A Message To Elite Dangerous Developers

[Hat Man]

Nothing wrong with whatsoever with having a self-imposed goal, as V'larr says! I think all that's happened is that you've mixed up your goals a bit. Unless I've misunderstood, you set yourself a short term goal (get the ship) to enable you to do a longer term goal (go exploring). It's a good approach in general. All that's happened in this case is that you thought you needed more than you had ship-wise, whereas actually you pretty much already had the perfect ship for your longer term goal.

It also sounds like you were concerned that you were concerned that going out and doing what you wanted might hurt your progression rate. My question on this is; what is it that you think you're progressing towards that you're worried about getting there slower? If you're talking about ranks and money, then it's worth thinking about what you'll do once you've reached the levels you want, and then asking yourself if there's any reason you can't or don't want to do that stuff now. Nothing wrong with going for ranks and money by the way, I just wouldn't want to see you doing it so you can do something else, only to find out that you could have just done that something else in the first place!

And yes, scan data can be very profitable. There's a few routes available to rack up around 100MCr in a short space of time. I've never bothered with them myself. They're money things and not really exploration as it's just following a route someone else has already worked out. Anyway though, if you've already got what you need to do the most attractive thing in the game, what does it matter how profitable that thing is?

It's because I usually enjoy progression systems. Going from smaller, less capable vehicles to larger, more capable ones. Normally, it isn't my main focus in a game, unless it's all there seems to be to it. I realize I focused on it a little too much.

On a side note, I've gotten a Dolphin and have started running shorter range passenger missions. One of the reasons why I like passenger missions is that, one of the good things about them is that they can draw your attention to interesting sights you otherwise never would've found. For example, on the one I'm currently on, the guy had me go to a space station built inside an asteroid, one being mined from the inside out called "freeholm"... I didn't even know that was a thing in this game. It was certainly one of the more unique stations I've yet seen

On a side note, I also saw a local message in solo by a guy named "Dent Arthur Dent"... Apparently he has a schedule to keep... Good one FDEV.

I wonder what this game would be like if we could randomly jump with an infinite improbability drive.

 

[Thatchinho]

I would say it's what the game is about. It is the theme of the game: what the various game activities represent.

I see it a little differently: the games the sim of being the independent cmdr, and in the context of the 3300s that is set out there are some common/major career routes, but what you actually do is entirely up to you.

The same game could essentially be set in a Fantasy Dungeons and Dragons setting, with ships replaced by horses and armour, lasers by swords, arrows and magic spells, and stations with villages and cities; and combat, piracy, bounty hunting, trading, missions (quests), mining, crafting and exploration all adapted to fit the environment. Essentially the same game activities, but with a different theme. ED is basically WoW in space.

Is that really the case though? WoW's very much a quest-led game and ED isn't. I'd say that ED and WoW are actually very different games but not because of the setting. In fact I've often thought that a quite a lot of issues people have with ED basically amount to them expecting ED to be like WoW in space and then saying there's something wrong with ED when it doesn't act like Wow in space.

To flip the comparison round, if WoW were like ED, you wouldn't have to pick a race, you wouldn't have to pick a class, you wouldn't have to pick Alliance or Horde, you'd be free to go where you wanted and interact with whatever factions you wanted, you wouldn't generally be restricted in where you can go because of your level, you wouldn't need to follow quests to progress and do what you want, you wouldn't have endgame and endgame content and instead you would have content there for anyone who wants to find it, you would have more player generated content, and so on...

ED isn't any other game, it's just ED. And from everything I've seen on the forums, it's best to treat it that way.

I would argue that you are playing a whole set of sub-games, which are designed to dynamically and relatively seamlessly interact to constitute the main game. But that distinction is arguably technical and irrelevant to your experience. It only becomes obvious when there are design flaws and holes, like with e.g. the RNG element in engineering. Suddenly the subgame switches from a quest to a gamble without narrative context, and that makes no sense and jars.

I would argue that by virtue of playing the overall game, and not a collection of sub games, things make a lot more sense then how they appear if viewed from the 'collection of sub-games' perspective. Take your example of issues with engineering. The issues you talk about just aren't there for me, because a. there is no quest to switch from, and b. I have the context of the overall game. I'll elaborate...

Engineering is entirely a players choice. The game does not force you to do it, nor does it even ask you to do it. You do engineering because you want what's on offer.

However, there are (genuine) consequences to what you have to do to get what you want, in particular what you have to do to unlock some engineers. There are decisions to make about whether you're prepared to do what the engineer is asking for and whether you're prepared to face the possible consequences. For those reasons I held off on getting the meeting with Qwent for a long time. I only did it ultimately to get access to Corrosion Resistant Cargo racks, as events happened in game that changed both the value of having them, and the impact of unlocking Qwent. I also haven't unlocked Palin for similar reasons. I have actually now found a way to unlock Palin myself that I'm morally ok with, but I'm not ok with what Palin has lead other players to do, and the consequences that may have for those players if not us all.

And the engineering itself... the engineers are pretty much in the tinkerer / mad scientist mode. You're not taking your Mercedes to AMG for a standard tune up, you're taking it to Doc Brown and seeing what crazy stuff he comes up with. The randomness makes complete sense. And again engineering or not is up to the player. If a player really wants to tweak the last 0.001% of performance out of their ship, then that's fine, but they shouldn't expect to just get it without a lot of trial and error. Consider how much time and effort a professional racing driver puts into working with their engineering team to get absolute peak performance out of their cars. Again, things make sense.

Another is how the dark side of planets are artificially lightened 'to facilitate game play'. It doesn't; it removes a strategic variable. You never remove strategic variables in a game that is supposed to be richly varied and complex.

The dark sides of planets are lit by starlight though. Consider a clear moonless night on Earth. There's no atmosphere on the planets we land on so no clouds, no atmospheric interference, etc. Also, I haven't been far enough out to confirm it myself, but word on the street is that the dark sides are much much darker out on the rim where there's much less starlight.

Besides, it's not entirely unreasonable to think that night vision tech may have progressed a bit in the 1,000 years or so since our day.

I think ED is a masterpiece of coding. The Stellar Forge is undoubtedly a historic milestone in computer games (and having been into that scene since the Atari 2600 back in 1978, I've seen a few). The flight dynamics are superb. There is a lot to like about ED.

Agreed. (And I can't say how relieved I was that they went back to the type of combat flight dynamics from Elite instead of the ones from Frontier! )

But it also has some rather obvious flaws and bad game design decisions which are not a matter of lack of resources or technical limitations. They are just not well thought through. As such several interesting possibilities are lost, mistakes are made and occasionally outright bad decisions. It tells me that FD lacks a game designer (ludologist).

As I'm sure you'll be able to predict at this point, I disagree with this as it just does not seem that way to me given the perspective I look at the game from. Also, I wasn't around at the time, but I've scanned a few of the design discussions and it seems that a lot of thought and time went into it all.

Thanks for dropping ludologist in btw, I hadn't heard the word before (everyday's a school day and all that! )

I suspect that David Braben imagined that ED was basically a matter of scaling up Elite: Frontier to the current state of computer game art. But it's more complicated than that. As you add more features and game play, you have to add more game mechanics, and the rules, challenges and reward structures all have to make sense. It all has to mesh with the existing stuff in a coherent and consistent manner. My impression is that it's being done by team discussion rather than by a game design expert.

From what I've read/heard I think it's a bit more that Braben has a vision for the game, and has done what the tech at the time allows. Some lessons have been learnt from previous games, hence we now have good combat flight dynamics for example.

ED clearly isn't yet Braben's vision, but the choice appears to have been to either take the approach that was taken and have release the game in an early iteration and have the development progress over a long time, or to not release the game until it was completed and Braben's vision was realised. Given the chance that the latter would never have actually happened, I definitely think they made the right choice!

Anyway, I hope this doesn't all come across as me saying I'm right and you're wrong. I'm largely just saying how I genuinely see and play the game, and it's up to you whether you think there's merit to it or not! Look forwards to your further thoughts on it all!

 

[Hat Man]

The dark sides of planets are lit by starlight though. Consider a clear moonless night on Earth. There's no atmosphere on the planets we land on so no clouds, no atmospheric interference, etc. Also, I haven't been far enough out to confirm it myself, but word on the street is that the dark sides are much much darker out on the rim where there's much less starlight.

Besides, it's not entirely unreasonable to think that night vision tech may have progressed a bit in the 1,000 years or so since our day.

I agree, but actually, I'd say there's an even simpler and more logical/realistic explanation than even that.

Your eyes automatically adjust to light levels. They simply can't pick out details in a dark area in the presence of a bright light source. Your eyes can only see a limited amount of contrast, and in the presence of a bright enough light source, they'll fail to see accurate detail in a dark patch.

Remove the lightsource, and your eyes will automatically adjust to the darkness. If you are outside all day on a bright day, and suddenly walk in a room that is nearly pitch black, you'd struggle to make out any detail. Give your eyes a second to adjust however, and soon, they'll be able to see fairly well in the dark.

Your pupils are literally variable aperture, so your eyes LITERALLY control the brightness of what you see.

This is simulated in the game as a sudden change in brightness.

Furthermore, a ship with large windows would logically ALSO have variable tinting to help. Otherwise, fuel scooping would blind anybody on board.

Also, the atmosphere has little influence over starlight. This is a common misconception people have, and moon hoax nutjobs like to use it as a straw-man. "Well, you can't see any stars in the footage, and the moon has no atmosphere"... Well... The earth has an atmosphere, but you can still see stars at night, right? So clearly that isn't the deciding factor. What is the deciding factor is whether it's daytime or not, whether or not the sun is visible.

So... It does help with gameplay, yes, but it's far from "unrealistic". In fact, it's certainly a lot MORE realistic than jumping 40 light years in 30 seconds.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I agree, but actually, I'd say there's an even simpler and more logical/realistic explanation than even that.

Your eyes automatically adjust to light levels. They simply can't pick out details in a dark area in the presence of a bright light source. Your eyes can only see a limited amount of contrast, and in the presence of a bright enough light source, they'll fail to see accurate detail in a dark patch.

Remove the lightsource, and your eyes will automatically adjust to the darkness. If you are outside all day on a bright day, and suddenly walk in a room that is nearly pitch black, you'd struggle to make out any detail. Give your eyes a second to adjust however, and soon, they'll be able to see fairly well in the dark.

Your pupils are literally variable aperture, so your eyes LITERALLY control the brightness of what you see.

This is simulated in the game as a sudden change in brightness.

Furthermore, a ship with large windows would logically ALSO have variable tinting to help. Otherwise, fuel scooping would blind anybody on board.

Also, the atmosphere has little influence over starlight. This is a common misconception people have, and moon hoax nutjobs like to use it as a straw-man. "Well, you can't see any stars in the footage, and the moon has no atmosphere"... Well... The earth has an atmosphere, but you can still see stars at night, right? So clearly that isn't the deciding factor. What is the deciding factor is whether it's daytime or not, whether or not the sun is visible.

So... It does help with gameplay, yes, but it's far from "unrealistic". In fact, it's certainly a lot MORE realistic than jumping 40 light years in 30 seconds.

I can vouch for how incredibly adaptable our eyesight is. I frequently bicycle in to work, for heath, fun, and to save money. Unfortunately, I start work at 5am. After watching the pirate episode of Mythbusters, I started wearing an eyepatch as I eat breakfast, to preadapt one of my eyes.

It's like flipping a switch when I take it off. It could look pitch black to the unadapted eye, when there's no moon, but the adapted eye sees a grainy, black and white picture. The full moon is bright enough to read by. I still get a kick out if navigating the house using just the status LEDs of electronics.

My only issue with the night side graphics is that there is no transition. It's especially noticeable when you log out on the surface, and log back in at night. It's itch black for a second and then someone turns on the light switch.

 

[Hat Man]

I can vouch for how incredibly adaptable our eyesight is. I frequently bicycle in to work, for heath, fun, and to save money. Unfortunately, I start work at 5am. After watching the pirate episode of Mythbusters, I started wearing an eyepatch as I eat breakfast, to preadapt one of my eyes.

It's like flipping a switch when I take it off. It could look pitch black to the unadapted eye, when there's no moon, but the adapted eye sees a grainy, black and white picture. The full moon is bright enough to read by. I still get a kick out if navigating the house using just the status LEDs of electronics.

My only issue with the night side graphics is that there is no transition. It's especially noticeable when you log out on the surface, and log back in at night. It's itch black for a second and then someone turns on the light switch.

I too was reminded of that episode. On a side note, you might be interested in using low frequency flashlights, lights that give off red light. The low energy light allows you to light up an area without the light source disrupting your night vision.

If the issue you have is the length of time it takes for that transition to occur, then that's understandable. it can take up to 5 minutes for eyes to adjust from one extreme to another. However, I'd probably argue that, in game, the windows are just variable tinted. Probably able to change tint rather quickly too. If you go from pitch black interstellar space, and suddenly jump to right next to a primary, the windows would have to instantly adjust tint to compensate, to avoid damaging the eyes of a pilot.

Perhaps they could simply lengthen the amount of time it takes for brightness to change.

 

[nexxo]

Is that really the case though? WoW's very much a quest-led game and ED isn't. I'd say that ED and WoW are actually very different games but not because of the setting. In fact I've often thought that a quite a lot of issues people have with ED basically amount to them expecting ED to be like WoW in space and then saying there's something wrong with ED when it doesn't act like Wow in space.

To flip the comparison round, if WoW were like ED, you wouldn't have to pick a race, you wouldn't have to pick a class, you wouldn't have to pick Alliance or Horde, you'd be free to go where you wanted and interact with whatever factions you wanted, you wouldn't generally be restricted in where you can go because of your level, you wouldn't need to follow quests to progress and do what you want, you wouldn't have endgame and endgame content and instead you would have content there for anyone who wants to find it, you would have more player generated content, and so on...

ED isn't any other game, it's just ED. And from everything I've seen on the forums, it's best to treat it that way.

The reason that some people expect WoW in space is because the progressive reward structure suggests it. There are the Feds, Empire and Indies, there are factions, alliances and power play, and missions linked to all that. Those who are familiar with ELITE and Elite: Frontier of course know it is not exactly like WoW, but all these elements look very WoW.

I would argue that by virtue of playing the overall game, and not a collection of sub games, things make a lot more sense then how they appear if viewed from the 'collection of sub-games' perspective. Take your example of issues with engineering. The issues you talk about just aren't there for me, because a. there is no quest to switch from, and b. I have the context of the overall game. I'll elaborate...

Engineering is entirely a players choice. The game does not force you to do it, nor does it even ask you to do it. You do engineering because you want what's on offer.

However, there are (genuine) consequences to what you have to do to get what you want, in particular what you have to do to unlock some engineers. There are decisions to make about whether you're prepared to do what the engineer is asking for and whether you're prepared to face the possible consequences. For those reasons I held off on getting the meeting with Qwent for a long time. I only did it ultimately to get access to Corrosion Resistant Cargo racks, as events happened in game that changed both the value of having them, and the impact of unlocking Qwent. I also haven't unlocked Palin for similar reasons. I have actually now found a way to unlock Palin myself that I'm morally ok with, but I'm not ok with what Palin has lead other players to do, and the consequences that may have for those players if not us all.

And the engineering itself... the engineers are pretty much in the tinkerer / mad scientist mode. You're not taking your Mercedes to AMG for a standard tune up, you're taking it to Doc Brown and seeing what crazy stuff he comes up with. The randomness makes complete sense. And again engineering or not is up to the player. If a player really wants to tweak the last 0.001% of performance out of their ship, then that's fine, but they shouldn't expect to just get it without a lot of trial and error. Consider how much time and effort a professional racing driver puts into working with their engineering team to get absolute peak performance out of their cars. Again, things make sense.

The randomness makes sense if it is presented in context to represent the risky, uncertain bleeding edge tinkering that the engineers do. Having a roulette/slot machine GUI however breaks that narrative: it is not randomness representing something, it is just shown for what it is: an RNG at work.

The dark sides of planets are lit by starlight though. Consider a clear moonless night on Earth. There's no atmosphere on the planets we land on so no clouds, no atmospheric interference, etc. Also, I haven't been far enough out to confirm it myself, but word on the street is that the dark sides are much much darker out on the rim where there's much less starlight.

Besides, it's not entirely unreasonable to think that night vision tech may have progressed a bit in the 1,000 years or so since our day.

Sure, but narrative should serve game play, not cover up flaws in it. Pitch-black planets and foggy planets are fun.

Agreed. (And I can't say how relieved I was that they went back to the type of combat flight dynamics from Elite instead of the ones from Frontier! )

As I'm sure you'll be able to predict at this point, I disagree with this as it just does not seem that way to me given the perspective I look at the game from. Also, I wasn't around at the time, but I've scanned a few of the design discussions and it seems that a lot of thought and time went into it all.

Thanks for dropping ludologist in btw, I hadn't heard the word before (everyday's a school day and all that! )

From what I've read/heard I think it's a bit more that Braben has a vision for the game, and has done what the tech at the time allows. Some lessons have been learnt from previous games, hence we now have good combat flight dynamics for example.

ED clearly isn't yet Braben's vision, but the choice appears to have been to either take the approach that was taken and have release the game in an early iteration and have the development progress over a long time, or to not release the game until it was completed and Braben's vision was realised. Given the chance that the latter would never have actually happened, I definitely think they made the right choice!

Anyway, I hope this doesn't all come across as me saying I'm right and you're wrong. I'm largely just saying how I genuinely see and play the game, and it's up to you whether you think there's merit to it or not! Look forwards to your further thoughts on it all!

It's cool: this is just, like, my opinion man. My annoyances are mainly driven by how this game could be even better and open up more game play if they just changed some things. Braben seems to me basically exploring the possibilities: he has a vision, he has improved technology, he can realise more of his vision. The trick is how much, and how. Every time he adds a feature it has to mesh with the existing game and preserve consistency and coherence. I think that team sometimes gets lost there.

EDIT: and then there's emergent game play to consider (which is the best experience of all, because now you're writing the narrative and not just taking part in it). Check out the fuel rats: awesome. A sandbox game needs to offer lots of tools and paths, and just let people decide what to make of it. ED does this quite well, and doesn't exactly hold your hands, but... it is not consistent in that. Let players figure out how to navigate their SRV in darkness; let them be able to dump fuel to increase jumps range, let them be able to use limpet to transfer cargo and materials as well as fuel. Repair limpet and ship reboot are a great idea --now take it further.

Let people lose their ship and have to work on a station before they can afford a rebuy. They could for instance be security guns for hire in leased Vipers. They could shuttle cargo between stations in system. Let ships be subject to wear and tear and need regular supplies of materials for the AFM unit and repair limpet. Same with SRV (fuel from the ship, fix with materials!).

Let people get sucked down black holes if they get too close. I mean, seriously.

Let them do geological scans from orbit and core sampling in SRVs. Let them deploy automated mining drones, like in E:F. Let them deploy scavenger drones on shipwrecks.

And give people storage space on stations.

 

[ArchEmperor]

Write on paper, send by snail-mail. Will be read more often and by the right people. Maybe even get framed on the wall above the devs heads.

 

[Hat Man]

Ok, now I'm starting to have more fun with the game.

I accepted this tourist mission from a general. He wanted to go to 2 beacons. I went to the first one, then noticed that there was another beacon on the contacts list mentioning ice geysers. I wasn't aware that was even a thing in the game, so I decided to detour to go look at them... They were pretty awesome, driving over them shoots your SRV into the air.

Anyway, I scanned the beacon... The general said "thanks for that" and asked to be taken back to his originating station... I guess if you show a tourist something cool enough, they'll just forgo whatever previous plans they had. I was able to complete the mission by just visiting one of the two systems, and I got to see something cool out of it.

 

[Blackcompany]

Ok, now I'm starting to have more fun with the game.

I accepted this tourist mission from a general. He wanted to go to 2 beacons. I went to the first one, then noticed that there was another beacon on the contacts list mentioning ice geysers. I wasn't aware that was even a thing in the game, so I decided to detour to go look at them... They were pretty awesome, driving over them shoots your SRV into the air.

http://oi63.tinypic.com/2cdhhl2.jpg

Anyway, I scanned the beacon... The general said "thanks for that" and asked to be taken back to his originating station... I guess if you show a tourist something cool enough, they'll just forgo whatever previous plans they had. I was able to complete the mission by just visiting one of the two systems, and I got to see something cool out of it.

And now you have seen all there is to see of Tourist missions. Because literally every single one of them will play out just like this, from now until you finally tire of them. They will never have have consequences. the process will never change. You will just do exactly this thing over and over again, every single time, in the exact same order.

And that's the problem with both Elite, and space games in general. When you cannot LEAVE the ship - when you are, from a functional standpoint, nothing more than a cockpit - YOU cannot exist in the universe the way Braben envisions. In order to realize the game Braben imagines in his head - the one he THINKS he has developed, based on his interviews, as opposed to the one he has actually, demonstrably made - we not only HAVE to get out of the ships, we have to have meaningful reasons to do so.

Or, failing that, we have to have meaningful interactions. That means persistent NPC's and characters. Faction relationships that matter. Consequences for our actions. A reputation that sticks to us wherever we go and factions that not only care about the rep, but ACT on it. Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds have interesting interactions in sci fi environments not because they have ships; everyone in the Verse has a ship. Those interactions arise from the people and beings they interact with, who remember and act independently based on those interactions. Without persistent characters and meaningful interactions we are just a ship, and there is nothing interesting about BEING an inanimate object with a nice viewport.

 

[V'larr]

... A few people who hated the idea of autopilot in this thread have started having more of an open mind about it, and rather than simply saying NO, have started thinking about ways to keep it balanced, and prevent it from being abused as a farming method, and they have come up with some very good ideas about it.

First, I'm not talking about 'farming', I'm talking about preserving the journey as a true, involved, plan-weeks-ahead, epic-undertaking journey.

Second, I did read through it all, and no, none of it is satisfactory to me whatsoever. I am adamantly steadfast on this point, I do not want autopilot at all.

Not to mention, but as far as I'm aware Elite lore includes having had a "Butlerian Jihad" of sorts of its own (that's a Dune reference if you don't know), and that is the reason there is no true artificial intelligence in Elite - only limited, virtual intelligence, like what you see in Mass Effect.

And this...

when combined with more interesting interstellar flight mechanics, using an autopilot could in fact result in a higher chance of jump failure, and a significantly increased time to complete a jump.

...is an absolutely atrocious idea in my eyes, far worse than simply adding autopilot to the game. You might as well start adding random chances of your ship blowing up out of the blue for no reason at all. Just NO.

That's World of Tanks rubbing off on you mate - I'll say it again, it's *not* a good game and having RNG thrown everywhere is NOT a good thing. That's what ruined Mechwarrior Online and keeps that game from appealing to more than pre-existing Battletech fans, they followed Wargaming's example, to their own detriment, and tossed RNG into their otherwise excellent game. And we got more than enough of that here with RNGineers, and I'm still hoping Fdev is making plans to revisit Engineers and redo it from the ground up for that very reason.

As for the current super cruise mechanic... I don't know really how that can be improved upon. It's a logarithmic scale.

I'm not sure you actually read my thread then? The rate at which your speed increases - and decreases! - is *artificially capped*. You can easily notice that cap when going in long distances in supercruise and paying attention to your speed. And it's been dev-confirmed, not that I have a link ready on-hand, but I do recall seeing a dev post explaining it. It's most certainly not some kind of software/hardware limitation.

I also find it funny that you're criticizing the autopilot idea as something that would "reduce the scale of the universe" in one hand, but stating that you want to get to your destination FASTER in super-cruise in the other.

The scale of the galaxy, specifically, and removing an acceleration rate cap in supercruise only applies to 1, single star system at a time and only creates access to locations that are a massive number of light-seconds away from the jump point of the system...so I fail to see why you find it funny.

I mean, it's literally quite faster by a few orders of magnitude to pick two systems with everything nearby the jump point, rather than staying in 1 system where half the things are close to the nav beacon and the other half are over 100k ls away.

That's outrageously silly.


--

Sorry, yes, the keel-back... The ships blend together sometimes. I use rougey to figure out what ships have to offer.

Rougey isn't bad, but it's not as nifty as coriolis or edshipyard, I'm afraid.

The Beluga definitely isn't as good of an explorer than, well, MANY ships. But I didn't mind it being a passenger ship, since passenger missions appear to be really the only ones that mesh with long range exploration. I also kind of like the idea of being a cruise ship captain, showing "tourists" cool crap I've found... I dunno... I guess it's more down to role play than functionality. I figured, if I managed to find the time, I could try taking on one of those long range passenger missions.

Besides, it was the next thing up that I could afford with fighter capability... Like I said, I was getting pretty impatient with the mission boards and the progression rate by this point. It's why I lost the Beluga in the first place. I wasn't about to spend time grinding out twice as much money as I had at that point.

I believe this was your PEBKAC moment then!

I suppose you're right about exploration's profitability. I guess that's true IRL as well. One of my ancestors, the great Tom Crean, was a 3 time antarctic explorer. Real nut job, almost got himself killed going down there, and saved lives while doing it. He became a house hold name in Ireland... But he wasn't rich. He retired to a small house and owned a little pub.

Maybe if there was something else to do out there. I mentioned the possibility of more in depth scientific study of interesting finds. Maybe this could be used as a way to grind faction reputation that's far better than more economic options like trade. Explorers aren't usually rich... But they do tend to be famous.

Well, you can always go visit Ram Tah for a spell....

__

I think I begin to see where our disconnect is.

In short, my goal is not to reach Elite in trading. I don't care about reaching any of the three categories as fast as possible. It will happen sooner or later, and they provide no benefit beyond bragging rights.

Not true, they *do* provide you benefits: 2.5% discount applied to prices of anything, anywhere, per each Elite rank, as well as access to Founder's World where you can buy all ships & modules.

My goals in this game are:
[*]To have fun

Sorry, but I have to stop you here a moment. EVERYONE playing any game, anywhere, any time, has the goal of having fun. It's really, really not something you can just list as though it puts you on an idealistic pedestal above myself and the way I play the game. Carrying on.

[*]To not break character.

[*]To help spread the light of freedom, civilization, and prosperity throughout the Galaxy

[*]Flying my space ship, and pushing it too its limits to travel as fast as possible.

For this, you need credits...and if you actually mean 'fast as possible', that means trading efficiently as possible as well.

[*]To seek out and learn new things.

Like how to use eddb.io and find good routes by what is, essentially, word-of-mouth between other CMDRs around the galaxy!

Whether it is developing a new skill in the game, exploring a new region of space, or trying to understand some aspect of the game Universe, the fun is the process of discovery, not the fruits of that discovery. Which is why I try to avoid walkthroughs, guides, or spoilers. And I personally consider sites like eddb.io to be all three. The only thing I use it for is to find out the average price of grain at Azaban City when I'm away from home, because I don't have access to the game.

You could always get one of the third-party tools that I *think* work while you are ingame to do that. As for avoiding all walkthroughs/guides/information of any sort...I've said it before in other threads, but for some reason, this game sure seems to attract masochists from all walks of life.

[*]Roleplaying. I'm a roleplayer at heart, and when I play a game, I play that game as an inhabitant of that Universe, NOT as a player sitting in front of her computer (in VR) playing a game.

...That's what you just said, "Roleplaying". FWIW I have my own roleplaying I do as well.

Combine that with what I wrote above, it means I have a tendancy to pay attention to things. I read the tourist beacons in any system I'm operating in, as well as scan as many information nodes as I can. I also pay attention to things most gamers skip. This creates a rather interesting picture of why the Elite: Dangerous Universe is so dysfunctional:

[*]The first is to confirm that Corporations in the Elite: Dangerous Universe were still cut from the same cloth as Omni Consumer Products, Wayland-Yutani, and or Lexcorp. And there are a lot of corporations out there that are basically Corporate Towns scaled up to control entire star systems. I'm both very familiar with the history of Corporate Towns, the history of the East India Company, and have read the Wealth of Nations. This paints a rather horrific picture.

[*]When I started reading the beacons in Shinrarta Dezhra, I was rather startled to discover that the Pilots' Federation was this Universe's version of Comstar, a "corporation" that controlled interstellar communications in the game Battletech. Only rather than being a cult of techno-pagans who wanted plunge humanity into a new Dark Age, so that they could reshape the Inner Sphere in their own image

*This was a particular faction of Comstar, rather than Comstar as a whole, IIRC

the Pilots' Federation is a criminal cabal uses their "near monopoly" of the flow of information to enrich their members, and to ensure that their members can literally get away with mass murder.

I confess haven't seen the beacons myself; but...most of what you talked about is from other games/real life.

The second is to not break character.

[*]I have a rather detailed history of Inga Stevenson, as well as a personality profile. While Commander Stevenson has a lot of traits in common with me, she is also a traditional Imperial, the "bad guys" of Elite's two sequels. Whenever I'm at a loss of what the right choice is to be, I just ask "What would Inga do?"

[*]I also try to keep OOC knowledge separate from IC knowledge. Of course, part of Inga's background was that one of the reasons she sold herself into Imperial Slavery was to get a full education, AND she apprenticed with an ancient prospector before the FSD was invented, so she knows a lot. But the bottom line is that if she shouldn't know something, then she doesn't.

[*]Which leads me to the topic at hand: the in game trade tools. Yes, they aren't very good if your goal is to get to Elite in trading as fast as possible. There is no way to get market data remotely. But from what I've read IN the game, as well as from Frontier's dev diaries, newsletters, and some of the stuff in the DDF, my conclusion that this is a deliberate design choice made by Frontier. You are free to feel that this is a horrible design decision, but I personally enjoy it. But as far as the game universe is concerned, the Pilots' Federation has a "near monopoly" on information and station services, and if they don't provide that information to its members, then they don't want you to have it.

Again, where's the proof of that?

There's no ingame indication whatsoever of this Pilot Federation Mafia thing going on - no inkling is ever clearly made to the average player who doesn't go around triapsing tourist beacons (which, really, what kind of mafia would let those things sit around?).

The best it amounts to is handwavium to excuse the lack of development time to put fix the ingame tools so they are functional, and elevate them to what eddb.io manages to do.

[*]The Pilots' Federation, however, DOES regularly update the Galaxy Map, to let us know about faction state changes. It is trivially easy to go into the Galaxy Map, select the "faction state" filter, and select on the "war" states if your interest is combat, or "famine" and "outbreak" states if your interest is faction state trading.
[*]I tend to avoid meta-gaming, primarily because doing it frequently requires me to break character and rely on OOC knowledge.

Finally, my third goal is to help spread the light of freedom, prosperity, and civilization throughout the Galaxy. This means that I tend to support Imperial factions, and work against the Evil Galactic Federation. This means I tend to play with the Background Simulation. This is probably the closest I ever get to meta-gaming, but I can usually justify it IC. BGS work is basically how many transactions you can complete per minute. Whether they are missions, exploration data, or trade, the more you do, the more influence you deliver to a particular faction.

On the trade side of things, influence gain is capped both on profit per transaction, so you want a wide variety of commodities to ship, and you want to compete as many runs as you can. Coincidentally, Commander Stevenson isn't omniscient, so when she has extra room in her cargo hold while running a mission, she tends to hedge her bets by bringing in several different commodities.

Okay, manipulating the BGS & roleplaying is good and all, but in the context of whether the ingame tools actually function...that's neither here nor there.

I get that you've accepted the non-functionality as such as head-canon and possibly intentional, but I flatly don't. It's like the HUD color thing; they simply haven't devoted development time towards making it function. Which is why I'm less excited for 2.4 itself and more excited for what comes after.

It may sound silly that I'd rather have trade tools and being able to customize HUDs (or at least unique huds per ship manufacturer & so on) as opposed to aliens, but that's exactly how it is.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Not true, they *do* provide you benefits: 2.5% discount applied to prices of anything, anywhere, per each Elite rank, as well as access to Founder's World where you can buy all ships & modules.

I HAD forgotten about former. Pursuing Elite status the discount reminds me of people who drive WAY out of their way to save themselves a few pennies. The money and time they waste isn't worth the saving they get. Which is why getting to trading isn't a priority for me.

On the one hand, I can bore myself to tears for weeks by following someone elses trade route, to the point where the only thing that makes it tolerable is watching Netflix. And then, once I have billions in the bank, I'll be able to save myself a few credits the next time I need to buy a 2A power generator. On the OTHER hand, I can have fun now, and make a fortune doing it.

Sorry, but I have to stop you here a moment. EVERYONE playing any game, anywhere, any time, has the goal of having fun. It's really, really not something you can just list as though it puts you on an idealistic pedestal above myself and the way I play the game. Carrying on.

Sorry, but I have to stop you right there. Given the number of complaints on this discussion board, by people who take the attitude, "I'm going to be completely bored doing X, just so I can have FUN latter," I really think this needs to be said. There is NOTHING in this game, besides flying a ship launched fighter, that cannot be done in a Sidewinder.

Exploration, trading, missions, BGS work, mining, and even PVP, have no intrinsic barrier to entry. This kind of behavior is completely self inflicted. The opening post even asked for Frontier to divert resources into adding a media player to the game, so they could watch Netflix. So yes, I DO think it needs to be said. Your priority should be having fun.

For this, you need credits...and if you actually mean 'fast as possible', that means trading efficiently as possible as well.

Skillful flying costs you nothing. My typical "launch to launch" time is around three minutes, which includes jump, supercruise, landing, buying, and selling, and I'm having a blast doing it. I also get plenty of credits. Sure, I might not be getting the "perfect trade" each time, but getting it would require breaking character, taking a minute to punch in my current location and destination, and MAYBE I might get an extra 10 credits per ton more. I've tested this enough times to feel that the credits gained isn't worth the time lost. I'm lucky if I can scrape up four hours a week in this game to do what I enjoy, and I'm not going waste a moment of that time doing something for so little gain.

BTW, I also find traditional ABA trade routes extremely boring. The only time I'll do them is Empire-aligned Community goals, and even then, I'll only do enough to get to the 50% of Commanders, plus an extra load for a buffer. By then, I've learned the mass distribution in the system, and the quirks of the destination's mass shadow, that I can do a sufficient job threading the needle even in my Type-7, which isn't the most nimble ship around.

Like how to use eddb.io and find good routes by what is, essentially, word-of-mouth between other CMDRs around the galaxy!


You could always get one of the third-party tools that I *think* work while you are ingame to do that. As for avoiding all walkthroughs/guides/information of any sort...I've said it before in other threads, but for some reason, this game sure seems to attract masochists from all walks of life.

As I said, I don't like using walkthroughs, guides, and spoilers. I much prefer to... wait for it... "Blaze my own trail." I have generally found the wisdom of the forums to pretty bad. The "forum recommended" Supercruise technique, for example, should be really be called, "How to double your travel time, put yourself at risk for interdiction, and not have fun doing it." I've long felt using "Submit, Boost, Boost, Highwake" doesn't teach you anything if you ever intend on getting into combat. I could go on and on, but it's time to go to work...

And yes, there are quite a few masochists in this game. I'll never understand why anyone would want to GRIND in this game, when you can have fun instead.

(to be continued... maybe)

 

[Shinji Ikari]

For this, you need credits...and if you actually mean 'fast as possible', that means trading efficiently as possible as well.

No you don't. He said "my space ship", not the best spaceship. Also he seems to be talking about buckyballing which has nothing to do with trading because he said "travel as fast as possible."

Edit: You indeed are talking about trading, I apologize.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Sorry, but I have to stop you right there. Given the number of complaints on this discussion board, by people who take the attitude, "I'm going to be completely bored doing X, just so I can have FUN latter," I really think this needs to be said. There is NOTHING in this game, besides flying a ship launched fighter, that cannot be done in a Sidewinder.

Exploration, trading, missions, BGS work, mining, and even PVP, have no intrinsic barrier to entry. This kind of behavior is completely self inflicted. The opening post even asked for Frontier to divert resources into adding a media player to the game, so they could watch Netflix. So yes, I DO think it needs to be said. Your priority should be having fun.

Many star systems can't be reached in a Sidewinder. As a side note, you can do PVP in a sidewinder but unless it is modded from top to bottom and you are Archon Fury, you won't get anywhere.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Many star systems can't be reached in a Sidewinder. As a side note, you can do PVP in a sidewinder but unless it is modded from top to bottom and you are Archon Fury, you won't get anywhere.

That is not what he said though. Yes some star systems you can't get to in a sidewinder, there are some that you just can't get to in any ship, that doesn't mean that all ships are rubbish at exploration. You can get to Beagles Point in a Sidewinder, and yes you can do PvP in a sidewinder, just don't expect to win many if any battles against a corvette, but you could be effective against a Cobra.

 

[Darkfyre99]

No you don't. He said "my space ship", not the best spaceship. Also he seems to be talking about buckyballing which has nothing to do with trading because he said "travel as fast as possible."

Edit: You indeed are talking about trading, I apologize.

We're talking about two very different types of trading though. He's talking about trading to reach Elite in trading. I'm talking about quick and dirty trading while doing BGS work.

And I Buckyball everywhere. Even while exploring.

Many star systems can't be reached in a Sidewinder. As a side note, you can do PVP in a sidewinder but unless it is modded from top to bottom and you are Archon Fury, you won't get anywhere.

But you don't need to reach every single system in the Galaxy to go exploring. You just have to GO. You don't even need an ADS to go exploring. You just need the basic, and a willingness to learn how to spot planets via parallax. As a bonus, when Frontier finally decides to fix Exploration, you already have the skill in your skill set.

There are also of plenty of PvP tournaments out there that include a cheap, unmodified class for beginners or the less wealthy. I've participated in a couple combat tourneys myself, but combat really isn't my thing.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

But you don't need to reach every single system in the Galaxy to go exploring. You just have to GO. You don't even need an ADS to go exploring. You just need the basic, and a willingness to learn how to spot planets via parallax. As a bonus, when Frontier finally decides to fix Exploration, you already have the skill in your skill set.

There are also of plenty of PvP tournaments out there that include a cheap, unmodified class for beginners or the less wealthy. I've participated in a couple combat tourneys myself, but combat really isn't my thing.

Well yes you can do everything in any ship in the game on a basic level but that's it. If all ships could do the same things just as good, then we might as well just have the Sidewinder and stay at that.
Unless you are Archon Fury and have an engineered small ship, you probably won't do well in a random PVP duel.

Under you own logic you can do PVP in a SRV...

 

[Darkfyre99]

Well yes you can do everything in any ship in the game on a basic level but that's it. If all ships could do the same things just as good, then we might as well just have the Sidewinder and stay at that.
Unless you are Archon Fury and have an engineered small ship, you probably won't do well in a random PVP duel.

Under you own logic you can do PVP in a SRV...

True.

But if you are just learning this game, or just certain aspects of, it, which makes more sense?

• Spend countless hours doing something you don't enjoy, that also happens to not be the activity you're interested in doing in the first place, until you can afford the "perfect" ship, which you use to make extremely expensive newbie mistakes?
• Or buy a cheap ship and just DO it. Make all your mistakes when the rebuy tiny, and use all the money, and the experience, you gain, to build the perfect ship for you?

 

[Thatchinho]

Under you own logic you can do PVP in a SRV...

Sorry for jumping in on this but...

You can.

I have.

Vs a well known reasonably well known 'griefer' in a Cutter.

And from a certain perspective I won.

You just have to take a slightly different approach to your PvP.

(And I say 'griefer' as although that's how some people would see it, the guy was actually a decent bloke when I spoke to him and from my perspective it actually created one of the best pieces of gameplay I've had.)

 

[Thatchinho]

I agree, but actually, I'd say there's an even simpler and more logical/realistic explanation than even that.

Your eyes automatically adjust to light levels. They simply can't pick out details in a dark area in the presence of a bright light source. Your eyes can only see a limited amount of contrast, and in the presence of a bright enough light source, they'll fail to see accurate detail in a dark patch.

Remove the lightsource, and your eyes will automatically adjust to the darkness. If you are outside all day on a bright day, and suddenly walk in a room that is nearly pitch black, you'd struggle to make out any detail. Give your eyes a second to adjust however, and soon, they'll be able to see fairly well in the dark.

Your pupils are literally variable aperture, so your eyes LITERALLY control the brightness of what you see.

Yep! (And although it wasn't explicit, that's what I mean by 'consider a clear moonless night on Earth' )

This is simulated in the game as a sudden change in brightness.

Exactly.

Furthermore, a ship with large windows would logically ALSO have variable tinting to help. Otherwise, fuel scooping would blind anybody on board.

Very good point.

Also, the atmosphere has little influence over starlight.

I know what you mean. But... clouds, smoke, smog, particulates, etc. all have a massive effect (especially if there's also light originating from the surface for them to reflect/refract). So atmosphere does have an effect. Even 'clean' atmosphere as a bit of an effect, even if slight.

This is a common misconception people have, and moon hoax nutjobs like to use it as a straw-man. "Well, you can't see any stars in the footage, and the moon has no atmosphere"... Well... The earth has an atmosphere, but you can still see stars at night, right? So clearly that isn't the deciding factor. What is the deciding factor is whether it's daytime or not, whether or not the sun is visible.

Well... ... Strictly speaking the deciding factor on star visibility is the ratio of brightness of the stars to the general light levels. If the ratios high enough you see the star, if it's too low you don't. If it's marginal, you see it in your peripheral vision, but don't see it if you look directly at it.

And the people making that particular moon hoax argument either don't understand, don't bother to think about, or just knowingly ignore how cameras and eyes work.

So... It does help with gameplay, yes, but it's far from "unrealistic".

Agreed. And:

In fact, it's certainly a lot MORE realistic than jumping 40 light years in 30 seconds.

Heresy!!!!

 

[Thatchinho]

The reason that some people expect WoW in space is because the progressive reward structure suggests it. There are the Feds, Empire and Indies, there are factions, alliances and power play, and missions linked to all that. Those who are familiar with ELITE and Elite: Frontier of course know it is not exactly like WoW, but all these elements look very WoW.

Yeah, and it's understandable, but ultimately that's people putting their own framework onto the game rather than taking the game for what it is.

Superpowers, factions, alliances and powerplay and associated mission are all just projections of human nature. It's pretty realistic to model a future in which that kind of thing going on. I don't think those things should be taken as property of game X. (I know they will be though! )

The randomness makes sense if it is presented in context to represent the risky, uncertain bleeding edge tinkering that the engineers do. Having a roulette/slot machine GUI however breaks that narrative: it is not randomness representing something, it is just shown for what it is: an RNG at work.

Yeah, fair play, very good point about the roulette/slot machine. I'd forgot/ignored that bit of the engineers. Personally, if I've wanted an effect then usually I've just called in a favour from the engineer, which kind of makes sense. But you're absolutely right, the roulette aspect is ridiculous.

Sure, but narrative should serve game play, not cover up flaws in it. Pitch-black planets and foggy planets are fun.

I think this one has been covered in other replies, but just to sum up, to me this one seems to be realism rather than narrative.

It's cool: this is just, like, my opinion man.

Ha ha ha! Groovy! But seriously, thanks for sharing it!

My annoyances are mainly driven by how this game could be even better and open up more game play if they just changed some things. Braben seems to me basically exploring the possibilities: he has a vision, he has improved technology, he can realise more of his vision. The trick is how much, and how. Every time he adds a feature it has to mesh with the existing game and preserve consistency and coherence. I think that team sometimes gets lost there.

Don't get wrong, I think that the game could be better too. And I think that it will be. I do however think that often people put their own interpretive framework over the game which limits how they play the game and what they get out of it.

I also think that FD face a tough job with the playerbase. There's a lot of demand that in the wider scheme of things isn't particularly reasonable, and FD can't possibly cater to what everyone wants because what everyone wants, taking the playerbase as a whole, is massively contradictory and incoherent.

It's taking steps towards Brabens vision while trying to keeping everyone reasonably happy. It's not an easy job, and I don't envy them it.

EDIT: and then there's emergent game play to consider (which is the best experience of all, because now you're writing the narrative and not just taking part in it). Check out the fuel rats: awesome.

Yeah, absolutely! (It actually took me quite a while to track down that fuelrats galnet article that I was telling Hat Man about, but I figured it was worth it! )

A sandbox game needs to offer lots of tools and paths, and just let people decide what to make of it. ED does this quite well, and doesn't exactly hold your hands, but... it is not consistent in that.

Some great points so separating them:

Let players figure out how to navigate their SRV in darkness; let them be able to dump fuel to increase jumps range, let them be able to use limpet to transfer cargo and materials as well as fuel. Repair limpet and ship reboot are a great idea --now take it further.

Agreed (notwithstanding the previous points about whether things are or aren't actually dark! ). It's great to see hull repairs will be in 2.4 and I hope that kind of stuff keeps coming.

Let people lose their ship and have to work on a station before they can afford a rebuy. They could for instance be security guns for hire in leased Vipers. They could shuttle cargo between stations in system. Let ships be subject to wear and tear and need regular supplies of materials for the AFM unit and repair limpet. Same with SRV (fuel from the ship, fix with materials!).

Great suggestions IMHO, which if anything I personally would like to see go even further. I'm just not sure FD can practically do it with reactions they'll face... Take for example:

Let people get sucked down black holes if they get too close. I mean, seriously.

Yes. Completely. And I would go even further on that one. In my view, being sucked into a black hole should represent absolute character death. Reset of game and start from scratch.

As much as I would like that though, I hope FD don't do that (at least not in a way that forces it onto people in the current game modes), and I don't think they ever would, as the reactions from all the people who fall foul of it would just not be worth it.

Let them do geological scans from orbit and core sampling in SRVs. Let them deploy automated mining drones, like in E:F. Let them deploy scavenger drones on shipwrecks.

And give people storage space on stations.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, respectively! Could not agree more on these in principle. And hopefully these kind of things will come. I think it's just a matter of what comes when. (And I have some things which I personally would prefer ahead of a few of those.) If we spoke for the entire playerbase then I'm sure FD would prioritise what we thought was important. We don't though (although we should, obviously! ). And again things are hence difficult for FD, and with that context I think they're doing reasonably well and tend to disregard a lot of things that I personally would like to see changed in the game.

Anyway though, great points mate, cheers!