Elite Dangerous' Game Design is stuck behind a rock and a hard place

[Morphine]

I just reinstalled the gamma! I wish I didnt. Its a bore from beginning to end, I am same as the OP. Love space, love the little touches this game has but its just a sad travel simulator that makes you deal with a tiny seemingly pointless market to earn enough to buy a bigger ship. What do you do with a bigger ship? Seriously not much point buying anything as there is nothing to do with it when you bought it.

What a let down, why would you not start in a little shuttle ferrying from world to world building your ship up? In a living world around a planet, moon or star full of life and stations. Give you satisfaction in gaining something worthwhile, seeing something worth looking at other than ... "ooo look ... a bigger ship, planet, star, station" The irony is that is ALL you can do and see in the game, and only one lump of a station sat in space ... alone. So dull ... so so dull.

How can you defend boredom so easily people

Its not a sim at all, Its like using a string with a marble and saying its a car/road sim. Not ...

 

[Grimghast]

I do agree with the pervasive sentiment that we just wish there was more, but I have to admit. When I key in a destination, or scramble to escape a gravity field while dodging incoming fire, throttling up and then hearing I the countdown....throwing the engage switch on the hotas and hearing the blast of propulsion as I angle the stick and rudder making course corrections...

pure gaming nirvana. First thing I noticed and love about this game. You never leave the simulation. Always in pilot seat as you travel, get ferried below decks on a station, swap out weaponry or buying ships. I, for one, love the details and tedium, as you say.

Hell, I wish they'd let me turn the key and fire the reactor up. Let me strap in. Put on the helmet. Ok, going to play some more.

 

[noodle]

There are so many threads in this forum where people seem top state their subjective experiences and feelings as objective fact. You find supercruise boring, I don't. A lot of people enjoy boss mob fights. I find them tedious. Doesn't mean I think that games with boss mob fights are broken. They're just not the right games for me.

 

[Lendri]

The only problem I have with travel is having to judge when/where to come out of supercruise... I'm woeful at it, after weeks of play, and still overshoot or even undershoot and spend ages powering down.

 

[Mikey2305]

@morphine... thanks for telling us that...

because to some of us it isnt boring, its challenging, interesting and exciting. but not for you i guess

 

[Ian Phillips]

From the OP:

You could still design around a lot of the problems with a jump to point of interest function with supercruise - but as many players rightfully point out, that kinda makes super cruise pointless.

This isn't going to make you feel any better about Supercruise, but what you have described in the quote is the original design. That was changed in favour of the current system.

 

[Zallibik]

I think the travel system is excellent, people jus want insta click travel, why not jus start with best ship and a billion credits and elite ranking.. will save ya some time.

 

[Zaptruder]

From the OP:


This isn't going to make you feel any better about Supercruise, but what you have described in the quote is the original design. That was changed in favour of the current system.

Yeah, I'm aware. It's a hindsight problem though. In theory, super cruise sounds great, and is a way of providing distances more meaning than would otherwise experience. So sight unseen, voting for supercruise over jumping to POI makes complete sense.

In practice, acceleration, deceleration, wind up, cool down, load times... all makes the mechanic much less enjoyable than it is in theory.

It's a difficult situation; FD have gone all in and committed to this design direction. They can't alter it without also altering a lot of the underlying connective design and effort that they've put into the whole system already.

 

[Foreverowned]

I haul a lot and i find the long distances oddly satisfying, there's a wonderful atmosphere provided by the real stars, the ominous creaking and whining of my ship, and when i get to my destination it feels like i actually covered that distance, it re-enforces how real it feels, and it's so addictive because i never know what's coming next, what my destination will be, what cargo i'll be hauling or for who, what fights i'll get into etc. I laugh reading this because i sound like the people i used to criticise, that was before the game clicked with me.

 

[Darkfyre99]

The biggest shame about this community is that... it recognizes the problem, but feels the need to defend the flaws anyway - as if it should be part and parcel of the experience.

I played about 8 hours yesterday... and I do have a triple monitor setup; and I was indeed using my other monitors to browse the web and watch videos. But the travel in this case is maximally annoying - requiring just enough attention to make it difficult to do other things, but repetitive to the point that it's very boring.

I'm sorry, but that's not how a game should be experienced.

Or maybe we happen to actually enjoy flying our ships, and missions, trading, bounty hunting, etc. are merely our excuses for doing so?

Elite Dangerous just happens to be one of the few games where I turn off my usual distractions, relax, and stare into the black as I listen to the purr of my engines.

 

[Harry Stone]

@ zaptruder
I think it depends on the players mood and what he/she likes and expects from the game.
You, for instance call the waits (to jump, to target, to slow down, to enter SC and so on) tedious, I however take the opportunity to gaze at the starscape, look at my galaxy map or peruse the system map, in essence, do the things I would do if I were *really* I that spaceship going to those places.
I, for one, love hearing the silky computer voice telling me what's going on as the FSD drive spools up.

I could go on but essentially I think you are allowing yourself to non-suspend your disbelief and so your critical faculties usurp the immersive experience and take you out of the moment. Remember, with time, FDEV will address your concerns

 

[Dr Wookie]

I really enjoy playing ED, and (this is really important) STOP before it gets dull! I hope to be playing with this commander for years to come, so playing for 8 hours in a day seems to be a recipe for burnout. I tend to play for an hour or do at a time, but can easily be kept in game by a fun looking mission.

I would actually be totally fine with building up travel to other points of interest in the star system over time... The default could be to go to the highest mass, but as you get more and more info on the system, you could select a POI and have an increasing chance of arriving within a few ls of your target rather than the default position

 

[Foreverowned]

The only problem I have with travel is having to judge when/where to come out of supercruise... I'm woeful at it, after weeks of play, and still overshoot or even undershoot and spend ages powering down.

when you look at the throttle bar in front of you on the right (sorry i don't know the technical name) if you just place the needle in the middle of the white bars, your ship will speed up or slow down by itself and leave you more or less at the right speed once you reach your destination, i'm terrible at describing stuff so if someone else could explain this it would be better.

 

[Wicz]

All the things that the OP doesn't like, I love.

I do not want my hand held, and long journeys are simply par for the course.

 

[Raylion]

My view on this is if you've explored a system (or purchased system data) and if the system has multiple stars then when you jump via the galaxy map you should be able to choose which star to jump to.

I wouldn't necessarily want more than that as I don't want to see an instant travel system develop within the game, after all, it is space and big journeys should be within the game.

 

[gamecat]

The OP's sig is professing him/her to be an Imperial Courier. Hilarious. Just imagine without SC what being a courier would be like. Point/Click Point/Click

SC is essential in creating a sense of distance and travel. It is also another space for events to occur that are essential for pirates. (Interdictions). It also serves as a way to reveal through exploration systems. Its manual feel gives a sense of freedom to move about a system and adds more tensions and danger.

I think SC is implemented extremely well considering the alternatives. The only gripe I have is with hyperspace jumps that I cant see the target system/galaxy moving towards me rather than the annoying animation.

SC is one of the strong points for me. I slave trade without shields often maxed out with cargo crapping my pants whenever I see a player or pirate chasing me... AWESEOME!

The game is a spaceship sim. If you used Eve's point and click mechanic (which makes me fee like I'm just navigating a very nice interactive webpage) you'd lose the whole the point of the game and that is your meant to be FLYING a space ship. Manually flying that is, and it does it excellently. Flying a long way to far flung stations creates fantastic dynamics creating a real sense of remoteness.

 

[Nelson]

A very simple suggestion:

Enable Hyperspace Jumps over distances of 2000Ls within system.

This will remove bordem of the long haul 15 miniute cruises to far flung stations.
And you could explain away the science of having a minimum jump distance for Hyperspace Jumps.
Could easily put some safety features in to stop it being abused.

Loving the game and am a happy fanboy but the OP does have some valid observations. Keep the Faith.

 

[blueski]

Agree with the OP, there needs to be a design solution to long travel. Otherwise you're spending 60% of your time in game supercruising. Maybe a few more nav beacons in some of the wider systems?

 

[Cradle2Grave]

I'm with the OP on this one. With so much travelling done that way it needs.... something.


But I do really like the game.


Also can 'They' (Brabbo and The Boys) change the hypercruise sound. It loops too quickly and sounds like a muffled recording of fans singing in a football-stadium.

 

[Cmmdr Jaffa Cakes]

Impatience is a fault of today's expectations with everything and it taints processes that in the past were the normal. Think of the pre-cellphone pre-internet days when you had to look things up in books, go to the library, or simply not know the answer until you could take the time to research it or ask the right person. Think of the time before movie streaming and DVD. You had to go to the video tape rental store and search for your movie (many times that movie was rented out!) not to mention queuing the movie in that tape, and rewinding it afterwards. These are just some examples of what we used to do, what we used to wait for, what was our "normal" (If you're old like me) - and I'm not even going to go into when there were no airplanes and people had to travel by ship, or... horse and carriage! (I'm not that old!) So, we are in the 21st century and we expect everything immediately at the press of a smartphone button and when it isn't fast we think it is boring and broken. But for me, I treat those "waits" in travel as what they are in game ... incredibly fast transport between systems - immerse yourself into the game why don't you? Remind yourself that your "smartphone expectations" are SLOW and mundane to what your in-game character is achieving. If you were actually in that Sidewinder traveling between stars, you'd eat lunch, listen to some music, perhaps joke with friends (teamspeak). Don't succumb to 2014 impatience.