Nope
Elite - Would it be better as a single player?
- Thread starter ITZC0ATL
- Start date
Nope
I would have preferred it to be a single player game however I don't think that it would have sold as well.
People nowerdays seem to need multiplayer in a game for some reason.
The mode method that Frontier have chosen seems to be a decent compromise.
PS get off my lawn.
Yeah I'm getting sick to death that nearly every game these days has to be multi player or shared world or multi player with the tack on of a small single player campaign. It should be like it used to be. A single player campaign with a multi player tacked on. Whats wrong with interacting with people in person these days. And having a story to go through in stead of having to shoot other people.
Playing a bit last night another couple of issues as to why genuine SP would be better occurred to me:
1. The trivial one is that it would be possible to pause the game properly, it doesn't go down that well with "she who must be obeyed" if you shout can't do something immediately, or even answer the door/phone because you're halfway through landing or just dropped out of hyperspace and need to dodge the star.
2. Experimentation. There are loads of missions on the boards such as scanning or retrieval where I'm thinking yeah, I wouldn't mind taking a look at these as an alternative to couriering but if they're above my pay grade... Chances are minimum I'm looking at the rebuy screen, loss of rep and/or bounty if it turns out to be too difficult. Not talking about save scumming here but the simple ability to revert to a fixed save at a static point and leave that particular avenue for another time if I'm in over my head.
Given the vast amount of income Mr Braben and FDev have had from this game and its DLC (and continue to receive) isn't it at least time they thought about addressing the true single player game? I imagine the ability to offer this is still buried in the source code somewhere.
1. The trivial one is that it would be possible to pause the game properly, it doesn't go down that well with "she who must be obeyed" if you shout can't do something immediately, or even answer the door/phone because you're halfway through landing or just dropped out of hyperspace and need to dodge the star.
2. Experimentation. There are loads of missions on the boards such as scanning or retrieval where I'm thinking yeah, I wouldn't mind taking a look at these as an alternative to couriering but if they're above my pay grade... Chances are minimum I'm looking at the rebuy screen, loss of rep and/or bounty if it turns out to be too difficult. Not talking about save scumming here but the simple ability to revert to a fixed save at a static point and leave that particular avenue for another time if I'm in over my head.
Given the vast amount of income Mr Braben and FDev have had from this game and its DLC (and continue to receive) isn't it at least time they thought about addressing the true single player game? I imagine the ability to offer this is still buried in the source code somewhere.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
yeah i agree.... I look at the assets in battlefront (ok i know battlefront 2 does have a campaign of sorts but it is a bolt on exactly as you describe) but i look at battlefront and just think about the game they could make using them, if the time and care which was put into say, Dark Forces was put into a proper narrative driven game.
Elite was never a pure narrative driven game, however 1st encounters did have an underlying story - and there IS one buried deep in ED too....
I am beginning to think one of the biggest advantages of single player games however - and i have a feeling you will agree given our disagreements on the passenger missions - is the ability to tailor the difficulty....
So if i want a tough as nails economy where i can lose money hand over fist if i pick the wrong ship for the wrong job, and where it takes 100s of hrs to save up for the cash to buy say, an anaconda .... but perhaps i hate combat (I dont as it happens) but if i did i could set the economy to hardcore and the npc combat ability to below average.
Perhaps you are not bothered about the economy but want to have a hardcore challenge for the combat , you may choose a basic economy where money earning is easy, but put the npc combat AI to deadly. this cant happen in the game as it is now...... so you get .... enthusiastic.... debate from players who liked the money earnings at launch (excluding the out and out broken exploits), compared to what we have now.
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Repped for this. The other downside about it being an online only game is that constant balancing is necessary. That can be a good thing, but often there may be changes made in order to balance an aspect of the game I have no interest in (such as PVP). In a single player game I'd know my game would be the same throughout my playthrough.
Also single player games allow you to have multiple characters on the go so you can try different paths from the start. I know that I can access any career path I want but sometimes I think "what if I'd have done nothing but trade right from the start" - single player gives the opportunity to try these things.
multiplayer has its place, but single player will always be my option 1
Lol. We have had disagreements and agreements. But i have to say i like you Mad Mike. When ever i come across one of your posts i do make time to read it. You seem to try to be fair and explain your thoughts and have some good ideas.
Thank you cmdr
Unfortunately, yes.
Solo is by far where I spend most of my time, however I also love spending time in Group, be it Mobius or a Private Group to muck about with trusted humans.
Open is just EVE 0.5, and I stopped playing EVE a decade ago. Open was a brilliant idea, and may well yet progress to resemble something close to Braben's vision. I think FD need to understand open, systemically before that can happen, in four years they haven't managed to yet.
Until then, it will simply suffer from continually bad Game Design and continue to essentially be a completely different game from the other two modes.
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What about a single player with non-MMO multiplayer components? Where you and your friends CAN play together, but can also play with mods, or custom skins, against better AI?
I've read every post in this thread and it seems to break down this way:
Reason for SP:
- Mods
- Save games
- Unlimited (as in non-limited) gameplay elements (i.e. no speed limit)
- No internet connection required
- Every game runs on it's own clock (time-scaling, etc.)
- Possibilities for stronger narrative
- NPCs that matter
- Cooler "unbalanced" weapons and ships (because not worrying about PVP)
- Better performance
- Better AI scripting and interactivity
Reasons against SP:
- No BGS
- No PVP
- No "community" stuff
- ... umm... some people would stop playing it...?
I think the pro's vastly outweigh the cons... though I would advocate for a "Single Player game with a Co-Op mode" like so many other games have had.
Imagine if you like... got to MEET Aisling Duval, or see her debate her sister in a cutscene, only to have the thargoids attack the press conference, so you run to hop in your ship and give chase... but your ship is stuck in a launch bay that is damaged and won't open, so you hop in the 2nd crew seat of a nearby character and now you're the gunner (on-rails shooter) in a mission where you're chasing thargoid scouts and it whips around all through the canyons and cities of the Duval homeworld... only to shoot out into space and see...
The thargoid mothership... and the ship you're on gets disabled... and you get captured... tossed in prison... when you come to, you're being rescued by an old Guardian insurgency that has been hiding dormant, and your character is in a cutscene, running, and the only means of escape... is a thargoid ship...
now you're piloting a thargoid ship...
Would it have been this? Who knows... pure speculation and fantasy on my part... but as it stands, due to the devotion to the "all powerful BGS'... we can say for certain it will NEVER be this.
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No. I don't have enough time to explore myself and I enjoy seeing what is going on in the universe without me. The hollow squares are starting to become more obvious in my region but they haven't been a problem for me and I'm not a problem for them.
The fact that I can interact and change that is one of the best parts of the game
The fact that I can interact and change that is one of the best parts of the game
You know I've been harping on about understanding Open vs Closed systemic nature since I've been a member of these boards.
That little nugget, just about sums it all up.
+1
Yes, so long as it meant the intrinsic design changed.
Having every activity be nothing more than a time grind, rather than challenging gameplay, or narrative progression.
Having danger essentially encapsulated into CZs/signal sources such that free flight is virtually risk free, making danger completely avoidable.
More generally the way space is segmented to facilitate instancing is detrimental to immersion.
That time has to flow linearly for all players hurts the lore of the game; loss of star dreamer makes travel feel trivial, and the economics of the Galaxy a contrivance, and prevents massive bodies from causing fun time dilation effects.
Then there are the performance problems; loading BBs, jumping into supercruise, jumping between systems, loading starport interface, loading system map, they're all littered with unnecessary wait states to mask networking delays. The flow of Es gameplay is fundamentally far slower than FE2 back on the Amiga 500+ despite the huge performance disparity.
Then you've got the network sync bugs; going into a station and finding broken indestructible AI ships being zapped by the station, or occupying your assigned pad.
Then there's the narrative, or rather the lack of it; an SP game would necessitate the inclusion of a far stronger (if static) narrative 'out of the box'. Moreover the narrative of the game would be the same regardless of when you bought the game, newcomers to E are joining an ongoing story and have missed much.
Finally there's all the development time that's been spent on the networking,
arena, power play, and other MP focused features that could have been spent elsewhere.
So for me, yes, the MMO features of E are detrimental to what I wished it to have been. That's why I withdrew my Kickstarter backing all those years ago and only recently picked up the game.
Having every activity be nothing more than a time grind, rather than challenging gameplay, or narrative progression.
Having danger essentially encapsulated into CZs/signal sources such that free flight is virtually risk free, making danger completely avoidable.
More generally the way space is segmented to facilitate instancing is detrimental to immersion.
That time has to flow linearly for all players hurts the lore of the game; loss of star dreamer makes travel feel trivial, and the economics of the Galaxy a contrivance, and prevents massive bodies from causing fun time dilation effects.
Then there are the performance problems; loading BBs, jumping into supercruise, jumping between systems, loading starport interface, loading system map, they're all littered with unnecessary wait states to mask networking delays. The flow of E
s gameplay is fundamentally far slower than FE2 back on the Amiga 500+ despite the huge performance disparity.Then you've got the network sync bugs; going into a station and finding broken indestructible AI ships being zapped by the station, or occupying your assigned pad.
Then there's the narrative, or rather the lack of it; an SP game would necessitate the inclusion of a far stronger (if static) narrative 'out of the box'. Moreover the narrative of the game would be the same regardless of when you bought the game, newcomers to E
are joining an ongoing story and have missed much.Finally there's all the development time that's been spent on the networking,
arena, power play, and other MP focused features that could have been spent elsewhere.
So for me, yes, the MMO features of E
are detrimental to what I wished it to have been. That's why I withdrew my Kickstarter backing all those years ago and only recently picked up the game.
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I absolutley would prefer a single player game but with the option for four person co-op. It would have been much better if designed this way from the start.
The reason given for ditching was we were going to get a vibrant alive feeling galaxy driven by the BGS, this I am afraid to say has been proved to be lies. The online aspect is DRM, you can still have DRM with a single player game.
The problem we now have is the way the game is setup is it cannot incorporate most of the things both sides of the argument want. The multi player crowd will not get a galaxy with any meaningful persistence due to the P2P networking. The Single player crowd won't get what they want as it would involve Fdev making major changes and admitting they were wrong, which won't happen as they are building the game they want to build.
If single player was implemented it would also affect Fdevs income, as mods can negate the need for buying items.
There are more space sim type games coming. NMS was a disappointment but is improving. Who knows if we will ever get Star Citizen. I am watching very closely x4 Foundation and a few others. If EVE valkyrie or the EVE team created a seperate version of the EVE universe with Flight controls I would be playing all the time. At the moment there is nothing to pull me back into Elite.
What I wanted from Elite Dangerous was an engaging alive Galaxy with entertaining mechanics. I did not want a grind fest trying to cover up the lack of or poorly thought out content.
If a good competitor comes out then Fdev are going to have a hard choice for Elite, change its fundamental core to allow the things we all want or let it die. I will say that I will not back another kickstarter by Frontier given the lies.
The reason given for ditching was we were going to get a vibrant alive feeling galaxy driven by the BGS, this I am afraid to say has been proved to be lies. The online aspect is DRM, you can still have DRM with a single player game.
The problem we now have is the way the game is setup is it cannot incorporate most of the things both sides of the argument want. The multi player crowd will not get a galaxy with any meaningful persistence due to the P2P networking. The Single player crowd won't get what they want as it would involve Fdev making major changes and admitting they were wrong, which won't happen as they are building the game they want to build.
If single player was implemented it would also affect Fdevs income, as mods can negate the need for buying items.
There are more space sim type games coming. NMS was a disappointment but is improving. Who knows if we will ever get Star Citizen. I am watching very closely x4 Foundation and a few others. If EVE valkyrie or the EVE team created a seperate version of the EVE universe with Flight controls I would be playing all the time. At the moment there is nothing to pull me back into Elite.
What I wanted from Elite Dangerous was an engaging alive Galaxy with entertaining mechanics. I did not want a grind fest trying to cover up the lack of or poorly thought out content.
If a good competitor comes out then Fdev are going to have a hard choice for Elite, change its fundamental core to allow the things we all want or let it die. I will say that I will not back another kickstarter by Frontier given the lies.
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All of that.
All of that too (or limited to full squadron size, if they ever get that working), especially this bit.
With the exception that I'm not sure at this point, whether it's turning out to be the game they want to build.
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The cancellation of offline mode was due to a near fanatic belief in a shared background.
It is also the reason for much of the discord about the game.
ERMAHGERD..... I was a sophomore in high school when you were born. I feel old.
Regarding Elite as a single player game - Yes and no. Yeah, that's a totally non-committal answer. Sue me! It's true, though. I'm more of a single-player kinda gamer, so I gravitate towards those experiences. In that respect I'd love it if Elite were offline/single player.
That said, there are a lot of cool possibilities for social gaming and player interaction that comes from an online experience. I've had a lot of fun meeting people in the game. Playing multi-crew can be a real engaging experience, too. Even though I don't PvP much I can totally see how people can really get into that as well. I hope that future updates like the wing mission stuff will only improve the game and its social aspects.
So yeah - it depends.
I was born in the Eisenhower Administration. We didn't have personal computers.
We *did* have black and white TV.