Forward: This is an open letter. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, I'm simply giving my honest opinion of why I'm completely bored out of my mind while playing ED.
I quit playing ED about 5 days ago because I wasn't having fun anymore and wanted a break. it's been long enough and I'm going to explain why I won't be coming back until a few things change.
The review:
What I absolutely love about ED:
1.) Depth of detail. Seriously, this shows passion and immersion and I love it. The ship detail, subsystems, all wonderful.
2.) The galaxy size. Again, this places a level of immersion into the game that I absolutely love.
3.) The attempts at faction play. Nice concept with a few frustrating flaws, but when finished or fleshed out it will be very good.
4.) Frameshift FTL and Jump. I know you called it hyperspace, frontier, but I just delete that in my own mind and call it an alcubierre bubble. It doesn't upset my inner geek as much.
The problems I simply can't abide:
Combat:
Absolutely no attempts are being made to make this an actual space game. I know being a fighter jock is fun for some people, but I'm actually a pilot. I grew up with a dad who is a flight instructor and used to send new students to find a bucket of propwash. At 12. (I started my career in smart-mastery early).
My point with this is that if I wanted to play an aircraft flight sim I have a whole lot of choices and they all do a better job of being fighter jock sims than ED does. ED can't be a fighter jock sim, because it's a sci-fi space game. You know, in SPACE. I love Star Wars and I used to play X-wing vs. Tie fighter and that was a lot of fun, but ED isn't Star Wars and doesn't try to be.
You gimp the flight physics to balance a false playing field for no benefit. It doesn't make the game more fun. It doesn't add to the realism (it detracts in fact). I'm not even talking about max velocity rather than acceleration. That's a pet-peeve but it's not nearly enough to hack me off. What really ticks me off is your whacked-out 'balance' physics.
I want to have room to get better. SKILL. That's what draws me to games like Darksouls. It's hard as hell, but if you spend time you can get really good at it. ED has a shallow competency curve. That means you can get better in MARGINS only.
Here is the amazing sum total of the strategy of ED combat:
1.) the jouster: run at the bad guy and shoot, sometimes using thrusters to alter your vector by tiny little bits. First person to get knocked off their hourse... er... lose their shields... is in trouble.
2.) the turning game: faster ships try to stay out of the slower ship's primary weapon envelope. Skill component: the pilot of a slower ship can hit reverse and forward and mess up a faster ship, bringing them into engagement.
3.) tactics with turrets: well it's broke so it doesn't exist, but we could talk here about the balance of turrets vs. gimball vs. forward-fire. Unfortunately turrets either don't fire, or fire at nothing, or turn too slowly, or burn too much power, or generate too much heat. This is a bald-faced attempt to make huge expensive ships nothing more than huge slow fighters. Why!? what's the point? No navy in their right mind would even bother building anything like this. The cost-benefit makes no sense. Sure small fighters have a chance against big ships ('condas and corvettes and clippers and such) but basically you're making people work... and grinding is a horrible and boring job, don't think it is anything else... for basically what? A big, slow, hard-hitting (at least in front) fighter. That's it. It's a bloody huge fighter. Worse, what navy would buy a ship design into service that has such horrible fields of fire!? No navy. Your idea of game balance here basically ONLY makes sense to a bunch of people trying to make everyone happy. It isn't tactical, or strategic, or immersive. It breaks the entire military fiction.
Worse still, you have this weird... something... for turning ships when flight assist is disabled. This is really quite simple: angular momentum proximate torque guys. Thrusters provide torque to alter the ship's angular momentum. Mass, inertia and thrust. it's not a hard problem. Unless, of course, it's 'unfair' for someone with skill to kill someone with no skill. I suppose that might be a good reason to come up with a completely nerfed flight control on big ships. Flight assist for weenies, when you have the skill turn it off. Don't level the playing field, that makes the game have a player skill cap and that ruins it's endurance over time.
In the end, my primary problem with combat is that you're followed the tried-and-true MMO model of Dragonbal-Z combat. This isn't even my final form. If I grind and grind I can get even bigger with bigger weapons. Nothing changes except size and power. BOOOOOORRRRRIIIIIIINNNNNGG
Exploration:
Once you've seen 800 trinary systems, you've seen 800 trinary systems. I know this is a technical challenge. I know exactly how incredibly hard it is to create a universe of 400 billion stars and not having a massive amount of predictability in the system generation logic for exploration. The code for generating workable stellar physics in a system must be a real PITA to manage as it is. But really... it gets incredibly old, incredibly fast.
Trade:
No supply and demand, no monetary exchange... there is NO ECONOMY. Some people may prefer making money with trade rather than the mononotony of the limited combat model, but without any dynamics (you know, the variables that make an economy difficult to predict) it's really just a simple matter of finding a route and then doing it over and over and over and over and over and over.
PvP:
Combat logging is bad, but so is the game environment. If you have the money to kit a ship out enough for self-defense you face a choice: You can either double (or even tripple) the amoung of BORING GRINDING you have to do by kitting weapons that can defend you against player killers, or you can be cannon fodder for any roaming PvPers. That's it. Pick one.
You can either play the PvE game or the PvP game, but trying to do both is not going to happen. Worse, to play together at all in PvE you have to expose yourself to PvP. This means that even if you fix combat logging, PvE is going to be completely ruined. No community goals will be met, nobody with a shaddow of a life outside of ED is going to be able to do faction play, and the PvP roaming wings will basically run the field.
Read the Art of War. The PvP wings get every single advantage in timing, placement, choice of engagement, division of forces, preparedness, etc... etc...
Conclusion/Summary
In the end, there is nothing to keep me (or really anyone not trying to justify their investment of time) playing the game for very long. There isn't any real staying value or anything worth working for. Getting enough money to finally have 700 million credits in a ship just so you can have the ship (and play it exactly like the cheaper ships only with more guns and slower turn speed) doesn't serve a purpose.
I challenge you to give me 1, just 1 good argument against being bored with this game. Give me a challenge that I'll enjoy meeting. Anyone?
