Still remember the time when I grinded for days so I was finally able to slap an advanced disco scanner on my Diamondback and go explore the black.
A short tale of how FD lost another paying customer.
- Thread starter Powderpanic
- Start date
Still remember the time when I grinded for days so I was finally able to slap an advanced disco scanner on my Diamondback and go explore the black.
To name the first two things that comes to mind: stories unfolding in game during and between more interesting missions. Dogfighting, escort, interception (of ships and/or waves of torpedoes), cap ship assaults, disabling, boarding parties, sometimes all of it in a same mission. X-Wing but even more so TIE Fighter wouldn't be a bad inspiration imho. Combat missions in ED are pure combat for the sake of combat, credits, and percents on a progress bar. A bit more context that "We are at war with the KCWX33 Crimson Gang, go destroy 44 ships of theirs" would be nice.
The answer to "why" is in the quoted text, read it and you will know
the OP has right... and bob as well.
at one point... the player is bound to grind for the engeners..
the AI Ships are all fully engenered ... yours no.
so for PVE:
Want you combat in CZ? can't without and ENG ship
Want you to do BH? Can't without ENG ship
Want you done mission, maybe assassins mission with big payout? with not ENG ship will be more difficult
piracy? ahahahahah no, not without ENG.
Want you explore the universe, with a not ENG ship (at least FSD) will be more painfull.
For PVP: it's impossible done anything without a not ENG ship.
so... the players choice is ridicolous...
yes, you can do missions for factions..the same mission with ridicolous 100k, 200k of payout. but how long can you continue with this?
At a certain point the player must face the grinding ENG.
It 's a FD choice
keep the game alive, because users have to play more for afford a objective
and obviously... in the meantime... you need to do money, more money..
so if you don't take 1 year to a full A Conda, for example... you get off to find compromises.. and grind.
this is the game.
at one point... the player is bound to grind for the engeners..
the AI Ships are all fully engenered ... yours no.
so for PVE:
Want you combat in CZ? can't without and ENG ship
Want you to do BH? Can't without ENG ship
Want you done mission, maybe assassins mission with big payout? with not ENG ship will be more difficult
piracy? ahahahahah no, not without ENG.
Want you explore the universe, with a not ENG ship (at least FSD) will be more painfull.
For PVP: it's impossible done anything without a not ENG ship.
so... the players choice is ridicolous...
yes, you can do missions for factions..the same mission with ridicolous 100k, 200k of payout. but how long can you continue with this?
At a certain point the player must face the grinding ENG.
It 's a FD choice
keep the game alive, because users have to play more for afford a objective
and obviously... in the meantime... you need to do money, more money..
so if you don't take 1 year to a full A Conda, for example... you get off to find compromises.. and grind.
this is the game.
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True. Gameplay is now bolted directly onto the 'under the hood' mechanisms of the BGS. There needs to be a storytelling layer in between.
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If you can't BH in PvE without an engineered ship, I suggest you stop looking at your ship as the flaw and start investigating your own flight technique.
Now...PvP, that engineered ship is 100% essential and a lot of work to maintain several PvP viable ships. But in PvE, sorry, it's categorically not required, and easily done on low grade mods only if you want just the small boost. NPC ships hardly get mods themselves (especially on the lower end of the skill spectrum).
"Can't explore without mods"? Yeah, we know by this point you're either trolling or unwell.
Offline Solo was added to the KS pitch midway through. (Online) Solo, Private Groups and Open all existed at the start of the pitch.
And that's fair enough - but I'd still like to look through the crystal ball and see how ED turns out if all online interaction were Open only; I think you'd find a much more constructive atmosphere in terms of player-managed C&P/escorting. Which is what people (at least attempt to) refer to when talking about emergent gameplay in Open.
Still, this is derailment, so I'mma shush.
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Well missed out page 2, so not sure how the thread became open/solo. Long time since we managed to turn every thread into that debate. Glad to see we have not lost our touch with all the moaning, getting worried for a month or so!
Just want to hi-lig
There is a bit more th the BGS than moving numbers up and down. There is a bit more to powerplay than moving numbers up and down. You move the numbers up and down for a reason to meet objectives, for the powerplay side this is often grup objectives.
to diminish it to repeat the same actions to move numbers up and down is a bit like saying in X3 you built ststions and traded to move numbers up and down, all game mechanics where result is measured over multiple actions can actually be broken down to this, making numbers go up or down.
Now if the OP had said that Bob did not find the framekwork behind the BGS or Powerplay compelling, then I would have some empathy, BGS in particular is improving all the time (faction summary in local news being the most recent, local news before that). You can argue they are still both too opaque though.
OP did not mention alien hunting or F-Rift (cannot spell it let alone pronounce it), mystery solving is another part of the game that Bob might enjoy.
There are many strands to the game other than getting credits to upgrde the ship. All of it is optional though - which is what FD mean by blazing your own trail. Action->Credits/Materials->New Ship/Improve Ship->Repeat sounds a really boring game to me. It is very rare that I chose an action based on credits or material. I may alter my actions to recieve either as a secondary effect but to limt any action you perform in game to increasing or decrease a single number seems a bit self limiting to me.
So the morale of the story is "How FD lost another paying customer" - he listened to the OP!!!!!
Simon
Just want to hi-lig
There is a bit more th the BGS than moving numbers up and down. There is a bit more to powerplay than moving numbers up and down. You move the numbers up and down for a reason to meet objectives, for the powerplay side this is often grup objectives.
to diminish it to repeat the same actions to move numbers up and down is a bit like saying in X3 you built ststions and traded to move numbers up and down, all game mechanics where result is measured over multiple actions can actually be broken down to this, making numbers go up or down.
Now if the OP had said that Bob did not find the framekwork behind the BGS or Powerplay compelling, then I would have some empathy, BGS in particular is improving all the time (faction summary in local news being the most recent, local news before that). You can argue they are still both too opaque though.
OP did not mention alien hunting or F-Rift (cannot spell it let alone pronounce it), mystery solving is another part of the game that Bob might enjoy.
There are many strands to the game other than getting credits to upgrde the ship. All of it is optional though - which is what FD mean by blazing your own trail. Action->Credits/Materials->New Ship/Improve Ship->Repeat sounds a really boring game to me. It is very rare that I chose an action based on credits or material. I may alter my actions to recieve either as a secondary effect but to limt any action you perform in game to increasing or decrease a single number seems a bit self limiting to me.
So the morale of the story is "How FD lost another paying customer" - he listened to the OP!!!!!
Simon
Check his post history.The odd thing is how many 'unhappy' people here seem to work from a 'prove its fun or else' mentality, whereas there doesnt appear to be much of an 'else' involved.
Yeah, I've never quite understood the mentality of "I don't like {x} and I want you not to like {x} either".
Is Elite perfect? No, of course not. I personally think that Engineers were a terrible, terrible idea. For one, they locked out Mac players (due to the lack of Horizons on the Mac). For two, getting a random benefit for a known input isn't engineering. I'd much prefer A* upgrades that are expensive but give a known result.
Elite is always going to be a work-in-progress. If you don't like how it is now, go and play something else for a while - 6 months, say - and see what it's like later. If you still don't like it then, well, that's just how it goes sometimes.
Yes, something like that. It was much harder to make money then.
I think the "White Knight" ting is as bad as the "Carebear" thing, its a derogatory term. It is used to broadly paint a large group of people in one way. In lack of any substance. It is useless imo. Using those terms invalidates the post.
People will have different opinions on everything in this game, they have a right to opinion that, if done properly.
On the other hand one must also accept the hated phrase "this game is not for you" does have a ring of truth to it, all games don't appeal to everyone.
OP's post is rather melodramatic, at the end of it I was beginning to fear for his friend BOB, I already had tears in my eyes. (OP could write soap's for Brazilian TV stations). If OP has an opinion, voice it , but less drama, more substance, please
Cheers Cmdr's
Sleutelbos did not write that there. Are you making up someone elses words to agree with your point?
At the time I hit 'quote' that was what he had written. It appears he's changed his post since.
if you want to BH asp or eagle with an anaconda... yes, you can.
when i hadn't an eng ship, i was killed in 20 seconds by and eng PVE enemy... it's not mt flight technique.
engeneered it.. the things has changed.
for exploring... if you want to do 20 ly at jump and scooping every jump... your choice...but it's painfully.
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Explicitly, no, but reading through the OP, it's not hard to draw that implication.
I had this moment of revelation about a year and a half ago... I was "playing" Bounty Hunter - how brilliant does that occupation sound? - when I realised while farming the RES I was in, just how vapid and shallow the entire thing was... It's like the entire bubble just burst for me, and in a Neo moment, I could see the "Matrix" around me. A never ending procession of Wanteds being spawned by the game, for no other reason than to commit suicide on the end of my lasers. I could sit there for all eternity, vapourising more metal than was in the entire "bubble", and the outcome would be little more than a couple of pretty insignificant "state changes" in my current system... I was in little more than a mini-game there just to give "Bounty Hunters" a place to go...
Note: Multi-crew is released, basically asking individuals to sit there farming these very same RES zones, in the same mini-game mechanics from 2+ years ago...
It was at that point (end of 2015) I started slowly giving up with the game, so I gave myself the exploration challenge of The Distant Disc...
But TBH, while some aspects of this were interesting, in hind-sight, even reaching the most remote place (at the time) in the galaxy showed me it was no more challenging than simply knowing where to go to achieve it; "J"-honk-"J"-honk... And unsurprisingly while going to this uber remote place, I didn't witness anything different to the systems I'd seen before. And infact the experience was even tainted by the fact when I landed on planets in these uber remote locations, POIs littered them with human garbage; eg: Containers of tea on the remotest planets on the edge of the galaxy!
Since then, I've been waiting for the gameplay and mechanics in ED to deepen and advance, and unfortunately update after update has done little to achieve this (IMHO), instead seemingly dedicating effort to bolting on more fluff and re-using elements of gameplay rather than introducing/deepening mechanics and gameplay...
I'm hoping Season 3/Version 3 (what ever guise it takes) will see some long overdue strides forwards in gameplay depth/content...
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I did write it there, but removed it because I wasn't really that interested in having a 10+ page thing about it and an individual's post history isn't all that relevant to the topic. In any case: if you see no depth, that is your perogative, as it is your problem.
Hmm....
I guess this means that Elite: Dangerous, after the initial gameplay etc, becomes a Simulator of a Space Pilot life, rather than a game. As a Simulator fan, I have no problems with it being that way; I do mining, trading, BH, CGs and BGS stuff... my current personal goal is to fill a Cutter with Platinum and Painite.
I guess this means that Elite: Dangerous, after the initial gameplay etc, becomes a Simulator of a Space Pilot life, rather than a game. As a Simulator fan, I have no problems with it being that way; I do mining, trading, BH, CGs and BGS stuff... my current personal goal is to fill a Cutter with Platinum and Painite.
If you take most games, they are essentially getting you to repeat the same actions over and over, just in different scenarios.
For example, the Call of Duty series, you just go round shooting people, that's it, nothing more. The Sniper Elite series (which I love), you shoot someone from a distance, that's it, nothing more. Granted you have to sneak up to a suitable location and then escape in some scenarios, but the gameplay mechanic is just "shoot someone from a distance". The Left 4 Dead series (which I also enjoy), all you do is kill zombies and escape to the next level. I could go on with more game examples, but essentially they don't have much depth with repetitive simple gameplay mechanics and yet they are hugely popular.
I think it would be almost impossible to make a game that doesn't have repetitive gameplay mechanics of some sort.
I'm not saying Frontier shouldn't add more gameplay mechanics (I would love to see more Exploration mechanics) but I have found Elite: Dangerous has more varied gameplay mechanics than most of the games I've played.
Didn't say it was likely - you can put yer pitchfork down
Believe it or not, it doesn't have to be attributed to sheer PvP lust. A naturally flowing universe with higher CMDR population, where everyone has to interact and in some cases take initiative to achieve a goal instead of moving to Solo to achieve tasks, would be a much more exciting universe.
I actually wish the idea for offline solo and Open with BGS had gone through for multiplayer, but....what ya gonna do, eh.
Apart from fend off hysterical forum attacks whenever you mention support for Open. One has to do that a lot apparently.
I am not sure where the "Open (forced if you like) mode is great" comes from.
If I wanted a combat game I would play one designed as such.
I have played in Open about 15 times and a "positive" experience is few and far between - or am I in the wrong corner of the universe?
"Ganked" twice (though the FPS made it a slideshow), about 6 times other players seeing me and running for their lives, and the last two was some idiot spewing a constant stream of obscenities over the Chat Channel. Nothing better for "muh imershun" then that.
And this all makes for exciting and "emergent" gameplay? No, not really.
If every time I booted up ED and that was what I had to look forward to ED would lose another paying customer just like my imaginary friend "Bob."
Just one question: What did your friend do back then in "original Elite, X-Wing, Wing Commander, Frontier 2 etc etc"? Seriously, what did he do? Aren't all long-term games about repeating the same gameplay activities? Like every MMO out there? I can't count how many times I went through the exact same strikes/missions in Destiny or Division. How many times I repeated the same activities in Neverwinter. How much grinding I did in any given RPG, from Skyrim to Witcher. Elite is all about the experience of flying among the stars. There are countless mission types in it. It's about living a space life. If you're not amazed by the galaxy itself just being there at your fingertips then no amount of gameplay or missions or lore or goals will make you satisfied. You play and "live" in this game not to save the world or rescue the princess but to take it all in. The sights and sounds. The virtual future of humanity. To experience the physics, to blaze your own trail. To have fun with friends. Simply to enjoy the feeling of being out there.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't have new ideas about gameplay but really it's not about gameplay itself (this is a spaceship flying game after all) but new mechanics and goals. They wouldn't change the game completely. No amount of mission types would. I still don't get what people mean by "meaningful gameplay". I have more than 1050 hours in this game now and I'm not bored with it at all! What is it if not meaningful? I'm enjoying my ships, the galaxy, the activities, the CGs. I spend my time among the stars because I love it!
"He had done all the mission types, run 5hrs of exploration to get access to Farseer, shot up a RES and CZ with me for bigger payouts, driven on a planet, spaced Ubered, CG'ed, mined and done lots of trading while watching CrunchyRoll."
I think that's a lot of things to do! If you think about how much time it takes to get to know the game, how to equip ships, how to earn money, how to engage in all those activities, don't tell me it's not meaningful. Or not enough. If your general love of space is there then this should be enough in the long run. And it always gets more complex with every update. Seriously, I don't get you or your friend. If you're bored with the whole galaxy then it's not only the game's fault. There's only so much you can do in a given genre. In Halo I always shoot the same aliens. So what? Most games you finish in 8-10-20 hours. And then they're done. You're never done in Elite. But you can get bored with it just like with any other MMO game that has repeating mechanics. Why do you expect Elite to constantly offer something new indefinitely? There's no such game, and will never be. Your love of space and science and astronomy can provide you the urge to go beyond gameplay mechanics and enjoy the galaxy forever. If it's not there then this is just a game like all others. Don't blame it because you get bored sooner or later. There's nothing Frontier or anyone can do anything about it. Every game gets boring after a while.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't have new ideas about gameplay but really it's not about gameplay itself (this is a spaceship flying game after all) but new mechanics and goals. They wouldn't change the game completely. No amount of mission types would. I still don't get what people mean by "meaningful gameplay". I have more than 1050 hours in this game now and I'm not bored with it at all! What is it if not meaningful? I'm enjoying my ships, the galaxy, the activities, the CGs. I spend my time among the stars because I love it!
"He had done all the mission types, run 5hrs of exploration to get access to Farseer, shot up a RES and CZ with me for bigger payouts, driven on a planet, spaced Ubered, CG'ed, mined and done lots of trading while watching CrunchyRoll."
I think that's a lot of things to do! If you think about how much time it takes to get to know the game, how to equip ships, how to earn money, how to engage in all those activities, don't tell me it's not meaningful. Or not enough. If your general love of space is there then this should be enough in the long run. And it always gets more complex with every update. Seriously, I don't get you or your friend. If you're bored with the whole galaxy then it's not only the game's fault. There's only so much you can do in a given genre. In Halo I always shoot the same aliens. So what? Most games you finish in 8-10-20 hours. And then they're done. You're never done in Elite. But you can get bored with it just like with any other MMO game that has repeating mechanics. Why do you expect Elite to constantly offer something new indefinitely? There's no such game, and will never be. Your love of space and science and astronomy can provide you the urge to go beyond gameplay mechanics and enjoy the galaxy forever. If it's not there then this is just a game like all others. Don't blame it because you get bored sooner or later. There's nothing Frontier or anyone can do anything about it. Every game gets boring after a while.
As an open player I dislike the idea of forced open. I dont want to play with people uninterested in playing that way, whats the point?