Is Anything Left To Improve In Horizons?

[Catalyser]

Rebalancing the ships and weapons so we get a level playing field both in PvP and PvE, making combat more skill based and less grind/gear based.

Seriously - what would be the point of playing then? I'll just use the original Sidey and run around for a few years pew pewing.

The whole point of this game is to do things, collect and grind, to get a better ship. What pi$&es me off is doing all that and then having a ship that is basically the same as everyone else's in combat.

Sorry, not trying to have a swipe at you, I'm just frustrated at the whole balancing thing in ED. A bad a$& ship is the ED way of saying I'm a Level 50 character in another game. I should be able to take down Level 10 characters with relative ease.

Asteroid Belts.

Not planetary rings, but Asteroid Belts.

For all the Mining improvements, these were glossed over. Why? No idea. But these so need to be refined and improved upon, to make them viable.

Ditto, and planetary surface mining.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Seriously - what would be the point of playing then? I'll just use the original Sidey and run around for a few years pew pewing.

The whole point of this game is to do things, collect and grind, to get a better ship. What pi$&es me off is doing all that and then having a ship that is basically the same as everyone else's in combat.

Sorry, not trying to have a swipe at you, I'm just frustrated at the whole balancing thing in ED. A bad a$& ship is the ED way of saying I'm a Level 50 character in another game. I should be able to take down Level 10 characters with relative ease.

Plenty of excellent pilots can take on bigger ships in smaller ones and take them out. Pilot skill is a massive part of the game.

 

[Valorin]

I believe FD has tweaked lots of things since Horizons first dropped. They've spent this last year improving things in this version of it (which is a good thing, I believe).

They've done improvements in QOL items and graphics. What's left to improve in it? Or do you think it's time for them to move on to something more juicy? DLC's involving atmosphere? DLC's with legs? DLC's with story plots that you can choose to play or ignore?

I think the playing field has been created, the lawn has been trimmed, and grid lines nicely set and improved. I believe it's time for something juicy. Toss in a ball and let's play something.

What do you think?

I disagree. I think there is still a lot to do about the playing field, and I think they are working on that as well.
Not because it hasn't been taken care of, but because space is big and there's a lot to discover. Apart from Horizons planets will always be a topic of updates. Be it surface POIs or more planet types to land.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I think there is plenty which could be improved but personally I would rather they happened alongside expansions. 3 years since the last paid expansion is too long imo . I just hope they don't try to make player gtoup megaships their next dlc

 

[Chaffers]

Seriously - what would be the point of playing then? I'll just use the original Sidey and run around for a few years pew pewing.

The whole point of this game is to do things, collect and grind, to get a better ship. What pi$&es me off is doing all that and then having a ship that is basically the same as everyone else's in combat.

Sorry, not trying to have a swipe at you, I'm just frustrated at the whole balancing thing in ED. A bad a$& ship is the ED way of saying I'm a Level 50 character in another game. I should be able to take down Level 10 characters with relative ease.



Ditto, and planetary surface mining.

Hardly...

A Cutter = 2 hours gameplay. A fully equipped smeaton special not too many more. Credits are no measure of achievement in this game.

 

[babelfisch]

The game still lacks cockpit cats.

FDEV said in a recent newsletter that they will implement some of the best and most common suggestions in 2019, which means that cockpit cats are confirmed. Either that or space legs.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

The game still lacks cockpit cats.

FDEV said in a recent newsletter that they will implement some of the best and most common suggestions in 2019, which means that cockpit cats are confirmed. Either that or space legs.

Did they really? Surely npc ship's crew and NPC wingmates as in the DDF must rank very highly in that.? The day they come (if done well) I shall be dusting off the cobwebs and opening the wallet for some ship decorations.
I would rather those things (and the accompanying content mentioned in DDF) than any space legs or atmospheric planets myself

 

[Stinja]

+1 for cockpit cats. Also it feels like FDev moved away from QoL fixes, console SRV bug ignored all year for example, but outstanding (some as already mentioned):

- keybind profile management. Resetting your bindings with updates; not loading when you swap devices (between HOTAS and controller say); letting us reset segments of the controls, not all of it; even breaking it into chunks better, instead of the massive list it is.
There's a bunch of tweaks that could improve the QoL around keybinding.

- multicrew. Let us mix wings, with 2 people in a single ship; multicrew SRVs; gameplay around it eg: navigator role with say scanning, plotting, targeting; mining multicrew, with a mining SLF, allowing wing member to feed to a refinery ship etc

- NPC crew. Letting them be visible; pilot ship while the CMDR uses turrets (it's already basically there from multicrew); perma-death.

- limpet and limpet controllers. I mean it's just unbelievable the number of limpet types, and how the whole system functions.

- utility slot pass. What should be a utility, scanners all over the place, limpet controllers as utilities?

- stations. Why no small pad only stations? installation, megaships, asteroid bases, surface bases all feel they could be revisited.

- ship pass. Biggest QoL they could do is really examine ships. Instead of "clone ships", why not just refactor the existing one. Blah blah backlash from players, over X or Y favourite ship, but it would improve the game IMO taking look at the power creep, philosophy of small/med/large, variety and redundancy.


Bonus QoL issue *cough* Hotel Cali *cough*:

- Private Groups. Max number of players, management tools, setting "rules", and so on.

 

[galahad2069]

Fix broken wing mechanics (e.g. navlock dropping you 100s of kms away from your wingmate or straight above the far side of a nearby planet) and instance problems (players not being able to see each other, shadowrams, 5 km "teleportations" etc.).

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Totally disagree with you!

Multicrew was a great tool from the very start. The problem was there just wasn't much to do via this kind of gameplay except combat.

After Tuesday Multicrew as it is will become 300% more meaningfull, as you'll be able to share with your friends exploration and mining mechanics via multicrew now.

For me, Multicrew will become complete now!

are you serious?
The one and only thing that really works in Multicrew, is having a friend or two using your SLF while bounty hunting / CZ grinding.

in horizons they have shifted the main credit income to missions -> crew doesn't get anything.

mining in multicrew - the crew gets NOTHING but the 5% trade interest that they have to collect after the mutlicrew session at the starport it was created.
gunner combat in multicrew is not only very cumbersome with the stupid auto-lock-on target, but most of the tools the gunner gets to use, simply don't work
examples: KWS, Manifest Scanner, Wake scanner, Xeno Scanner, prospector limpets (dont follow aim), collector limpets (need cargo hatch control),

and lets see if the new mining tools got bugfixed between the last beta and release. the drills UI was bugged, and the auto-lock on target doesn't help if the ship is moving

yes, the thing that will be better on tuesday is, that the gunner can now go into external view and identify targets in supercruise 360°,
but i wonder if they have fixed the bug where targets that are identfied as wanted by the gunner only are not allowed to be attacked by the gunner without incuring a bounty on the mothership.

also, i wonder if they have removed the "you have to stand still in supercruise to use the FSS, even as gunner" restriction.

....

i could go on with it. Multicrew's major issue is not the lack of gameplay, its the lack of Quality of the few things where it is allowed with it...

 

[Rubbernuke]

Powerplay (pre Horizons and a supposedly 'core' feature') pirate gameplay, engineering effect balance, useful engineering effects outside weight reduction / power, block function, P2P improvements (ongoing).

 

[Leadfoot]

Release the Kraken

Repped - If atmospheric planets become a thing, especially with gas giants becoming accessible, they need giant creatures that pioneers name "Krakens" and they need to have a huge maw that can swallow an anaconda ..... sideways.

Ditto, and planetary surface mining.

Agreed. I'd love to mine on planets the way one can mine asteroids.

- NPC crew. Letting them be visible; pilot ship while the CMDR uses turrets (it's already basically there from multicrew); perma-death.
- limpet and limpet controllers. I mean it's just unbelievable the number of limpet types, and how the whole system functions.

I like both ideas. I don't get to play at the same time all the time, so multicrew for me would be next to impossible to schedule. I'm semi-retired but that doesn't mean I'm always available to either host a crew or join someone else's ship at the same time each day / evening.

Limpet controllers - there was another HUGE discussion about that already and I fell on the side of "one box with multiple applications" column. The limpets are all the same - they just need a single box to tell them what you want them to do. One person suggested that this gives you a point to think about - what do you bring and what do you leave behind. I believe my response was "If FD had made ONE box with a selector switch on it originally, would you want FD to split these boxes into 8 separate boxes?" I think the thread died after that.

Oh, and as someone else mentioned, I'd love to see an improvement in Black Holes.

 

[Gaarp Kobayashi]

are you serious?
The one and only thing that really works in Multicrew, is having a friend or two using your SLF while bounty hunting / CZ grinding.

in horizons they have shifted the main credit income to missions -> crew doesn't get anything.

mining in multicrew - the crew gets NOTHING but the 5% trade interest that they have to collect after the mutlicrew session at the starport it was created.
gunner combat in multicrew is not only very cumbersome with the stupid auto-lock-on target, but most of the tools the gunner gets to use, simply don't work
examples: KWS, Manifest Scanner, Wake scanner, Xeno Scanner, prospector limpets (dont follow aim), collector limpets (need cargo hatch control),

and lets see if the new mining tools got bugfixed between the last beta and release. the drills UI was bugged, and the auto-lock on target doesn't help if the ship is moving

yes, the thing that will be better on tuesday is, that the gunner can now go into external view and identify targets in supercruise 360°,
but i wonder if they have fixed the bug where targets that are identfied as wanted by the gunner only are not allowed to be attacked by the gunner without incuring a bounty on the mothership.

also, i wonder if they have removed the "you have to stand still in supercruise to use the FSS, even as gunner" restriction.

....

i could go on with it. Multicrew's major issue is not the lack of gameplay, its the lack of Quality of the few things where it is allowed with it...

Yes. I’m serious. And you have intentionally missed the whole new exploration mechanics via Milticrew post Tuesday’s patch to support your point of view, haven’t you?

 

[Jukelo]

I'd like to see multicrew + srv and better integration of multicrew and wings

 

[krylite]

I would rather they call it something else than Horizons or Beyond related. Horizons and part of Beyond had been bashed so much by the naysayers for too long, which lowered expectations of some passerbys to the forum. Such as some not knowing otherwise somehow thinking X4-foundations was going to be a game with ED's massive scope, "just like ED, but better" hogwash where the naysayer trolls tried to shame ED&FD with X4 like they tried to do with NMS-Next vs. ED where it was one of the worst ED bashing-bandwagon web commentary summers ever seen of ED's lifetime.

So if it was spacelegs next year and going forward, npcs and multicrew would also be improved as part of the overall spacelegs gameplay work. In fact holo-me and multi-crew was thought by some to be a preliminary groundwork for spacelegs where the avatars are already modeled to stand, shift weight, limb and upper head movement etc.

 

[Iskariot]

Is Anything Left To Improve In Horizons?

In the game in general there is still enough to flesh out:

- The game could use a more interesting bounty hunt mechanic, with more depth (I made several proposals for this.)
- We need a planetary mining mechanic (with mining SRV).
- We desperately need a good and solid npc crew system.
- An SLM (Ship launched mining utility vehicle) would be cool.
- Other SRV variations would be cool: a heavy assault variant with at least two weapon types, or a fast light skimmer explorer etc.

- The universe could use a lot more variation. Space stations should look the part on the outside too. We should be able to identify a station's core business by looking at it's exterior: a mining station should look like a mining station, a military station should look like a battlestation, a high tech station should have a unique appearance, A industrial station should look like an industrial complex etc. etc.
And it would be awesome if the Empire got a few stations and outposts that looked like true Gutamaya designs.

 

[Wendake]

The only aspect of the game I still feel would need some Beyond / love / fleshout is the gameplay around planetary surfaces.

I see so much potential with what we ALREADY have in the game...not talking about space legs or atmospheric planets here.

Would love to have more reasons to explore in SRV than rock shooting...

- underground caves on icy planets to explore in SRV where you can find rare relics or crystals
- fossiles stuck in the ice that you have to melt down with special SRV hardpoints to be able to collect
- remote and hard to reach places that require SRV skills to collect unique soil / rock samples
- volcanoes with lava streams that you have to avoid to collect samples
- crashed megaship that you can explore in SRV to collect data / materials in it that would require skill to drive in

And I could go on and on ...

Planetary overhaul will come later next year with fleet carriers but do we know if it'll be only visuals improvements (icy planets & bigger rock on rocky planets) or if it'll also add stuff / gameplay related to them ?

o7

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Yes. I’m serious. And you have intentionally missed the whole new exploration mechanics via Milticrew post Tuesday’s patch to support your point of view, haven’t you?

have i missed the part where SRVs are multicrew enabled?
have i missed the part where FDEV confirmed that gunner and the helm can use the FSS at the same time - or where the gunner can use it while the ship is moving.
have i missed the part where FDEV confirmed that USS are synchronized between all members of a multicrew session when it goes live?
have i missed the part where they mentioned to implement real-time updates to the system/orrey map for the whole crew when the one, who can use it, uses the FSS ?

i mean, what are you talking about?

 

[bigity]

There are plenty of basic quality of life improvements that still need to be made in my view. For me, the main one is multiple condition filters on the galaxy map. Basically, every search function that we currently rely on 3^rd party sites for should be in the game. I’m a little disappointed that there hasn’t been more work in this area. I don’t care about menu diving, I just don’t want to be pulling off my VR headset every five minutes or seeing 21^st century web pages while playing.

OMG how did I forget this. Yes.

 

[Lucifera Danzig]

The ability to see what's on your other ships stored at the same station and move modules between those ships without having to change to a different ship each time you want to refit something.

Please....

You can see what's on the other ships by looking in the Shipyard, in the Remote tab, if I recall correctly.