Well spoken Phaedra; better than I could have.
Elite Dangerous is not a sandbox
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Well spoken Phaedra; better than I could have.
I mostly agree with you, but your last line bothers me. I wasn't a kickstarter backer - I was too poor at the time to justify the cost to me, and even more recently but Premium Beta was at my price point at the right time for me.
So what you are first saying with this is that my thoughts and opinions are worth much less than a Kickstarter backer? Ok as of this moment you might have a point, but after the 31st May I'd disagree. Just because I couldn't financially back the game earlier, doesn't mean I'm not as invested in it emotionally as a kickstarter backer.
And after the release of the game even more so - back on Kickstarter doesn't make that person a shareholder, more of a donator - and at no point here should Frontier/DB be made to feel bad by a small group of people because some of them don't like a decision they made.
Oh I don't know, suppose the old dog in me is old enough to have seen this kind of rolling SA community forum warfare stuff played out time and time again on other forums. The pattern and smell is always the same.
Also as you know, the SA are always looking for a new home to play in. You think if ED can be turned to a community numbers game there aren't going to be verbose characters turning up time and time again to make that turn happen?
As I say, seen it all before ... ED is no different, if they can convince the devs or at least divide the community here they'll be trying it. Why? Because it is what they do and this forum stuff is merely part of that conversion exercise.
Yep, this. <Moderation Edit: Comment Removed>.
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So Elite D is kinda sandboxy, but not as sandboxy as other sandboxy games that are sandboxy enough to be considered a true sandbox.
Player Empires, EvE 2.0 – sorry I don’t believe it’s going to happen and here’s the reason why.
It’s not the playerbase you have to convince, all the EvE style social engineering and forum PVP may serve to convince a couple of Dev’s but that doesn’t matter. It’s one man. A man who has I’ve no doubt woken up every morning for the last thirty years and chanted a simple mantra, something along the lines:
“One Pilot, One Ship, One Galaxy.”
Above all one beautiful, seamless, procedurally generated scientifically accurate Galaxy.
He’s opening up that vision, open and free to everyone in the playerbase. Free to roam, free to touch any system you can reach.
If you look at the mechanics and direction of the game, a common thread runs through, players can influence, we cannot own.
Do you really think he’s going to abandon that vision and allow its of his galaxy to be carved off, cut apart and locked away, this bit to the Redditors, This area is for Goons only. Sorry not going to happen.
Try Star Citizen, or beg CCP for a reset and for Valkyrie to be incorporated fully into New Eden.
It’s not the playerbase you have to convince, all the EvE style social engineering and forum PVP may serve to convince a couple of Dev’s but that doesn’t matter. It’s one man. A man who has I’ve no doubt woken up every morning for the last thirty years and chanted a simple mantra, something along the lines:
“One Pilot, One Ship, One Galaxy.”
Above all one beautiful, seamless, procedurally generated scientifically accurate Galaxy.
He’s opening up that vision, open and free to everyone in the playerbase. Free to roam, free to touch any system you can reach.
If you look at the mechanics and direction of the game, a common thread runs through, players can influence, we cannot own.
Do you really think he’s going to abandon that vision and allow its of his galaxy to be carved off, cut apart and locked away, this bit to the Redditors, This area is for Goons only. Sorry not going to happen.
Try Star Citizen, or beg CCP for a reset and for Valkyrie to be incorporated fully into New Eden.
The thing to remember is that ED doesn't cast the players as the primary force in its universe. Player dependent economy will never be a part of it because the game has a thriving NPC population which is as much a part of the background simulation as players are. Remember, in Elite we are little fish swimming in a big pond. We're never going to grow up to be sharks. We're never going to be in a position to challenge the centuries-old NPC corporations that are in the game. They are part of the water we swim through.
From everything that FD have said about the future direction of the game, there'll be at least as much horizontal progression (for want of a better word) of activity as vertical.
Crafting ships and weapons might be possible down the line, but I doubt it'll work like it does in Eve or on the same scale. Similarly DB has said he likes the idea of us being able to build settlements (note the word settlement, not planet dominating city
I think the big thing here is that ED is taking a very different approach to other open-world, sandbox games in that it is based around a dynamic background simulation that can be influenced but not controlled by players. That background simulation will also be creating content on the fly based on all kinds of factors, including player influences. There's going to be an awful lot of emergent gameplay that comes out of that, and it's impractical to predict how the dynamics will work out.
Obviously, the ED that's released won't be the same ED that's around in 5 years time, but we can't really predict (or demand) what features the game will have then. It's short-sighted to expect it to develop along the same lines as established games, when the gameplay that emerges will make unforeseen and innovative new features possible - or make standard features unworkable.
I think a lot of the resistance to including established features in ED comes from this, and it doesn't mean that everybody is against ED changing ever. A lot of it is wait and see, and I'm pretty sure FD are taking the same approach regarding future expansions.
Here here. For all the negative bashing that has gone on in this thread I think that people are being rather short sighted. ED, once released, will organically grow to fit it's needs.
For example when I think of future production in ED - unlike Eve which is a constant grind and click fest - I don't see why we *couldn't* leverage the background NPCs to hire them, buy the materials and blueprints, and set up a manufacturing colony in an uninhabited system. They player is then hardly involved in the actual production itself but can benefit from moving and selling the goods that are produced.
Is mine a very good idea? Who knows, it's certainly an opinion of where I'd *like* to see ED go in it's current state - but two years down the line I might change my opinion when FD present a much better option - or it's proved we don't need production in the game.
Sisyphus, just replying to the reply you made to my post, I didn't say anything about preferring other features not being added, I simply said, quoting my original post and the part of yours I was responding to:
Originally Posted by Sisyphus:
"Again, freedom to do only 3 things: transport pre-made stuff for profit, fight or explore."
My reply:
"Yep, that's all you could do in the original Elite and its all E: D needs to keep me happy!"
So long as the ethos of the original game is not compromised, I don't mind what else is added, I might even like the extra things, but I backed Elite: Dangerous because I understood that it would be essentially the same game as the original Elite: one commander, one ship, trying to advance in and explore the galaxy.
I don't have a problem with people owning more than one ship, or co-op MP where a ship can accommodate multiple pilots or groups of friends flying together for a common goal, but the game would be destroyed for me if it allowed empire building resulting in corporate hierarchies that could run roughshod over solo players without consequence, which I truly believe would be the result of what you seem to want, even if that's not your aim.
Like many who have posted on these forums, I don't thrive on conflict, quite the opposite. I have no interest in a game where PVP and the accumulation of wealth and power to allow groups of players to dominate other players are the goals.
just like in the original game, I accept that some conflict is inevitable, but to suggest that a game that allows exploration of an entire galaxy of billions of star systems will become boring is to completely miss the point of the game.
Trading and surviving occasional conflict are the prices I know I will have to pay to be able to equip my ship and explore the galaxy. if you are not interested in exploring and instead want to be able to accumulate wealth and power to dominate systems and by extension, other players, I don't think this is a game you will want to play. I wouldn't have backed E: D if I thought it was going to be that sort of game.
Some have suggested you might be a troll, I'm not sure, but I don't think you are. I prefer to think that you are genuinely disappointed that E: D won't allow you the sort of gameplay you would like, but if it did, I think many of the backers of the game would be just as disappointed as you appear to be, I know I would.
If E: D is a success and there is enough demand for the sort of game you would like, perhaps Frontier could be persuaded to make it as an E: D spin off, but I would be very disappointed if E: D became that game, not because I don't want you to have fun, just because I think the sort of game you want is not a true a sequel to Elite and Frontier, it certainly wouldn't be the game I thought I was backing.
Book of Gaming Perceptions, Chapter 3, verses 1-2
I don't know why the op said that this will not be a sand box. I just watched the number 2 twitch stream, and they said new systems would be determined by player actions. So if every one supported the empire in the new system, you would have the new system be empire. He also said you could control trading by destroying trade ships, thus effecting the larger game.
From everything I have seen the players will have a mass effect on the world. How much more sand box do you want. As for capital ships, and owning a empire, as was said so many times before doesn't make sense. If Microsoft decided it wanted to make a military empire, with top of the line military equipment, it would not be allowed. Nor would it be allowed to take over a country by force.
Also I don't know how you can't see that you could control a whole system if you so desired. You would have to get some people together and manipulate the systems trade to your liking. If you had enough you could, stop any one from entering your system, in effect owning it. This game gives enough tools, and game play to do what eve does, if you so desire.
No maybe you maybe won't have a huge capital ship, or your own personal interactive planet, or huge space station. But use your imagination please, you could enforce your law in a system, not let any one near your space station, or your planet. If you can't pretend that you have a base on the planet I dono what to tell you other then, a sand box isn't what you want anyways. What you want is for a game that tells you, with its in game menus how to run the game with their limited interfaces.
If you want to tax people tax them, where in this game did it say you couldn't bring your people to a system, and tell them if they want leave in your system, then they must pay you. The possibility a of this game are endless, and the less they add in terms of forcing you to play the way they want, by putting in a in game control menu, the more sand box it is.
There is no end that I can see, as to what is possible in this game.
From everything I have seen the players will have a mass effect on the world. How much more sand box do you want. As for capital ships, and owning a empire, as was said so many times before doesn't make sense. If Microsoft decided it wanted to make a military empire, with top of the line military equipment, it would not be allowed. Nor would it be allowed to take over a country by force.
Also I don't know how you can't see that you could control a whole system if you so desired. You would have to get some people together and manipulate the systems trade to your liking. If you had enough you could, stop any one from entering your system, in effect owning it. This game gives enough tools, and game play to do what eve does, if you so desire.
No maybe you maybe won't have a huge capital ship, or your own personal interactive planet, or huge space station. But use your imagination please, you could enforce your law in a system, not let any one near your space station, or your planet. If you can't pretend that you have a base on the planet I dono what to tell you other then, a sand box isn't what you want anyways. What you want is for a game that tells you, with its in game menus how to run the game with their limited interfaces.
If you want to tax people tax them, where in this game did it say you couldn't bring your people to a system, and tell them if they want leave in your system, then they must pay you. The possibility a of this game are endless, and the less they add in terms of forcing you to play the way they want, by putting in a in game control menu, the more sand box it is.
There is no end that I can see, as to what is possible in this game.
So the distinction here is probably game mode vs. game scope.
The game mode is a sandbox.. But only within the scope of a "player is a pilot" dynamic.
I guess a truer sandbox would be one where the scope is completely flexible so that a player can be a pilot, a shipyard, an empire, a widget manufacturer or a god.
If we all agreed that this is what Elite should be, then the game we're all waiting for wouldn't be Elite anymore.
The game mode is a sandbox.. But only within the scope of a "player is a pilot" dynamic.
I guess a truer sandbox would be one where the scope is completely flexible so that a player can be a pilot, a shipyard, an empire, a widget manufacturer or a god.
If we all agreed that this is what Elite should be, then the game we're all waiting for wouldn't be Elite anymore.
I haven't played yet, but from the videos I have seen there is more sand in the alpha 4 box than, most main stream mmos put together. Even if that all it was was alpha 4, it still has a lot possibles, and invokes the imagination to what space truly is, and so much that could be done in the game.
Haha, nope they drink forbidden energy drinks now a days.
that seems to be what's happening here.
I really hate threads like these - that just go off, hundreds of replies in very little time. I just don't have the time to read everything.
sandbox is a subjective term imo.
it might be a play area for you, with your shovel and your bucket, but when I finish it's going to be one hell of a ' castle.
lets not let one cat ruin it for everyone else.
I have one small question and sorry if it was covered. 8 pages is just to much to wander through
In this "sandbox" which you define as Eve.... Where is the PLAYERS skill. Where is the actual piloting? Where is the mental effort that could not be achieved without a calculator?
I played Eve. Eve felt like a fully 3 dimensional pseudo first person version of... Starcraft.
Kinda spacey, had to monitor your resources, call in armies to defeat armies.
In your "sandbox" which you define as Eve, where could a single person go and make a difference without having to be worried about gankers, gate camps, and grieving waiting those days for skill points to rack up just so you go move on to a bigger ship?
No thanks. Your definition of sandbox does have a purpose though.
Beneath my cat.
In this "sandbox" which you define as Eve.... Where is the PLAYERS skill. Where is the actual piloting? Where is the mental effort that could not be achieved without a calculator?
I played Eve. Eve felt like a fully 3 dimensional pseudo first person version of... Starcraft.
Kinda spacey, had to monitor your resources, call in armies to defeat armies.
In your "sandbox" which you define as Eve, where could a single person go and make a difference without having to be worried about gankers, gate camps, and grieving waiting those days for skill points to rack up just so you go move on to a bigger ship?
No thanks. Your definition of sandbox does have a purpose though.
Beneath my cat.
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