Guilds in Elite Dangerous
- Thread starter JohnStabler
- Start date
- Status
Please don't turn my multiplayer space sim into an MMO.
It's possible to develop interesting and engaging content without requiring content that necessitates groups of players.
I'm fine with Guilds, but don't add any content for a guild that I can't engage in as a single player.
The moment that happens I'm out and asking for my money back.
I already played MMOs for years, it sucked, and it sucked precisely because I had to coordinate with other people on the internet to experience meaningful content.
That has no place in this game.
If I can do a hundred thousand missions for a minor faction and help tjem slowly expand over the course of months and years, and tben maybe other commanders can do that in parallel with me on their own schedules, that's a cool story and a neat experience that levels a shared universe to tell a neat story.
If I have to wear a guild tabbard and grind instanced content with 20-40 other people, and worry about getting kicked out of the regular instanced content rotation because my schedule doesn't match, that isn't cool, and I'm beyond tired of having that story told in every large scope game I play for years.
So are a whole ton of other people.
No group specific content. Not now, not ever.
It's possible to develop interesting and engaging content without requiring content that necessitates groups of players.
I'm fine with Guilds, but don't add any content for a guild that I can't engage in as a single player.
The moment that happens I'm out and asking for my money back.
I already played MMOs for years, it sucked, and it sucked precisely because I had to coordinate with other people on the internet to experience meaningful content.
That has no place in this game.
If I can do a hundred thousand missions for a minor faction and help tjem slowly expand over the course of months and years, and tben maybe other commanders can do that in parallel with me on their own schedules, that's a cool story and a neat experience that levels a shared universe to tell a neat story.
If I have to wear a guild tabbard and grind instanced content with 20-40 other people, and worry about getting kicked out of the regular instanced content rotation because my schedule doesn't match, that isn't cool, and I'm beyond tired of having that story told in every large scope game I play for years.
So are a whole ton of other people.
No group specific content. Not now, not ever.
I agree with much of the OP.
Station ownership in ED does not make sense if the only purpose is providing nexus for combat, but it is a common assumption that this is the only option. However station control/ownership can also be the basis for group bonuses/subsidies, discounted/free maintenance, establishment of long-range support, political connection, home-base identification, and so on. All of these things can (and some already do) fit comfortably in ED without changing the game [into EvE].
"Guilds" is a demonized term here that elicits a reaction based on people's expectations of what guilds "must" mean. However, group support in-game could be done as "player factions" that allow limited control by players and exist at the same level as NPC minor factions. In effect, NPC minor factions that can be steered by players acting as a group, rather like a takeover where the stockholders (players) gain 51%+ of the stock. Not literal stock, but by accumulation of rep or merits. The ability to build stations (and they should cost billions to build) would be a good way to make the accumulation of credits actually mean something, by implementing the analog of "guild cities" that are still open to any player. That's a much more interesting and satisfying way to inject "end-game content" than by spending cash to grind Powerplay.
As long as the baseline for this game remains as one pilot flying one ship at a time and interacting with NPCs against a changing political/economic backdrop with "guild" involved play being totally invisible to said player, I don't see any issue with also adding whatever content makes the game meaningful for people who prefer to play multiplayer in open. It's always presented as an either-or situation and that does not have to be the case.
Agree completely. I've had a bellyful of guild leadership sagas, infighting and rage, raid party rotas, expectations of attendance, etc. and I'd HATE to endure that in this game. Fortunately of all possibilities those things are the least likely to happen. There is a middle road that I'm sure the good people at FD are capable of implementing.
Player factions could offer most of the plusses without the negatives. Nothing that a solo player could not achieve, but a different way to achieve it by playing as part of a group. Ideally, they could promote themselves and compete for peaceful interaction with solo players by sponsoring bounties, missions etc. just as NPC minor factions do, and it would work to everyone's advantage.
Last edited:
Call them guilds or corporations or gangs or clans or whatever, it may be important for people to group up under a common banner (besides the Pilot's Federation, don't forget!). I guess FD could allow them to do that.
HOWEVER! This should be nothing but cosmetic, an excuse to clutter up our hard drives with other peoples decals. The whole point of Elite, and what should set it apart from pretty much any other game out there, is that the universe is not revolving around each individual player. Rather, we immerse ourselves into a living universe, lots of wee drops into a vast sea. Were Elite to go the way of, say, EVE, then why don't we add joystick support to EVE and play that instead?
So no thanks to put anything but the ability to pilot ships into players hands. That's what we are in the game for, flying the boats while the game play spreadsheets. Somewhere along the line I would not mind if we got the ability to add player-owned structures such as minor outposts and mining camps. But it should be nowhere near the level that any of the worlds with thousands, even millions, of inhabitants are able to muster.
Get used to the idea of a game where you are not the centre, please.
S
HOWEVER! This should be nothing but cosmetic, an excuse to clutter up our hard drives with other peoples decals. The whole point of Elite, and what should set it apart from pretty much any other game out there, is that the universe is not revolving around each individual player. Rather, we immerse ourselves into a living universe, lots of wee drops into a vast sea. Were Elite to go the way of, say, EVE, then why don't we add joystick support to EVE and play that instead?
So no thanks to put anything but the ability to pilot ships into players hands. That's what we are in the game for, flying the boats while the game play spreadsheets. Somewhere along the line I would not mind if we got the ability to add player-owned structures such as minor outposts and mining camps. But it should be nowhere near the level that any of the worlds with thousands, even millions, of inhabitants are able to muster.
Get used to the idea of a game where you are not the centre, please.
SRobert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Right on, Commanders!
Thread merged.
Call them guilds or corporations or gangs or clans or whatever, it may be important for people to group up under a common banner (besides the Pilot's Federation, don't forget!). I guess FD could allow them to do that.
HOWEVER! This should be nothing but cosmetic, an excuse to clutter up our hard drives with other peoples decals. The whole point of Elite, and what should set it apart from pretty much any other game out there, is that the universe is not revolving around each individual player. Rather, we immerse ourselves into a living universe, lots of wee drops into a vast sea. Were Elite to go the way of, say, EVE, then why don't we add joystick support to EVE and play that instead?
So no thanks to put anything but the ability to pilot ships into players hands. That's what we are in the game for, flying the boats while the game play spreadsheets. Somewhere along the line I would not mind if we got the ability to add player-owned structures such as minor outposts and mining camps. But it should be nowhere near the level that any of the worlds with thousands, even millions, of inhabitants are able to muster.
Get used to the idea of a game where you are not the centre, please.
My suggestion would be to use PP as the vehicle for group play. That way, you can get most of the advantages of groups - the creation of stable, long-term player communities that keep people engaged in the game - but you don't get the biggest downside (from the Elite perspective) of player groups coming to dominate the universe. If it's part of PP, it's not the player groups that ultimately benefit from their efforts, it's the NPC Power that's employing them to do the dirty work. This also doesn't require the implementation of a great deal of group-specific functionality to be implemented; at a minimum, you'd need a group chat channel, and group instancing functionality that ensures members of the same group end up in the same instance. That last bit is already in the game for wings anyway.
Well, the antagonization of group features and direct group/player influence is certainly strong. Threatening to demand a refund or to leave isn't helping the issue I'm talking about however. Nor is it contributing to any kind of constructive discussion, no matter what the topic is.
I disagree with the notion that the game is not centred around the player. Large parts of it are - in fact - centred almost exclusively around the player as a single person. What are the direct points of reference/motivations that a player has? It's their bank account, their ship collection, their Elite status progress, their permits to various systems (and enjoying the various game mechanics offered). Almost everything in the game is designed around those concepts. To the point, that hoards of wanted NPC pilots are jumping into RES so players can shoot them up and collect their bounties. To the point, that there is a whole galaxy for players in which to discover planets first, while somehow not a single NPC is even attempting to.
And I'm not taking issue with that. For me, this artificial centring around the player is inconsistent and highly unbelievable when I take a closer look, but I'm enjoying flying around too much to really care.
What I'm taking issue with, is that the backdrop is giving me the feeling of cruising around in a semi static, uninhabited galaxy. I see attemtps by Frontier to breath live into the galaxy, so I'm going out of a limb, assuming that giving their world a heartbeat is in their interest. The decision to axe the offline mode, so even solo players see shifting powers, is one of them. Then there are Galnet posts, Community goals and Powerplay, the latter even giving the players some more direct influence compared to doing "stuff" for local powers. But still, I feel, it's all moot. To me this doesn't feel like a galaxy inhabited by humans. It feels like a static galaxy controlled by a rudimentary robot. It's the curse of having a semi procedurally generated gigantic game world. I doubt Frontier, or any other dev for that matter, can author enough content within a human life span - certainly not within a game's dev cycle - to let Elite Dangerous' world with its gigantic proportions feel really alive. The reason being that I believe only humans can do that and they're rather hard to simulate.
Yet, humans - that is: players - would do just that, if they had the tools. My impression is that Elite Dangerous' design philosophy seems to be one of only looking, and not touching!
Which is a pity, as all those point FDev is advertising, would work better, if human players were given more influence, by grouping and getting responsibility over stations - incentivised by profits of course:
I fear that none of the things is ever going to live up to the promise, for as long as Frontier tries do simulate them with an automated system.
Threatening to demand a refund or to leave isn't helping the issue I'm talking about however. Nor is it contributing to any kind of constructive discussion, no matter what the topic is. I disagree with the notion that the game is not centred around the player. Large parts of it are - in fact - centred almost exclusively around the player as a single person. What are the direct points of reference/motivations that a player has? It's their bank account, their ship collection, their Elite status progress, their permits to various systems (and enjoying the various game mechanics offered). Almost everything in the game is designed around those concepts. To the point, that hoards of wanted NPC pilots are jumping into RES so players can shoot them up and collect their bounties. To the point, that there is a whole galaxy for players in which to discover planets first, while somehow not a single NPC is even attempting to.
And I'm not taking issue with that. For me, this artificial centring around the player is inconsistent and highly unbelievable when I take a closer look, but I'm enjoying flying around too much to really care.
What I'm taking issue with, is that the backdrop is giving me the feeling of cruising around in a semi static, uninhabited galaxy. I see attemtps by Frontier to breath live into the galaxy, so I'm going out of a limb, assuming that giving their world a heartbeat is in their interest. The decision to axe the offline mode, so even solo players see shifting powers, is one of them. Then there are Galnet posts, Community goals and Powerplay, the latter even giving the players some more direct influence compared to doing "stuff" for local powers. But still, I feel, it's all moot. To me this doesn't feel like a galaxy inhabited by humans. It feels like a static galaxy controlled by a rudimentary robot. It's the curse of having a semi procedurally generated gigantic game world. I doubt Frontier, or any other dev for that matter, can author enough content within a human life span - certainly not within a game's dev cycle - to let Elite Dangerous' world with its gigantic proportions feel really alive. The reason being that I believe only humans can do that and they're rather hard to simulate.
Yet, humans - that is: players - would do just that, if they had the tools. My impression is that Elite Dangerous' design philosophy seems to be one of only looking, and not touching!
Which is a pity, as all those point FDev is advertising, would work better, if human players were given more influence, by grouping and getting responsibility over stations - incentivised by profits of course:
I fear that none of the things is ever going to live up to the promise, for as long as Frontier tries do simulate them with an automated system.
If your backers do not want this game to turn into an MMO, I suggest stop advertising it as an MMO.
The "MMO" tag creates expectations, and you're not going to reinvent the wheel of MMOs with single player "adaptations" of current popular mechanics.
Many feel they got a bit fooled, and this is not a good thing on the long run.
Every "new" MMO had its hype, AoC, SWTOR, Wildstar, GW2 etc., with hundreds of thousands joining, only to quit after a few months.
Ivé been through each of them - and many more - and I'm seeing the same pattern repeating.
If that's ok with you, suit yourself.
The "MMO" tag creates expectations, and you're not going to reinvent the wheel of MMOs with single player "adaptations" of current popular mechanics.
Many feel they got a bit fooled, and this is not a good thing on the long run.
Every "new" MMO had its hype, AoC, SWTOR, Wildstar, GW2 etc., with hundreds of thousands joining, only to quit after a few months.
Ivé been through each of them - and many more - and I'm seeing the same pattern repeating.
If that's ok with you, suit yourself.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Does every game with the MMO tag (i.e. not MMORPG) have Guild features?
Last edited:
Unrelated to any tags the game might carry or not: Can any multiplayer game that aims to create a dynamic persistent world afford to not provide guild features in the long term?
It's one thing to allow the "lone wolf" players to do their own thing. It's another thing to outright prevent more socially inclined players from grouping up in some form. Even if it's just a tag in front of the commander's name and a guild decal on their ships together with a guild forum for internal exchange. Without even having the ingame opportunities for that, any persistent world online game takes opportunities away from such players.
Add the "Look, don't touch (directly)!" doctrine of Elite's universe and what does that yield? Even as mostly a solo player, seeing that a station is controlled by some guild or player, together with a name and logo, and maybe some player controlled direction like: "buying iron at higher price, so the station's shipyard can build T9 transporters", would make the world feel more alive than any NPC related things the automated backround sim generates.
Last edited:
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I expect that Frontier will decide for themselves if they need to include these features, however from what DBOBE has said on the topic, he seems to have reservations regarding some of the more confrontational behaviours that Guild / Clan / Corp structures can facilitate in-game, e.g. in his live Q&A at EGX 2014, and more generally in his interview at E3 with Arstechnica:
That said, the lack of in-game communications for Power affiliates could be rectified (even if just text chat) - that might go some way to allow them to better organise.
Last edited:
It would also no longer be "Elite", which has 30 years of its own style and gameplay, and is considered the father of what you appear to want to turn Elite into - EvE (and lots of other similar genre games) - and I don't mean that disparagingly, by the way, it's just that the way Elite has always worked was by being an inherently PvE game with the gameplay driven by NPC's. Elite: Dangerous I'm glad to see is continuing that tradition.
I'm just pointing that fact out so don't be angered or take offence where none is intended.
Elite does things its own way, and always has done. It was a ground-breaking game way back in 1984, and was still ground-breaking with Elite II. I never played Elite III, and have returned with great gusto to Elite IV (ED). I missed the Kickstarter stage, but, I do know that there has been plenty of discussion on what to have or not have in the game at that stage, and guilds were one thing that were rejected.
I still think that any direct guild support would absolutely be jarring to the whole atmosphere (heh) and ethos of the Elite universe. This isn't me being an old fart '84'er out of his time. Not at all. Like I mentioned above, Elite has its own kind of uniqueness which would be spoiled by directly adding support for guilds. But that's just my personal opinion of course.
I suspect that something like EvE Valkyrie might be quite close to what you're wanting - although I don't know if Valkyrie is basically EvE-in-a-cockpit or not (haven't looked into it that much othr than watching a youtube video trailer for it).
If I say anything more, I'll just be repeating what I said in this thread many moons ago, so I'll just leave it at that
Regards.
One thing that springs to mind is the instancing network model wouldnt work well with guilds as not many people would be able to group together to do the guild related stuff, its not like they could own a space station and all players could be in there at once.
With things like EVE, Freelancer, UO etc guilds could be in there as it is a server/client model. Yes I know Freelancer is only a multiplayer game BUT some people have been hosting persistent universes in there for 64+ players (more than the 32 FDEV instancing thing).
With things like EVE, Freelancer, UO etc guilds could be in there as it is a server/client model. Yes I know Freelancer is only a multiplayer game BUT some people have been hosting persistent universes in there for 64+ players (more than the 32 FDEV instancing thing).
They don't necessarily have guilds, but they all have some mechanism to allow player organisations to form and operate. WW2 Online, say, has a squad chat channel and not much more than that. I submit that having a faction-dedicated chat channel or bulletin system, for example, is not going to turn the game into EVE, but it would allow the formation of an actual in-game community around each power.
All not providing a minimal level of organisational tools to allow groups to function does is making things irritating. It doesn't stop the formation of player organisations - the fact that power reddits for PP exist is proof enough of that - it just makes it unnecessarily awkward by forcing it outside of the game world. You can accommodate that level of player-based organisation without having to go full EVE and allow player groups to build their own private empires.
When you get right down to it, they said the game is multiplayer. That implies more than just occasionally seeing a square that's not filled in on the scanner. It implies that you'll have the tools to find and interact with other players, and to play together if you wish, but E: D currently lacks the very rudimentary tools needed to make doing so convenient. If you don't want a minimum level of multiplayer gameplay functionality, what's the point of making it a multiplayer game in the first place?
Ultimately, the reason people play multiplayer games and persistent universe games is in large part for the social aspects. Deliberately not putting some sort of social functionality in and effectively forcing everybody to play in isolation or very small, often temporary groups, is self defeating and renders what's supposed to be one of the central features of the game irrelevant. What incentive is there for me to play open when, having played both, I've found them almost totally identical experiences?
It seems to me that the whole thing is basically an attempt by Frontier to have their cake and eat it; they want the game to be multiplayer, but they want to avoid having many 'bad' features that are part and parcel of persistent multiplayer games. The result is a 'multiplayer' game that strongly resembles a single player experience.
Last edited:
Why would I, when I'm happy to discuss the topic?
I disagree though, both with the notion that guild features would turn Elite into EvE and the notion that such features would in any way go against Elite's legacy. Apparently the legacy (which is pretty much open to DB's personal interpretation) also allows a strong multiplayer focus, indirect planet system control via Powerplay and a CQC arena battle mode. As I said, I believe there are engaging and very beneficial ways to include guild features within the game's current framework, without the negative effects of guilds controlling access to their space. Which is by design not possible anyway due to the game's instanced framework.
That's exactly the impression I'm getting from the game and what I've seen of parts of the community. In fear of players exploiting group features, simply no such features are implemented rather than trying to find a middle ground to implement such features, that wouldn't be a complete denial for to players who'd enjoy these features. This strongly reminds me of Nintendo insisting on using mutual registration friend cods and not providing any (voice-)chat features in their systems and games - apparently in fear of players being harassed via the internet. It's frustrating to see, even for someone like me, getting so little play time, that I could never even meaningfully contribute to a guild.
Can I also wear a red shirt and suddenly Elite supports a red pilot suit? No. As long as there is no ingame acknowledgement of the existence and actions of such player groups, ED has no guild features.
Last edited:
Found this, thought it might be interesting.
http://massivelyop.com/2015/04/09/massively-overthinking-the-death-of-the-mmo-guild/
http://massivelyop.com/2015/04/09/massively-overthinking-the-death-of-the-mmo-guild/
If you want to go in black and white, then "MMO" is a very generic term, that includes games like iRacing and FSX, used by Steam to easily manage a category.
ED is closer to an MMORPG, rather than a MOBA or a simulator.
When you think "MMO", whats the first game that comes to your mind?
Wanna do a poll?
*Narrator voice*
"In the year 3301, socially active humans have retreated into a remote corner of the galaxy, so their less socially inclined brethren are not reminded of their existence and are left alone, playing with their robotic galaxy simulation."
Exaggeration of course, but that would be very heavy handed handling of the issue. Apart from the extra effort to develop exclusive guild content, it would also require effort to hide it from everybody else. In that sense, they're probably better off not implementing anything at all.
Last edited:
- Status