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

AndyWeller

AndyWeller
Zaptruder said:
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.
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But wasn't frontier just like that? swap SC for time acceleration and you'd struggle to spot the difference?
 

Chris23235

Chris23235
Connor Caple said:
Ah, the typical troll and fanboi response that everyone ignores. Thanks for wasting your time there.

"Go play CoD" is so last century, a bit like this game.

Criticise the X series all you like, but they moved forward. They don't have the sheer scope of ELITE, but they know how a computer should work...

As I've said before, If I wanted a game that was this backwards I would have to load up Elite 1984 and hack it to remove J-Drive! Sheesh. :p
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I can't disagree more, when X-Rebirth was launched last year, it had a minigame tagged to the travel mechanics, that players found so annoying, that they dropped it within weeks after launch. Overall, X-Rebirth wasn't about moving forward, the whole game is a giant step back from the X3 games.

In my opinion travel in ED is fine and I like it. Some reviewers pointed out, the game has something in common with a Euro-Truck simulator and I think it's exactly this, driving your truck in such a game isn't a challenge, as driving a high speed sports car in Need for Speed is, but in the end, it's a core mechanic of the game and it should be designed in a way, that keeps you engaged with the game, while not challenging you the whole time. In the end, travel is only a means to achieve things in the game.
 
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Vagabond

Vagabond
tsh said:
Yes, the biggest problem with SC for me is that it doesn't require any mental input at all. The end result being I get distracted and overshoot - often by further than I had when I set my initial vector. I think the realism ideal and the fanboi support will be the death of it. If I was genuinely on a 6 month trip to mars, I'd have a stack of steam downloads to fill a 4TB drive, and a schedule for drive, workout, photography, play, sleep. Not 15 minute cycles of think, wait. (interspersed with tea and overshoot).

Its not a question about racing to the end - if you think that is really what the complaints are, you are greatly lacking in the ability to read a post with anything other than your own preconception.

The time taken is not the problem. The problem is how to maintain a suitable level of mental engagement for the majority of the time. If I could check my trade or navigation plans whilst in the mid-section of a SC jump, it would help. For this to work, it would need prox alarms (destination and threat) and more sophisticated data management tools (in game or as extensions).
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^^
this

Took the words out of my mouth. In no way attacking the game nor asking for travel to be replaced with insta transport but only for SC to be more engaging and, IMO, feel more fluid rather than... Erm... icy? (cringes).
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
Memnoch said:
The acceleration and deceleration is automated already though but it has limitations. You can hear the ships engines struggling if you push it too hard for instance and it is trying to do what you ask but you are flying too fast in relation to the proximity of nearby bodies. You may also have noticed that it will decelerate very quickly if you pass quite close to one of these bodies and I often use a moon or planet as a speed break while approaching a station.
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Acceleration and deceleration isn't exactly automated. Your supercruise speed is mostly affected by nearby mass shadows, which interfere with the efficiency of the frame-shift drive. Yes, you do get a bit of assist when approaching less massive objects like stations and USS, but your maximum SC speed is affected by, in order:

your proximity to a star
your proximity to a planet
your proximity to a moon

As you say, you can use a planet's or moon's mass shadow to break when approaching your destination, but its definitely a skill that needs to be practiced. It's also a lot easier with gas giants than it is with rocky bodies, since their mass shadows are a lot bigger, and start affecting you far enough out you can adjust your trajectory for maximum effect.

Memnoch said:
Some manual adjustment of the throttle is required to fly optimally in SC and to remove this entirely would be a mistake I think.
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Personally, I don't adjust my throttle at all in Supercruise. I keep it at 100% all the way. Instead, I use my knowledge of how mass shadows affect supercruise speeds to cut down on travel times. I timed myself when I had stumbled upon an in-system trade route, and on average using mass shadows breaking to arrive at my destination was about 25% faster than the "cruise control" method, despite missing my mark most of the time. Best time was about 33% faster, when I got it almost perfect.

In my opinion, supercruise efficiency is not about what you set your throttle at, but your path through the system as you travel from one place to another. You lose efficiency the longer you stay close to anything but your destination on the way there, and the longer you stay away from your destination primary once you get there. And I've noticed that you get interdicted a lot less, too.
 

Ghostlight

G
Muthax said:
Why don't you go try and then we see?
If someone goes in my business and starts acting like you, he gets kicked out. If he is lucky, just metaphorically
You have to stop thinking YOU are the center of the universe
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We live in 2 different worlds then. Customer complaints are taken very seriously in mine, and we hear over and over of people going out of business because they didn't put their customers first and listen to them.

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Darkfyre99 said:
Acceleration and deceleration isn't exactly automated. Your supercruise speed is mostly affected by nearby mass shadows, which interfere with the efficiency of the frame-shift drive. Yes, you do get a bit of assist when approaching less massive objects like stations and USS, but your maximum SC speed is affected by, in order:

your proximity to a star
your proximity to a planet
your proximity to a moon

As you say, you can use a planet's or moon's mass shadow to break when approaching your destination, but its definitely a skill that needs to be practiced. It's also a lot easier with gas giants than it is with rocky bodies, since their mass shadows are a lot bigger, and start affecting you far enough out you can adjust your trajectory for maximum effect.



Personally, I don't adjust my throttle at all in Supercruise. I keep it at 100% all the way. Instead, I use my knowledge of how mass shadows affect supercruise speeds to cut down on travel times. I timed myself when I had stumbled upon an in-system trade route, and on average using mass shadows breaking to arrive at my destination was about 25% faster than the "cruise control" method, despite missing my mark most of the time. Best time was about 33% faster, when I got it almost perfect.

In my opinion, supercruise efficiency is not about what you set your throttle at, but your path through the system as you travel from one place to another. You lose efficiency the longer you stay close to anything but your destination on the way there, and the longer you stay away from your destination primary once you get there. And I've noticed that you get interdicted a lot less, too.
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That's all very interesting. You know that all you do is throttle max at your target until the timer reaches 6.5 to 7 seconds, then you press the "75% throttle" button and you cruise right in perfectly pretty much every time and with optimal time-efficiency? That's it. Further adjustments might shave a second off at the risk of an overshoot so they are not worth it. One button, 6.5 seconds away. Job done
 
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SentineI

SentineI
I shall just repeat my earlier suggestions on how to improve SuperCruise:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=16737&page=9&p=971401&viewfull=1#post971401
I do NOT think that SC's problem is that you have to travel vast distances too slowly. The problem is that you have nothing interesting to do while that is happening. It is the least interactive part of E.D., such that I can typically alt-tab out of the game & browse the web while waiting to get near my destination (with one ear listening for Interdiction/etc).

SC needs more interactivity to stop it being boring. The occasional Unknown Signal Source & the threat of being interdicted is not enough. Some possible ideas:
* Instead of space being "flat" (so you can just head straight to your destination), it should bumpy, so you have to struggle a bit to keep it on course. Gravity from planets would tend to drag you towards them, while smaller random 'turbulance' would mean you have to keep correcting your course.
* Bumpy SC (see above) would probably not be enough. SC also needs some kind of danger, which you need to avoid. Maybe there would be the occasional dangerous anomaly in SC, which you need to spot & then go around. If there was some way for hostile (NPC) ships to hide themselves in wait for other ships, before they chased after you, then this would give "intelligent danger" that you have to out-wit, which would be even better.
* Being CHASED (by another ship) in SuperCruise, around a star system could be great fun, at least if there were obstacles to avoid. Since I already suggested dangerous anomalies, you might try to trick another ship into running into one of them. This happens all the time in Sci-Fi films & shows.

Take a look at how travelling the world is handled in Skyrim. At least if you have not been somewhere before, then you have to travel there on foot (or horse back). There isn't a straight path, so you have to find a good route. There are occasional (random) dangers along the path, which you have to either deal with or take a long route around. Sometimes you get chased a fair distance, before you either out-run the enemy or stop to fight them. These mirror my suggested SC improvements.
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Kadaeux

K
Connor Caple said:
Ah, the typical troll and fanboi response that everyone ignores. Thanks for wasting your time there.

"Go play CoD" is so last century, a bit like this game.

Criticise the X series all you like, but they moved forward. They don't have the sheer scope of ELITE, but they know how a computer should work...

As I've said before, If I wanted a game that was this backwards I would have to load up Elite 1984 and hack it to remove J-Drive! Sheesh. :p
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Wait wait, unless I've missed something, you're criticising E:D's travel systems, and using the X series as your example? I LOVE the X series to hell and back including Rebirth, but that's like complaining your Lear Jet doesn't get you anywhere fast enough, but how dare you criticise the trains!

With the sole exception of Hutton Station travelling anywhere in E:D in a single system is faster than travelling anywhere in any of the X games.

Though on the "Go play CoD" criticism you're entirely right :p If people want to accuse other people of being casuals who expect to be spoon-fed gratification at every turn isn't farmville the go-to accusation now? Or has another facebook game trumped it?




Ghostlight said:
And to those comparing this realism to the original game...NOPE. Travel in the original was handled a hundred times better. You'd emerge from hyperspace at a certain distance from the station. You'd press J to IMMEDIATELY enter SC where you'd stay till you encountered something (essentially an ISS or interdiction). When you did you'd IMMEDIATELY and automatically drop from SC into normal flight and have your encounter: might be 3 pirates on you, or a bounty hunter in his pimped out Fer-de-Lance, or some floating cargo. You'd deal with it and IMMEDIATELY enter SC again till the next encounter, or you got to the station. The whole thing took as long as a single uneventful SC in this game BUT fitted a bunch of fun encounters in on the way, and each one was encountered and dealt with FAST. Most importantly on safe systems where you might encounter nothing from hyperspace to the station, the SC only took a few SECONDS. None of this waiting 1 minute to get up to any kind of speed and another minute to align 2 blue lines to have your encounter....super-cruising in the original was nowhere near as real as this game, but totally FUN.

Also people talk about immersion. That makes me laugh. Two blue lines converge and I press J.....suddenly a station which was a tiny blip in the distance is BAM right in my face after what is quite obviously a short loading screen (the blue effect as you exit SC). And if you point your side to the target as you exit SC you still end up a perfect 10km away pointing right at it. Yeah totally immersive, LOL.
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Did you play a different Elite? Because there is little difference in travel times in E:D than there was in Frontier: Elite II. (And with more success in E:D's in many cases, like the Hutton Station run, I simply cannot understand how people are actually running out of fuel on that. Sure it takes forever but running out of fuel?)
 

Ghostlight

G
Kadaeux said:
Did you play a different Elite? Because there is little difference in travel times in E:D than there was in Frontier: Elite II. (And with more success in E:D's in many cases, like the Hutton Station run, I simply cannot understand how people are actually running out of fuel on that. Sure it takes forever but running out of fuel?)
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I was comparing to Eite 1 not Frontier.
 

AndyWeller

AndyWeller
Chris23235 said:
In my opinion travel in ED is fine and I like it. Some reviewers pointed out, the game has something in common with a Euro-Truck simulator and I think it's exactly this, driving your truck in such a game isn't a challenge, as driving a high speed sports car in Need for Speed is, but in the end, it's a core mechanic of the game and it should be designed in a way, that keeps you engaged with the game, while not challenging you the whole time. In the end, travel is only a means to achieve things in the game.
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Agreed and they should give the option to make Landing harder rather than the bit being automatic. little bits like this will help make the game much more immersive. my next main mission is to learn to fly with flight assist off. so far my attempts have not be great as it's quite nauseating in the rift lol.
 
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OnePercent

OnePercent
keeping the timer on your FSD target to on 7 seconds or above keeps you from ever overshooting yet gives you the best speed delta. This will save you so much time when FSD'ing/
 

Muthax

M
AndyWeller said:
Agreed and they should give the option to make Landing harder rather than the bit being automatic. little bits like this will help make the game much more immersive. my next main mission is to learn to fly with flight assist off. so far my attempts have not be great as it's quite nauseating in the rift lol.
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Well if you want to make it harder you could try landing with FA off
Unless you are THAT good that you always have it off!

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Vagabond said:
Yeah I'd like something along those lines. Or like I said, and may I say far more articulately-like, more fluid and less icy.
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Ah ok, nothing wrong in 'improving' it's just that to someone that means a different thing...
 

Chris23235

Chris23235
AndyWeller said:
Agreed and they should give the option to make Landing harder rather than the bit being automatic. little bits like this will help make the game much more immersive. my next main mission is to learn to fly with flight assist off. so far my attempts have not be great as it's quite nauseating in the rift lol.
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Optional harder docking would be a nice addition, I think, it could be a little bit more challenging. I tried Flight Assist Off now and then too, it wasn't graceful to watch ;), I think I will try it in the future again, because it's much more fun.
 
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