Interesting article related to why I no longer play ED

[Whiterose]

Wife, kids, grand kids, full time employment, various volunteering roles in the community, active cyclist, runner. Yet....I still have time to play and enjoy ED, couple of hours a night. I never get the people who can do a 12 hour session all in one go. For me do I feel like I am wasting time flying from A to B? No, its part of the game and enjoyment.

Not judging. Just saying.

 

[Valan]

If you see stuff as a grind then you're playing the wrong game. If you remove the grind the game is no longer the same and it loses everything it set out to be.

If there are no time sinks you're done in a few weeks and you don't play anymore anyway.

If they change the game how many players will they lose over time? How many players will they gain and for how long.

EVE has time sinks it has been going since 2003.

The Devs have a game in mind and Devs never really pander to the whims of the player base. They know if they do they'll end up with an incoherent vision and no one will play it.

Why do people think a game needs to be changed so they play it? Find a game you like instead. If you moaned on every forum and Devs changed the game you would have a library of 50 games all the same.

 

[ste]

Theres plenty of pick up and play games for casuals who dont really play out there, like 99% of them, we complain because games get made pick up and play, blame the console market or whatever, when a game comes along that isnt pick up and play we complain and want it turning into a pick up play game.

It doesnt matter how much time you have to play, theres no time limit, its endless, theres no reward for being first and no punishment for being last, you can take as long as you like, 100 hours to unlock a ship takes 100 hours whether thats spread over week or months,

If the game was designed for people who arent gamers then the gamers would leave looking for a game designed for gamers.

Its a bit selfish that people want every game made for people who dont have time to play or are to impatient to take it slow or to wait. I work, I would love to be able to sit in the house all day and play games, but I cant, I just have to make do with the time Ive got, and appreciate it just as much when eventually I do get it.

The game is designed to be played forever, not finished in a week, people want to unlock a conda or whatever in two days say they are done, then move on to the next game. Leaving the rest of us wondering when a game thats coming to come along that doesnt just reward us for turning up that you can get lost in for months and months.

 

[KING5TON]

I saw that Article and my first thought was of ED.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Gameplay is its own reward. I kept playing ME3MP for hundreds of hours after unlocking all the stuff. I'm artificially increasing the playthrough time in my XCom2 LW2 playthrough because I like the battles. I play all sorts of combinations in CoH2 vs AI to see big explosions and ragdolled bodies, then I develop my strategies to hit fast and hard in MP matches.

Progress is nice, rewards are nice, but it's really often overdone. ED overdoes it, too.
We're already seeing publishers shove in "legal cheats" to buy for microbucks in their artificially inflated grindfests - even in SP games. I guess we'll be dealing a lot with this kind of "respect for player time" in the near future.

 

[Eymerich]

Other questions might be: "do players with little time available respect the gaming desires of those with more?" and "should all games be suitable for all players?".

Maynard question could be easly reversed.

But it is an intelligent question after all.

Netherless, I believe that clicking 200 times J after refuelling from a star just to reach a (slightly) different location for... doing the same things it's just... well... lame..

Also: most of the play in Ed is just stare the cockpit and wait till you reach your destination.

At the beggining it's nice. After some time it's just boring...

My opinion of course...

If you see stuff as a grind then you're playing the wrong game. If you remove the grind the game is no longer the same and it loses everything it set out to be.

If there are no time sinks you're done in a few weeks and you don't play anymore anyway.

If they change the game how many players will they lose over time? How many players will they gain and for how long.

EVE has time sinks it has been going since 2003.

The Devs have a game in mind and Devs never really pander to the whims of the player base. They know if they do they'll end up with an incoherent vision and no one will play it.

Why do people think a game needs to be changed so they play it? Find a game you like instead. If you moaned on every forum and Devs changed the game you would have a library of 50 games all the same.

So time sinks are reason to spend time because otherwise game won't last? (edited part)

Seems like a failure in the design as well as a Golden alibi...

At least to me.

 

[StiTch]

If you could select a free Anaconda at the start of the game it would still not address the large issue is that there are too many stretches of gameplay where you are effectively doing "nothing" and your moment-to-moment decision making is irrelevant. Fix the moment-to-moment gameplay

But this is all ultimately your choice. You've been given a massive universe and if traveling time isn't your thing, don't spend all your time traveling! How difficult can that be?

It's like going on holiday, booking yourself onto every tour bus going, and then whining you didn't get beach relaxation time.

If relaxing/doing time is what you're after, do so. It took me a good afternoon in a reasonable jumping ship to find a system I could call "home", or at least my base. Fulfills every prerequisite I had, including station types/distances/proximity to discounted modules/appearance/HazRES/reasonable planets for materials...

What's to stop any player doing the same? Enjoy the hunt of looking for a system that could ultimately allow quick transport to a select few nearby systems, has a RES in it, generates the types of missions they want, and then living there. Suddenly no need to spend half your time traveling.

Honestly, I hate it when devs of any game patronise players by treating them like sheep that need herding using the same carrot and stick. But the more I read in these forums, the more I realise that players want to be blinkered. Give them freedom and they can't handle it...

fix the consequentiality of your decisions; make different choices *matter*; and I'll gladly fly in a sidewinder forever and it won't matter to me if the Anaconda is forever out of reach.

Sure, this is true. If you want to satisfy a God syndrome, then you'll have to deal with being small fry, but it's not unreasonable to ask that the "galactic influence" aspects of ED are given some TLC. PP certainly never made the grade for the great shaping of history it was cut out to be, and system-based aspects of the BGS turned out to be pretty lackluster.

 

[duckofdeath]

It's funny how people respond differently to the same stimuli.

Learning the basics of conversation, I see.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Some people like boxing, some people like cricket, some people like both.

The PC Gamer article comes from the perspective of someone who hates cricket and thinks every game should be boxing - wouldn't it be more efficient and exciting if the teams just attacked each other with the bats and the last one standing won? Expecting someone to watch a 5-day test match without Netflix on a second monitor is ridiculous - you can end up sitting on a bench for days if you're late in the batting order.

There's probably a parallel article somewhere resenting the focus on all action all the time and proposing that boxing be reformed with a 3 hour tea break between rounds and played in a ring a few hundred metres across, where you're only allowed to attack by taking it in turns to throw boxing gloves at each other.

Of course, sport journalists - being a field of journalism that has existed for more than a few decades - have mostly got past the idea that every single sport has to appeal to their exact personal tastes or is objectively badly designed.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Never understood this argument. You can do almost the same with 10 hours per year as you can with 10 hours per day. Yeah, you're not going to maintain rank 5 in powerplay, score highly in any CGs, or take any missions that will take longer than you have time to play, but otherwise nothing stops you from playing as much or as little as you want.

To get everything in the game, yeah, that takes a lot of time, but nobody says you should get everything in the game.

And look at the flip side, if everything was possible to get quicker, then those with more play time would be complaining about lack of content for them. Its pretty much like people saying in WoW that getting to level 99 takes too long and that's why they don't play.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Never understood this argument. You can do almost the same with 10 hours per year as you can with 10 hours per day. Yeah, you're not going to maintain rank 5 in powerplay, score highly in any CGs, or take any missions that will take longer than you have time to play, but otherwise nothing stops you from playing as much or as little as you want.

To get everything in the game, yeah, that takes a lot of time, but nobody says you should get everything in the game.

And look at the flip side, if everything was possible to get quicker, then those with more play time would be complaining about lack of content for them. Its pretty much like people saying in WoW that getting to level 99 takes too long and that's why they don't play.

We're not just looking at unlocking e.g. an Anaconda.
We're looking at gathering credits, gaining ranks and then equipping ships along with engineered stuff so the gameplay (which was pretty fine before) doesn't become a tedious slough to wade through.

in essence: The game offered compelling gameplay before - tedious at times but still enjoyable - now I have to deal with additional pointless busywork on top to play the game I played before. That added nothing for me. It rather took away.

 

[Noctover]

Never had an issue with the whole time thing. I work alot, but i still have enough time to slowly plod through. I play ESO and it takes me forever to do stuff but i see that as the career of my char rather than something i need to rush toward.

I quit ED for 3 main reasons (well i haven't "quit" but I've uninstalled it)

1. Mostly because most of the game feels like a framework, a proof of concept, a placeholder. Missions are barebones, exploration is barebones, tourism is barebones. Im not triple Elite or even single Elite but i feel I've seen everything the game has to offer with exception of unlocking all the engineers. To get further in the game i'd literally be repeating the same thing forever and the world isn't that interesting.

In ESO to progress, i do different stories, missions, see different scenery, encounter different enemies, amounts with different abilities. In ED if i do a planetary scan mission, i've literally done them all. Im not comparing ESO to ED btw, im comparing the progression of other games to ED.

2. Lack of risk and challenge. I feel like i can go anywhere do anything and can only lose my ship or get in to trouble if i choose to. In the vast galaxy there is no area that is remotely dangerous and no interdiction you cannot avoid in any ship. It feels too much like pandering, like i've bought a game and the "easy" option has been chosen for me.

3. The RNG. I don't like the way even when you pay for a product the same way everyone else does, a dice roll dictates who gets to see content and have the better modules; the way that if you are determined to see an event you have to sit by a landmark or jump endlessly through a region for no reason and hope the dice rolls in your favour. That isn't gameplay.

Luckily i think FD themselves have recognised that the framework they have put in place lacks depth which is why they have changed their focus instead of new content, to work on whats there. I shall keep watching and make my return in a year or so (or when Thargoids are out providing they are implemented properly )

 

[Stealthie]

I sympathise with the OP's problem but I'm afraid I'm opposed to any kind of "fast track" idea.

As a uni' student, I'm sure you understand the concept of having to put in a certain amount of effort to achieve a goal and I'm sure you wouldn't approve of some kind of "fast track degree" which only taught people what they need to pass an exam and they ended up with the same qualification that'd taken you 3 years to achieve.

Same thing applies here.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I sympathise with the OP's problem but I'm afraid I'm opposed to any kind of "fast track" idea.

As a uni' student, I'm sure you understand the concept of having to put in a certain amount of effort to achieve a goal and I'm sure you wouldn't approve of some kind of "fast track degree" which only taught people what they need to pass an exam and they ended up with the same qualification that'd taken you 3 years to achieve.

Same thing applies here.

Ye, I don't want fast tracking - I just want gameplay that's worth doing in itself.

 

[Frameshift_is_Magic]

Elite has a steep "time tax". People with higher opportunity costs will frown on this time tax, while retired people or those on welfare or those who don't have other hobbies or family won't see the problem and rationalize time sinks as important parts of game design. The question is: which group will have more time to moan on the forums if design changes go against their wishes?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Elite has a steep "time tax". People with higher opportunity costs will frown on this time tax, while retired people or those on welfare or those who don't have other hobbies or family won't see the problem and rationalize time sinks as important parts of game design. The question is: which group will have more time to moan on the forums if design changes go against their wishes?

Is it? I thought the question was rather who is going to buy future "DLC" or whatever it will be called.

 

[Rakaposhi]

I found the tone of the article a little arrogant, but I can see what he's driving at.

At the heart, games are a pretty basic transaction. How many hours will I play this game vs. how much does it cost. If players aren't able to reconcile those two sides of the equation, that's their problem, not the game's. On that that scale, the worst games I have bought are Black & White and Dungeon Keeper. They promised so much but delivered so little.

Elite Dangerous? Go read the kickstarter page. It doesn't really promise a lot. Delivered gameplay for ED and Horizons? For the money I spent, it's been huge.

 

[Iskariot]

Not started to slate ED in anyway but first i've seen it discussed in a editorial

http://www.pcgamer.com/do-games-hav...el=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

One main reason I quit playing ED. With kids and minimal time, it felt like I was never going to get anywhere. So frustrating to spend a good hour jumping, getting half way through a mission to realize I'm out of time. Then wishing I was back at uni with, what seems like now, endless hours to spare

Made me wonder if some sort method could work with ED to allow people the option to speed up certain aspects. Does seem like there are two sides to the argument. 1. Spend and enjoy the length of the game or 2. speed through it to get the ship you desire to make combat "fair".

I would love to speed up the game and would it really effect the people who have the time to enjoy the length and time it takes?

It is very well possible to have a bit of ED fun in just an hour of gamplay. It simply depends on the activity you choose.
You can't go to the movies either if you have just one our to spend.
These are simply facts of life.

This game's scope is what attracts me and I am willing to pour many hours of my life into it.
Those who cannot do so will simply have to look for another game.

 

[archie456]

I would like the option for the ship to automatically make the jumps to the next system when travelling very long distances.

Its 3303, its should be possible for the ship to align to a system and press H automatically.

So say I'm travelling 1000 light years, the ship would align and jump automatically unless attacked or put in danger, that way I could watch a bit of youtube whilst the ship does its thing and I could jump in if there was any danger etc to be dealt with.

At the moment when I play ED, I watch youtube when doing loads of jumps, but have to keep pausing every 30 seconds to align and jump again.

I would also like the ability to do things to the ship when jumping as opposed to freezing out the control - say synthesis or setting up ship power levels etc.

I don't think any of this would be immersion breaking...


Edit: Also using the FSD within a system to travel to the outer most planet or star would be a great time saver...

 

[Ian Skippy]

We're not just looking at unlocking e.g. an Anaconda.
We're looking at gathering credits, gaining ranks and then equipping ships along with engineered stuff so the gameplay (which was pretty fine before) doesn't become a tedious slough to wade through.

in essence: The game offered compelling gameplay before - tedious at times but still enjoyable - now I have to deal with additional pointless busywork on top to play the game I played before. That added nothing for me. It rather took away.

As someone with a ton of credits yet mostly flying small ships: what exactly are you referring to? What gameplay became a slough and forces one to get the best ship with the best mods? I honestly dont follow you here.