(Gameplay) Search and Rescue: FD. What are you even try to do with it? What is a point?

[Ian Skippy]

- Stop releasing half-finished features. If you're gonna make multi-crew, then make multicrew with ALL of the roles you envisioned. And if for some reason you can't do that yet, don't waste ludicrous amounts of dev time on it, because the cost-benefit ratio is terrible. There are other areas of the game that DESPERATELY need attention, and they're focusing on things with laughable cost-benefit ratios that aren't used by a large percentage of the playerbase because of how "hollow" they are.

Thats just petty. They sold MC in the season pass so had to release it. It didnt go as planned, which sucks. They dont want to repeat something like this so are pretty much dropping the season model. Yeah it blows if stuff doesnt go according to plan, but just deal with it as they learn from it.

 

[Mengy]

As for me I prefer seeing it as a tiny step in the right direction. At least, this demonstrates that there are a lot of non-combat areas that can be worked on, especially since the S&R CG was a decent success. I whine often enough about the lack of non combat love in the different updates, it seems only fair to show some support when an effort is made. Even if, I agree, this is far from perfect right now.

Thumbs up on this one FD.

I can agree with this. The 2.4 S&R contact plus making salvage legal was a tiny step in the right direction. I was just hoping for a slightly larger first step, that's all.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Thats just petty. They sold MC in the season pass so had to release it. It didnt go as planned, which sucks. They dont want to repeat something like this so are pretty much dropping the season model. Yeah it blows if stuff doesnt go according to plan, but just deal with it as they learn from it.

Looking back I see why FD wanted to do MC, but I also agree that they should have thought twice. I like some glimpses of crew coop, but have FD stated that this pre-space legs multi crew with limitations, I think we could avoided lot of confusion and anger.

In nutshell, they got player avatars and wanted to add cool feature to do something with them. Didn't turn out as they expected. Whole Horizons story just indicates that FD has to rethink how they roll out updates. Is better to sell paid for DLC for face value, not promise something and figure out that you can't really deliver it.

 

[Tadeus72]

Well. I'm not surprised Frontier did MC. A lot of people dream about being able to fly the same ship with your buddies, taking on different roles. For me it's only the P2P nature of the game that makes it mostly unusable. I maybe get a good connection 1 time out of 5. I know it might be something with router settings etc, but most people won't care. Most MMOs just work without you having to study some advanced settings of your hardware.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Looking back I see why FD wanted to do MC, but I also agree that they should have thought twice. I like some glimpses of crew coop, but have FD stated that this pre-space legs multi crew with limitations, I think we could avoided lot of confusion and anger.

In nutshell, they got player avatars and wanted to add cool feature to do something with them. Didn't turn out as they expected. Whole Horizons story just indicates that FD has to rethink how they roll out updates. Is better to sell paid for DLC for face value, not promise something and figure out that you can't really deliver it.

the biggest problem with multicrew is the non-consistent implementation.
eg. NPC crew.
we can hire NPCs already, their faces are already generated using the same engine as the holo-me.
so why can't we have them sit in the cockpit, and especially in the gunner-chair ?

then why did they make gunner controls so dumbed down that we can only do a very little of what we can do on the helm? (eg. subsystem targeting, hell, manually targeting to begin with)
the 8 weeks it took to implement a switch to restrict gunner a bit more, but still just a preset we can turn on and off, are on the level of a 3-man DEV team.

Spacelegs is for me a pointless thing, because it requires like 100GB more 3D assets to make sense or to add gameplay.

the search and rescue page is a nice addition, but it came without the assorted gameplay.
i mean... just for testing, i went into an unhabitated system and dropped in several distress calls.

you can find npcs there either stranded or disabled. if you defend the disabled one, an npc search and rescue conda will jump in and use repair limpets on him (takes forever!).
in both cases, you can just send over a fuel limpet and the npc will eventually thank you and jump away.
that was it.... no reputation gain with a minor faction, no inbox message with a tip-off mission, or at least a thank-you credit transaction to pay for the limpet.

same with those data caches you may find outiside the bubble. they are not even there to be sold on the search and rescue, and they do not give you anything but a few credits... not enough to pay for a limpet...

 

[Kaocraft]

Yes, if you ask 1000 people you will get a bunch of different answers. I don't think it's a 1-to-1 correlation - one completely different answer for each person. And I think there is a lot of overlap. And yes, they will never fully please everyone. But there are things they could do that I'm willing to bet 975+ of the thousand people would all appreciate.
- Stop introducing KNOWN bugs into live code.
- Stop taking 6 months to a year to fix these bugs.
- Stop reintroducing old bugs.
- Hire a game design specialist. I think the guys they have are good on the technical side of things, but when it comes to fun and engaging gameplay loops and systems, balance, narrative pacing, etc they are one of the worst I've ever seen in modern games.
- Stop releasing half-finished features. If you're gonna make multi-crew, then make multicrew with ALL of the roles you envisioned. And if for some reason you can't do that yet, don't waste ludicrous amounts of dev time on it, because the cost-benefit ratio is terrible. There are other areas of the game that DESPERATELY need attention, and they're focusing on things with laughable cost-benefit ratios that aren't used by a large percentage of the playerbase because of how "hollow" they are.
- Reign in the project manager's expectations. If you take double the dev time expected AND deliver far less than you wanted, that's a serious problem. Set realistic expectations, and build in time for feedback and bug-fixes. Stop moving on to your next bug-riddled feature when your last one still hasn't had the bugs fixed.

I could go on and on here, but you get the point. You're right that if I was saying "Add player-owned capital ships now or I'm boycotting the game!!1!" that would be silly, and they can't be expected to cater to everyone's individual specific feature list. But that's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking that they deliver what they say they are gonna deliver. I'm asking that things generally work as intended. I'm asking for bugs to be kept to a reasonable level. I'm asking for fully fleshed out features. If I'm not using multicrew because it's not fleshed out enough, and I'm not looking for cool stuff on planets because the tools aren't there to find them in a reasonable way, then adding another half-baked feature isn't improving the game at all. The next half-fleshed-out feature is gonna go directly onto my ever-growing pile of "crap I'm never gonna use until they finish it (if they ever do)".

Very well put.