOTAS and TrackIR to explore I will happily jump ship from Elite. NMS looks like a coherent experience designed by a team with a solid end goal in mind.

Compare that to the disparate mess that is Elite right now. By all means let's have some competition in the genre.

 

[Lobstris]

This has always been the problem with games using PG isn't it though? Yes the game is repetitive, but it means it has 'unlimited' content - there is always something (albeit predictable) to do. The best story-driven games (and I'll take RPG and such as the Witcher 3 here as the pinnacle) will be played once or twice, and give a few hundred hours of enjoyment, or an FPS may last 6-24 hours and give a really intense experience - but once they are over, meh... I'll go back to 'predictable' Elite as it will still faithfully serve up trade routes, missions and res to play in.
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Yet it *is* lacking. Even Frontier realised that Elite II was better with a handcrafted story/handcrafted written content in it, hence Frontier: First Encounters. I'd have loved to see Procedural Generation used to make proper story arcs for missions, with casts of characters and branching/rective/proactive actions, rather than just 'take X to Y' and 'kill Z pirates' and 'if you do this some cops will spawn with an 'a' % chance'. Is that really all we've come to after 20 years? So discounting missions the 'hook' in Elite is that the core 'flying the ship with Track IR, VA and HOTAS' is still solid.
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Regarding certain other space games, I do wonder what is taking NMS so long? I'd humbly suggest someone may have pointed out that NMS has a dose of 'Elite syndrome'. Once the 'wow' factor of exploration and tagging things has worn off, what have we actually seen of the game? As for SC, if Elite's ambitions now seem too high, and progress glacially slow, well... hopefully S42 will at least deliver...

 

[Enderby]

Feels like ED are really gonna have to pull it out the bag now.

But, I guess they've made the £$€s anyway so even if it goes      up they've made a few quid.

 

[Soliluna]

I definitely agree that there isn't lots to do.

But I would also agree that they are slowly addressing this issue.

My only concerns with the game is that they have communicated they have no plans to keep the solo game up to date with the multiplayer game. i.e. lack of npc crews, hirable npc wings and also the lack of combat zones/res sites etc on the surface.

I play in Open but meet people so infrequently and even when I do there are only drawbacks where it concerns the grind in the game. I think Elite is probably the only game that offers no benefit to grouping. I find this peculiar, particularly when FD have no qualms with introducing mechanics for gameplay's sake (like disappearing POI's).

 

[Kristov]

Re: Exploration

David wasn't the one who said exploration is solid as is, that was Michael Brooks, and that simply means that according to what Michael knows, it's solid. Here's the kicker, what does Michael know that we don't about the plans for the game in regards to exploration that are coming down the pipe? WE don't know, so perhaps Michael's statement is based on things coming that will make exploration a bit more than it is now. Or perhaps he think the basic mechanics of exploration as they sit now are solid and don't need to be fixed, there's no bugs. Or who knows what else he may or may not have been thinking?

I HOPE we get more to do with exploration, but since almost everything that's been asked for by most of the folks is just hitting a button, I'm not really seeing the point, it's what we do now, and honestly, advances in tech over the next 1200 years, I'd kind of expect that a single system would be doing what they do ingame right now. I'd still love to take soil samples and all that other science stuff, but I won't toss anything out of the pram if it doesn't happen.