ED: component isolation is its biggest problem

[John Xenir]

First of all, in an effort to not duplicate the subject I've tried searching forums, but the amount of topics is simply beyond one man's capability of reading them all, so apologize if this has been repeated.

I appreciate this Community may have seen enough of "I know what's wrong with this game" cliche.
As an exception from countless preceding threads, though, I would like to focus not on details, but on a big picture instead. The details are not the underlying cause here, but the effect of the actual problem.
Give me a chance of explaining, and I'll promise I'll try and keep it be brief.



Let's describe it in one sentence and see how it translates to everything else in-game:
Elite: Dangerous' fundamental activities are isolated from each other.


Let's translate that to a little longer thesis: the only thing mining, exploration, trading and (in general) fighting have in common is the Galaxy.
And, to a very small degree, BGS but we'll get to that shortly.


Promissed to-the-point TL;DR:


Mining should exist not for the sole purpose of allowing to mine - in real world, "mining" (understood very broadly and generally) is there to provide resources for industry. Industry that doesn't exist in this game at all. So the driving force behind "mining" is meeting industries' needs
Trading should exist not for the sole purpose of trading, but as means of moving commodities between places capable of creating them (supply), to places incapable of creating them (demand), generating profit in the process. While we can surely ship resources around, it changes literally nothing as there is no existing industry to benefit from it. There is no market apart from commodity shipping itself. Commodities themselves serve no other purpose than being transported around.
Exploration should exist not just for the purpose of exploring, but creating opportunities for scientific discoveries, expansion possibilities and - broadly - prospecting opportunities. While we can explore and sell data to stations, there are no means for prospectors or miners to utilize such data in any meaningful way. If not for 3rd party tools, finding pristine reserves outside of bubble would be impossible unless one was to explore himself. But who needs explorers then?


Few more details:


These three activities do not influence one another, there are no interactions between them and no dynamic interactions occur.
They're not mutually-depending, but instead are artificial, almost a theatre scene on which thousands of players play their roles, but as soon as you step behind the scene, it becomes awfully apparent it's all smoke and mirrors.
Worse yet, they're three separate scenes with no apparent cohesion between them.


I would like to describe how that can be quickly seen for what it is, but instead, let me put it in contrast so what I'm saying is easily visible, and takes less time.
In an Einstein's way of thought-experiment, let's modify Elite: Dangerous world with the following modifiers:
1) ships cannot be bought, but require material investment that is delivered to a shipyard in which the ship is built (shipyard industry); the only fee is processing fee for building the ship and is insignificant in comparison with material requirement;
2) commodity market is player-influenced (as opposed to player-driven), where station's stock commodities can be supplied/bought just as well as player-created (mined or produced) commodities, for a price regulated by players;
3) Players can directly exchange commodities, credits and exploration data with each other.


Continuing the thought-experiment, let's ask ourselves a question: is this world more dynamic and engaging? Is there now justification for these activities (mining/trading/fighting/exploring/pirating)?


Yes, there is!
It requires miners to not only mine the single, most-profitable resource, but all resources involved in building ships (stations/mega-ships/outposts/planetary structures etc.).
It allows players to decide whether they prefer to sell mined resources to stations in bulk, for immediate profit, or rather create a sale offer for an increased price and earn better money in more remote places, or for orders exceeding station's supply capability.
It allows explorers to sell their data to those seeking particular resource, which explorers spent time finding in sufficient quantities to support demand.
It allows for commodity prices to fluctuate depending on various input variables, which are influenced through players' actions, among others.
It allows for commodity prices to vary between systems, depending on resources available. Or production of processed materials/goods.
It allows for commodities themselves to be more than just hauling filler to create illusion of market.
It allows for systems to become temporary activity hubs when huge co-operational ventures are taking place (like building of mega-ships or stations). Unlike manually-created CG now
It allows said systems to become dynamically significant (or become insignificant over time) in response to real in-game events.
It allows supply and demand to react to changing scenarios.


Compare this to how trading interacts with the world currently - it doesn't. It only slightly influences BGS which in turn changes system's status, which in turn changes very little to anyone. But at its core, it's just there for people who want to trade, to be able to trade.
Compare this to mining which - apart from the same minuscule influence on BGS as trading - has no other meaning in the game, apart from providing mining opportunity for those interested in it.
Compare this to bounty hunting which - again, apart from minuscule influence on BGS which then influences system's status - has no connection to anything, and is there purely so that you can shoot.
Compare this finally to exploration, which unlike the three predecessors, doesn't even work with anything in the world, has no purpose other than just allowing exploration.
Even the BGS itself is a creation that was built as a means to allow political game play, maybe some version of dynamic market we'll get further down the line. But for something so complicated and development-heavy, its visible effects are surprisingly barely visible. And that's when it actually works.


Yes, activities like trading, selling exploration data etc. can have effect on influence and standing, but these are rather effects of undertaking said activities, rather than their driving force.


This is where I think all complaints come from. The fundamental, basic activities are so isolated from each other, unable to dynamically influence one another, that they ultimately create this empty feeling everyone's describing.
A feeling that I would describe as result of separate mechanics being slapped together to tick activity boxes required to launch the game, with little to no interaction between them. With very little justification for their existence, as opposed to real world cause-and-effect solutions.


While credit needs to be given to Frontier for greatly improving said activities over time, one must pose question how much things can improve without addressing the fundamental issue here?
One should ask: how many lipstick can you put on a corpse before you finally admit the corpse is the ugly problem, not the wrong lipstick colour?


I do not dare insisting I'm absolutely right, I certainly don't see the whole picture - only Devs do. At the same time, I'm not trying to tell them what the game should be.
I'm just trying to find cohesive explanation of game's issues, and I dare to put forth there's only one.
Even heavy reliance on RNG isn't as much of an issue, provided game's foundation is strong in which case changing RNG - from being in the centre of mechanics, to be solely their helper - is much easier than re-inventing the game from ground-up.


To conclude: I don't think taking 1984 Elite and applying the same mechanics - with modernized graphical fidelity - will work in 2014 any more.
These may have worked in the times of polygon graphics and while there's no direct competitor currently, there are other MMO space-themed games that happen to do some thing far better than Elite: Dangerous and this existing opportunity for comparison shows Elite's strong sides, like first-class flight mechanics, overall feel of being in a cockpit, sheer size of the Galaxy and others.
But at the same time, Elite's shortcoming are ruthlessly exposed and some design decisions are simply baffling.


What do you guys think? Can proposed thesis sufficiently explain where it all began wrong? And how fundamental design mistakes are creeping in every corner of the game as a result of said design decisions? Or is the problem elsewhere? Is Elite: Dangerous so far into development life that any fundamental changes are now downright impossible to implement?

Share your thoughts.

 

[Dbrn47]

Unfortunately, yes, this has been said repeatedly in many threads. However, I think it is worth repeating as many times as it takes until they aren't so isolated, until things interact and become more engaging. People will often dismiss this idea and point toward the BGS, but seeing as it really isn't much more than a switch that turns states on or off during server ticks, it simply isn't enough.

 

[babelfisch]

TL;DR

Not because it isn't worth reading but because I know that I agree with it anyway

 

[Ulaidian]

A great post!!

 

[RamirezKurita]

Pretty much said in quite a few words what has been repeated on these forums ever since I joined them in early Horizons. There's so much potential for interaction between all the mechanics, but currently FD has shown no interest in trying to weave all the isolated strands of gameplay together into a cohesive game. People want to play a game, not a series of disconnected minigames.

 

[CMDRGibbs]

You are totally right and its frustrating because this game has so much potential, but in almost 4 years there's been no weaving in or coherence between the different types of gameplay. I think I huge factor is no player driven economy and no player factions/bases that make people work for what they want with a sense of achievement.

 

[CMDR Rhatigan]

100% agree, great post!!

I think CG's were the first step towards merging these different activities.. but I just fear it was also the "last step" If they were dynamic instead of hand picked, and triggered based on players interactions, such as "you mined a lot of materials here, mini CG to build a station if you continue" would be a nice next step. Smaller CGs that are triggered based on player interactions.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What do you guys think? Can proposed thesis sufficiently explain where it all began wrong? And how fundamental design mistakes are creeping in every corner of the game as a result of said design decisions? Or is the problem elsewhere? Is Elite: Dangerous so far into development life that any fundamental changes are now downright impossible to implement?

I would agree that a major problem with Elite Dangerous is disconnection of its components - though I probably interpret that differently to you.

My broad opinion would be that the fundamental design problem with Elite Dangerous is that it's set in space. No-one sensible would ever try to set a game in space. Space is extremely big and extremely empty, which makes it a terrible setting for most forms of gameplay. Everything else Frontier have done has been an attempt to make it work anyway. Supercruise - which is an excellent compromise for "works in multiplayer", "allows planetary landing", "allows travel between planets before you get old" and "allows reasonably free movement and experience of scale" ... has significant weaknesses in that it makes interactions with the environment (and for that matter with other players) very disconnected. It's still better than the alternatives they could have used, but nevertheless, it's unavoidably a compromise.

So that's what I mean by "disconnection between components" - you can mine, trade, bounty hunt, pirate or explore ... but most of those roles don't involve much interaction with ships doing other roles. You don't sit in a ring mining and see traders go past on their way to the station (mostly). You don't bounty hunt by pulling pirates off traders. Bizarre as they are, the RES - where pirates, miners, bounty hunters and police ships all go about their business and interact somewhat organically - at least joins up the roles in a way that most parts of the game don't. RES need a lot more work, of course - both inside them and in their context in the overall game - to make the miner and pirate behaviour there make more sense. But they're closer than most bits.

(I don't think this is actually fixable without starting over without something like "multiplayer" or "planetary landings" dropped from the requirements list. And they're not going to do that, obviously. It may be mitigated more as time goes on, though.)



Unlike you, I don't think that it was a fundamental design mistake to not have a fully-integrated economic simulation. Three main reasons:
1) Economic simulation is really difficult to get right so that it doesn't just collapse or run into major issues, especially as player numbers and behaviours change, and especially with players dedicated (for a variety of reasons) to breaking the whole thing for their advantage.
2) The galaxy and bubble size means the median inhabited system has very few players. For the mining-trading-etc economy to work based primarily on player input would require a much higher player density.
3) The vast majority of players don't understand economics (though I have fun reading some of their more bizarre theories from time to time). The game already has a pretty steep learning curve just for the flying around bit without sticking that on as well. But if you can play the game without understanding what's going on with the economy, how much does it matter how realistic the sim is?

If every new feature had to be carefully planned out, simulated, tested, re-tested and so on, not just to make sure that it worked in itself but to make sure that it wouldn't completely trash the economy (or in the case of the Thargoids, did completely trash the economy but in an entertaining way...), I think development would slow to an absolute crawl. We wouldn't even be at 1.0 yet if they'd wanted to release the game that way. Even the existing BGS - highly abstracted as it is - has been subject to some pretty wild swings as the result of implementation of relatively minor-looking changes, or as a consequence of apparently unrelated updates.

It's great to imagine a hypothetical space game with all the features - fully simulated economy, realistic galaxy, top-notch combat, major inter-player interactions, a variety of integrated roles, etc. - but Frontier are not a huge company with an unlimited budget, and it's not a design mistake to focus on doing a few features rather than trying to do everything (and inevitably failing to do anything as a result)

 

[RandomGun]

I would put it this way: ED doesn't really simulate the civilization and pilot's interaction with said civilization. As long as this is true the game activities are almost automatically a loose collection of mini-games.

Functioning bubble-wide economy and functioning reputation system could change almost everything. Activities would have consequences and meaning. Activities would change both the world (a bit) and player's interaction with the world. Disasters, wars, aliens and player groups would make changes faster. Changes usually mean new opportunities.

(Though, it shouldn't be player centric. ED is not about that. Players should be just one power in a complex, living but ultimately self-stabilizing mechanism.)

 

[krylite]

I would agree those are good ideas, except for not being able to buy ships, to make the ED world a more integrated industrial and economic simulator, OP. I'm sure Frontier had ideas of simulating a more complete working galaxy. Unfortunately, it's either due to the technical hurdles of somehow simulating an interconnected economic simulator across thousands of stations/cities in hundreds of populated systems, or they just haven't gotten around to it from all the other myriad demands and wishes by the playerbase to upgrade, improve or work on something else in ED.

Egosoft's "X" series may seem to have a universe of alien system and economies, but it's just an illusion. It's really a map of only up to hundreds of stations on less than a hundred limited spaces organized on a 2d map like a scrabble game. A very good "ant farm" simulation with dressed up space looking backdrops with weird planets and pretty fantasy space coloring.

 

[Bounder]

While i wholeheartedly agree with all of the OP suggestions - a more naturalistic player-driven economy would of course provide a much-needed layer of depth - with respect to the underlying thesis, the glue binding all the disparate game elements together should be specifically the flight model, rather than merely the galaxy generally; it's principally supposed to be a spaceflight game, and so flying a spaceship through space should provide all the context and continuity needed between the various activities.

I do not mean to advocate removing the familiar aeroplane-style handling - it provides instant accessibility to what might otherwise be an overwhelmingly steep learning curve, and i also enjoy flying this way in FFE / Pioneer when just cruising around joyriding (i don't play ED itself).. But being stuck with either that, or disabled angular damping (AKA "FA-off"), and no way for the pilot to change the preset speed limit on any plane or axis, is the reason i can't enjoy ED, and the same reason i feel it's a disparate mish-mash of minigames... we're allowed an extremely limited degree of freedom of movement in "normal space", an even more limited and awkward degree of freedom in "supercruise", and that is all of the experience of so-called 'spaceflight' ED has to offer.

As such, all six of the main flying-related activities - trading, fighting, mining, fighting, exploring and fighting - inevitably converge on the same limited robotically-repeated manoeuvres and basic options to manoeuvre... there's simply not much you can do to have fun in an ED "spaceship", because everything fun or exciting about spaceflight is instantly precluded when it has arbitrarily-imposed speed limits. Spaceflight is speed control. If you're not allowed to control your own speed, then whatever else you're doing instead had better be just as riveting, or else we have this gameplay vacuum... and none of the activities on offer in ED can ever come close to fulfilling the thirst for free spaceflight. Indeed, they would only ever interest me in the slightest as pretexts for more - and more thrilling - spaceflight, rather than some kind of attempts at alternatives to it. ED's fractured partly because its restrictive flight envelope capabilities are defeating the whole point of the game..

All the missions types and career opportunities should ultimately just be notional pretexts for more and better flight experiences. But instead, they're just spurious and ultimately insufficiently compelling narratives to whitewash the despairing paucity of freedom of movement and basic flight control ED is capable of providing. I do not need another reason to go "supercruise" somewhere then slowly pitch and roll while being incapable of accelerating or yawing or selecting a different FoR or determining my heading and direction vectors. Because whatever the supposed activity, that's basically all the interaction with it we're allowed to indulge, and it's dumb, dreary, terminally unrewarding stuff after a few hours play. Just rolling and pitching, pitching and rolling... et voila, "spaceflight", a la Elite: Dangerous: Horizons: Passengers: Guardians: Beyond...

The other traditional motivating context of Elite gameplay is the imperative to upgrade your ship, the hard work involved in doing so, but especially, the rewards of having done so. But again, designing the game around fixed "space speed limits" instantly eliminates the whole motivation to upgrade - what's the point if the upgrade's still going to be speed-limited? If i'm never going to be free to fly any ship myself, no matter what ship i buy or what components i fit to it, then there is no purpose to the ships, components or 'game', whatsoever... if i simply wanted an astronomy slideshow, there's SpaceEngine or Celestia for that. I play Elite because i want to pilot spaceships, in an unrestricted, seamless, free-roam environment. If ED was capable of doing that one, simple thing, i doubt i'd care too much what 'activities' were providing the narrative contexts for free-flight, i'd just be enjoying getting stuck into it. I think everyone else would be too.

As-is, i've no desire to buy any ship on offer in ED - they're all comically impotent as so-called 'spaceships' in the first place, and inherently incapable of providing any fun, excitement or wonder etc. I've no desire to trade goods or support powers or CG's, to mine or explore, no incentive to 'progress', there's no driving objective or point to any of it in the absence of basic freedom of movement. And for me at least, this is also why it's a patchwork of disconnected minigames - empty distractions from the fact that there's no possibility of fun, creative free-form spaceflight to provide that unifying raison d'etre that should be cementing it all together...

In looking to find some other means or context of interaction with the game and BGS, i think everyone's missing what's right under their noses - adding more depth to the back-end whilst leaving the front-end (arguably the main point-of-sale) so impoverished is only going to drive ED ever-further from its gameplay origins... It's already "not Elite" to me, and the logical conclusion of all the OP suggestions is basically a full-3D version of Eve, from what i've heard of it - fully player-driven, but lacking anything of the visceral experience of actual spaceflight.. and while such a game may have a promising or even far superior market, it had better not include "Elite" in the title again, as that's a promise ED dismally fails to deliver on so far..

 

[Falcon_D]

First of all, in an effort to not duplicate the subject I've tried searching forums, but the amount of topics is simply beyond one man's capability of reading them all, so apologize if this has been repeated.

I appreciate this Community may have seen enough of "I know what's wrong with this game" cliche.
As an exception from countless preceding threads, though, I would like to focus not on details, but on a big picture instead. The details are not the underlying cause here, but the effect of the actual problem.
Give me a chance of explaining, and I'll promise I'll try and keep it be brief.



Let's describe it in one sentence and see how it translates to everything else in-game:
Elite: Dangerous' fundamental activities are isolated from each other.


Let's translate that to a little longer thesis: the only thing mining, exploration, trading and (in general) fighting have in common is the Galaxy.
And, to a very small degree, BGS but we'll get to that shortly.


Promissed to-the-point TL;DR:


Mining should exist not for the sole purpose of allowing to mine - in real world, "mining" (understood very broadly and generally) is there to provide resources for industry. Industry that doesn't exist in this game at all. So the driving force behind "mining" is meeting industries' needs
Trading should exist not for the sole purpose of trading, but as means of moving commodities between places capable of creating them (supply), to places incapable of creating them (demand), generating profit in the process. While we can surely ship resources around, it changes literally nothing as there is no existing industry to benefit from it. There is no market apart from commodity shipping itself. Commodities themselves serve no other purpose than being transported around.
Exploration should exist not just for the purpose of exploring, but creating opportunities for scientific discoveries, expansion possibilities and - broadly - prospecting opportunities. While we can explore and sell data to stations, there are no means for prospectors or miners to utilize such data in any meaningful way. If not for 3rd party tools, finding pristine reserves outside of bubble would be impossible unless one was to explore himself. But who needs explorers then?


Few more details:


These three activities do not influence one another, there are no interactions between them and no dynamic interactions occur.
They're not mutually-depending, but instead are artificial, almost a theatre scene on which thousands of players play their roles, but as soon as you step behind the scene, it becomes awfully apparent it's all smoke and mirrors.
Worse yet, they're three separate scenes with no apparent cohesion between them.


I would like to describe how that can be quickly seen for what it is, but instead, let me put it in contrast so what I'm saying is easily visible, and takes less time.
In an Einstein's way of thought-experiment, let's modify Elite: Dangerous world with the following modifiers:
1) ships cannot be bought, but require material investment that is delivered to a shipyard in which the ship is built (shipyard industry); the only fee is processing fee for building the ship and is insignificant in comparison with material requirement;
2) commodity market is player-influenced (as opposed to player-driven), where station's stock commodities can be supplied/bought just as well as player-created (mined or produced) commodities, for a price regulated by players;
3) Players can directly exchange commodities, credits and exploration data with each other.


Continuing the thought-experiment, let's ask ourselves a question: is this world more dynamic and engaging? Is there now justification for these activities (mining/trading/fighting/exploring/pirating)?


Yes, there is!
It requires miners to not only mine the single, most-profitable resource, but all resources involved in building ships (stations/mega-ships/outposts/planetary structures etc.).
It allows players to decide whether they prefer to sell mined resources to stations in bulk, for immediate profit, or rather create a sale offer for an increased price and earn better money in more remote places, or for orders exceeding station's supply capability.
It allows explorers to sell their data to those seeking particular resource, which explorers spent time finding in sufficient quantities to support demand.
It allows for commodity prices to fluctuate depending on various input variables, which are influenced through players' actions, among others.
It allows for commodity prices to vary between systems, depending on resources available. Or production of processed materials/goods.
It allows for commodities themselves to be more than just hauling filler to create illusion of market.
It allows for systems to become temporary activity hubs when huge co-operational ventures are taking place (like building of mega-ships or stations). Unlike manually-created CG now
It allows said systems to become dynamically significant (or become insignificant over time) in response to real in-game events.
It allows supply and demand to react to changing scenarios.


Compare this to how trading interacts with the world currently - it doesn't. It only slightly influences BGS which in turn changes system's status, which in turn changes very little to anyone. But at its core, it's just there for people who want to trade, to be able to trade.
Compare this to mining which - apart from the same minuscule influence on BGS as trading - has no other meaning in the game, apart from providing mining opportunity for those interested in it.
Compare this to bounty hunting which - again, apart from minuscule influence on BGS which then influences system's status - has no connection to anything, and is there purely so that you can shoot.
Compare this finally to exploration, which unlike the three predecessors, doesn't even work with anything in the world, has no purpose other than just allowing exploration.
Even the BGS itself is a creation that was built as a means to allow political game play, maybe some version of dynamic market we'll get further down the line. But for something so complicated and development-heavy, its visible effects are surprisingly barely visible. And that's when it actually works.


Yes, activities like trading, selling exploration data etc. can have effect on influence and standing, but these are rather effects of undertaking said activities, rather than their driving force.


This is where I think all complaints come from. The fundamental, basic activities are so isolated from each other, unable to dynamically influence one another, that they ultimately create this empty feeling everyone's describing.
A feeling that I would describe as result of separate mechanics being slapped together to tick activity boxes required to launch the game, with little to no interaction between them. With very little justification for their existence, as opposed to real world cause-and-effect solutions.


While credit needs to be given to Frontier for greatly improving said activities over time, one must pose question how much things can improve without addressing the fundamental issue here?
One should ask: how many lipstick can you put on a corpse before you finally admit the corpse is the ugly problem, not the wrong lipstick colour?


I do not dare insisting I'm absolutely right, I certainly don't see the whole picture - only Devs do. At the same time, I'm not trying to tell them what the game should be.
I'm just trying to find cohesive explanation of game's issues, and I dare to put forth there's only one.
Even heavy reliance on RNG isn't as much of an issue, provided game's foundation is strong in which case changing RNG - from being in the centre of mechanics, to be solely their helper - is much easier than re-inventing the game from ground-up.


To conclude: I don't think taking 1984 Elite and applying the same mechanics - with modernized graphical fidelity - will work in 2014 any more.
These may have worked in the times of polygon graphics and while there's no direct competitor currently, there are other MMO space-themed games that happen to do some thing far better than Elite: Dangerous and this existing opportunity for comparison shows Elite's strong sides, like first-class flight mechanics, overall feel of being in a cockpit, sheer size of the Galaxy and others.
But at the same time, Elite's shortcoming are ruthlessly exposed and some design decisions are simply baffling.


What do you guys think? Can proposed thesis sufficiently explain where it all began wrong? And how fundamental design mistakes are creeping in every corner of the game as a result of said design decisions? Or is the problem elsewhere? Is Elite: Dangerous so far into development life that any fundamental changes are now downright impossible to implement?

Share your thoughts.

Hello.
Your thought experiment seems to completely and utterly disregard the size of the bubble (nevermind the galaxy) and the population of the bubble as compared to the population of players.

As for BGS manipulation, the impacts of what you do depends on a lot of factors. It can get complicated enough that from a player not actually involved in the BGS it can seem quiet shallow.

I understand where you and others are coming from. I’ve played EvE, WoW, GW2 etc. The game area of any one of these games could probably fit in one sector of the ED galaxy. Heck, WoW and GW2 would probably fit on one of the landable planets. When I first came to ED I had the same thoughts as to having an AH (player trading, which essentially what your argument boils down to.) As like a lot of the supporters here I came from a traditional MMO background. But I’ve come to appreciate that ED is different. A single player or even a group of players can’t really change prices for a system with 3 billion people. A system with a few thousand, maybe.

Ship buying ala EvE with credits, blueprints and material will probably never fly. As ED is all about getting a commander into a ship and having them fly around. The same reasoning goes towards not having a player trade hub as ED is more about the HOTAS than about the Excel spreadsheet.

You talk about industries but it seems you didn’t see the economies of the systems that are already there. Also on Galaxy map, turn on “show trade routes”. Then remember, you are not a pebble in a mountain, but a grain of sand in the Sahara.

 

[Roybe]

There is no connection because there is no economy. All the game does is push numbers to the galactic average when a player does something and relaxes them away from the galactic average when they do nothing...in both cases until the numbers stop moving...or the items become unprofitable to move.

Spoiler

Been known since before the game released!




https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...on-the-economy?p=889874&viewfull=1#post889874


And here's the video on how pricing is adjusted when commanders interfere with a market, basically, every system is an island to itself, with no communication to anywhere else...and everything just floats in a range around the galactic average. There really is no economy to speak of (the discussion starts are 32:42 if the link does not take you there)

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;EvJPyjmfdz0]https://youtu.be/EvJPyjmfdz0?t=1963[/video]

OP is correct, this is a design decision that will not change...because the devs decided this is more a single player game with multiplayer functionality...than a MMO with a real market in it.

 

[GraXXoR]

OP, I'm surprised you didn't add Power Play onto the list.
There's another totally tacked on, unwanted function that achieves nothing.

also

40,000 homogenous worlds bound together by duct tape and prayers. No matter where you go, everything is the same...

Go to a station on lock down... yellow cars drive around and around.
Go to a station in Boom state... yellow cars drive around and around.
Go to a station in retreat... yellow cars drive around and around.
Go to a station at war... yellow cars drive around and around.
Go to a station with a famine... yellow cars drive around and around.

There needs to be more variation. It doesn't matter if it's anarchy or not, danger level is pretty much the same. Imperial or Federal... Pretty much the same.
They call it a BGS but it's not really an "S" at all, it's just a simple state machine repeated 40,000 times.

 

[Ulaidian]

I'm not keen on auction houses myself, but an economy based on supply/demand would be good.

 

[Roybe]

I'm not keen on auction houses myself, but an economy based on supply/demand would be good.

One of the better run markets is in GW2...the economics make sense...it is live second to second pricing so that any manipulations are found quickly by the players and 'autonerf'...faucets and sinks, as well as overall health are watched by an in house economist to verify the markets are working properly and if not repairs can be enacted to get things back on track. Inflation has occured but the overall health of the market has been maintained.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

Great post OP repped.

I know it's been said a thousand thousand times that ED players don't want "Eve with cockpits", but it's hard to ignore that with Eve having had so much development time, it has come up with some incredibly successful ingame mechanics.

It's hard to go back to "clunky, unresponsive and static economy" when you've witnessed "dynamic economy that changes by the hour, where wars can cause all kinds fluctuations, and have lasting effects on players"

And that massive margin can be applied to pretty much every aspect of ED. In almost every respect bar graphics ED is the poor cousin of Eve Online, but with cockpits. Eve gets referenced so often by people who play space games, because love it or hate it, it's still recognised as the zenith of "player vs anything" interaction.

Another major issue is that ED hasn't yet solidified its identity, while having elements of content that reflect both sides of the equation below.

Does it want to be a game that you can "dabble" in whereby an hours playtime can still have meaning - but the downside of that is the game lacks any real depth - like most space sims of years gone by.

Or does it want to be a game whereby you can RP a CAREER, where your choices matter, and your actions influence your local sphere.

I understand Elite fans don't want to be able to build bases like the X series, and I understand they don't want it to the the "space opera with a cast of thousands" that Eve is.

Many of the "old gits" playergroups (myself included) are quite happy to live out a "Firefly" sort of existence, roaming the galaxy doing a bit of this and a bit of that, just a ship and a small crew (or none) having a small and intimate interaction with the galaxy; no base required, no capital ships either.

But the galaxy still has to feel alive, without the feeling that when you go anyplace, you know all of it has popped into existence just for the duration of your visit, and will pack up and vanish as soon as you jump out.

 

[JonSnowman]

Yes it is the biggest problem, and yes it has been said many times before.

Personally I'm frustrated that FDEV are prioritising things like Engineers over core elements like you mentioned.

 

[John Xenir]

Wow, I didn't expect so many responses, and not so much flame war going on.
Thank you, Everyone who took the time to read my post and still decided to respond.


My goal was not to present an idea of what I think Elite should be, I just tried to investigate and see if there's a simple answer to this game's current shape.
That's all


I'll try to answer a few posts now, please forgive me I can't start discussion with each and every one of you, especially those of you who decided to put out quite an elaborate posts in response. I appreciate your effort!

(...)
It's great to imagine a hypothetical space game with all the features - fully simulated economy, realistic galaxy, top-notch combat, major inter-player interactions, a variety of integrated roles, etc. - but Frontier are not a huge company with an unlimited budget, and it's not a design mistake to focus on doing a few features rather than trying to do everything (and inevitably failing to do anything as a result)

Thank you for your post, Ian!
Interesting points you've brought up.

I understand they're small studio and that explains a lot of design decisions they've made with Elite: Dangerous.
My thought experiment was only designed to put current situation in bright contrast to such dynamically changing system, just to show what I mean.
Otherwise, agreed with you

(...)
Functioning bubble-wide economy and functioning reputation system could change almost everything. Activities would have consequences and meaning. Activities would change both the world (a bit) and player's interaction with the world. Disasters, wars, aliens and player groups would make changes faster. Changes usually mean new opportunities.


(Though, it shouldn't be player centric. ED is not about that. Players should be just one power in a complex, living but ultimately self-stabilizing mechanism.)

I would agree those are good ideas, except for not being able to buy ships, to make the ED world a more integrated industrial and economic simulator, OP.(...)

Thank you, both!
I would like to underline the hypothetical ship production was just a thought experiment to visualize universe in which mined materials have a meaning. They're sought after for industry production, making mining very desirable activity. In other words, they're means to achieving a goal, not just an activity present for the sake of being able to perform it.

Such a contrast clearly shows that currently, mining exists just for the sake of mining. Those materials are then sold to stations and that's the end of their purpose. No industry uses them to produce anything (because such industry doesn't exist at all). They're simply gone as even station's commodity count doesn't change in reaction to what you've just sold. Just trying selling a commodity that's not on the standard station's commodity list. It's there as long as it's in your hold, you then sell it - poof. Gone. Never existed. Station's stock doesn't even show it bought it off of you.

While i wholeheartedly agree with all of the OP suggestions - a more naturalistic player-driven economy would of course provide a much-needed layer of depth - with respect to the underlying thesis, the glue binding all the disparate game elements together should be specifically the flight model, rather than merely the galaxy generally; it's principally supposed to be a spaceflight game, and so flying a spaceship through space should provide all the context and continuity needed between the various activities.
(...)

Just a small correction to a statement I otherwise wholehartedly agree with you - I'm not talking about player-driven economy, but player-participated economy.
It should rely mostly on BGS spanning the galaxy, but also should allow player interactions with market, be it in simply actually responding to buying/selling stock, or allowing players to place their own offers. Still, that was just a thought experiment
And yes, I love Elite for being the space-pilot cockpit simulator and it should absolutely focus on that.
I just wish activities were not designed to be simple check-boxes for activities you can do. And nothing more than that.

(...)


I do not mean to advocate removing the familiar aeroplane-style handling - it provides instant accessibility to what might otherwise be an overwhelmingly steep learning curve, and i also enjoy flying this way in FFE / Pioneer when just cruising around joyriding (i don't play ED itself).. But being stuck with either that, or disabled angular damping (AKA "FA-off"), and no way for the pilot to change the preset speed limit on any plane or axis, is the reason i can't enjoy ED, and the same reason i feel it's a disparate mish-mash of minigames... we're allowed an extremely limited degree of freedom of movement in "normal space", an even more limited and awkward degree of freedom in "supercruise", and that is all of the experience of so-called 'spaceflight' ED has to offer.


As such, all six of the main flying-related activities - trading, fighting, mining, fighting, exploring and fighting - inevitably converge on the same limited robotically-repeated manoeuvres and basic options to manoeuvre... there's simply not much you can do to have fun in an ED "spaceship", because everything fun or exciting about spaceflight is instantly precluded when it has arbitrarily-imposed speed limits. Spaceflight is speed control. If you're not allowed to control your own speed, then whatever else you're doing instead had better be just as riveting, or else we have this gameplay vacuum... and none of the activities on offer in ED can ever come close to fulfilling the thirst for free spaceflight. Indeed, they would only ever interest me in the slightest as pretexts for more - and more thrilling - spaceflight, rather than some kind of attempts at alternatives to it. ED's fractured partly because its restrictive flight envelope capabilities are defeating the whole point of the game..


All the missions types and career opportunities should ultimately just be notional pretexts for more and better flight experiences. But instead, they're just spurious and ultimately insufficiently compelling narratives to whitewash the despairing paucity of freedom of movement and basic flight control ED is capable of providing. I do not need another reason to go "supercruise" somewhere then slowly pitch and roll while being incapable of accelerating or yawing or selecting a different FoR or determining my heading and direction vectors. Because whatever the supposed activity, that's basically all the interaction with it we're allowed to indulge, and it's dumb, dreary, terminally unrewarding stuff after a few hours play. Just rolling and pitching, pitching and rolling... et voila, "spaceflight", a la Elite: Dangerous: Horizons: Passengers: Guardians: Beyond...


The other traditional motivating context of Elite gameplay is the imperative to upgrade your ship, the hard work involved in doing so, but especially, the rewards of having done so. But again, designing the game around fixed "space speed limits" instantly eliminates the whole motivation to upgrade - what's the point if the upgrade's still going to be speed-limited? If i'm never going to be free to fly any ship myself, no matter what ship i buy or what components i fit to it, then there is no purpose to the ships, components or 'game', whatsoever... if i simply wanted an astronomy slideshow, there's SpaceEngine or Celestia for that. I play Elite because i want to pilot spaceships, in an unrestricted, seamless, free-roam environment. If ED was capable of doing that one, simple thing, i doubt i'd care too much what 'activities' were providing the narrative contexts for free-flight, i'd just be enjoying getting stuck into it. I think everyone else would be too.


As-is, i've no desire to buy any ship on offer in ED - they're all comically impotent as so-called 'spaceships' in the first place, and inherently incapable of providing any fun, excitement or wonder etc. I've no desire to trade goods or support powers or CG's, to mine or explore, no incentive to 'progress', there's no driving objective or point to any of it in the absence of basic freedom of movement. And for me at least, this is also why it's a patchwork of disconnected minigames - empty distractions from the fact that there's no possibility of fun, creative free-form spaceflight to provide that unifying raison d'etre that should be cementing it all together...


In looking to find some other means or context of interaction with the game and BGS, i think everyone's missing what's right under their noses - adding more depth to the back-end whilst leaving the front-end (arguably the main point-of-sale) so impoverished is only going to drive ED ever-further from its gameplay origins... It's already "not Elite" to me, and the logical conclusion of all the OP suggestions is basically a full-3D version of Eve, from what i've heard of it - fully player-driven, but lacking anything of the visceral experience of actual spaceflight.. and while such a game may have a promising or even far superior market, it had better not include "Elite" in the title again, as that's a promise ED dismally fails to deliver on so far..

Thanks for your post!
Interesting I'm not the only one that finds artifical speed limits in space baffling, but I guess it's down to simulation vs fun gameplay. At some level, some things need to be sacrificed for the sake of creating engaging game. But I understand where you come from
Also, I'll repeat: I don't want Eve with cockpits, I've used some of Eve's mechanics to show what dependancies exist between various activities, be it in Eve or in real life where everything's a network of mutually-reliant economical systems. That's all - just a thought experiment and while I believe utilising some of already-existing solutions in other games could benefit Elite: Dangerous, this topic was not about discussing what Elite should be. I wanted to focus on underlying cause of its current shape.

Hello.
Your thought experiment seems to completely and utterly disregard the size of the bubble (nevermind the galaxy) and the population of the bubble as compared to the population of players.


As for BGS manipulation, the impacts of what you do depends on a lot of factors. It can get complicated enough that from a player not actually involved in the BGS it can seem quiet shallow.


(...)

Yes, you are correct. My thought experiment was designed to show no corelation between market, commodity supply/demand and other in-game activities like mining, which also is disconnected from the market itself. And since that was the focus of the experiment, the bubble size, its population or finally the galaxy size has been left out intentionally. That was my focus here.

(...)
I understand where you and others are coming from. I’ve played EvE, WoW, GW2 etc. The game area of any one of these games could probably fit in one sector of the ED galaxy. Heck, WoW and GW2 would probably fit on one of the landable planets. When I first came to ED I had the same thoughts as to having an AH (player trading, which essentially what your argument boils down to.) As like a lot of the supporters here I came from a traditional MMO background. But I’ve come to appreciate that ED is different. A single player or even a group of players can’t really change prices for a system with 3 billion people. A system with a few thousand, maybe.


Ship buying ala EvE with credits, blueprints and material will probably never fly. As ED is all about getting a commander into a ship and having them fly around. The same reasoning goes towards not having a player trade hub as ED is more about the HOTAS than about the Excel spreadsheet.
(...)

While I agree with general notion of "few people shouldn't affect system of 3 billion", it's not really a matter of how many people it takes, but resources at their disposal.
Still, that's not the point of this thread, and you're looking at it from the wrong end of the stick.
Point is not to be able to greatly influence player's surroundings. The point is to be able to dinamically interact with them, and even that was not a suggestion of what Elite should be, but a thought experiment designed to show how disconnected its core mechanics are. Just that

(...) You talk about industries but it seems you didn’t see the economies of the systems that are already there. Also on Galaxy map, turn on “show trade routes”. Then remember, you are not a pebble in a mountain, but a grain of sand in the Sahara.

Yes, I talk about industries cause there are none. There are no shipyards building ships, there are no factories producing commodities from lower-grade resources etc.
Economies are quite different thing, but even them are simply divided into "genres", if I may call it so.
Still, the point stands: whatever it is we're looking at, it doesn't utilize existing mechanics in any meaningful way, and that was the only purpose of this analysis.

OP, I'm surprised you didn't add Power Play onto the list.
There's another totally tacked on, unwanted function that achieves nothing.
(...)

I have not added Power Play as it's not exactly a separate mechanic. Yes, it depends on BGS heavily, but in order to create political struggle, it very much utilizes some already existing "mechanics" like trading or fighting, so is more of an addition on the basic activities, rather than a new activity of its own.
But I agree, it feels just as isolated.

Great post OP repped.


I know it's been said a thousand thousand times that ED players don't want "Eve with cockpits", but it's hard to ignore that with Eve having had so much development time, it has come up with some incredibly successful ingame mechanics.


It's hard to go back to "clunky, unresponsive and static economy" when you've witnessed "dynamic economy that changes by the hour, where wars can cause all kinds fluctuations, and have lasting effects on players"


(...)

Frankly, a well done static economy can be far more fun than a broken, semi-dynamic one.
But I agree Elite's signature is first-person feeling of the cockpit dweller and it should stay there cause it nails it on the head.
Economy? Not so much - there's room for improvement. I guess we'll see with time where this goes.

(...)


And that massive margin can be applied to pretty much every aspect of ED. In almost every respect bar graphics ED is the poor cousin of Eve Online, but with cockpits. Eve gets referenced so often by people who play space games, because love it or hate it, it's still recognised as the zenith of "player vs anything" interaction.


Another major issue is that ED hasn't yet solidified its identity, while having elements of content that reflect both sides of the equation below.


Does it want to be a game that you can "dabble" in whereby an hours playtime can still have meaning - but the downside of that is the game lacks any real depth - like most space sims of years gone by.


(...)

Precisely. I think should there be one cohesive vision of the game presented - one that clearly allows to see what elements (like space legs) fit or not in the long run - a lot of threads could've been avoided. But since there is none presented, a question arises if there actually is any.

(...)
I understand Elite fans don't want to be able to build bases like the X series, and I understand they don't want it to the the "space opera with a cast of thousands" that Eve is.


Many of the "old gits" playergroups (myself included) are quite happy to live out a "Firefly" sort of existence, roaming the galaxy doing a bit of this and a bit of that, just a ship and a small crew (or none) having a small and intimate interaction with the galaxy; no base required, no capital ships either.


But the galaxy still has to feel alive, without the feeling that when you go anyplace, you know all of it has popped into existence just for the duration of your visit, and will pack up and vanish as soon as you jump out.

Very much so!

 

[RamirezKurita]

Hello.
Your thought experiment seems to completely and utterly disregard the size of the bubble (nevermind the galaxy) and the population of the bubble as compared to the population of players.

As for BGS manipulation, the impacts of what you do depends on a lot of factors. It can get complicated enough that from a player not actually involved in the BGS it can seem quiet shallow.

I understand where you and others are coming from. I’ve played EvE, WoW, GW2 etc. The game area of any one of these games could probably fit in one sector of the ED galaxy. Heck, WoW and GW2 would probably fit on one of the landable planets. When I first came to ED I had the same thoughts as to having an AH (player trading, which essentially what your argument boils down to.) As like a lot of the supporters here I came from a traditional MMO background. But I’ve come to appreciate that ED is different. A single player or even a group of players can’t really change prices for a system with 3 billion people. A system with a few thousand, maybe.

There's a couple of points to be made regarding what you have said here.

You are quite right that the ED universe is huge and that we, as players, are not likely to have too much of a direct impact. However, if we use the idea of player activity as a yardstick for what sort of things the countless NPCs are likely to be doing, where for every player performing a certain activity there's another 1000+ NPCs doing the same, then suddenly the effects on the overall galaxy makes much more sense. It makes sense that if a particular activity is highly profitable for players and offers great risk/reward ratios then every NPC pilot within 100ly will also be getting in on the action, while niche activities that players do not bother with due to risk or income are unlikely to attract even NPC workers as they will move onto more profitable activities.

Secondly, the BGS might have some strange arcane mechanics behind it, but the only reason why it seems complicated is due to the sheer opaqueness of it all. Even then, despite whatever underlying mechanics there are, the overall system produces neither depth nor story - the two things that such a simulator should be bringing to the galaxy. As pointed out by others in the thread, the BGS is the great answer to half of the disparate mechanics that make the whole game feel disjointed, while also potentially providing a vehicle for plot advancement, player attachment and strategic gameplay depth.