Or a flight simulator. I don't mean a combat sim but a commercial airline type sim. I fly X-Plane quite a bit and I only fly the big boys. 747 across the atalntic... When you make these kinds of flights it takes a long time(a looooooong time) If you use vatsim you have to be at your post all the time. When the CTO calls out you had better be at the controls to respond...
Elite Dangerous' Game Design is stuck behind a rock and a hard place
- Thread starter Zaptruder
- Start date
Or a flight simulator. I don't mean a combat sim but a commercial airline type sim. I fly X-Plane quite a bit and I only fly the big boys. 747 across the atalntic... When you make these kinds of flights it takes a long time(a looooooong time) If you use vatsim you have to be at your post all the time. When the CTO calls out you had better be at the controls to respond...
Supercruse is what i'm doing 80-90% of my playing time and is booring as hell. This is the only thing that i really dislike in this game.
Supercruse is basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g92-pgyJrU just more time consuming and annoying.Every single game mechanic is the same as in ME3, except the annoying gravity well slow downs and is 3d, not 2.5d like in Mass Effect.Even ME3 have interdictions, just doesnt drop you in instance but kills you. The more i think about the supercruse the more i'm realising its just a very well disguised map in which we're travelling from gameplay pocket to the next.The real problem is that its the bulk of the game.
Its also like a lobby in multyplayer games with the big difference that you can force someone into deadmatch game without other guy clicking ''ready'' button first, which is fine i guess.
Supercruse is basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g92-pgyJrU just more time consuming and annoying.Every single game mechanic is the same as in ME3, except the annoying gravity well slow downs and is 3d, not 2.5d like in Mass Effect.Even ME3 have interdictions, just doesnt drop you in instance but kills you. The more i think about the supercruse the more i'm realising its just a very well disguised map in which we're travelling from gameplay pocket to the next.The real problem is that its the bulk of the game.
Its also like a lobby in multyplayer games with the big difference that you can force someone into deadmatch game without other guy clicking ''ready'' button first, which is fine i guess.
Interesting perspective... although seems to be completely oppositional to my take on the issue with Supercruise.
I've played through premium beta's version of Supercruise which is much more akin to what you describe. It's better now, but only marginally so - and only because you can flip around and see points of interest as you're moving around. The main problem to me is still the length of transition times in and out of super cruise, which don't just include load screens, but acceleration and deceleration. Which in turn makes the motivation to visit points of interest significantly reduced - they rarely yield anything worth the pain of dropping out of SC, decelerating, accelerating, etc worth the trouble of it.
Probably the best time I've had in this game to date was simply during the early premium beta where easy access to conflict zones was provided; going in there and grinding on federation fighters for income. Not terribly engaging... but changed the base gameplay from travel to combat. Combat in this game is actually pretty fun in the roiling chaos of a battlefield. But the game has gravitated away from that sort of gameplay... even when it's very capable of it.
Call me weird but I like the super-cruise mechanic. Ok I admit the worm-hole hyperdrive or whatever you call it is a bit repetitive but how else could ya travel around a star system without it taking the rest of ya life.
And the concept on a instant-travel teleportation type method seems to Star Trekky for me. Um, I have to admit this is the first Elite game I've ever played so I'm still in that "excited like a little kid" type situation I guess.
But yeah. I know I'm weird.
And the concept on a instant-travel teleportation type method seems to Star Trekky for me. Um, I have to admit this is the first Elite game I've ever played so I'm still in that "excited like a little kid" type situation I guess.
But yeah. I know I'm weird.
Btw anyone knows why we change instances all the time in single solar system?They're so empty.Its not X Rebirth where you have ridicilous amount of ships and stations on the screen, or ridiculous amount of objects in general.Which points to me that the real limitation is the scale.
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As far as i know the game generate stuff in run time.So the hyperdrive jump is the time needed for this.This is the only reason.Some games transition without any kind of loading which hyperdrive is eexactly this, fancy loading screen.Call me weird but I like the super-cruise mechanic. Ok I admit the worm-hole hyperdrive or whatever you call it is a bit repetitive but how else could ya travel around a star system without it taking the rest of ya life.
And the concept on a instant-travel teleportation type method seems to Star Trekky for me. Um, I have to admit this is the first Elite game I've ever played so I'm still in that "excited like a little kid" type situation I guess.
But yeah. I know I'm weird.
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I like the way travel is handled, it allows for the lulls between events to feel real, like a real pilot experiences. Or like arma, where you run for a few km and suddenly hear the crack of a gun. Then again, I'm like the guy who flys flight sims across oceans.
Perhaps the op simply needs to take a break from elite. 8 hours straight tells me: A. You really like this game. B. You play too much.
Perhaps the op simply needs to take a break from elite. 8 hours straight tells me: A. You really like this game. B. You play too much.
I know what you mean. I used to purposely make missions in Falcon 4 and IL-2 which would require long travel times. Mainly to practice my formation flying, but the traveling part of the mission always excited me as much as the combat; sometimes more at times.
Travel from arrival in a system to a station in most cases takes no more that 2 mins. And that is too much for you? Wow....
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Fair enough op. I see what you are saying but think you are looking at the other games with rose tinted specs. In elite that final part of the journey when you are approaching to dock took an age. In most systems the overall time from exiting hyperspace to entering station is about the same IMO.... And the less said about the continual cruddy little eagle mass locking you in either frontier or was it 1st enc? nd sending a message along the lines of...... This is for dealing with (insert random name here) it took an age to get anywhere. At least we have the chance to dodge interdiction!.
Headsup: There are some systems in the game where people have traveled beyond 40 minutes to get to certain space stations.
I think the op's point about SC not being sufficiently hands-off to allow an opportunity to do other things could be solved by having the SC equivalent of a docking computer. Picking up an earlier thought about known routes it could offer higher chance of getting to your location based on familiarity (and if they wanted FD could have this intelligence as a commodity that could be traded between players).
That is true and i think we need some solution for that.
But the time dilation mechanic in FE and Frontier was awful! It was always accelerate for the first half, break for the second half, no real way to change destination in mid travel without serious overshoot, oh and you basically jumped from one pirate attacking you to the next.
In ED you can see the pirate coming, you can avoid him, you can turn the tables and jump THEM.
Supercruise isn't perfect, but it beats the old games by a wide margin for me.
Well since the forums dont handle line breaks, Everything gets compressed into a constant wall of text.
How can anyone bother to read anything constructive anyone posts on such a forum?
I think it may only be for certain users. I put a full stop (as break) in my posts, to break the lines up to avoid walls of text. I use Win8 Explorer, not sure if its a Win8/Explorer thing, or everyone has the same, but the forum (for me) does not recognise breaks/paragraphs, not sure why..
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So yes it can end up just huge text walls that don't get read.
OP, what you find tedious I find actually enjoyable.
Now ... there are tons of games out there where you just click "next mission" and then you're there and do whatever you wanted to do, no downtime, no whatever, then you get the next mission, click, finish the mission. Hell ... I'm sure, if after some time you feel that all that clicking is annoying you could get a bot from some mod forum to do all the clicking for you! So go play those. Hint :there is even a game with spaceships where actually PLAYING the game isn't necessary. Most upgrading and leveling is made while you do something constructive offline.
So please, just let me (and the other players who undoubtly like it the way it is) enjoy the game Frontier made the way Frontier made it.
And TheNut, GW2 is the exact opposite to Elite. Frontier actually did a game that fits with GW2, it's called RollerCoaster Tycoon.
Eliteangerous does have theme-park elements : The USS could be called "events", but all in all it caters to a different crowd and follows a different approach to entertaining the player. I'm not actually dissing GW2. I *do* play it. but its 'philosophy' is so diametrical to Eliteangerous that bringing it up here is quite pointless.
EDIT: okay... OP, my paragraphe above is a bit harsh I guess. You clearly like the game, but as I said : some of us do actually like SC the way it is.
Now ... there are tons of games out there where you just click "next mission" and then you're there and do whatever you wanted to do, no downtime, no whatever, then you get the next mission, click, finish the mission. Hell ... I'm sure, if after some time you feel that all that clicking is annoying you could get a bot from some mod forum to do all the clicking for you! So go play those. Hint :there is even a game with spaceships where actually PLAYING the game isn't necessary. Most upgrading and leveling is made while you do something constructive offline.
So please, just let me (and the other players who undoubtly like it the way it is) enjoy the game Frontier made the way Frontier made it.
And TheNut, GW2 is the exact opposite to Elite. Frontier actually did a game that fits with GW2, it's called RollerCoaster Tycoon.
Elite
angerous does have theme-park elements : The USS could be called "events", but all in all it caters to a different crowd and follows a different approach to entertaining the player. I'm not actually dissing GW2. I *do* play it. but its 'philosophy' is so diametrical to Eliteangerous that bringing it up here is quite pointless.EDIT: okay... OP, my paragraphe above is a bit harsh I guess. You clearly like the game, but as I said : some of us do actually like SC the way it is.
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I've spent the last couple of days at a system where players are currently amassing to try and affect the power of balance there.
What I've noticed is that when you're in a system bustling with player activity, it changes the nature of the game entirely.
Suddenly, supercruise is filled with things to look at and things to do.
Watching other players move around the system, trying to interpret their intentions from their movements. Flicking through their subtarget lists, trying to guess their profession from what components they have installed. Which one of them is working for the Crimson brigade, who is a pirate and who is a bounty hunter. Who is the most likely to have a large non-local bounty and worth interdicting for a stop and scan.
Jockeying for position from where you can interdict another player (or evade being interdicted by them)
Watching, as a third party, a suspected pirate manoeuvre behind an innocent trader, and trying to sneak through the frameshift wake into the interdiction island with them.
Literally racing other bounty hunters around the sun to catch that guy who just jumped in with a 100k+ bounty on his head.
Cursing when that guy you were chasing managed to trick you into getting too close to a planet and being slowed down to a crawl by the gravity well.
There is hardly a single moment of boredom. It's all thanks to multiplayer and the presence of other players involved in complex activities and the spatial game mechanics of supercruise that enable them.
I guess what I'm trying to stress here is that there is a huge difference between playing the game with other players, versus playing it while surrounded by just predictable NPC's with simple AI - and while I agree traveling can get tedious when you're just trucking along uneventfully through empty systems it's a boon for emergent behaviour as a source of interesting gameplay when you're in a player-populated system.
And so I wouldn't be so quick to blame multiplayer for making the travel mechanics boring. Though I don't disagree that things could perhaps be improved since we're not going to be always surrounded by players to make things interesting.
What I've noticed is that when you're in a system bustling with player activity, it changes the nature of the game entirely.
Suddenly, supercruise is filled with things to look at and things to do.
Watching other players move around the system, trying to interpret their intentions from their movements. Flicking through their subtarget lists, trying to guess their profession from what components they have installed. Which one of them is working for the Crimson brigade, who is a pirate and who is a bounty hunter. Who is the most likely to have a large non-local bounty and worth interdicting for a stop and scan.
Jockeying for position from where you can interdict another player (or evade being interdicted by them)
Watching, as a third party, a suspected pirate manoeuvre behind an innocent trader, and trying to sneak through the frameshift wake into the interdiction island with them.
Literally racing other bounty hunters around the sun to catch that guy who just jumped in with a 100k+ bounty on his head.
Cursing when that guy you were chasing managed to trick you into getting too close to a planet and being slowed down to a crawl by the gravity well.
There is hardly a single moment of boredom. It's all thanks to multiplayer and the presence of other players involved in complex activities and the spatial game mechanics of supercruise that enable them.
I guess what I'm trying to stress here is that there is a huge difference between playing the game with other players, versus playing it while surrounded by just predictable NPC's with simple AI - and while I agree traveling can get tedious when you're just trucking along uneventfully through empty systems it's a boon for emergent behaviour as a source of interesting gameplay when you're in a player-populated system.
And so I wouldn't be so quick to blame multiplayer for making the travel mechanics boring. Though I don't disagree that things could perhaps be improved since we're not going to be always surrounded by players to make things interesting.
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