Notice Bridging the Gap - Community Goal Feedback

[Flossy]

A CG with no option for delivery by large-pad ships? Kind of ridiculous.

No, what is ridiculous is the idea that a large ship is of any use in this CG. It takes long enough to fill a small or medium ship with the required Guardian commodities - which cannot be simply bought at another station, but need to be gathered individually.

 

[Mathew of Tegalus]

No, what is ridiculous is the idea that a large ship is of any use in this CG. It takes long enough to fill a small or medium ship with the required Guardian commodities - which cannot be simply bought at another station, but need to be gathered individually.

Maybe that is a problem in and of itself?

Gathering individual items manually one-by-one a thousand and three hundred years later? Good grief.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox IV]

I don't know why developers feel the need to big up the difficulty of their job, it's not that hard really if you have the skill set.

And with that single line you demonstrate the immensity of your ignorance of developing a game of this complexity and programming in general. Yes there are bugs and as long a new features are being added there will always be bugs.

 

[Micha]

Gathering individual items manually one-by-one a thousand and three hundred years later? Good grief.

We're on the cusp of self-driving cars and there's serious debate about making it illegal for people to drive their own cars in the future.
Planes mostly fly automated.
Rockets pretty much have always been automated apart from a few early exceptions.

In the future, there's NO BLEEPING WAY there'll be individuals in control of thousand-tonne ships, FTL drives, high-powered weaponry etc etc etc, especially not around populated areas let alone anywhere near a star port or base.

It's a game. Things are in-game to give us something to do. Hopefully with in-game lore to back it up (unfortunately this has been breaking a bit, but anyway) If you don't like a particular aspect of it, don't do it. It's entertainment, not a job. Simples.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I remember posting in another thread a few days ago that mats + commodities together would have been extremely unbalanced due to the fact one could be collected far more easily and quickly than the other.

I'm posting this here as well as in the CG thread to ask whether the Tiers have been/ will be adjusted to account for the fact that we're now only able to contribute commodities, the slower of the two to gather.

Fingers crossed they adjust them, as after 4 BP runs and with a hold containing 64t of Guardian goodies I can't see me doing many more runs and the Tiers seem to be set (as someone else mentioned) as if for a standard Trade CG.

My personal opinion on the II's so far is that they're a great concept for fleshing out the standard CG's, but pretty much every misstep possible has been made so far in this one. Oh well, things can only get better eh

o7 all, Cmdr ADAMtheWELSHMANz

The issue to me is that 'better luck next time!' is a great attitude for hardcore players, as a casual player I'd feel differently. There is only so much you can mess up, only so much time you can waste of your players, before people give up on your neat little events.

Remember this isnt a new thing. Years ago I gave up on the thargoid narrative when event after event after event was bugged. It was a running joke, each new event would be a reason to bet on the dumbest thing FD would bungle.

This isnt my problem as I am in Colonia, but IMHO FD woukd do better to just do nothing like this if they cant get some rudimentary basics right. Yes, I am sure it is hard. But if you get it wrong on so many levels so consistently for so many years, something needs to change.

 

[avow555]

Too little to late.

 

[Heater]

Maybe that is a problem in and of itself?

Gathering individual items manually one-by-one a thousand and three hundred years later? Good grief.

Simple ... then do not do it!

 

[sandkid]

My Two Credits...

1) Given 'The Prospect' only allows medium and small ships (which isn't an issue so far as I'm concerned), it's fairly evident that the quantities set for the different tiers didn't take two major points into consideration:

• You can't carry large quantities of the requested cargo, which inherently leads to a bottleneck (when compared to most CGs with large pads available)
• Even if you COULD carry large quantities, guardian artifacts are much more time consuming to collect compared to the vast majority of other cargo types

In short: it's obvious no thought was put towards the actual quantities demanded when building this CG - which gives the impression to the larger community (because everyone can SEE the CG progress, even if not participating, just by checking missions at any station) that the CG is pointless, has little involvement, and furthers the general perception that they will always be this way.

2) A CG that only incorporates ONE aspect of gameplay correctly (surface salvaging) but goofs up the other routes (pirating, hacking) and doesn't provide the missing career options (combat notably) is 100% doomed to not have community participation on a level worthy of making the event in the first place.

3) CGs that only last a week (see: all of them) alienate commanders who may only play a few days if the CG isn't within reasonable travel distance or the rewards are too meager to justify travel for the few days they play. The lack of transparency of rewards (what does each tier actually represent if achieved) further disincentives participation. Adding insult to injury, you created a 'ferry system' that might alleviate this...except it runs on a weekly tick. So if you missed THE FIRST EVER launch from Zende, you also missed this CG if travel and time restrictions are in place. CGs that are only a week long just aren't very sensible.

4) As is the case with many features these days, FDev still isn't answering the basic question: Why should I play this? I don't mean the game - I love the game - but specifically features like CGs. Why bother? I miss out on a few million credits at best effort and I'll get access to whatever it is you're dropping anyways. The story will be told in GalNet - not on site or in any dynamic way - and past experience shows that if anything does change, I need only show up after the event to see it. Put simply, there isn't a carrot because there isn't a feature.

CGs are fetch missions that happen to have a GalNet article tied to them. That's it.

Any 'new module' reward isn't actually tied to the event - or, to be certain, as a non-participant there isn't any way for me to discern that it is. A new guardian module? Coolies, I'll see it at the broker without having ever participated or even knowing the story behind it. AX Weapons are this way currently - there is no reference point whatsoever, today, that explains how these weapons came about or why I find them at certain stations. There certainly isn't any story arc or mission arc for me, a potentially new commander, to follow leading me on a path towards encountering Thargoids and seeking the equipment to do so.


So answer the question: Why should I play this?
Because if you can't give a compelling answer...
Why the **** are you building it?

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

Hey Sandkid, I agree with a lot of what you said but it is worth noting that some CG's are pass/fail (merely need to hit tier 1) and others have rewards (other than credits) tied to the tiers

Totally get that the majority of the time you can get the bonuses (new weapons/modules/station) without having to participate yourself however if interest was so low we never hit tier 1 on this CG/II then it's entirely possible we'd get neither of the weapons FDev announced

With the tied to tiers one's I can think of two off the top of my head which are the availability of the AX weapons (each tier unlocked a different system state that would carry them) and Obsidian Orbital, which got more services the higher the tiers went and notably due to not hitting a certain tier doesn't have a shipyard

Again, I agree that most the time participation is not required to gain the benefits offered, but on occassions we have been stung as a community by the fact that we haven't "completed" them

Even on one as....... awkward shall we say as this one it's worth saying a small thank you to the 2000 or so Cmdrs that did get involved and ensured ALL players will get access to the new weapons in the coming weeks

 

[CMDR Redback]

The CGs absolutely do NOT need to be longer than a week. If someone cannot participate in a week's span then tough. That's ample time.
I'd argue longer CGs would alienate more people since if they don't like the theme of the CG and have to wait 2 weeks for example, then they're going to be more frustrated. At least 1 week cycles allow constant cycling between combat/trading.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

I beg to differ! Ever bought a ticket to a sporting event for your favorite team? They might get DESTROYED, and you get zero return on your expense. You also don't get to return to that event at any time in the future after your one purchase.

The ticket doesn't advertise that your team will win, you go to see the game, not neccessarily to see your team win, heck, you might not even have a favourite.

 

[Arkadi]

My Two Credits...

1) [...]
In short: it's obvious no thought was put towards the actual quantities demanded when building this CG - which gives the impression to the larger community (because everyone can SEE the CG progress, even if not participating, just by checking missions at any station) that the CG is pointless, has little involvement, and furthers the general perception that they will always be this way.

What I have read from the community managers, at first the CG was designed in a way that also Guaradian Materials would count towards the goal. They changed that later so that only Guardian Cargo would count toward the goal. And that's why numbers had to be tweaked later.

2) A CG that only incorporates ONE aspect of gameplay correctly (surface salvaging) but goofs up the other routes (pirating, hacking) and doesn't provide the missing career options (combat notably) is 100% doomed to not have community participation on a level worthy of making the event in the first place.

You can do piracy by going to the convoy USS's and following transports waking out into anarchy systems. You can also raid the intstallations cargo bays, if you equip manifest scanner and hatchbreakers, both available at The Prospect. It's just not really obvious how these things work, if you haven't spent time in game to try these things earlyer. But it's there and it works - and finding out how to best possibly pirate and raid may be part of the fun. Also combat will be coming with the next stage. Wait for thargs... err thursday.

3) CGs that only last a week (see: all of them) alienate commanders who may only play a few days if the CG isn't within reasonable travel distance or the rewards are too meager to justify travel for the few days they play. The lack of transparency of rewards (what does each tier actually represent if achieved) further disincentives participation. Adding insult to injury, you created a 'ferry system' that might alleviate this...except it runs on a weekly tick. So if you missed THE FIRST EVER launch from Zende, you also missed this CG if travel and time restrictions are in place. CGs that are only a week long just aren't very sensible.

Agreed that the ferry travelling only once a week is a bit meager. At least for the duration of the Initiative it would have been nice to have it go daily. Also the Interstellar Initiative lasts for a month. What is lasting a week is the actual stage of the Initiative, collecting of Guardian objects.

4) [...]
CGs are fetch missions that happen to have a GalNet article tied to them. That's it.
[...]

Agreed, I lost interest in old CG's long time ago because of that. Neither there was compelling story telling nor compelling gameplay tied to it, with a few exceptions that thematically catched my attention.

Also remember there are those bounty hunter CG's, and we also had warlike CG's that would decide witch of two factions would dominate a region of space, like Feds vs Imps in the Pleiades, or the war over Daramo.

The CGs absolutely do NOT need to be longer than a week. If someone cannot participate in a week's span then tough. That's ample time.
I'd argue longer CGs would alienate more people since if they don't like the theme of the CG and have to wait 2 weeks for example, then they're going to be more frustrated. At least 1 week cycles allow constant cycling between combat/trading.

I am not sure on this one. If Frontier would show some interest to build more interesting CG's I would not mind if they would be only once a month and last for two or three weaks each. Oh wait, that's actually the Interstellar Initiative.. more or less so.

To come to my opinion, I think I like the direction Frontier is going with Interstellar Initiatives. They try to bring more flavor to the event, but they bodged by doing this by E-Mailing and forum mostly. They try to make the event more grounded in the game universe by involving us a bit more into the plot, by voting (on the forums only again) and multi-staged story line (a good idea imho). They try to bring more variety to the event (ferry is new, but only once a week, including piracy and installation raiding is nice, also the Guardian Sites are a new location for a CG).

But I also have the feeling that Frontier is trying to achieve all this with minimum effort. And that's my critic. If Frontier would take a littel bit more effort in preperation and bring a littel bit more love to theire endeavor and the presentation ingame, the results might be way better! Meaning: less streaming and forum-gaming instead more ingame coding. Yes it's more work. I know.

edit: I nearly forgot my most important critic. The reward! It seems the new human/guardian hybrid weapons will be of no real use in AX fights beyond scout farming, if they really will come only in small sizes. Theire armour piercing will be simply to small to really hurt Thargoid Interceptors. If that's true, it's really meager especially for the material cost that is needed to create the AX ammo firsthand. For details see here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...you-rather-have-spoilers.512393/#post-7805797

 

[Tikanderoga]

Gathering individual items manually one-by-one a thousand and three hundred years later? Good grief.

Using collector limpets would be a nice touch at least. But those things are plain suicidal to begin with.

 

[zimms]

@sandkid
Yeah, nobody will be able to tell you why you should participate. There really is no reward. A tech broker in the middle of nowhere? Why?

We still need regular commodities to unlock stuff. So if we have to return to the bubble anyway, why would we fly out there again instead of going to one of the many tech brokers within the bubble? Once again they don't think things through. Either that or they just have no clue what playing their game is like.

 

[Cpt. James Flint]

Correct! Neither does ED advertise that you will win, or survive, or succeed. Sure, your team will play, but they may play poorly, or badly, and have fouls against them for not playing properly. Just like a game may have bugs or issues that don't allow it to play 100% perfectly.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Correct! Neither does ED advertise that you will win, or survive, or succeed. Sure, your team will play, but they may play poorly, or badly, and have fouls against them for not playing properly. Just like a game may have bugs or issues that don't allow it to play 100% perfectly.

The thing is, ED rarely has an updates that can be considered relatively "bug-free", I know games have bugs, they always do, the thing is, ED is just about the buggiest I have played. And in some ocasions I haven't even been able to play!

 

[Old Duck]

Yes there are bugs and as long a new features are being added there will always be bugs.

That reasoning is fine for new bugs (though proper testing should eliminate a huge percentage of bugs that make it to the general public in ED), but it doesn't excuse the continued existence of old bugs for months and even years after being identified and documented.

Not that any of this has anything to do with an unimaginative string of boring CGs...

 

[sandkid]

snip
I am not sure on this one. If Frontier would show some interest to build more interesting CG's I would not mind if they would be only once a month and last for two or three weaks each. Oh wait, that's actually the Interstellar Initiative.. more or less so.

To come to my opinion, I think I like the direction Frontier is going with Interstellar Initiatives. They try to bring more flavor to the event, but they bodged by doing this by E-Mailing and forum mostly. They try to make the event more grounded in the game universe by involving us a bit more into the plot, by voting (on the forums only again) and multi-staged story line (a good idea imho). They try to bring more variety to the event (ferry is new, but only once a week, including piracy and installation raiding is nice, also the Guardian Sites are a new location for a CG).

But I also have the feeling that Frontier is trying to achieve all this with minimum effort....snip

That third paragraph - that FDev seems to do things with minimal effort - I 100% agree on. That said, I also agree with your point on the GI as an idea. It sounds great on paper and I genuinely believe it can be implemented in a successful way. The point has been raised 'longer than a week' CG might be too long, but that's based on how crummy they are currently designed. On the flip-side, if a GI is built well...one week for a stage is just fine. If I miss it, I'll hop in on a different stage of the arc.

Therein lies the problem though...participation has no incentive, still. From something as simple as 'Here's a Decal for participating in all four stages' to a more complex reward of discounted pricing for the first month on the new modules, there can and (I argue should be) a reward for total participation...even if you only made the top 100% of each stage. My Buy-In to your feature should be rewarded in a meaningful way, which would incentivize me to participate in future events of similar scope.

It's called building 'hype'. It's not deadly if managed correctly - in small, meaningful doses of rewarding gameplay. CGs (and the GI concept that is built on them) have so much potential not yet unlocked because of lazy design. Not coding, not engineering, not technical IT know-how.

Design. Pen and Paper. Answering the question: Why am I going to play this?

Long before the advent of computers, when the sun was still a common fixture in the life of the gamer, ancient lords of wisdom conspired to create dungeons worthy of adventuring - The Dungeon Masters. Nerds from on High, they toiled to create compelling stories worthy of time away from the real world. Many failed...but not all. The gamers of today owe thanks to these creative minds, because they answered the most important, original question of the would-be-adventurers:

Why should I play this?

Their answer was apparently sufficient.

I play Elite because it is a remarkable space flight simulator - I'm absolutely depressed I can't use VR on PS4 (yes, I know why, not complaining...just is what it is). The reason I play - the answer FDev gave, if you will - is that this simulator is unlike any other I've played. It really will let me step into the world of being the commander of a complex, powerful starship - from little details like external lighting, to big details like the quadruple thump of Huge beam lasers. It is a space that allows my imagination to run wild with self-appointed goals and, when the mood strikes, a little role-playing.

CGs do not in any way compliment or positively modify that. They're just a mission with an article attached. The story has nothing to do with me...and that's why I'm playing, right? I don't play for entities that don't exist - I play for me, for my enjoyment and exploration of my identity as a commander in this world. CGs add nothing to that search. The search and rescue feature did, I love spelunking burning stations (would love to see more of that stuff)...and that's not a CG. It's just a different mission structure that allows exploration of my commander's ethos. CGs don't do that - pick a side, get an unrelated reward. Or don't pick a side at all. Whatever. They scream, "We don't care and neither should you."

Design. Pen and Paper. Answering the question: Why am I going to play this?

Ok...end rant. I'm in a typing mood today. =)

 

[Lyvan Kitaen]

Really the only positive thing I got out of this initiative was that I was able to fill up on materials that I can use later.

I don't see the utility of most of the other things.
1) I have no use for a shuttle service that only goes 600ly and runs only once a week. I routinely cover that sort of distance on passenger runs.
2) The rewards are two weapons that I would never use, and don't interest me in the slightest.
3) To collect guardian commodities in any kind of reasonable amount, I have to resort to piracy. That's something my character wouldn't do. As soon as you changed the turn-in to commodities only, I lost interest.
4) From what you've hinted at, the next stage of the initiative involves fighting in conflict zones. I hate those.

So, for me, this initiative is pretty much a bust. YMMV of course.

 

[Jonesy42]

I wanted to sell the Guardian stuff at the ferry, turns out it counts only to the CG when you sell them at the station. I can't dock there because it doesnt have any large landing pads.. Why cant we use the ferry to progress in CG too?