dayrth
Volunteer Moderator
How can you say that the game is lifeless....
It discredits completely your post.
I agree with the op.
Am I playing a different game to everyone else?
- Thread starter Dr Roly
- Start date
How can you say that the game is lifeless....
It discredits completely your post.
I agree with the op.
i share this perspective.
I don't find this game lifeless or too grindy compared to other games. I definitely hit a wall when PP came out and I ended up leaving it for 4 months.
The last few weeks I've come back. I've gone and bought myself an Asp & rigged it for mining. I'm having great fun with the drones, flying around asteroids.
Made more money than I have ever before. There's something so satisfying about waiting for that Prospector Drone to come back with some juicy info.. "51% Palladium?! YESSSS!!"
The last few weeks I've come back. I've gone and bought myself an Asp & rigged it for mining. I'm having great fun with the drones, flying around asteroids.
Made more money than I have ever before. There's something so satisfying about waiting for that Prospector Drone to come back with some juicy info.. "51% Palladium?! YESSSS!!"
You've just ruined the game for him ¬_¬
Even if RNG isn't satisfying, would a handful of handcrafted outcomes or situations be? Because it's the only other alternative. You either go RNG or you go handcrafted.
Last I checked, handcrafting was tedious, expensive, took ages and produced very little number of things that looked amazing. Suitable for games targeting a limited amount of play time but totally out of question for a game like ED.
Or would you be more content with finishing your epic ED adventure in about 30 hours and meet the credits screen?
I don't get the whole VR thing either. I'm not keen on having something strapped to my face for as many hours as I put into this game. I'm perfectly capable of being in the game, without completely shutting out reality. VR just isn't for me.
Regarding the "target audience". I think that nobody really fits into the category of "target audience". FD are making a niche game, and attempting to add elements to it that will appeal to as broad a spectrum as possible. They've attempted to appease the PvP MMO players with CQC. The Space Opera fans with PP, and the BGS. The grinders with BH Rez zones, miming and trading. The RPers with missions (well... ok... RPers are happy anywhere.
).I think they've spread themselves a little thin, however. They don't do any of them very well. So, unless you're the type of player that can move around and make your own fun, then this game is going to fall short for you.
I'm looking forward some of the upcoming improvements. Particularly the missions and BGS revisit. The BGS in particular is something I've been avoiding. Partly because it's a little unintuitive, and partly because it goes hand in hand with the missions, and they're not exactly finished as of right now.
Also, I think the complaints and their number are exaggerated. It's only natural that those who feel aggrieved are the most likely to voice their grievances.
TL;DR If you're going to make a niche game, you can't afford to be too esoteric with it. And forums attract complaints in general.
I'm guessing you've not played Witcher 3, have you? Or any Fallout or Elder Scrolls game for that matter.
Pretty much agree with the OP.
Seeing the number of threads saying X needs buffing/nerfing; Y is broken; Z is grind.
Quite often I just think well, ummm really ? (or at least well yeah, but I'll deal with it).
Obviously there are bugs and some people have issues with some aspects of gameplay or mechanics or whatever - and the game isn't perfect.
But after a year of play, I for one am still finding it pretty darn fun and playable - and still have "wow, that's so cool" moments.
Oh well, maybe I'm just a fanboy [from the class of '84 - no VR though]...
Seeing the number of threads saying X needs buffing/nerfing; Y is broken; Z is grind.
Quite often I just think well, ummm really ? (or at least well yeah, but I'll deal with it).
Obviously there are bugs and some people have issues with some aspects of gameplay or mechanics or whatever - and the game isn't perfect.
But after a year of play, I for one am still finding it pretty darn fun and playable - and still have "wow, that's so cool" moments.
Oh well, maybe I'm just a fanboy [from the class of '84 - no VR though
]...What do you think the stuff outside the main quests and a few side storylines in those games are? It's RNG pure and simple. It's just that the game world is small and varied enough that it can be disguised better. The random missions in none of those games is anything other than RNG generating missions for you. The mission system in ED can, and I believe will, be designed better but it has to rely on some kind of RNG one way or the other.
Elite: Dangerous really is a game like no other. Literally EVERYTHING you do makes some kind of impact on the galaxy at large.
Piracy? Demoralizes systems and increases security.
Bounty Hunting? Rallies the morale of a system and in a weird, roundabout twist, decreases security. (You're doing their job better than they can.)
Trading? The lifeblood of systems, affecting price, demand, value, and even availibility of commodities.
Exploring? Fully explored systems can actually be expanded in to by a faction, which is why there's a lot more systems with super-low population and one outpost than there used to be.
Not to mention, even playing with a keyboard, mouse, and really, really terrible monitor, the game is truly immersive. There's always something neat to look at, some other cool detail to find that you wouldn't expect. Take the Adder, for example.
The funny little panel right in the middle of the cockpit glass bar? Watch it when you request docking. The lights change colors. It's little details like that, at the smallest level, as well as the grand scale of the game, that make it brilliant. Yes, it caters poorly to the "GOTTA KILL KILL KILL ACTION" crowd, but those people rarely stick to one game for long anyways. That's why there's a new Call of Duty game coming out every year, for those people. Elite: Dangerous isn't a game for those types. It's a game where you can lose yourself, doing the most mundane-seeming of things, you look up, rub your eyes, and suddenly it's four hours later than you started.
It's brilliant.
Piracy? Demoralizes systems and increases security.
Bounty Hunting? Rallies the morale of a system and in a weird, roundabout twist, decreases security. (You're doing their job better than they can.)
Trading? The lifeblood of systems, affecting price, demand, value, and even availibility of commodities.
Exploring? Fully explored systems can actually be expanded in to by a faction, which is why there's a lot more systems with super-low population and one outpost than there used to be.
Not to mention, even playing with a keyboard, mouse, and really, really terrible monitor, the game is truly immersive. There's always something neat to look at, some other cool detail to find that you wouldn't expect. Take the Adder, for example.
The funny little panel right in the middle of the cockpit glass bar? Watch it when you request docking. The lights change colors. It's little details like that, at the smallest level, as well as the grand scale of the game, that make it brilliant. Yes, it caters poorly to the "GOTTA KILL KILL KILL ACTION" crowd, but those people rarely stick to one game for long anyways. That's why there's a new Call of Duty game coming out every year, for those people. Elite: Dangerous isn't a game for those types. It's a game where you can lose yourself, doing the most mundane-seeming of things, you look up, rub your eyes, and suddenly it's four hours later than you started.
It's brilliant.
There are no random mission in Witcher 3. Every quest, main or otherwise, is hand crafted, same in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and NV. The awful radiant stuff wasn't introduced until Skyrim. Also, describing the playable areas of any of those games as "small" is ridiculous. Also, "few side storylines"? Really? If you haven't played Witcher 3, go play it, do every witcher contract, visit every poi on the map and finish the main quest then come back here, read what you just wrote, realise how silly it sounds then write a letter of apology to the developers of the game for insulting them with that nonsense.
Well I'm club '93 if that's a thing rather than 84, but I also play in VR, love the immersion and like the game.
I have done the grind in a number of MMOs, and I did Earth-Barnards star a good deal in Frontier, but I just decided not to with E : D. If there isn't something I want to do that's fun, I just don't play. Realised from Alpha that you can have fun in a sidewinder and be bored in an Anaconda, so I take it from there.
That said, there are plenty of legitimate criticisms. If you compare Elite to a typical MMO, yes they both have cookie cutter repetitive missions/quests, and endlessly spawning mobs/npcs to kill, etc.
But your typical MMO would have a lot of unique hand crafted content on top of that. You would have hundreds of none-repeating quests and dialog. Dungeons, unique locations, boss encounters, raids, crafting etc. If you launched a generic MMO with just repeatable quests, it would get slaughtered.
Now, I'm not for a minute saying they should add those things to Elite. Most of them would be totally inappropriate. But there should be something that is appropriate instead. Currently, the game has only the grindy elements and not the more interesting, rare or one off stuff that punctuates the grind.
But we don't want a cookie cutter save the world story! No, but that's not the only alternative. Meaningful consequences, events that lead to other events, some sort of exploration gameplay - things that allow stories to develop in the game rather than in our heads.
What if I jump in to a distress call and save the day, I'm then asked to escort the crippled ship to a dock, then smuggle a hunted passenger to safety hunted by criminals and the authorities alike? We have something a bit more interesting.
If I grind missions with a research organisation and that leads to them telling me that one of their scouts reported an site of interest far beyond civilised space.. but they have lost contact with that individual. I have to track them down, get to the location and study it before returning the findings safely, that breaks up the grind. Perhaps by working with these organisations I gain access to specialist research equipment, or the coordinates of interesting sites.
What if I've been doing military missions in an area, and simultaneously a neighbouring system degenerates in to anarchy.. I'm asked to go in and recover some key personnel stranded on a base. I fail, things escalate. I fly some combat missions, then I'm asked to infiltrate a scanning station and gather data from it. It reveals that another faction is working to destabilise this system. A battle fleet is dispatched and I'm asked to go with it, getting missions on the move from the capital ship.
But as it is, when I save someone in a distress call, the game world doesn't care. It made no difference that I did that. Exploring is just go places, because you can. There's no particular difficulty in doing it, or interesting consequences of doing it beyond personally seeing what's there.When I go to a conflict zone, there are endless spawns thrown at each other. Nobody can win, and nothing would happen if they did.
Most of what I made up above does not require new game mechanics, just new ways to present them. It doesn't even need to be hand written, most of that could be procedurally generated from the existing universe. Much of it is still well short of long standing ideas in the DDF. The elephant in the room is persistence - we don't have persistent NPCs or consequences, just current mission and current standing.
So I enjoy the game, it's a wonderful universe with enjoyable combat and huge potential. But to do that justice, there should be more than these superficial mechanics which have no lasting consequence. Elite's universe is huge and beautiful. Its combat is fun. But while seeing the world, killing respawns and getting better gear might be the crux of many games, it shouldn't be literally all of them.
They need to apply the same amazing procedural generation talent to gameplay, mission and event generation that they have to the galaxy and planet generation.
I have done the grind in a number of MMOs, and I did Earth-Barnards star a good deal in Frontier, but I just decided not to with E : D. If there isn't something I want to do that's fun, I just don't play. Realised from Alpha that you can have fun in a sidewinder and be bored in an Anaconda, so I take it from there.
That said, there are plenty of legitimate criticisms. If you compare Elite to a typical MMO, yes they both have cookie cutter repetitive missions/quests, and endlessly spawning mobs/npcs to kill, etc.
But your typical MMO would have a lot of unique hand crafted content on top of that. You would have hundreds of none-repeating quests and dialog. Dungeons, unique locations, boss encounters, raids, crafting etc. If you launched a generic MMO with just repeatable quests, it would get slaughtered.
Now, I'm not for a minute saying they should add those things to Elite. Most of them would be totally inappropriate. But there should be something that is appropriate instead. Currently, the game has only the grindy elements and not the more interesting, rare or one off stuff that punctuates the grind.
But we don't want a cookie cutter save the world story! No, but that's not the only alternative. Meaningful consequences, events that lead to other events, some sort of exploration gameplay - things that allow stories to develop in the game rather than in our heads.
What if I jump in to a distress call and save the day, I'm then asked to escort the crippled ship to a dock, then smuggle a hunted passenger to safety hunted by criminals and the authorities alike? We have something a bit more interesting.
If I grind missions with a research organisation and that leads to them telling me that one of their scouts reported an site of interest far beyond civilised space.. but they have lost contact with that individual. I have to track them down, get to the location and study it before returning the findings safely, that breaks up the grind. Perhaps by working with these organisations I gain access to specialist research equipment, or the coordinates of interesting sites.
What if I've been doing military missions in an area, and simultaneously a neighbouring system degenerates in to anarchy.. I'm asked to go in and recover some key personnel stranded on a base. I fail, things escalate. I fly some combat missions, then I'm asked to infiltrate a scanning station and gather data from it. It reveals that another faction is working to destabilise this system. A battle fleet is dispatched and I'm asked to go with it, getting missions on the move from the capital ship.
But as it is, when I save someone in a distress call, the game world doesn't care. It made no difference that I did that. Exploring is just go places, because you can. There's no particular difficulty in doing it, or interesting consequences of doing it beyond personally seeing what's there.When I go to a conflict zone, there are endless spawns thrown at each other. Nobody can win, and nothing would happen if they did.
Most of what I made up above does not require new game mechanics, just new ways to present them. It doesn't even need to be hand written, most of that could be procedurally generated from the existing universe. Much of it is still well short of long standing ideas in the DDF. The elephant in the room is persistence - we don't have persistent NPCs or consequences, just current mission and current standing.
So I enjoy the game, it's a wonderful universe with enjoyable combat and huge potential. But to do that justice, there should be more than these superficial mechanics which have no lasting consequence. Elite's universe is huge and beautiful. Its combat is fun. But while seeing the world, killing respawns and getting better gear might be the crux of many games, it shouldn't be literally all of them.
They need to apply the same amazing procedural generation talent to gameplay, mission and event generation that they have to the galaxy and planet generation.
Does it? How does that effect the game outside of changing some text or some numbers?
I think the different generations of gamers have different expectations too...
"Us old-timers" who came from the original 80's game probably get satisfied more easily, as compared to the old games this is obviously a HUGE step forward, and it's great to even just go exploring the (kinda) realistically modeled Milky Way. Also back then in the old game you needed to use your imagination a lot more to get yourself really immersed. So I think we maybe are (generally) better equipped to "find entertainment by ourselves", whereas younger people who grew up with a lot "cooler" games (ie much more content and variety, and less linear, more realistic looks etc) are more used to "being entertained" and having to use imagination less?
Dunno, it's just a thought, and not meant to be offending, it's just different generations I guess...
For myself, I try not to think about it in terms of getting the biggest/best stuff as quick as I can, but "enjoying the ride", just doing whatever I feel like doing at the moment (go exploring, run a trade route, do missions or RESes, join some powerplay faction for a while). I hope that this game will be around for years, and there will be enough time to get those big ships, and meanwhile I just have fun. A big inspiration for that are the videos of Cmdr Isinona, where you can see he is never overly rich, but just immerses himself and enjoys the ride..
"Us old-timers" who came from the original 80's game probably get satisfied more easily, as compared to the old games this is obviously a HUGE step forward, and it's great to even just go exploring the (kinda) realistically modeled Milky Way. Also back then in the old game you needed to use your imagination a lot more to get yourself really immersed. So I think we maybe are (generally) better equipped to "find entertainment by ourselves", whereas younger people who grew up with a lot "cooler" games (ie much more content and variety, and less linear, more realistic looks etc) are more used to "being entertained" and having to use imagination less?
Dunno, it's just a thought, and not meant to be offending, it's just different generations I guess...
For myself, I try not to think about it in terms of getting the biggest/best stuff as quick as I can, but "enjoying the ride", just doing whatever I feel like doing at the moment (go exploring, run a trade route, do missions or RESes, join some powerplay faction for a while). I hope that this game will be around for years, and there will be enough time to get those big ships, and meanwhile I just have fun. A big inspiration for that are the videos of Cmdr Isinona, where you can see he is never overly rich, but just immerses himself and enjoys the ride..
How many other games have the least attractive faction overachieving in most regards just because it advocates for equality?
So I'd add one of the best communities in the mix.
I think one thing that is a shame is that people don't want to be part of something bigger. Despite it being perfectly possible for someone to be a lone wolf and work towards a common goal at the same time. I am a lone wolf at large when it comes to my gameplay, but working for the Alliance has added a whole new layer of goals to aim from and get the feeling of achieving something within the game.
So I'd add one of the best communities in the mix.
I think one thing that is a shame is that people don't want to be part of something bigger. Despite it being perfectly possible for someone to be a lone wolf and work towards a common goal at the same time. I am a lone wolf at large when it comes to my gameplay, but working for the Alliance has added a whole new layer of goals to aim from and get the feeling of achieving something within the game.
shaped liked Felicity Kendal's bottom you say? a most worthwhile pursuit, if ever there was.
Then you got the fuel rats, be a wacky pirate in an t7. Run with those station racers, or the buckyball crew. Or trie figure out that unknown artifact. Or teach yourself to fly fa off..
I havent done anny of that yet and i have played this game for almost 3500 hours. My assets are about 1.5 billion, not fully ranked in either empire or federation either. Im a few % dangerous, elite in trading and trailblaser in exploration. I do have plans to join that great expedition. And have bought an second account so i can do stuff in the bubble
I actually siggested much if this to another rant thread and the op meant i was trolling.. Lol
I havent done anny of that yet and i have played this game for almost 3500 hours. My assets are about 1.5 billion, not fully ranked in either empire or federation either. Im a few % dangerous, elite in trading and trailblaser in exploration. I do have plans to join that great expedition. And have bought an second account so i can do stuff in the bubble
I actually siggested much if this to another rant thread and the op meant i was trolling.. Lol
Wait, I don't want to be misunderstood. I was a fan of those games you mentioned long before I became one of ED. I don't need to write them anything since I bought all of their games and played the living everything out of them. They are games like no other but you can't change one fact. The play area in all those games combined is tiny compared to the play area ED has. ED has a play area equal to the real life version of the galaxy.
No matter what you do, all the content in every video game ever combined will not even fill up a noticeable fraction of ED's available area.
I was talking about everything which is not handcrafted in those games you mentioned. They are masterpieces in their own right but they are completely different from ED in every sense.
Also, both the fallout and the elder scrolls games got smaller and smaller maps with each iteration no matter how filled to the brim with stuff they look. With the amount of detail expected from games, to handcraft everythig to satisfaction, you have to make the world smaller. There is no way around it.
FD didn't shy away from the 1:1 scale galaxy and is getting all the flack for it. I respect all the other developers immensely but respect FD a little more.
The fact that they have modelled the galaxy to the limit of our understanding of it at 1:1 scale is indeed a feat that can not be understated. However, Elite Dangerous is being marketed as a video game, not a map. If they removed all the hand crafted content from Skyrim, made the map a 1:1 representation of North America and populated it with nothing but the repetitive Radiant quests would it make it a better game?