Game is in future.. features are set in the past, fix it or lose players

I was very excited to play Elite Dangerous in beta 2, and indeed purchased and played the game. HOWEVER, after playing for a short while I found the game seemed very backwards in several respects. The game is set in the future, with ships the have computers able to compute frameshift routes, yet unable to save basic commodities data (as one example). In addition who cares what demand there is for commodities, if I buy it for more at one location than another i dont care what the demand is, it is pointless data (all we are looking at is what i buy it for here and sell it for there). Also, the trade route information on the galaxy map is also absolutely pointless, it does nothing to help the user without relevant data (like an ingame compilation of commodities gathered from sites visited).

In the PRESENT, we can check online for current prices of commodities and then compare that with other places. We can buy at one place, and then get it sold at another BEFORE going there (example: a long haul trucker is not going to pick up a load and then travel across country checking prices, he knows that BEFORE loading).

You are setting the game in the future and yet having the game experience set way in the past, its contradictory and extremely maddening to the player.

The news for instance is also tremendously pointless to the player. It says things are "downtrending" but what does that really mean? There is no relevant information given.

The shipyard for instance is a great example for taking something old and making it useful. Before you clicked on a ship and had no information about it, now you know all kinds of useful information. Good on you.. thats one.

You are planning to implement walking around on ships, and planets, to what end though? Just to look at them? If thats all we are going to get with it then please just stow, who cares if you cant actually do something with it. I want to be able to land on a planet, pull out my fishing pole, catch a fish, shoot the bear trying to steal it, take the booty from the resident pirates or monsters, and then launch and sell my stuff at a station. I then want to be able to buy my own star (or system) and place my own space stations, which create their own trade routes, that I get a profit from. That is the kind of game players want.

If you are making this game because you want us to have the experience YOU feel we should have, then you have lost us. Everyone of us. Make a game and let us make our own experiences within it. If you dont want us to profit, dont offer commodities markets then, because your argument that having a database of commodities trade route data is absolutely ridiculous and holds no merit to the real life, let alone the future with ships and computers able to do interstellar travel.
 
In addition players are comparing the current game to other games already out there for their valuable time. Other games already have ingame auction houses with data mining very much possible and allowable.

Take the "this is an unfair advantage" out of the equation though because we cant even play "together" with friends anyway. Are we trading with each other? NOPE! Can we even find our friends in game? I have not been able to do so, the most I have done is speak to them via voice chat.. yippy, I do that already with Teamspeak.. and usually we arent playing the same game anyway so it doesn't matter.

Again, if you are trying to decide for us the experience we should have then you are shooting yourselves in the foot. Let us do that and just make a kick @$$ game.
 
In addition players are comparing the current game to other games already out there for their valuable time. Other games already have ingame auction houses with data mining very much possible and allowable.

Take the "this is an unfair advantage" out of the equation though because we cant even play "together" with friends anyway. Are we trading with each other? NOPE! Can we even find our friends in game? I have not been able to do so, the most I have done is speak to them via voice chat.. yippy, I do that already with Teamspeak.. and usually we arent playing the same game anyway so it doesn't matter.

Again, if you are trying to decide for us the experience we should have then you are shooting yourselves in the foot. Let us do that and just make a kick @$$ game.

I get the distinct impression you'd rather Elite be like another game that's been mentioned way too often on this forum. If that's the case, the solution is clear...

As has been said by David Braben himself, and requoted many times: "We're making the game WE want to play". People can either accept that and enjoy, or not, there's always a choice. But to come to these forums at this late date, and start making such extreme negative comments, and demands, is just plain silly.
 
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@zexsis On the whole I agree with the points you make, but not the part where you forget this is a WIP.

However, I'm not sure the tone of your title comes across in the way it was perhaps intended.
"Fix it or lose players"
TBH It comes across as either threatening or petulant: Neither are particularly positive traits.
How about something along the lines of:
"Any plans to fix this in the future?"

"The news is pointless."

In it's current form, perhaps, but it is testing the news presentation front end... It collects actual, realtime or close-time data from the backend servers and presents it to the users.
I can foresee a point where the news becomes like a mini internet browser with online data available and generated from ingame events presented as news bulletins, figures, stats and most importantly TREND GRAPHS (hint hint).
There may be a way to submit user generated content as news in game with payments made for views. CMDRs might even get famous compiling bulletins.

"Trading is [broken]"...

Yes, the data is poor currently, and I can think of several ways things could be improved immediately.
- Obvious Commodity Price History Requirement is Obvious.
But how about:
- Paid access to data from other systems. Either look ahead pay per use or, for example faction by faction (fed, imps, etc...)
- Favourites and bookmarks, market commodity watch tickers... etc.

"Not enough freedom..."

We already get to name planets (systems?) and that's just the beginning... there's 400,000,000,000 out there. Who knows what Frontier will come up with once the game goes live. Initially, however, it's going for an updated version of the original Elite, which is what the original backers backed for. once that goal is met, they will start to push the boat out with periodic updates (OSLT).

Personally, my main gripe is CMDR history and future planning.
I want to store the places I've been, screen shots I've taken reports and memos I've written.
I also want to be able to plan a route, not one, not two, but twenty, thirty systems ahead and store the route for later reference.

There are so many possibilities with this game and the bits which have been produced so far are showing a LOT of promise. Let's not worry ourselves, overly.
 
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"We're making the game WE want to play"

And that's a lot easier when you get the players to pay up, sight-unseen. Don't get me wrong, I think game design and production is the hardest, most intellectually demanding job you could have with computers. It's the ultimate in UX design. But times have changed since EDs predecessors. In the gameworld, I need to be given more pertinent information than Google can give me. I need to be able to buy things easier than through eBay. I need to be able to customise my ship as well as I can my Domino's pizza. I need to be able to stay in touch with people better than The Wife does on Facebook. These are not features exclusive to EVE, and if its hubris that stopped Frontier appraising those they inspired, only the players lose out.
 
In the PRESENT, we can check online for current prices of commodities and then compare that with other places. We can buy at one place, and then get it sold at another BEFORE going there (example: a long haul trucker is not going to pick up a load and then travel across country checking prices, he knows that BEFORE loading).

Actually, there's a great reason for that in sci-fi universes - it's very easy for a single planet to communicate almost instantly since size of a planet is small compared to a light-second. On the other hand, communicating with another planet or another solar system in real time may never be possible. For example, in the Traveler universe, any message sent to another star system takes a minimum of 2 weeks to get a reply, and a message crossing the Empire and back would take four years. The Elite universe is like Traveler in that there is no faster-than-light communication - only faster-than-light ships that could store and transmit communications. You are limited in your queries to where (and how fast) a courier will take your message and return with a reply.

At best, within the limits of the universe they have, they could show you a time-lagged version of what prices were the last time someone shared market data from that system.
 
The Elite universe is like Traveler in that there is no faster-than-light communication - only faster-than-light ships that could store and transmit communications. You are limited in your queries to where (and how fast) a courier will take your message and return with a reply.

At best, within the limits of the universe they have, they could show you a time-lagged version of what prices were the last time someone shared market data from that system.

Well. There is FTL comm, but that is solely GalNet's monopoly and likely in "bandwidth" very narrow (data moves FTL, yes, but a few bits at time or so), and absurdly expensive tech.
 
"We're making the game WE want to play".

Totally agree with the comments above. They are fair and valid because its from a paying customer. Can you imagine a chef that opens up a restaurant, and customers provide feedback that say 'you should include pasta on the menu' only for the Chef to say 'you wanna eata my store, you eata my food or get lost' (no offense to any nationality implied..just an analogy). In the business world, you MUST take heed of what customers are saying because -ve feedback puts off potential future customers, then suddenly your customer base (and revenue) drops, then the company wilts and dies (as an extreme example).

Above aside, this game has so much potential but has some really annoying aspects as well - one important one is the fact that the devs forget that its the year 3300. We have mastered interstellar travel (faster than light) in single pilot ships - that in itself is awesome - yet:

- the nav computer can't calculate >1 jump
- you have to manually control speed in supercruise
- is there an autopilot??
- manually maneuvering a 1000T spaceship back and forth to 'scoop' up rock fragments (wait, what????). Shouldn't there be some sort of auto collection device? I dunno, little robots or a tractor beam or whatever. Imagine doing this with the Lakon!
- no onboard computer that saves current market data (eg. how do I know how valuable the titanium I just found in this rock is? I spent all my time ignoring bertrandite (roughly 2900cr per T) to mine uraninium (roughly 400cr per T) without knowing it

Yeah noone knows what the year 3300 is going to be like, but if we've advanced to faster than light travel, I'd be damned sure the above would've been solved 1000 years prior.

This game is being released in Dec. really? the devs better have a whole lot of stuff hidden to be released on actual release day or there's going to be a huge backlash.
 
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Can you imagine a chef that opens up a restaurant, and customers provide feedback that say 'you should include pasta on the menu' only for the Chef to say 'you wanna eata my store, you eata my food or get lost'

I think that's a pretty terrible analogy - there are tons of restaurants that don't serve pasta. The vast majority of restaurants have a vision for a particular kind of food (italian, thai, fine dining, etc.) and would never add menu items that don't fit with their vision.

In the business world, you MUST take heed of what customers are saying

To an extent, yes, but it's more important to have a strong vision and build your brand around that vision. You need to know your idea has a market, but you can't and shouldn't bend to all feedback, particularly feedback that goes against your brand identity. As, say, a Thai restaurant, even if some customers ask for hamburgers on the menu, it would be a dumb idea to listen. Trying to please everyone is a sure-fire way to end up pleasing no-one.
 

Problem with that is means people would have to read instead of rant about things already planned or things that will not be a part of this universe.

Tbh the main reason I believe this game does not have 'advanced' features like cross sector market place prices or ftl comms is that FD want us to use this thing that we have between our ears, everything I have seen about a lot of the 'must have' features in this game all see to go in the same direction, make it easier for us to play without requiring us to think for ourselves.

I wonder how many people are going to be crying when they find out in Gamma and release that the systems (Eranin, Wyrd and so on) we can all travel to now are not going to be prelinked, and we instead have to discover new areas of space for ourselves.
 
I was very excited to play Elite Dangerous in beta 2, and indeed purchased and played the game. HOWEVER, after playing for a short while I found the game seemed very backwards in several respects. The game is set in the future, with ships the have computers able to compute frameshift routes, yet unable to save basic commodities data (as one example). In addition who cares what demand there is for commodities, if I buy it for more at one location than another i dont care what the demand is, it is pointless data (all we are looking at is what i buy it for here and sell it for there). Also, the trade route information on the galaxy map is also absolutely pointless, it does nothing to help the user without relevant data (like an ingame compilation of commodities gathered from sites visited).

In the PRESENT, we can check online for current prices of commodities and then compare that with other places. We can buy at one place, and then get it sold at another BEFORE going there (example: a long haul trucker is not going to pick up a load and then travel across country checking prices, he knows that BEFORE loading).

You are setting the game in the future and yet having the game experience set way in the past, its contradictory and extremely maddening to the player.

The news for instance is also tremendously pointless to the player. It says things are "downtrending" but what does that really mean? There is no relevant information given.

The shipyard for instance is a great example for taking something old and making it useful. Before you clicked on a ship and had no information about it, now you know all kinds of useful information. Good on you.. thats one.

You are planning to implement walking around on ships, and planets, to what end though? Just to look at them? If thats all we are going to get with it then please just stow, who cares if you cant actually do something with it. I want to be able to land on a planet, pull out my fishing pole, catch a fish, shoot the bear trying to steal it, take the booty from the resident pirates or monsters, and then launch and sell my stuff at a station. I then want to be able to buy my own star (or system) and place my own space stations, which create their own trade routes, that I get a profit from. That is the kind of game players want.

If you are making this game because you want us to have the experience YOU feel we should have, then you have lost us. Everyone of us. Make a game and let us make our own experiences within it. If you dont want us to profit, dont offer commodities markets then, because your argument that having a database of commodities trade route data is absolutely ridiculous and holds no merit to the real life, let alone the future with ships and computers able to do interstellar travel.


I don't remember authorizing you to speak for me. How about admit to the fact that you are only stating your opinion.
 
Totally agree with the comments above. They are fair and valid because its from a paying customer. Can you imagine a chef that opens up a restaurant, and customers provide feedback that say 'you should include pasta on the menu' only for the Chef to say 'you wanna eata my store, you eata my food or get lost' (no offense to any nationality implied..just an analogy). In the business world, you MUST take heed of what customers are saying because -ve feedback puts off potential future customers, then suddenly your customer base (and revenue) drops, then the company wilts and dies (as an extreme example).

Considering the only revenue from it is via the Zaonce store, they aren't charging subscriptions. David Braben's also stated very clearly that the upkeep of the game and servers is provided by other projects, so, even if they only get those people that have a love for Elite and will continue to play it, I don't believe they're really worried. I'm also sure there will be others who come to Elite and love it just the same, and there are those that won't, and they'll go away and play something else. I played Eve, I tired and bored of it very quickly, mostly due to some of the other players constantly getting in my way of having fun, because they found it fun to grief others. Elite's got a way that I can play the game I love and not worry about that.

Above aside, this game has so much potential but has some really annoying aspects as well - one important one is the fact that the devs forget that its the year 3300. We have mastered interstellar travel (faster than light) in single pilot ships - that in itself is awesome - yet:

- the nav computer can't calculate >1 jump
- you have to manually control speed in supercruise
- is there an autopilot??
- manually maneuvering a 1000T spaceship back and forth to 'scoop' up rock fragments (wait, what????). Shouldn't there be some sort of auto collection device? I dunno, little robots or a tractor beam or whatever. Imagine doing this with the Lakon!
- no onboard computer that saves current market data (eg. how do I know how valuable the titanium I just found in this rock is? I spent all my time ignoring bertrandite (roughly 2900cr per T) to mine uraninium (roughly 400cr per T) without knowing it

Yes there are those that would prefer to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Those same people just want to click one thing then sit back and watch the magic happen, without having to lift a finger, good for them, there are plenty of games for them to play that do just that, have fun.

Yeah noone knows what the year 3300 is going to be like, but if we've advanced to faster than light travel, I'd be damned sure the above would've been solved 1000 years prior.

We don't know what things will be like in 3300, quite true. There has been plenty of SciFi devoted to such issues, Serenity and Firefly, The Honor Harrington books, and the list goes on. Look at other more popular movies, Star Wars, the technology of the Millennium Falcon appears to be decades, perhaps a century behind that of the Federation, but it's an FTL ship. Who knows what could happen between now and 3300, we can go to the stars, colonize other planets and star systems, build up trade between them, etc etc. We can also have wars that destroy much of that technology, or eat it up to the point that it has to be relearned from the ground up, cannibalizing colony ships, etc. Who knows, it's all plausible. It's also plausible that we could evolve to the point that we don't require technology as we know it, that we're more mind and energy, and can do everything we need by that power.

Games expand our imaginations, some games better than others.

This game is being released in Dec. really? the devs better have a whole lot of stuff hidden to be released on actual release day or there's going to be a huge backlash.

Don't write Elite and Frontier off just yet, David Braben and crew have a plan, and I'm sure it'll be borne out, and Elite will be more successful than the nay sayers believe. How do I know this? Because I can see it happening before my eyes, I can see the ability of the developers and designers, and the fans. The nay sayers are actually a smaller percentage of the whole.
 
Considering the only revenue from it is via the Zaonce store, they aren't charging subscriptions. David Braben's also stated very clearly that the upkeep of the game and servers is provided by other projects, so, even if they only get those people that have a love for Elite and will continue to play it, I don't believe they're really worried. I'm also sure there will be others who come to Elite and love it just the same, and there are those that won't, and they'll go away and play something else. I played Eve, I tired and bored of it very quickly, mostly due to some of the other players constantly getting in my way of having fun, because they found it fun to grief others. Elite's got a way that I can play the game I love and not worry about that.



Yes there are those that would prefer to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Those same people just want to click one thing then sit back and watch the magic happen, without having to lift a finger, good for them, there are plenty of games for them to play that do just that, have fun.



We don't know what things will be like in 3300, quite true. There has been plenty of SciFi devoted to such issues, Serenity and Firefly, The Honor Harrington books, and the list goes on. Look at other more popular movies, Star Wars, the technology of the Millennium Falcon appears to be decades, perhaps a century behind that of the Federation, but it's an FTL ship. Who knows what could happen between now and 3300, we can go to the stars, colonize other planets and star systems, build up trade between them, etc etc. We can also have wars that destroy much of that technology, or eat it up to the point that it has to be relearned from the ground up, cannibalizing colony ships, etc. Who knows, it's all plausible. It's also plausible that we could evolve to the point that we don't require technology as we know it, that we're more mind and energy, and can do everything we need by that power.

Games expand our imaginations, some games better than others.



Don't write Elite and Frontier off just yet, David Braben and crew have a plan, and I'm sure it'll be borne out, and Elite will be more successful than the nay sayers believe. How do I know this? Because I can see it happening before my eyes, I can see the ability of the developers and designers, and the fans. The nay sayers are actually a smaller percentage of the whole.


Seriously, get a grip. You don't speak on behalf of the development team and you don't have any special insight, drop the god complex.

The game needs a lot of work. It's not just 'the servers'. It's the game. It's the netcode. It's a fact echoed throughout these forums almost everywhere you look, despite fanboy posts like yours.
 
I always chuckle whenever I see post titles like "You must have this, or else you lose players/or else this game will fail!!!"

Back in 1984, everyone else was following market trends in games ("must have this or else the game will fail/lose players!!!!!") - players have 3 lives, the game has numerous levels, and a high score table. Elite came along, WITHOUT those.

Guess what happened? :)
 
Seriously, get a grip. You don't speak on behalf of the development team and you don't have any special insight, drop the god complex.

The game needs a lot of work. It's not just 'the servers'. It's the game. It's the netcode. It's a fact echoed throughout these forums almost everywhere you look, despite fanboy posts like yours.

I'm not speaking for them, I am repeating what they've said, there is a difference. As for your assertion of a god complex, not quite, but I am stating my opinions and observations, take it for what it's worth, I don't expect everyone to agree with me, and I'm fine with that, but when someone attacks me for my opinions, I do take issue with it, so please, stay on topic.
 
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