Elite Dangerous AMA on reddit (multicrew)

[jabokai]

"If you don't want to" is the key phrase. Most gamers aren't satisfied with being ignorant of mechanics, and ED doesn't provide a lot of feedback for many of the things we do, such as controlling pips, throttle, thrusters, etc.... Being required to do it all at once, and then not getting any direct response as to whether what you did was effective, or even affected anything at all, when you are also being required to immediately shift your attention somewhere else, is frustrating for a lot of people. If they don't feel they are making progress in learning the game, they're not going to bother, because it just feels like a waste of time.

Everyone encounters this with different varieties of games. RTS is my particular bugbear. Unless you can convince me that you enjoy all games and their mechanics equally, in which case I want to see screenshots of your Train Simulator Hours Played.

Disagree that it doesn't provide feedback for pips, throttle or thrusters - your examples are terrible if that is your argument.

That aside, no, I'm terrible at RTS games! But what I wouldn't want, I guess, is someone else doing 3/4 of it just to make it playable - I just play more enjoyable games in the first place.

 

[Tinman]

Perhaps, but on second thoughts the AI may simply be an autopilot/follow in which case my initial comment stands. DB's comment doesn't make it clear either way.

If they are deployable fighters then they better fight and not just follow.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

NPC's smack into asteroids way too often in my opinion. Don't give them flawless piloting so that they never brush up against anything, but don't make them completely incompetent either.

It's like Fallout 4. I'm wandering around Boston and the Brotherhood of Steel are doing their thing, buzzing around in Vertibirds cleansing the Wasteland. Except their idea of cleansing the Wasteland involve lots of fire... Fire created by crashing their vertibirds..... If I was a foot-soldier in the Brotherhood of Steel I would go AWOL before I ever set foot in one of those death-traps, because they all go down in flames, almost every last one of them. Even after I downloaded a mod that tripled their durability.

If I wanted to fight the Brotherhood of Steel, I'd get absolutely no satisfaction out of it. They are their own worst enemy. I can't do anything to them that is worse than what they do to themselves.

If I want to be a Bounty Hunter in ED, the best way to measure my success is by the competence of my targets. The more skilled they are, the more accomplished I feel.

Nothing is satisfying about shooting an NPC pirate in a Python who has a 50/50 chance of pancaking before I can even get his shields down.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I really cross my fingers on the deployable fighters.

My fear is that they'll be like torpedoes, but taking C7 internals : launch it, does minimal damage, gets taken down. All of this in like 1 min.

Then time to go back to the starport to buy a new one :/

I hope something akin to assembling new fighters from spare parts will be possible. (i.e. as to make carried fighters something actually usable,
and not a gimmick that takes months to develop, get used 2-3 times by players, and never gets used again as its useless).

 

[Bacalao]

For the life of me I can't understand the attitude towards single players where Elite is concerned. First there was 'Wings' without AI wingmen (despite the fact they exist in the training missions) and now no NPC crew. Why? How does its absence benefit the multiplayer? I choose to play single player, simply because getting a team together is quite difficult for a length of time - so the addition of NPC crew to fill the gaps would have been ace.

Please Frontier, stop cutting out AI content!

I think NPC wingmen/crew would be a fine addition, but there is a difference between NPC and PC wingmen/crew, aside from the very obvious.
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The big thing that sticks out to me is that NPC wingmen/crew aren't people so they are not a finite commodity, so they are expendable, always available and relatively cheap (a friends time is worth more than a few credits because it is real beyond the virtual world). What ends up happening I guess, is that while PC wingmen will always be a premium and have a high cost (real time and availability), NPC wingmen quickly just become another module that you always have fitted.
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With a PC crew a player has to sacrifice having an entire ship in his wing to get the benefits of a single NPC crew member, but with NPC crew, that isn't the case. You cough up a few credits (high value perhaps to players in eagles and vipers, but negligible to people in big ships where they actually benefit anyway) and you get a close approximation of what a player would do (and if it isn't close enough then what's the point? We may as well just put blow up dolls in the seats if they aren't going to actually yield a substantial/competitive benefit).
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I don't think it's a balance issue so much as an issue of giving it value against other alternatives. If you introduce NPC wingmen, open or solo, nobody is going to forgo the benefits of having multiple ships with 3 NPC wingmen aboard to have 1/4 the ships with 3 PC wingmen aboard. It will become as mandatory to have NPC crew as it is to have guns at all, sure you can play without them (and some few people do) but statistically speaking, no one will, they won't be a gameplay option, they'll be a gameplay standard. And that regardless of mode and one that totally overrides PC wingmen because of the enhanced benefits they provide, especially in coordinated play (imagine gimbals unaffected by chaff in wing v wing combat....).
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I hope we see some implementation some day, but I also think there are more, and very big, considerations than just Open vs Solo. (I play in a very small private group or solo (on bad server days), 1 or 2 friends online with me about 1 time every week or two, usually some thousands of Ly away, just so you know where I am coming from on this).

 

[Hydrino]

Didn't say "never"? Just not now.

There is a massive feature wish/ priority list and NPC crew are probably not at the top. Also logically should wait for better persistence, avatars and walking about. Logically also there is a huge amount of work to make NPC crew more than just a placeholder avatar image. FD have hired or posted for a character animator, and at some point when walking about they will have to populate cities and starports.

So I think this will come eventually, but out of all the desired features, this is probably at the bottom of my list as well.

Also, AI pilot of deployable fighter easily equates to NPC crew. Some of the posts saying FD have given up totally on the idea seem to say that they can't code an NPC but in reality NPC pilots are already coded because they are who we fly against most of the time. They just don't have avatars with walking about behaviors so are only like 30% coded with the hardest part being something more than generic list of text choices to handle interaction. If all you are going to tell your NPC fighter pilot crew to do is fly the fighter and defend the main ship then the effort to make that a believable interaction is not worth it versus getting Thargoids, inhabited earth-likes, better BGS interaction, passenger missions, etc.

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I think NPC wingmen/crew would be a fine addition, but there is a difference between NPC and PC wingmen/crew, aside from the very obvious.
-
The big thing that sticks out to me is that NPC wingmen/crew aren't people so they are not a finite commodity, so they are expendable, always available and relatively cheap (a friends time is worth more than a few credits because it is real beyond the virtual world). What ends up happening I guess, is that while PC wingmen will always be a premium and have a high cost (real time and availability), NPC wingmen quickly just become another module that you always have fitted.
-
With a PC crew a player has to sacrifice having an entire ship in his wing to get the benefits of a single NPC crew member, but with NPC crew, that isn't the case. You cough up a few credits (high value perhaps to players in eagles and vipers, but negligible to people in big ships where they actually benefit anyway) and you get a close approximation of what a player would do (and if it isn't close enough then what's the point? We may as well just put blow up dolls in the seats if they aren't going to actually yield a substantial/competitive benefit).
-
I don't think it's a balance issue so much as an issue of giving it value against other alternatives. If you introduce NPC wingmen, open or solo, nobody is going to forgo the benefits of having multiple ships with 3 NPC wingmen aboard to have 1/4 the ships with 3 PC wingmen aboard. It will become as mandatory to have NPC crew as it is to have guns at all, sure you can play without them (and some few people do) but statistically speaking, no one will, they won't be a gameplay option, they'll be a gameplay standard. And that regardless of mode and one that totally overrides PC wingmen because of the enhanced benefits they provide, especially in coordinated play (imagine gimbals unaffected by chaff in wing v wing combat....).
-
I hope we see some implementation some day, but I also think there are more, and very big, considerations than just Open vs Solo. (I play in a very small private group or solo (on bad server days), 1 or 2 friends online with me about 1 time every week or two, usually some thousands of Ly away, just so you know where I am coming from on this).

Good observations!

NPC crew and NPC Wing as defacto standard to play! I had not thought of that until reading your post.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

I can already see the pattern unfolding as lack of depth and a complete failure adding a multicrew feature.

1 man can manage all the systems easily in a ship - why do they think 4 people need to?

Unless they add a LOT MORE options for us to do at each station there won't be much to do.

Yay I can pre-scan targets for the pilot.

The only interesting thing about multicrew will be turrets and 4 SRV's / Fighters.

Engineering and galaxy map and all that could be done in a second. Helm set course for the xyz system. Ok.. open galaxy map type it in.. plot course done. Next? You just sit there and pick your nose..

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Disagree that it doesn't provide feedback for pips, throttle or thrusters - your examples are terrible if that is your argument.

That aside, no, I'm terrible at RTS games! But what I wouldn't want, I guess, is someone else doing 3/4 of it just to make it playable - I just play more enjoyable games in the first place.

Direct feedback. I've changed my speed from 180m/s to 200m/s, what does that mean? Jack all, because all I see is stars on a black background. I've put 3 pips into systems instead of 2, how does that help my shields? Damned if I know, because I still have 3 rings that are kind of fading in and out depending on god knows what, because I can't count how many hits I'm taking and track the second target at the same time due to the audio overlapping. Is using upward thrust to tighten my turns helping me catch up to my target that I've been spinning around for the last minute? No clue, because I can't tell if he's sped up or slowed down, so I have no idea if his maneuverability has changed. Etc... Neither was anything said about permanently eschewing parts of the game. I spoke about helping people focus on the individual parts of the game so that they can get a better understanding of them.

Thank you for choosing not to use the option to have multiple crew members. Feel free to also choose to exclude yourself from any discussions involving it.

 

[Hadron-Higgs-Boson]

...
Also, AI pilot of deployable fighter easily equates to NPC crew.

No, they are not the same thing. Ai is what flies ships in space now, the ship (and the pilot inside it if there is one) is the NPC. AI fighters sounds great, looking forward to it, but its not NPC crew, they will not be sat in any of the vacant seats on my ship. As for your cost benefit analysis, you might be right, but if they can't do NPC crew why do you think they can do Thargoids, or inhabited earth likes, those are going to be pretty weak without NPC's. I do sort of agree with you, that they are not doing it now and it wil come later, its just harder and harder to keep that faith when they keep showing reasons not to.

 

[jabokai]

Direct feedback. I've changed my speed from 180m/s to 200m/s, what does that mean? Jack all, because all I see is stars on a black background. I've put 3 pips into systems instead of 2, how does that help my shields? Damned if I know, because I still have 3 rings that are kind of fading in and out depending on god knows what, because I can't count how many hits I'm taking and track the second target at the same time due to the audio overlapping. Is using upward thrust to tighten my turns helping me catch up to my target that I've been spinning around for the last minute? No clue, because I can't tell if he's sped up or slowed down, so I have no idea if his maneuverability has changed. Etc... Neither was anything said about permanently eschewing parts of the game. I spoke about helping people focus on the individual parts of the game so that they can get a better understanding of them.

Ha ha, it means you've slowed by 20m/s. Honestly, is it really that confusing? Now I'm hoping that not only are you and your friends not pilots or doctors but that you're not bus drivers!

Thank you for choosing not to use the option to have multiple crew members. Feel free to also choose to exclude yourself from any discussions involving it.

Oh okay, as you've judged my opinions unworthy I will bow out. Cheers.

 

[who?]

Didn't say "never"? Just not now.

There is a massive feature wish/ priority list and NPC crew are probably not at the top. Also logically should wait for better persistence, avatars and walking about. Logically also there is a huge amount of work to make NPC crew more than just a placeholder avatar image. FD have hired or posted for a character animator, and at some point when walking about they will have to populate cities and starports.

I think a lot of people would be quite happy with just "placeholder avatars". Crew who sit and man the controls, maybe if in combat they're more frantically pressing buttons etc.

Until such time as we get ship internals and first-person roaming, any AI/NPC crew would have to be largely cosmetic. Even if you could order them about, it's only adding to your own workload, it'd be quicker to cut out the middleman. Voice-attack in combination with NPC multicrew would visually be very cool - but you're still the one in control.

It's not as if we'd be trusting the NPC crew to steer the craft while we shoot, or make a decision to switch to silent running, or decide whether to jettison cargo for a pirate or shoot back. I think all we're talking about here is something cosmetic, and a relatively easy win for Frontier.

 

[Insomnia]

I can already see the pattern unfolding as lack of depth and a complete failure adding a multicrew feature.

1 man can manage all the systems easily in a ship - why do they think 4 people need to?

Unless they add a LOT MORE options for us to do at each station there won't be much to do.

Yay I can pre-scan targets for the pilot.

The only interesting thing about multicrew will be turrets and 4 SRV's / Fighters.

Engineering and galaxy map and all that could be done in a second. Helm set course for the xyz system. Ok.. open galaxy map type it in.. plot course done. Next? You just sit there and pick your nose..

Agreed. They will probably add NPC crew Frontier style - you pay extra for it.

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I think a lot of people would be quite happy with just "placeholder avatars". Crew who sit and man the controls, maybe if in combat they're more frantically pressing buttons etc.

Until such time as we get ship internals and first-person roaming, any AI/NPC crew would have to be largely cosmetic. Even if you could order them about, it's only adding to your own workload, it'd be quicker to cut out the middleman. Voice-attack in combination with NPC multicrew would visually be very cool - but you're still the one in control.

It's not as if we'd be trusting the NPC crew to steer the craft while we shoot, or make a decision to switch to silent running, or decide whether to jettison cargo for a pirate or shoot back. I think all we're talking about here is something cosmetic, and a relatively easy win for Frontier.

EXACTLY!

 

[deMangler]

I think a lot of people would be quite happy with just "placeholder avatars". Crew who sit and man the controls, maybe if in combat they're more frantically pressing buttons etc.

Until such time as we get ship internals and first-person roaming, any AI/NPC crew would have to be largely cosmetic. Even if you could order them about, it's only adding to your own workload, it'd be quicker to cut out the middleman. Voice-attack in combination with NPC multicrew would visually be very cool - but you're still the one in control.

It's not as if we'd be trusting the NPC crew to steer the craft while we shoot, or make a decision to switch to silent running, or decide whether to jettison cargo for a pirate or shoot back. I think all we're talking about here is something cosmetic, and a relatively easy win for Frontier.

Not only be happy with, but were expecting at the very least.
Why do we only find out about these things, like no NPC crew, no NPC dogfights over planets, No off-line mode, etc, at the very last minute, after pre-order has been around for a few months. Would have been nice to point out that the expectations voiced many times on these forums was unrealistic before now.
Any way - thanks for letting us know in the AMA FD.

 

[Varrag]

I think a lot of people would be quite happy with just "placeholder avatars".

Quite so. I wish they could just put same copy pasted pilot avatar into those empty chairs (and control towers in stations as well) and thus breathe a little bit life into the game, at least visually if not by other means.

 

[h347h]

How? When I'm in a federal corvette what good are two condors going to do? Those things die in 2 seconds from anything.

They could be more like CQC ones and Braben said in one of the livestreams they would have unique powerful weapons.

 

[Y'Berion]

I can`t even tell where they are heading with this game any more. Neither they do as it seems.

 

[Midian27]

They could be more like CQC ones and Braben said in one of the livestreams they would have unique powerful weapons.

Ok... they still die in 2 seconds from focus fire from big guns. Can't see how this will be useful.

 

[JosiahD]

Didn't say "never"? Just not now.

No, 'never' wasn't used specifically if the quote I've seen is accurate, but it is implied as such when it succinctly states multicrew doesn't include AI. That doesn't mean it won't ever be revisited, but it does indicate that their intent is AI has no place where multicrew is concerned, which is in my opinion essentially saying their intent is 'never' at present.
.
Overall, I think to outright exclude AI multicrew is a mistake, and one I rank alongside survivability of materials and not having an AI-based mode in CQC (or allowing AI to fill empty slots in CQC matches). I get the multiplayer thing and that's what is encouraged - but why enable muticrew at all if there is no advantage, no gain in efficiency of ship operation, no improvement of performance? If such an advantage is provided by having other players man your ship with you, as it must or why do it, then surely solo pilots will be at a significant disadvantage in the absence of AI crew to bridge the gap? If that disadvantage extends to PvP combat.........? Then again, maybe there'll be no advantages to having multicrew, but in that case I would ask again......why do it at all then?

 

[Yokoshima]

Well that sucks. The thing I like about ED is it is a single player/multiplayer game, unlike most MMOs. Gives me the freedom to play how I want to. I sincerely hope this is the only multi-player exclusive content they release. I was hoping for AI wings and the like. The AI will always be terrible so playing with real people will always be better, and that's how it should be imo. But it shouldn't be exclusive. I really hate seeing those empty seats...

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No, 'never' wasn't used specifically if the quote I've seen is accurate, but it is implied as such when it succinctly states multicrew doesn't include AI. That doesn't mean it won't ever be revisited, but it does indicate that their intent is AI has no place where multicrew is concerned, which is in my opinion essentially saying their intent is 'never' at present.
.
Overall, I think to outright exclude AI multicrew is a mistake, and one I rank alongside survivability of materials and not having an AI-based mode in CQC (or allowing AI to fill empty slots in CQC matches). I get the multiplayer thing and that's what is encouraged - but why enable muticrew at all if there is no advantage, no gain in efficiency of ship operation, no improvement of performance? If such an advantage is provided by having other players man your ship with you, as it must or why do it, then surely solo pilots will be at a significant disadvantage in the absence of AI crew to bridge the gap? If that disadvantage extends to PvP combat.........? Then again, maybe there'll be no advantages to having multicrew, but in that case I would ask again......why do it at all then?

They said a multi-crew ship will be on par with a wing of 4.

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I think a lot of people would be quite happy with just "placeholder avatars". Crew who sit and man the controls, maybe if in combat they're more frantically pressing buttons etc.

Until such time as we get ship internals and first-person roaming, any AI/NPC crew would have to be largely cosmetic. Even if you could order them about, it's only adding to your own workload, it'd be quicker to cut out the middleman. Voice-attack in combination with NPC multicrew would visually be very cool - but you're still the one in control.

It's not as if we'd be trusting the NPC crew to steer the craft while we shoot, or make a decision to switch to silent running, or decide whether to jettison cargo for a pirate or shoot back. I think all we're talking about here is something cosmetic, and a relatively easy win for Frontier.

So. Much. This. I would be very happy with something as little as that.

 

[cluelessforumuser65578]

has anything been said by FD that a single person in a ship can jump between the different stations?