News Content Recap: Beyond - Chapter Four Livestream - Background Simulation and Scenarios

[Geist]

Thanks FDev lots more juicy things to play with But, can we now please get rid of the wedding barges?

 

[rp198419]

I like what ive read about, but not sure about the term "happiness" makes the game sound very my little pony.

Prosperity would have been my word of choice.

...or 'contentment', perhaps?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

As I have said before: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-or-FSS-mode?p=7103896&highlight=#post7103896

It is clearly not possible to integrate new mechanics into the existing code of ED.

The only option is to bolt-on anything new, which means it will always be a stand-alone minigame.

What exactly do you mean by new mechanics? As to stand-alone mini-games I can't see any at the moment. Maybe when legs comes out we will be able to go to the bar and play poker.

 

[discocat]

Thanks FDev lots more juicy things to play with But, can we now please get rid of the wedding barges?

You can. With guns !

 

[rp198419]

I hope someone at FD is reading this, because this is about the stream itself, not the actual content reveal: the audio is too low. Like, the volume is like a third or half of what it should be. I have to turn my volume way up to twice my normal setting and it is still below normal talking volume.

Edit: Okay, after like two minutes or so they turn up the volume. Still too low to work at normal levels, but at least a bit better.

It would also be better without all the utterly pointless and childish preamble, imo.

 

[Whitehair]

It would also be better without all the utterly pointless and childish preamble, imo.

So, when are you going to stop?

 

[rp198419]

I watched the stream live. Now to be clear I am a fanboy, ED is by far (so far) the best galaxy wide, interactive game I can find that has multi-role objectives.

However the stream was not well delivered, it appeared confused (except for middle Adam), left hand side Adam did not give me a sense of security, namely on 2 counts. If you have developed a part of the game over 12 months, why do you need (and I mean need) notes to remind you what the hell you have been doing? It's not like its been part of your life delivering this massive change (at the expense of other elements) over the past year. If that had been me, I would have just stated it having been so immersed in its lore. Secondly why was LHS Adam so unsure of exactly what he could disclose? I found this very weird, considering ED already know what's coming out. Some might argue that he didn't want to infringe on future episodes, but this just goes to show the lack of coordination around the making of the streams. Not professional at all. Its like the streams are being led by what the content of the UI is. Don't show, don't tell. Happiness, need I say more....

I found the changes to USS / combat zones to be superficial. Some background chat and a progress bar?? Come on guys, it took you 12 months? Introducing the voices from multicrew NPC's is a tweak, not a revelation.


Bleating for fuel or food? Get a grip, 99% of players will just jump out because it means nothing, I mean nothing to their gameplay. This is kindergarten stuff and was frankly embarrassing.


Nothing in the changes to the BGS states said anything about change, it was just a regrading of states, if you like an addition to the number of states without further influencing what was happening. Worse it seems that groups trying to hold a number of systems are about to become so stretched that there reason for existence becomes null. Why continually attempt to retain control of your 10 systems if the groups are constantly attempting to reverse BGS states imposed by events that happen at one outlying system? This does not make good gameplay.


The BGS update smacks of badly drawn up solutions to invisible issues not raised by the player-base. Badly thought out and ill-designed with that rider that it may be tweaked / changed in the future, well we have all been down that road before with ED.

Sorry but I'm not impressed, BGS looks to be even more susceptible to abuse and manipulation than it is now and the other changes looked to be superficial at best. As for knocking out power capacitors on a mega-ship? Jeez if you can fly that badly in solo and still get 6 where is the challenge? It is extremely basic play that most will ignore. It was interesting to note the number of comments in the sidebar saying "BGS open only?" when the disclosures were made, speaks volumes.

All in all, sorry guys but that was embarrassing tonight.

I was really hoping that the BGS changes would inspire me to take more interest.

The BGS still seems as boring and uninteresting as before.

As for the 'scenarios' in USS instances...the food lady will be disappointed; I'm not going shopping for anyone. What utter rubbish, really.

Now, if she were offering me a mission to escort her to her destination, I'd probably say yes.

Come on FD...food, really?

 

[rp198419]

Good stream. Lots of stuff here that looks like a fantastic step forward!

You clearly walk with small steps.

 

[who?]

Very very happy with the changes so far. I didn't think this would be 'my kind of livestream', but I love the added UI feedback, and the enhancements to the combat zones in particular. Happy with the direction the game is taking.

Extremely minor quibbles:
- I'm a bit wary of choosing voice-acting over synthesised speech. Obviously, voice-acting will be of a far higher quality, but equally it's going to be much more limited (same dialogue has to be recorded by several actors, then presumably in several languages as well?). People tire of repetitive audio quickly.

- LOVE the UI feedback, the indication of how the battle is going etc., though I wish (I know, this is HIGHLY picky) it could be conveyed in a non-gamey way. e.g. audio messages "we've almost got them, just the last few" or "hang on Cmdr, only a few of us left now" etc. instead of displaying a progress bar.

- It's a bit ambiguous if the in-CZ audio is 'real' or just filler. Currently there are two kinds of background speech in the game, the barely audible background chatter at stations, and the fake ATC comms "proceed to flight level...." commands, which a noob might think were real instructions. Similarly in a CZ, I presume these "get this bogie off my six" messages are just filler, and there's nothing for us to do?

(IF there are real audio instructions, it'd be great if there were a HUD/scanner indicator of which ship is speaking to us!)

- Scenarios: look great. A lot depends on how many of them there are and how varied, and how good the dialogue is. Also how they're triggered, it'd be really good if they're triggered based on your rep/notoriety/ship/actions etc. and not entirely random.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Has anyone mentioned HOTSPOTS?

Been waiting years for these to arrive, and FD have gone completely radio silent on them, so I'm getting more and more worried they've missed an opportunity to add in some really interesting mechanics and gameplay, and we're going to get some bare bone mechanic instead

Fingers crossed!

I'm sure there will be a HOTSPOTS mini-game if folk shout loudly enough... (but won't be holding my breath)

 

[rp198419]

I would help people in the USS scenarios...provided there was just ONE unified limpet controller and limpets did not take up valuable cargo space. That way you could reasonably carry fuel, repair and other limpets.

The proposed mechanic is just...meh.

 

[rp198419]

This. A hundred times.


Discovery scanners and limpet controllers should all be core modules.

Agreed. This ^^^

 

[Marc_Hicks]

What exactly do you mean by new mechanics? As to stand-alone mini-games I can't see any at the moment. Maybe when legs comes out we will be able to go to the bar and play poker.

There is a good reason why this bloke is on my ignore list .

 

[NeilF]

I was really hoping that the BGS changes would inspire me to take more interest.

The BGS still seems as boring and uninteresting as before.

As for the 'scenarios' in USS instances...the food lady will be disappointed; I'm not going shopping for anyone. What utter rubbish, really.

Now, if she were offering me a mission to escort her to her destination, I'd probably say yes.

Come on FD...food, really?

You mean if she'd instead of asking you to fetch something and bring it back, she'd instead asked you to escort her to a neighbouring system, and then escort her in normal space through an asteroid field to another ship she was meeting up with. And during this flight through the asteroid field she came under attack from some other ships? And on arriving at the other ship, you had to protect them both while they exited the asteroid field etc etc...

Or, if she'd asked you to help assaulting an enemy asteroid base (akin to attacking a megaship), where, when you arrived, she and a couple of other ships then became an NPC wing you could give basic commands to (attack this/defend that)?


You basically mean gameplay more akin to the depth of gameplay on offer even in 1998?


Yes the BGS and Scenario improvements are nice, but so much of it is such small steps in questionable directions.

 

[NeilF]

I'm sure there will be a HOTSPOTS mini-game if folk shout loudly enough... (but won't be holding my breath)

That's just it... Hotspots should be the exact opposite of a mini-game. They should be/will be realistically stateful. ie: If you go there and mine a Hotspot of half its valuable minable asteroids, the remaining 50% will be there for you or others to mine later. And once mined down to 0%, gone forever!

And consider if FD manually sprinkles some Hotspots across a region as part of some CG. And consider if this was done sometimes as part OPEN only CGs?


Look what you've gone and done! You've got me all excited again!

 

[rp198419]

You should be able to focus away from the panel and just not respond, allowing you a third choice of not getting involved.

Is a third selection option too complicated to code Adam?

 

[NeilF]

This. A hundred times.


Discovery scanners and limpet controllers should all be core modules.

Agreed at least to some degree:-

How many people are going to be able to take advantage of this supply fuel scenario? ie: How many folks carry around fuel limpets just incase?

And how many folks are going to go to a station and refit, just to come back to complete such a scenario?


It's been an issue to me for a long time, the amount of times gameplay is shut off from CMDRs simply because of needless reasons. eg: Imagine if we could dock with other ships, offering a means to transfer things, fuel being one of them. But cargo and materials being others.

And indeed docking could also become the beginning/ending of a mission to collect/deliver something too.

Or all ships should have a basic limpet to do basic delivery/collection as standard.

 

[NeilF]

So the discovery scanner becomes a mandatory module, since it's being used to find USS and scenarios play out in USS. Make it a core module FD, or the gankers with not a care in the world for scenarios and USS will have an even easier time, since your own ship will be at a one slot less available disadvantage.

I also noticed the 5:22 timer on the USS shown in the stream. That is way too short. Some systems are huge, and you spend dozens of minutes to get anywhere in supercruise. Unless USS always spawn close to you, you won't be able to reach quite a lot of them within the expiration timer.

I was wondering about this too... Someone mentioned you can go to the system's Nav Beacon to achieve the same?

 

[rp198419]

How many people are going to be able to take advantage of this supply fuel scenario? ie: How many folks carry around fuel limpets just incase?

And how many folks are going to go to a station and refit, just to come back to complete such a scenario?


It's been an issue to me for a long time, the amount of times gameplay is shut off from CMDRs simply because of needless reasons. eg: Imagine if we could dock with other ships, offering a means to transfer things, fuel being one of them. But cargo and materials being others.

And indeed docking could also become the beginning/ending of a mission to collect/deliver something too.

Or all ships should have a basic limpet to do basic delivery/collection as standard.

X:Rebirth has all these things.

Why not ED?

 

[rp198419]

Thanks FDev lots more juicy things to play with But, can we now please get rid of the wedding barges?

I so agree!