Feedback on Gameplay-Loop and Multiplayer

[Maidor]

Hi, I would like to post my thoughts after trying to comeback to ED for the forth time this year.
The wall of text is my thoughts on why me and my friends have difficulties comming back, and what I think would help the game.
EDO already has many challanges and a planned roadmap. I just want to see such a great game and team achieve their full potential.

ED is a vast Community Sandbox, full of activities and objectives to explore. But after the experimentation phase of the game, every single player will hit a roadblock that is directly related to time spent playing. And eventually the charm of those experiences start fades into a repetitive commun place. What to do after you experienced it all and did it all over and over?

Does not matter how you cheat the gameplay-loop, Elite's experience revolves around spending time doing tasks that ultimatly do not ammont to the fun aspec.
It seems that Im talking about Engineering alone, but it is not. Every aspect of the game, from trading to mining, exploring or pvp; repeats the cycle with the same activities until you are bigger and better, with Greater Ships, better modules, more money. So you can do the same thing with a lot more ease. But its not new, it's just easier version of what you already do.

This is all great, but the end goal is fun experiences. Is the Sandbox just a grind? No, the community and narrative constantly offer new things to do, because people always bring variety.
But we could improve the community part. Because that is the part of the game that is always different, can always offer more.

Currently, it is hard for some playstyles to have multiplayer fun, there is very little incentive from the game's mechanics and loop to play with someone-else. Even though every single activity gets easier with a party. There is no easy way to create a connection with other players, to go on the same activities and even find more players, who might be allied or enemies.
Although you might see 20 NPC at the same time, you will rarelly bump into 3 players doing the same activity as you.

My solution would be creating Missions that would direct you to that objective with other people.

Mining missons that require a total ammount of X minerals from the party do exist. But they dont help you form a party or go to a place where there are other miners.
-What if all the nearby system offered the same quest, and after accepting it, would mark a jump to that exact instace.
This would prompt a lot of interactions on a sector.
This could also be added for Combat, Exploration and Trade missions.

It would function like a group finder option inside your faction. For pvp or pve missions. The party could stay formed for other activities like trading, rank grinding, etc
It dont think that the most urgent aspect of the game is reworking fps AI, or advancing the narrative, or even ship interiors...

For any longtime ED player, it is obvious that the gameplay loop is overused and grindy in all aspects without an ''END-GAME''. We would'nt have played the whole game before realizing that It is a sandbox, it has no goals.

But our goals are the experiences along the way, and right now, the community part of the sandbox could use a boom. To spark new experiences.
Small groups forming and banding on sectors, more automaticly organized ship pvp in conflict zones, trading routes with bonus to incentivise a high number of player trading, ganking and bounty hunting. Most of these are about changing numbers and coming up with creative ways to use the existing Missions and Mechanics to add to the players experience
.
I hope this gives the Devs some thoughts that eventually generates ideas on how to bring more people into the game and make it more acessible.

 

[metatheurgist]

Community goals already serve that purpose, no?

With 22K systems players aren't likely to find each other naturally.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I hope this gives the Devs some thoughts that eventually generates ideas on how to bring more people into the game

I applaud the sentiment...
Unlikely that Frontier would do anything to change the status quo though, so any change would have to fit in with the choice of 3 modes.

and make it more acessible.

What do you mean by more accessible? (genuine question)
Once a player has learned how to fly their ship every activity in the game is open to them, should they choose.

 

[Maidor]

Community goals already serve that purpose, no?

With 22K systems players aren't likely to find each other naturally.

More or less, that's the point.
A Match making system similar to what FPS combat got, but for other types of activities, found on multiple stations around the bubble.
The community goals are great, but not permanent, and change activities. Their rewards also are limited by time.
It would be the same idea but permanent and acessible from a distance.

 

[Maidor]

What do you mean by more accessible? (genuine question)
Once a player has learned how to fly their ship every activity in the game is open to them, should they choose.

I'm not a fan of battle royale games, and have been enjoying pvpve games.
Both are very growing and acessible genres because you see a lot of other players doing what you wanna do.
And even if you are bad at it to go alone, the main more is generally a 3 player group.
After you are able to do combat, exploration, trading and mining, you still cant do specific aspects of it.
Like bounty hunting npcs or pirating sucessifully. It requires specific ships and modules with engineering to do it alone. A group of people would do it easly, and people could teach each other.

Being surrounded by people doing exential things helps people understand why they would want a better ship, or a better combat ship to escort their friends, start thinking ways to enjoy their gameplay. Get a hook for the game

Find an objective into the sandbox, the thing most players are always seeking in this experience.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Incentivise ganking?

 

[Ryox]

Community goals already serve that purpose, no?

Agree, and that's why On-Foot is on the down low since FDev "removed" it from War CGs (since last March)

 

[Old Duck]

Community goals already serve that purpose, no?

I'd love to CGs get a buff. Last week's CG was amazing IMO, but this week there is nothing. I'd love to see multiple, weekly CGs covering many gameplay styles - overlapping combat, trade, mining, on-foot stuff you Odd folk, etc.

I do realize that this would be very demanding on Frontier if every CG was narrative-driven and hand-written, so I could live with an automated community "mission system" to generate CGs when Frontier's narrative team is unable to. For example, Dav could write a script that scans the BGS for systems in dire circumstances (bad famine, war, bust, whatever), randomly pick one, and then use some boilerplate text to generate CGs for this system.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

I'd love to CGs get a buff. Last week's CG was amazing IMO, but this week there is nothing. I'd love to see multiple, weekly CGs covering many gameplay styles - overlapping combat, trade, mining, on-foot stuff you Odd folk, etc.

The problem was that the combat CGs had no effect regarding the trade CG. This caused confusion for the AXI and frustration for OWH.
We did however force a switch of commodities being delivered through efforts elsewhere.

 

[Maidor]

The Idea is more in line with what you guys are saying about ''recurring CG like content''.
The incentivised ganking would occur in riskier goals that players would be OK with the ganking since it would also colaborate to the creation of groups with combat players. Offering higher rewards.

They dont need to be always heavly narrative. With a few premade narratives, like experimentation of prototypes by X company, or war for independence in X planet.
Scientific boom around X system.
They could start offering rewards with great experience involved. Like unlocking older engineers, or random guardian modules. To top contributors, making the game less of a grind late game. And more of a chose your place full of activities.

If some of them revolve around the on-foot settlements, you would see people fixing a reactor while others are secretly planting a virus, and none would interfere. They would just add live to the experiences

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Player numbers are perhaps a difficulty with regularly running multiple simultaneous CG-like activities.

A reasonably popular CG (of one of the more conventional types) gets 3k-5k people signing up over the course of the week, with maybe two-thirds of those making contributions which require spending a fairly significant amount of time participating. That's quite a bit, and enough to make the CG systems some of the busiest in the game. Spread that same activity out over ten systems and they'd still be busier than normal but no more so than existing regularly-busy systems (popular engineers, Shinrarta, capitals, etc)

I'd still like to see that sort of broader activity be more common as a way of developing or decaying individual systems - but it would need to be on the expectation of participant numbers in the tens rather than the thousands for any individual one, and probably with longer timescales for each individual event, to get it to work, which makes it more a community focus for existing groups who care about those systems, rather than a way of meeting new people.

 

[ImmerseMe]

It's the "Does not matter how you cheat the gameplay-loop, Elite's experience revolves around spending time doing tasks that ultimatly do not ammont to the fun aspec" part I can't empathize with.

Docking, mining, fighting, FPSing, sneaking, making money, upgrading, etc ARE the gameplay. You seem to be playing for the COMPLETION of those activities. That's just not something I've ever felt.

 

[Fizzatron]

More or less, that's the point.
A Match making system similar to what FPS combat got, but for other types of activities, found on multiple stations around the bubble.
The community goals are great, but not permanent, and change activities. Their rewards also are limited by time.
It would be the same idea but permanent and acessible from a distance.

I think a player bulletin board would be pretty neat in game. Of course it could be a griefer's first port of call too, but an ingame way to alert if willing players are around needing help or looking for multiplayer shenanigans would be pretty cool, especially if it was incorporated into the galaxy map by way of a player heat map or something? The traffic report does indicate player activity to a degree and maybe that could be expanded upon as a means to make it easier to see where things are happening.

 

[Maidor]

It's the "Does not matter how you cheat the gameplay-loop, Elite's experience revolves around spending time doing tasks that ultimatly do not ammont to the fun aspec" part I can't empathize with.

Docking, mining, fighting, FPSing, sneaking, making money, upgrading, etc ARE the gameplay. You seem to be playing for the COMPLETION of those activities. That's just not something I've ever felt.

It was poorly phrased ''loop not concluding in the fun''. A chunk of the loop is - trying to achieve something, generally a condition that enables and experience.
And thats not why a lot o people play. As you said, they like to do certain things of the gain, I just thing a lot of time is spent trying to find a away to do that activity.
I understand this feeling you have. I enjoy trading and mining a lot, and have dedicated time to have different ships for each variation of those activities.

But once you learn and farm all you can ''aquire'' to enable you to do exactly what you want to do, and when you want it (like go mining for trilpe diamond hotspot). You spent so much more time finding this exact experience, using external tools, time that didn't lead you to mine that place, only enable that you have a place to do it.

While there might be a player that wants to do that exact thing too, and has parked a fleet carrier there so people can enjoy farming there, jumping faster, selling etc.
There is just no way to know. As a new player, bulding a ship to mine and jump so far away in a T-6 seems like a hard experience. As a veteran, you will just spend some time looking up the best place to do something and go do with your premade ship after 20 min of jumping and prep.

Why not create the information and incentive needed to form a place where many people will leave a ship there just o quickly enjoy that experience with others.
That is more of the objective