Does complexity equal fun?

[Ziljan]

The game has no complexity at all. Don't confuse complexity with a flood of material required to build something.
In fact if I see how simple the missions are done or the BGS by design (there is no real economie to start with) I wonder if FD avoided game complextiy at all cost. It's a pitty because good games require a certain complexity (= life) to give a good experience. Doesnt mean the user have to see it. That can all be hiddin in a good BGS. It just have to work and make fun.

Idk, I've been playing 21 months. The BGS still has new surprises. It's a fairly deep mechanic. About as complex as combat. If Frontier wanted a strong (non-combat) leg to expand upon, the BGS would be a good place to start.

If they added a more dynamic and changeable economy, colonization, station enhancement and building, all without the need for nose-leading CGs, then the game would be in a much better place.

Actually owning created player bases and being able to pledge to a minor faction, with special perks, would be a huge step forward as well.

 

[Julio Montega]

Dear OP the things you mentioned might seem complex,
due to a lack of ingame information sharing.
Yes engineers have a lot of micro-ressources which were added
to incentivize to test other playstyles, very much to my
personal displeasal.

But i can understand why they went that road.
Removing the commodity requirements from engineers now is a good step, imo.

Where i find complexity lacking are the base jobs.
There is not much to involve yourself,
unless you use imagination drive.
I would welcome more complex jobs with more immersion
and more to do, then rinse and repeat basic methods.

Rez hunting, PvE piracy, exploration, all those are prime examples
to that.

 

[Spacecat]

Lets take combat for instance. Let's compare ED vs Skyrim. How many different ways are there deal with an enemy? Skyrim has countless ways to approach an npc obstacle, no question, tons.

Now that you bring up Skyrim, what's nice about that game (and Witcher 3 also) is you have a pretty complex and detailed crafting system in both games, which is nice, and gives you lots of options, but the best feature of all is that if you don't want to do any of it, you don't have to (often found gear is also pretty good), which is kinda the opposite of engineers. Since you can't ever "find" anything in ED, things like engineers are your only options.

 

[IronDuke]

I think this video is important here.
[video=youtube;jVL4st0blGU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVL4st0blGU[/video]

--IronDuke

 

[Vacendak]

I would say that it really depends on the player. I like complicated personally however, I'd also say that the balance could be better as well because there are aspects of ED that really are unnecessarily over complicated. This is especially true for beginners. It wasn't until I joined Mobius and learned from the more seasoned CMDRs about 3rd party stuff like EDDB, Thrudds Trade Tools for rares, Coriolis, INARA, etc. that I was able to start grasping the finer points of the game that it started to make sense and become fun.