Frontier Developments have never used any of the following phrases in describing what Elite is:
I checked the website, the DDF archives, the manuals and the quickstarter... these terms don't come up. I can't say I've read every single newsletter, every forum post by a developer and watched every video, but it seems clear that Frontier don't use these terms to describe their game.
Now I'm not saying they shouldn't be used at all, they have meanings and these meanings can be applied to Elite. When two CMDRs face-off against each other, the term PvP perfectly describes it. People are perfectly welcome to post their suggestions saying they would like Elite to incorporate this or that feature that is 'sandbox' or 'PvE' or 'MMO' (or even that they've seen in Eve).
What I felt it necessary to point out though is that there are lots of suggestions being posted that read something like 'So Elite Dangerous is a PvP game, yet it doesn't have [insert wanted feature here]... I thought Elite Dangerous was supposed to be a sandbox, but it lack some key features that are essential to all sandbox games.
People post these thinking that saying 'Elite is a [label] game and therefore it should have [feature]' automatically wins them the argument. All PvE games have [feature], Elite is a PvE game and therefore it logically follows that if Elite doesn't have [feature] then Elite is wrong, and Frontier have messed up the game design. That is a logical fallacy, they have applied a label of their own choosing to the game and then used that label to argue that the game must be changed in order to conform more closely to the label... but left unchallenged the idea that the label applies to the whole game at all.
So if you do have a suggestion, by all means let us know, but let us know how you think it will improve the game for everyone, don't simply insist that the suggestion must be implemented because of a label you have applied to the game.
More generally Elite is largely the brainchild of one-man, David Braben... he had the idea and the developers at Frontier were people who loved his idea and were inspired to help make it a reality. A game designed by committee to maximise sales might decide to start off with a label that comes with a built-in recipe of ingredients that must be included to satisfy that label, and then build the game around that, but Elite is not that game. Labels may be relevant in different aspects because they allow us to look at what games which have tackled similar problems have done, but something will only get the developer's attention if they see it and believe it will improve the game. If they don't like it then they will ignore it whether the person proposing it has argued it is essential for conformity to a label or not... and probably checking to see what is in this forum will just become a massive drag to them.
They're clearly interested in what the community has to say, they learned the value of community involvement during the kickstarter and they wouldn't have created this forum if they had no intention of at least having someone flick through it once in a while, but let's not let it all get bogged down by lazy arguments shall we?
- sandbox
- MMO
- MMORPG
- PvP
- PvE
I checked the website, the DDF archives, the manuals and the quickstarter... these terms don't come up. I can't say I've read every single newsletter, every forum post by a developer and watched every video, but it seems clear that Frontier don't use these terms to describe their game.
Now I'm not saying they shouldn't be used at all, they have meanings and these meanings can be applied to Elite. When two CMDRs face-off against each other, the term PvP perfectly describes it. People are perfectly welcome to post their suggestions saying they would like Elite to incorporate this or that feature that is 'sandbox' or 'PvE' or 'MMO' (or even that they've seen in Eve).
What I felt it necessary to point out though is that there are lots of suggestions being posted that read something like 'So Elite Dangerous is a PvP game, yet it doesn't have [insert wanted feature here]... I thought Elite Dangerous was supposed to be a sandbox, but it lack some key features that are essential to all sandbox games.
People post these thinking that saying 'Elite is a [label] game and therefore it should have [feature]' automatically wins them the argument. All PvE games have [feature], Elite is a PvE game and therefore it logically follows that if Elite doesn't have [feature] then Elite is wrong, and Frontier have messed up the game design. That is a logical fallacy, they have applied a label of their own choosing to the game and then used that label to argue that the game must be changed in order to conform more closely to the label... but left unchallenged the idea that the label applies to the whole game at all.
So if you do have a suggestion, by all means let us know, but let us know how you think it will improve the game for everyone, don't simply insist that the suggestion must be implemented because of a label you have applied to the game.
More generally Elite is largely the brainchild of one-man, David Braben... he had the idea and the developers at Frontier were people who loved his idea and were inspired to help make it a reality. A game designed by committee to maximise sales might decide to start off with a label that comes with a built-in recipe of ingredients that must be included to satisfy that label, and then build the game around that, but Elite is not that game. Labels may be relevant in different aspects because they allow us to look at what games which have tackled similar problems have done, but something will only get the developer's attention if they see it and believe it will improve the game. If they don't like it then they will ignore it whether the person proposing it has argued it is essential for conformity to a label or not... and probably checking to see what is in this forum will just become a massive drag to them.
They're clearly interested in what the community has to say, they learned the value of community involvement during the kickstarter and they wouldn't have created this forum if they had no intention of at least having someone flick through it once in a while, but let's not let it all get bogged down by lazy arguments shall we?
