Deleted member 38366
D
IMHO there's been numerous issues, although thankfully a few have been addressed or at least lessons learned for future implementations/plans from the looks of it.
Original issues :
- ELITE isn't a Sandbox Game and on top not "finished" by design (ongoing addition of Elements/Features/Assets etc.)
That in the distant past had led to situations where i.e. GALnet or Forum hints (deliberately placed "mystery comments") lured people out into the Black to search things that afterwards were clearly proven not to be in the Game yet.
Sometimes for almost a full year.
Essentially Players were lead on wild goose chases and were effectively chasing non-existent ghosts.
When the hinted content was eventually added after a Major Client Update, magically stuff was found within hours or days after Release.
Understandably, that has frustrated many otherwise Exploration or Mystery-chasing inclined Players severely, often beyond repair.
- on top, the lack of Content (even when present) acting "on its own" as it would in an actual Sandbox Game resulted in basically zero chances of these things being found by even the most hardcore Explorers
The odds were simply way too low, the search areas undefined and the in-game Tools to assist in such searches basically non-existent.
Again, this quickly wore out alot of folks who tried nonetheless.
Eventually, any such progress only came from utilizing Forums, getting direct hints from Frontier or them drastically ramping up some parameters to work that "one in a Trillion chance" into reasonable gameplay.
With many critical hints later found to be placed in the Audio spectrum of Sound Files or Youtube Videos definitely didn't help either.
Those were simply entirely inaccessible to all Players who sticked to in-game content.
- existing in-game Information (GALnet)
This was often either fake (ahead of its time, content not yet in Game) or later vastly incomplete, making it again physically impossible to even visit discovered sites without referencing either Forum, Youtube or some Google Spreadsheets.
All in all, the key Transporter of Information (GALnet) has been under-used and is generally regarded as extremely poorly maintained. Just can't do its core job that way.
- RNG
Be it gathering UAs, especially UPs or just trying to see a non-Youtube Thargoid has proven to be either "a dime a dozen" all the way upto "spent 2 weeks bunny-hopping around the Pleiades... not working".
With no Sanity Checks applied, that's just what happens. RNG.
Again, not very helpful and perfectly suited only to frustrate those who'd like to interact (or just watch) what little Teasers the Game had to offer at that time.
- speed of Storyline progression
(did you know that there were supposedly upto 5 different Storylines active? Hard to identify, aren't they...)
The super-slo-motion progression of things and the femto-cam ultra-slow narration accompanying it - and the cumulative duration of the "Teasers only" Phase as icing on the cake definitely did their own thing. That sure didn't help.
Credited to the slow speed of Feature Implementation, everything simply was "Construction in Progress".
------------------------------------
In a nutshell, the way many of these things were implemented and run essentially achieved one single goal :
- diminish and kill all possible Interest by maximizing frustration and denying these experiences to many Players, causing alot to eventually walk away from it
Alot went terribly wrong or took a bad turn due to above factors.
Time will tell if the future will bring a more "playable" progression of things.
Original issues :
- ELITE isn't a Sandbox Game and on top not "finished" by design (ongoing addition of Elements/Features/Assets etc.)
That in the distant past had led to situations where i.e. GALnet or Forum hints (deliberately placed "mystery comments") lured people out into the Black to search things that afterwards were clearly proven not to be in the Game yet.
Sometimes for almost a full year.
Essentially Players were lead on wild goose chases and were effectively chasing non-existent ghosts.
When the hinted content was eventually added after a Major Client Update, magically stuff was found within hours or days after Release.
Understandably, that has frustrated many otherwise Exploration or Mystery-chasing inclined Players severely, often beyond repair.
- on top, the lack of Content (even when present) acting "on its own" as it would in an actual Sandbox Game resulted in basically zero chances of these things being found by even the most hardcore Explorers
The odds were simply way too low, the search areas undefined and the in-game Tools to assist in such searches basically non-existent.
Again, this quickly wore out alot of folks who tried nonetheless.
Eventually, any such progress only came from utilizing Forums, getting direct hints from Frontier or them drastically ramping up some parameters to work that "one in a Trillion chance" into reasonable gameplay.
With many critical hints later found to be placed in the Audio spectrum of Sound Files or Youtube Videos definitely didn't help either.
Those were simply entirely inaccessible to all Players who sticked to in-game content.
- existing in-game Information (GALnet)
This was often either fake (ahead of its time, content not yet in Game) or later vastly incomplete, making it again physically impossible to even visit discovered sites without referencing either Forum, Youtube or some Google Spreadsheets.
All in all, the key Transporter of Information (GALnet) has been under-used and is generally regarded as extremely poorly maintained. Just can't do its core job that way.
- RNG
Be it gathering UAs, especially UPs or just trying to see a non-Youtube Thargoid has proven to be either "a dime a dozen" all the way upto "spent 2 weeks bunny-hopping around the Pleiades... not working".
With no Sanity Checks applied, that's just what happens. RNG.
Again, not very helpful and perfectly suited only to frustrate those who'd like to interact (or just watch) what little Teasers the Game had to offer at that time.
- speed of Storyline progression
(did you know that there were supposedly upto 5 different Storylines active? Hard to identify, aren't they...)
The super-slo-motion progression of things and the femto-cam ultra-slow narration accompanying it - and the cumulative duration of the "Teasers only" Phase as icing on the cake definitely did their own thing. That sure didn't help.
Credited to the slow speed of Feature Implementation, everything simply was "Construction in Progress".
------------------------------------
In a nutshell, the way many of these things were implemented and run essentially achieved one single goal :
- diminish and kill all possible Interest by maximizing frustration and denying these experiences to many Players, causing alot to eventually walk away from it
Alot went terribly wrong or took a bad turn due to above factors.
Time will tell if the future will bring a more "playable" progression of things.
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