Elite Dangerous is the Largest Empty Sandbox Ever Made

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Half the current features wouldn't work if the game was offline, so let's be honest here... solo is holding off the full potential of this game and due to this problem we will most likely never get a true sandbox experience.

Which features would those be? And how exactly would that affect Solo if the game were "offline"?
 
Half the current features wouldn't work if the game was offline, so let's be honest here... solo is holding off the full potential of this game and due to this problem we will most likely never get a true sandbox experience.

90% of the game has been sacrificed for online multiplayer, the game's so hideously crippled that none of its ships are even capable of basic spaceflight, and we have transitions for the transitions.

No full freedom of movement, none of the thrills and spills of basic spaceflight, no seamless transitions, disastrous UI, not even basic autopilot, no FA-off, can't even tweak FA-on, no basic physics, conservation of momentum, no elastic collisions, no persistent AI, no atmospheres, wooden and amateurish "duh, missions!" and passenger system with no proper BBS system... we had to fight for years just to get external views, which were still utterly broken and unusable last i checked..

..if this game were offline solo, it might still be recognisably 'Elite', unlike the pathetically handicapped, clunky and disjointed afterbirth that is ED..
 
Well I certainly dont wanna see it fail m8...Im hanging on fer the QOL changes next year and while Im a pessimistic old sod at the best of times, they do appear to be doing something. Im a patient man, I can wait years fer something if I think its gonna be worth it...not gonna let up on the forums in the meantime though...old habits and all that.

Speaking of which, I want pvp to be improved significantly...I sure as hell hadnt planned on being an explorer and playing alone fer 2 years when I got here, and there might just be a year or two left in it yet...one never knows what the future holds but one things fer sure. Ive been a hardcore pvp player fer decades and this is the first game in a long time where I dont enjoy it...not yet anyway. I dont wanna see open die a death cos tbh, Im a social butterfly and I miss playing with people...solo mode serves a purpose but thats all thats special about it...if open were more tolerable then who knows (shrugs) Im making meself feel old fer some odd reason.

Would any of us be here if we wanted the game to fail? Ok theres always one or two but whatever...ye know what I mean jellybean ^

I wasn't implying that you wanted the game to fail at all. And for that matter ED could not improve one teeny little bit beyond the state it's currently in and it won't have failed. Personally, my gripes have more to do with the game's unrealized potential and the ominous feeling that the game is being back burner-ed so Fdev (sensibly) focuses on more lucrative ideas.

It has become increasingly obvious that they've painted themselves into a corner with their development choices, as well as the game's fundamental architecture, and I'm afraid all we're going to see going into the future are minor qol improvements, nothing approaching "adding sand." As far as I'm concerned (and I've been saying this publicly and loudly for months now) 2.4 was their chance to prove they even knew what sand was much less planned on spending their resources pouring it into the box for us to play with. Love it or hate it, ED is what it is, and that's not going to change to any large degree.
 
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+++ even the last major CG's were focused around combat and exclusive to open, shall I start naming them all?

Yes, please start listing all of the open exclusive CG's. ;)

Half the current features wouldn't work if the game was offline, so let's be honest here... solo is holding off the full potential of this game and due to this problem we will most likely never get a true sandbox experience.

Actually, it's multiplayer, not solo, which has held back the true development potential of Elite Dangerous from a sandbox point of view. Multiplayer is why we have the instancing design which segregates everything into little individual and unconnected "rooms". It's why we have so much development time dedicated to balancing weapons and such just for the PvP pilots, stealing valuable dev time to do other things. It's why multicrew is what it is instead of being NPC crewmembers which everyone can use. It's why Frontier is spending so much dev time on an intricate C&P system instead of other more valuable features. If the game was single player then we'd have a vibrant mod community which would greatly help to alleviate the slow dart board development progress we've gotten from Frontier since 1.0.

Solo has barely gotten any dev attention at all in the past three years, so blaming solo for all of Elite's woes is demonstrably hilarious.

Love it or hate it, ED is what it is, and that's not going to change to any large degree.

I'm slowly coming to believe this too. I am desperately hoping that Beyond and 2018 proves my fears wrong about this, but my gut tells me you are most likely correct, unfortunately.
 
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+++ even the last major CG's were focused around combat and exclusive to open, shall I start naming them all?

"focused on combat" does not mean PvP or GSP.

As you tend to shoot NPCs in Solo while still counting for the missions.

Also, I can name all three times something was Open Only. And CGs have never been any of them.


  • First to Elite / Triple Elite Cash prize when the game launched
  • GPU card giveaway
  • Salome (due to Drew flying in Open for the event)


Everything else that has been added to the game, was done so Solo and Private Groups could also take part.
 
The way I see It, is that we like parts of the game, what needs to be done is to make the existing way we play a lot better, not completely change the type of game it is.

So look at existing features and see how to make them better. We can't have a purely player driven economy with the size of the bubble, just not realistically possible. So pseudo one we have is what it needs to be. So let's look at ways that can be enhanced for everyone.

There is a lot that can be done with just the existing game to make it much better.

I think it's best not to talk about corporations, station control etc until the rest of the game is in a healthy state.
 

Goose4291

Banned
"focused on combat" does not mean PvP or GSP.

As you tend to shoot NPCs in Solo while still counting for the missions.

Also, I can name all three times something was Open Only. And CGs have never been any of them.


  • First to Elite / Triple Elite Cash prize when the game launched
  • GPU card giveaway
  • Salome (due to Drew flying in Open for the event)


Everything else that has been added to the game, was done so Solo and Private Groups could also take part.

You forgot about the Rise to Power CGs. Some of those were open only.
 
"focused on combat" does not mean PvP or GSP.

As you tend to shoot NPCs in Solo while still counting for the missions.

Also, I can name all three times something was Open Only. And CGs have never been any of them.


  • First to Elite / Triple Elite Cash prize when the game launched
  • GPU card giveaway
  • Salome (due to Drew flying in Open for the event)


Everything else that has been added to the game, was done so Solo and Private Groups could also take part.

To be scrupulously fair, 'The Hunt' event was also Open only.
Or at least you had to be in Open to get the clues.
 
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The way I see It, is that we like parts of the game, what needs to be done is to make the existing way we play a lot better, not completely change the type of game it is.

So look at existing features and see how to make them better. We can't have a purely player driven economy with the size of the bubble, just not realistically possible. So pseudo one we have is what it needs to be. So let's look at ways that can be enhanced for everyone.

There is a lot that can be done with just the existing game to make it much better.

I think it's best not to talk about corporations, station control etc until the rest of the game is in a healthy state.

That's a good way to put it: The "blaze your own trail" game is not in a healthy state, unless participating in the spoon-fed Thargoid stuff is considered trailblazing.
 
This is pretty much you admitting that you just need easy victims.

Nevertheless, neither Solo nor Private Groups are going away. So, basically, you can either get over it and move on, or you can just move on.

Your call.

Thats always been the not-so hidden agenda - give us hapless victims. It has always been obvious.
If people want to PvP that's great - have at it all you want - blow yourselves up and have all the fun you want. But they can't can they? Which shows how phoney the whole PvP thing is. They don't want to play amongst themselves. They might get hurt.

That's the rub; some of our PvP heroes here don't want to go up against like ships and Cmdr's. They might see the rebuy screen and what fun is that? Your own salty tears are not so delicious apparently. So nope, can't PvP against my ship equals.

Much more fun to take my hyper-Engineered combat machine, good for absolutely no other part of the game, and listen to the wailing and salt of hapless Traders and newbies while you heroically blow them up outside of stations. So damn you play in Open where I can kill you! What? No, it doesn't matter what you want to do in a game you paid for with 3 modes. You must play with me when, where, and how I want otherwise FDev is just ruining the game.

Do I have that right now?
 
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Goose4291

Banned
Any links to support that?

As the thread for it doesn't say that. It says all can get involved.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/243226-The-Dangerous-Games-The-Rise-to-Power!

I can't seem to find it, but the threads tied to the specific CGs once it got whittled down to the final five seem to have been purged.

I can tell you which one it was though: it was the final game with the puzzle and trying to grab salvaged gems, that only spawned in open (similar I'd imagine to the GPU card giveaway design, but on a much larger scale). Caused a bit of a ruckus at the time because it contradicted what they had originally said in the thread you linked.

There was another open only thing as well now I think of it... remember when there was the freighter giving out clues to the Thargoid wreck site, you could only get in open, that SDC brassed up within minutes of its appearance?
 
I can't seem to find it, but the threads tied to the specific CGs once it got whittled down to the final five seem to have been purged.

I can tell you which one it was though: it was the final game with the puzzle and trying to grab salvaged gems, that only spawned in open (similar I'd imagine to the GPU card giveaway design, but on a much larger scale). Caused a bit of a ruckus at the time because it contradicted what they had originally said in the thread you linked.

Was that the one where it was actually bugged and was supposed to be all modes?
I recall a CG that was bugged and FD decided not to fix it due to it being a few days in by the time folks figured out it was bugged.
I glanced over some post about it, but I didn't pay that much attention as I was busy trading at the time elsewhere.

There was another open only thing as well now I think of it... remember when there was the freighter giving out clues to the Thargoid wreck site, you could only get in open, that SDC brassed up within minutes of its appearance?

Yea Drew mentioned it above, The Hunt - though people were travelling in Solo/PGs due to lag and disconnects, then doing quick swaps to Open to get the clues.
I actually forgotten about it until Drew mentioned it.

So if right it's 4 on purpose open only and 1 due to a bug that FD couldn't be bothered to fix?
 
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