Does anyone at FDEV understand the word 'Incongruent' ?

[CMDR_Havok]

The reason I ask is because I have been playing the game for several weeks now and the game is full of 'Incongruencies',

For example:

Last night I spent an hour in an opposing system (Federation) during which time I took out a number of their Agents and, local security forces. Now in theory this should make me public enemy #1 in that system as well as throughout their territory.

Anyway, being out of fuel as well as ammo I decided to try and dock at a local station (Federal controlled) rather than return to one of our own as usual (as I had always assumed that trying to land at an enemy controlled system would be a no-no) .

Well I could hardly believe it when they not only allowed me to land but also repaired my ship AND gave me enough ammunition to be able to carry on my killing spree against their own people, Jesuz are these Guys STUPID or what ?
But its getts even better !
I decided to take a look at their outfitting bay and nearly rolled off my chair laughing when I saw that they were selling the 'Retributiobn' Laser ! (for those that dont know its the special Alliance weapon that you can unlock), WHY WHY WHY would a federal controlled system be willing to sell a special alliance weapon to an enemy pilot ? Why would they be selling it in the first place ?

Honestly although I LOVE THIS GAME some of the incongruecies and there are many are really dumbing it down and breaking the immersion.
And yet these sort of things seem relatively easy to solve, OK im no programmer BUT i would have thought that the code required to prevent some of these issues would be pretty straightforwrd, had anyone at Frontier been bothered to think it through a little.

My SECOND Example also relates to power play:

Upon noticing that one of our controlled system was experiencing a significant undermining effort, Me and a group of wingmen decided to go on patrol and chase the enemy ships out, We spent ages flying around in circles trying to protect our system from the enemy incursions but in a whole evening we saw hardly any enemy even enter the system, and yet the fortification effort carried on unabated.

OUR Conclusion is that our opponents must have been exploiting the solo mode option to perform their operation and evade our patrols.
It is a ludicrus and incongruent that a multiplayer game has a solo mode that effectively allows anyone to tactically sidestep enemy defences ! the temptation to use this exploit is just too tempting for many to ignore and completely ruins entire aspects of Elite as a multiplayer experience.

There are many other example of serious incongruencies and inconsistencies in this game, I hope the guys ate frontier or aware and working on them because thing like the two problems listed above are really spoiling the game (at least for me and the guys that I fly with).

 

[Sandmann]

Last time I pointed out "incongruencies" to Michael Brooks he was unable to justify the choices they'd made in the game's design (regarding flight model at that time) with any sort of in game logic, and instead shot me down with "playability trumps realism". I assume this is just one more of many such examples.

 

[Snowdog]

Oh please stop, they are working on the Console version now, maybe we will get some fixes after the money drys up on the console version, maybe not. Actions speak louder than words "we care what you think"

 

[satrycus]

Last time I pointed out "incongruencies" to Michael Brooks he was unable to justify the choices they'd made in the game's design (regarding flight model at that time) with any sort of in game logic, and instead shot me down with "playability trumps realism". I assume this is just one more of many such examples.

Still waiting for this fabled "(power)playability".

 

[Robert Maynard]

OUR Conclusion is that our opponents must have been exploiting the solo mode option to perform their operation and evade our patrols.
It is a ludicrus and incongruent that a multiplayer game has a solo mode that effectively allows anyone to tactically sidestep enemy defences ! the temptation to use this exploit is just too tempting for many to ignore and completely ruins entire aspects of Elite as a multiplayer experience.

Please continue discussion on this portion in the relevant thread to avoid this thread being closed or merged.

 

[Sim Maker]

As a SciFi fan all my life, I find Elites "logic" to be far from logical, so much so it pulls me out of the game and reminds me of clunky games from the 1980s like Top Trumps, Asteroids, Pac-Man, with VERY simple game mechanics....
.
Eat big pill, you can eat the Ghosts, when it wears off, you have to run from the Ghosts....how does this apply to Elite?.....
.
So I am hunting in a RES.....I am using my "imagination" and play back up to local security forces, I have been doing this since I got my mining ship shot out from under me and wanted pay back and to protect miners....So there is me and a few cops trying to take down an Anaconda and his wing.....violent battle, explosions and bullets flying everywhere.......chaos...good times......but no, wait, I have just "fizzed" a coppers shield.....at which point they IGNORE the massive anaconda trying to kill them......and all the cops who I have been Helping, turn on ME over a 200 credit fine?......I guess they ate the Big pill in PacMan?.........
.
Then we have ships that can fly faster than light, but all combat takes place at WWI and WWII aircraft speeds.
.
You can park a few miles from a Black Hole and never get hit by anything or suffer any more than I would around the Earth.....where are the rocks, planets, stars, and other junk getting pulled in to it?..........

 

[_Flin_]

Another incongruency:

There are 19.000 inhabited systems with more than 40.000 stations.
Assuming that the colonization of Space began before 2.300, and lasts now for 1000 years, this means that there are over 40 stations built each year, on average. If we assume that the amount of stations being built is accelerating (more systems, more planets, more people, more ressources), we should see way more than that each year.

So far we had 2 stations being built in half a year. Unity and Mercenary's Respite.


EDIT:
Other gameplay incongruencies.
- There is a civil war, but actually fighting in the conflict zones gives way less influence than hunting pirates in closeby systems.
- There is a civil war, but you don't get missions to fight in that war, but you get missions to fight in another war in a nearby system.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

--- Deleted ---

 

[Sandmann]

maybe we will get some fixes after the money drys up on the console version, maybe not.

I imagine once the money dries up all we're likely to see is another theme park tycoon game.

 

[CMDR Derrida]

Yeah, same thing experienced last night regarding the undermining...this town, is getting like a ghost town

 

[CMDR UBERPEITSCHE]

[...]

Or they just disagree with your godlike opinion and want it the way it works..

-

If the station/police force doesn't scan you when you're tyring to dock I assume nobody knows who you are because the system is automated.
Is privacy not a thing in the future anymore? Do all stations in the Elite Universe just know who you are among the million ships docking and outfitting every day?

Btw People who you shoot down can't tell the tale, so you're not as well knows as you would guess I imagine.

 

[Defacto]

Or they just disagree with your godlike opinion and want it the way it works..

-

If the station/police force doesn't scan you when you're tyring to dock I assume nobody knows who you are because the system is automated.
Is privacy not a thing in the future anymore? Do all stations in the Elite Universe just know who you are among the million ships docking and outfitting every day?

Btw People who you shoot down can't tell the tale, so you're not as well knows as you would guess I imagine.

Your own ship can automatically find out if any other ship is wanted int he current jurisdiction. Based on the docking request replies, the station always knows your standing with the local faction.
Yes, the station knows exactly who you are.

Ships that are attacked can signal for help, and all bounties stay, so yes, people who are shot down can tell the tale.

 

[ronin516]

By now I only have very few remaining explanations (rather : old jokes I used to make) :

1) for reasons unknown they have no idea what they're doing to the game

This Option basically is a mystery - as there would be no single, logical explanation for it. Not one.

2) they are so extremely short on resources that any type of feature implementation - for as long as it "functions" in any way - is fed into the Release build and pushed out the door with the next update

This Option basically implies that their Coders are 18hrs/day, tired and "crunch-time" burned out people that have no time to check for even the most basic logical dependencies or breaks.
Alternatively, the Company is being entirely run by finance and driven manically by stockholder priorities - or a step away from having to file Chapter 11 or something.

3) their Design Teams are persistently overruled by Marketing (non-professionals in terms of Gaming and Game content) or Executive Decisions (following priorities far away from any original Design Documents and -plans)

This Option implies that the Devs themselves do intend to make things logical and reasonable - but are overruled by non-professionals... leading to unprofessional results or varying nonsensical, contradictory, lore- and immersion-breaking and upto bizarre conditions.
Hence, good ideas taking a little more time to actually fit into the existing Game structure are simplified and "ironed over" simply for faster results and achieving fixed milestone deadlines and a fixed release schedule, for example.

4) the Design Team lacks any Common sense whatsoever and/or actually has no viable gameplay or MMO experience to either see all the dots that require connection/interaction or entirely fail to "connect the dots" due to not recognizing the consequences of their implementation.

This Option is rather bizarre.
But... it kinda holds up as we've all seen other Publishers or Studios take what would be a potentially terrific AAA-Blockbuster hit.... and ruin it by drowning it with nonsense/superficial Options/Elements instead of making it realistic, logcial and credible in nature.
That's the kind of guys to fail to see 180ton elephants in a small room - despite getting notified of their very presence in all forms and over months straight, all presented on a silver plate. Lacking the understanding of the fundamental issue, they persistently fail to realize where the problem is in the first place - plus they utterly fail to recognize even large direct results that take a massive negative impact on the entire game, its community and eventually its commercial success.
The kind of people who work on all & everything because they feel "just too warm" and go through great length to check the Air Conditioner - while actually failing to realize their building is bright-lit on fire.

That would be the worst Option - as one cannot help people lacking any common sense (and thus having no foresight, as well as being unable to recognize or learn from previous mistakes) - because whatever is presented to them as a major problem, they'd typically downright reject that there was any related problem in the first place.

ALL of this. And to add.....NOTHING in this game really works. It is all smoke and mirrors with a background illusion. A shame because it had the potential to compete with SC. But now even at this point in time It is just a grinder with no real personal player oriented goals to reach or any real content to immerse the player. At least for the love of god implement a real mission system. And stop trying to port the game to everything else and focus on the basic gameplay.

 

[CMDR UBERPEITSCHE]

Your own ship can automatically find out if any other ship is wanted int he current jurisdiction. Based on the docking request replies, the station always knows your standing with the local faction.
Yes, the station knows exactly who you are.

Ships that are attacked can signal for help, and all bounties stay, so yes, people who are shot down can tell the tale.

But you have to scan first, even if its the basic "I click you scan"?
And the fines/bounties seem universal to me, without saying what they where for.

I forgot about the hello message, you're right on that one. But that goes for rep, not your wanted status.
Why they sell you stuff if you're hated by them is a little odd.. capitalism ftw.

 

[Brandon31]

The reason I ask is because I have been playing the game for several weeks now and the game is full of 'Incongruencies',

For example:

Last night I spent an hour in an opposing system (Federation) during which time I took out a number of their Agents and, local security forces. Now in theory this should make me public enemy #1 in that system as well as throughout their territory.

Anyway, being out of fuel as well as ammo I decided to try and dock at a local station (Federal controlled) rather than return to one of our own as usual (as I had always assumed that trying to land at an enemy controlled system would be a no-no) .

Well I could hardly believe it when they not only allowed me to land but also repaired my ship AND gave me enough ammunition to be able to carry on my killing spree against their own people, Jesuz are these Guys STUPID or what ?
But its getts even better !
I decided to take a look at their outfitting bay and nearly rolled off my chair laughing when I saw that they were selling the 'Retributiobn' Laser ! (for those that dont know its the special Alliance weapon that you can unlock), WHY WHY WHY would a federal controlled system be willing to sell a special alliance weapon to an enemy pilot ? Why would they be selling it in the first place ?

Honestly although I LOVE THIS GAME some of the incongruecies and there are many are really dumbing it down and breaking the immersion.
And yet these sort of things seem relatively easy to solve, OK im no programmer BUT i would have thought that the code required to prevent some of these issues would be pretty straightforwrd, had anyone at Frontier been bothered to think it through a little.

My SECOND Example also relates to power play:

Upon noticing that one of our controlled system was experiencing a significant undermining effort, Me and a group of wingmen decided to go on patrol and chase the enemy ships out, We spent ages flying around in circles trying to protect our system from the enemy incursions but in a whole evening we saw hardly any enemy even enter the system, and yet the fortification effort carried on unabated.

OUR Conclusion is that our opponents must have been exploiting the solo mode option to perform their operation and evade our patrols.
It is a ludicrus and incongruent that a multiplayer game has a solo mode that effectively allows anyone to tactically sidestep enemy defences ! the temptation to use this exploit is just too tempting for many to ignore and completely ruins entire aspects of Elite as a multiplayer experience.

There are many other example of serious incongruencies and inconsistencies in this game, I hope the guys ate frontier or aware and working on them because thing like the two problems listed above are really spoiling the game (at least for me and the guys that I fly with).

I fully agree - with all the above and have experienced similar inconsistent outcomes so many times I have given up trying to figure out what is going on friend and foe wise.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

Another incongruency:

There are 19.000 inhabited systems with more than 40.000 stations.
Assuming that the colonization of Space began before 2.300, and lasts now for 1000 years, this means that there are over 40 stations built each year, on average. If we assume that the amount of stations being built is accelerating (more systems, more planets, more people, more ressources), we should see way more than that each year.

So far we had 2 stations being built in half a year. Unity and Mercenary's Respite.

Good point.

We can also fly to Sagittarius A* in less than 10 hours and cross the galaxy in a few days. Yet there is no scientific endeavor to do so.. no outposts where the science community would be begging for them, no tourism infrastructure out at nearby nebulae or other interesting points of interest, no attempt to really expand beyond the frontier, despite it all being in reach and so easy to get to. Instead humanity and its entire infrastructure is all lumped into a sprawling urban blob.

That's one of the most disappointing things for me, there was no imagination put into the physical distribution of colonized space. It would have been far more interesting to have colonies and clusters, pockets of humanity, strewn throughout the local Orion Spur, each distinct and separate from one another with frontier badlands and tenuous trade links in-between. Long distance trade and commerce between pockets of humanity could have opened the game up to some challenging trade opportunities and commerce based missions, and really made something like powerplay make more sense as the powers try and get a foothold on their tiny patch of the galaxy.

The game is flawed in so many ways. It seems the emphasis on immersion and a coherent and believable foundation was very low on the to do list.

 

[Ydiss]

How does the station know you have a criminal record unless the security force scans your ship?

Try going on a killing spree then let yourself get scanned at the station in the same system.

The game tends to operate on the logic that humans aren't omniscient, so they're incapable of knowing you and everything about you the moment you come into contact with them.

Until you get a reputation...

 

[_Flin_]

It would have been far more interesting to have colonies and clusters, pockets of humanity, strewn throughout the local Orion Spur, each distinct and separate from one another with frontier badlands and tenuous trade links in-between. Long distance trade and commerce between pockets of humanity could have opened the game up to some challenging trade opportunities and commerce based missions, and really made something like powerplay make more sense as the powers try and get a foothold on their tiny patch of the galaxy.

FD should give us the possibility to colonize new systems in an automated way.

I'd even pay bucks for a colony ship.
I'd fly it to Sagitarrius A, name the station "Void" and found a Theocracy in the name of the Black Nothingess.
Then all could bask in Nothing.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

3) their Design Teams are persistently overruled by Marketing (non-professionals in terms of Gaming and Game content) or Executive Decisions (following priorities far away from any original Design Documents and -plans)

This Option implies that the Devs themselves do intend to make things logical and reasonable - but are overruled by non-professionals... leading to unprofessional results or varying nonsensical, contradictory, lore- and immersion-breaking and upto bizarre conditions.
Hence, good ideas taking a little more time to actually fit into the existing Game structure are simplified and "ironed over" simply for faster results and achieving fixed milestone deadlines and a fixed release schedule, for example.

This would be my guess.

Exploration being a prime example. It reeks of marketing people having the final say on it.

 

[ToniB]

all that faction/criminal status/who to shoot to get wanted at what faction/access to stations on wanted status/reputation by killing other wanteds etc. etc. is ill thought and rushed and not thought out to the end. it seems fdev just hadnt and hasnt the right people for this job or they just didnt care that all these things are incoherent and illogical.