Article: "Elite’s Distant Worlds 2 expedition proves the game is wildly unbalanced, and that’s OK"

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StuartGT

StuartGT
Article: "Elite’s Distant Worlds 2 expedition proves the game is wildly unbalanced, and that’s OK"

Polygon:

Elite’s Distant Worlds 2 expedition proves the game is wildly unbalanced, and that’s OK.
Two different groups are working at cross purposes, and both seem to be having a great time.

Polygon said:
The old adage in gaming, attributed to Warren Spector during the development of Deus Ex 2, states that “anytime reality gets in the way of fun, fun wins.” For companies that develop MMOs, however, that’s not always good advice.

Players should be allowed to feel powerful and encouraged to get rich in an MMO, but only within reason. If power and wealth swing way out of balance, then virtual economies crash and the player experience suffers. An MMO must, in theory at least, always be grounded in its own internal sense of reality. Otherwise it just doesn’t feel fair.

It’s a constant tightrope walk, one that Frontier Developments, the team behind Elite: Dangerous, has cleverly managed to sidestep. The result is a game that, in its current iteration, is a bit like the old television show Whose Line Is It Anyway? Nearly five years after its initial launch, Elite is a game where “everything is made up and the points don’t matter.”

It’s just that Frontier’s show is set in a fictional version of the 34th century and within an accurate model of all 400 billion star systems in our Milky Way galaxy.

What’s more interesting is that the majority of the game’s community both acknowledges these imbalances and actively works to ignore them.

Elite: Dangerous is imperfect. And most people seem OK with that.

But not everyone.
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Article link
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
The game isn't that unbalanced though....

A combat ship excels at combat. But not exploration.
An exploration ship excels at exploration. But not combat.
Tis balanced.

FD provided the tools for everyone (with horizons) to increase their defences significantly, while increasing offensive capabilities a small amount.
Choosing to ignore this, for whatever reason, is not unbalanced, it's just ignorance. Lol
 

Stewart_

S
The second comment in the article sums describes things nicely:

"No bully wants to be called out for their bullying. Doesn’t make them any less the bullies."


AFAIK, they aren't even role playing, just killing because they can. Exploration ships with little defences.

I'm thankful for Solo and PG, so I don't have to bother with these people.
 
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[VR] M4st0d0n

[VR] M4st0d0n
Stuart. In the next month steamcharts will show an average player of maybe 4000. In the interval of less than a month Elite would have bleed the largest player number evarrr. Because ganks and server issues. This article has been written at least four weeks too late. But that's OK.
 
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Burke

B
M4st0d0n said:
Stuart. In the next month steamcharts will show an average player of maybe 4000. In the interval of less than a month Elite would have bleed the largest player number evarrr. Because ganks and server issues. This article has been written at least four weeks too late. But that's OK.
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Dont forget the FSS. No normal person could tolerate that for any length of time.
 

Stewart_

S
M4st0d0n said:
Stuart. In the next month steamcharts will show an average player of maybe 4000. In the interval of less than a month Elite would have bleed the largest player number evarrr. Because ganks and server issues. This article has been written at least four weeks too late. But that's OK.
Click to expand...

In most games, when a major release occurs, there is more user activity. The active user base will drop off once again.

ED is no different, and has been no different. Not (only) due to ganks and server issues.
 

StuartGT

StuartGT
M4st0d0n said:
Stuart. In the next month steamcharts will show an average player of maybe 4000. In the interval of less than a month Elite would have bleed the largest player number evarrr. Because ganks and server issues. This article has been written at least four weeks too late. But that's OK.
Click to expand...

What goes up must come down. And then the next update releases :)
 

The Replicated Man

T
I am just laughing at the misrepresentation of the pvp community here. Using Iridium wing as a basis for The best PvPers in the game is just a joke. Those guys get stomped by The 13th Legion and those who know how they operate will understand what that means.
 

Scubadog

Scubadog
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead said:
The only things I don't like about the FSS are the zooming error message spam, and zooming in on every single flippin' signal source... Lol
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The zooming errors only occur if you don't aim correctly. We can debate over whether or not target signal tolerances are acceptable. I'm fine with them.
 

Stigbob

Stigbob
jasonbarron said:
"It's unbalanced but that's ok." Wow, that right there is some pretty sad commentary.
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The games been unbalanced since the first beta testers got to fly anaconda's. High wake is the great equalizer.

This line made me laugh "And some of the angriest players are the ones heavily invested in player-versus-player combat."
 
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who?

who?
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead said:
The game isn't that unbalanced though....

A combat ship excels at combat. But not exploration.
An exploration ship excels at exploration. But not combat.
Tis balanced.

FD provided the tools for everyone (with horizons) to increase their defences significantly, while increasing offensive capabilities a small amount.
Choosing to ignore this, for whatever reason, is not unbalanced, it's just ignorance. Lol
Click to expand...

Meh... I'd still argue it is imbalanced.

I reckon you should be able to choose between a fast, lightweight build that's fragile, but jumps far and should be able to outrun almost anything (but can't fight to save its life....)
Or you can build a ship stacked with weapons, shields, reinforcement packages, shield boosters, shield-cell-boosters that can give and take a pounding (but should be heavier and less agile)

Or a compromise build somewhere in between.

As it stands, you can effectively build a 'tank'-like ship with no compromise on firepower or shields/hull, that's retains enough agility and speed to outrun and destroy most lightweight explorer craft builds. That makes no sense to me, from a balancing (tanks are rarely fast or agile) or realism perspective.
 

Rampant

Rampant
Stewart_ said:
The second comment in the article sums describes things nicely:

"No bully wants to be called out for their bullying. Doesn’t make them any less the bullies."


AFAIK, they aren't even role playing, just killing because they can. Exploration ships with little defences.

I'm thankful for Solo and PG, so I don't have to bother with these people.
Click to expand...

Totally agree.
Bullies, in practice, typically don't ever perceive themselves to be bullies. Just "stronger" or "more deserving" or "superior". That's just the way bullies are. They don't recognise that their behaviour is wrong. So they normally always tell you that they aren't bullies, and they say this with utter conviction. And they tell you that what they are doing is "acceptable" or provide some justification that they believe makes their behaviour "acceptable", normal, even. Again, with utter conviction.

I actually quite enjoyed the article, even if some of it was very, very poorly described. Like "board flipping" was - I got the impression that this was being used to describe resetting an instance at Dav's Hope, for instance. Not exactly board flipping, but I get the point.

I've never been very satisfied that instance resetting was a thing, to be perfectly honest. But I can't provide an alternative that works better. So ho hum, can't criticise you much if I can't provide a suitable or improved alternative.
Doesn't mean that the game is broken, though.

Yours Aye

Mark H
 
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