Elite Dangerous is not a sandbox

[zynaps]

Interesting discussion that I think boils down to the following.

ED is a sandbox, in fact it's a big, huge enormous sandbox. The problem is that it does not appear we get many toys to play with in this sandbox. To make a fair comparison (in my opinion); ED will be a bit like Minecraft without the crafting, which will sadly limit its audience quite a bit. If Minecraft didn't have crafting you could still gather resources (asteroid mining), build your house (get better ships), you could still punch animals and monsters (combat), you could trade with villagers (market), and you could explore caves and the world (exploration). However it would be a pretty boring game, just like the Elite's of old are in fact quite boring games once you get over the novelty of them.

Now I hear a lot of people yelling "But Elite (and FE2 and FFE) are awesome games! They are my favorite games of all times! They are NOT boring !". That's OK, this post not a personal attack on your beliefs or feeling, just an observation on how the old Elite gameplay holds up to newer games and new players.

I too have fond memories of FE2 on my old Amiga. The game was amazing and the keyword here is "was". Sadly the gameplay of the old elite franchise doesn't hold up in todays market because it's all very simple... a bit too simple perhaps? The simplicity of the old gameplay eventually reduced the game to a grinding game after just a few days, with the goal being to reach the highest rank. Yes you could go explore and visit systems no human had ever seen, which was cool, for a day or two, until you realized it's all the same thing over and over again.

Now Frontier has done a lot of modernization in ED compared to the old games but so far it's all related to flight mechanics and better graphics (which is great!). However the core gameplay still remains the same from what I can tell? We have the super simple trading that will quickly grow boring. We've got mining that's destined to be more dull than EVE mining since there's no resource management at all in ED. Also neither of these two gameplay elements have an actual meaningful purpose except for putting cash in your pocket, so performing them is bound to be an unsatisfying experience for a lot of players.

That leaves us with missions and exploration which will be the two main features of ED that I think has any hope of keeping the game interesting in the long run.

I'm going to ask two question, and I'll list the answer to the first one, but before you peek at it see if you can figure out the answer yourself.

1. Given the following popular PC games, League of Legends, Dota2, Counter-Strike GO, StarCraft2, MineCraft, Diablo III, EVE online, World of Warcraft, World of Tanks and Hearthstone, what makes players sink thousands of hours into them? What draws them back into the game day after day? Disregard the multiplayer aspect, because while that certainly helps with the popularity it's only because of how easy it is to defeat the AI.

Answer:

Spoiler

No matter of you sink a hundred, a thousand or even ten thousand hours into these games, there is still new things to learn that directly relates to the game. There's a real sense of progression for you as a player, not necessarily in terms of in-game stats, but as a real person that is actually constantly improving at the game and learning new things. None of these games are hard to get into at an entry level, but the ceiling is very high on all of them and this is what draws people back day after day. For a player, learning something new gives them a sense of accomplishment, not only in the game but in the real world as well and they come back because they want to learn more and become even better. Think of it as climbing an infinite mountain. Every day in your journey you reach a little bit higher, but how high can you go? The only way to find out is to keep on playing...

2. Will Frontier add anything to ED that directly relates to the answer I gave to the first question? Will ED be the hill down the street or will it be Olympus Mons on Mars? After a 20 hours of playing ED will I have reached the top? Will I from there have a view of everything?

 

[Makasouleater69]

add all the features that the op thinks makes a game 'sandbox' and you will end up with something like this:

crowded, full of toys but with very few players

Very nice way to sum up the whole thing. I think that ends it right there, atleast for me. You don't need all those toys to have a good sand box, and as you say to many toys ruins it.

 

[Riandor]

Interesting discussion that I think boils down to the following.

ED is a sandbox, in fact it's a big, huge enormous sandbox. The problem is that it does not appear we get many toys to play with in this sandbox.

Very nice way to sum up the whole thing. I think that ends it right there, at least for me. You don't need all those toys to have a good sand box, and as you say to many toys ruins it.

Somewhere in the middle, as always, is the sweet spot.
Too few elements and it is a money-grind in space, beautiful, but a grind.

Too many and it is an unbearable mess.

Let us not forget what is to come: Planetary Landings & Avatar/walking/EVA

That will add a LOT of additional options to game play. But for the initial release we are getting a very much updated CORE Elite.

So whilst we await the additions (which in my mind are not so much additions but parts of the puzzle), we will likely have most of what made Elite great and possibly even those elements that some find limiting.

I raised this myself in other threads, that the core elements, Trading, Exploring, Combat should very much be the basics. The elements that allow the game to function. But the real beauty, that has to come from the dynamic missions, the events and everything that fits outside of those core elements.

A game can certainly die if the core stuff is flawed, but it will only truly live if the elements on top of that are memorable.

As for the OP... seriously? Elite IS Sandbox, in EVERY sense of the usage (other than physical sand, though maybe they could add a small packet of sand inside every box of the game they ship out for retail)

 

[Teefur]

See, you even get an education from the game

What? It's not a sandbox, and now you tell me it's just a thinly veiled edutainment title? That's it! I'm going home, I didn't sign up for this!

 

[hunvagy]

Now Frontier has done a lot of modernization in ED compared to the old games but so far it's all related to flight mechanics and better graphics (which is great!). However the core gameplay still remains the same from what I can tell? We have the super simple trading that will quickly grow boring.

[...]

1. Given the following popular PC games, League of Legends, Dota2, Counter-Strike GO, StarCraft2, MineCraft, Diablo III, EVE online, World of Warcraft, World of Tanks and Hearthstone, what makes players sink thousands of hours into them?

Aside from WoW, D3 and Minecraft all these games you listed are competitive Player vs. player focused games, many of the belong to the same for me utterly boring subste (Moba). Player go back to these because they want to be on the top of the ladder, and because they want to win. It's that easy.

As for WoW.. how does running the same raid 3000000000 times to complete your set gear differ from mining in Elite Dangerous, as per your definition? It's exactly the same. Running quests in WOW to kill 50 boars.. then 50 bunnies, then 25 bigger bunnies.. it is all the same then, isn't it? How does running trade runs or fighting pirates for bounties differ from rerunning Inferno bosses in D3? It doesn't. People go back to grind and get better gear, not because there's new techniques to be learned. If anything most boss runs have been documented, and everyone can do them with tunnel vision.

As for Minecraft, there are people who don't play it in Survival or Creative mode. There's lots of people who play it in Adventure mode, which is basically what it would be in comparison to Elite.

As for your second question: "Will Frontier add anything to ED that directly relates to the answer I gave to the first question? After a 20 hours of playing ED, will my answer still be relevant? Will there be anything worth coming back to?"

Is there anything worth going back for in WoW? My answer? No. I got bored of it during the open beta, and that was just one week. It was highly repetitive, bland and boring. Yet I play other MMOs, which have similar mechanics. Why? Because I like the setting, I like the people, not the game mechanics, but the people I play with. If the setting appeals to the audience, the game will be good no matter how much it is or is not like EVE online. If it doesn't, like seen by the OP because it doesn't offer the things that he likes, he'll never like it, even if something akin to that function was put in. He'd still find something else to nag about.

 

[Sterlino]

 

[AtomicHorror]

Interesting discussion that I think boils down to the following.

ED is a sandbox, in fact it's a big, huge enormous sandbox. The problem is that it does not appear we get many toys to play with in this sandbox. To make a fair comparison (in my opinion); ED will be a bit like Minecraft without the crafting, which will sadly limit its audience quite a bit. If Minecraft didn't have crafting you could still gather resources (asteroid mining), build your house (get better ships), you could still punch animals and monsters (combat), you could trade with villagers (market), and you could explore caves and the world (exploration). However it would be a pretty boring game, just like the Elite's of old are in fact quite boring games once you get over the novelty of them.

GTA series doesn't have crafting. Millions of players love those games. Argument invalid.

 

[hunvagy]

GTA series doesn't have crafting. Millions of players love those games. Argument invalid.

Damn, what I spent minutes typing, you did in a single sentence.. I'm in awe

 

[Gibbonici]

2. Will Frontier add anything to ED that directly relates to the answer I gave to the first question? Will ED be the hill down the street or will it be Olympus Mons on Mars? After a 20 hours of playing ED will I have reached the top? Will I from there have a view of everything?

ED is still only in alpha and it's nowhere near feature complete yet. We've seen a bit of combat and the very basics of trading, and that's all.

The biggest feature (and the one that consistently gets overlooked) is also the feature that sets it apart from every other game on your list. And every other game not on your list for that matter.

The background simulation.

Trade routes won't remain profitable or safe forever, system statuses won't be static, factional borders aren't set in stone, the frontier will expand. Content will be generated according to the changing galaxy. ED will dynamic in ways that other games, even games like Eve, have never been. It will change despite what players do or want. It will also change with players' interactions with itself.

I totally get why some people are worried that ED will fail because it's not like the other games they've played, but there are also many gamers who want something new.

Sometimes there's a view on these forums that many ED backers are stuck in the past because they don't want "modern" features that have been the staple of games for ten years or more. I think that's quite ironic.

I think that a lot of us don't want those features in the same way they didn't want 3 lives and a high score back in 1984. We're not stuck in the past, we're pining for something new in gaming.

 

[Fromhell]

Yeah, so World of Warcraft is a sandbox MMO?

Prove me wrong.



Standard defininion of themeparks MMOs: NPC driven, developer controlled


Sandbox MMOs
Player driven, player controlled
Owning, building, defending, controlling parts of the game world


We can control, own or build absolutely nothing in the ED universe as far as I know, right?
The universe gets injected with developer events and 99,9% NPC artificial intelligence are ruling the universe.

So there, draw your own conclusions.
No sand anywhere.

 

[Stormprooter]

Sometimes there's a view on these forums that many ED backers are stuck in the past because they don't want "modern" features that have been the staple of games for ten years or more. I think that's quite ironic.

I think that a lot of us don't want those features in the same way they didn't want 3 lives and a high score back in 1984. We're not stuck in the past, we're pining for something new in gaming.

Well said that man, have some rep

EDIT: forum won't let me rep you - so have a +1 in plain text for now . . .

 

[zynaps]

As for WoW.. how does running the same raid 3000000000 times to complete your set gear differ from mining in Elite Dangerous, as per your definition?

Because as you play you get better at playing the game in a mechanical sense which adds to the satisfaction as well. The game might be a grind (I don't play WoW) but I know that a big draw in all popular games is simply getting better at playing the game. You get better at hitting your keys, you get better at aiming, targeting, combos, hitting timings. You learn new things like every time through a new raid, be it a particular mob stats, best spells to use, best weapons to use, etc. This also applies to D3. The fun is not only the game and ganking monsters. No the fun is learning the game and all the nuances of statistics, weapons, gear combinations, potions, spells, etc. You don't need that of course, you can play the game on a casual level forever but if you want to go further you can because the ceiling is not set so low you hit your head when you try and stand up.

In Minecraft a big draw for players is to learn new crafting patterns, invent new contraptions and even learning complex red stone logic. You might learn the core gameplay in 10 minutes but learning the rest; red stone, farming, potions, automation adds a lot to the overall experience. Then lets not even mention MC mods like Feed the Beast which are crazy complex.

In ED the question is; what could you possibly learn and get better at in regards to mining after you've spent 10 minutes doing it? Same with the market. Have you traded once you know all there is to know. Apart from fluctuating prices there are basically no nuances to pick up on. These are tasks with very low skill ceilings. But just because something is easily accessible doesn't mean it has to forgo the possibility for someone to become a master at it, does it?

I'll give more examples with some popular single player games: Meat Boy and Spelunky. Two games that at the first glance appears to be simple platform games. I mean what new things could you possibly learn after spending 10 minutes playing them? Nothing right? Well not quite. They might be easily accessible games but boy are they hard to master. The nice thing is, you don't have to master them to enjoy them, but if you would like to, there's always a possibility of pushing yourself to next level purely for added self satisfaction.

In Elite and probably by extension, ED, where's the next level for those who want to take the plunge and indulge themselves in intricacies? Right now ship combat appears to be it. Aiming and shooting is easy enough making it accessible for both new and old players. Managing your power, your heat, flight assist, shields, weapon groups, tactics, stealth, now that adds more complexity for those who might want focus on getting somewhere. They enables an option to become a master at something in the game which in turn adds a draw to keep playing the game.

However apart from the vastly improved combat mechanics over old Elite games; where's the added mechanics for the rest of the game? Reading the design documents it's quite clear than mining and trading doesn't offer anything new in this regard.

Now, we still don't know anything about missions and exploration or how complex that will turn out to be, so there's still hope that those two gameplay elements have a lot deeper gameplay than mining and trading.

In ED there's five core gameplay elements; combat, trading, mining, missions and exploration. Four of those, trading, mining, missions and exploration, feels like nothing but interdiction enablers which leads players into the only portion of gameplay with any depth to it: combat.

Surely it would be nice if ED contained things to do, other than combat, that required spending some time getting really good at it?

 

[hunvagy]

In ED the question is; what could you possibly learn and get better at in regards to mining after you've spent 10 minutes doing it? Same with the market. Have you traded once you know all there is to know. Apart from fluctuating prices there are basically no nuances to pick up on. These are tasks with very low skill ceilings. But just because something is easily accessible doesn't mean it has to forgo the possibility for someone to become a master at it, does it?

However apart from the vastly improved combat mechanics over old Elite games; where's the added mechanics for the rest of the game? Reading the design documents it's quite clear than mining and trading doesn't offer anything new in this regard.

Now, we still don't know anything about missions and exploration or how complex that will turn out to be, so there's still hope that those two gameplay elements have a lot deeper gameplay than mining and trading.

In ED there's five core gameplay elements; combat, trading, mining, missions and exploration. Four of those, trading, mining, missions and exploration, feels like nothing but interdiction enablers which leads players into the only portion of gameplay with any depth to it: combat.

Surely it would be nice if ED contained things to do, other than combat, that required spending some time getting really good at it?

I guess this is where I don't agree. Yes, the mechanical aspect of mining itself is "point laser and wait". The intricacy lies in the fact that you merge it with some exploration, trying to find the mining spot that yields the biggest gain for your, without being blown out of the sky by pirates, or giving it away to other people. At least that's how I see it.

In turn trading might be just buy low, sell high, but then again, there's hundreds of places to come where you have to use this knowledge, and that might be enough challenge for dedicated traders. Reading the news and learning about sudden shortages, working out profitable trade routes that not only give you credit, but also steer the galaxy your way. If I recall it was said that your actions can influence the shape of the galaxy. So how about you decide you only supply worlds leaning towards the Empire? I know you can't starve out the Feds since you haven't got that degree of control, but your contribution to the Empires needs might trigger their expansion into new star systems, opening new venues for you to exploit. And again, this is just my opinion, I don't want to assume things in the name of the devs.

But same as you, I am hoping that during the beta the mission and exploration systems get their time in the limelight, and we know how the little bits we see now (just a few goods, no simulation on fluctuations or politics) fall into place.

 

[Cosmo Bozo]

Sometimes there's a view on these forums that many ED backers are stuck in the past because they don't want "modern" features that have been the staple of games for ten years or more. I think that's quite ironic.

I think that a lot of us don't want those features in the same way they didn't want 3 lives and a high score back in 1984. We're not stuck in the past, we're pining for something new in gaming.

Yep, nailed it in one.

 

[AtomicHorror]

So there, draw your own conclusions.

I believe we have done so, though you're clearly unhappy with the outcome.

 

[ElGuappo]

Now, we still don't know anything about missions and exploration or how complex that will turn out to be, so there's still hope that those two gameplay elements have a lot deeper gameplay than mining and trading.

The asteroid belt around Fromage IV has begun to show signs of moving beyond its normal boundary. Tidy up the asteroid belt and you'll be handsomely rewarded!

Destroy 12,750,000 Meandering Asteroids and choose your reward

The Rattle-And-Hum 5000 Gattling Gun (+2 Targeting, +3 Damage)

Ever-Lock Missile - 20 sec Cooldown (+10 Damage)

The 'Galaxy Far Far Away' Radar Module - (+8 Navigation, -2 Collision Damage)

 

[hunvagy]

The asteroid belt around Fromage IV has begun to show signs of moving beyond its normal boundary. Tidy up the asteroid belt and you'll be handsomely rewarded!

Destroy 12,750,000 Meandering Asteroids and choose your reward

The Rattle-And-Hum 5000 Gattling Gun (+2 Targeting, +3 Damage)

Ever-Lock Missile - 20 sec Cooldown (+10 Damage)

The 'Galaxy Far Far Away' Radar Module - (+8 Navigation, -2 Collision Damage)

What? No myserious microtransaction item filled lockboxes that I can unlock for 9.99?

 

[ElGuappo]

What? No myserious microtransaction item filled lockboxes that I can unlock for 9.99?

As long as I can unlock my Level 60 Mk 5 Cobra, you can keep your lockbox

 

[HaB1971]

The OP may be right in that this isn't a box full of sand to bury your action figures in, use that bright plastic water wheel thingie that you pour sand in at the top and then it cascades down spinning the wheel or find that the dog had buried a nice chocolatey looking thing in the corner... other then that he is dead wrong...

But I will say the ED is not a side scrolling platform game that I was promised.. in a dream after a drunk night out and a very dodgy curry !!!

 

[Robert Maynard]

Sandbox MMOs
Player driven, player controlled
Owning, building, defending, controlling parts of the game world

We can control, own or build absolutely nothing in the ED universe as far as I know, right?
The universe gets injected with developer events and 99,9% NPC artificial intelligence are ruling the universe.

Instead of "Sandbox MMOs" above, should it not read "EVE Online"?

We can control our actions, we can own our ships, weapons and cargo and we can build our reputations.

I think you missed a few 9s off the percentage though.