Elite's still bossing single player... multiplayer is still catching up!

[Muzz UK]

As much as it pains me to be critical of a game I love and have put over 1500 hours into the single player experience in Elite still outweighs multiplayer. New mining is great as a solo experience and you can make some good money as well as see some beautiful areas in the game. Trading, exploration and combat are still as they were before but I do admit the new CZ mechanic is fun (when they load) and the scenarios are fun, but we need more scenarios more often.

Given chapter 4 dropping I've managed to get a few friends back into the game. We have a squadron of 8 of us but only 3 of us log on everyday. The recent server issues and game lockups did not help either. Had to all exit and reconnect several times in a 3 hour session and twice wing missions were were in the middle just completely disappeared.

Anyway

Wing Assassination Missions - Fun with great difficulty but get repetitive as the targets always seem to be an FDL guarded by 3-4 Vultures.

Wing Collect Missions - A great money maker and simple that you can involve any level or player in any ship... my squadron play with a rule that you must provide 5% of goods to get a reward. These are fun but lack any real danger and get boring pretty quick.

Wing Kill Missions - Again fun to start with but Haz res sites just aren't hard any more I think once in a 3 hours session I had to be repaired and have shields boosted by wingman.

Scenarios - Good, fun and hard but when you've done the same one 3 or 4 times it's a bit meh.


How do we feel as a community the multiplayer experience is going? whats the end game Thargoidy stuff like for you guys out there?

I wanted to write more in more detail but its 9am I've been in work since 6.30 and not had coffee yet

 

[Brrokk]

As much as it pains me to be critical of a game I love and have put over 1500 hours into the single player experience in Elite still outweighs multiplayer. New mining is great as a solo experience and you can make some good money as well as see some beautiful areas in the game. Trading, exploration and combat are still as they were before but I do admit the new CZ mechanic is fun (when they load) and the scenarios are fun, but we need more scenarios more often.

Given chapter 4 dropping I've managed to get a few friends back into the game. We have a squadron of 8 of us but only 3 of us log on everyday. The recent server issues and game lockups did not help either. Had to all exit and reconnect several times in a 3 hour session and twice wing missions were were in the middle just completely disappeared.

Anyway

Wing Assassination Missions - Fun with great difficulty but get repetitive as the targets always seem to be an FDL guarded by 3-4 Vultures.

Wing Collect Missions - A great money maker and simple that you can involve any level or player in any ship... my squadron play with a rule that you must provide 5% of goods to get a reward. These are fun but lack any real danger and get boring pretty quick.

Wing Kill Missions - Again fun to start with but Haz res sites just aren't hard any more I think once in a 3 hours session I had to be repaired and have shields boosted by wingman.

Scenarios - Good, fun and hard but when you've done the same one 3 or 4 times it's a bit meh.


How do we feel as a community the multiplayer experience is going?

I wanted to write more in more detail but its 9am I've been in work since 6.30 and not had coffee yet

To be honest, although I like belonging to a player group and repairing stations, playing BGS etc. cooperatively, I always find it immersion-breaking to actually meet another ship in the depths of space because that would be an amazing coincidence. The only exceptions are if a meeting at a specified location has been arranged in advance, or going in and out a busy station. I therefore usually play in Solo in locations that should feel remote. It's a bonus that the game performs better too.

 

[Hacker#451563]

It's a horses for courses thing.
Sometimes ED can be fantastic with mates nailing NPC's or trying to nobble CG pilots or suchlike, and other times the wonderful solitude of the great black expanse or an out-of-the-way mining site is all that's needed.

I like the choice, although I can see where you're coming from with your thread, the Solo stuff is looking more polished these days. Perhaps it's easier to code (I have no idea about such things)?

I hope the shine can be re-applied to the CZs soon though because I'm getting a little cheesed off with the dropping into an empty playing field situation we have now.

 

[ApexWanderer]

Here are some more ideas=SLF combat (vs npc or each other),Srv racing,canyon racing,base jumping,wing exploration ,wing mining,wing mega ship hacking and small ship combat in a CNB.
Just a few ideas whilst I'm drinking my coffee.-)o7.

 

[Factabulous]

So which do people think should be fixed first - networking issues, or things to do in a wing?

For me the networking issues are the main problem - I tend to play in a PG just because I can avoid rubberbanding / long SC/hyperspace drop-out delays etc.

 

[Julio Montega]

So which do people think should be fixed first - networking issues, or things to do in a wing?

For me the networking issues are the main problem - I tend to play in a PG just because I can avoid rubberbanding / long SC/hyperspace drop-out delays etc.

You can't fix wings without fixing networking first.
A lot of bugs appear in wings due to how the networking handles things.

 

[Muzz UK]

You can't fix wings without fixing networking first.
A lot of bugs appear in wings due to how the networking handles things.

Yea its gotten so much better but even 4 years in we still have lots of de-syncs... honesty thought it was fixed but chap4 seems to brought a lot of older bugs back to the game.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

As much as it pains me to be critical of a game I love and have put over 1500 hours into the single player experience in Elite still outweighs multiplayer. New mining is great as a solo experience and you can make some good money as well as see some beautiful areas in the game. Trading, exploration and combat are still as they were before but I do admit the new CZ mechanic is fun (when they load) and the scenarios are fun, but we need more scenarios more often.

Given chapter 4 dropping I've managed to get a few friends back into the game. We have a squadron of 8 of us but only 3 of us log on everyday. The recent server issues and game lockups did not help either. Had to all exit and reconnect several times in a 3 hour session and twice wing missions were were in the middle just completely disappeared.

Anyway

Wing Assassination Missions - Fun with great difficulty but get repetitive as the targets always seem to be an FDL guarded by 3-4 Vultures.

Wing Collect Missions - A great money maker and simple that you can involve any level or player in any ship... my squadron play with a rule that you must provide 5% of goods to get a reward. These are fun but lack any real danger and get boring pretty quick.

Wing Kill Missions - Again fun to start with but Haz res sites just aren't hard any more I think once in a 3 hours session I had to be repaired and have shields boosted by wingman.

Scenarios - Good, fun and hard but when you've done the same one 3 or 4 times it's a bit meh.


How do we feel as a community the multiplayer experience is going? whats the end game Thargoidy stuff like for you guys out there?

I wanted to write more in more detail but its 9am I've been in work since 6.30 and not had coffee yet

i think ED is a great social MP game with a handful friends ***** and is how i play 80% of it now. Some parts of it do not really fit that well into that model but most of it does.

i cant comment on larger MP numbers than that... to be honest my view is FD have had to compromise far too much to implement their massive multiplayer vision and i would much rather they left it at that. single player or small number of friends in multiplayer - like say L4D or payday.

indeed iirc that was originally how elite 4 was going to be, then with an extra bolt on multiplayer part, separate from the main game (maybe like CQC is now) I am not certain however as that was quite some time ago.

Strangely enough as a single player game, many parts of the game are sorely lacking - npcs do not get SRVs, no wingmates in single player and missions do not always make much sense - all of this i am told is because it is hard to get right in a MP game.

ED in a glass half full light caters for everyone, but in a glass half empty falls through the cracks of a jack of all trades failing in part on all counts.


***** but that said i have mothballed my heavily engineered ship (and eve nthat is far from a meta build) most of the ships i fly at moment have VERY limited engineering and that keeps things interesting even in a wing.

 

[Screemonster]

the best description I've heard for Elite is "a singleplayer game that you can play with your friends".

 

[B1rdy]

Wing Assassination Missions - Fun with great difficulty but get repetitive as the targets always seem to be an FDL guarded by 3-4 Vultures.

The really weird thing is, we had variety in previous iterations. I am disappointed, because those missions could be good fun.

Wing Kill Missions - Again fun to start with but Haz res sites just aren't hard any more I think once in a 3 hours session I had to be repaired and have shields boosted by wingman.

They are too easy even in mission specific USS. The difficulty should be adjusted automatically be the size of a Wing. This mission specific USS design seems very strange. For those type of missions you need to kill 30+ targets. How many reside in USSs? 10? How are they supposed to be played?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Wing Collect Missions - A great money maker and simple that you can involve any level or player in any ship... my squadron play with a rule that you must provide 5% of goods to get a reward. These are fun but lack any real danger and get boring pretty quick.

Wing Kill Missions - Again fun to start with but Haz res sites just aren't hard any more I think once in a 3 hours session I had to be repaired and have shields boosted by wingman.

All i can say for this, and i fully agree you really should not have to do this as games are meant to have rules built in, is to assign a few rules.....

1) is this something which i think fits in in a science fiction game or is it fantasy and if it is fantasy do not use it. (and lasers of healing i would put in that latter category )

there are ways of not locking out too much content whilst still keeping the game a challenge. eg shield boosters.

2) i only ever use 1 on a small ship, 2 on medium, 3 on large and if more than 1 and i am doing engineering i have to have at least 1 resistance augmented and one capacity augmented - so this limits stacking somewhat.

3) i ignore the heavy weight armour completely unless i am building a ship without shields (which i have only done in beta) (I use heavy duty light armour if i engineer it)

4) only 1 x Shield Cell on a ship, when they are gone they are gone, i either risk it or fly to base.

5) I only use hull reinforcements in military slots, if i have more than 1 and am engineering then 1 will be module protection and 1 hull protection, i never use more than 2.

6) Never cheese the game. If it feels cheesy dont do it . (this latter rule i have to admit i have broken on occasion. i have been guilty or respawning the barnacles as well as logging out and back in when a RES is just full of PP ships and no targets. i felt dirty doing it and hate that the game encourages this but ........................

this means i can still engineer everything on my ship, so i am not locked out of it, but it somewhat means i can not over powermyself from the game..... that said, i have mothballed my FGS which was built to these rules and only use that when playing solo because it is still too OP for playing in a wing but i find if i stick to the above i can still get enjoyment and challenge out of the game. As a plus point it means all my ships actually have a decent amount of flexibility so even if not "perfect" i can normally do what i want in any given session.

it does bug me because i cant think of any other game i deliberately have to play with 1 arm behind my back to play, and it also means i can never go head to head with other players or i will get seriously outmatched - but that is ok for me as competetive pvp is not my bag in ED......

 

[Lateralus]

Ok here goes:

Pros

• Emergent gameplay scenarios are possible in open play
• Private groups can be useful
• Player-lead events such as Distant Worlds, the Salami Hunt or the PvP League are interesting and get the game attention
• UI mostly supports mulitplayer well (wings, squadrons, player contacts etc)
• Wing functionality works well (instancing permitting)
• Multicrew is good for showing a noob the ropes
• Squadron functionality has good potential for creating cooperative and competitive gameplay
• Shared profits from wing activity is a good thing, especially for noobs winging with more experienced players
• Flight model has a learning curve which rewards high skill against other players in PvP
• Galaxy is large enough to create areas of low/no player intensity as well as high, allowing the player to manage risk levels of encountering a random player in open
• CQC is fun for a while if you can get a match
• Group rivalries and politics can be interesting
• The mining boom has caused some interesting gameplay and restored some of the trader/pirate/hunter eco-system that mission-reward creep destroyed pre 2.0
• Wing-missions are conceptually a good thing

Cons

• Private group admin controls are limited
• Instancing can be a nightmare 4 years in
• Multicrew is missing features; SRV, Wing-integration, initially-touted engineering controls
• Squadrons still have to daisy-chain members into large wing-fights because there is no squadron-beacon feature. Fail
• PvP is gimped at every turn because Fdev seem to want to contain and control it to the point of throwing the baby out with the bathwater (rewards for killing other players are always capped or reduced; credits, merits, materials etc)
• Combat-logging has still not been dealt with in a satisfying or effective way (despite promises from before beyond that it would be).. there is no deterrent
• Following on from that, there is no notification that an interdicted player is logging out (gracefully [haha] )
• There is no incentive to play in open other than the vain-hope of some organic PvP and/or social advantages (now we have system chat the significance of that is reduced)
• Following on from above, Risk vs Reward is not a major factor in Elite multiplayer
• Private groups and solo mode are used as a vehicle for indirectly PvP'ing against other player factions without risk of retaliation
• Blocking can be abused to gain a gameplay advantage so easily
• You can get wanted for returning fire on an aggressor due to crimes on/off limitations
• There is no way to bring a drifting ship with 0% drives to a halt, this makes unwilling piracy extremely difficult and encourages pirates to kill runners
• Powerplay was created as an outlet for PvP-minded players, but is totally undercut by allowing it in Private groups/Solo.. This reduces it to a module-shopping circus
• There is no proper mechanism for PvP bounty hunting (other than kill warrant scanning, but this involves blind luck rather than a 'hunt')
• Squadron league-tables measure everything but PvP (CQC? Not a good indication of main-game PvP skill)
• There is no CQC dueling with your own ships - could solve so many problems with organised wing fights or 1v1 duels (instancing/travel time/custom rules)
• There is no galaxy map overlay to highlight busy systems (despite there being traffic data seen on station menus).. implementing one would create player choke points, and therefore encourge competitive and cooperative play
• Wing-mission rewards are not balanced with single-player mission rewards (in most cases a lot more effort for a lot less reward)

That's about all I can think of right now, there's probably a lot more.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I suppose the biggest part of this all comes down to what you’re looking for in a multiplayer experience. Mine have all been good so far.

 

[Old Duck]

Hey OP, I know this is terribly selfish, but as someone stuck in Solo right now, your post gives me comfort that I'm really not missing much

 

[Auronio]

Open only. Simple like that. And with new mission servers I can't even justify anymore to cycle through private and solo for other /better missions.
No reason to play any other mode than open imho.

 

[Iskariot]

How do we feel as a community the multiplayer experience is going?

I have no feelings, and little knowledge, about the subject.
I do not do multiplayer at all. Not my thing.

I do very much care about solid game mechanics in general, and in my opinion the game is now heading in the right direction.


Sometimes multiplayer wins, sometimes singleplayer wins.

Multiplayer got winging up and we soloists still can not wing up with NPC

Another example: I think that an NPC crew mechanic should have been prioritized over a multiplayer crew mechanic, because everybody will be able to enjoy a cool npc crew mechanic, as opposed to a multiplayer crew mechanic. Even those who like multiplayer would use an npc crew mechanic much more often than a multiplayer crew mechanic, simply because most people want to fly their own ships.

On the other hand I think that FDev should have added multiplayer tools for mining: For example why did they not add a mining SLF-like utility (Ship Launched Miner) that can place the charges to break up asteroids or blast off surface deposits. That would have been perfect for multiplayer mining I believe.
It would also be perfect for solo mining in big ships like the T10. A solo pilot could have used the agile SLM to zip around the rocks and do the more detailed mining activities.

In general I as a soloist believe that multiplayer is a hindrance for the development of the proper game. Because of the idiosyncrasies of multiplayer gaming all kinds off stuff becomes extra difficult or even nigh impossible, like balancing, like a single player story campaign, like stability etc.

But... I do get that many people love multiplayer and I have accepted that.

 

[Old Duck]

Open only. Simple like that. And with new mission servers I can't even justify anymore to cycle through private and solo for other /better missions.
No reason to play any other mode than open imho.

You are wrong. Sorry!

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

You are wrong. Sorry!

It's fair enough if that is how he feels for his play style. I respect that so long as he does not ask FD to force it on me . I get the feeling that was not not really the point of the OP however .
I believe ED is only really enjoyable in VR. This is a truth for me but I would not every try to force this view on anyone else.

 

[Auronio]

It's fair enough if that is how he feels for his play style. I respect that so long as he does not ask FD to force it on me . I get the feeling that was not not really the point of the OP however .
I believe ED is only really enjoyable in VR. This is a truth for me but I would not every try to force this view on anyone else.

I don't.

More precisely - the changes to meet any other CMDR in open are so low - except for a few places I still see no reason for all these different modes. I would hope concentrating on only one would reduce perceived technical issues.

Anyway - technical issues need to be resolved regardless of mode.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I don't.

More precisely - the changes to meet any other CMDR in open are so low - except for a few places I still see no reason for all these different modes. I would hope concentrating on only one would reduce perceived technical issues..

ahh ok in which case i am with old duck................ you are wrong

btw how would you appease any console players who bought the game knowing they could actually play a kind of multiplayer (CGs and the BGS) without paying for gold / PSN+ who suddenly could not log into the game?

and that is before the issue of the bait and switch from the people who bought the game based on the advertised multiplayer of, and i quote

Multiplayer: you will be able to control who else you might encounter in your game – perhaps limit it to just your friends? Cooperate on adventures or chase your friends down to get that booty. The game will work in a seamless, lobby-less way, with the ability to rendezvous with friends as you choose. This technology is already working, using a combination of peer-to-peer (to reduce lag) and server connections.