Much as I am willing to RP lots of things in this game - heard everybody going on about Robigo and heading out there in hopes of making a pretty penny, only to head back because me and my crew "We don't do slaves, sorry" (NOTE: Not the game's fault: My decision of who I want my character to be) - many missions and the PoIs are barely RPable. I think what many people perceive as the "shallowness" or "lack of depth" in the game is the fact that the random spawns of mission objectives deprive you of any feeling of achievement. Doing planetary rescue missions frequently - for ethic and monetary reasons - , I find myself usually heading to any ol' PoI and picking up several escape pods. Which has two effects: Either you find them right away, which leaves you without any sense of achievement. Or you scoot from one PoI to the next in the plethora of installations and remote-controlled drones that infest every god-forsaken rock in the galaxy - getting more and more frustrated because it's always stuff that is NOT your mission objective. The chief source of frustration here is that whether the PoI (or USS, for that matter) contains your objective doesn't have anything to do with your actions, with the amount of thought and planning you have put in, but is simply random spawn game mechanics. It's irrelevant how much thinking you do beforehand, and it makes everything just a grind, a chore, feeling like a second dull job instead of an interesting challenge. This is a flaw that hampers so many (especially mission-related) parts of the game.
The solution, which could be implemented in a great number of ways, harkens back to Pirates! from the 80ies!
Especially the very unsatisfactory PoI concept screams: GIVE PLAYERS MAPS!
What if players could come by pieces of maps (given to them when being handed a mission, even as mission rewards, from loot, salvage, heck, you could even let players trade them) that contain some (more or less, depending on the value and difficulty) recognizable crater/trench/surface feature configuration, sometimes perhaps even coordinates) and reading "Somewhere near Rio de la Hacha"...er, I mean, "Klondyke Installation, Beta Hydri 5 A). That way, you'd have to put in scouting and thought when trying to find crashed pilots or indeed ANYTHING, and if you come up empty-handed, you KNOW it was YOUR FAULT. Look at your map again, try again in a different spot. Or sell your map. Combine that with persistent NPCs - and perhaps even non-credit rewards - and you've multiplied the immersion and depth of the game with a simple stroke (heck, if they could do it in the 80ies!!!)
As I have said before, this design concept could be used in any number of ways, extending to bounty-chases across the galaxy and lots of other things.
What thoughts do you have on that?
The solution, which could be implemented in a great number of ways, harkens back to Pirates! from the 80ies!
Especially the very unsatisfactory PoI concept screams: GIVE PLAYERS MAPS!
What if players could come by pieces of maps (given to them when being handed a mission, even as mission rewards, from loot, salvage, heck, you could even let players trade them) that contain some (more or less, depending on the value and difficulty) recognizable crater/trench/surface feature configuration, sometimes perhaps even coordinates) and reading "Somewhere near Rio de la Hacha"...er, I mean, "Klondyke Installation, Beta Hydri 5 A). That way, you'd have to put in scouting and thought when trying to find crashed pilots or indeed ANYTHING, and if you come up empty-handed, you KNOW it was YOUR FAULT. Look at your map again, try again in a different spot. Or sell your map. Combine that with persistent NPCs - and perhaps even non-credit rewards - and you've multiplied the immersion and depth of the game with a simple stroke (heck, if they could do it in the 80ies!!!)
As I have said before, this design concept could be used in any number of ways, extending to bounty-chases across the galaxy and lots of other things.
What thoughts do you have on that?
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