Elite: Dangerous gameplay discussion thread

[Crayfish]

Thought it best to start a new topic for discussion about the potential content of this game in terms of game dynamics.

My first big worry comes from these two Braben quotes:

"...with the benefit of hindsight I think the way the ships flew detracted from the joyous immediacy of those in “Elite”."

"I want a game that feels more like the original “Elite” to fly..."

Now hopefully, as has been hinted at in the past here on this board, this means there will be some sort of fly-by-wire overlaid on a standard newtonian physics model that will make the ships handle better. What I fear is that the new Elite will have fake space physics.

The original Elite did have a lovely immediacy and the ships had a visceral presence so I know what David is getting at. However the experience of controlling ships in Elite was a mini-game of playing with a crippled "roll-only" control system. That's not really something to aspire to.

Basically what I'm saying is I hope I will be able to flip my ship and fly backwards on my retros

 

[Steve O B Have]

I think that the gotcha with that is in how accessible it ends up being for the broader audience. Personally I agree - I love playing with the Newtonian flying style and I'd like the option to fly with either control method. How that plays out for AI and physics is a whole other ball game. I don't think that the original Elite way of flying detracted from the gameplay, so I'm not sure that it would from a new game either. It's hard to not see it from a fan purist position but it does boil down to this being a successful endeavor and accessibility is rather key to that point.

 

[Styggron]

I'm happy David Walsh already replied to my question in that there will be a single player mode.fantastic news I think.

With multi player I hope it won't be a subscription fee each month. Hopefully something like minecraft. People can set up a "server" per se and others join or a LAN. Otherwise it will be like EVE (which I don't like by the way).

 

[Steve O B Have]

As long as it doesn't end up like the borefest that is the X series of games, I'm a happy man.

 

[Styggron]

As long as it doesn't end up like the borefest that is the X series of games, I'm a happy man.

Indeed !!! I tried X BTF, then X2 then X3 sure it had ELITE like elements but...I don't know it just didn't grab me or at least did not sustain me to play it more.

ELITE I still play now and Oolite of course. So sure it is competing with childhood golden age but there is more to ELITE players now than JUST nostalgia, it has a certain SOMETHING. I can't quite put my handle on it.

X tried something very similar, nicer graphics and all that but I'm with you Steve. I *TRIED* to like them I really did.

Anyway my money is where my mouth is and I have pledged a good amount, enough to get me in the testing if it all goes ahead

[EDIT: up to 12K now. I've set it to my home page ;-)]

 

[Styggron]

So......

A thought experiment.

Just suppose we are Frontier Software.

What kind of elements would we put in Elite Dangerous that would stop people saying "oh that is just like <x>". What are elements that you would like to see that may have NEVER been done before, what will set this one apart from all others to prevent people saying "it's just like <x>".

We would want to stop the "it's just new fancy items, bigger map, better graphics" syndrome which most things suffer from, X included IMHO. It has to be "this has never been done before".

I know I would like Scientific Missions. I would like to be able to buy equipment to scan a planet for scientific content such as minerals etc, the more expensive the scanner the faster it would scan etc. I made this suggestions to the developers of Pioneer on github and it is a documented possible feature...and they liked this. This is something I have never seen before. On board programmable computers would be nice but 0x10c is doing this already.

I'd like computer viruses and security software available to buy and trade on the market and deploying communication satellites (which can send encrypted signals which can be hacked if you had the right hardware/software in game. So a cheaper satellite has a easy to break code telling your other ships maybe this planet is rich in minerals from your scientific scan. The scan would work like a grid over the planet speed. You could do a fast scan but not get all data or slow scan and get all data but time would be an issue.

Just some ideas.

Other thoughts ?

 

[Steve O B Have]

Personally I'd like to see an expansion on the exploration component and have the game expand with settlements as you explore the frontier. i.e. missions that involve finding habitable planets for settlers to make use of etc. I'd also like to see piracy and salvaging as more viable lifestyle choices as has been hinted at on the Kickstarter brief.

 

[Styggron]

Personally I'd like to see an expansion on the exploration component and have the game expand with settlements as you explore the frontier. i.e. missions that involve finding habitable planets for settlers to make use of etc. I'd also like to see piracy and salvaging as more viable lifestyle choices as has been hinted at on the Kickstarter brief.

Totally !!!

Do you like my scanning planets / scientific expeditions and equipment ?

 

[gunbladelad]

I reckon it should also utilize some procedural randomization for the colonisation growth and ingame markets to reflect how markets operate in reality.

For those that opt in for multiplayer (which I reckon will likely be most) the colonisation in single-player can follow the trend on the online game, whereas someone who's purely offline could see different colonisation trends on each new playthrough.

For markets, I'm thinking mainly in terms of supply & demand - with a higher supply prices tend to go down. Online if people are spamming one particular traderoute to make massive profits, the server should be able to pick up on that and slowly shift the prices. For offline it could be a similar idea but not as fast.

In Elite 2 & 3 there were several planets in the process of being Terraformed and those kinds of planets would be perfect for shifting prices. For example they could start out being "industrial planets" then slowly shift towards agricultural - which would then start affecting prices across the system to some degree.

 

[Sir.Tj]

Great news that their will be a single player element to the game.

Newtonian physics has to be the flight model.

Like you Steve, I'd love to have exploration of new systems and to have the Elite Universe evolve as the game progresses.

With FFE the news stories told you what was going on it the galaxy, but if the Federation and Empire went to war........

Think of the possibilities

 

[Geraldine]

3 Way Street

Newtonian physics has to be the flight model.

100,000,000 % agree with you TJ. :smilie:

I think he should have 3 flight modes, the easy flight mode typical of other space sims for new players and two hardcore flight modes, the original roll and turn for fans of Elite 1 and the Newtonian mode for FE2 and FFE fans.

I will still get it of course no matter it's flight model, but for me Newtonian would make it damn near perfect

Imagine the multiplayer battles with ships using different flight modes

 

[rgmarett]

I like the fly-by-wire approach Chris Roberts is doing with Star Citizen - real physics but a bit more fun (and you can always turn the fly-by-wire off if you want to - makes sense to me)

 

[deej]

Here's my $0.05AU.

I basically want the original game, but with:
- More vertices on the wireframe models. No fancy curves or wings or anything silly like that, as I liked the hard-edged clean lines of the original elite ships and would prefer a slightly more detailed versions of ships but with a similar style.
- Larger structures, ships. So large that they have docking bays (or multiples of). Remember the starting scene of star-wars? I want see a massive ship and (if its friendly) fly into its hanger and dock to trade.
- Shaded polygons would be totally fine with me for ships. Actually I'd even go so far as to say that most ships be shaded in a dark colour (in regular space) and that the only bright thing you would see would be glare of the their engines or lights shining through windows if you were close enough. The Last thing I would want to see is rainbow coloured ships. Space is vast, dark and mysterious.
- Beautiful looking planets. Here we can go crazy with what ever the latest graphics techniques are. I want to drool every time i arrive at a new planet.
- Make the sun at system be the correct light source. I want to dart in and out of the shadows of planetary bodies, eclispes etc. And see the dark & light sides of ships when dogfighting etc. Fly in and amongst a fleet of capital ships and hide in their shadows... that sort of stuff.
- Be able to enter the atmosphere and dock in space-ports/cities planet-side (both above and below oceans)
- Repeat: Space is mostly black.
- Giant (and I mean GIANT) planets, some so large that you must avoid or go around else get crushed. (Same with massive suns). Not sure how I feel about black holes though...
- Generation Ships.
- Ability to have a homeworld (with garage) to store ships as I get wealthy.
- Ability to buy many types of ships. Some days I want to be a bounty hunter, others I want to be a smuggler, other days I want to be a cop and patrol around orbiting space stations, other days I just want to shuttle people from orbiting space stations down to cities on the surface and back again.
- Stay with the procedurally generated universe but seed it with new races for me to discover over time.

Thats enough for now, it's late and way past my bedtime.

 

[Jack Nova]

I'd love to see a game where there is an option for the mod community to get to work. Maybe start off with a vanilla game, but with the intention that somewhere down the line it would be opened up to the community to allow it an indefinite lifetime.

 

[rgmarett]

Here's my $0.05AU.

I basically want the original game, but with:
- More vertices on the wireframe models. No fancy curves or wings or anything silly like that, as I liked the hard-edged clean lines of the original elite ships and would prefer a slightly more detailed versions of ships but with a similar style.

I'm torn between the hard-edges of the original or actually making it look more the cover image on the game box...I think I'd prefer it to look more like that cover illustration thinking about it.

Also agree, planets need to be rendered really nicely (as if they aren't going to be) - I'd like something to explore, so the alien worlds need to be really alien, but true to life - like planets that are freezing on one side, boiling on the other and only the middle is habitable. Or planets/moons like Titan where the sky is green and big blobs of methane rain like floating snow down to the ground.

I'd like to enter the atmosphere of Jupiter and travel through it's clouds.

I'd also like them to reboot Mars and make it red again but map it out as acurately as they can using data from NASA. (I'm never going to go there for real).

Getting out of your ship is a logical progression for the game too - I hope they add to Elite/Frontier and not do the same with fancy graphics.

Oh and some mod tools

Oh and loving the idea that I can fly around with my friends.

 

[Rroff]

Procedural generation is good for fleshing out the background/incidental stuff, generating side/extended missions, etc. but at the end of the day quality > quantity the core of the game needs some solid hand crafted content that the rest builds around. Its one area similiar types of games ultimately falldown because pretty soon the procedural generated nature of them no longer engages the player.

Definitely want to feel awed when I come across a new planet - making planets landable, etc. at a detailed level is a whole games worth of development time in itself but something beyond just being a 2D painted ball would be something worth playing to see.

As mentioned above space should be mostly black but its still possible to make something that is elegant and awe inspiring with relative simplicity in the design.

It should be relatively easy to pick up and play but very hard and unforgiving to master.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

original roll and turn for fans of Elite 1 and the Newtonian mode for FE2 and FFE fans.

My 0.02c.

I think these 2 modes would suffice as simple space sims and that of the original Elite model are not that far apart - most people should be able to figure it out.

Newtonian Physics is great if you want the full "real deal" package but personally I found it difficult to master and often overshot my target or slammed into a planet. It's the one thing that stopped me from playing Elite:Frontier in the end. (Maybe now I am 20 years older I might have the patience

Personally I would like some kind of hybrid - gravity in and around planetary bodies (implying Newtonian Physics) forcing you to be careful when landing / flying about but the general mode of play, especially combat, to be based around the Elite model. I just don't want to target something in the distance to end up overshooting it on every approach thus dragging out a 5 minute dog fight into a 30 minute affair!

 

[The Space Pirate]

I am concerned about one thing. And that is 'the game is fully multiplayer' - what does that mean? No SP mode? We're always going to have to put up with other people in the game - who are there in some cases to ruin other people's fun?

 

[zmurf]

Great news that their will be a single player element to the game.

Newtonian physics has to be the flight model.

Like you Steve, I'd love to have exploration of new systems and to have the Elite Universe evolve as the game progresses.

With FFE the news stories told you what was going on it the galaxy, but if the Federation and Empire went to war........

Think of the possibilities

Agreed ...

 

[The Space Pirate]

OK - it appears my concerns were a bit unfounded.

One other thing though: what the hell is 'Kickstarter'?