Hey seems to be a very profitable business solution for at least one other software developer … lol
Broken promises 2 years on.
- Thread starter Rafe Zetter
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Wow, all very serious stuff, man. Uhm, you know that it's about a game, right?
I have a suspicion it will be replaced by lashings of humble pie.
Rafe earlier:
Nope I am quite confident that even if FD released exactly what some here want, those Commanders would still find fault with it, even if they had to look really really hard, they would still find something to complain about.
And here we go again. The only thing I can really ding FD on is removing off-line play and when I look into it in depth, I can't even really ding them on that. Looking back, I think to myself, "Why would they even promise that? It's clear it would make the game a static, basically dead place. You're going to devote resources to that? Are you daft?"
The rest of it were goals. Things they wanted to put in. Well, guess what? Not everything is doable. You may not like that (I sure as hell don't), but that's the way things are. There's a technical term for that; It's called life!
Take what they get and enjoy the game. If you play the "Oh but we could have had this, and I want that" game, you 'll drive yourself crazy. You want something, ask for it. If they can do it and enough people get behind it, and it doesn't conflict with their vision of the game, it will get patched in.
The rest of it were goals. Things they wanted to put in. Well, guess what? Not everything is doable. You may not like that (I sure as hell don't), but that's the way things are. There's a technical term for that; It's called life!
Take what they get and enjoy the game. If you play the "Oh but we could have had this, and I want that" game, you 'll drive yourself crazy. You want something, ask for it. If they can do it and enough people get behind it, and it doesn't conflict with their vision of the game, it will get patched in.
I know that these statements were plans and those change. And I also very much enjoy Elite as it is today.
But one thing I want to point out: There is imho one big difference between the game they described and what we have now. The former sounded much more alive. What we have instead are those isolated experiences, each hidden within its own USS, etc.
Right now you don't see much difference between a system in famine, war, Thargoid attack, boom and so on.
But one thing I want to point out: There is imho one big difference between the game they described and what we have now. The former sounded much more alive. What we have instead are those isolated experiences, each hidden within its own USS, etc.
Right now you don't see much difference between a system in famine, war, Thargoid attack, boom and so on.
Looking at it ... some progress in some areas since the original post. Not everything, though ... and of course a couple of things reflect the difference between the current player base and the less representative KS backers (and the extremely unrepresentative DDF) and would be really unpopular to implement nowadays as originally described.
Some of the interactions around Famine and the like are there - the famine will affect influence levels in the system and potentially in surrounding systems, which could lead to an inbound expansion or a war for control starting - but the cause and effect are both a lot more abstract and not highlighted in-game.
I think this ties into two major things, though, which led to a big gap between initial ideas and the current implementation:
1) The size of the bubble. A lot of these ideas feel like they'd work a lot better in a ~800-system bubble like FE2 (or maybe even a 70-system bubble like Colonia). Managing all the interactions between this stuff in a 20,000-system bubble I think just got way out of hand, and wouldn't have had enough players to support it ... even four years later, the bubble is probably still about twice as big as it needs to be for the number of players.
2) The one big thing that went completely missing from the DDF - as opposed to being implemented differently or partially - was the "Events system" that would have driven that kind of mid-level stuff between a hand-crafted CG and routine BGS effects. I wonder if Powerplay was supposed to be the first step on that route, and for various reasons just didn't work in that way.
Seriously, everyone wants "space legs" or "atmospheric landings" or "a nice reliable 500 MCr/hour earning method" ... I want that Events framework implemented
But I suspect we'll get space legs and atmospheric landings first, since they're easier...
... and the realisation that people will actively play the BGS with a long-term goal in mind (and Events, if they could) rather than just watching it unfold and participating in passing events has probably added a lot of extra complexity to the planning, too.
- you can get mission offers to your inbox while in space
- distress call USSes exist
- mission-specific USSes exist
So all it needs is an inbox mission that if you accept it immediately generates a distress call mission USS nearby, and sends you the reward once all hostiles are destroyed.
Similarly all the bits for the capital ship video exist - CZ massacre missions, CZs with capital ships, mission offers in deep space, etc. They're just not put together like that yet...
(Or just the old "have a wing blowing up NPCs until the system goes into Lockdown" play)
Group battles have occurred around Powerplay ... and free-for-all battles are available in CQC.
I really wonder just how badly switching to supercruise messed up their original plans.
Either you can't or don't efficiently shift shields to the side your enemy is on, in which case you've basically just got weaker shields ... or you do as in X-Wing or Freespace in which case you've basically just got a single shield that you have to micromanage. Didn't like it much in those games, glad it got dropped here.
I can't imagine it would be popular to bring back the other early idea which is that point-blank shots, especially on the bigger ships, would have a good chance of just going straight through the shields. Watch those Anacondas fall in seconds to ram-and-frag tactics...
They stuck more to the spirit of that plan when placing engineers, tech brokers, material traders, and so on which you have to go somewhere special for ... or as it's called on these forums by the "all in one" fans, "a time sink".
(Again, an idea which works better in smaller bubbles than 20,000 systems, I think)
The station damage+repair mechanism introduced in 2.4 (and the ability to prevent Thargoid attacks added in 3.0) is probably the only current case of this sort of thing in the game - and that's "maintenance" rather than "progress", so it feels a bit different. 3.2 - in the ability for the Colonia engineers to upgrade their capabilities over time without direct dev intervention - may be an important (if small) step in this direction as well ... we'll see in a few hours.
Some of the interactions around Famine and the like are there - the famine will affect influence levels in the system and potentially in surrounding systems, which could lead to an inbound expansion or a war for control starting - but the cause and effect are both a lot more abstract and not highlighted in-game.
I think this ties into two major things, though, which led to a big gap between initial ideas and the current implementation:
1) The size of the bubble. A lot of these ideas feel like they'd work a lot better in a ~800-system bubble like FE2 (or maybe even a 70-system bubble like Colonia). Managing all the interactions between this stuff in a 20,000-system bubble I think just got way out of hand, and wouldn't have had enough players to support it ... even four years later, the bubble is probably still about twice as big as it needs to be for the number of players.
2) The one big thing that went completely missing from the DDF - as opposed to being implemented differently or partially - was the "Events system" that would have driven that kind of mid-level stuff between a hand-crafted CG and routine BGS effects. I wonder if Powerplay was supposed to be the first step on that route, and for various reasons just didn't work in that way.
Seriously, everyone wants "space legs" or "atmospheric landings" or "a nice reliable 500 MCr/hour earning method" ... I want that Events framework implemented
But I suspect we'll get space legs and atmospheric landings first, since they're easier...... and the realisation that people will actively play the BGS with a long-term goal in mind (and Events, if they could) rather than just watching it unfold and participating in passing events has probably added a lot of extra complexity to the planning, too.
Interestingly all the *bits* for this are in place - just not put together in this way.
- you can get mission offers to your inbox while in space
- distress call USSes exist
- mission-specific USSes exist
So all it needs is an inbox mission that if you accept it immediately generates a distress call mission USS nearby, and sends you the reward once all hostiles are destroyed.
Similarly all the bits for the capital ship video exist - CZ massacre missions, CZs with capital ships, mission offers in deep space, etc. They're just not put together like that yet...
It depends what you're balancing *for*. The "casual" earning potential of most professions is relatively even - the min-maxed potential is wildly uneven. That's probably unavoidable, and there are some professions which could still use adjustment on the casual side.
On the supply side, buy the cargo out. On both supply and demand sides, for most goods there's a BGS state which will have higher prices.
Most surface mission types are bad for the target faction, so the surface wing missions coming later today will probably count.
(Or just the old "have a wing blowing up NPCs until the system goes into Lockdown" play)
Group battles have occurred around Powerplay ... and free-for-all battles are available in CQC.
This - and a lot of other bits like that Anaconda rescue mission - would have made far more sense and also been easier to do if they'd stuck with the original microjump plan, rather than implementing supercruise.
I really wonder just how badly switching to supercruise messed up their original plans.
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This is one of the few original plans I'm really happy to see gone. We've already got the power distributor to shift sliders around in a fight ... adding multiple shield generators would be another less-interesting layer on top of that.
Either you can't or don't efficiently shift shields to the side your enemy is on, in which case you've basically just got weaker shields ... or you do as in X-Wing or Freespace in which case you've basically just got a single shield that you have to micromanage. Didn't like it much in those games, glad it got dropped here.
I can't imagine it would be popular to bring back the other early idea which is that point-blank shots, especially on the bigger ships, would have a good chance of just going straight through the shields. Watch those Anacondas fall in seconds to ram-and-frag tactics...
Dockable megaships have been in the game since 2.3 - both permanently-placed and moving ones.
The original idea to have separate shipyards for buying ships, commodity stations for buying goods, black market stations for smuggling, hangars for storing the ships you've bought and so on ... did all get largely dropped in favour of having all the services available at single stations.
They stuck more to the spirit of that plan when placing engineers, tech brokers, material traders, and so on which you have to go somewhere special for ... or as it's called on these forums by the "all in one" fans, "a time sink".
(Again, an idea which works better in smaller bubbles than 20,000 systems, I think)
But the cops are much less likely to scan you on the way in if you're Allied. Now that fines block market access, that's actually relevant too.
I'd guess most of this is down to not being able to get things to work dynamically in multiplayer. These would all be things Braben would have thought about when he was thinking about a single-player sequel, without knowing the complexities of achieving the same stuff reliably in multiplayer. You can see the same struggles in the development of Star Citizen.
That's my guess anyway.
EDIT: All this stuff is probably feasible but you'd be debugging it for years as all the weird emergent MP things went out of control.
That's my guess anyway.
EDIT: All this stuff is probably feasible but you'd be debugging it for years as all the weird emergent MP things went out of control.
Exactly. Frontier had still been a relatively small game company and now they are just coming into their own as a more major player. They were also fairly new at the MMO genre and still seeming to learn their way about it. Consider how detailed the galaxy and system simulation is with so many factors of the stellar forge. Just slapping on colored textures similar to how it was done in FFE would be quick to be ridiculed and heaped on with a deluge from the salt shakers. Making atmospheric worlds and spacelegs of fidelity into the already complex backdrop structure of ED is an enormous never before done task. (NMS has it much easier because their space sim aspect is just show filler with simplistic modeling, which allowed to fill up their ground walking game which is essentially the same as most other survival games (ex: Ark Survival, Conan Exiles' bases, etc. ) just dressed up to look space fantastical. ) The order of complexity of atmospheric dressed worlds ED could be approaching closer to FSX and Prepar3D, so quite a significant undertaking. I think Frontier couldn't plan to add as much additional resources to dev until after JWE was successful and Frontier could keep expenses covered for the year.
Yep, a lot of us know which gaming boondogle is being refererred to, hehe. Quick to keep on givin'.. er I mean sellin' .jpgs and concepts. Every week a "verse" video showing they are trying and demoing this idea and that idea , oops don't mind that engine scripted movie making console screen leak.. and that one too that this other game has and ED has, and EvE has, and it's all coming next year, or the year after...babble, babble. Just keeping fundin' the 7+ shell companies & buildings round the world of CRobbers & fam with yer next ship concept purchase and be sure to sub$cribe to higher "tier" dev-peeking access also..putputty-ing "PTeeUu" 3.1 will drop just before ED's 3.1!.. oops, couldn't preempt ED 3.2 this time...ad nauseum.
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The Don was essentially insane and Sancho got regularly injured by the normal citizenry.
There are fair bigger windmills/giants to tilt at in games development or outside it, than the state of Elite Dangerous...
There are fair bigger windmills/giants to tilt at in games development or outside it, than the state of Elite Dangerous...
This is may main gripe with the BGS. You enter a system in famine or outbreak or war or thargoid attack and you will be hard pressed to notice the difference with a system in boom.
In my view, if they change that and make it visually obvious what state the system/station is in, then the game will become far more "alive" and give more of a reason to do missions. You will actually see the changes happen in system. System state need to have consequences too which the commander can help overcome via missions.
Looking at it ... some progress in some areas since the original post. Not everything, though ... and of course a couple of things reflect the difference between the current player base and the less representative KS backers (and the extremely unrepresentative DDF) and would be really unpopular to implement nowadays as originally described.
The station damage+repair mechanism introduced in 2.4 (and the ability to prevent Thargoid attacks added in 3.0) is probably the only current case of this sort of thing in the game - and that's "maintenance" rather than "progress", so it feels a bit different. 3.2 - in the ability for the Colonia engineers to upgrade their capabilities over time without direct dev intervention - may be an important (if small) step in this direction as well ... we'll see in a few hours.
Some of the interactions around Famine and the like are there - the famine will affect influence levels in the system and potentially in surrounding systems, which could lead to an inbound expansion or a war for control starting - but the cause and effect are both a lot more abstract and not highlighted in-game.
I think this ties into two major things, though, which led to a big gap between initial ideas and the current implementation:
1) The size of the bubble. A lot of these ideas feel like they'd work a lot better in a ~800-system bubble like FE2 (or maybe even a 70-system bubble like Colonia). Managing all the interactions between this stuff in a 20,000-system bubble I think just got way out of hand, and wouldn't have had enough players to support it ... even four years later, the bubble is probably still about twice as big as it needs to be for the number of players.
2) The one big thing that went completely missing from the DDF - as opposed to being implemented differently or partially - was the "Events system" that would have driven that kind of mid-level stuff between a hand-crafted CG and routine BGS effects. I wonder if Powerplay was supposed to be the first step on that route, and for various reasons just didn't work in that way.
Seriously, everyone wants "space legs" or "atmospheric landings" or "a nice reliable 500 MCr/hour earning method" ... I want that Events framework implemented
... and the realisation that people will actively play the BGS with a long-term goal in mind (and Events, if they could) rather than just watching it unfold and participating in passing events has probably added a lot of extra complexity to the planning, too.
Interestingly all the *bits* for this are in place - just not put together in this way.
- you can get mission offers to your inbox while in space
- distress call USSes exist
- mission-specific USSes exist
So all it needs is an inbox mission that if you accept it immediately generates a distress call mission USS nearby, and sends you the reward once all hostiles are destroyed.
Similarly all the bits for the capital ship video exist - CZ massacre missions, CZs with capital ships, mission offers in deep space, etc. They're just not put together like that yet...
It depends what you're balancing *for*. The "casual" earning potential of most professions is relatively even - the min-maxed potential is wildly uneven. That's probably unavoidable, and there are some professions which could still use adjustment on the casual side.
On the supply side, buy the cargo out. On both supply and demand sides, for most goods there's a BGS state which will have higher prices.
Most surface mission types are bad for the target faction, so the surface wing missions coming later today will probably count.
(Or just the old "have a wing blowing up NPCs until the system goes into Lockdown" play)
Group battles have occurred around Powerplay ... and free-for-all battles are available in CQC.
This - and a lot of other bits like that Anaconda rescue mission - would have made far more sense and also been easier to do if they'd stuck with the original microjump plan, rather than implementing supercruise.
I really wonder just how badly switching to supercruise messed up their original plans.
Top 1% of liners
This is one of the few original plans I'm really happy to see gone. We've already got the power distributor to shift sliders around in a fight ... adding multiple shield generators would be another less-interesting layer on top of that.
Either you can't or don't efficiently shift shields to the side your enemy is on, in which case you've basically just got weaker shields ... or you do as in X-Wing or Freespace in which case you've basically just got a single shield that you have to micromanage. Didn't like it much in those games, glad it got dropped here.
I can't imagine it would be popular to bring back the other early idea which is that point-blank shots, especially on the bigger ships, would have a good chance of just going straight through the shields. Watch those Anacondas fall in seconds to ram-and-frag tactics...
Dockable megaships have been in the game since 2.3 - both permanently-placed and moving ones.
The original idea to have separate shipyards for buying ships, commodity stations for buying goods, black market stations for smuggling, hangars for storing the ships you've bought and so on ... did all get largely dropped in favour of having all the services available at single stations.
They stuck more to the spirit of that plan when placing engineers, tech brokers, material traders, and so on which you have to go somewhere special for ... or as it's called on these forums by the "all in one" fans, "a time sink".
(Again, an idea which works better in smaller bubbles than 20,000 systems, I think)
But the cops are much less likely to scan you on the way in if you're Allied. Now that fines block market access, that's actually relevant too.
Rep for having the energy to address each significant point. Well said.
Welcome back!
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see this would be where npc crew would come in.. dont want to do it yourself, have an npc crew member (or human multicrew member of course) do it as part of their job.
if the crew person is elite rated they would practically do it at the most efficient way possible - like a human would - anything less and they are not as good but improve with practice.
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