Casual Player Penalties FD Should Reconsider

[Kristov]

OP I feel for you. I agree with you. Decay and real time mission timers are not fun. Nor do they add challenging. There is nothing harder about playing for longer stretches. These mechanics add nothing.

But they take away a lot. Like, say, potential customers. The grown up sort, with their own money.

But good luck. These self appointed "hardcore gamers" have made a willingness to be crapped on by shoddy mechanics and tolerate nonsensical levels of grind part of their identity. They take well to the truth of how ridiculous a lot of this stuff is.

Hardcore? I get a few hours a week to play, maybe, and right now I'm a few thousand light years out in the Black and heading across the core to the far Rim, I'll be out for months and months. My rep with the Federation, Alliance and Empire, already as low as they are going to go, because I haven't done a single mission in weeks, and I won't do another mission for many months. Oh, noes!!!11!!1!! I'm now Friendly 75% with all 3 major factions!

Those saying, 'don't let the missions matter to the BGS if over X time', uh, you DO realize that all missions are a product OF the BGS at the time it's created, right? There's a reason you see the missions you see when you see them, it's not just to annoy you by not giving you all the Kill Pirate missions you want or all the Charity missions you want, so yeah, that's rather the point of those missions being time sensitive, it's a living galaxy and you are directly interfacing with it when you are online, everything you do in the bubble has repercussions, regardless of whether you know it, realize it or give a damn.

STO, pause, yeah, on specific missions you do get that, but that's because it's not a real time game really now is it? And your actions have 0 influence on anything in the game world as well, so...really, how about you pick a game that has your actions and inactions influencing the game world and see how many of THOSE let you pause the game. All 0 of them.

Again, this is NOT an offline game, you are interfacing with a nonstop always running game world where the things the players due have a direct influence on how the game runs, so missions have timers, you not being around costs you reputation, makes you fail missions, all that stuff, and it's not at all unusual, special or unique, MANY other MMO games do this exact same thing, including timed missions. You don't like it, get a refund, go find an offline game where nothing happens except when you have the game running. This isn't new, this isn't unique to Elite: Dangerous, it's been a FEATURE of MMOS for a long time, and before that it was a FEATURE of MUDs and other games played on BBS before the internet was a thing.

 

[GammaZ]

Can you please give few examples of MMO's which have such missions?
Also, in elite all mission-related stuff spawn so obviously upon player entering the system, that talking about some "living galaxy" is somewhat funny...

 

[Caramel Clown]

Can you please give few examples of MMO's which have such missions?
Also, in elite all mission-related stuff spawn so obviously upon player entering the system, that talking about some "living galaxy" is somewhat funny...

What they spawn depends on a BGS, and suppose to be dependent even more when 2.1 drops.
Also, there's literally no MMO out there that would have timed missions that would allow you to pause them on exit. It's a multiplayer game, world doesn't stop spinning only because you want to take a pause.

 

[GammaZ]

It theoretically depends on BGS, but the system itself (or instance if you like) does not even exist before player entered it. What will it change if player could pause his instance, instead of just shutting it down by closing the game?
Also, any examples of MMO's which have mission timers, with said timers running in realtime?

 

[xondk]

Hint: ED is a game, not real life.

And while real-life can (and does) intrude on game time, players shouldn't be punished for that (as long as it doesn't affect other players).

I have to ask though, is it really a punishment to fail a single mission here and there? really? how often do people get interrupted? if you get interrupted that much then yeah, most any game will have the issue of not progressing, you can simply not take a ton of missions no problem? that way you wouldn't fail many missions and get an actual hit?

 

[Ralph Vargr]

It's really not possible to make changes to the game without impacting other people. For example one of the simplest ways to drop an opposing minor factions influence is to take and fail (not discard) timer based missions.

Ah, thank you. There's a faction next system over that I will never beat in combat.

 

[Vyrsai]

Sorry but pausing timers or the game in general will never happen for reasons already posted many times.

Next.

 

[terrycloth]

Short term missions running out of time makes sense. The 10 hour+ timed missions should just be 'infinite time' because time isn't a real constraint for them except when it's stupid and annoying because it makes you finish them in the same session instead of pausing when you want to, for no good reason.

I am not swayed by people abusing mission timers to cheese other factions out of influence. Fixing that loophole sounds like a positive side effect.

Multiple/stored ships -- why can't we teleport between them? The main problem with exploration is that you have to fly ALL THE WAY HOME if you want to do anything else. Every other profession you can switch off ships in a few minutes and do whatever you feel like doing that night, but exploration you're trapped hours away from civilization and can do nothing but more exploration. If you could leave your exploration ship in Sag A* and teleport to your combat ship in the bubble, then bloop back when you were done, it would be *so* much better. Exploration data is already lost when you die, so just tie it to the ship to avoid people popping home to sell it, if you even care. I don't know why you would care.

There is no immersion in this game to break -- the first time you die it's broken forever because the thought that anyone would offer 'insurance' in a world where a typical pilot (including PCs and NPCs here) is guaranteed to be killed in hours or days is just ridiculous.

 

[Kristov]

What they spawn depends on a BGS, and suppose to be dependent even more when 2.1 drops.
Also, there's literally no MMO out there that would have timed missions that would allow you to pause them on exit. It's a multiplayer game, world doesn't stop spinning only because you want to take a pause.

Neverwinter Nights, the MMO, had some, as does DDO and LotRO, seem to recall a few in WoW as well...so...there you go, it's not a first or one off with Elite: Dangerous, it's been done plenty of times before. MMOs don't take your schedule into account, never have, not part of the design.

And yes, MMOs do actually reward those who play them the most quicker than those who play casually, but the rewards are the same, just take longer to get to, that's by design as well. The more time you spend in the game, the more likely you are to keep spending money on the game as you become more invested in the game. This ain't news either, been that way since the days of Meridian 59 in 1996, ALL the monthly subscription models followed that design and the Free2Play games do as well because it works. And none of them cater to the casual gamer outside of a few little tidbits here and there, like giving a short timed bonus to XP if you haven't played in X time frame, little things like that, all designed to get you more invested by the way.

 

[Caramel Clown]

Neverwinter Nights, the MMO, had some, as does DDO and LotRO, seem to recall a few in WoW as well...so...there you go, it's not a first or one off with Elite: Dangerous, it's been done plenty of times before. MMOs don't take your schedule into account, never have, not part of the design.

And yes, MMOs do actually reward those who play them the most quicker than those who play casually, but the rewards are the same, just take longer to get to, that's by design as well. The more time you spend in the game, the more likely you are to keep spending money on the game as you become more invested in the game. This ain't news either, been that way since the days of Meridian 59 in 1996, ALL the monthly subscription models followed that design and the Free2Play games do as well because it works. And none of them cater to the casual gamer outside of a few little tidbits here and there, like giving a short timed bonus to XP if you haven't played in X time frame, little things like that, all designed to get you more invested by the way.

Not sure wether you've tried to agree with me or not I don't remember timed missions in WoW pausing on exit. Or any of the events depending on you being online.

 

[Kristov]

Not sure wether you've tried to agree with me or not I don't remember timed missions in WoW pausing on exit. Or any of the events depending on you being online.

Well, hell, sorry, quoted the wrong person, my apologies. I was replying to GammaZ, I thought, since he keep insisting this isn't how MMOs work, they don't have timed missions and so on.

 

[GammaZ]

There are no timed missions in WOW, or LotRO (do not know a thing about DDO). I mean there may be very-very limited amount of missions available which have time limits (i mean just like 1-2-3 missions in whole game), but all other thousands of missions have no time restrictions. You can login into WOW after not playing it for year and complete missions you've taken a year ago.

And yes, rewards for being online for a long time are present in many games, but it is another matter entirely

 

[Caramel Clown]

There are no timed missins in WOW, or LotRO (do not know a thing about DDO). I mean there may be very-very limited amount of missions available which have time limits (i mean just like 1-2 missions in whole game), but all other thousands of missions have no time restrictions. You can login into WOW after not playing it for year and complete missions you've taken a year ago.

And yes, rewards for being online for a long time are present in many games, but it is another matter entirely

But again, WoW doesn't claim to have BGS

 

[GammaZ]

But again, WoW doesn't claim to have BGS

Sure. But the question was, are there MMO-s which have time limits for all missions? And i still believe the answer is NO.

 

[Vyrsai]

WoW has some quests with timers to them, not sure on LOTRO but EQ 1 and 2 also have timed quests.

Terris (very old mmo, text based) has many timed based quests.

SWTOR has a bunch of timed quests and missions.

I'm sure there are more that I'm not even thinking of.

Of course in this game, since it's some hybrid of MMO/Sim, the concept of time and the world being alive are both very important and not something that will EVER be paused for any reasons.

 

[Kristov]

Sure. But the question was, are there MMO-s which have time limits for all missions? And i still believe the answer is NO.

The answer is yes, even WoW had some, they don't make up the entirety of their quests, but they do happen on occasion, LotRO had some, DDO had some, many MMOs have done it, from simple little quests to raids.

You asked, I answered, you not liking the answer doesn't make it any less so.

 

[GammaZ]

The answer is yes, even WoW had some, they don't make up the entirety of their quests, but they do happen on occasion, LotRO had some, DDO had some, many MMOs have done it, from simple little quests to raids.

You asked, I answered, you not liking the answer doesn't make it any less so.

Ok, i'l try to explain...
Sure, wow has few time limited missions. So do some other MMO-s like SWTOR. They are usually some sort of storyline missions which player can complete only once. You will run into such missions just few times during the whole time you play game, but 99.9% of the time you will have no time limits.
Then we look at elite, where every single mission have a time limit. No matter what, if you take a mission you are now forced to complete it right now, or you will fail it. The question was, are there another MMO with time limits attached to every single mission.
One of such MMO-s is eve online, but there time limit only changes whether you receive additional bonus reward or not, mission itself has no time limit.
Can anyone give another examples of such games?

 

[Vyrsai]

Ok, i'l try to explain...
Sure, wow has few time limited missions. So do some other MMO-s like SWTOR. They are usually some sort of storyline missions which player can complete only once. You will run into such missions just few times during the whole time you play game, but 99.9% of the time you will have no time limits.
Then we look at elite, where every single mission have a time limit. No matter what, if you take a mission you are now forced to complete it right now, or you will fail it. The question was, are there another MMO with time limits attached to every single mission.
One of such MMO-s is eve online, but there time limit only changes whether you receive additional bonus reward or not, mission itself has no time limit.
Can anyone give another examples of such games?

This is just not true at all. You seem to be just making up "facts" as you go sir. Some timed missions are just for bonuses sure, but not close to 99.99% (total crap #).

Every single day this forum becomes more and more full of entitled, woe is me, complaining it's too hard-type posts. Dumbing down the game is not good. Not to mention pausing in any sense whether it be real time pausing or just timer pausing will NEVER happen. It's not even worth discussing. FD will never be able to even implement something like that no matter how easy you might think it is.

The only thing you could push for is to have no timers at all. Or to have timers be bonus based. Both sound terrible to me, so I'm assuming loads of people on these forums would like it.

 

[GammaZ]

Lets refrain from personal attacks please.
And regarding 99.9%, here you go:
WOW. time limited quests, all quests.
15 out of 16281 have timers...

And just to clarify something, this timers have nothing to do with "too hard" or "dumbing down", this is just convinience related thing. There is nothing hard in completing 20H limited mission which can be done in 30 minutes, the only thing this timer does, is it presumably forces me to play more right now...

 

[Vyrsai]

Lets refrain from personal attacks please.
And regarding 99.9%, here you go:
WOW. time limited quests, all quests.
15 out of 16281 have timers...

I'm not personally attacking anyone. It's a generalization of how bad these forums are.

I'm not sure what that means showing us that link. I'm not a big WoW player so I'll just take that link as completely legit.

Try to read what I wrote again and not get your feelings hurt this time. You are not making any ground here.