A disturbing lack of analysis has gone into this.
If a player can only commit a meagre amount if time, please explain to me how you envisage them to culture friendships and play "together" if they have very little time with which to do so.
Having Only Timed Missions is Stupid
- Thread starter Jester362
- Start date
A disturbing lack of analysis has gone into this.
If a player can only commit a meagre amount if time, please explain to me how you envisage them to culture friendships and play "together" if they have very little time with which to do so.
Every CMDRs actions - no matter how insignificant they might seem - affect how the BGS of the persistent universe works. Until FD implement a "don't include my actions when the BGS makes decisions about changes to the persistent universe" option, if that's even possible, you're playing in the same universe as every other CMDR and your actions have exactly as much influence on things as every other CMDR.
And outside of UA bombing, the BGS has what impact on anybody's gameplay exactly?
Do you mean apart from putting factions into boom / bust / lockdown etc thereby changing the types of missions available to the player.
Or making a faction expand into another system, or retreat out of it.
Changing prices, controlling factions, determining what functions are available in a system, locking down a CG, helping it to happen.
Need I go on?
I can point to several threads where traders were unhappy because their latest cash cow had been shut down by factions playing the bgs properly and others because they've opened up another one.
There is a lot that the bgs does that we don't see so while the impact of your own gameplay might not be felt immediately, you do make subtle changes over time. And those changes can be game changing.
I believe it was . . . . me . . . who once said:
I'll also add that I'd be more sympathetic to the "but BGS!" arguments if the BGS were at all dynamic or volatile or interesting. But the BGS barely does anything. The whole galaxy is pretty much the same all the time everywhere and the difference in playable experience between a Communist system in Famine and a Capitalist system in Boom, is pretty minimal. Populations never grow or shrink, areas never become meaningfully more or less dangerous nor are there interesting opportunities or challenges that arise in these different states. And the entire BGS game is rigged to continually maintain equilibrium so that for example independent factions don't start to displace federal factions and heaven forbid change the makeup of the inhabited galaxy. It's musical chairs, basically, and if it were randomized, or it completely ignored player input, it really wouldn't make a shred of difference to anyone who hasn't personally founded a "player" faction (actually just NPCs with a vanity name). And I actually *have* done that and even I don't care about the BGS.
But I'm not actually demanding death to the BGS, or to the idea of a persistent game world. Instead I'm suggesting that the rest of the game cannot be hamstrung by these elements. If the BGS requires that every other aspect of the game be obnoxious and poorly implemented and disrespectful of the player's time and attention, then YES I want it destroyed. But I don't actually think this is the case. I'm pretty sure there are solutions to these problems which leave the BGS intact, or can trade off the benefits in one area for benefits in another area. Right now the BGS is lame and barely functional, so it's not a very good tradeoff for all the obnoxious timer junk in the game.
Which again is why you can't just dismissively say "Persistent Universe" as if that were a valid rebuttal to a valid concern. Sorry that's not how it ever works.
I would hardly describe them as "game changing". The only thing they change is the location you have to source your goods from. It's not exactly reshaping the galaxy. The effects are minimal and that's being generous.
So you want the faction to pay and reward you, doubtless in full, even though the task you have done will be of no benefit to them?
Knowing you have no interest in the BGS I am more puzzled than ever why you bother doing missions which are as stated elsewhere a part of it.
Really? I like the fact that I can play it for a half hour or 3 hours, depending on my mood and time allowance.
Herein be seen in this very thread, the fundamental split between Elite: Pretend Spaceman Experience and Elite: Rewarding Video Game.
It's tough to find a compromised vision of the game because the wants of those firmly in one camp or the other are so often polarized between experiental-first and reward-first gaming. Neither is better than the other as a basic concept of gaming but I find some of the worst divides in the playerbase are between players who want to have a cool alternate space future and those who want a cool spaceship video game, because many times the element needed to improve one group's gaming is fundamentally detrimental to the gameplay of the other group.
In this case, being of the Pretend Spaceman peoples myself, I prefer the world to move on with or without me. It's an online galaxy, always something going on somewhere. It's not waiting patiently for me to go activate it so it can tell me its little story. I'd find it completely boring if my game presence or lack thereof wasn't tied to the persistence of the rest of the galaxy. That's a single player game, and I have plenty of those already. A game where you can totally miss things due to unavoidable timing or be super lucky and be at the right place at the right time doesn't bother me in the least.
I can completely see however that if I was looking at Elite primarily as its video game part, I wouldn't want the missions to be burning off while I wasn't even playing. From the perspective of "I got this to spend a bit of time playing around to entertain myself sometimes", Elite is probably one of the least useful games to fill that need. I do feel however that this stems from the design perspective, as from what I can see over the development of this game the Elite developers are generally in the Pretend Spaceman camp themselves, sometimes even too much for me. It's a tough row to hoe trying to make Elite feed both these beasts.
Generally, I like the current mission timers, which give an urgency to your actions. However, I understand the OP. I've failed a few missions due to RL time limits and I hated it.
I'm not sure if some missions are "special" or the mission system changed, but I once missed a deadline (a long time ago), while I wasn't logged in, and when I next played, I was surprised to see that I'd been given another 24 hours to complete the mission, for a reduced payout (according to an in-game email in the comms panel).
It would be nice for something like that to be available for regular missions: Extend the mission deadline (when possible, due to mission type), so when you log back in, you get another 24 hours, with a "regretful, but we still need it" email and lowered payment and faction status improvement. Maybe even a 7 day extension with a significantly lowered reward and faction status is unchanged (didn't go up, but since you eventually achieved the mission goal, it doesn't go down either - or only drops a little).
I think this would fall under the category of a QOL improvement.
I'm not sure if some missions are "special" or the mission system changed, but I once missed a deadline (a long time ago), while I wasn't logged in, and when I next played, I was surprised to see that I'd been given another 24 hours to complete the mission, for a reduced payout (according to an in-game email in the comms panel).
It would be nice for something like that to be available for regular missions: Extend the mission deadline (when possible, due to mission type), so when you log back in, you get another 24 hours, with a "regretful, but we still need it" email and lowered payment and faction status improvement. Maybe even a 7 day extension with a significantly lowered reward and faction status is unchanged (didn't go up, but since you eventually achieved the mission goal, it doesn't go down either - or only drops a little).
I think this would fall under the category of a QOL improvement.
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Oh great here we go I've opened the floodgates for the "if you don't like it leave" nerds. Yes, I researched the game before I bought it. I knew it was slow, and had a steep learning curve. No, I don't want my money back.
BUT NEWS FLASH: this is a game in development. There are ALL SORTS OF THINGS BROKEN IN ED RIGHT NOW. Several of you have said something along the lines of "don't stack missions if you don't have time to finish them all." Guess what? Mission stacking is an exploit; a cheat; a bug in the game that everyone takes advantage of and treats like part of the game. And that is just the tip of the iceburg of little things that need tweaking and fixing. For an example, I briefly joined up with Felicia Winters. I was interested in the faction rewards, but I didn't do my research properly. Turns out I would do better in a different faction. So I defected and joined Zachary Hudson. You guys know how when you defect from a faction they send killers after you? Well Winters and Hudson are both Federal, so these killers would follow me around space and send me messages saying things like "You're dead meat!" and "The boss will pay me a lot of money to kill you!" etc. and show up everywhere I dropped out in a system but they never attacked me. And I mostly hunt down bounties and you know what happened when I found a wanted person? The assassin sent to kill me would help me out in the fight. It was soul-crushingly stupid. And the thing is we all have stories like that! This game is still changing! Lots of things need to be worked out!
In my opinion, the current system where missions have a rigidly set time limit is a bug that needs fixing. People, you can disagree with me, but if the only reason you can offer is "CAUSE THAT'S HOW IT WORKS I AM SUPER HIGH LEVEL YOU ARE A NOOB STOP WHINING" then maybe you should shut the hell up and put the pacifier back in your mouth because you are infantile.
BUT NEWS FLASH: this is a game in development. There are ALL SORTS OF THINGS BROKEN IN ED RIGHT NOW. Several of you have said something along the lines of "don't stack missions if you don't have time to finish them all." Guess what? Mission stacking is an exploit; a cheat; a bug in the game that everyone takes advantage of and treats like part of the game. And that is just the tip of the iceburg of little things that need tweaking and fixing. For an example, I briefly joined up with Felicia Winters. I was interested in the faction rewards, but I didn't do my research properly. Turns out I would do better in a different faction. So I defected and joined Zachary Hudson. You guys know how when you defect from a faction they send killers after you? Well Winters and Hudson are both Federal, so these killers would follow me around space and send me messages saying things like "You're dead meat!" and "The boss will pay me a lot of money to kill you!" etc. and show up everywhere I dropped out in a system but they never attacked me. And I mostly hunt down bounties and you know what happened when I found a wanted person? The assassin sent to kill me would help me out in the fight. It was soul-crushingly stupid. And the thing is we all have stories like that! This game is still changing! Lots of things need to be worked out!
In my opinion, the current system where missions have a rigidly set time limit is a bug that needs fixing. People, you can disagree with me, but if the only reason you can offer is "CAUSE THAT'S HOW IT WORKS I AM SUPER HIGH LEVEL YOU ARE A NOOB STOP WHINING" then maybe you should shut the hell up and put the pacifier back in your mouth because you are infantile.
Only because it doesn't fit your point.
If you don't have time to play the game. If the game isn't fun for you. Don't play it.
It's an ever changing galaxy. It waits on no man.
Pot Kettle, Black.
And I really don't know how you would have coped with the original mission timers....
So given the troubles with the games constantly the past few nights after the tick (8:15pm), which coincides with when I play for a couple of hours, I would've liked my Deliver 88 Palladium with a 3mil CR fine not to be timed as I had to give up last night then wake up earlier today just to hand a bloody mission in!!
Well lets see, he's entitled to his opinion, everyone else is entitled to theirs, it's how you put across that opinion that makes it matter & quite frankly the OP threw the first stone in the glass house.
Everyone else is simply reacting to it in kind.
This isn't one of them - it is working as intended.
Taking more than one mission at a time is not cheating, people were suggesting that you take less missions in one go so you can complete them within the time limit you have allocated to playing the game on that occasion.
Again, it is not a bug dispite your opinion. It is working as intended gameplay that you happen to dislike.
I didn't see any posts of that nature.
I think the only person that requires a pacifier is the guy shouting in caps lock becuase they don't like something in game. Very childish.
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