News Elite Dangerous: Arena Removal From Sale

Jex =TE=

Banned
J
starman said:
you mean people play CQC where are they hardly get a match . Hardly if ever meet cmdrs in open game space.

rather than look at 'metrics' look at what cmdrs post on forums. You have a captive user base respect it.

having the CQC 'rank' displaced alongside the others in the made game is grating. Its a sideshow.

The game is poorly marketed outside core audience.. Cant get the SC crowd? Female gamers?

The potential for cross play planet coaster and Ed - Deliver metals and visitors to PLanet Coaster :)

CQC had a potential as a esport.
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I doubt FD will put ANY dev time into this rubbish. 4 concurrent users on steam. It peaked to 6 back in the long hot summer of 2015.

Get rid of it - turn it into a training simulator instead that you can hook up with an experienced player and fly together as s/he shows you the ropes.

How about that for an idea that promotes the game and has an excellent use in helping new people.
 

Cosmo

Cosmo
ddr330 knows what killed Arena:
Would it really have been so hard to just allow games to start with bots, and let players drop in? Requiring full lobbies just to start and splitting players into three separate game modes killed it...
 
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Ziljan

Ziljan
StiTch said:
People have issues getting together for so much as a cup of tea in the same location. I don't think requiring in-game organisation of any kind to participate in CQC will work if we can't even do it now clicking a button in the menu.

Just leave it as a menu game where it is now, and at best allow players to queue up for participation while docked. Then if you cannot improve matchmaking through networking, just give us the damn bots guys...surely SJA will appreciate a second breed of minion?
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You won't need to be docked for multicrew, so why should you need to be docked to join a CQC game? It should be as easy to join a CQC as it is to join Multicrew. The whole point is to increase player participation after all.
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
J
Cosmo said:
ddr330 knows what killed Arena:
Would it really have been so hard to just allow games to start with bots, and let players drop in? Requiring full lobbies just to start and splitting players into three separate game modes killed it...
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Reading that it seems people are saying "if they did this... if they did that it would have had players"

No. The game SUCKS that's why nobody is playing it now. If it was good, people would play it it's that simple. Adding bots would have just given the people that play it something to do it wouldn't get other people interested because the entire premise was flawed from the beginning. Power ups? Auto-aim? Gimmicky maps? stupid match making (lvl 1 players against lvl 36 lol) I mean where do you stop where they went wrong?
 

Noddie

N
Hmmm.

They're about to launch multi-crew. This will require people who won't pilot their own ships to become players and will likely introduce a lot of people to the game, starting out as auxiliary crew to existing players.

Come on. You don't have to be Miss Bleedin' Marple to work out what's going on here. It's perfectly sensible.
 

Noddie

N
I wonder how long they'll keep it available for? - they're going to have to maintain it for some time at least as people will have purchased it.

If I were FD i'd run it until the end of this season, then give everyone with a CQC a current "season" licence (to reduce licence categories) immediately before releasing the next season licence. Keep CQC in for the next season, then kill it.
 

xondk

X
Ziljan said:
Any chance that we'll ever be able to queue for CQC from the main game? This seems fundamentally similar to the new multicrew lobby.
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I suppose it could be done, allow queuing, but only allow you to join a game if certain conditions are met? say not attacked/aggressive, zero throttle and speed and not in supercruise?

These are normal logout conditions anyway?


So say you get "match found" you'd have x time to respond by going still, and clicking a sort of ready button, then you'd be loaded in, others would naturally be able to see 'waiting on join' or similar, loading or whatnot indicating people have been found for a match and are loading in.
 
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Mengy

Mengy
I think CQC has the potential to be a nice feature in the Elite galaxy, but it needs some rework in order to find a place and use that players can not only take advantage of, but WANT to take advantage of. If I was to somehow magically be put in charge of revamping CQC, this is how I’d do it:

  • Transform the concept of CQC away from a “real thing” with real ships and locations and instead turn it into the galaxy’s favorite competitive virtual e-sport. Commanders all throughout the galaxy can easily log into GalNet from their ship’s left panel (or from starbases) and queue up for CQC where they can virtually fly against the galaxy’s best (and worst) pilots! All within the main game of course, although CQC itself remains a separate “mode”.
  • Implement CQC seasons, divided quarterly or bi-annually. Have leaderboards for most points, most hours played, most kills, most deaths, etc, all available for browsing at any time via GalNet in the main game.
  • Implement rewards for seasons. Credit rewards of course, but also one free paint pack from the store for reaching season milestones. The best of the best would get more, maybe two free paints. Also award medals for each season for achieved ranks, and each player can display these medals on their space suit via the commander creator. Not that the free paint pack per season should NOT be only for the top 10 and the like, this incentive needs to be attainable for everyone who puts in time and effort, no matter how bad you are and how poorly you rank. An expert combat pilot would earn it sooner, but even the worst combat pilot should be able to earn their way up to the reward, it would just take longer and more time. CQC needs attainable and worthwhile rewards in order to get people playing it, this is very important!!!
  • Implement AI bots. There needs to be a way to fill up matches and allow people to actually play CQC even during times with no one else queuing. Bots can be worth less points, and Sally should be allowed to really ramp up the AI difficulty on them. It’s okay to have players absolutely murdered by incredible AI bots as long as losing matches still provides player progression (slower of course) towards season goals. Losing should not equal wasted time!!!!!
  • Implement active CQC queues. Players can queue up from their ship’s GalNet panel but still fly around in the main game and do things while waiting for matches.

I think something like this could really turn CQC into a tremendously great and fun feature that is much more easily accessible, with real game rewards and competitive visible leaderboards to stir competition and incentivize participation, while also giving it a believable and “realistic” lore explanation for it existing at all. Just the thought of deep space explorers or tired traders taking a break and parking their ships to log into CQC to “virtually” compete against real pilots all the way across the galaxy sounds like a fun idea to me, but the way CQC is currently implemented makes it so difficult to accomplish, or even believe it from an immersion point of view.
 
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Lenin

Lenin
I think CQC is great, but with only a limited amount of time, I would rather focus on the main game. However, after a couple of beers, CQC is good fun, in short doses, and I suppose some bots or in-game challenges to help coordinate when people play, to avoid waiting for players.
 

StiTch

StiTch
Ziljan said:
You won't need to be docked for multicrew, so why should you need to be docked to join a CQC game? It should be as easy to join a CQC as it is to join Multicrew. The whole point is to increase player participation after all.
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Because logistics my friend.

Unless you are going to matchmake them into a game entirely full of bots and replace bots as you go you will still need a matchmaking component. That means waiting, and means either having to wait in one spot or going about your business knowing you could poof at any moment. That kinda gets messy then in combat/pirating situations etc.

By all means if a decent solution were put forward, am all for it.
 

Brimstone

Brimstone
I love CQC, but the matchmaker is it's weakest link. Most of the time ( after launch, and after the hype wore off for everyone) the matchmaker wouldn't work. When it did, I'd get matched up with players who are vastly superior to me, or with players who would shove everyone down a toilet and win the match within a couple minutes. Or I'd be the top dog, shoving everyone else down the toilet within a few minutes. Very rarely was it a fair fight, but when it was, it was the most fun I'd have with other players in this game.

But how do you match players based on their ability to fight? This isn't like other games, like an FPS arena game, where you only have to worry about moving around one dimension(mostly). This game is in 6 axis, and demands an understanding and appreciation of that, on top of learning how to fly the ships and appreciating their unique handling characteristics at the same time.

For people who only bought Arena, this had to have been absolutely overwhelming. Anyone who did buy Arena and managed to figure the game out, I commend you.

CQC is in a bad state, and has been for a very long time, with no new maps or ships for over a year. I desperately want to play this game mode because it can be a hell of a lot of fun, but until there is some type of 'overhaul' I can't see myself consistently trying to queue up for a match any time soon.
 

Cosmos

C
Ziljan said:
Any chance that we'll ever be able to queue for CQC from the main game? This seems fundamentally similar to the new multicrew lobby.

The major reason I don't play more CQC is that waiting in the CQC lobby for a game is as dull as a staring at a box of nails. If I could queue from my ship while playing the main game, I'd be queued for CQC all the time.
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The work required to make this a success would have been trivial.. Queue from main game, leaderboards, ranks, leagues, seasons, and rewards going back to the main game. THe lack of these is why it never maintained a decent player population. Its a shame because CQC is fun and whoever is responsible for not doing the things I suggest let down all those who worked hard on making CQC the polished combat game it is.

At this stage I fear its too late now. You only get to launch a title once, and subsequent attempts struck me as being half hearted. Looking back it seems like a wasted development effort.
 
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who?

who?
Cosmos said:
The work required to make this a success would have been trivial.. Queue from main game, leaderboards, ranks, leagues, seasons, and rewards going back to the main game. THe lack of these is why it never maintained a decent player population. Its a shame because CQC is fun and whoever is responsible for not doing the things I suggest let down all those who worked hard on making CQC the polished combat game it is.

At this stage I fear its too late now. You only get to launch a title once, and subsequent attempts struck me as being half hearted. Looking back it seems like a wasted development effort.
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I don't think it's too late, but yet I doubt how much effort FD is going to put into it.

It's something that does worry me a little - that FD has such a huge promised feature list to get to, meaning they might not be able to flesh out individual elements as much as they (or we) would like. It doesn't help either when releases like 2.1 are tweaked for weeks/months afterwards. I guess that's the problem with a galactic simulator. There's quite a lot to simulate!
 

BLACKPANTHERVII

BLACKPANTHERVII
Can't find people online at all due to a wall of some sorts that blocks me from connecting to anyone out of my local region so therefore I'm screwed and australia has no one online playing. I say just remove arena and all its achievements forever as it's a failure and just focus on core game and it's updates
 
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