So I watched Yamik's latest video and it got me thinking on several aspects of this game. I for one want E
's Dev Team to see this as well as Frontier as you are in danger of losing players with the continued cycle in your development practices.
Let's address these under different headings and subheadings to make things easier.
Also, to the players who might back me...no I got words for you as well. I ain't takin' no prisoners.
An entire post itself could probably be written on this alone and I put it first after the most recent patch, you know...the one where you guys took a massive nerf hammer to mining? Now let me preface this before I got legions of players running to back me up.
You should not be able to get rich within hours of starting without some godly amount of work put in first. You should not go from a Sidewinder to an Anaconda in 8 hours. No, you should not. Why? Because the difference between flying a Sidewinder and flying an Anaconda is like taking the Red Baron, throwing him through time, and placing him in the cockpit of a F-35C Lightning. There is a HUGE amount of difference in handling characteristics between the two that new players should spend time learning as they progress through ships. By providing get rich quicks for everyone to jump on...you are cementing bad habits in the player base. I worked my aft off for my Cutter and honestly...it's too big for me. I like how Medium ships handle and how jack of all trades certain ones can be. That's the other thing...you are robbing a new player of finding the ship and build that fits them by telling them what ship is the best.
Elite is about setting a goal for yourself as a player. Telling a player what their goal should be by saying 'this is the best ship and here is how to get it in 8 hours' robs them of the chance to discover what this game has to offer. I didn't seek out these methods...I dug in and stuck it out for hours a day.
However that said...
FDEV, Elite is too grindy!
By Infinity's Edge...even BDO knows to at least throw some coin at it's player base as they realize western players are not fans of grind. I don't mind working to get the credits for a ship or a module or to engineer it but there is grind...and than there is what you guys have us do. Community Goals were a great way to allow players to make decent credits in a decent amount of time with the right ships/fits and some dedicated work. They're loss is felt keenly right now.
Of the three big professions: Combat, Trading, and Exploration...Exploration and it's associated Passenger Missions arepretty okay if you ask me in it's credits/hr and fun/hr ratio but here is where I have to start lobbying criticism when we start on the other two.
Combat? Nope, not enough Credits for the Fun unless you do Thargoids and those require some specialized and expensive builds that no new player can take on for the big ships and the scouts require at least a medium vessel or one that can pack enough hull reinforcement. Pirating is alright but you gotta know your stuff. Merc work? Conflict Zones can provide steady work but you still need a decent fit for it that no new player will have. Bounty Hunting? Yeah, this is the big one that really needs a balance pass. Missions in this category especially need one badly.
Trading/Passenger Missions/Mining? Too much credits for not enough fun. It feels like work and I want to come on here to have fun blowing things up, not work my aft off to do it. There is a reason people look for Gold rushes...to avoid this and having to rely almost entirely on third party tools to do it. They want to have fun with the ship they want. They will look for exploits to avoid the grind and the extremes they go to should be an indication that there are fundamental flaws in the player progression path.
In short, while the playerbase's jumping onto Gold Rushes and making them public cheapens the game for new players by handing them a ship they may not be ready for in an ungodly short amount of time...the fault lies with FDev on the why. A fair progression path with good skill and decision making for a new player should be Sidewinder to the ship of their dreams within 2-10 weeks (if it does not require a rank grind....oh I got words on that and Powerplay) with 4-6 hour play sessions per day....depending on ship. An Anaconda should take far longer to get to than a Krait Phantom. This should be doable on any of the major professions with the same amount of effort. Right now? A bounty hunter or Merc has to spend far more time than an Explorer and both got left in the dust by Mining up until now. If you want a good measure of how to balance pass and what an acceptable rate of credits is? Exploration should be a good gauge.
Okay...let's go on to the other bit...
Yep, now to dissect and completely rip into this mess. First off let's make it clear...the game's handling is fine for combat. I played EVE, trust me many of you would eat EVE Players for dinner in combat for the first few days as they learn how to actually use piloting...not to mention docking. Every ship handles just fine (though some could use some tweaking to make them slightly better...or at east give them a reason to exist grumbles in Asp Scout) and for people who want to complain about FDLs...um most PvP'ers as far as I learned via the Pilot's videos do not even use it in combat as it makes life way too easy.
Like literally this game has only two real competitors right now...
...and it could blow both out of the water if it fixed the rest of it's systems. What do I mean? Well let's start with the elephant in the room...
...Powerplay...Yep, opening with this can of worms. It had potential...and then it got cast off for the next big thing. What holds it back the most is it does not force any form of PvP on it's most combat-oriented factions. It also turns attaining and keeping your rank in it into a chore with the only incentive being shiny weapons. LYR most of all is wasted as his top tier bonus would be one for Explorers to grab onto but who wants to spend 5 weeks grinding that hard with that much exploration data on their ship? That's a bad white dwarf attempt or a PvP'er ganking incident away from a rage quit. His stations should at least provide a flat bonus like ALD's stations provide for bounty vouchers with extra bonus per tier rank in the faction.
Which brings me to the other bad side of PP...the fact that you lose rank if you can't play. No other MMO with a Faction system has you losing rank in that faction if you stop playing that I know of. Like what was the design decision behind that? Not even the Faction Rank system has that system. (Oh I got a can opener for that can of worms as well!) There is no reason or urgency beyond a fancy weapon or module with Powerplay, nothing to contribute to the personal narrative of the player. It's there to be filler, like what Faction Warfare in EVE became for a time till recently. Which now let's link this with another forgotten system...
The Empire Naval Ranks...Oh yes, we are going here. Now first...for certain PP Factions and three major players in the Galaxy besides the Thargoids...there was a missed opportunity to tie the rank grinds together. Like in all seriousness, the two Feds and four Imperials in PP could have had their own missions to gain rank from the empire in question. It would have easily...easily provided a reason to stay loyal to many. Furthermore...getting rank in the PP power and Faction could provide net bonuses based on who the PP power was allied to within the power. ADL and her sister could easily provide access to their PP modules for someone who is in the Top Tier of the Imperial PP faction of the same alignment and attained a certain Naval rank in the power. There was so much missed narrative and gameplay opportunity in these two systems together and apart that one could write a whole post itself on these.
Second, it suffers from the same problem as trading/mining but worse...no fun and to few credits for the time spent. It feels like work 2.0...the factions should have a narrative involved for your rank along the three different lines or at least a feeling of accomplishment...not; "Why did I do this again and do it in such a slow way?"
Next and certainly not last..
Engineering
Engineering is a hodgepodge of stuff that works, stuff that doesn't...and stuff that breaks the game. First off...that which breaks the game...Healing Beams. Like heck, you already had to balance these once and it was not in a way that even stuck...Reverb Cascade on station guns. That was the fix for Healsies for Feelsies...so now they went and used it to exploit High Conflict Zones for credits and materials...which has not been fixed. In all honestly, get rid of these Effect and you fix half the problems with Engineering as this magnifies the other.
What do I mean? SHIELD BOOSTERS! Like by Infinity's Edge! I think this is the only module that needs a hard cap on how many can be placed on a ship based completely on how many utility slots it has; like say...half the number of slots can be shield boosters for large ships. You have the ability FDev to do this, the AX and Guardian Weapons prove this limit can be hard coded into the game at a set value. You can also introduce diminishing returns for going past 2 of them you the next one is half as effective and the fourth is like 1/4 the effectiveness of it's boosts. This will force players to make a choice...4 engineered to the Nth degree shield boosters or take other stuff in those slots on any but the largest ships. This makes even the Cutter and FDL balanced to some extent and PvPers might use the latter again.
So what's next? Oh right...
I was on DW2, still have yet to collect my ship badge for it. It was an awesome thing...and I want more of this. I want CGs focused on exploration, trade, combat, etc.
I want to see Galnet back up and running telling stories in the universe.
I want these bits of filler back as the former not only provided new players with decent cash flow on a weekly to monthly basis but they were interesting to get involved in. I want the Thargoid narrative back and the aliens on the attack again and maybe meet ones friendly to us as well as what became of the Guardians. I want those sectors you got permit locked to be unlocked so we can truly fly anywhere. The Gnosis should have been a wake-up call, should have been this game's 'Summer of Rage' where you realized you messed up and wanted to fix it. So far, you barely have scratched the surface of what angered people in that mess. You had a chance right after that and you messed it up.
Now I bring these up right now as you got Odyssey coming up next year...and it promises to make Elite one of the best Space Life Sims to date and do what even a certain other two that shall remain nameless can't really deliver on, especially one that charges us real money for ships that may or may not end up in the final product. But these problems are going to hold it back if they don't get addressed between now and release of Odyssey. You need to put time and effort into these problems first. I want this game to succeed. All of us who play want it to succeed....which brings me to this bit..
So now to the grit...space legs are a good thing to see. What I worry about is more of the same from the past. So what needs to be done for Odyssey to be awesome and make Space Legs worth it?
Well, for starters even if it is limited for the first one...Station Interiors we can walk around! Also, let us see the interiors of our ships...the full interiors. Let us walk on the hull of our ships if it has an air lock on the bridge (hello Anaconda). Let us explore the interiors of those abandoned outpost we find. All in all, let us poke around! Let us see the armory where we keep all our weapons.
The weapons you are going to give us? Variety of types and damage. Give us both mass-driver and laser snipers. Give us tactical options for how to handle a pirate base on a moon, either Stealth or calling in our ship for a CAS run. Give us missions to make use of these. Allow us to board vessels and take on enemy crew. Give us more SRV variety as well and the ability to board and leave these on a surface.
Like literally the potential for all this is there.
Well, I rambled on enough. Fly dangerously everyone!
's Dev Team to see this as well as Frontier as you are in danger of losing players with the continued cycle in your development practices.Let's address these under different headings and subheadings to make things easier.
Also, to the players who might back me...no I got words for you as well. I ain't takin' no prisoners.
An entire post itself could probably be written on this alone and I put it first after the most recent patch, you know...the one where you guys took a massive nerf hammer to mining? Now let me preface this before I got legions of players running to back me up.
You should not be able to get rich within hours of starting without some godly amount of work put in first. You should not go from a Sidewinder to an Anaconda in 8 hours. No, you should not. Why? Because the difference between flying a Sidewinder and flying an Anaconda is like taking the Red Baron, throwing him through time, and placing him in the cockpit of a F-35C Lightning. There is a HUGE amount of difference in handling characteristics between the two that new players should spend time learning as they progress through ships. By providing get rich quicks for everyone to jump on...you are cementing bad habits in the player base. I worked my aft off for my Cutter and honestly...it's too big for me. I like how Medium ships handle and how jack of all trades certain ones can be. That's the other thing...you are robbing a new player of finding the ship and build that fits them by telling them what ship is the best.
Elite is about setting a goal for yourself as a player. Telling a player what their goal should be by saying 'this is the best ship and here is how to get it in 8 hours' robs them of the chance to discover what this game has to offer. I didn't seek out these methods...I dug in and stuck it out for hours a day.
However that said...
FDEV, Elite is too grindy!
By Infinity's Edge...even BDO knows to at least throw some coin at it's player base as they realize western players are not fans of grind. I don't mind working to get the credits for a ship or a module or to engineer it but there is grind...and than there is what you guys have us do. Community Goals were a great way to allow players to make decent credits in a decent amount of time with the right ships/fits and some dedicated work. They're loss is felt keenly right now.
Of the three big professions: Combat, Trading, and Exploration...Exploration and it's associated Passenger Missions arepretty okay if you ask me in it's credits/hr and fun/hr ratio but here is where I have to start lobbying criticism when we start on the other two.
Combat? Nope, not enough Credits for the Fun unless you do Thargoids and those require some specialized and expensive builds that no new player can take on for the big ships and the scouts require at least a medium vessel or one that can pack enough hull reinforcement. Pirating is alright but you gotta know your stuff. Merc work? Conflict Zones can provide steady work but you still need a decent fit for it that no new player will have. Bounty Hunting? Yeah, this is the big one that really needs a balance pass. Missions in this category especially need one badly.
Trading/Passenger Missions/Mining? Too much credits for not enough fun. It feels like work and I want to come on here to have fun blowing things up, not work my aft off to do it. There is a reason people look for Gold rushes...to avoid this and having to rely almost entirely on third party tools to do it. They want to have fun with the ship they want. They will look for exploits to avoid the grind and the extremes they go to should be an indication that there are fundamental flaws in the player progression path.
In short, while the playerbase's jumping onto Gold Rushes and making them public cheapens the game for new players by handing them a ship they may not be ready for in an ungodly short amount of time...the fault lies with FDev on the why. A fair progression path with good skill and decision making for a new player should be Sidewinder to the ship of their dreams within 2-10 weeks (if it does not require a rank grind....oh I got words on that and Powerplay) with 4-6 hour play sessions per day....depending on ship. An Anaconda should take far longer to get to than a Krait Phantom. This should be doable on any of the major professions with the same amount of effort. Right now? A bounty hunter or Merc has to spend far more time than an Explorer and both got left in the dust by Mining up until now. If you want a good measure of how to balance pass and what an acceptable rate of credits is? Exploration should be a good gauge.
Okay...let's go on to the other bit...
Yep, now to dissect and completely rip into this mess. First off let's make it clear...the game's handling is fine for combat. I played EVE, trust me many of you would eat EVE Players for dinner in combat for the first few days as they learn how to actually use piloting...not to mention docking. Every ship handles just fine (though some could use some tweaking to make them slightly better...or at east give them a reason to exist grumbles in Asp Scout) and for people who want to complain about FDLs...um most PvP'ers as far as I learned via the Pilot's videos do not even use it in combat as it makes life way too easy.
Like literally this game has only two real competitors right now...
...and it could blow both out of the water if it fixed the rest of it's systems. What do I mean? Well let's start with the elephant in the room...
...Powerplay...Yep, opening with this can of worms. It had potential...and then it got cast off for the next big thing. What holds it back the most is it does not force any form of PvP on it's most combat-oriented factions. It also turns attaining and keeping your rank in it into a chore with the only incentive being shiny weapons. LYR most of all is wasted as his top tier bonus would be one for Explorers to grab onto but who wants to spend 5 weeks grinding that hard with that much exploration data on their ship? That's a bad white dwarf attempt or a PvP'er ganking incident away from a rage quit. His stations should at least provide a flat bonus like ALD's stations provide for bounty vouchers with extra bonus per tier rank in the faction.
Which brings me to the other bad side of PP...the fact that you lose rank if you can't play. No other MMO with a Faction system has you losing rank in that faction if you stop playing that I know of. Like what was the design decision behind that? Not even the Faction Rank system has that system. (Oh I got a can opener for that can of worms as well!) There is no reason or urgency beyond a fancy weapon or module with Powerplay, nothing to contribute to the personal narrative of the player. It's there to be filler, like what Faction Warfare in EVE became for a time till recently. Which now let's link this with another forgotten system...
The Empire Naval Ranks...Oh yes, we are going here. Now first...for certain PP Factions and three major players in the Galaxy besides the Thargoids...there was a missed opportunity to tie the rank grinds together. Like in all seriousness, the two Feds and four Imperials in PP could have had their own missions to gain rank from the empire in question. It would have easily...easily provided a reason to stay loyal to many. Furthermore...getting rank in the PP power and Faction could provide net bonuses based on who the PP power was allied to within the power. ADL and her sister could easily provide access to their PP modules for someone who is in the Top Tier of the Imperial PP faction of the same alignment and attained a certain Naval rank in the power. There was so much missed narrative and gameplay opportunity in these two systems together and apart that one could write a whole post itself on these.
Second, it suffers from the same problem as trading/mining but worse...no fun and to few credits for the time spent. It feels like work 2.0...the factions should have a narrative involved for your rank along the three different lines or at least a feeling of accomplishment...not; "Why did I do this again and do it in such a slow way?"
Next and certainly not last..
Engineering
Engineering is a hodgepodge of stuff that works, stuff that doesn't...and stuff that breaks the game. First off...that which breaks the game...Healing Beams. Like heck, you already had to balance these once and it was not in a way that even stuck...Reverb Cascade on station guns. That was the fix for Healsies for Feelsies...so now they went and used it to exploit High Conflict Zones for credits and materials...which has not been fixed. In all honestly, get rid of these Effect and you fix half the problems with Engineering as this magnifies the other.
What do I mean? SHIELD BOOSTERS! Like by Infinity's Edge! I think this is the only module that needs a hard cap on how many can be placed on a ship based completely on how many utility slots it has; like say...half the number of slots can be shield boosters for large ships. You have the ability FDev to do this, the AX and Guardian Weapons prove this limit can be hard coded into the game at a set value. You can also introduce diminishing returns for going past 2 of them you the next one is half as effective and the fourth is like 1/4 the effectiveness of it's boosts. This will force players to make a choice...4 engineered to the Nth degree shield boosters or take other stuff in those slots on any but the largest ships. This makes even the Cutter and FDL balanced to some extent and PvPers might use the latter again.
So what's next? Oh right...
I was on DW2, still have yet to collect my ship badge for it. It was an awesome thing...and I want more of this. I want CGs focused on exploration, trade, combat, etc.
I want to see Galnet back up and running telling stories in the universe.
I want these bits of filler back as the former not only provided new players with decent cash flow on a weekly to monthly basis but they were interesting to get involved in. I want the Thargoid narrative back and the aliens on the attack again and maybe meet ones friendly to us as well as what became of the Guardians. I want those sectors you got permit locked to be unlocked so we can truly fly anywhere. The Gnosis should have been a wake-up call, should have been this game's 'Summer of Rage' where you realized you messed up and wanted to fix it. So far, you barely have scratched the surface of what angered people in that mess. You had a chance right after that and you messed it up.
Now I bring these up right now as you got Odyssey coming up next year...and it promises to make Elite one of the best Space Life Sims to date and do what even a certain other two that shall remain nameless can't really deliver on, especially one that charges us real money for ships that may or may not end up in the final product. But these problems are going to hold it back if they don't get addressed between now and release of Odyssey. You need to put time and effort into these problems first. I want this game to succeed. All of us who play want it to succeed....which brings me to this bit..
So now to the grit...space legs are a good thing to see. What I worry about is more of the same from the past. So what needs to be done for Odyssey to be awesome and make Space Legs worth it?
Well, for starters even if it is limited for the first one...Station Interiors we can walk around! Also, let us see the interiors of our ships...the full interiors. Let us walk on the hull of our ships if it has an air lock on the bridge (hello Anaconda). Let us explore the interiors of those abandoned outpost we find. All in all, let us poke around! Let us see the armory where we keep all our weapons.
The weapons you are going to give us? Variety of types and damage. Give us both mass-driver and laser snipers. Give us tactical options for how to handle a pirate base on a moon, either Stealth or calling in our ship for a CAS run. Give us missions to make use of these. Allow us to board vessels and take on enemy crew. Give us more SRV variety as well and the ability to board and leave these on a surface.
Like literally the potential for all this is there.
Well, I rambled on enough. Fly dangerously everyone!
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