General Can playing with friends be more cooperative?

[Archimagus]

My friend and I recently got into Elite Dangerous, and for the most part are really liking it. But being a multiplayer game, it seems like many things are built to discourage players playing together.

Wing missions are the only thing close to promoting mutiplayer gameplay and they can only be shared one at a time. With that, they can just be shared during turn in, so what's the point? One person can complete 20 of them, and then share and turn in with a whole wing who had nothing to do with it.

Multicrew gameplay is severely lacking. Only money from kills is shared. And you can't even share wing missions with your multicrew partner. Of course, you can cheese it, see above.

There isn't any real way to cooperatively mine. Sure you can go out as a wing and both mine, but you can't have one person mining and another person hauling like is common in most space games. I mean I guess you could dump cargo and have the other guy scoop it, but then there is no way to share the profits.

Trade dividends is a weird system to sort of push group play, and it hasn't worked for us for a week.

Since carriers can serve as bases for groups of players it seems strange that there is no way to directly contribute to the upkeep (or purchase) of a carrier. Relying on taxing services as the only way for your squad mates to contribute seems odd. I like the tax system, but that seems like it would be meant more for when you let the public use the carrier and it's a fee for that. For instance, using the carrier as a forward operating base for deep space exploration means that it's upkeep can only be funded by doing weird things with the tax system to allow the group that came with you to "donate" money.

The Wing Man Nav-Lock system is is hard to get a handle on. It doesn't sync jumps or frameshift, you have to wait until the leader has already left before your system winds up and by that time the leader is gone. We can make it work with good voice coms, but its way more fiddly than it could be.

It just feels like to me that everything is designed around a bunch of single players loosely playing in the same space. I'd love to hear that I'm wrong, and that there is a lot of good ways to play together as a group of RL friends. But we're struggling to find it.

That said, we are still having fun with the game and are able to at least fly together, we just with there was more actual cooperation and ways to play WITH each other instead of along side each other. It feels like we are both playing solitaire at the same table.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Some things are generally recognised as clunky and/or deficient. One thing you could try is haz res mining - fragments per rock there are increased, but there are pirates. One person could be in a "combat miner" outfit, the others in dedicated mining ships. I've not tried haz res mining yet, and this suggestion might be more fun than profitable, although with the bounty buff there's always that, especially if you pick up some pirate massacre missions too. I mix my cereals, so this idea appeals to me...

And for carriers, I think you can donate tritium, no?

 

[Fake Newts]

Elite is at best a 'parallel' single player game with a multiplayer environment, it's downright terrible at supporting or encouraging moment to moment interaction be it co-op or PvP. There are numerous relatively small tweaks that could be done to make winging up or mulicrew more rewarding but you'll find that a large portion of the playerbase as well as a contingent within Frontier itself are actively hostile to this idea. Look at the nerfs Braben himself imposed on multicrew at the last minute. The approach is very much 'having friends is OP' thus far and we're all supposed to be interacting in a purely arm's length, incidental kind of way for the most part.

That said, areas where you can really directly help each other out as a wing are bounty hunting, CZ massacre stacking and Thargoid hunting (provided that doesn't bug out).

(Edit: if you're looking for shared goals you can adopt a BGS faction with your friends then chat on discord while you each individually work for an overarching goal outside of war time. Discord is this game's most important multiplayer patch.)

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It just feels like to me that everything is designed around a bunch of single players loosely playing in the same space. I'd love to hear that I'm wrong, and that there is a lot of good ways to play together as a group of RL friends. But we're struggling to find it.

Broadly, yes. Or at least, since the average number of players around in any bit of space is one, everything has to work with just one player, which means that enhancements for multiple players are largely an afterthought if at all. That said, there are plenty of big player groups which get up to a lot of stuff together.

Cooperation is therefore more generally indirect to achieve some sort of shared goal that doesn't require everyone being in the same place - there are lots of examples of that in the game:
- Community Goals (the current one is a particularly unusual one that requires a fair bit of cooperation)
- Operation IDA (repairs damaged stations)
- Anti-Xeno war (fights on the various battlefronts to stop Thargoids)
- Engineering research (mostly done now, helps the Colonia engineers develop new blueprints)
- Exploration/mysteries (searching for answers, unusual star systems, whatever might be out there)
- BGS (support or oppose particular factions for various reasons ... or have more unusual objectives)

...while being in the same place is generally done for fun rather than profit - activities such as races, duels, etc. that don't pay out at all, or running missions or combat or exploration together for the company rather than the money.

 

[Greasetrap42]

When I started playing I understood it was multiplayer with multicrew. I was really looking forward to sharing adventures on a ship with other real world friends. An actual crew, where people take on roles and we all work together cooperatively. Pilot, navigation, weapons, etc. I was disappointed when I discovered the ship is very much single player oriented. Yes there is multicrew and SLFs, but.... ya, whatever.

I really like the game, its fantastic. But realizing the multiplayer/multicrew implementation was a big disappointment to me. I was expecting something big and shiney,

 

[Archimagus]

An actual crew, where people take on roles and we all work together cooperatively. Pilot, navigation, weapons, etc. I was disappointed when I discovered the ship is very much single player oriented. ...
I really like the game, its fantastic. But realizing the multiplayer/multicrew implementation was a big disappointment to me. I was expecting something big and shiney,

Yes that is our feeling exactly. Having also played star citizen, there is a lot cooperation and multicrew stuff available/planned, and it's great, but there is a very limited set of things to do there right now which is why we came here.

 

[Vahnkiljoy]

BTW you CAN share wing missions with crew, not sure why you say you can't the only caveat to it is the crew members need to turn in the mission in their own ships.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Broadly, yes. Or at least, since the average number of players around in any bit of space is one, everything has to work with just one player, which means that enhancements for multiple players are largely an afterthought if at all. That said, there are plenty of big player groups which get up to a lot of stuff together.

Cooperation is therefore more generally indirect to achieve some sort of shared goal that doesn't require everyone being in the same place - there are lots of examples of that in the game:

• Community Goals (the current one is a particularly unusual one that requires a fair bit of cooperation)
• Operation IDA (repairs damaged stations)
• Anti-Xeno war (fights on the various battlefronts to stop Thargoids)
• Engineering research (mostly done now, helps the Colonia engineers develop new blueprints)
• Exploration/mysteries (searching for answers, unusual star systems, whatever might be out there)
• BGS (support or oppose particular factions for various reasons ... or have more unusual objectives)

...while being in the same place is generally done for fun rather than profit - activities such as races, duels, etc. that don't pay out at all, or running missions or combat or exploration together for the company rather than the money.

Let's just add powerplay to that list too. Get in a discord for your chosen power and the teamwork will be coming out of your ears.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Wing missions are the only thing close to promoting mutiplayer gameplay and they can only be shared one at a time. With that, they can just be shared during turn in, so what's the point? One person can complete 20 of them, and then share and turn in with a whole wing who had nothing to do with it.

Depending on the wing mission, these need to be shared if the others can contribute to the mission completion.

Take the cargo hauling missions, move 5000+ T of something to X (bad reward compared to most other wing missions) , or source and return Y amount of Z.... sure you can do these solo, but shared and doen together, these are done faster...

For the combat missions, sharing them makes the others who accepted the missions to be able to see signal sources related to the mission.
Here, most players struggle with the wing assassinate missions, where you basically face a Deadly/Elite FDL, with 2-3 Deadly Vultures. So these can be a great challenge for many players to take on, and if these are easy in your wing of PvE Combat Corvette/Cutter, then try something new. do this in a medium sized ship, or why not try it out in small ships?


for most part, wing missions do not stack with other missions, with one exception, pirate massacre missions, otherwise all wing missions have to be donme in th eorder they where accepted, and there are still some gotchas in the massacre missions stacking mechanism.


Every player in the wing, can share one wing mission. this is not so different from other multiplayer games.
The way the profit-share is done is to discourage players acting their worst, and leaving the wing before they turn in their missions, but let the other players share their mission reward with them, now your reward is not changed in any way if turn in the mission solo or in a wing. imagine if your reward was lowered if you turned it in while in a wing? Yup, that would make most players pretty selfish. now there are reasons for players to actually meet up with other random players just to share their solo run wing missions, I share mine, you share yours, and we both profit from it...





Elite is not like most other multiplayer games, there is no raids, or similiar. And most activities are from the start build around you can do it solo....