News Changes Coming to Multi-crew

[Mephane]

travel grind

Did you just try to coin that term or is this established - do we really consider travelling and the physicality of actual presence - not telepresence - a grind in a game that is literally about travelling through space in space ships?

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Whish it was some (any!) other studio producing a space game, but Elite is still unmatched in scope and its positive qualities and I don't see any likely aspirants to even come close in the near future.

That's possibly the root cause of most of our woes: ED is still without competition (after the NMS disaster) so for anyone's open world realistically-scaled space flight fantasy there isn't really an alternative. If any of the big game studios decided to make a "GTA 5 in space" then that would create some real pressure on ED.

 

[Soopyyy]

I pulled "travel grind" out of my bum. I mean, if a friend is 100ly away and you want to wing up, I can't think of a better way to sum it up

 

[babelfisch]

I pulled "travel grind" out of my bum. I mean, if a friend is 100ly away and you want to wing up, I can't think of a better way to sum it up

That's 5 jumps, 3 minutes...

 

[TheRealTommo]

That's 5 jumps, 3 minutes...

That would depend on jump range [big grin]

 

[babelfisch]

That would depend on jump range [big grin]

Don't fly a FDL then

 

[metatheurgist]

Don't fly a FDL then

My FDL could do that in 6 jumps.

 

[BurnyBurns]

My FDL could do that in 6 jumps.

Good to know. Zero reason to play as crew then!

Did you just try to coin that term or is this established - do we really consider travelling and the physicality of actual presence - not telepresence - a grind in a game that is literally about travelling through space in space ships?

Personally, I would consider the term valid. Travelling between distant points A and B with activities at A and some at B in Elite Dangerous after all means watching loading screens and not too much else. If you're the lucky person having played enough to cross 100ly in a FDL with six jumps, that's six loading screens. If you're the underprivliged person running an unengineered beginner combat ship like let's say.... a Viper, and the distance is greater, that could just mean watching 20 minutes of loading screens. Yep. Travel grind is a valid term in the context of ED.

Let the loading screens be a reminder to you, that space is bloody big!

One argument could be that multicrew isn't supposed to be the money printing machine for new players, but something aiming at seasoned players who already own big ships and have seen everything else the game has to offer. Maybe it's some kind of endgame content. You can participate in it earlier, but it's not designed around newbies. Just guessing here, don't take the argument too serious please.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or not actually. The seasoned pretend space ship pilots in their half a billion pretend credits engineered to the teeth murder boats? Crewing up, not playing their own ship they spend dozens to hundreds of hours perfecting, to get a 20% paycut? [haha]

Oh, yes. They'll love it.

 

[lightwolf]

The first change will allow Helm to toggle limited access for the Gunner role. When toggled on the Gunner will only be able to use weapons, not utilities (such as shield cells), and only Helm will be able to deploy and retract the ship’s hardpoints. When toggled off the Gunner will have full access as they do now.

Good changes overall. This is one point where I'd like to have more control though. Even though I only played one session as a gunner so far (for two hours though ).

It would be really nice if the access to utilities would be more granular. As an example, let the helm handle the heatsinks, SCs and chaff, but allow the gunner to control the KWS.

As a side note, the extra two bindings in the fire group for gunners don't allow for a long key press, i.e. to assign the KWS to a keyboard key to scan.

o7

 

[babelfisch]

Good to know. Zero reason to play as crew then!



Personally, I would consider the term valid. Travelling between distant points A and B with activities at A and some at B in Elite Dangerous after all means watching loading screens and not too much else. If you're the lucky person having played enough to cross 100ly in a FDL with six jumps, that's six loading screens. If you're the underprivliged person running an unengineered beginner combat ship like let's say.... a Viper, and the distance is greater, that could just mean watching 20 minutes of loading screens. Yep. Travel grind is a valid term in the context of ED.

Let the loading screens be a reminder to you, that space is bloody big!

Ok, I get that we both play the game in VERY different ways. I have the feeling that my way is more in line with what FDEV intended, so what, I am not going to say you are doing it wrong. But to me it seems like an Arena based mode similar to CQC would be more to your liking?

 

[BurnyBurns]

Ok, I get that we both play the game in VERY different ways. I have the feeling that my way is more in line with what FDEV intended, so what, I am not going to say you are doing it wrong. But to me it seems like an Arena based mode similar to CQC would be more to your liking?

Yes. The issue is with naughty little me, questioning whether Frontier is quiet serious about giving even the most "seasoned" player a 20% pay cut for crewing while simultanously allowing everybody to have a better experience more worthy of their personal free time in a Wing. My bad. I'm really just a CoD instant-gratification kiddy, who should be playing CQC. Strawmen much?


Explaining design decisions that make zero sense and only lead to wasting player time away by searching the fault with people who complain won't fix Elite's game design decisions, which are so often made with absolutely zero regards to valuing their player's time. And looking at discouraging multicrew as an activity by means of "paycuts" due to all the angst that new players could get more than they deem appropriate, apparently also with zero regards to valuing their own dev's time who've had to implement the feature.

This pretentious payout gimping has for instance turned multicrew from a feature I was quite looking forward to enjoying with friends and a colleague from desirable to auto-ignore. We'll be playing in a Wing instead and multicrew has become a paperweight feature for us.

 

[Terrator]

I dont't get it. Why does Frontier always react to the crybabies and work on stuff like payment for crew members, or when The Engineers was released they made farming so much easier with their patches.
As i said at that time i dont get it why they invest time into these kind of changes when the most part of the players want content! I think its not these little adjustments of numbers what keeps players playing the game but patches with new gameplay elements or more content for the implementet game mechanics would cause players to return to the game. So pls Frontier overthink your decisions there... just sayin. For me these minor changes arent worth coming back to the game. I play here and there, maybe 1-2 hours a week but not that much i used to play when the game came out. We're now two and a half years into this game and simply need more to do in the game beside credits, ranks, engineers... just saying...

 

[W.T.Sherman]

Yeah I'm going to be this guy.

And the month and half beta was for???? How did these not get resolved during beta? Yes there payouts were changed last minute for the worse during the beta but they should have known there was going to be flak. But the helmsman controls should of stood out in the beginning of the beta.

Easy, there weren't so many sociopathic trolls in Beta, people were actually testing and enjoying gameplay...........funny that.

 

[babelfisch]

Yes. The issue is with naughty little me, questioning whether Frontier is quiet serious about giving even the most "seasoned" player a 20% pay cut for crewing while simultanously allowing everybody to have a better experience more worthy of their personal free time in a Wing. My bad. I'm really just a CoD instant-gratification kiddy, who should be playing CQC. Strawmen much?


Explaining design decisions that make zero sense and only lead to wasting player time away by searching the fault with people who complain won't fix Elite's game design decisions, which are so often made with absolutely zero regards to valuing their player's time. And looking at discouraging multicrew as an activity by means of "paycuts" due to all the angst that new players could get more than they deem appropriate, apparently also with zero regards to valuing their own dev's time who've had to implement the feature.

This pretentious payout gimping has for instance turned multicrew from a feature I was quite looking forward to enjoying with friends and a colleague from desirable to auto-ignore. We'll be playing in a Wing instead and multicrew has become a paperweight feature for us.

We talked about travelling there, not multicrew. Seems like you confused two posts.

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I'm not sure whether to laugh or not actually. The seasoned pretend space ship pilots in their half a billion pretend credits engineered to the teeth murder boats? Crewing up, not playing their own ship they spend dozens to hundreds of hours perfecting, to get a 20% paycut? [haha]

Oh, yes. They'll love it.

Yes, glad that we agree (again). They don't need money anymore after all.

 

[BurnyBurns]

We talked about travelling there, not multicrew. Seems like you confused two posts.

No worries, I didn't. I merely ignored that you presumed to be the person to tell others what game they ought to play, rather than considering that not everybody considers having 20 non interactive loading screens shoved down their throat an elegant mechanic to drive home the vastness of space but just might also not be looking to play a deathmatch game. Just like you venture to hand wave away Frontier's elegant way of telling people not to use their shiny new features with that magnificient multicrew payout table of "why you shouldn't bother and wing up instead".

 

[Monk]

My nerves were frayed from testing out loadouts on my newly engineered Viper (OMG the Viper is insane with Level 5 dirty drives) and some intense MC bounty hunting. So, I hopped on an exploration ship and just took in the views and conversation while the cadence of the constant jumping calmed me.

As great as that was, it was blatantly obvious how there needs to be exploration/engineering roles in MC. I started daydreaming about taking part in some sort of activity (IDK, I'm no game designer) where my successful actions would save fuel with more efficient jumps...or perhaps I could work on something (again, not a designer) for a while and when finished I could inform Helm and give them a jump boost.

In the end, I'm having fun with MC...but it needs MORE

 

[babelfisch]

No worries, I didn't. I merely ignored that you presumed to be the person to tell others what game they ought to play, rather than considering that not everybody considers having 20 non interactive loading screens shoved down their throat an elegant mechanic to drive home the vastness of space but just might also not be looking to play a deathmatch game. Just like you venture to hand wave away Frontier's elegant way of telling people not to use their shiny new features with that magnificient multicrew payout table of "why you shouldn't bother and wing up instead".

Ah, so you DID confuse my post after all. I didn't tell you what game you should play. In fact I was VERY careful to avoid this because I think it's a pretty stupid argument. I did ask you a question though, don't know if that's allowed.

PS
I didn't ask that question to annoy you, but to get a better understanding of the wishes you have for the game. If I don't understand you it's pretty pointless to discuss it. And it seems like we have very different ideas how the game should be.

So if I understand you right:
- you don't want to travel in space
- you want to instantly join a fight with a friend
- but you don't want to have reduced payouts as compromise for instant travel
- so you just want to use wings where payouts aren't reduced
- but you can't use wings because you don't like space travel

Is this a instant ship transfer argument in disguise?

 

[Adept]

This is better, but I have another design question.

Why do the guns snap on targer? A large part of the draw in having a gunner is actually being able to use full mouse precision, and pick your targets. The snap-on aim assist has no business here, outside of compensating for the weakness of a console type controller.

The limits should be based on the traverse speed of the turret, and any inaccuracy inherent to the weapon (for example from Engineer tweaks). There's also no reason not to allow gimbaled weapons to be used, within the same constraints.

I'm a little disappointed in the quick and dirty approach to implementing the gunner's role.

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As great as that was, it was blatantly obvious how there needs to be exploration/engineering roles in MC. I started daydreaming about taking part in some sort of activity (IDK, I'm no game designer) where my successful actions would save fuel with more efficient jumps...or perhaps I could work on something (again, not a designer) for a while and when finished I could inform Helm and give them a jump boost.

In the end, I'm having fun with MC...but it needs MORE

This is the great weakness in FDev game design when it comes to Elite. The way things are implemented always minimises the role of player skill. Think about exploration. There is absolutely nothing skill based left. You jump to a star, you honk with the god-scanner which instantly reveals every orbiting body in the system, you fly at them one-by-one, and wait for the timer / data retrieval.

That is not a game. I can't imagine how any designer could feel satisfied with that, nor how a producer would sign off on it.

 

[markuslig]

Weird? Really? LOL. I thought it was a fairly graspable concept. Income is an incentive. If you enjoy what you're doing, you don't need as much incentive to do it. If you hate what you're doing, you do require more incentive to do it.

Yeah i know how you're thinking and in a way it does make sense, but it would be a weird way to design a game. If something is so boring that nobody would do it unless its well paid, its something wrong with that part of the game

For me Engineers is definitely one of those things

 

[Sunleader]

Better but still completely inferior to Wing Mechanics and thus still not being anything beyond a toy feature for fooling around with no real meaning.


1.
100% Payout regardless of Rank.
2.
Shared Missions and Exploration Data. Shared as 50/50 not as 100/100
3.
100% Exp and Reputation regardless of Rank.

Then we can talk guys.

 

[Adept]

Yeah i know how you're thinking and in a way it does make sense, but it would be a weird way to design a game. If something is so boring that nobody would do it unless its well paid, its something wrong with that part of the game

For me Engineers is definitely one of those things

Consider how CQC was effectively killed.

It's a good, fun game mode. The income was just set so disastrously low, that anybody who actually has goals in Elite can't afford to send their time playing CQC. (that, and some MM related balancing issues, which could easily be addressed).