I have been hanging around these forums awhile now and I believe it's about time I contributed. I'm going to make this fairly straightforward and concise. Being a player who has been truly addicted to your game from the start, I'm going to list in order of importance the changes and improvements that I feel (and many here I hope will also agree) that this game needs because I and others desperately want this game to live up to its potential. I fear that if these improvements are not made soon then you will not have enough players left for these changes to matter.
Critical
You need to fix your core game.
-Instancing and Wings-
This needs to be fixed asap. Instancing issues and bugs with the wingman system means you're hemorrhaging players right now because we can't enjoy the game together with friends. When we do manage to get together, we don't see anyone or we can't get into the same instance as others. In my opinion you also need to make both the instance and the wings larger. At the moment this game cannot be categorized as an MMO, and more worryingly from a legal perspective this is an arguable case.
-Missions and NPCs-
The galaxy does not feel alive, there is nothing to do on the face of it, which will be a crucial problem for your XBone customers. Missions need to be multi-tiered, deeper and more integral with the NPC system. They need to be far more rewarding and you need more variety. You need to be clearer regarding how the minor factions work and the benefits of supporting a minor faction. NPCs needs to have a level of persistence and sophistication (having them interdict you all the time is not the answer, it's just annoying). There needs to be pirate bases, mining bases, recruitment centres and other artifacts to fill your systems instead of just the same stations and planets. I think in general as well the focus needs to be less on mini-games, meta-layered concepts, we need additional game content to be integrated with the main game.
-Open/Solo Dilemma-
This needs to be addressed whether you like it or not. You cannot have the situation to remain where a player can effectively cheat and jump into solo if they need to do something critical or outdo an opponent without ever seeing them. This is like playing a board game but you are allowing players to play the same board game in different rooms. Why can a player playing in solo affect what I'm doing in Open?
Here's my solution: The system is already split into Solo, Private Groups and Open - good. The type of player that wants to play in Solo does not care about the multiplayer aspect, there is no need to give them the ability to influence the players playing in Open. The 2 universes should be separated, I understand this is not hard to do technically. Either i) Separate Open and Solo/Private Group Universes or ii) Even better: Give us another universe for true multiplayer - let's call this Real Open. Get rid of the P2P architecture for Real Open, get rid of the instancing cap and give us proper servers so we can all see each other and experience the game as it's supposed to be. More expensive? Charge us for Real Open. You will not be going against your Kickstarter pledges as we will still have Normal Open/Private Groups/Solo which are free, you are just adding an option for the MMO universe. Funds from this will be used to improve the game for both Real Open and Normal Open/Solo. Everyone wins.
Less Critical but Important Additions
I'm not going to go into additional details with these as they're pretty straightforward and has been debated to death on these forums. They are just as important as the above issues mentioned above but are not critical right now. In order of what needs to be improved first:
- Powerplay mechanics:
- Needs to have less grind, more variety
- Powerplay weapons needs balancing
- Player controlled NPCs
- Player controlled stations/mini bases
- Co-pilots (Player and NPC)
- Mining needs to be retuned
- More Weapons
- More Ships (incl. Carriers, Cruiser class and Capital class)
- Planetary Landings
- Thargoids
Hope I haven't offended anyone here, especially with the Open/Solo proposal as I know there are strong feelings amongst forum contributors regarding this - I wanted to offer a solution that will satisfy everyone and cause the least amount of compromise.
I understand the developers are not just going to go and take every bit of this and act upon it. But if there's anything to take away I hope it's the idea that you have got to fix the core game first. What has been stated above is I hope for the good of the game, I and I believe many others want these changes because we want the dream/vision that David Braben sold us. We want Elite
angerous to be successful, a watershed in gaming history and for Frontier developers to be regarded as trailblazers. We still believe, I hope FDev still do to.
Critical
You need to fix your core game.
-Instancing and Wings-
This needs to be fixed asap. Instancing issues and bugs with the wingman system means you're hemorrhaging players right now because we can't enjoy the game together with friends. When we do manage to get together, we don't see anyone or we can't get into the same instance as others. In my opinion you also need to make both the instance and the wings larger. At the moment this game cannot be categorized as an MMO, and more worryingly from a legal perspective this is an arguable case.
-Missions and NPCs-
The galaxy does not feel alive, there is nothing to do on the face of it, which will be a crucial problem for your XBone customers. Missions need to be multi-tiered, deeper and more integral with the NPC system. They need to be far more rewarding and you need more variety. You need to be clearer regarding how the minor factions work and the benefits of supporting a minor faction. NPCs needs to have a level of persistence and sophistication (having them interdict you all the time is not the answer, it's just annoying). There needs to be pirate bases, mining bases, recruitment centres and other artifacts to fill your systems instead of just the same stations and planets. I think in general as well the focus needs to be less on mini-games, meta-layered concepts, we need additional game content to be integrated with the main game.
-Open/Solo Dilemma-
This needs to be addressed whether you like it or not. You cannot have the situation to remain where a player can effectively cheat and jump into solo if they need to do something critical or outdo an opponent without ever seeing them. This is like playing a board game but you are allowing players to play the same board game in different rooms. Why can a player playing in solo affect what I'm doing in Open?
Here's my solution: The system is already split into Solo, Private Groups and Open - good. The type of player that wants to play in Solo does not care about the multiplayer aspect, there is no need to give them the ability to influence the players playing in Open. The 2 universes should be separated, I understand this is not hard to do technically. Either i) Separate Open and Solo/Private Group Universes or ii) Even better: Give us another universe for true multiplayer - let's call this Real Open. Get rid of the P2P architecture for Real Open, get rid of the instancing cap and give us proper servers so we can all see each other and experience the game as it's supposed to be. More expensive? Charge us for Real Open. You will not be going against your Kickstarter pledges as we will still have Normal Open/Private Groups/Solo which are free, you are just adding an option for the MMO universe. Funds from this will be used to improve the game for both Real Open and Normal Open/Solo. Everyone wins.
Less Critical but Important Additions
I'm not going to go into additional details with these as they're pretty straightforward and has been debated to death on these forums. They are just as important as the above issues mentioned above but are not critical right now. In order of what needs to be improved first:
- Powerplay mechanics:
- Needs to have less grind, more variety
- Powerplay weapons needs balancing
- Player controlled NPCs
- Player controlled stations/mini bases
- Co-pilots (Player and NPC)
- Mining needs to be retuned
- More Weapons
- More Ships (incl. Carriers, Cruiser class and Capital class)
- Planetary Landings
- Thargoids
Hope I haven't offended anyone here, especially with the Open/Solo proposal as I know there are strong feelings amongst forum contributors regarding this - I wanted to offer a solution that will satisfy everyone and cause the least amount of compromise.
I understand the developers are not just going to go and take every bit of this and act upon it. But if there's anything to take away I hope it's the idea that you have got to fix the core game first. What has been stated above is I hope for the good of the game, I and I believe many others want these changes because we want the dream/vision that David Braben sold us. We want Elite
angerous to be successful, a watershed in gaming history and for Frontier developers to be regarded as trailblazers. We still believe, I hope FDev still do to.
