I purchased an extra copy of Elite for my son, who had watched me play a bit and was excited by what he saw. He and I have been able to get together in a wing and go out hunting, myself using my HOTAS and he using a Logitech controller. In addition, it turned out that three of his friends from school also had the game, and so they'd all get together and play from time to time.
The other day I noticed that he hasn't been wanting to play much, and any time I did see him log in it was for no more than 15-20 minutes before he'd shut down. Apparently his friends (all 15) have stopped playing as well.
So I started asking what his main complaints were with the game.
Firstly, the issue is that he wants to be able to get into combat much faster, with bigger results when he does. His statement regarding RES was that every time he gets into one, he either runs into enemies too big to fight (Pythons), or the spawns are slow and he spends too long flying around without a target. I mentioned Combat Zones to him, and the opinion there was that too frequently you get targeted by multiple large ships, and that there doesn't seem to be any sort of objective to them.
Second, there isn't anything that he can do with his friends. If they wing up, it reduces the payout for combat to the point that you're better off flying alone in many cases. They want tasks to complete together.
Compare this to his old pappy who likes flying around on the far side of Sagittarius A* taking screenshots of pretty planets, and you see why I was having difficulty coming up with much for a solution. I mentioned that it isn't a game of instant gratification, that things take time, and that you can't expect to be able to take on a Dangerous Python in a C-Rated Asp unless you've spent a lot of time becoming a top flight pilot, but the truth is that his age bracket wants that. They can log into a shooter or play minecraft with friends and get what they want out of it immediately. They don't have to spend hours and hours killing Vipers to be able to afford an upgrade to their loadout. Even in an MMORPG (He played Elder Scrolls Online for a while), the grind is masked behind quests and tasks; there are checkboxes everywhere giving you updates to individual storylines.
Part of it, he says, is that he feels he would do better with a HOTAS setup. That's likely true, but it's not going to make the game.
This was when I considered CQC. Previously, I'd thought that it's an interesting thing, but hardly what the game really needs right now. But looking at it through the lens of a 15 year old and his friends, it provides exactly what is needed to compete for their interest with other titles. You get to fight immediately when you start it, you get to upgrade your CQC ship over time, you complete matches and get a feeling of accomplishment for winning them, all without the hours of obvious grinding that you see in the standard game. The teamplay is there as well, so you actually have a reason to join with friends to do something.
So I've changed my tune. CQC is something I can see getting people interested in the game that weren't interested before, or that have lost interest for one reason or another. Good call by Frontier to focus on it, and I think it will increase the appeal of the game for many. The trick now is to work on the base game so that those won over by CQC can find an element of that within the game itself, be that through mission, exploration, mining, or trading overhauls.
The other day I noticed that he hasn't been wanting to play much, and any time I did see him log in it was for no more than 15-20 minutes before he'd shut down. Apparently his friends (all 15) have stopped playing as well.
So I started asking what his main complaints were with the game.
Firstly, the issue is that he wants to be able to get into combat much faster, with bigger results when he does. His statement regarding RES was that every time he gets into one, he either runs into enemies too big to fight (Pythons), or the spawns are slow and he spends too long flying around without a target. I mentioned Combat Zones to him, and the opinion there was that too frequently you get targeted by multiple large ships, and that there doesn't seem to be any sort of objective to them.
Second, there isn't anything that he can do with his friends. If they wing up, it reduces the payout for combat to the point that you're better off flying alone in many cases. They want tasks to complete together.
Compare this to his old pappy who likes flying around on the far side of Sagittarius A* taking screenshots of pretty planets, and you see why I was having difficulty coming up with much for a solution. I mentioned that it isn't a game of instant gratification, that things take time, and that you can't expect to be able to take on a Dangerous Python in a C-Rated Asp unless you've spent a lot of time becoming a top flight pilot, but the truth is that his age bracket wants that. They can log into a shooter or play minecraft with friends and get what they want out of it immediately. They don't have to spend hours and hours killing Vipers to be able to afford an upgrade to their loadout. Even in an MMORPG (He played Elder Scrolls Online for a while), the grind is masked behind quests and tasks; there are checkboxes everywhere giving you updates to individual storylines.
Part of it, he says, is that he feels he would do better with a HOTAS setup. That's likely true, but it's not going to make the game.
This was when I considered CQC. Previously, I'd thought that it's an interesting thing, but hardly what the game really needs right now. But looking at it through the lens of a 15 year old and his friends, it provides exactly what is needed to compete for their interest with other titles. You get to fight immediately when you start it, you get to upgrade your CQC ship over time, you complete matches and get a feeling of accomplishment for winning them, all without the hours of obvious grinding that you see in the standard game. The teamplay is there as well, so you actually have a reason to join with friends to do something.
So I've changed my tune. CQC is something I can see getting people interested in the game that weren't interested before, or that have lost interest for one reason or another. Good call by Frontier to focus on it, and I think it will increase the appeal of the game for many. The trick now is to work on the base game so that those won over by CQC can find an element of that within the game itself, be that through mission, exploration, mining, or trading overhauls.
