Finding a meaning in this game

[TheSynopticVision]

Most stories run untold, for individuals or Groups. There's plenty of such publications though, sometimes in the Forum, a few in Discords, alot on INARA or EDSM Logs.
But those are the personal/group Stories that represent the "life in the Galaxy".

No, see, that's the problem. I agree that there's a LOT of incredibly well-crafted lore/activity around the game (I used to write for SagEye, I should know). Probably more than in any other game.

But this is not "life in the Galaxy". This is "life on the Forums, life on Reddit, life on Discord". Say that I am a new player, I started 2 weeks ago, still learning the ropes. If, by Rapture, ALL of the meta-game community content was to suddenly disappear (LaveRadio, YouTubers, Reddit, Discord channels, this forum, SagEye, Inara, EDSM...all gone), I (the new player) would not notice at all. My gameplay experience would not change one bit.

THIS is the problem with Elite. Aside from a few PMF names and the occasional gathering of ships, there is NOTHING tangible in-game that mirrors all the effort put by the community. All these initiatives, all the thousands of hours spent by the community have no effect whatsoever on the Galaxy that you interact with when you play the game.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Hehe, true...

Almost every action and story is written outside of the Game indeed.
That's been a core issue ever since the Game was released.

The extraordinary reliance on out-of-game tools that came with it remains a huge Achilles heel but that's been discussed to death.
IMHO one of the issues is that ELITE : Dangerous from gound-up was concepted as a single Player Game with some (optional) MultiPlayer/MMO additions.

Should all those 3rd Party sites ever close doors, it'd almost finish the Game.
I remember the very short-period protest of some key sites (temp. shutdown to make a point) last year that visibly forced their hands within hours (!) of going live; mere weeks after an official (no naming and shaming) proudly proclaimed (quote) "You don't need a Spreadsheet to play the Game" xD

(I had heated - and entirely ignored - discussions about Information access, acquisition, brokering and management in early 2015 already; to this Date only a little bit about it has changed, but at least that's something)

 

[MoonRacer]

No, see, that's the problem. I agree that there's a LOT of incredibly well-crafted lore/activity around the game (I used to write for SagEye, I should know). Probably more than in any other game.

But this is not "life in the Galaxy". This is "life on the Forums, life on Reddit, life on Discord". Say that I am a new player, I started 2 weeks ago, still learning the ropes. If, by Rapture, ALL of the meta-game community content was to suddenly disappear (LaveRadio, YouTubers, Reddit, Discord channels, this forum, SagEye, Inara, EDSM...all gone), I (the new player) would not notice at all. My gameplay experience would not change one bit.

THIS is the problem with Elite. Aside from a few PMF names and the occasional gathering of ships, there is NOTHING tangible in-game that mirrors all the effort put by the community. All these initiatives, all the thousands of hours spent by the community have no effect whatsoever on the Galaxy that you interact with when you play the game.

As a rather new player (since start of February) I must confirm this: Without the huge amount of external information, including the forums here I would never have bought the game! On Frontiers store page the descriptions are sparse, and the manual is not up to date, and also spare. The game is more of a 'secret gaming hint'.

Luckily the game seems to suit me, I prefer more complicated games with a lot to know. A more casual player will play only for hours and then leave. Especially if a player is not very much into searching on the internet. My brother for example would never have bought the game, and now, when I tell him about the game, he is even sure he does not want it

The problem with ED is a lot of wasted potential.
For example: There are billions of people living on planets. Do they care what's going on above their heads? One would think, yes, they would care very much. But nothing can be seen in the game. Stations and outposts or planetary bases look deserted. Not one living soul to see. Would it be so hard to animate people doing things and walking about? They would not even have to care about the faces, since they would wear protective clothing or space suits. But all we have is a bunch of talking heads. This reminds me of old games, where nobody had 3D person animations. Yes, I have no trouble with this, I just imagine it, going to a restaurant at a station or going for a short trip down to a planet. And no, this is no argument for 'space legs'. I do not want an added FPS. And walking around in the ship, on stations and so on would be cool, but only nice to have and soon boring.
But a bit more animation would do lots for the feeling to be in the world.
Or being able to talk to NPCs in space. The old game Freelancer had it, you could 'hail' other ships, provided they were not hostile and not in a fight they would answer with data what they do and where they were going. Completely unnecessary but added a lot to the immersion. Would it be so hard to implement this? They could answer depending on the alignment and the relationship to the CMDR, and they would not even need to give out detailed information, a friendly 'Fly safe' would suffice. Also - in the future a selection of hails could be made, so that the CMDR can also threaten another ship, and so on. This would give much more life to the ghostly spawned NPCs, whose existence is often only for seconds. I am sure you heard about Fallout 76, and the comments about missing NPCs. ED has even less. They are not so much needed here, but still...

I find the sandbox world and the freedom very compelling, but chances are wasted to make more game from ED. All the mechanics (traveling, landing, driving the SRV) are made with love to detail, exceedingly well done. But it seems to stop here, it is as if Frontier does not know how to make a game. All the 'shells' which make a game out from the simulation are full of holes and bugs. I avoid most missions because they often seem to fail. I hope they will do something and not add a huge thing like 'space legs' or something similar. Small updates with more animations and more persistent NPCs would help a lot, even if they are only decorations. And bug fixes...

 

[TheSynopticVision]

I find the sandbox world and the freedom very compelling, but chances are wasted to make more game from ED. All the mechanics (traveling, landing, driving the SRV) are made with love to detail, exceedingly well done. But it seems to stop here, it is as if Frontier does not know how to make a game. All the 'shells' which make a game out from the simulation are full of holes and bugs. I avoid most missions because they often seem to fail. I hope they will do something and not add a huge thing like 'space legs' or something similar. Small updates with more animations and more persistent NPCs would help a lot, even if they are only decorations. And bug fixes...

Could not agree more.

 

[Sylow]

I find the sandbox world and the freedom very compelling, but chances are wasted to make more game from ED. All the mechanics (traveling, landing, driving the SRV) are made with love to detail, exceedingly well done. But it seems to stop here, it is as if Frontier does not know how to make a game. All the 'shells' which make a game out from the simulation are full of holes and bugs. I avoid most missions because they often seem to fail. I hope they will do something and not add a huge thing like 'space legs' or something similar. Small updates with more animations and more persistent NPCs would help a lot, even if they are only decorations.

That's something i also keep bringing up at some time. I don't really miss NPC pixels (we wouldn't see much more from our cockpits) running around in a station. But we interact with NPCs in the station and they also lack feeling. The game is mostly well done on the technical side. But it often is much too bare bone. Just look at missions, it gives you all technical information about a mission, no matter if you need it or not. But it doesn't provide any story or agenda.

Often just a few lines of text would make all the difference. Currently a mission chain at best could be like this:

• steal cargo
• kill ships
• kill named ship

This is terribly generic. But a few small text messages could change the same thing to:

• Known criminal child-eater XY has to be brought to justice. Go ahead and save children from a transport.
• A bunch of his minions are on way to kill you. Fend them off.
• Your actions have drawn XY out of hiding. Now use the chance and send him to the void!

Technically it would be the same thing. But it would be so much more enjoyable to play. And if even i can figure out something like this, then try to imagine what an actual writer with actually good ideas could come up with...

 

[Tikanderoga]

Almost every action and story is written outside of the Game indeed.
That's been a core issue ever since the Game was released.

Should all those 3rd Party sites ever close doors, it'd almost finish the Game.
I remember the very short-period protest of some key sites (temp. shutdown to make a point) last year that visibly forced their hands within hours (!) of going live; mere weeks after an official (no naming and shaming) proudly proclaimed (quote) "You don't need a Spreadsheet to play the Game" xD

I think, that's the biggest flaw right there. Everything is happening outside of the game.
The game relies very heavily on 3rd party content and tools, Netflix, Stan or Hulu being the biggest ones, followed by Inara.

Why can't I query the prices or the supply of a station I just visited a mere 10 minutes ago? They'd be roughly the same, unless the BGS ticked of course, then a minor variance is expected.
In the X series, you can place satellites in sectors, and always query the supply and price of any station there. Food for thought maybe?

BUT: A station I visited 10 minutes ago, I cannot query of their supplies. However, another commander that I never met, updates Inara with said information and I can query it outside of the game. Because it should be built in the game!!

 

[Valorin]

Hello Commanders,

I have this game for one year now and maybe for a lot of you is nothing compared how many hours you spent in it, but after this year full of grinding, exploration, bounty, etc, I've come to a conclusion which is bringing me back at the beginning of my journey: what's the meaning of this game?

The Galaxy is immense, probably the whole Community is going to take centuries to complete the exploration of it, and a lot of features are included in this game that, unfortunately or luckily, you need to find out by yourself. But what are the rewards for such gestures?

In details:

1) Exploration: You spent a lot of hours to travel around the Galaxy, tons of jumps and fuel scoops, just to spot Water/Earth like worlds, but for what? Just to bound your name on that planet? What are the benefits to explore the Universe... in this game?
2) BGS: Why do I need to bother to increase the reputation of one specific faction instead of one other? Why do I chose to change the stability of one system instead of another? What are the benefits of this?
3) Thargoids: You "can" kill them, but you cannot defeat them, so why should I bother to haunt them down if nothing will change in this "dynamic" universe?
4) Bounty, Engineers, Guardian, etc: A lot of MMO games give you rewards / incentive for such activities, well for Guardian you can actually get special blueprints as well as for Engineers, even if the price to pay which is a pure grind activity is far beyond a normal gamer (roughly called Casual Gamer), but in this game, again, why should I bother to involve my self in such activities? Money? Well ok, we need them, but once I will be super-rich, what can I do with all those money?

I don't want to start a flame post, maybe some of you can get this post as a daily complaint, but is not. I love this game, I love the space simulation, but I've lost my affinity to this game and I want to find a new motivation, a reason, to return playing it and enjoying it as a brand new game.

Take care Commanders!

I don't really agree to some of your points, but I guess they are all more or less valid. It's also, for a change, well delivered criticism, which deserves mentioning.

 

[HAMM3R]

As much as I've enjoyed ED in blazing my own trail exploring around the galaxy, the feeling of being a spectator, as someone so fittingly put it, has always bugged me.

Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a "political BGS" or AI for the super powers. They'd have their own agendas to form treaties, alliances, wage wars, expand and so on and the players would be doing their thing in the middle of it. You could join the war effort if you so choose or take advantage and raid fleeing civilians, smuggle goodies/weapons or whatever.

Dang, I remember back in the day playing Master Of Orion II, I had some treaty with the Bulrathi, who went on to war against the Klakkons. A while later the Bulrathi asked to form an alliance. Didn't think much of it, just yeah whatever, don't want them to attack me. Of course the alliance obliged me to declare war against the Klakkons so I did that and moved my fleet to protect my border systems. A few turns later the Bulrathi fleets attacked my home system. But yeah, would be great to see that type of scheming going on in Elite between the super powers and players meddling in between.

 

[Tikanderoga]

As much as I've enjoyed ED in blazing my own trail exploring around the galaxy, the feeling of being a spectator, as someone so fittingly put it, has always bugged me.

Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a "political BGS" or AI for the super powers. They'd have their own agendas to form treaties, alliances, wage wars, expand and so on and the players would be doing their thing in the middle of it. You could join the war effort if you so choose or take advantage and raid fleeing civilians, smuggle goodies/weapons or whatever.

Dang, I remember back in the day playing Master Of Orion II, I had some treaty with the Bulrathi, who went on to war against the Klakkons. A while later the Bulrathi asked to form an alliance. Didn't think much of it, just yeah whatever, don't want them to attack me. Of course the alliance obliged me to declare war against the Klakkons so I did that and moved my fleet to protect my border systems. A few turns later the Bulrathi fleets attacked my home system. But yeah, would be great to see that type of scheming going on in Elite between the super powers and players meddling in between.

That's what Powerplay is about. You join a superpower and assist them.

The problem there is that none of the super powers can be eradicated. No matter how hard you try or what you do.
Would be great if you could though.