Elite Dangerous has become "that game I keep looking up on YouTube."
I really enjoyed Elite Dangerous in 2014 because of its YouTuber community. I myself wasn't playing yet, but friends were. I learned about Obsidian Ant, ChaosWulff, Kornelius Briedis, Vindicator Jones, and many others. These listed few where some I would keep coming back to for new information though. There was also Galnet which I thought was a pretty awesome idea. "How do we keep players and people outside the game interested?" Answer, "We'll have a weekly updating news network on youtube!" It worked. A lot of my girlfriends and myself got really into just listening to these things for weeks on end. Most of the people above were focused on talking about combat so nothing really drew us to the game. We wanted more co-op related content. I don't think there is ever going to be a really girl-attracting MMO any time soon. The he-woman is just too popular right now which excludes more girly-girls from feeling included, character customization is really locked to an artists desire of who they want the characters to be rather than allowing us to decide, and in general clothing options are just as dead-ended and same-same.
What sucked me into Elite was friends playing. "Hey, you can fly freight for us. You don't have to PvP. Just fly with us and we'll protect you." This, "We'll protect you," bit always defeats the former selling points of, "Don't have to PvP," and "Fly to gether." So, it took a long time to convince me there was enough co-op here to get involved.
Once in the game it was about a month of grinding to get to where I could fly a Python or Type-9. Then I was ready to do this freighting thing. It turned out a lot of people didn't fly Type-9s. They would fly Cutters or drop down to a Python. One of the first memorable experiences for me was listening to someone with a snarky old British accent complaining that they (and the rest of the people flying) could tell what was the top or bottom of the Type-9. It was kind of awkward.
It also made me realize the game can be a bit monochromatic. Here I am flying the most space-shipy of the big spaceships and people aren't sure where the bottom is. The Type-9's cargo-hatch was more or less the same shape and size as the Cutter's, Python's, etc, and blah-blah-blah. This meant that people looking for it couldn't distinguish it by its size or uniqueness. This tiny detail highlights one of the great kill-joys of Elite Dangerous: much of everything is just a copy of some earlier smaller thing. Fer-de-Lance is a big lower jump range Adder. Type-9 is just a big Asp. Blah-blah. Imperial Ships and Passenger Ships are not to be spoken of too much because the former a modern airliners pretending to be spaceships and the latter or modern yachts that got dragged into space.
So, the game lacks heavily on originality when it comes to ships. The ship-kits are starting to put a dent in that, but it's a few years too late in my opinion. The longer you play a game with no updates to core issues the less friends you have who haven't already looked at the game and rejected it.
I have been trying for a long time to understand why so many people today WON'T buy this game despite enthusiasm. I mean this. I have so many friends with real enthusiasm for the game in how it plays. However, the mass of things "not in it" are too many. They're also diverse which means trying to tell people, "These are the issues," is like trying to keep the attention of a cat on speed.
This is another reason why Forums are places to talk to developers directly. There isn't much hope of generating player discussion that is sustained about a topic. Too many people have a dog in a fight such that a conversation about this or that niche is going to lead to statements like, "If you don't like this then this game isn't for you." I just translate that as, "I'm a lazy jerk who is announcing I'm not willing to use my big-person words and brain-thing to assemble thoughts into a coherent dismal which has substance, details, and isn't too internally contradictory." A little internal contradiction is fine in my opinion. It rarely stems from a person all on their lonesome. Things like, "I really love how I have to go looking for things for hours on a planet," often get followed up with, "but I wish the scanners would let me find this thing." The former statement is broad-sweeping and general. It is a perfectly accurate statement to their enjoyment of "the mystery" with which they are currently involved. However, once they've gone bothered to turn their scanners on they want them to have functionality like they would in real life. No game gimmicks that break immersion for the sake of adding some shallow content. There are 400+ billion star systems in this galaxy. It isn't asking for me much to be able to have scanners to take us to the things we're searching for when they aren't anomalous. Geysers, materials, etc... these are not anomalies. A seven year old with some radio equipment and duct tape today could solve our scanner functionality problems in this game. There is absolutely no reason we should be expected to treat Geysers, materials, and other well known phenomenon as "anomalous" and therefore requiring the pilot to find them by brute-force searches every single time.
This leads us into the entire game being an RNG generator, but I'm going to sidestep that discussion for now.
At this point we have arrived at modern games: Lazy Design.
Instead of constantly battering on the developers for not doing any development worth calling it such I'm going to point at a very different sort of game:
Hyper Light Drifter.
I started playing Elite Dangerous around the same time I had bought HLD. What I immediately recognized was that HLD was a GAME. Not a single thing in that game was not without PLAY to it. This is very important as it demonstrates what games since the SNES have been moving away from: Coherence and Functionality.
- Please keep something in mind about HLD. The game possesses not a single word anywhere inside its world. Everything is communicated intuitively and/or by a series of pictures in some story instances left up to you to interpret
- This means if the devs had messed up at all the whole game would have just failed.
- It didn't, doesn't, and is just the raw stuff of awesomeness
HLD is a system that obeys Newton's 3rd Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
... HLD Actions & Responses:
1. Sword Slash
2. E to Interact with buttons, objects, a tiny drone that accompanies you
3. Ranged Weapon
4. Grenade
5. Your physical self (useful for playing football (not joking)... football is a mini game in the town you can play)
6. Dash (replaces jump and run in other games)
7. Health Packs
8. Health
9. Stamina (used for some skills ((upgrades to these sets of Actions and Dash))
That's it. You have all the tools on hand to interact completely within the game.
... The Gameplay Design:
The Game is ONLY responsive to the set of ACTIONS {1,2,3,4,5,6,7} above.
{7,9} are passive-responsive.
Isn't that brilliant?! You can have absolute faith in the game and the developers. When you Act the game Responds.
This completes Newton's 3rd Law.
Here's another example of GOOD DESIGN using that 3rd Law again.
When you go off into the world of HLD you find these gold things. People are calling them data caches or gearbits. I think the official term is now gearbits. See, here too, players just had to work together outside the game to discuss things, name things, and guess as to what's going on. It was really quite fun with many hours of reply value. More on that later as this relates heavily to the failure of the alien mystery as it is in many respects.
Gearbits are particularly good design because you can ONLY Upgrade your HDL Actions using them. This can be done just 3 times. FD... this game... in just two parts fully realized a crafting system. Get it? This is why people get annoyed with the laziness of RNG. An SNES style game walloped you. "Play the game to advance!" ... ... No - a - single - hint - of - r - n - g...
~Clustered
1. Right well, so you go and get these Gearbits by killing monsters and using {1,2,3,4,5,6,7} Actions to solve puzzles, overcome obstacles, kill monsters, etc.
2. Collecting FOUR of these makes ONE GEAR.
3. You can turn-in GEARS at 'stores' for Upgrades to your {1,2,3,4,5,6,7} Actions.
4. Thus, there is GAMEPLAY to Hyper Light Drifter sourced from these Action & Response Sets. A whole NINE in all.
Not a single bit of it involves RNG, it makes the whole world go, and it feeds back on itself to transform the gameplay into every more dynamic structures. As far as I can tell, with just the addition of a skill tree process this could be an infinitely advancing system.
This is a good game. In fact it is the only GAME I have played in close to a decade that is MODERN.
There is no Post-modernism in this design. It uses the technology on hand to create a coherent and internally consistent structure. Then you are left to play to your heart's content within the design of that structure. No gimmicks. No consistency breaks to 'surprise' while simultaneously destroying what makes the thing (game/product) what it is.
Most game designers today DO NOT do this.
And this is why most of the games made today are utter garbage.
So, with all this in hand what happened to Elite Dangerous?
Something did.
Something is broken.
The most general statement that can be made accurately is that the developers ended up with an internally incoherent structure of the product's underlying design with the core gameplay mechanics. Later, due to ignorance, they added content which is not responsive to previous content.
Let's pull that apart. There are only two sections to this.
Bullet Points: The Issues
1. Internally incoherent structure of the product's underlying design with the core gameplay mechanics
- ala, game doesn't meet the demands of Newton's 3rd Law
2. due to ignorance, they added content which is not responsive to previous content.
Bullet Points: Explanation of Issues
1. The thing we login to is a Product. A background Simulator.
2. Expansions/Content Updates ~ Horizons
3. Gamer Actions:
a. Actions - (currently) 1. Bumping things with your ship 2. ship handling and controls via keyboard, hotas, etc.
b. Utilities - 1. Modules 2. what the module is.
Issues 1 and 2 are their own set: Set {1,2}
- Set {1,2} is "What the world has in it". Its "Is-ness".
- Set {3} is "What ways we can talk to it and how we expect it to talk back to us."
Set {3} has largely not been developed.
- FDev has done little or no work on this resulting in a lack of "gameplay".
RNGi continues to be "installed" into Set {1,2} in an attempt to "remedy" this problem. It is idiocy and needs to be understood as such.
RNGi constitutes an exclusion from development by ignorance of a developer to understand what Set {1,2} is: a simulator
RNGi constitutes an exclusion from development by ignorance of a developer to understand what Set {3} is: their product
The term "Content":
Refers to developments in either Set {1,2} or Set {3}
RNGi
- is evidence a developer has initiated the deconstruction of the content wherever it has been installed because this constitutes the randomization of the product having being in existence nor not.
- please process again the previous statement: RNG constitutes the randomization of a content being in existence or NOT.
- Why would you buy something that is only going to exist at random?
Where RNG works:
"Determining if a creature with a fixed area of "pathing" will "roam". Example, if you have a 5x5 room the creature may chose to move to grid area 3,2 then 3,4 before going to 4,1 etc as a non-random path then chose any former three coordinate points using RNG. This is actually quite good programming because it enables some variation within a bounded range: here the maximum range of motion within a square of 5x5 units. This is practically the only time where RNG has any utility. The possible exception to this would be if you had a maximum bounded area you wanted to be shortened by chance. This would be perfect in Elite Dangerous for Surface Scans off the DSS. Let's say you want to hunt for Geysers (because they are a "DEVELOPED" area of the game as opposed to undeveloped such as how mineral spawn). You scan the surface which, for our purposes we'll imagine to an area 64 x 64 units across. Z isn't important. The Scanner isolates an AREA < (64x64) to say, "Somewhere within this area you will find geysers." That's GAMEPLAY. YOU... as a GAMER... now have a PRODUCT that can be PLAYED. Now, the RNG could be used here to ...give you exactly where the Geysers are (very rare), a close, but not quite reading (rare), a getting closer, but not great (uncommon), and finally general narrowed down range of some fixed unit (common). That's FAIR and RELIABLE. It's like you actually have some sort of GAME here.
Currently Elite Dangerous has none of this. It is just a background simulator with some excuses for utilities who really only just reveal the text for what you already knew had you never used the scanners to begin with.
A rare, very, very, rare exception to this example was when the player based complained so much about RNGineering that we actually got some real game play content: FDev let us know what minerals were on a planet's surface and to what percentage. Being that the rest of the simulator is entirely RNG... that was that. Nothing more could they tell us. End of game.
So, RNG would work great for having fixed units to Common to Very Rare Surface Scanning and NPC pathing.
In every other circumstance RNG is the same thing as the game randomly shutting off on you only to come back in the same condition as it would have had you experienced a hard reset. Ala, an example of horrible development.
The Problems of Non-Subscription Games:
Eventually these developers always, always turn to RNG.
This is the death knell of such games.
Subscription games do not go down this road. Though, if they should start throwing out RNG to make the game it is also their death knell. Hence why people got so enraged when World of Warcraft finally took to RNG. Their subscriptions went right down the tubes.
I'm very serious, therefore, when I say Elite Dangerous is currently dying. If you want to save it you really should take this post seriously.
How to solve the problem of RNG:
Since we understand what Set {1,2} represent.
And we understand what Set {3} is.
What RNG is.
And how RNG inevitably kills a game by osmosis.
We do have a clear image of the disease Elite Dangerous is dying from.
This is like a blight in a tree. Since this is a programmed environment largely static in its simulation there is every opportunity to correct the problem.
We can't fix the problem for 2.4. The content is already made, but we can work on helping out with communicating how to get the RNG out of the game and actually make a game that plays with us rather than itself.
Some steps to build on:
A starting point would be a hard analysis of Hyper Light Drifter. Its design is not something difficult to wrap your head around. Therefore it is a good medium for discussion and exampling.
From there it is a matter of understanding where Set 3 isn't working.
Area 1: Quality of Life vs. Simulator vs. Game
Anything involving RNG is not included here as that is not part of the "game". It is eating a hole in the game like some drugs eat holes in the brain. I won't contribute to people's confusion as to the harm it causes by trying to discuss it as something valid or essential. It is a sign saying, "Development Pending," or "Under Construction/Forgotten"
Example 1: Mining
a. Quality of Life: Limpets should be infinite
b. Simulator: Limpets are there to force you to fly back to a station and buy more of them. This isn't game play. It is a really poor job at imagination.
c. Game: Still waiting for some. Any ideas?
Discussion: Exploration
a. Quality of Life: ADS should have gotten the surface map. The community was wrong about this. There are 400+ billion systems in Elite and trillions upon trillions of surface maps to scan. This is one of those areas where, "I just want to zoom in," overrides, "I want the immersion of riding up to the world itself for the 100 millionth time just to see what's out the window!! You pushed the player base into such a low expectation for development they are deliberately breaking exploration scanners into even less gameplay functionality just to have something to do. I'm seriously tempted to compare the results of Frontier Developments here to something like studies on torture victims. "What does two years of no development do to gamers?!" *rubs hands together*. "Oh, very interesting results here. This group is beginning to sabotage their own section of the game just to shake it up a bit." Lead Designer: "Excellent! Forestall all development another year for Explorers!"
Discussion 3: Smuggling
Does it still exist?
Discussion 4: Combat PvP
RNGineers made it possible for a very dedicated pilot to create an "epic" sidewinder.
Kornelius Briedis stopped making YouTubes, men I know who are dedicated to combat and wargames scoff at Elite as it is now. No few female pilots are also saying the same thing. RNGineers made PvP a joke. In all seriousness it is worse sign when a woman is angry enough to call something in private horrible than when men do. If a girl isn't willing to even consider a piece of content valid anymore she'll drop it. We're very binary when it comes right down to it in what we involve ourselves with. Once dropped we're done. However, in general it seems like the older people get the more this is true for both genders. Men and younger men will try a game again a time or two, but consistent failures to appeal to them is seen as something almost "dishonorable". If the head of that male group decides to just get rid of you and then their entire circle of friends seem to feel like participation is then "bad association". So, Kornelius Briedis dropping from YouTubing combat should have been a real warning sign a long, long, time ago Elite's combat situation is in a bad place.
Discussion: 5: Trading
This might actually be the only part of the game that's solid as what it is. To really get anything out of it you really do need to have Inara.cz, but the GAMEPLAY is there.
a. Quality of Life: Many interesting places to visit (stations) with unique voice acting.
b. Simulator: Same as above.
c. Game: You Earn Credits which you can use to upgrade this existing ship or buy another.
Discussion 6: Credits
This is another aspect of the game which I personally respond to as a subsection of the Simulator that is actually working. However, not entirely
a. Quality of Life: Money that is universally applicable to every aspect of the game.
b. Simulator: Produces money gains and deficits to various systems in response to its own internal workings as well as our influence upon it.
c. Game: Time-In = Time-Out BY YOUR DETERMINATIOn
example: 300 hours of trading Imp Slaves in a python = 300 million credits roughly. 300 hours of stacked scanner missions = freedom to go play whatever content you want to without having to involve yourself with the balance-to-deficit accounting game... at least until players can privately buy megaships or destroyers. Personally I find this perfectly balanced. The Preto Distribution is a thing.
Discussion 7: Power Play
This is something I'm no longer involved with, but considering the chunk of friends I not logging in any more for me... It's broken. Very, very, badly broken.
Discussion 8: Trading Micro-Commodities
a. Quality of Life: Is this a game or a social-engineering project to train people so as to forgot the benefits of another human being as a friend?
b. Simulator: Fixed areas to find them that show up on the surface scanner and/or a fixed spawn rate. The SRV is a boundy, nausea producing gimmick that we wouldn't send to another planet today. It is also the size of a small house. We should be using because of its utility, not because someone has a fixation or nostalgia for living out the moon landings again and again and again again again... and again... and... annoyed yet? Me too.
c. Game: While this is technically RNG-rot I'm addressing it to example how you, FD, are really schizophrenic about what is multiplayer content and when you'll do everything you can to not have multiplayer function. I am carrying something on my ship. I want to share that something with a friend. If you will not let me share MY TIME with MY FRIENDS then I don't see any reason we should share our time with you. That's just playground logic taken to adulthood. Where are you at in all this?
Discussion 9: More Multiplayer Content
a. Quality of Life: Title says it all
b. Simulator: Has a ton of opportunity for it
c. Game: content is largely absent with the exception of the Fuel Transfer Limpet and possibly healing lasers... Ship-Hull and Module Repair Boon, anyone? Stuff like that desperately needed.
Discussion 10: Deep-Space Support Vessels for Expeditions
Not sure where to go with this one, but the exploration groups have had a lot of discussion on it.
Alright, finishing up.
Summary:
In summary the simulator has been made, but the product is being vitiated by RNG sending this game into the death spiral that all buy-to-play and free-to-play games have gone. If you want to save the game sort out where Utilities, Actions, Modules, and Ships we have or need should be implemented. Especially in place of RNG.
Keep it simple.
Bullet Points: The Issues
1. Internally incoherent structure of the product's underlying design with the core gameplay mechanics
- ala, game doesn't meet the demands of Newton's 3rd Law
2. due to ignorance, they added content which is not responsive to previous content.
Bullet Points: Explanation of Issues
1. The thing we login to is a Product. A background Simulator.
2. Expansions/Content Updates ~ Horizons
3. Gamer Actions:
a. Actions - (currently) 1. Bumping things with your ship 2. ship handling and controls via keyboard, hotas, etc.
b. Utilities - 1. Modules 2. what the module is.
Issues 1 and 2 are their own set: Set {1,2}
- Set {1,2} is "What the world has in it". Its "Is-ness".
- Set {3} is "What ways we can talk to it and how we expect it to talk back to us."
Set {3} has largely not been developed.
- FDev has done little or no work on this resulting in a lack of "gameplay".
again, examples...
What "gameplay" do you see missing?
What "gameplay" turns off (scanners as they do with POI) before it reaches the Simulator?
Where could the Simulator "respond" meaningfully?
... really think on this. There are a lot of ways to answer. Many could happen right from the Ship's forward-facing HUD if we just said "This, that, and this other thing." Some require actual development while deleting the excuses for it that RNG currently fills in.
I really enjoyed Elite Dangerous in 2014 because of its YouTuber community. I myself wasn't playing yet, but friends were. I learned about Obsidian Ant, ChaosWulff, Kornelius Briedis, Vindicator Jones, and many others. These listed few where some I would keep coming back to for new information though. There was also Galnet which I thought was a pretty awesome idea. "How do we keep players and people outside the game interested?" Answer, "We'll have a weekly updating news network on youtube!" It worked. A lot of my girlfriends and myself got really into just listening to these things for weeks on end. Most of the people above were focused on talking about combat so nothing really drew us to the game. We wanted more co-op related content. I don't think there is ever going to be a really girl-attracting MMO any time soon. The he-woman is just too popular right now which excludes more girly-girls from feeling included, character customization is really locked to an artists desire of who they want the characters to be rather than allowing us to decide, and in general clothing options are just as dead-ended and same-same.
What sucked me into Elite was friends playing. "Hey, you can fly freight for us. You don't have to PvP. Just fly with us and we'll protect you." This, "We'll protect you," bit always defeats the former selling points of, "Don't have to PvP," and "Fly to gether." So, it took a long time to convince me there was enough co-op here to get involved.
Once in the game it was about a month of grinding to get to where I could fly a Python or Type-9. Then I was ready to do this freighting thing. It turned out a lot of people didn't fly Type-9s. They would fly Cutters or drop down to a Python. One of the first memorable experiences for me was listening to someone with a snarky old British accent complaining that they (and the rest of the people flying) could tell what was the top or bottom of the Type-9. It was kind of awkward.
It also made me realize the game can be a bit monochromatic. Here I am flying the most space-shipy of the big spaceships and people aren't sure where the bottom is. The Type-9's cargo-hatch was more or less the same shape and size as the Cutter's, Python's, etc, and blah-blah-blah. This meant that people looking for it couldn't distinguish it by its size or uniqueness. This tiny detail highlights one of the great kill-joys of Elite Dangerous: much of everything is just a copy of some earlier smaller thing. Fer-de-Lance is a big lower jump range Adder. Type-9 is just a big Asp. Blah-blah. Imperial Ships and Passenger Ships are not to be spoken of too much because the former a modern airliners pretending to be spaceships and the latter or modern yachts that got dragged into space.
So, the game lacks heavily on originality when it comes to ships. The ship-kits are starting to put a dent in that, but it's a few years too late in my opinion. The longer you play a game with no updates to core issues the less friends you have who haven't already looked at the game and rejected it.
I have been trying for a long time to understand why so many people today WON'T buy this game despite enthusiasm. I mean this. I have so many friends with real enthusiasm for the game in how it plays. However, the mass of things "not in it" are too many. They're also diverse which means trying to tell people, "These are the issues," is like trying to keep the attention of a cat on speed.
This is another reason why Forums are places to talk to developers directly. There isn't much hope of generating player discussion that is sustained about a topic. Too many people have a dog in a fight such that a conversation about this or that niche is going to lead to statements like, "If you don't like this then this game isn't for you." I just translate that as, "I'm a lazy jerk who is announcing I'm not willing to use my big-person words and brain-thing to assemble thoughts into a coherent dismal which has substance, details, and isn't too internally contradictory." A little internal contradiction is fine in my opinion. It rarely stems from a person all on their lonesome. Things like, "I really love how I have to go looking for things for hours on a planet," often get followed up with, "but I wish the scanners would let me find this thing." The former statement is broad-sweeping and general. It is a perfectly accurate statement to their enjoyment of "the mystery" with which they are currently involved. However, once they've gone bothered to turn their scanners on they want them to have functionality like they would in real life. No game gimmicks that break immersion for the sake of adding some shallow content. There are 400+ billion star systems in this galaxy. It isn't asking for me much to be able to have scanners to take us to the things we're searching for when they aren't anomalous. Geysers, materials, etc... these are not anomalies. A seven year old with some radio equipment and duct tape today could solve our scanner functionality problems in this game. There is absolutely no reason we should be expected to treat Geysers, materials, and other well known phenomenon as "anomalous" and therefore requiring the pilot to find them by brute-force searches every single time.
This leads us into the entire game being an RNG generator, but I'm going to sidestep that discussion for now.
At this point we have arrived at modern games: Lazy Design.
Instead of constantly battering on the developers for not doing any development worth calling it such I'm going to point at a very different sort of game:
Hyper Light Drifter.
I started playing Elite Dangerous around the same time I had bought HLD. What I immediately recognized was that HLD was a GAME. Not a single thing in that game was not without PLAY to it. This is very important as it demonstrates what games since the SNES have been moving away from: Coherence and Functionality.
- Please keep something in mind about HLD. The game possesses not a single word anywhere inside its world. Everything is communicated intuitively and/or by a series of pictures in some story instances left up to you to interpret
- This means if the devs had messed up at all the whole game would have just failed.
- It didn't, doesn't, and is just the raw stuff of awesomeness
HLD is a system that obeys Newton's 3rd Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
... HLD Actions & Responses:
1. Sword Slash
2. E to Interact with buttons, objects, a tiny drone that accompanies you
3. Ranged Weapon
4. Grenade
5. Your physical self (useful for playing football (not joking)... football is a mini game in the town you can play)
6. Dash (replaces jump and run in other games)
7. Health Packs
8. Health
9. Stamina (used for some skills ((upgrades to these sets of Actions and Dash))
That's it. You have all the tools on hand to interact completely within the game.
... The Gameplay Design:
The Game is ONLY responsive to the set of ACTIONS {1,2,3,4,5,6,7} above.
{7,9} are passive-responsive.
Isn't that brilliant?! You can have absolute faith in the game and the developers. When you Act the game Responds.
This completes Newton's 3rd Law.
Here's another example of GOOD DESIGN using that 3rd Law again.
When you go off into the world of HLD you find these gold things. People are calling them data caches or gearbits. I think the official term is now gearbits. See, here too, players just had to work together outside the game to discuss things, name things, and guess as to what's going on. It was really quite fun with many hours of reply value. More on that later as this relates heavily to the failure of the alien mystery as it is in many respects.
Gearbits are particularly good design because you can ONLY Upgrade your HDL Actions using them. This can be done just 3 times. FD... this game... in just two parts fully realized a crafting system. Get it? This is why people get annoyed with the laziness of RNG. An SNES style game walloped you. "Play the game to advance!" ... ... No - a - single - hint - of - r - n - g...
~Clustered
1. Right well, so you go and get these Gearbits by killing monsters and using {1,2,3,4,5,6,7} Actions to solve puzzles, overcome obstacles, kill monsters, etc.
2. Collecting FOUR of these makes ONE GEAR.
3. You can turn-in GEARS at 'stores' for Upgrades to your {1,2,3,4,5,6,7} Actions.
4. Thus, there is GAMEPLAY to Hyper Light Drifter sourced from these Action & Response Sets. A whole NINE in all.
Not a single bit of it involves RNG, it makes the whole world go, and it feeds back on itself to transform the gameplay into every more dynamic structures. As far as I can tell, with just the addition of a skill tree process this could be an infinitely advancing system.
This is a good game. In fact it is the only GAME I have played in close to a decade that is MODERN.
There is no Post-modernism in this design. It uses the technology on hand to create a coherent and internally consistent structure. Then you are left to play to your heart's content within the design of that structure. No gimmicks. No consistency breaks to 'surprise' while simultaneously destroying what makes the thing (game/product) what it is.
Most game designers today DO NOT do this.
And this is why most of the games made today are utter garbage.
So, with all this in hand what happened to Elite Dangerous?
Something did.
Something is broken.
The most general statement that can be made accurately is that the developers ended up with an internally incoherent structure of the product's underlying design with the core gameplay mechanics. Later, due to ignorance, they added content which is not responsive to previous content.
Let's pull that apart. There are only two sections to this.
Bullet Points: The Issues
1. Internally incoherent structure of the product's underlying design with the core gameplay mechanics
- ala, game doesn't meet the demands of Newton's 3rd Law
2. due to ignorance, they added content which is not responsive to previous content.
Bullet Points: Explanation of Issues
1. The thing we login to is a Product. A background Simulator.
2. Expansions/Content Updates ~ Horizons
3. Gamer Actions:
a. Actions - (currently) 1. Bumping things with your ship 2. ship handling and controls via keyboard, hotas, etc.
b. Utilities - 1. Modules 2. what the module is.
Issues 1 and 2 are their own set: Set {1,2}
- Set {1,2} is "What the world has in it". Its "Is-ness".
- Set {3} is "What ways we can talk to it and how we expect it to talk back to us."
Set {3} has largely not been developed.
- FDev has done little or no work on this resulting in a lack of "gameplay".
RNGi continues to be "installed" into Set {1,2} in an attempt to "remedy" this problem. It is idiocy and needs to be understood as such.
RNGi constitutes an exclusion from development by ignorance of a developer to understand what Set {1,2} is: a simulator
RNGi constitutes an exclusion from development by ignorance of a developer to understand what Set {3} is: their product
The term "Content":
Refers to developments in either Set {1,2} or Set {3}
RNGi
- is evidence a developer has initiated the deconstruction of the content wherever it has been installed because this constitutes the randomization of the product having being in existence nor not.
- please process again the previous statement: RNG constitutes the randomization of a content being in existence or NOT.
- Why would you buy something that is only going to exist at random?
Where RNG works:
"Determining if a creature with a fixed area of "pathing" will "roam". Example, if you have a 5x5 room the creature may chose to move to grid area 3,2 then 3,4 before going to 4,1 etc as a non-random path then chose any former three coordinate points using RNG. This is actually quite good programming because it enables some variation within a bounded range: here the maximum range of motion within a square of 5x5 units. This is practically the only time where RNG has any utility. The possible exception to this would be if you had a maximum bounded area you wanted to be shortened by chance. This would be perfect in Elite Dangerous for Surface Scans off the DSS. Let's say you want to hunt for Geysers (because they are a "DEVELOPED" area of the game as opposed to undeveloped such as how mineral spawn). You scan the surface which, for our purposes we'll imagine to an area 64 x 64 units across. Z isn't important. The Scanner isolates an AREA < (64x64) to say, "Somewhere within this area you will find geysers." That's GAMEPLAY. YOU... as a GAMER... now have a PRODUCT that can be PLAYED. Now, the RNG could be used here to ...give you exactly where the Geysers are (very rare), a close, but not quite reading (rare), a getting closer, but not great (uncommon), and finally general narrowed down range of some fixed unit (common). That's FAIR and RELIABLE. It's like you actually have some sort of GAME here.
Currently Elite Dangerous has none of this. It is just a background simulator with some excuses for utilities who really only just reveal the text for what you already knew had you never used the scanners to begin with.
A rare, very, very, rare exception to this example was when the player based complained so much about RNGineering that we actually got some real game play content: FDev let us know what minerals were on a planet's surface and to what percentage. Being that the rest of the simulator is entirely RNG... that was that. Nothing more could they tell us. End of game.
So, RNG would work great for having fixed units to Common to Very Rare Surface Scanning and NPC pathing.
In every other circumstance RNG is the same thing as the game randomly shutting off on you only to come back in the same condition as it would have had you experienced a hard reset. Ala, an example of horrible development.
The Problems of Non-Subscription Games:
Eventually these developers always, always turn to RNG.
This is the death knell of such games.
Subscription games do not go down this road. Though, if they should start throwing out RNG to make the game it is also their death knell. Hence why people got so enraged when World of Warcraft finally took to RNG. Their subscriptions went right down the tubes.
I'm very serious, therefore, when I say Elite Dangerous is currently dying. If you want to save it you really should take this post seriously.
How to solve the problem of RNG:
Since we understand what Set {1,2} represent.
And we understand what Set {3} is.
What RNG is.
And how RNG inevitably kills a game by osmosis.
We do have a clear image of the disease Elite Dangerous is dying from.
This is like a blight in a tree. Since this is a programmed environment largely static in its simulation there is every opportunity to correct the problem.
We can't fix the problem for 2.4. The content is already made, but we can work on helping out with communicating how to get the RNG out of the game and actually make a game that plays with us rather than itself.
Some steps to build on:
A starting point would be a hard analysis of Hyper Light Drifter. Its design is not something difficult to wrap your head around. Therefore it is a good medium for discussion and exampling.
From there it is a matter of understanding where Set 3 isn't working.
Area 1: Quality of Life vs. Simulator vs. Game
Anything involving RNG is not included here as that is not part of the "game". It is eating a hole in the game like some drugs eat holes in the brain. I won't contribute to people's confusion as to the harm it causes by trying to discuss it as something valid or essential. It is a sign saying, "Development Pending," or "Under Construction/Forgotten"
Example 1: Mining
a. Quality of Life: Limpets should be infinite
b. Simulator: Limpets are there to force you to fly back to a station and buy more of them. This isn't game play. It is a really poor job at imagination.
c. Game: Still waiting for some. Any ideas?
Discussion: Exploration
a. Quality of Life: ADS should have gotten the surface map. The community was wrong about this. There are 400+ billion systems in Elite and trillions upon trillions of surface maps to scan. This is one of those areas where, "I just want to zoom in," overrides, "I want the immersion of riding up to the world itself for the 100 millionth time just to see what's out the window!! You pushed the player base into such a low expectation for development they are deliberately breaking exploration scanners into even less gameplay functionality just to have something to do. I'm seriously tempted to compare the results of Frontier Developments here to something like studies on torture victims. "What does two years of no development do to gamers?!" *rubs hands together*. "Oh, very interesting results here. This group is beginning to sabotage their own section of the game just to shake it up a bit." Lead Designer: "Excellent! Forestall all development another year for Explorers!"
Discussion 3: Smuggling
Does it still exist?
Discussion 4: Combat PvP
RNGineers made it possible for a very dedicated pilot to create an "epic" sidewinder.
Kornelius Briedis stopped making YouTubes, men I know who are dedicated to combat and wargames scoff at Elite as it is now. No few female pilots are also saying the same thing. RNGineers made PvP a joke. In all seriousness it is worse sign when a woman is angry enough to call something in private horrible than when men do. If a girl isn't willing to even consider a piece of content valid anymore she'll drop it. We're very binary when it comes right down to it in what we involve ourselves with. Once dropped we're done. However, in general it seems like the older people get the more this is true for both genders. Men and younger men will try a game again a time or two, but consistent failures to appeal to them is seen as something almost "dishonorable". If the head of that male group decides to just get rid of you and then their entire circle of friends seem to feel like participation is then "bad association". So, Kornelius Briedis dropping from YouTubing combat should have been a real warning sign a long, long, time ago Elite's combat situation is in a bad place.
Discussion: 5: Trading
This might actually be the only part of the game that's solid as what it is. To really get anything out of it you really do need to have Inara.cz, but the GAMEPLAY is there.
a. Quality of Life: Many interesting places to visit (stations) with unique voice acting.
b. Simulator: Same as above.
c. Game: You Earn Credits which you can use to upgrade this existing ship or buy another.
Discussion 6: Credits
This is another aspect of the game which I personally respond to as a subsection of the Simulator that is actually working. However, not entirely
a. Quality of Life: Money that is universally applicable to every aspect of the game.
b. Simulator: Produces money gains and deficits to various systems in response to its own internal workings as well as our influence upon it.
c. Game: Time-In = Time-Out BY YOUR DETERMINATIOn
example: 300 hours of trading Imp Slaves in a python = 300 million credits roughly. 300 hours of stacked scanner missions = freedom to go play whatever content you want to without having to involve yourself with the balance-to-deficit accounting game... at least until players can privately buy megaships or destroyers. Personally I find this perfectly balanced. The Preto Distribution is a thing.
Discussion 7: Power Play
This is something I'm no longer involved with, but considering the chunk of friends I not logging in any more for me... It's broken. Very, very, badly broken.
Discussion 8: Trading Micro-Commodities
a. Quality of Life: Is this a game or a social-engineering project to train people so as to forgot the benefits of another human being as a friend?
b. Simulator: Fixed areas to find them that show up on the surface scanner and/or a fixed spawn rate. The SRV is a boundy, nausea producing gimmick that we wouldn't send to another planet today. It is also the size of a small house. We should be using because of its utility, not because someone has a fixation or nostalgia for living out the moon landings again and again and again again again... and again... and... annoyed yet? Me too.
c. Game: While this is technically RNG-rot I'm addressing it to example how you, FD, are really schizophrenic about what is multiplayer content and when you'll do everything you can to not have multiplayer function. I am carrying something on my ship. I want to share that something with a friend. If you will not let me share MY TIME with MY FRIENDS then I don't see any reason we should share our time with you. That's just playground logic taken to adulthood. Where are you at in all this?
Discussion 9: More Multiplayer Content
a. Quality of Life: Title says it all
b. Simulator: Has a ton of opportunity for it
c. Game: content is largely absent with the exception of the Fuel Transfer Limpet and possibly healing lasers... Ship-Hull and Module Repair Boon, anyone? Stuff like that desperately needed.
Discussion 10: Deep-Space Support Vessels for Expeditions
Not sure where to go with this one, but the exploration groups have had a lot of discussion on it.
Alright, finishing up.
Summary:
In summary the simulator has been made, but the product is being vitiated by RNG sending this game into the death spiral that all buy-to-play and free-to-play games have gone. If you want to save the game sort out where Utilities, Actions, Modules, and Ships we have or need should be implemented. Especially in place of RNG.
Keep it simple.
Bullet Points: The Issues
1. Internally incoherent structure of the product's underlying design with the core gameplay mechanics
- ala, game doesn't meet the demands of Newton's 3rd Law
2. due to ignorance, they added content which is not responsive to previous content.
Bullet Points: Explanation of Issues
1. The thing we login to is a Product. A background Simulator.
2. Expansions/Content Updates ~ Horizons
3. Gamer Actions:
a. Actions - (currently) 1. Bumping things with your ship 2. ship handling and controls via keyboard, hotas, etc.
b. Utilities - 1. Modules 2. what the module is.
Issues 1 and 2 are their own set: Set {1,2}
- Set {1,2} is "What the world has in it". Its "Is-ness".
- Set {3} is "What ways we can talk to it and how we expect it to talk back to us."
Set {3} has largely not been developed.
- FDev has done little or no work on this resulting in a lack of "gameplay".
again, examples...
What "gameplay" do you see missing?
What "gameplay" turns off (scanners as they do with POI) before it reaches the Simulator?
Where could the Simulator "respond" meaningfully?
... really think on this. There are a lot of ways to answer. Many could happen right from the Ship's forward-facing HUD if we just said "This, that, and this other thing." Some require actual development while deleting the excuses for it that RNG currently fills in.
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