What I am about to say will probably be a fairly divisive statement, but I think it bears putting out into the world. So, here it goes, thesis time. When walking around and shooting stuff gets added, it really should be in the third person perspective. Now a lot of you stopped reading there, because you're too busy writing something about Immersion, with a big I, below. But I have, what I think is, a fairly good reason for saying what I'm saying.
I want you to think about how Elite, especially the combat plays. I know a lot of forum goers have not a lot of experience in combat, and many who do have a lot of combat hours logged probably don't really think too much about this. But stay with me for a second. There are, principally, two ways combat can be modeled in a game. You can have combat that is very fast paced and based upon reaction time and snap decisions, or you can have combat that is slower and more tactical, that is more about knowing how to position yourself and maneuver than it is about you're ability to act quickly.
That isn't to say that the fast paced combat isn't tactical, or the slow paced combat doesn't rely on your reactions, but each does one more so than the other. Currently Elite is a very slow paced game, even combat is fairly thoughtful, because, frankly, you can't react that quickly while fighting in the ships we have available. Turning takes time, in combat turning is an investment, and knowing how to use that investment appropriately is a large part of getting good.
Now, a first person shooter lends itself very well to the fast pace reaction based combat I mentioned before. Because the amount of information you have is limited, you can't see all that much at all, so, because you have to make a lot of guesses based upon limited information it often just comes down to reflex. It is my belief that this sort of mechanic would be incongruous to the pace already present in the game and would feel... wrong. It wouldn't fit into the pace of the established mechanics and I feel it would detract from the experience.
A third person perspective, on the other hand, naturally means you have access to much more information, because of that you have the luxury of moving more slowly, acting with more care and precision, which lends itself to the established pace set by the limitations of our vehicles. For this reason, for Elite, Third person shooting would be the superior option available to Frontier.
Stay Frosty
~Commander Fulsom
