Game "Philosophy" question... should people have to "suffer" or "go away?"

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Giving second thought, I always come up harsh. I am sorry that I sounded like that.

But there's the catch - you can have fun without investing huge time in ED. There's no binary solution there. You can have fun in Sidewinder, Eagle, Cobra, you name it. You can progress together.

What is so different, so much more fun with big ships hm? What's there so different that sells game and not introduction? Many people say Cobra MkIII is still coolest ship in the game and I agree. It is amazing. And pack of Cobras can wreck serious , they can easily take down pair of Anacondas without breaking sweat.

This is also a skill game. How do you think your friends gonna enjoy ED without knowing how to fly, how to dock, how to properly get missions (see reddit)? If they don't have a patience for few days to just poke around, how do you think they succeed in ED?

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

As far as I recall your posts went like "I, me, my, want". No demands? Might wanna check the link above.

Where they went? As I said all I want simple upgrade AND new system provides that. So I am cool.

I am not here to argue, in fact I wonder why I even care. People clearly don't come to these forums to change opinion. Who ever does that on Internet.

So it all boils down to if you can find fun in ED. I have little issues with that so far. Granted, I don't play it every day so I guess I am protected against burn outs. But in the end it is all about having fun and if you don't have one in ED...why do you even bother if you don't want to try.

 

[Iskariot]

Would you be opposed to solo being "actually" solo and having a different progression than Open?

I for one would love that.
I want it to be off line too.
That would be so great.
We could have all kinds of cool things that are not possible in a multiplayer setting (I posted a list in another thread.).
All balancing problems would evaporate.
We might even be able to mod the game.
We might have several persistent personal bases in space and on planets.

I can see only pros for an off line solo version of ED.
I would be willing to pay for it, even though it was promised to us in the kickstarter.

 

[Chaparral]

Getting and having in game stuff is fine and satisfies my materialistic drive, but I would not consider the getting and having as the most motivating element of game play. Those things are sort of the backdrop I want so that I can choose the style of gameplay that motivates me at the time I am playing.

Interesting combat or mission mechanics, personal decisions that have meaningful consequences for the setting and my character's development motivate me a bit more. I am looking forward to the personal narrative developments in Elite, and hope there will be some additional personality injection going on.

I would never consider grinding on 1-20k credit missions or bounty hunting up to a python a rewarding experience ever. Been there, done that - it sucked. I did not recommend this game to other people until credit access was easier, and spending a few hours with friends had a bit more meaningful rewards.

Now we do things like - ok everyone pull out your gunships, buy 1 ton of gold and play survivor in a haz res. or something like - race to 20 kills in a cz, or play chicken with a basilisk in an ieagle. What ever strikes us as fun at the moment.

We wouldn't be able to do these things if rebuys weren't cheap and rank grinding wasn't "exploited".

Anyone says that I'm not playing Elite "as intended" or "the right way" can kindly take a walk. I bought the game - I do with it what I will.

If easy credit access is nerfed away I certainly will.

 

[SavingPrincess]

From a developer/publisher standpoint, I believe this philosophy has to do with longevity.

Cheat codes and other means of easy access allow the player to gain access to the bulk of a game’s enjoyable content early on. This was great back in the days of Blockbuster, Video Hut, etc. when you could rent a game for 2-5 days, get cheat codes out of the in-store magazines, and get the most out of the game in the short time you had with it.

Nowadays game developers have structured the market in the way that a large portion of total revenue comes from added content and micro-transactions. The longer they can keep you playing their game, the more money they can potentially make off you. So forcing you to “waste” your time doing repetitive is, essentially, financially advantageous to them.

This is the kind of discussion I was looking for... you're great.

It's super interesting to me from a design perspective... like... you could probably attract a lot more "casual players" with some sort of offline-single player mode that lets them just fly cool ships around and do stuff in their own pocket universe, which would mean a lot of revenue... as this isn't a subscription based game. What you're describing is like, the central case of MMO's with subscription/etc. content... I know I could sell at least 5 copies of the game tomorrow if there were a single player mode with a dev console, etc. where I could hack my friends into some cool stuff to show them how fun things can be...

And think of this... X-Com has a dev console... you can cheat that entire game, but people love things like ironman, and longwar, and the playerbase is exceedingly "hardcore" and loves punishing stuff. Same with games like Civilization, Total War, etc. Most of those games with the hardest-of-hardcore playerbases (that would frankly make E's community look like casuals) all have dev consoles, mods, even cheat "options" baked into the game itself.

I think what it comes down to is confidence in your base gameplay loop. X-Com knows that X-Com players love X-Com, so they can open things up to mods, workshop, dev consoles, etc. and know that X-Com is still going to sell gangbusters.

Thanks for being awesome <3

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

If easy credit access is nerfed away I certainly will.

Didn't know you have to have huge rebuy for that Eagle.

 

[Logios]

My problem with Elite is that you have to "suffer" (do a bunch of tedious, boring ) in order to progress on to having fun. Elite is literally balanced so that the more boring an activity is, the more it pays. Whenever you decide to do anything fun it feels like you're taking a day off without pay. With other RPG/RPGlike games you grind the fun parts of the game over and over to get more resources/power/etc and THAT'S what makes them so addicting.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

My problem with Elite is that you have to "suffer" (do a bunch of tedious, boring ) in order to progress on to having fun. Elite is literally balanced so that the more boring an activity is, the more it pays. Whenever you decide to do anything fun it feels like you're taking a day off without pay. With other RPG/RPGlike games you grind the fun parts of the game over and over to get more resources/power/etc and THAT'S what makes them so addicting.

Bounty hunting pays more than trading. Please tell me you find bounty hunting boring.

Also 'yeah, right' about other RPG games and their 'grindy' side activities.

If you don't find game fun, you don't imho.

 

[SavingPrincess]

Giving second thought, I always come up harsh. I am sorry that I sounded like that.

But there's the catch - you can have fun without investing huge time in ED. There's no binary solution there. You can have fun in Sidewinder, Eagle, Cobra, you name it. You can progress together.

What is so different, so much more fun with big ships hm? What's there so different that sells game and not introduction? Many people say Cobra MkIII is still coolest ship in the game and I agree. It is amazing. And pack of Cobras can wreck serious , they can easily take down pair of Anacondas without breaking sweat.

This is also a skill game. How do you think your friends gonna enjoy ED without knowing how to fly, how to dock, how to properly get missions (see reddit)? If they don't have a patience for few days to just poke around, how do you think they succeed in ED?

No worries mate, you're obviously passionate. Thanks for also being a cool human.

I'm more interested in the discussion around the philosophy, getting perspectives, etc. I kinda expected the "passionate" reactions... lol.

I put "suffer" in quotes in my OP to kind of be tongue-in-cheek and people took it very literally... that's on me I guess. I love the game. I would also love an offline "me only" version that doesn't affect BGS that I can dev-console my way through, because to me this game is like Gran Turismo in space... I love flying all the different ships, I love just playing around with builds... etc. I farmed Allen->Smeaton to build up a decent nest egg and now I'm having WAYYYYY more fun than I was previously... but what's interesting to me is that other people are mad at people like me for that...

I get it from the "BGS" perspective, but a lot of those people are the same ones that support UA bombing, etc. I just don't "fundamentally" understand the mentality behind:

"This game I love and want to be successful, if you don't enjoy it exactly the way I think you should, you should just go play something else, and keep your causal-af friends away too..."

Seems really counter-intuitive to me?

Bounty hunting pays more than trading. Please tell me you find bounty hunting boring.

Also 'yeah, right' about other RPG games and their 'grindy' side activities.

If you don't find game fun, you don't imho.

I do find the game super fun, but it's WAY MORE FUN to me after I built up a "I don't have to think about it anymore" amount of credits so I can start playing with all the cool toys.

 

[Logios]

From a developer/publisher standpoint, I believe this philosophy has to do with longevity.

Right but when FD makes the grind tedious and boring it chases people away. Most people understand there needs to be some kind of grind to keep players motivated but the problem with Elite is that the grind is soul crushingly boring. In other games like the Diablo series, the grind is a lot of fun and on top of that you get the reward of progression.

 

[sidereal6]

There should be a sandbox mode where you can pick any ship, outfit it in any way you like, and then fly it around to test it out - even do some PvP if you want. What we currently call "the game" should be changed to "career mode"

There should also be several single-player campaigns. There should be one for more important events that make it into GalNet. Someone was the first person to encounter Thargoids (post 3302), and there might even be an interesting story behind that - maybe he provoked them or stole an artifact and they came looking for him. There should be a single player campaign where you get to play as that guy, culminating in the first hyperdiction.

I have yet to even see a thargoid. That's one of the reasons I suggest this. FDev could throw together a few single player campaigns - pay a company to make some cutscenes and dialog - and just like that, much of the backstory that people currently don't know about would be common knowledge.

That plus the sandbox for people who just want to see what it's like to fight a vette and so much of the frustration people have with Elite would be fixed. And the rest of us can continue in career mode just as we are.

 

[SavingPrincess]

This is a game with a multiplayer component. The borders between solo and multi are fuzzy in this unique design.
Therefore it stands to reason that people don't want to see people use cheats to conjure up billions of credits and corvettes and cutters equipped with super modded shields and hulls and more stuff like that.

If this were an off line solo game I could not care less about you cheating.

If your friends don't have the time and love for this game, then this is simply not their kind of game.
It happens and I don't care.
Let them play something else, with cheats for all I care.

So you'd be cool with an offline only mode not tied to BGS where I could cheat all day?

 

[Genus]

A lot of people actively don't think players should experience "all the content" of a game they paid for unless they spend thousands of hours in return.

I grew up in an era of IDKFA and Rosebud... cheat codes to me were always a way to unlock MORE enjoyment of a game, or let me experience all the content I paid for, even if I didn't have the time. I still use things like Cheat Engine (though never in a multiplayer capacity) on PC games, and I miss the days when you could do crazy things through cheat codes.

On a business-level, I get replacing cheat codes with DLC and microtransactions (it sucks, but I understand it)... but what I don't understand, is this weird desire to see other gamers "suffer" based on the way you (as in the royal you) prefer to play your game.

I get it in Elite, there's BGS and Open/Solo are tied together, etc. I'm not really looking to go down that road, but more explore the idea that "Because it took ME a long time to do something, you should have to go through the same..."

To me, that sounds like a way to completely kill a living game... if the content within the game can only be accessed in its entirety by players with infinite free-time, how can I sell this game to my friends?

As it stands right now, most of my friends love video games, and I would love to fly around with them... but I can't sell them on this game. I just can't. They don't have the free time required to "enjoy" this game as its designed, and the question I have, is why do people LIKE that?

Spot on. Any kind of actual real life responsibility, (job, family etc) automatically puts you at a disadvantage. I for one am weary of jumping on to grind ED and having it feel like a job.

The issue is lack of fun things to do, activities and payoffs etc. Long Range Passenger missions were a means to an end in this regard. Now FD have made their intentions clear, it's pretty obvious they've come down on the side of the hard liners and wish to make the game a grind void of fun for the foreseeable future. Happy twiddling knobs and 1 line of code at a time, rather than doing any real Game Design. Everything is a quick fix Sledgehammer, rather than a considered scalpel.

 

[SavingPrincess]

There should be a sandbox mode where you can pick any ship, outfit it in any way you like, and then fly it around to test it out - even do some PvP if you want. What we currently call "the game" should be changed to "career mode"

I absolutely ADORE this idea... I can regrettably only smash the rep button once though.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I get it from the "BGS" perspective, but a lot of those people are the same ones that support UA bombing, etc. I just don't "fundamentally" understand the mentality behind:

"This game I love and want to be successful, if you don't enjoy it exactly the way I think you should, you should just go play something else, and keep your causal-af friends away too..."

Seems really counter-intuitive to me?

I want this game to be successful on it's own merits and design. You are welcome if you are here to play by - very loosely defined btw - rules. Board flipping is something out of those rules. And in fact, that's only exception I can see so far. People sharing info, sharing hints, using CGs...it is all legit, all welcome.

I think biggest issue are demands. Some of them are just absurd. Payouts for missions? They are huge. Game has never paid more for doing something than now. Will they go up and down in specific cases? Sure. Devs listen and if given good solid reason, they will tweak numbers.

But if you don't enjoy moment-by-moment gameplay....if you are here to enjoy just 1/10 of the game? It is really awkward, because everything I or others get hyped or interested about are get talked down and ridiculed.

You are welcomed, if you truly want to play game. If you just want to take a Corvette for a ride, well, I don't think we can find much of agreement here.

https://i.imgur.com/8LWDq8d.jpg

There should be a sandbox mode where you can pick any ship, outfit it in any way you like, and then fly it around to test it out - even do some PvP if you want. What we currently call "the game" should be changed to "career mode"

There should also be several single-player campaigns. There should be one for more important events that make it into GalNet. Someone was the first person to encounter Thargoids (post 3302), and there might even be an interesting story behind that - maybe he provoked them or stole an artifact and they came looking for him. There should be a single player campaign where you get to play as that guy, culminating in the first hyperdiction.

I have yet to even see a thargoid. That's one of the reasons I suggest this. FDev could throw together a few single player campaigns - pay a company to make some cutscenes and dialog - and just like that, much of the backstory that people currently don't know about would be common knowledge.

That plus the sandbox for people who just want to see what it's like to fight a vette and so much of the frustration people have with Elite would be fixed. And the rest of us can continue in career mode just as we are.

Nice, you have idea for new game No go, make it a reality!

 

[mp4x]

If we're going down the philosophy path than 'suffering' is subjective, especially when it pertains to something designed specifically for enjoyment(a game in this instance.) Either you enjoy it or not. Many of us have over 1000 hours across multiple accounts, and that's not because we enjoy suffering but because we're enjoying the process/game/challenge. That said I'm sure there's more than one masochist that plays ED. It sounds like you need a quick-fix game in your life, Destiny 2 is mine at the moment, but ED isn't that type of game. I don't think you should have to spend 1000's of hours because I did, that's not the argument, the argument is that this is simply the type of game that ED is and it's not for everyone (your mates, for example) and as much as FD would like more people to buy ED, I don't think they want to sell-out their vision to do so

 

[Logios]

Bounty hunting pays more than trading. Please tell me you find bounty hunting boring.

Also 'yeah, right' about other RPG games and their 'grindy' side activities.

If you don't find game fun, you don't imho.

I find a lot of stuff in this game fun. But I don't find the grind for money or rep fun at all. I honestly don't think I've seen a single person say they had fun grinding rep. That is so boring it crushes your soul. I do think gathering resources for engineering is fun. Interdicting and killing ships in anarchy systems for their mats, checking out USSs, exploring planets, etc is a lot of fun. I wish more of the game's grind was like that, where you just play the game how you want and the resources/credits will come in. But unfortunately if you need credits or rep you will be doing tedious, mindnumbing garbage for hours on hours to fund your "fun" time.

 

[Winterwalker]

My problem with Elite is that you have to "suffer" (do a bunch of tedious, boring ) in order to progress on to having fun.

I don't agree with this, only on the simple premise that running away (and knowing when to) also counts as gameplay. Imo you can have easily as much fun in a hazres in an eagle, as you'll have in a vulture, FDL or corvette, if nothing else because the rebuys are lower even if the earnings are too. People want a big ship's feeling of power I know but I think can discount the small ones a bit too easily.

I don't agree with the "if you don't like it, go away" line myself. It's not something Frontier would ever say and imo is a bit lazy. Then again, while it's not other player's job to persuade people to like the game, I think more often than not it comes from the standpoint of suport the development of the game. That might include mistakes by devs, an evolving situation because nobody's perfect, but oddly I think it comes from people meaning well and not enjoying salty comments about their fav game. Depends how comments are put too of course, a salty comment possibly deserves some kind of put down, everyone probably responsible for putting their complaint about the game in a balanced way.

There's also I think a feeling of not wanting to see the game ruined by - what can be - knee jerk reactions to features. I can't speak for anyone else but I actually like a challenging game. Althoguh the trash rolls - that engineers are now losing - were flawed because no player agency, for me that kind of loss is not all that different from doing something silly, losing you're fully modded ship and rebuying .. a set back. I hope we don't lose set backs even major ones because they create the challenge - that creates the game. Quite often though, set backs can be characterised as 'suffering' which is about as unfair to the game as 'play another game' is.

 

[SavingPrincess]

Nice, you have idea for new game No go, make it a reality!

(Actually that was part of the original idea for this game, an offline separate mode anyway, it was also the original Elite if you're old like me!)

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I find a lot of stuff in this game fun. But I don't find the grind for money or rep fun at all.

Emmmmm....almost everything i know as solid activity in ED gives you credits and/or rep. You're sure you got this right?

I honestly don't think I've seen a single person say they had fun grinding rep.

Then don't....grind?

That is so boring it crushes your soul. I do think gathering resources for engineering is fun. Interdicting and killing ships in anarchy systems for their mats, checking out USSs, exploring planets, etc is a lot of fun. I wish more of the game's grind was like that, where you just play the game how you want and the resources/credits will come in. But unfortunately if you need credits or rep you will be doing tedious, mindnumbing garbage for hours on hours to fund your "fun" time.

Not sure I agree. For example, I do selective bunch of missions...assassinations, passengers, data deliveries...very selectively, just when I feel it. And always when I feel it I get lots of credits (due of having full rep with factions) and rep for both minor and major faction.

I just dance in my corner of the world and I have gotten tons of money already. Also I did some rescuing from burning stations - if you wanted to do fun and get rep and get money, that's right way to do it.