Immersion - the Suspension of Disblief

[Blackcompany]

Immersion is important in Sandbox games and RPG's. Ask around; players will agree.

Elite began with a powerful aim toward immersion and assisting in the suspension of disbelief. The flight models and ship handling all were approached with maximum aim toward a Simulation. Toward creating that feeling of being there.

Then the game was added. And the game the flight model depends on, well...it really strayed from the path of Immersion. So many of the mechanics are gamey and badly in need of a rethinking.

Basically what this posts asks Frontier to consider isn't any single mechanical change but rather a far more overarching idea: Its time to examine the development philosophy that underpins Elite itself. To ask yourself what sort of foundation you want to lay down for the future of the game.

IF I may presume to do so, I would like to urge Mr. Braben and company to approach the design of Elite with Immersion in mind. Ask yourself what areas right now feel "gamey" and actively subtract from the suspension of disbelief. Ship module "classes" (as opposed to competing brands) are one. Non-persistent, large POI bases and wreckage are another. The too-convenient, just-what-i-need-every-time USS spawning is another. Pirates with zero sense of self preservation and a heavy prevalence of shoot-to-kill, i-dont-care-about-cargo NPC's are another. All of these things yank players out of the experience and scream to us "its just a game."

Honestly, its killing the fun. Elite is like receiving an invite to that these-things-only-happen-on-Bud-Light-commercials type of dream party. The one where you're approached by a girl so far out of your league you wonder what sport she plays and then you beat the Terminator at ping pong while listening to a live rock band...except...except at this party, the Miller Lite guys are always trudging along behind you, reminding you its all a lie and you shouldnt really be here. That's Elite.

You nailed the whole Star Wars space pilot/Buck Rogers/Battlestar feel for the ships and flying. Good on you. But I dont just want to FLY LIKE Han Solo, I want to FEEL LIKE Han Solo. And that guy...he has friends, and enemies. He delivers varied types of high risk goods to real clients and characters, with personalities and a serious lack of forgiving in their nature. He pulls of heists and tricks to get out of sticky situations, and people REMEMBER him everywhere he goes, for the things he has done - good or ill. Han Solo's world is more than just progress bars and numbers on a graph.

And Elite can be too. IF you start now. If you step back and ask yourself, "What aspects of this game lend themselves to building up a real sense of place, of a coherent world." And then you keep those. And you then ask yourself, "What aspects of this game either fail to contribute to or actively take away from, this aspect of Elite." And you kill or completely overhaul those.

Steven Covey in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People stresses the need to both understand, and to be understood. I hope I have achieved the latter, in order to help you achieve the former, where my words are concerned. Covey also spoke of a need to "Begin with the End in Mind." I hope for Elite that end is an Immersive Simulator, and that the developers will begin to move forward with end squarely in mind. I think that, if they do so, Elite could be the greatest space sim to ever have existed.

But right now I feel like the game is teetering on the brink and edging toward the precipice, in grave danger of becoming little than Diablo with a cockpit view, despite the potential for it to be much more.

 

[CMDR Thon Mystra]

I loved this post, Blackcompany. I've read some of your other posts regarding each of these issues, but here you put them all together very eloquently in a way that reminded me of one of my favourite events in ED so far:

In a CZ, the side I was fighting for had a Farragut and the fun I had was incredible. It really felt like being in a Star Warsy- esque battle chasing the enemy around our cruiser, sometimes skimming the surface of the massive ship whilst pursuing an aggressive sidewinder, or FA-offing round the opposite side to use it as a shield against multiple enemies.

It felt immersive. And I think you're absolutely right that this kind of feeling of immersion needs to be applied throughout the rest of the game.

Hope FD take notice

Great post, +1!

 

[DocLooshkin]

Hello, Blackcompany.

Interesting post. The tone could perhaps have been a little bit less presumptious and lecturesome, but your point is sound enough and I can appreciate the passion that drives you to make it, as can FD, I'm sure.

I'm a big fan of the more simulational and immersive aspects of the game, up to a point. I fully agree that there are things in ED which don't quite gel with the rest of the experience. We can see the immense virtual galaxy, travel to a distant star, take two hours to reach an outlying station, dock... and then have instantaneous repairs, before opening up PowerPlay, a system that looks for all the world like a tabletop board-game. It's almost like playing two entirely different games, sometimes.

That said, I feel Frontier does have a balance it needs to strike, at times. Too much simulation or immersion, at the expense of fun or practicality, will kill the game. While you and I might appreciate a 'pure' game, it's not for everyone. A game that's too many Hutton runs and not enough convenient respawns, as it were, will drive away players in droves, perhaps ultimately costing us the game's further development. The bottom line is, quite rightly, the line that matters most. I think FD has the balance right for the most part, although they may wish to look again at some things.

I'll address a few details.

Regarding the randomly murderous NPC pirates, it could be argued that they provide a small degree of useful training for players in Solo, ahead of encountering actual randomly murderous players when they venture into Open. I'm not sure it would be wise to reduce that. I don't quite know what to make of the suicidal NPCs, other than target practise.

I'm not sure I agree with competing brands of module. It would be plausible, certainly, the OEM's DRM technology notwithstanding. I assume at the moment that modules (or at least the designs they're locally fabricated from) are provided by the ship's own manufacturer. Different classes have different properties, suitable for different purposes. Having different producers make almost-but-not-quite-identical variants would just bloat the already-huge list of equipment, for little practical gain. For me, convenience trumps authenticity here, by a country mile.

The Signal Sources have irritated me for a year. They do the job, but not in a plausible or elegant way. As I see it, the issues with SS's are that the right ones are always where we happen to be (given enough SS spawns) and also that they always seem to be the right distance for us to intercept with ease each time, no matter how fast or slowly we're originally going.

It's even more disconcerting to see more and more of the bloody things spawn right next to you, as you approach the first one. Venerable running jokes about busses aside, that's not terribly compelling.

With Horizons and the SRV scanning mechanics, FD have produced a much more engaging system, evidently somewhat inspired by past forum feedback. In my view, it's fun, beautiful and reasonably credible. I'm extremely happy with it, arguably the most successful-on-every-level thing in the game at present. The SRV scanner's better than any implementation I would have come up with, so I'll not be prescriptive, but FD can clearly do better with SS's, if they have the will and the time. I really hope this can happen.

As a side note, I find it a little odd that Distress Signals quietly come and go the same way as the other SS's. I would have thought our ships would produce some kind of audible alert - it's a Distress Signal, after all.

Blackcompany, while I don't agree with everything you said, your post is appreciated. If you - or anyone else - wish to contribute more details about what you find to be counter-immersive in ED, I'd be very interested to read them. It's a good topic.

 

[Psychomorph]

Blackcompany, couldn't agree more. You just put perfectly into words what I think. Everytime I play ED, it's pretty, it's slick, the expanse of the galaxy is awesome, but the generic design (for me also the generic flight model and generic sound concept) just makes it so hard to fully be immersed into it.

I watch videos of "Enemy Starfighter" now and then and I am so frustrated about how awesome the thinking behind it is, the cockpit view, the HUD, especially the sound design. So much was done right and it feels so immersive, but ESF is a colourful vector style game... Why can't we just have the ESF concept realized in the ED package?

Of course, there is more to it, it's just that my personal focus is predominantly an immersive cockpit experience, but I agree with the other points as well.


I don't expect much development though, it's an Xbox tailored game essentially.

 

[who?]

I agree wholeheartedly, but you know what - I think Frontier do too.

In a sense, I think Frontier 'pulled a fast one' by the initial release of a game that was a tiny, empty shell of what their vision was, and is. And they got away with it, and I'm thrilled they did. Because in just over a year from release the game has already come a long way, and it still has a huge way to go. We're still in the building blocks phase of the game, where basic elements of gameplay are still being fixed - or even added - so I think it'll still be some way off before they can stand back and take a more sweeping, strategic view of the game. "Ok, we've stopped the NPCs ramming and them rolling over and playing dead, and pirate Sideys attacking Vultures for cargo.... now let's start making the behaviour more credible, their dialogue more contextual" etc..