rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
UPDATED 09/01
I went through the list and added some comments in yellow. Really glad to see things from this list being addressed, one way or another. Let this thread be an actual proof that FDEV actually listens to the community feedback
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OP2:
I have received a notification from a developer that they find this thread and our feedback very useful and are taking it on board. Keep the feedback coming guys!
I will keep updating this list to demonstrate just how many different things don't really make sense or are not very consistent with either the rest of the game or itself, or just simply break immersion. Some are smaller issues, some are bigger ones, but majority should be relatively easy to fix - and yet nothing is being done about them, despite some of them being in the game since the very beginning. Instead more are introduced with every release
OP:
These are the little things that really kill the experience for me. They are not massive deal breakers on their own, but when you look at the game as a whole and put all of them together, they just break the world integrity and make the whole thing not very immersive.
I realise not everyone cares about this stuff and for many of you this is just a game, but for me personally it's more than that. Please pay more attention to little details, Frontier. They make the world believable. They make us forget it's just a game.
Anyway, let's make a list! Feel free to add your own little imerrshun breakers in the comments
PLEASE NOTE: This thread is not intended for dev bashing or "game is doomed" or "nobody is working on Elite anymore" comments. I will be reporting those as offtopic/derail and hoping for moderators to remove them. This thread is to point out little things that break the immersion and world integrity. Things that don't make sense in the context of the lore. Keep it polite and constructive.
Maybe those pesky Planetary Scan missions could be finally useful? You do one of them, and all black markets in 40 LY radius (as this seems to be another arbitrary number thrown into the game recently) appear on the map, regardless of govt type or security level? (As in you're hacking into a database of a local anarchy faction which obviously has the intel on the nearby black market network).
Just more attention to details here please!
Telepresence works from orbit for SRV but only 30 km for SLF.
Also, I can launch 2 fighters if I have another Cmdr in Multi Crew (either 1 NPC and 1 player or 2 players), but I can only launch 1 SLF with NPC crew (because I cannot take more than 1 NPC crew on board).
This is easy to fix. Allow us to take more than 1 NPC crew on board and let them both use 2 SLF's at the same time. Make it consistent with Multi Crew.
Also place the NPC crew avatar in the cockpit, using the extra seat.
It also doesn't make sense from realism point of view - why can't I put additional escape capsule for my crew? Who in their right mind would sign a contract like that? It's like in case of a fire, the emergency exit in my office was for management only and all regular employees were forced to stay in and burn to death.
This is easy to fix - just add extra cost to the ship insurance for the additional escape capsule for the crew member.
This is another big one. It reminds me constantly that all the traffic in the system is just 100% RNG and there is no consistency behind it. Just a dice roll, "generate 2D6 NPC ships".
Can't it be already generated on the surface when we scan the Nav Beacon or use ADS?
Riiiight...
(Oh BTW, so they can have the escape pod, but my SLF pilot still can't have one?)
No easy fix for this one either (imagine the meltdown if one career path was blocked if you're at certain rank with the opposing force... and what about the people that already have both ranks?).
Can't win here. It never made sense and you can't just change it now, because people will get mad either way.
This could be enhanced by introducing a 3rd stage - station under attack.
If we don't stop the attack by killing Scouts, station is under attack and we can fight alien ships right next to it (which would probably result in fines for firing our weapons in no fire zone ). If we manage to repell the aliens, the station is still damaged, but not as badly, as currently when the attack happens.
Occupied escape pod is worth 30k Cr. Personal Effects are worth something like 400 Cr (yes, four hundred Credits). Why on earth should I risk my life to try and rescue people from Thargoids when I can comfortably earn gazillion more Credits by running passenger transport, planetary scan or other missions?
The same goes for mega ship loot. It's absolute peanuts which makes it a one-time activity just to see what's it all about and then one can forget about it forever. Why not use some of the existing commodities like Rare Artwork or Ancient Artefacts being included in the loot and introduce new mission type to get those specific items from a mega ship? Those missions could pay handsomely (considering the risk involved) and the other loot would then be a nice bonus.
Instead we get the ability to loot the space installations instead of mega ships now, which I bet will contain the same worthless loot that mega ships.
Let us ask them for directions or location of where to buy a specific ship or find the nearest black market or IFC or material trader or whatever. There are tonnes of useful communication options that could be introduced to replace the current 3rd party tools that we're often forced to use if we don't want to randomly fly around hoping the RNG will be generous enoguh to bless us with the ship we want being available in the next shipyard we dock at.
The list goes on, these are from the comments which I think fit with my list above, where I personally think immersion > gameplay:
And other notable mentions from the comments, where I think however that gameplay reasons are justified enough to trump immersion OR are simply requests for improvements to the current mechanics:
I went through the list and added some comments in yellow. Really glad to see things from this list being addressed, one way or another. Let this thread be an actual proof that FDEV actually listens to the community feedback
---
OP2:
I have received a notification from a developer that they find this thread and our feedback very useful and are taking it on board. Keep the feedback coming guys!
I will keep updating this list to demonstrate just how many different things don't really make sense or are not very consistent with either the rest of the game or itself, or just simply break immersion. Some are smaller issues, some are bigger ones, but majority should be relatively easy to fix - and yet nothing is being done about them, despite some of them being in the game since the very beginning. Instead more are introduced with every release
OP:
These are the little things that really kill the experience for me. They are not massive deal breakers on their own, but when you look at the game as a whole and put all of them together, they just break the world integrity and make the whole thing not very immersive.
I realise not everyone cares about this stuff and for many of you this is just a game, but for me personally it's more than that. Please pay more attention to little details, Frontier. They make the world believable. They make us forget it's just a game.
Anyway, let's make a list! Feel free to add your own little imerrshun breakers in the comments
PLEASE NOTE: This thread is not intended for dev bashing or "game is doomed" or "nobody is working on Elite anymore" comments. I will be reporting those as offtopic/derail and hoping for moderators to remove them. This thread is to point out little things that break the immersion and world integrity. Things that don't make sense in the context of the lore. Keep it polite and constructive.
- Black Market being listed as official starport contact, right next to the Authority contact. Also, black market being listed as an official facility of a starport on system map.
Maybe those pesky Planetary Scan missions could be finally useful? You do one of them, and all black markets in 40 LY radius (as this seems to be another arbitrary number thrown into the game recently) appear on the map, regardless of govt type or security level? (As in you're hacking into a database of a local anarchy faction which obviously has the intel on the nearby black market network).
Lack of variety in generic NPC lines, that get old very quickly.I consider this acknowledged and acted upon. I've seen quite a few new lines from the NPC's in game lately and while it's still nowhere near enough the variety required for better immersion, it seem like FDEV are actually addressing this. Slowly, but (hopefully) steady
- Idiotic scenarios, where a big ship like Anaconda is interdicted by a lone Sidewinder that claims "I'm gonna boil you up!" or an NPC that yells "This can all stop if you give me X tonnes of cargo" while being practically annihilated.
Just more attention to details here please!
- Inconsistent telepresence. I can TP myself 65000 LY to my friend's ship at Beagle Point, but a SLF can't hold the TP link over 30 km distance...?
Telepresence works from orbit for SRV but only 30 km for SLF.
- Inconsistent NPC crew vs Multi Crew and Ship Launched Fighters mechanics
Also, I can launch 2 fighters if I have another Cmdr in Multi Crew (either 1 NPC and 1 player or 2 players), but I can only launch 1 SLF with NPC crew (because I cannot take more than 1 NPC crew on board).
This is easy to fix. Allow us to take more than 1 NPC crew on board and let them both use 2 SLF's at the same time. Make it consistent with Multi Crew.
Also place the NPC crew avatar in the cockpit, using the extra seat.
No escape pods for NPC crew- This is going to be addressed in the upcoming patch. Nice one, FDEV!
It also doesn't make sense from realism point of view - why can't I put additional escape capsule for my crew? Who in their right mind would sign a contract like that? It's like in case of a fire, the emergency exit in my office was for management only and all regular employees were forced to stay in and burn to death.
This is easy to fix - just add extra cost to the ship insurance for the additional escape capsule for the crew member.
Non-persistent USS and NPC ships- Similar to NPC lines, while this is not fully fixed (assassination mission targets silly behaviour anyone?), we now have persistent USS - that was a very welcomed improvement indeed! Hopefully the NPC's with magical teleportation and repair powers will be fixed sometime soon (not TM ).
This is another big one. It reminds me constantly that all the traffic in the system is just 100% RNG and there is no consistency behind it. Just a dice roll, "generate 2D6 NPC ships".
- RNG planetary settlements generation process
Can't it be already generated on the surface when we scan the Nav Beacon or use ADS?
- Tourist passengers jettisoning themselves into space thousands of LY away from populated systems.
Riiiight...
(Oh BTW, so they can have the escape pod, but my SLF pilot still can't have one?)
- Business as usual, while the system is being attacked by an alien race, a nightmare of the past - This has gotten even worse. Where are the Thargoids at all? :/
- You can have a career in both Federal and Imperial Navy and you can achieve the highest possible military rank in opposing forces.
No easy fix for this one either (imagine the meltdown if one career path was blocked if you're at certain rank with the opposing force... and what about the people that already have both ranks?).
Can't win here. It never made sense and you can't just change it now, because people will get mad either way.
- Engineers were supposed to be these mysterious strangers, eccentrics that are hard to find and even harder to please via some "favours" in order to get the upgrades for our modules.
Fines issued in burning station for pad loitering when players are collecting dead bodies and black boxes all over the place...- I believe this was fixed?
- Thargoids in NHSS only
0/1 station attacks (aka Thargoid Thursday)- This was somewhat addressed with the Incursion state and AXCZ. Glad to see things improving here!
This could be enhanced by introducing a 3rd stage - station under attack.
If we don't stop the attack by killing Scouts, station is under attack and we can fight alien ships right next to it (which would probably result in fines for firing our weapons in no fire zone ). If we manage to repell the aliens, the station is still damaged, but not as badly, as currently when the attack happens.
- Lack of missions to support new content + new content not being profitable enough to try it out - While we have some new missions (disable megaship turrets), this is nowhere near what's required for better game world integrity IMO. But again, glad to see FDEV introducing something new here at least. I don't think it's fair to cross this one out yet.
Occupied escape pod is worth 30k Cr. Personal Effects are worth something like 400 Cr (yes, four hundred Credits). Why on earth should I risk my life to try and rescue people from Thargoids when I can comfortably earn gazillion more Credits by running passenger transport, planetary scan or other missions?
The same goes for mega ship loot. It's absolute peanuts which makes it a one-time activity just to see what's it all about and then one can forget about it forever. Why not use some of the existing commodities like Rare Artwork or Ancient Artefacts being included in the loot and introduce new mission type to get those specific items from a mega ship? Those missions could pay handsomely (considering the risk involved) and the other loot would then be a nice bonus.
Instead we get the ability to loot the space installations instead of mega ships now, which I bet will contain the same worthless loot that mega ships.
- Lack of any NPC comms initiated by the player
Let us ask them for directions or location of where to buy a specific ship or find the nearest black market or IFC or material trader or whatever. There are tonnes of useful communication options that could be introduced to replace the current 3rd party tools that we're often forced to use if we don't want to randomly fly around hoping the RNG will be generous enoguh to bless us with the ship we want being available in the next shipyard we dock at.
- Engineer missions being issued on the local station rather than Engineer base
- "Make way for the bigger vessels, Commander" while flying in one of the big 3. And there is of course a Keelback, Eagle or a Vulture in the mailslot, totally ignoring that rule.
Commodity supplies in line with BGS tick rather than real time tracked.- I think this is partially improved now. let's cross it out, daily tick is the heart of the sim and that won't change.
The list goes on, these are from the comments which I think fit with my list above, where I personally think immersion > gameplay:
- Every single time you arrive at a sightseeing tour POI, there are always exactly 3 Belugas there that promptly fly away. This is one of the case where some RNG would actually be good. Instead of always 3 Belugas, there could be some different number of other ships, like Orcas, Dolphins or even regular ships (or even no ships), and they wouldn't need to blitz immediately just because you arrived. This even happens 20k + light years from the bubble. Then they all fly off as if your presence offends them. Bonkers!
- Space is empty of human bodies and that only ships can be damaged. Let's see some people on stations walking around parks and control towers - not just driving trucks. This could do wonders for the sense of scale.
- SRV leaves tracks on planets, but the landing gear doesn't
- NPC ships keep forcing their way into the mailslot when you obviously are already there, filling up the space in your Beluga
- Illegal escape pods. What's that all about?
- No SRV multi crew.
- The ships in distribution centres in systems that are in Famine all take the food they pick up from the Type-9s to other systems that are mostly not in famine. Why don't they take the goods to ports in the same system?
- A mission board that better reflects the current system state... If the system is outbreak, the mission board should be spamming source and return for medicines not 25 massacre wing missions. If it's in famine, source and return food items, not tea or data. Make it believable. If a system is in boom state, how about adding some source and return missions for rares... "Hey, times are great and we want to celebrate... How bout getting us 5 units of Kamatra cigar and 10 units of Lavian Brandy to help us celebrate". These shouldn't be on every board and maybe only to those who are above a certain rank/status. I really would like my elite rank in trade to mean something.
- Disabled/destroyed ships (ie eagles, sidewinders, fas, etc) in USSs that can't be moved, even if you boost into them with your ship? Other debris floats freely around the area
- The ship collision behaviour. I appreciate it's a big ask from Frontier (and I'm not necessarily asking it - there's other things I'd rather they worked on) but whenever I bump someone elses ship (or indeed a landing pad or other bit of infrastructure) I'm instantly taken out of a believable galaxy and into a game world where things just bounce off each other like billiard balls.
- Endless passengers wanting travel from outposts. You can fit what, 100 people max on one of those even they were hanging off the pylons? There should only be worker transport to and from outposts. That would justify the travel and would support the concept of travel in the first place.
- Lack of satellites around populated ELWs
- Founders World ELW dark (huh?)
- Lack of military presence in military systems (only see a few ships now and then other than the docked capital ship)
- Huge payouts to haul commodity X to station Y one system over, but buying and selling that same commodity results in a loss between stations.
- Anonymous Protocols. I have a 200CR fine that I want to pay at this starport, why do I (or why does my ship) need to be anonymous? If I'm anonymous, how does the contact know that it's me/my ship? On the other hand, I've just committed a murder and have requested docking via anonymous protocols, if you were the starport controller, would you let me in?
- Ship damage model is not very sophisticated
- Anonymous Access cont. - approaches starport with Anonymous Access ... "Welcome back, Cmdr. An ally like you is always welcome here".
- No actual representation of Galnet News in the relevant locations in game ( --> Here is another one: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/431541-Aetertitas-A-Asteroid-Belt
Some rather exciting GalNet article leads to nothing in-game.) - Lack of differentiation between security states. Anarchy systems/systems at war/under thargoid attack should have a sense of threat and foreboding. More danger in dangerous bits please. I want wretched hives of scum and villainy, War systems that feel like being in a conflict.
- Permit-locked systems seem to be special (due to permit lock), but there is absolutely nothing special about them.
- Sprite rotation on the plasma ejections from stars
- Planet textures loading abruptly, especially on ELW's.
- Shields take the damage when a ship or SLF hits something but not when SRV hits something.
- You arrive at a "Shots Fired" (and other similar) signal source before the participants even appear.
- Progressive ship spawning after the player gets in SC.
- Seeing the same destination on a dozen skimmer/scan data point/blow up the generator/ect
- Finding human "artifacts" on undiscovered, unexplored planets. This happens way too often.
- When two factions are at war, other than the massacre missions, all kill orders for generals or terrorist leaders or wartime surface scans are for factions in other systems that have nothing to do with the war.
- Illegal goods sell for lower than market price. The issue is that illegal goods are treated the exact same way as stolen goods, thus having below average market price. While stolen goods make sense to sell below market (unless they were also illegal), illegal goods should sell quite above average market price. After all, if they're illegal, then they are scarce and hard to get, and as such be expensive to buy (like narcotics and weapons etc). That's while smuggling exists at all
- The utterly ridiculous NPC names... MAKE IT STOP
- Having to hack in (via anonymous access) to station services for just having a simple fine. I can understand when you have a bounty and are actually wanted in the jurisdiction, but a simple fine should not require me to hack into station's systems to get access to it. Fair enough, some services should not be available, as you broke the law, but you should not be required to hack in. Little thing, big immersion breaker (for me).
- Not losing modifications from engineering upon ship destruction is immersion-breaking, I think. Having to re-engineer after death would take some of the gas out of power creep as well. In addition, engineered modules should be voided from insurance - the insurance brokers should not want to pay out for something you tampered with. And finally, maybe ordinary station workshops shouldn't be able to service engineered modules: Anything engineered past level III should only be repairable at the engineers own stations.
- Additional persistence: get a USS for an out of fuel ship, there's a station close by, so you buy Fuel Limpet Controller, limpets, and head back... but they're gone. Likewise after you refuel an NPC, they just jump away, no "thanks for saving us all!"
- Why can't we dump fuel yet? Soooo simple.
- Inconsistent C&P vs Reputatoin: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?p=6811275&viewfull=1#post6811275
- Unable to switch off the lights inside the cockpit. Tiny detail, massive breaker!
- Founders World in Shinrarta Dezhra is dark... the lights are out on the PF pilots retirement home (Official Elite Lore)
- Cruise liner implementation is flat backwards. Economy cabins with massive capacities for passengers should be restricted to cruise liners; luxury cabins should be available for anything that can fit a passenger cabin. Why? Because in the REAL world, cruise liners are bulk ships that specialize in running huge numbers of people around the world. Ships that haul smaller numbers of people include freighters, and the most luxurious way to travel the seas is to charter a yacht. So: Reverse things. Cruise liner gets economy cabins to facilitate multi-hundred-passenger cruises around the galaxy for a huge fortune; my oh-so-luxurious Fer-de-Lance gets to haul five bigwigs across the bubble for a modest income
- Again, inconsistent NPC's >> https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ld-integrity?p=6886366&viewfull=1#post6886366
- Presence of obviously criminal organisations on the mission board and along with it illegal missions from all factions
- Pointless locations, like Checkpoints (more info: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?p=6940714&viewfull=1#post6940714)
- Can't illegally launch (like in previous elite games)
- No military factions that hand out military style missions for ranking up. Ranking up the Fed Navy by doing safe civilian delivery missions is completely the opposite of what military progression should be.
- RNG crew generation needs tweaking. Women are always butch with short hair or have a straight fringe. Men are always chubby and have silly grins. Compared to the hand done characters for factions etc, they look very comical and not realistic.
- No SRV NPCs, especially inside surface cities.
- Orbis station habitation rings not being to scale, especially the buildings and structures inside them. My DBX is larger than an office block by comparison
- When you are scooping manufactured materials the cargo scoop assistance UI doesn't show a smaller wireframe of the material it shows the same fragment of rock as when you are scooping asteroid fragments.
- There should be A LOT more missions available in a system with a population of a few billion or tens of millions of people. From a convo here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ssion-server?p=7005224&viewfull=1#post7005224
- SLF cost 1000c to replace and it was cheaper than reloading my mini gun just doesn't seem realistic.
Make replacing SLFs 100k a pop (or something more than 1k) - I can drop into a pristine ring with no RES sites, and three pirates will immediately appear. What are the odds given the sheer volume of the average planetary ring?
And other notable mentions from the comments, where I think however that gameplay reasons are justified enough to trump immersion OR are simply requests for improvements to the current mechanics:
- In the 34th century, the ships onboard computer can't sync with orbital stations rotation unless it's inside the station. Even 200-500m in front of the station would be nice. If you you leave the station slow enough, you can get your ship stuck because the rotation sync ends at the letter box and not the end of the grills.
- Every single time you drop into random spot in some random asteroid ring in the middle of nowhere, a couple pirate ships always appear out of nowhere. Not only it is completely illogical, but it does not serve any purpose
- The routines that spawn NPCs are gamey. Always an ambush. Always a lemming attack on me. Pursuers waits at the destination, though I got there first. Always Anaconda with escort. Sometimes it's two.
- USS/Mission Critical USS - why can't I just have a scanner which I interact with, that forcibly spawns the relevant Signal Source(s)? At least I'll feel more like I've been involved in the process, instead of knowing that some arbitrary counter/dice roll is taking place in the background. Plus that waiting for the system to do it for me is boring and frequently unreliable.
- If you crash into a light stand, how do you just bounce off of it? How can they be that tough? Maybe have them fall over and get fined 50000cr for station damage? Or maybe take ship damage instead?
- In SC, scanners have a range of light minutes. In normal space, it's less than 10km.
- Hitting a large rock on a 0.01G world ruins my SRV integrity (leaving no mark though?!?) however the rock doesn't move... really?
- Loitering is punishable by death, but murder grants you a cute fine.
- I should also be able to destroy or at least damage nav beacons with enough firepower. That would make me a fugitive (it's basically terrorism) and result in ATR response, but it would also create a compromised nav beacon, thus giving players some agency in the game.
- Ok, but why do we see asteroids on the scanner, that's supposed to only pick heat signatures?
- Being unable to enter coordinates as a destination nav lock, and/or enter a bookmark via coordinates.
- Stations set against an active, populated ELW with no traffic to or from that world. There should be at least an image of things coming and going, even if you cannot.
- Superpowers will happily allow for a Commander to progress within their Navy, despite a Hostile reputation of said Commander with said Superpower: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ion-missions?p=6751618&viewfull=1#post6751618
- Non-Newtonian flight model
- Some ship cockpit scale doesn't feel right > https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ld-integrity?p=6784634&viewfull=1#post6784634
- The small garage for my buggy (SRV hangar) consumes more power than the machine that bends time and space and punches holes into a different dimension (FSD)...
- Combat Zones - being able to fight on 2 sides is simply ridiculous. One minute you're killing the red side then the next your fighting with them. It seems nobody in the ED universe cares that their friends and family are killed by you at all as they'll fight alongside you right after you've done it.
- The Docking Computer cannot undock.
- Why is a collector limpet destroyed if i make it grab a single item?
- It's left my ship; returned into my ship; and then explodes? And then if i set it on general collection, it will run for it's entire time (eg: 600s). Really if it returns to your ship, you should be able to put it back into your limpet stock, refuel it, and use it again.,
- Why can i not choose what seat to sit in? The controls look identical on each position of say a Cobra MK3 or Python, but i'm forced to sit on the left side. Can i really not sit on the righthand side, as a preference? It's obviously rendered (when someone multicrews with you), so why can't i have a toggle in the options to choose pilot seat?
- Why do string lights remain powered when everything else shuts down from say a reboot or Thargoid disruption?
- Gunner cameras and screenshot cameras are not a ship subsystem module that can be damaged.
- Perfect and exactly the same landing pattern for NPC's: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ld-integrity?p=6816082&viewfull=1#post6816082
- HUD clipping on multi monitor
- IF SLF's are flown by telepresence - why did the manufacturer bother putting in real seats? Surely a ridiculous waste of resources and weight?
- When you are travelling a route if you open up the nav panel you get jumps remaining along with info on the next destination, if you open the panel during a jump you get the info but not the number of jumps remaining.
- When in VR the panels and HUD screens in the cockpit do not face the pilots head. It's like sitting 20-30 degrees off from a TV and viewing it on an angle. All panels in the cockpit should face the pilots line of sight 100%
- When you paint your ship with any amount of degradation, the degradation is maintained. When you paint a ship, it should look newly painted
- When you drop into a system, there are never any solar flares; but if you wait a while, big solar flares always develop. And far worse: if you roll while viewing these solar flares, they roll with you. Yuck.
- Slingshotting around celestial bodies doesn't work...
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