It's not an opinion. It's a dev quote about MC.
Discussion: Using NPC Crews as a Foundation for Multi-Crew
- Thread starter sandkid
- Start date
Simple: Buy financial control of the company. Otherwise, I have no legal suggestions for you.
Here is why human (us players) as multi-crew will never work, ever. Nature.
Can any one tell me the term for riding on the back seat of your friends motorcycle, assuming he's a dude same as you? That's called ridin bi*ch. And NO ONE wants to ride bi*ch. No one wants to take a back seat and try to pewpew what the pilot happens to fly by. They'll always think they can do it better.
Having played in numerous multi-player MMOs that have multi-crewed vehicles ... the ones that have sort-of worked ... the vehicles were utilized as a means to get from point A to point B where I can then hop out and do my own pewpew. Occasionally I may shoot at other players as we fly over head in a helo, but even that is short lived as something more exciting below than riding bi*ch comes along and I jump out of the helo, again, to do my own pewpew.
Then you have the jagoff pilots who wait for the vehicle (ground or flight) to fill up, then do a quick suicide dive or themselves, decide to hop out to pewpew leaving the vehicle pilotless.
Now I realize that some of the above examples really only apply to BF style MMO's but the not wanting to be second string (ridin bi*ch) is universal and timeless.
NPCs - they don't care about ridin bi*ch.
Can any one tell me the term for riding on the back seat of your friends motorcycle, assuming he's a dude same as you? That's called ridin bi*ch. And NO ONE wants to ride bi*ch. No one wants to take a back seat and try to pewpew what the pilot happens to fly by. They'll always think they can do it better.
Having played in numerous multi-player MMOs that have multi-crewed vehicles ... the ones that have sort-of worked ... the vehicles were utilized as a means to get from point A to point B where I can then hop out and do my own pewpew. Occasionally I may shoot at other players as we fly over head in a helo, but even that is short lived as something more exciting below than riding bi*ch comes along and I jump out of the helo, again, to do my own pewpew.
Then you have the jagoff pilots who wait for the vehicle (ground or flight) to fill up, then do a quick suicide dive or themselves, decide to hop out to pewpew leaving the vehicle pilotless.
Now I realize that some of the above examples really only apply to BF style MMO's but the not wanting to be second string (ridin bi*ch) is universal and timeless.
NPCs - they don't care about ridin bi*ch.
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Open letter?? kidding... but, this is the hard part. Beyond the suggestions forum FDev doesn't really provide a decent way for the average player to provide them with suggestions (that I'm aware of) and I can understand why; you see some of the things that are posted in that forum and the way some "discussions" go... It's also unclear how involved the Community Managers are with browsing the forums for suggestions and passing them on to the powers that be since I have never actually seen a dev post in the suggestions forums (again, I completely understand why they don't post there). The unfortunate fact of the matter is there are occasionally good suggestions put forth that receive positive feed back but then after a while they get buried and we have no idea if the devs took notice or not. While I don't think the support of an "influencer" would hurt any, I also don't think it should be necessary.
My best suggestion would be to reach out to a community manager (PM on the forum or some sort of social media) and inquire as to how community suggestions are escalated to higher ups. What criteria has to be met for them to actually take a suggestion seriously. Make them aware of this thread as well. Getting the attention of someone within the company is far better than the attention of an "influencer". From my understanding they are supposed to be our point of contact with the developers so they would be a good starting point.
My cynical side thinks this won't make a difference though. I get the impression that Fdev have their goals for this game in mind already and nothing the community pushes towards them as far as suggestions for game mechanics and/or features go will change anything. I don't think there is Criteria in place that a suggestion could meet for them to take notice. The suggestions forum was probably a place that was set up for people to let their ideas fly free in a safe place that couldn't hurt anyone else. I would very much like cynical me to be proven wrong.
I see...that's disheartening, sorta. I mean, I don't make use of multi-crew for two big reasons: 1) it doesn't work very well and 2) I'm not that big into multiplayer features like this...
Which brings me to another quote:
As a motorcycle rider myself, I found this amusing but also very straight-forward. Thanks for that Tacyon! I can't say I've personally ever applied this concept to gaming, so forgive me for being a bit late to a party I ought be familiar with!
This is a pretty compelling explanation for why multi-crew as a feature doesn't make a lot of sense. Certainly in its current form and scope. I do think multi-crew could solve the 'riding B' problem if the roles were each much more developed...but now we're talking about a completely different game design from what Elite is. Elite is a starship flight sim, first and foremost, not a bridge sim or tactics sim like Star Trek titles or other similar games.
That begs the question: does multi-crew belong in Elite to begin with or should all multiplayer 'development' be focused on wings and PvP?
Back on topic a bit for this thread...if Elite really isn't meant to be a 'multi-crew' game, does that mean NPC crew should also not exist? Or, given they already do, should they be highly limited in scope like the SLF pilot - a tool for certain ships - and nothing more? Again, if we adhere to Elite is a flight sim first, do NPC crew really belong in that vision?
Thanks for continuing great input!