Hi,
Not really sure who this post is aimed at. Game designers maybe? But here goes anyway.... Guys (and gals), you're killing the entertainment value of this game.
Who am I?
I'm Andrew. I'm 42. I live in the UK. I have to make a living. I haven't played Elite for around eight months, mostly because I've been focusing on running and building my business in the real world. I'm putting that out there because it's clear this game isn't just played by thirteen year old kids who can practice their combat skills for hours each day, have razor sharp reactions and the ability to adapt to new styles of gameplay on a whim. Obviously, I'm not the greatest at combat (nor will I ever be, even if I burn ten hours a day practicing, which is simply not going to happen). That said, I've been playing since half way through the original beta and I have some noteworth stats; 46 Mil current assets, 20 Mil spent on ships, 114 Mil outfitting, Expert, Broker, Trailblazer, Helpless (never loaded CQC yet). I can also tell you that I have never once succeeded in winning combat against another human being. I avoid human beings, otherwise my game just goes backwards. However, I've claimed 748 bounties and made 1.7 mil in combat bonds. I've had a fairly crime free existence and made 23 mil in trading. I've also dabbled in mining to the tune of 1.7 mil and made approximately twice that exploring the galaxy. In all, I've played for 1 week and 5 days. That's me.
Prior to the beginning of last week, I think I had been killed a total of 4 times. I could be wrong, but that's what I think. I had an Asp that I'd upgraded over time to work well for me. Put simply, if I couldn't outgun something, I could outrun it. I'd made the game work for me and gained entertainment value in the process. This is no longer true.
Today, a mere week later, I've been killed a total of 17 times, despite putting more power and shields on my ship than ever before. I'm still out gunned. The game has clearly been rebalanced several times in the 8 months I've had away from it. My guns are less powerful. My shields seem to last half the time they did. My ship is less maneuverable. The enemy is carrying weapons I've never seen and they're just ruining my day at least at a rate faster than I can make money.
The game has turned into a grind. It makes you work for everything. Back then, I could trade to make money and upgrade my ship. Trading got boring. For me personally, I can't go back and forth for ever and a day. That's a grind. That's life. I don't play games to delight in the grind of life. I'm not saying make it easy. I'm just saying, you're not fun anymore. What's more, the new grind is being heaped upon the old grind. Now it seems, to get my weapons back to their former glory I have to employ engineers to modify them. To do that, I have to collect a bunch of stuff I didn't have to collect before, creating even more grind. The game design is evolving and that's great, but it's evolving incorrectly because all it's really doing is sucking the enjoyment out by changing the game into something it never was before.
Here's what I think of the modifications over the life of the game:
1. Powerplays - it's just a big target on your back. It's completely daft. Soon as you join a faction, nine other factions all want to kill you. What's more, there's virtually zero reason for them not to kill you. In fact, it's all just one big excuse to kill and get away with it. Or to put it another way, it's about as realistic as me in the real world saying, "Hey, I vote Tory, so I'm going to join the Tory party. It'll be a bit of a grind but at least I'll be able to hunt down Labour voters and murder them for no apparent reason. Oh and, I'll be able to do it with zero consequence!" That's just dumb. I don't play Powerplays. I'd just get killed all the time.
2. Horizons - so we can now land on planets? That's great! But along comes another huge grind. The fact that I can now drive around on the surface means that I have to spend hours and hours collecting stuff that appears fairly randomly, to make my weapons as powerful as they used to be. That's dumb too. I sold my surface vehicle.
3. Engineers - now I get to collect even more random stuff from places I regularly get killed and lose massive amounts of money, putting my game further and further back, for less entertainment value. I already avoid combat and those signal thingies because they kill me. I guess I won't be using this functionality either.
Now as you can see, I've had a massive rant. You may be correct in thinking that I've just been killed for the umpteenth time by an NPC rated Dangerous (because I committed the heinous crime of taking a 10K data transfer mission - I wasn't even carrying anything said pirate could steal from me!?!?). I've now got so little money that I cannot afford the buy back on my Asp which means as soon as I leave the station to try and make some money back, I'll end up killed and broke. I'm faced with a choice of downgrading months of hard work (albeit hard work from many months ago) or stopping play altogether. I'm very aware that even if I downgrade to a lesser ship, the Elite experience isn't suddenly going to become more enjoyable for me, so it looks like the entertainment is gone from this game.
I guess it's no longer the game for me. I think probably my lifestyle (self employed adult) precludes me from getting the most out of the game. I'm pretty sure I should just stick to Cities Skylines because while that is complex, it's also forgiving and can be slotted into the lifestyle I live.
I am also acutely aware that because I've just had a massive rant and because I've tried to illustrate my skill levels, one could come back with some obvious answers or accuse me of taking my ball home. Get better at combat? Well, I can't. Not enough hours in the day and even if there was, I'm not 13 years old.
The whole point of the original Elite was freedom to play as you choose. You could stay in safe places if you wanted to, and play that kind of game. Or you might choose to go to dangerous places and take big risks to make big money. As Elite stands right now, it's a marvel of coding genius, but it's not freedom. There's always a bigger fish out there to kill you and put your game back a few million. They come more frequently than you can make money and they're random. That's my major complaint here. Put simply, I no longer have the choice to play how I want to play. No matter what I do, I get killed or move backwards in some way. That, is poor design. It's broken.
Put simply, if I'm crap, then I should have the freedom to play a crap (nice and safe) way, gaining much needed credits and progressing in the game, for entertainment value. I cannot do this now. At this point, I can no longer leave the station I'm docked at with cargo or missions, because I will be killed faster than I can make money to buy back my ship. Actually, I can't make any money because that would mean leaving the station.
Kind regards, Andrew
Not really sure who this post is aimed at. Game designers maybe? But here goes anyway.... Guys (and gals), you're killing the entertainment value of this game.
Who am I?
I'm Andrew. I'm 42. I live in the UK. I have to make a living. I haven't played Elite for around eight months, mostly because I've been focusing on running and building my business in the real world. I'm putting that out there because it's clear this game isn't just played by thirteen year old kids who can practice their combat skills for hours each day, have razor sharp reactions and the ability to adapt to new styles of gameplay on a whim. Obviously, I'm not the greatest at combat (nor will I ever be, even if I burn ten hours a day practicing, which is simply not going to happen). That said, I've been playing since half way through the original beta and I have some noteworth stats; 46 Mil current assets, 20 Mil spent on ships, 114 Mil outfitting, Expert, Broker, Trailblazer, Helpless (never loaded CQC yet). I can also tell you that I have never once succeeded in winning combat against another human being. I avoid human beings, otherwise my game just goes backwards. However, I've claimed 748 bounties and made 1.7 mil in combat bonds. I've had a fairly crime free existence and made 23 mil in trading. I've also dabbled in mining to the tune of 1.7 mil and made approximately twice that exploring the galaxy. In all, I've played for 1 week and 5 days. That's me.
Prior to the beginning of last week, I think I had been killed a total of 4 times. I could be wrong, but that's what I think. I had an Asp that I'd upgraded over time to work well for me. Put simply, if I couldn't outgun something, I could outrun it. I'd made the game work for me and gained entertainment value in the process. This is no longer true.
Today, a mere week later, I've been killed a total of 17 times, despite putting more power and shields on my ship than ever before. I'm still out gunned. The game has clearly been rebalanced several times in the 8 months I've had away from it. My guns are less powerful. My shields seem to last half the time they did. My ship is less maneuverable. The enemy is carrying weapons I've never seen and they're just ruining my day at least at a rate faster than I can make money.
The game has turned into a grind. It makes you work for everything. Back then, I could trade to make money and upgrade my ship. Trading got boring. For me personally, I can't go back and forth for ever and a day. That's a grind. That's life. I don't play games to delight in the grind of life. I'm not saying make it easy. I'm just saying, you're not fun anymore. What's more, the new grind is being heaped upon the old grind. Now it seems, to get my weapons back to their former glory I have to employ engineers to modify them. To do that, I have to collect a bunch of stuff I didn't have to collect before, creating even more grind. The game design is evolving and that's great, but it's evolving incorrectly because all it's really doing is sucking the enjoyment out by changing the game into something it never was before.
Here's what I think of the modifications over the life of the game:
1. Powerplays - it's just a big target on your back. It's completely daft. Soon as you join a faction, nine other factions all want to kill you. What's more, there's virtually zero reason for them not to kill you. In fact, it's all just one big excuse to kill and get away with it. Or to put it another way, it's about as realistic as me in the real world saying, "Hey, I vote Tory, so I'm going to join the Tory party. It'll be a bit of a grind but at least I'll be able to hunt down Labour voters and murder them for no apparent reason. Oh and, I'll be able to do it with zero consequence!" That's just dumb. I don't play Powerplays. I'd just get killed all the time.
2. Horizons - so we can now land on planets? That's great! But along comes another huge grind. The fact that I can now drive around on the surface means that I have to spend hours and hours collecting stuff that appears fairly randomly, to make my weapons as powerful as they used to be. That's dumb too. I sold my surface vehicle.
3. Engineers - now I get to collect even more random stuff from places I regularly get killed and lose massive amounts of money, putting my game further and further back, for less entertainment value. I already avoid combat and those signal thingies because they kill me. I guess I won't be using this functionality either.
Now as you can see, I've had a massive rant. You may be correct in thinking that I've just been killed for the umpteenth time by an NPC rated Dangerous (because I committed the heinous crime of taking a 10K data transfer mission - I wasn't even carrying anything said pirate could steal from me!?!?). I've now got so little money that I cannot afford the buy back on my Asp which means as soon as I leave the station to try and make some money back, I'll end up killed and broke. I'm faced with a choice of downgrading months of hard work (albeit hard work from many months ago) or stopping play altogether. I'm very aware that even if I downgrade to a lesser ship, the Elite experience isn't suddenly going to become more enjoyable for me, so it looks like the entertainment is gone from this game.
I guess it's no longer the game for me. I think probably my lifestyle (self employed adult) precludes me from getting the most out of the game. I'm pretty sure I should just stick to Cities Skylines because while that is complex, it's also forgiving and can be slotted into the lifestyle I live.
I am also acutely aware that because I've just had a massive rant and because I've tried to illustrate my skill levels, one could come back with some obvious answers or accuse me of taking my ball home. Get better at combat? Well, I can't. Not enough hours in the day and even if there was, I'm not 13 years old.
The whole point of the original Elite was freedom to play as you choose. You could stay in safe places if you wanted to, and play that kind of game. Or you might choose to go to dangerous places and take big risks to make big money. As Elite stands right now, it's a marvel of coding genius, but it's not freedom. There's always a bigger fish out there to kill you and put your game back a few million. They come more frequently than you can make money and they're random. That's my major complaint here. Put simply, I no longer have the choice to play how I want to play. No matter what I do, I get killed or move backwards in some way. That, is poor design. It's broken.
Put simply, if I'm crap, then I should have the freedom to play a crap (nice and safe) way, gaining much needed credits and progressing in the game, for entertainment value. I cannot do this now. At this point, I can no longer leave the station I'm docked at with cargo or missions, because I will be killed faster than I can make money to buy back my ship. Actually, I can't make any money because that would mean leaving the station.
Kind regards, Andrew
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