"Do they play their own game?!"

[V'larr]

I dunno, but in general I get my WF drops together way more faster than in ED. WAY more. Like in: WF might take days - ED takes MONTHS. Try playing with friends. It usually increases your drops in several ways.

Oh believe me, I know. Ever since I stopped playing due to finding out about the XP splitting in this game, I went and got into Warframe. I'm now MR25.

And I think I'd rather do my grinds to Duke/Rear Admiral in Elite all over from scratch rather than subject myself further to the massive amounts of RNG nonsense that exists in WF, even with 'radsharing' and other such things. DE are absolutely one of the worst sinners I've ever seen when it comes to over-use of RNG. Still second to Wargaming, but they're not far behind.

__

This ^
Testing gameplay (or workflow in my field) is intended to make sure the pieces fit together in a way that makes sense. It'll throw up some of the bugs, sure, but that's not it's primary purpose. Testing it early is difficult because you don't have all the pieces and often it's not until you have the jigsaw completed that you realize that the picture is ugly. At that point, the developer has two choices - either put some bandaids over the worst bits and release what you have, or throw the whole thing out and start again, knowing that you'll be months late on the project.

In an open-world game like ED there are so many different styles of play - even if they follow the same gameplay loop - that it's incredibly difficult to create something that works for everyone.

Still not a reason to at least make an effort. There's no harm that could be done by introducing dedicated & trusted players and community members to the design table.

I think it is very often the case, no matter what game you're talking about, that development teams do not have the same perspective as someone who lives and breathes the content they put out, and that without opening themselves up to that perspective, things that seem like glaring flaws and a clear trip down a rabbit hole will, to the development team, seem trivial or nonconsequential.

It doesn't need to be perfect, and sure it's difficult to create something that works for everyone - but that's precisely what makes it worth striving for.

 

[Ezzy]

Lot of subjective assumptions in your claims. You have issues granted. That's whole takeaway.

As I said yes some devs might involve gameplay testing but mostly devs test on their community, like it or not. Because of game's scope some extra gameplay testing for ED - especially how subjective each person's opinion is - might be fruitless effort.

Of course they're subjective, but I'll give you a few examples of terrible design. And this comes from someone who's liked a lot of things about the game, but is just frustrated by the design. I've only played 2 months (500h), so a lot of things are still unknown and new to me, that's for sure.

The Market - There's no search, no sorting, no "buy/sell all" button, the price comparison tool is horrific
Outfitting - no search, horrific layout with no sorting, stored modules feature is one of the biggest messes in the game, no feature for grouping modules as quick "loadouts" for exploration, thargoids, pvp, science etc. Instead, you have stored modules that every time you take something out of or start a transit to current station, resets its location in the list and you have to scroll back down to where you were. Not to mention it doesn't even tell you what station the module is at as far as I know.
Material traders - no search, horrific GUI.
Mission hub - no search, no sorting (by distance, type or anything), options don't save, everything promotes board flipping. Search would get people to do the things they enjoy faster.
Shipyard - No images of ships, can't swap ships if you have cargo and selected ship has no racks (station storage, anyone?).
Galaxy Map - route plotter in a game about exploration that only has from A to B options? Bookmarks without custom text in the galaxy map itself, no color coding, no folders, no grouping of said folders.
Surface prospecting - Just a huge mess of RNG instead of a ship-based prospecting feature (module?), that made finding a certain raw material straight-forward once in SRV. You can master FTL, but finding rocks is impossible?
Landing on planets - when dismissed and recalled, ships find a perfect spot for landing. Why can't they suggest this to you when you're manually landing it? You just have to fly around aimlessly until something comes up. Just show it in the terrain map.

Some of these are very subjective, but I've played games since the mid-80s and rarely come across a game with a GUI that actually fights you from progressing.
I don't want to be led by the hand, but christ, make it intuitive and smooth at least. People spend thousands of hours in this game, of which most of goes to repetition and fighting with the GUI. I've watched streamers struggle with things just as much as I've encountered these myself. Naturally, I blamed myself first.
I get that designing the same GUI for PC and consoles is hard, but this level of artificially slowing the players down just screams "we don't have a lot of content in the game -> increase repetition".

 

[Frenotx]

Not being led by the hand was a selling point for a lot of people, search functionality has improved massively already and IIRC there's been DEV talk of an in game reference source in focused feedback.

As for bugs given how many playing styles there are plus tech differences some will always slip through, it's not a big deal in the age of the internet as you can bang out a hotfix.

None of which has anything whatsoever to do with assuming they don't have playtesters.

"Not being led by the hand" done well leaves things very open, but makes available the tools and info needed to figure stuff out on your own in a reasonable amount of time. The amount of collective man-hours spent testing, experimenting, and generally figuring out the stats and mechanics in this game are IMMENSE. Hell, just amount of time I've personally initially figuring out the shield mechanics, figuring out the armour mechanics and hardness values of ships, figuring out the heat mechanics and heat capacity of ships, and figuring out the finer points of various experimental effects are IMMENSE. Thankfully some of that info has since been made available in game, but a lot of stuff still isn't. While these things CAN be figured out by players, it's entirely unreasonable to EXPECT players to spend that much time on such things. If you consider all time spent by other figuring out the rest of the aforementioned mechanics and the myriad other things not mentioned, a single player would be hard pressed to get that info on their own even if they spend 40 hours a week, every week, not playing the game but testing / experimenting mechanics for years.

The only way a player can realistically get the full picture is to utilize the various 3rd party resources, and capitalize on the crowd-sourced effort of Elite's many devoted fans. If you want to just play the game and not scour the net for info, you're just SoL if you have any hope of really knowing what's going on, or making informed decisions. It's not, "this game doesn't hold your hand", it's just lazy, poor game design.

 

[Stigbob]

"Not being led by the hand" done well leaves things very open, but makes available the tools and info needed to figure stuff out on your own in a reasonable amount of time. The amount of collective man-hours spent testing, experimenting, and generally figuring out the stats and mechanics in this game are IMMENSE. Hell, just amount of time I've personally initially figuring out the shield mechanics, figuring out the armour mechanics and hardness values of ships, figuring out the heat mechanics and heat capacity of ships, and figuring out the finer points of various experimental effects are IMMENSE. Thankfully some of that info has since been made available in game, but a lot of stuff still isn't. While these things CAN be figured out by players, it's entirely unreasonable to EXPECT players to spend that much time on such things. If you consider all time spent by other figuring out the rest of the aforementioned mechanics and the myriad other things not mentioned, a single player would be hard pressed to get that info on their own even if they spend 40 hours a week, every week, not playing the game but testing / experimenting mechanics for years.

Yep I know what you mean I've done sciencing of things like clean drives and their cooling effect on weapons (you get a couple of extra railgun shots). More recently I did an experimental grind to check just how productive it is against a muchless focused approach (much less so grind is counterproductive).

The thing is I enjoyed doing the testing, as I'm sure you did if you are of the frame of mind that likes to find out. Sometimes it's just fun to work it out for yourself.

The only way a player can realistically get the full picture is to utilize the various 3rd party resources, and capitalize on the crowd-sourced effort of Elite's many devoted fans. If you want to just play the game and not scour the net for info, you're just SoL if you have any hope of really knowing what's going on, or making informed decisions. It's not, "this game doesn't hold your hand", it's just lazy, poor game design.

True, however all games now have external resources (except failures no-one plays) so anticipating that isn't a massive intuitive leap neither is extrapolating why bother from that. Even if they include an in game reference resource Inara will probably still be better as that's all it does, and it does it very well.

Still though none of this means they don't have playtesters.

 

[Faybs]

"Not being led by the hand" done well leaves things very open, but makes available the tools and info needed to figure stuff out on your own in a reasonable amount of time. The amount of collective man-hours spent testing, experimenting, and generally figuring out the stats and mechanics in this game are IMMENSE. Hell, just amount of time I've personally initially figuring out the shield mechanics, figuring out the armour mechanics and hardness values of ships, figuring out the heat mechanics and heat capacity of ships, and figuring out the finer points of various experimental effects are IMMENSE. Thankfully some of that info has since been made available in game, but a lot of stuff still isn't. While these things CAN be figured out by players, it's entirely unreasonable to EXPECT players to spend that much time on such things. If you consider all time spent by other figuring out the rest of the aforementioned mechanics and the myriad other things not mentioned, a single player would be hard pressed to get that info on their own even if they spend 40 hours a week, every week, not playing the game but testing / experimenting mechanics for years.

The only way a player can realistically get the full picture is to utilize the various 3rd party resources, and capitalize on the crowd-sourced effort of Elite's many devoted fans. If you want to just play the game and not scour the net for info, you're just SoL if you have any hope of really knowing what's going on, or making informed decisions. It's not, "this game doesn't hold your hand", it's just lazy, poor game design.

Actually, a lot of the stuff people like Truesilver and yourself reverse engineered was meant to be hidden, as part of game design. I can't find it now, but I remember a quote from Sandro in around 2015-2016 where people were asking for these values to be displayed in outfitting, and he basically said no, those are meant to be hidden. Which makes absolutely no sense, because in a real galaxy these values would be published by starship and component manufacturers (look for any civilian car, aircraft or boat part online and you can get all its specs). All that means is that people are going to figure it out anyway.

 

[V'larr]

Of course they're subjective, but I'll give you a few examples of terrible design. And this comes from someone who's liked a lot of things about the game, but is just frustrated by the design. I've only played 2 months (500h), so a lot of things are still unknown and new to me, that's for sure.

The Market - There's no search, no sorting, no "buy/sell all" button, the price comparison tool is horrific
Outfitting - no search, horrific layout with no sorting, stored modules feature is one of the biggest messes in the game, no feature for grouping modules as quick "loadouts" for exploration, thargoids, pvp, science etc. Instead, you have stored modules that every time you take something out of or start a transit to current station, resets its location in the list and you have to scroll back down to where you were. Not to mention it doesn't even tell you what station the module is at as far as I know.
Material traders - no search, horrific GUI.
Mission hub - no search, no sorting (by distance, type or anything), options don't save, everything promotes board flipping. Search would get people to do the things they enjoy faster.
Shipyard - No images of ships, can't swap ships if you have cargo and selected ship has no racks (station storage, anyone?).
Galaxy Map - route plotter in a game about exploration that only has from A to B options? Bookmarks without custom text in the galaxy map itself, no color coding, no folders, no grouping of said folders.
Surface prospecting - Just a huge mess of RNG instead of a ship-based prospecting feature (module?), that made finding a certain raw material straight-forward once in SRV. You can master FTL, but finding rocks is impossible?
Landing on planets - when dismissed and recalled, ships find a perfect spot for landing. Why can't they suggest this to you when you're manually landing it? You just have to fly around aimlessly until something comes up. Just show it in the terrain map.

Some of these are very subjective, but I've played games since the mid-80s and rarely come across a game with a GUI that actually fights you from progressing.
I don't want to be led by the hand, but christ, make it intuitive and smooth at least. People spend thousands of hours in this game, of which most of goes to repetition and fighting with the GUI. I've watched streamers struggle with things just as much as I've encountered these myself. Naturally, I blamed myself first.
I get that designing the same GUI for PC and consoles is hard, but this level of artificially slowing the players down just screams "we don't have a lot of content in the game -> increase repetition".

You make a lot of good points, all these things would make lovely QOL improvements! I'd enjoy seeing a suggestion thread with details about how these things could be better, maybe even some pictures if you're artistically inclined?

Actually, a lot of the stuff people like Truesilver and yourself reverse engineered was meant to be hidden, as part of game design. I can't find it now, but I remember a quote from Sandro in around 2015-2016 where people were asking for these values to be displayed in outfitting, and he basically said no, those are meant to be hidden. Which makes absolutely no sense, because in a real galaxy these values would be published by starship and component manufacturers (look for any civilian car, aircraft or boat part online and you can get all its specs). All that means is that people are going to figure it out anyway.

Not the first time Sandro's had quite the misconception with design. The guy is likable, and I wouldn't mind carrying a discussion with him, but boy does some of the decisions made make me grit my teeth. (Though I'm still not entirely certain whether it's him or that he's the voicepiece for the decision-makers that don't directly interact with us players.)

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

for me the question is - not "do they play their own game" but, "do those guys play any games"
or do they have anyone who was educated in game or UI design?
many of the things they code in feel like re-inventions of the wheel, without following

yesterday, i was trying to help a friend unlocking Selene Jean,

while the ability to command limpets to ignore some stuff, was a great QoL feature -> the way it was integrated into the UI and gameplay is so horrible, that i wonder if anyone at FDEV has ever used it.
currently i have no idea what is on my ignore list, neither do i know if i just need to ignore it.
many of the lower grade materials are there because of the QoL "auto ignore when storage is full", that doesn't auto-unignore once i consume something of those.
but yeah, how can i know that those materials are ignored when they wont show up on my radar? (i have to look in the contact panel and scroll down a list, that jumps back up all the time)

not only could they have made the ignore feature something where i can switch between a whitelist and a blacklist.
the list should be accessible in a seperate panel, eg. the crotchpanel
the list should also allow for quick general filters, like "ignore illegal" and "collect every material i don't have stocked)
a multicrew gunner should have it accessible interface too when he he got the control over the limpets - and not in any side-panel but as one of the panels you can switch between...

last but not least, the need to have ammo based drones to collect stuff for materials you can only gather in conflict zones is beyond idiotic. you don't want tractor beams? hell then make it a grapple-hook harpoon based system.

 

[Stigbob]

Actually, a lot of the stuff people like Truesilver and yourself reverse engineered was meant to be hidden, as part of game design. I can't find it now, but I remember a quote from Sandro in around 2015-2016 where people were asking for these values to be displayed in outfitting, and he basically said no, those are meant to be hidden. Which makes absolutely no sense, because in a real galaxy these values would be published by starship and component manufacturers (look for any civilian car, aircraft or boat part online and you can get all its specs). All that means is that people are going to figure it out anyway.

If you keep these things vague it reduces min-maxing, which tends to makes things dull.

 

[Frenotx]

If you keep these things vague it reduces min-maxing, which tends to makes things dull.

As evident by the fact we've figured these things out, people are going to figure these things out. Keeping it excessively vague in-game just puts users of 3rd party sites at a big advantage over someone that just wants to play the game.

The way you "fix" min-maxing is to created a balanced and well-designed make. Metas will still happen of course, but because your game is balanced and well-designed, the difference between a top-tier meta ship and everything else will be very small. There will always be people that stick to the meta setups even if they're only very marginally the most effective, but small skill deltas, differing play styles, shifting popular strategies, and possible occasional very small number tweaks as needed from FDev would be plenty to keep things dynamic.

 

[Old Duck]

There will always be people that stick to the meta setups even if they're only very marginally the most effective, but small skill deltas, differing play styles, shifting popular strategies, and possible occasional very small number tweaks as needed from FDev would be plenty to keep things dynamic.

I purposefully avoid meta builds because they are dull IMO. I find much more thrilling to win a battle using "humble" builds, like the other day when I defeated a wanted CMDR flying a Krait. I got him down to 40% hull before he waked out of the hazres. I was flying a Sidewinder (albeit a highly engineered one) with burst lasers at the time

 

[Frenotx]

I purposefully avoid meta builds because they are dull IMO. I find much more thrilling to win a battle using "humble" builds, like the other day when I defeated a wanted CMDR flying a Krait. I got him down to 40% hull before he waked out of the hazres. I was flying a Sidewinder (albeit a highly engineered one) with burst lasers at the time

I personally prefer more off-the-wall stuff, too. Look at what the meta is, and try to come up with something weird to catch people by surprise, throw them off-balance, or at least give them an interesting fight. Unfortunately, the terrible balance we currently have means that the meta is SO strong, it tends to make everything else irrelevant. Metas aren't a problem- metas that are grossly superior to everything else, are. It's the difference between,
"Gun A can shoot 1% further than gun B, but I prefer the ergonomics and looks of gun B so I stick with that"
and,
"Gun A does twice as much damage as gun B, has 75% better reach, as jams gun B on on a near-miss."

In one situation there's room for choice, despite one option being marginally statistically superior. In the other, one option might as well not exist.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

a simple example for how FDEV failed to create diversity,
was the 30% heat reduction on all three legacy secondaries for railguns

tell me one reason to NOT choose one of those three for any railgun?
especially the super penetrator mod that comes with no negative (like removing the whole thermal component of the damage)

arguments like "now i can never create a ultra cool running railgun anymore" should have been answered with "you are not supposed to have the hammer of god and shooting them without consequences in the first place"

but that is all a result of that half-**** (what is the not offensive term for this?) revamp of engineering with forced powercreep.

 

[Zeeman]

Of course they're subjective, but I'll give you a few examples of terrible design. And this comes from someone who's liked a lot of things about the game, but is just frustrated by the design. I've only played 2 months (500h), so a lot of things are still unknown and new to me, that's for sure.

The Market - There's no search, no sorting, no "buy/sell all" button, the price comparison tool is horrific
Outfitting - no search, horrific layout with no sorting, stored modules feature is one of the biggest messes in the game, no feature for grouping modules as quick "loadouts" for exploration, thargoids, pvp, science etc. Instead, you have stored modules that every time you take something out of or start a transit to current station, resets its location in the list and you have to scroll back down to where you were. Not to mention it doesn't even tell you what station the module is at as far as I know.
Material traders - no search, horrific GUI.
Mission hub - no search, no sorting (by distance, type or anything), options don't save, everything promotes board flipping. Search would get people to do the things they enjoy faster.
Shipyard - No images of ships, can't swap ships if you have cargo and selected ship has no racks (station storage, anyone?).
Galaxy Map - route plotter in a game about exploration that only has from A to B options? Bookmarks without custom text in the galaxy map itself, no color coding, no folders, no grouping of said folders.
Surface prospecting - Just a huge mess of RNG instead of a ship-based prospecting feature (module?), that made finding a certain raw material straight-forward once in SRV. You can master FTL, but finding rocks is impossible?
Landing on planets - when dismissed and recalled, ships find a perfect spot for landing. Why can't they suggest this to you when you're manually landing it? You just have to fly around aimlessly until something comes up. Just show it in the terrain map.


I get that designing the same GUI for PC and consoles is hard, but this level of artificially slowing the players down just screams "we don't have a lot of content in the game -> increase repetition".

Totally agree. The UI and UX are woeful in so many ways, I don't understand why I need so many bindings simply to navigate the ship menus, for a start! Apple manage it with 6 buttons. Don't get me started on fire groups, and making scanners something that you need to deploy hardpoints to use, and waste fire group bindings on, yet they are mounted to utility slots, fer heavens sake...

Z...

 

[Zeeman]

I personally prefer more off-the-wall stuff, too. Look at what the meta is, and try to come up with something weird to catch people by surprise, throw them off-balance, or at least give them an interesting fight. Unfortunately, the terrible balance we currently have means that the meta is SO strong, it tends to make everything else irrelevant. Metas aren't a problem- metas that are grossly superior to everything else, are. It's the difference between,
"Gun A can shoot 1% further than gun B, but I prefer the ergonomics and looks of gun B so I stick with that"
and,
"Gun A does twice as much damage as gun B, has 75% better reach, as jams gun B on on a near-miss."

In one situation there's room for choice, despite one option being marginally statistically superior. In the other, one option might as well not exist.

Balance pre-engineers was quite good. They even had "engineered"weapons at one stage late in Beta. Overchaged, cool running, focused etc variants existed of lasers and mc's/cannons. The balance was good, too, as there was a fair downside for each gain. That is how it should have stayed.


Z...

 

[CMDR Redcrest]

I agree nobody should be forced to take their work home with them.
Time off from work actually contributes to productivity.
Although if FDEV have actual play testers: people who just play the game and point out what works and what's sub-optimal, I get the feeling they're not listened to as much as they should be.
I think play testing has essentially been outsourced to the forums.
No way would anybody describe the original Guardian unlock process with it's constant rinse repeat as fun.
I get the feeling that nobody in the pay of FDEV has ever sat down and engineered, say, a Python from start to finish to G5. Which includes material gathering from scratch. If they had engineers would be improved further (around 10 rolls for a top G5 mod would be revised downward for a start).
This is totally based on my own impressions as I have no insider knowledge. However if I can reach that perception so can other's and should probably be addressed.

FDEV can contact me via email and I will be happy to play test all future updates ahead of time for a wage to be mutually agreed! I can work from home so an expensive relocation package to Cambridge will not be required! Naturally I will sign any required NDA'S.

 

[Ian Phillips]

FDEV can contact me via email and I will be happy to play test all future updates ahead of time for a wage to be mutually agreed! I can work from home so an expensive relocation package to Cambridge will not be required! Naturally I will sign any required NDA'S.

Ever heard of Beta's ?

 

[CMDR Redcrest]

Ever heard of Beta's ?

Yeah I've joined a few.
Ever heard of tongue in cheek humour?

 

[Ian Phillips]

Heard? Yes. (Have you?)

Keep biting my tongue though

 

[Chaparral]

I assume that the devs write their code on PCs or Macs or on some high end workstation. Since the 80's, pointing and clicking with a mouse cursor has been a thing. Not in ED menus. So many are traversed ASFD. If you want to get down to core fails, and a basic disconnect between dev and player, it smacks me in the face every time I request docking or want to sell cargo. These guys cannot seriously think this is a finished product appropriate for 2018.

If they can't get such a basic functionality correct, are you really surprised you have to do 18 or whatever loops to unlock a turreted small guardian weapon. This is indy gaming. Don't get upset about it.

Ever heard of Beta's - ROFL that put a smile on my face that will last all day. Every day is a beta in ED. Wait 5 minutes for the next rush nerf and find out.

 

[Ezzy]

This is indy gaming. Don't get upset about it.

Ever heard of Beta's - ROFL that put a smile on my face that will last all day. Every day is a beta in ED. Wait 5 minutes for the next rush nerf and find out.

To be fair even games like World of Warcraft still have this kind of issues. The reason why I quit it. The constant Patch->buff->nerf->nerf->nerf->nerf->Patch->buff->nerf->nerf->nerf->nerf cycle was just too exhausting. I get that balance is an impossible task in games like this.

It really doesn't matter what the end-game is like, if the journey there is pure pain when it doesn't have to be.