I believe that CG's have lost their way

[SlickPBW]

Here are my thoughts:

1) There was a time when many/most CG's had a goal that would take "the community" to make it happen. There's no way that a single commander or small group could make it happen. These were large scale permanent changes (or not, if the CG failed) to the galaxy. Examples: new starport in a system, repair some damaged station, decide some political issue, and there are many more examples. Yes, now there's Trailblazers to build stations, but that's not the point. These were achieved only when the CG was completed within the time limit; i.e. the top tier was met. Sometimes there were lesser permanent changes at intermediate CG tiers that served as an incentive to continue. In most (all?) cases, the personal benefits to the contributors were only the credits gained as part of the CG, and, maybe more importantly, the benefit (if successful) of the ultimate objective of the CG; BUT what really made it fun was doing it with other players. Many players felt a real sense of desire to be part of these efforts.

2) Although this may still be true to a lesser extent, older CG's created gameplay that many times really fostered the idea of cooperative play, especially in wings. I have made a huge number of in-game friends over the years, many of whom I met and winged with. This is no longer common, and I can't remember the last CG I did in a wing. This is sad. Sure, there's always the CG system chat that brings people together; there's the ganker crowd, and the anti-ganker crowd; but when these things are the strongest reason that bring people together, and far more than the actual Goal of the CG, I believe that this is the reason that nowadays CG's have lost their way.

3) In the rare examples of older CG's that offered personal things like modules or whatever, they certainly required a lot of "work" to achieve a high or top tier of the CG. Even if it was just a PJ or some other cosmetic, players would wear it with pride knowing the effort it took to obtain it and these couldn't be obtained after the CG so they were exclusive. Nowadays, there's no real incentive to progress CG's. Credits are nearly worthless after you have been playing a while, not to mention the enormous credit payouts at the low tier level or worse, at the first contribution. And the real CG killer is when, like this CG and the last one, the MacGuffin is given away with a SINGLE contribution! Why on earth would anyone want to try to actually complete a CG??? How many of the last 50 CG's have been actually completed? I think that you will find that completed CG's had something very desirable to some players, but only available if the CG was completed.

4) I think that CG's are about the Community, not the Goal. When the Community works together, a MMO game strengthens its community.

 

[Jmanis]

I don't necessarily agree with all the points, but i agree with the sentiment.

Imo CGs are a relic of the past and need to go the way of the dodo.

In all but the most well designed CGs they take a game whose intent is this whole "the galaxy is your oyster, go everywhere, do everything" notion and, for a week, fortnight, or even a month, and boil them down to "No, forget all that. Do this one thing", and usually using outdated mechanics forcing FD to confront their own warts by doing things like slapping a massive markup on the demand items (in a game where credits are busted anyway), because otherwise, people simply wouldn't deliver them.

Even then, it's usually "solve one problem, then repeat a dozen times"... and this has always been FD's problem. Instead of injecting an orchestration of their best mechanics into a fun experience as the value-add to otherwise standalone mechanics, their inject is "do the same thing, but a hundred times"

Guardian Blueprint fragments were a great example of this... a comparatively interesting activity (explore ruins, activate beacons, fight sentinels, get blueprint from scan) had a pre-req of 3 blueprints per unlock, which, given the rarity of sites, was basically an instant "right, relog, do it again"... which is an immediate failure of that mechanic.

And the whole use of CGs as a vector for FOMO engineered modules is tone-deaf to their own design which introduced "tech brokers" literally as a 'personal narrative' thing. Like sure, the utility of that is debatable, but why go "here's a system for unlocking/ accessing rare modules and utilities as a personal narrative vector" and then not use that, instead jury rigging an old system too once again allow manual inject, rather than simply letting players play the game as built.

Then there's the issue of visible metrics to the CG. Conflict CGs are pointless when we have actual BGS war mechanics that consider more than just bonds handed in... yet we get it trivialised down to that, because those metrics are opaque to CGs. So we get merits with PP2 which is a translation layer into arbitrary mechanics for a CG. Ok....

... hold my beer though. PP is the competitive, balanced(for a contextual meaning) group vs group mechanic. Wth are FD doing putting in cgs for the powers and shaping that? If you're going to do that, forget giving points to gryffindor, just give them the win already, because its actively subverting the literal design intent of PP.

They just need to go, and FD need to go back to the drawing board and realise they have a game with some great mechanics which, if well orchestrated, could let them inject some absolutely amazing journeys for players using diverse and considered mechanics.

Instead, its "forget the rest of the game, do this one thing for a week[1]". In the context of the overall game's offering, it's an anti- pattern... it actively works against what the game offers.

[1] Every time I think of this pattern applied to the game, i think of this Iago suffing crackers (a 'treat') into the sultans mouth, because "oh you liked that? Have ALL the crackers.

 

[V'larr]

I disagree. The game was worse without community goals and it contributed to my choice to continue a hiatus from the game, so saying "it should go the way of the dodo" feels completely wrong to me. Community goals have always been one of the biggest things that gets me to play Elite.

There's room for improvements but out of all the issues Elite has (and I do agree about what the root cause of those issues are), this is one of the GOOD things about the game.

I don't think Slick's concerns are valid, or rather, the things that were true when "there was a time", are still true now. Most people simply don't bother with Open, groups and finding people to play with is still the same as it always was - find private groups, because Fdev won't put in an official PvE mode.

There's good reason the exclusive modules are no longer exclusive only to the top contributors - it was unfair to the majority of players especially those who inevitably get pushed out of the earning tier on the last day owing to last-minute contributors to the CG. Exclusivity is flatly unfun, and "exclusive decals" are overrated when we have no trophy wall to put them on. I have so many CG decals that I just never look at them anymore.

The credits are a big help to newer players, even now, so they aren't totally useless.

You talk about the sense of contribution and satisfaction from completing a community goal - and then attach it solely to whether or not you obtained the macguffin. Isn't that a self-contradictory sentiment?

Colonization has by and large replaced any "permanent changes to the galaxy" aspect that CGs used to have with the likes of the Colonia Highway, and that's fine. Nobody needs a repeat of the god-handed-derailment of things like the Jacques community goal to ever happen again.

 

[SlickPBW]

You talk about the sense of contribution and satisfaction from completing a community goal - and then attach it solely to whether or not you obtained the macguffin. Isn't that a self-contradictory sentiment?

4) I think that CG's are about the Community, not the Goal. When the Community works together, a MMO game strengthens its community.

 

[Jmanis]

I disagree. The game was worse without community goals and it contributed to my choice to continue a hiatus from the game, so saying "it should go the way of the dodo" feels completely wrong to me. Community goals have always been one of the biggest things that gets me to play Elite.

"Community Goals" as a concept are absolutely fine.

"Community Goals" as currently implemented are a god-awful antithesis to the concepts Elite promotes and makes available.

To be clear, things like whittling down control systems to take down a Titan, as a conceptual "Community Goal" where participation is accessible through a variety of mechanisms for combat, specialised and non combat alike, coordinated by community leaders, and driven entirely by the community, add to the game immesurably.[1]

An FD inject of "Haul a billion X's for <some intangible> to this one place, PS get some engineered modules if you do it, PPS oops, our economy is pants so let's just godhand it so you actually feel like doing it" as an example of the current implementation, is trash.

[1] Arguably, the rough-edges of this was all the god-handing by FD to make sure it kept to their timelines and drip-feeding of unnecessary modules which acted as progression gates.

 

[nemolomen]

Hmmm, a lot to take in here.

The TLDR: In the last two days of the recent CG, I saw the cooperative and combative combination of many commanders in a system with a new toy, banding together to work as a team to deliver supplies and take on the "pirates" in the system to do so...it was awesome, I hope it continues.

While I understand the current CG, I'm not sure 4 weeks was a great choice. However, I'll bet its just to tide us over until Vanguards, meaning there'll be even fewer galnet articles, etc...in that time, including whatever buildup there is to Vanguards.

Spoiler: The long and boring version...

I missed the "glory days" of the community part of this game. Nearing the winter of 2015, I whittled my next game purchase down to Wasteland 2 or ED. Elite in general, Dangerous or otherwise, is near and dear to my heart, well, now anyway, and it was a sad day when I stopped playing FE2 on my Amiga back in the late 90s. There just wasn't anything else like it. It was awesome. But the multiplayer aspect of ED, or rather my fear of it, led me to pick the wrong game.

Fast forward 5 years to the end of summer 2020...the plague was upon us...fleet carriers had recently been released...Odyssey was in development.

Lots of time at home, coupled with a motherboard and 8 core CPU donation from my BIL led me to look for a new game, there were a few to pick from after all...EVE, Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, several smaller indie titles, maybe another one or two somewhere. In the intervening years I had tried Terminus, DarkStar One, a few others, but none of them really stuck and the newer games looked a lot better.

So I dabbled in EVE for a few days, switched to some other unmemorable game or two then finally tried Elite Dangerous. I failed my pilots license exam, twice, using mouse and keyboard, then spent half an hour digging a 20 year old Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick out of a closet and cleaning it. I passed the exam with flying colors on the next try...

Fast forward 5 years to the present day...

Elite Dangerous is a simulation of a spaceship pilot's actions and experiences within, and upon, a simulated galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars which can be scooped for fuel, planets and their satelites, which can be mapped and many landed upon, 2 alien races, 3 major human factions as well as a large number of independents, 13 political figures, thousands of of local, smaller, factions, several Engineers, a manipulable socio-economic backgroud simulation, your own personal movable starbase, 44 different, modular, configurable, space ships, multiple species of exobiological specimens, planetary rings which can be mined, enemies to engage or avoid, a space bridge, combat zones, factories, tourist settlements, 2 ground vehicles, missions, commodities, materials, other players, etc..., etc....etc..., where you can now colonize star systems and build structures in them however you see fit.

I purchased my first VR HMD earlier this month and, in one of the worlds that came with it, there is an Office Simulator...and I was thinking, yeah, I can see that. Elite Dangerous is the same thing except my desk is the cockpit/bridge of a space ship which I fly around a more detailed, extremely large, simulated galaxy, instead of being in a room in an office building.

CGs, like the one many of us participated in this past week, are a mchanism by which the developers give players something to do as a group and puts players within the same smaller spaces, in their chosen modes, and offer prizes for participation in the endeavor. Some are grand, many are bland-ish, a few led to an insterstellar war with an alien race, including the possible side effect of the instigator of said conflict cheating death and becoming one with the matrix, as well as llittering human space with gigantic dead carcasses...

The game has changed a lot over the years. Many of the more recent changes have been geared towards widening the audience/player-base by:

a) providing new things to do which appeal to a wider selection of the gaming demographic collective.

b) lower the barriers to entry with respect to the difficulty curve, the purchase cost of the game, in-system travel times and by providing more capital to aid in the player's progression to having "all of the game" to play.

c) successfully monetizing new ships and all cosmetics which players are willing to purchase for additional real world money, in order to offset the relatively low number of sales of the game in general.

In this "new galaxy", so to speak, there will be future CGs of various purpose and design, some will be good, many will be merely ok and a few will be great, and they will all be tailored to appeal to the wider demographic in an effort to keep the game profitable.

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

Here are my thoughts:

1) There was a time when many/most CG's had a goal that would take "the community" to make it happen. There's no way that a single commander or small group could make it happen. These were large scale permanent changes (or not, if the CG failed) to the galaxy. Examples: new starport in a system, repair some damaged station, decide some political issue, and there are many more examples. Yes, now there's Trailblazers to build stations, but that's not the point. These were achieved only when the CG was completed within the time limit; i.e. the top tier was met. Sometimes there were lesser permanent changes at intermediate CG tiers that served as an incentive to continue. In most (all?) cases, the personal benefits to the contributors were only the credits gained as part of the CG, and, maybe more importantly, the benefit (if successful) of the ultimate objective of the CG; BUT what really made it fun was doing it with other players. Many players felt a real sense of desire to be part of these efforts.

2) Although this may still be true to a lesser extent, older CG's created gameplay that many times really fostered the idea of cooperative play, especially in wings. I have made a huge number of in-game friends over the years, many of whom I met and winged with. This is no longer common, and I can't remember the last CG I did in a wing. This is sad. Sure, there's always the CG system chat that brings people together; there's the ganker crowd, and the anti-ganker crowd; but when these things are the strongest reason that bring people together, and far more than the actual Goal of the CG, I believe that this is the reason that nowadays CG's have lost their way.

3) In the rare examples of older CG's that offered personal things like modules or whatever, they certainly required a lot of "work" to achieve a high or top tier of the CG. Even if it was just a PJ or some other cosmetic, players would wear it with pride knowing the effort it took to obtain it and these couldn't be obtained after the CG so they were exclusive. Nowadays, there's no real incentive to progress CG's. Credits are nearly worthless after you have been playing a while, not to mention the enormous credit payouts at the low tier level or worse, at the first contribution. And the real CG killer is when, like this CG and the last one, the MacGuffin is given away with a SINGLE contribution! Why on earth would anyone want to try to actually complete a CG??? How many of the last 50 CG's have been actually completed? I think that you will find that completed CG's had something very desirable to some players, but only available if the CG was completed.

4) I think that CG's are about the Community, not the Goal. When the Community works together, a MMO game strengthens its community.

I disagree with you completely. CGs have never been more formed and structured. There was a time when we had nothing. Careful what you express. I hope there are more disseting voices than those agreeing your very long and very wrong viewpoint.

 

[Jmanis]

CGs have never been more formed and structured. There was a time when we had nothing.

How so? Genuine question. Like, what's the functional difference between this (2015):
Deliver Battle Weapons, Non-Lethal Weapons, Personal Weapons, Reactive Armour

Spoiler

...and this (Today's)
Deliver Titanium, Aluminium, CMM Composite and Steel

Spoiler

Both are simply "deliver X to Y".

The credit rewards? The module rewards? There's mechanics in the game to facilitate all that already, CG's are just unnecessarily duplicating that through some FD godhanding... so yes, I'm highly skeptical that CG's are in a "good place compared to where they were" when really nothing has changed in 10 years.

I can appreciate the value people get out of joining a "shared cause", but there's mechanics FD can use in the game, like, literally PP in it's entirity, for people to rally around a common cause with a sense of community around it without a CG wrapped around it (because those PP CGs are just outright bizarre given the intent of PP)

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

While I understand the current CG, I'm not sure 4 weeks was a great choice. However, I'll bet its just to tide us over until Vanguards, meaning there'll be even fewer galnet articles, etc...in that time, including whatever buildup there is to Vanguards.

The current CG is on track to complete in under two weeks. And I kinda hope FDEV let it, not godhanding a tier 7. Then again the system might be in lockdown next week, as there is no bounty hunting counterweight.

 

[PilotB]

And I kinda hope FDEV let it,

They won't. The CG is a cash grab they'll run it to the end because it's hauling and if you want to compete you must buy the new hauler.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

I don't think the GCs have ever been in a better state than they are now.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

They won't. The CG is a cash grab they'll run it to the end because it's hauling and if you want to compete you must buy the new hauler.

I am definitely not buying the new hauler, but I will finish the CG in the top 25% quite a bit ahead of the curve.

 

[PilotB]

I am definitely not buying the new hauler, but I will finish the CG in the top 25% quite a bit ahead of the curve.

Sure by spending almost twice as many hours hauling. You're not required to buy the new ship. It's simply designed to encourage the purchase so I doubt they'll let it end.

 

[alexzk]

Probably CG is a smart way to shake BGS. There are many systems which had no single commander for 200+ days.
Without such a shake BGS would stabilize at some levels forever.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Sure by spending almost twice as many hours hauling. You're not required to buy the new ship. It's simply designed to encourage the purchase so I doubt they'll let it end.

I have CG hauled in Cutter/T9 for 10 years, 3-4 months more won't kill me. And if FDEV let the CG end when it ends, I will even have to haul less to stay in the top 25%

 

[St0rmFury]

Eh, I'm not aiming for higher than top 50% so my shieldless cutter will suffice.

 

[Danieros]

They won't. The CG is a cash grab they'll run it to the end because it's hauling and if you want to compete you must buy the new hauler.

No, it is not. Top 75% for a second set of engineered cargo racks is by no means a pay-to-win requirement. By the end of the 4-week CG I imagine it'll still be less than 5 trips to reach it. For comparison, the previous CG (2 weeks) only needed a single cutter delivery for top 75%.

If you're talking credit reward of higher brackets, please keep in mind each CMM Composite Cutter load for this CG is around 40 million credits profit by itself.

1) There was a time when many/most CG's had a goal that would take "the community" to make it happen. There's no way that a single commander or small group could make it happen. These were large scale permanent changes (or not, if the CG failed) to the galaxy. Examples: new starport in a system, repair some damaged station, decide some political issue, and there are many more examples. Yes, now there's Trailblazers to build stations, but that's not the point. These were achieved only when the CG was completed within the time limit; i.e. the top tier was met. Sometimes there were lesser permanent changes at intermediate CG tiers that served as an incentive to continue. In most (all?) cases, the personal benefits to the contributors were only the credits gained as part of the CG, and, maybe more importantly, the benefit (if successful) of the ultimate objective of the CG; BUT what really made it fun was doing it with other players. Many players felt a real sense of desire to be part of these efforts.

CGs with tiers that weren't for personal rewards have always been very rare. I don't see this being a "now vs old times" case.

2) Although this may still be true to a lesser extent, older CG's created gameplay that many times really fostered the idea of cooperative play, especially in wings. I have made a huge number of in-game friends over the years, many of whom I met and winged with. This is no longer common, and I can't remember the last CG I did in a wing. This is sad. Sure, there's always the CG system chat that brings people together; there's the ganker crowd, and the anti-ganker crowd; but when these things are the strongest reason that bring people together, and far more than the actual Goal of the CG, I believe that this is the reason that nowadays CG's have lost their way.

CGs seldom differ from haul X/Y/Z commodities, bounty hunt, or support X vs Y. This haven't really changed over the years, but with credit inflation I can see why people may not be looking to wing up for trade dividends or more efficient bounty hunting.

3) In the rare examples of older CG's that offered personal things like modules or whatever, they certainly required a lot of "work" to achieve a high or top tier of the CG. Even if it was just a PJ or some other cosmetic, players would wear it with pride knowing the effort it took to obtain it and these couldn't be obtained after the CG so they were exclusive. Nowadays, there's no real incentive to progress CG's. Credits are nearly worthless after you have been playing a while, not to mention the enormous credit payouts at the low tier level or worse, at the first contribution. And the real CG killer is when, like this CG and the last one, the MacGuffin is given away with a SINGLE contribution! Why on earth would anyone want to try to actually complete a CG??? How many of the last 50 CG's have been actually completed? I think that you will find that completed CG's had something very desirable to some players, but only available if the CG was completed.

CGs with personal rewards used to require top 50% and even top 25%. But this resulted in complaints about having to play to keep the position in the upper brackets, so I think Frontier caved in. Nowadays they went even further - we have a "contribution higher than 1" for the most important rewards.

I think this is due to the general reward being only "credits". I've said elsewhere but ARX and an exclusive currency for CGs depending on brackets (and tiers) could restore this competitive part. They could add every previous CG module to this "CG shop" and even stuff like engineering materials so if you're spending a lot of time in the CG at least you get to save time elsewhere. Powerplay 2 suffers a bit of this too with its brackets only offering credits, though in that case you still have the control points affecting the map (at least if you're doing enough to beat the automatic decay mechanic that got introduced).

The CG I went all out to compete in was one of the Colonia bridge ones - top 10 got to suggest names for the megaships, so there was a point competing for it.

4) I think that CG's are about the Community, not the Goal. When the Community works together, a MMO game strengthens its community.

But the Goal is important to drive the community. When the goal is just doing 1 contribution for a module reward it will surely get a lot of participants, but just doing 1 and moving on.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

Probably CG is a smart way to shake BGS. There are many systems which had no single commander for 200+ days.
Without such a shake BGS would stabilize at some levels forever.

The CG is being held in a system that is home to a trailblazer megaship. There would have been hundreds, if not thousands, of pilots through there in the past month.

 

[Jmanis]

But the Goal is important to drive the community.

So why is it important for the goal the community is driven towards to remain as "Bring A to B, repeat", "kill pirates" or any other equally uninspired activity?

Coming together as a community is one thing, but Elite Dangerous offers a range of exciting activities that get completely shelved by CGs in favour of asinine repetion.

 

[alexzk]

The CG is being held in a system that is home to a trailblazer megaship. There would have been hundreds, if not thousands, of pilots through there in the past month.

Yes, but where should you buy things ? Buying affects BGS too.