I don't imagine that this hasn't been brought up before but I'm too stupid to use the search feature (I guess I'm a robot I always fail the CAPTCHA) and honestly I'm just done with this game...
TL
R this game needs to increase the depth of it's game world. It is massive but everything is exactly the same wherever you go besides the controlling faction which is more annoying than interesting as you must go to certain systems to buy faction ships (witch makes sense and isn't incredibly annoying but the staton taking one of three color schemes isn't that interesting).
I am done with this game as after you experience all the mission types there is absolutely nothing to do besides a rare few special unique missions which are the funnest part of the game. So then you are left doing the same type of mission/action over and over and over and over again to grind, yes you could switch it up but that costs money in outfiting (You have to buy a ships-worth of modules for every different activity or lose money in constantly switching). So the most efficient way to grind is to repeat what you once found the funnest part of the game ad-nauseum, or the most profitable method whatever that happens to be at the moment. This is why so many people complain about the grind in this game, it is so easy to get locked into one action for the entire mid-game. The best way, in my opinion, to fix this would be to add more *custom, human made, content* however that is just not practical for a game like elite, so then what I would recommend is creating more random encounters with more rewards, to encourage players to make the game fun for themselves they must have incentive. If something is fun to do but earns few credits/data/other rewards most players will avoid doing that thing because they are focused on that far off goal, because of this it is one of the most important jobs of developers to protect players from *themselves* this is something that Fdev hasn't done the best job of to say the least. So how then can these issues be solved? I am not some super genius (Again the captcha on this site regularly fools me) and I think the comments on this post will probably have some good ideas, but my main two ideas would be A. environmental quests, quests gained from flying around and exploring, if implemented these should be scattered frequently throughout unidentified signal sources with enough different missions and methods for providing them that if a player spends an hour flying around they should not be likely to get the same quest more than one or two times (I am assuming that the player would find about 30 signal sources in the hour). For example you jump into a signal source and you find a large fed ship being attacked by two smaller empire ships, the fed ship dies like 10 seconds after you warp in an drops an item called "intelligence" or something the player will then be warned to leave and not pick up the intel by the empire ships, if they chose to take this item they will be engaged by the two ships. If they make it to fed space with a wanted level for picking up the intel, they could be chased, then sell it to a federal agent somewhere in any station they get a large sum of credits that scales with a random chance quality of the intel and how far the player had to travel to deliver it. This provides an incentive to look for these missions as the credit worth would have to be high enough to incentivise going to these signal sources. Again I cannot stress enough there would have to be a lot of different scripted handmade scenarios or this becomes just as boring as the current game activities, the reward should also be balanced to the point were looking for these signal sources is a terrible idea and is clearly a bad idea, but dropping in to see what a particular signal holds while passing by is more than worth it, maybe make it so that a player dropping is is never engaged or damaged in any way unless they actively chose to take part. These quests should also be linger for a few minutes (30?) after a player discovers them so they can go switch ships. This also incentivises players to invest in diverse modules and ships so that they can pick up these signal sources even if they prefer trading and the mission is combat oriented, they have a diverse range of mediocre ships/ modules along with the good ships/modules for the thing they like to do/earns the most money. This means that at any given time they can say "I'm tired of trading let's switch to my combat ship" instead of being stuck in trading unless they want to waste money on other ships/modules. This system, if it has diverse enough quests, would incentivise players to keep a diverse array of equipment close enough that they can switch to it in just a few minutes. The IMHO better option although it could be implemented with the other one would be to have more quests from normal sources like Robigo (not the gold rush part the story part) it is unique and gives the world a lot more depth, of course they need slave smugglers it makes in game sense. The problem is these quests and easter eggs are far and few between, if more time was focused on adding these personalised, unique quests to the inhabited bubble then the game would feel so much more alive. I would recommend if this were to be attempted that work start at the places of interest like the galactic core, sol, and the starting system and then worked out from there.
I am leaving this forum and this game so don't expect me to respond, I hope that enough discussion occurs below to inspire change within Fdev, I doubt it will happen but I can hope.
TL
R this game needs to increase the depth of it's game world. It is massive but everything is exactly the same wherever you go besides the controlling faction which is more annoying than interesting as you must go to certain systems to buy faction ships (witch makes sense and isn't incredibly annoying but the staton taking one of three color schemes isn't that interesting).I am done with this game as after you experience all the mission types there is absolutely nothing to do besides a rare few special unique missions which are the funnest part of the game. So then you are left doing the same type of mission/action over and over and over and over again to grind, yes you could switch it up but that costs money in outfiting (You have to buy a ships-worth of modules for every different activity or lose money in constantly switching). So the most efficient way to grind is to repeat what you once found the funnest part of the game ad-nauseum, or the most profitable method whatever that happens to be at the moment. This is why so many people complain about the grind in this game, it is so easy to get locked into one action for the entire mid-game. The best way, in my opinion, to fix this would be to add more *custom, human made, content* however that is just not practical for a game like elite, so then what I would recommend is creating more random encounters with more rewards, to encourage players to make the game fun for themselves they must have incentive. If something is fun to do but earns few credits/data/other rewards most players will avoid doing that thing because they are focused on that far off goal, because of this it is one of the most important jobs of developers to protect players from *themselves* this is something that Fdev hasn't done the best job of to say the least. So how then can these issues be solved? I am not some super genius (Again the captcha on this site regularly fools me) and I think the comments on this post will probably have some good ideas, but my main two ideas would be A. environmental quests, quests gained from flying around and exploring, if implemented these should be scattered frequently throughout unidentified signal sources with enough different missions and methods for providing them that if a player spends an hour flying around they should not be likely to get the same quest more than one or two times (I am assuming that the player would find about 30 signal sources in the hour). For example you jump into a signal source and you find a large fed ship being attacked by two smaller empire ships, the fed ship dies like 10 seconds after you warp in an drops an item called "intelligence" or something the player will then be warned to leave and not pick up the intel by the empire ships, if they chose to take this item they will be engaged by the two ships. If they make it to fed space with a wanted level for picking up the intel, they could be chased, then sell it to a federal agent somewhere in any station they get a large sum of credits that scales with a random chance quality of the intel and how far the player had to travel to deliver it. This provides an incentive to look for these missions as the credit worth would have to be high enough to incentivise going to these signal sources. Again I cannot stress enough there would have to be a lot of different scripted handmade scenarios or this becomes just as boring as the current game activities, the reward should also be balanced to the point were looking for these signal sources is a terrible idea and is clearly a bad idea, but dropping in to see what a particular signal holds while passing by is more than worth it, maybe make it so that a player dropping is is never engaged or damaged in any way unless they actively chose to take part. These quests should also be linger for a few minutes (30?) after a player discovers them so they can go switch ships. This also incentivises players to invest in diverse modules and ships so that they can pick up these signal sources even if they prefer trading and the mission is combat oriented, they have a diverse range of mediocre ships/ modules along with the good ships/modules for the thing they like to do/earns the most money. This means that at any given time they can say "I'm tired of trading let's switch to my combat ship" instead of being stuck in trading unless they want to waste money on other ships/modules. This system, if it has diverse enough quests, would incentivise players to keep a diverse array of equipment close enough that they can switch to it in just a few minutes. The IMHO better option although it could be implemented with the other one would be to have more quests from normal sources like Robigo (not the gold rush part the story part) it is unique and gives the world a lot more depth, of course they need slave smugglers it makes in game sense. The problem is these quests and easter eggs are far and few between, if more time was focused on adding these personalised, unique quests to the inhabited bubble then the game would feel so much more alive. I would recommend if this were to be attempted that work start at the places of interest like the galactic core, sol, and the starting system and then worked out from there.
I am leaving this forum and this game so don't expect me to respond, I hope that enough discussion occurs below to inspire change within Fdev, I doubt it will happen but I can hope.
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