Everything that is wrong with Elite: Dangerous, thread #52141298371

[Cidcaldensfey]

I guess that really depends on what your goal in the game is (not the cost of modules, obviously that's a fact). Maybe it just doesn't take a lot to keep me entertained but I enjoy just exploring and collecting bounties and combat bonds. It has yet to feel like a grind to me only because I don't do that for the credits; I have been partaking in one of the community goals as a way to earn a decent amount of credits but it's only because I get to do something I would do without reward, explore. Again though, I think anything will get boring after a couple hundred hours and I think that for people who have played that long and are now bored, it would be a good idea to voice your opinion and get some of your ideas out there and then maybe take a break until something new and exciting gets implemented. I just don't think it's all that fair to blame . FD for ones boredom after playing for that many hours.

I think you're wrong. I logged over 3000 hours on vanilla WoW alone and didn't get bored at all. I played through the entire expansion of Burning Crusade as well. 500 hours is nothing, it's about only two-months of gameplay if you were playing for 8 hours a day, 3-months if you were playing for 5 hours each day. Just playing 2 hours for 5 days and sixteen over a weekend will get you about 26/wk, would get you about 100/mo, so five months. Either way, playing Elite Dangerous on something like two hours doesn't even make sense when things like bb jobs have a time limit on them, usually less than three hours.

 

[iofhua]

Powerplay.

 

[leopoldfrank]

Agree with OP. Bored after a week. Longing for more interesting missions/tools for players to make their own missions/interaction with other players besides being yanked out of hyperdrive by some **** in a Python. Feel like I've been sold a very early version of a game. Don't recall it saying 'early access' on steam.

 

[NVNM]

I think the Great Interstellar Expedition community event encapsulates everything that is both good and bad in ED.

You get this event that tells you to hand in exploration data so you're happy that dedicated explorers get something to do that may affect them later on. You get money and discounts as a reward, nice. Then you do it, and you work hard to hand in useful data aaaaand once it's over you get the money unceremoniously dumped into your account. No "Congrats we did it guys! We explored X numbers of systems and found Y numbers of earthlike planets!" and no "We'll use this data to expand Z once we've sighted it all! Stay tuned for more later!"

The game is all talk but it never really starts to deliver, no matter at what point you are rank- or money-wise. It's entirely static.

 

[Cheesemaster64]

WARNING: This post is one player's personal thoughts, which are largely unorganized and may go into random tangents.

1-1 Responding to the OP

Well stated OP. 100% agreed.

1-2 My story

This game has something magical. When the offline mode was ditched before release, I cashed in on the opportunity to get a refund for the game but I was bored.
But I kept on getting the weekly newsletters, and I kept reading them. I would watch youtube videos of CMDERs having a good time, and it made me want to play the game again.

So I bought this game for a second time, and I was let down again (shame on me).

2-1 My hopes

I want this game to get better so bad that it hurts. I have never so much cared about the progress of a game in my life.
I want to log in one day and everything is just magically fixed.
I am still optimistic, but I fear that is things aren't fixed before SC is released (assuming that SC is worthy of the hype), I may stop caring about the newsletter once and for all.

2-2 What is wrong with the game

I think the biggest problem (which I know has already been stated) is that ED is focusing it's efforts in the wrong areas.
I am not talking about the Xbox one release. This is a good thing for us, since it will give the game more funding overall, and fresh opinions of the game.
I am talking about PP, elements that are added on top of the core game. PP would be great, if the core was not so full of holes.

For me, the biggest core issues are:

1) The mission system

Missions are cookie-cutter generated blocks of text. NPC's only exist by name. They have no personality, no avatar, nothing.

2) Super cruise

Not just talking about the boredom that comes from flying from point A to B.
I am talking about the whole system that is based on instanced zones.

For me they break the immersion of the game that was so beautifully achieved from the wonderful graphics, sound, etc.
Conflict zones spawn NPCs indefinitely. You could fight for weeks and nothing would have changed. Nothing dynamic.
The same goes for every other zone.
I feel like the programmers made a very powerful engine where almost anything can be scripted on the higher levels, but not enough time went into what should be actually scripted.
If you think about these zones, they are just

while this zone == conflict zone
{
Spawn X ships
if X ships die, spawn X more
}

3-2 What I'd like to see

If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem.

Personal Missions and Community Missions

---
Personal Mission example:
You take a mission from Sargent Butts, an NPC overseeing the conflicting between factions A and B.
He has a face. He is smoking a cigar and he is animated. He can talk.
He tells you that they are losing a battle at area X. He needs you (and your friends? ) to turn the tide of the battle.
Concerning the reward, he tells you that they do not have enough credits to spare, but will let you pick from some ship parts salvaged from the battlefield.
You accept.

(At this point, the background system generates an instance only you and your friends can enter.)
(This battle is not actually taking place at the point. The battle will not start until you enter the instance.)

You enter the instance and you see 7 enemies for every 3 allies. (This ratio adjusted according to the number of players.)

You kill all enemies, and you receive a transmission from the Sargent thanking you and asking to come back for your reward.

(Player rep is increased for the according army, that system's influence is shifted x points in favor of the said faction)
(If all players are killed, rep is lost and influence is shifted away from the said faction)
---

---
Community Mission example:

You are flying in sector Z, when suddenly a transmission from your faction asking for your help at conflict zone A, in the neighboring sector Y.
(Players can view transmissions from more distance sectors, but they won't know the details until they are closer.)
(A conflict zone is generated which any player can enter)
(Completing the mission will increase rep for all players and credits without need to dock anywhere)

Pirate Version

You receive a transmission from Captain Hook, saying that he has tasty information for you, for a price.
You transfer him a few thousand credits, and he tells you there be a carrier named "the black pearl" is full o' diamonds, and is traveling from point A to station B.

---

I feel like these could be so easily implemented within the game's current system.
We'd see more PVP for the people that want it. More life into game. Stuff to do.

And lets add chat channels for people who want to talk to somebody.
General chat, system chat, faction chat you name it.

 

[Zanten]

I think I was mostly in the same boat as you, with the sole difference being I actually did grind my way up to an Anaconda, which I only even managed for two reasons. One, the entire series of Friends had just been released on Netflix, and the motions/actions of running my trade route had become SO ingrained in me, I was able to run my trade route with only about 10% of my concentration, while the other 90% was spent watching Friends. The second had to do with my motivation FOR doing the grind in the first place; I had already felt my interest in all the mechanics waning, and I knew that the moment I stopped trading was probably going to be the moment I stopped playing. But I really wanted to have an Anaconda ready for when the whole Walking Around The Ship became a thing and, it being the early days, finding good, profitable trade routes (including, eventually, one area that ally quickly helped push up the extra twenty or thirty million I needed,) would PROBABLY be easier now than it would have been, say, a year from now to make lots of money relatively quickly; an hour of grinding now could save me two hours of grinding next year and, again, I had a Friends marathon to watch! It was actually pretty soothing, (watching it on my iPad) with my big TV showing E: D's lovely starfield. :3 Almost felt like a real space trucker, just trying to stave off the quiet dullness of a profitable trade run. Anyway, long story short, got my Anaconda, and the new shinyness of it actually kept me playing for awhile longer (maybe a few weeks to a month, not sure,) before I finally decided it was time for an extended LOA.

Ironically, the best thing I got out of this game was the community, or more specifically the forums. =D I recently toddled back to look over the boards, see if there was enough new stuff and/or improvements to warrant re-downloading the game (decided I'll continue to wait,) but got sucked back into the forums, as I forgot how much I enjoyed chatting with you folks.

Anyway, thus far the game's developments haven't really struck a chord with me. :/ I'll keep watching, of course, and am probably going to stick around the forums while I do so, but honestly I might wait until a LOT of new features are added before replaying it, rather than just playing bits and pieces every time they add a single new thing. Honestly, if the game starts to wear at you again, (and this applies to anyone else feeling it grind down on them,) I'd recommend just setting it aside; keep an ear to the ground for new developments that might spark your interest, of course, but otherwise just turn to other things. :3

 

[Tiamat]

You take a mission from Sargent Butts, an NPC overseeing the conflicting between factions A and B.
He has a face. He is smoking a cigar and he is animated. He can talk.

The problem with this idea is that you would need hundreds if not thousands of different animated heads and a similar number of voice actors (each having dozens of different lines of dialog) or it will be really immersion breaking when you run into the same face and voice a few days later in a different system. That is an absolute truckload of work and actor fees and that is before you even get to adding the code to display it all as well as trying to keep the duplicates to a minimum.

I feel like these could be so easily implemented within the game's current system.
We'd see more PVP for the people that want it. More life into game. Stuff to do.

There are a couple of things there that I don't think the game engined can do at this point.

That is not to say I disagree with you in any way as I don't but it wouldn't be nearly as easy as it sounds to implement.

And lets add chat channels for people who want to talk to somebody.
General chat, system chat, faction chat you name it.

This one keeps coming up and if it ever does happen it has to be possible to turn it off (and no noises for incoming messages). No chat channel has ever been remotely useful in any game I have ever played as it is always full of gold sellers, LFG requests and stuff in Russian I can't even read. It would be the most immersion breaking thing they could add.

 

[nexxo]

I don't know about that. In Eve Online the general chat channels are generally free of such stuff. Probably because subscription costs weed out a lot of the chaff. But it should also be easy to add some chat filters: a channel for everyone in current system, a channel for friends/faction, a personal Player to Player channel.
.
And who's to say that in a real life 3300AD universe you wouldn't get spammed by sites, dodge dealers and people chattering at you in some language you don't understand?

 

[ElGuappo]

Close private groups, close solo, let all play in open only. More fun, more unpredictable situations, more PvP, more player interaction, more death and destruction >>>> anarchy!!

There's actually a hell of a good game in that scenario, where safe and secure systems are well policed and very safe to travel between but the juicy work and hard to get equipment and even ships requires a player to venture further and further out until, well... wretched hives of scum and villainy. Escort requests, item sourcing and the like could be player driven and posted to message boards of every station within a certain radius. Make groups to complete certain missions or steps of mission chains. And all this has been said before, from way back, and what we got was Powerplay. Huzzah.