Make it hard

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

I want my palms sweating while fuel scooping, landing on a planet I want every decision I make while exploring to have consequences.

In the last month, whilst out on treks, I have made it a point of landing on High-G planets. I like them to have Geological sites or Biological, otherwise you're just landing on them for landing on them sake. When you're 5,000ly out, done a lot of scans, a fair bit of mapping, you have upwards of 60-80m in UC data collected, this feels like a risky business. This one simple thing has given me that risk element. No longer do I enter orbital glide and put my controller down, go put the kettle on. I can tell you, I'm checking all my speeds, height, decent rate, in and out of camera view. It feels proper. I can almost feel th weight of the ship as I edge ever closer to the surface. Very exciting.

Doesn't really address all you are talking about but I still felt compelled to share.

 

[Riverside]

There are a minority of players for whom the game presents both no challenge or engaging content, they 'suggest' global changes in the game in order to tailor the 'difficulty' to their perceived ability.

The rest of us just enjoy what the game offers and have fun - then when the game doesn't provide entertainment any longer, will surely move on rather than demand the game be changed

I would like this post twice if I could

It'd be good if those bored players could have something more challenging to do that's meaningful, but I don't think relying on a constant stream of new content is a good long term plan.

 

[B1rdy]

I would like this post twice if I could

Why would you do that though? He is dismissing any criticism and recommends to leave, if you don't like the way ED is. I would call that ignorance.

"relying on a constant stream of new content": FDev could not even hold this level, as they have demonstrated with Horizons. Content was unifished and has been perceived as "too little, too late", also compared to other games. Long-term fun is created by having a system variying within the ruleset to provide the player with an interesting challenge. Not indefinately, of course, but surely more elaborate than current mining or trading in Elite.
And before someone argues, active player numbers are probably more related to the latest gold rush and the hope for the next update fixing everything.

 

[Old Duck]

but I don't think relying on a constant stream of new content is a good long term plan.

If you are talking about new ships, then I agree. If you are talking about things like Galnet and Interstellar Initiatives, then I strongly disagree, though I do think Frontier should implement a way to do IIs that don't require new game assets to be added every time they do one. There are tons of assets already in the game (think of all these hospitals and farms and other CQC-like structures) that could be woven into an ongoing narrative. I believe there is a "sweet spot" where Frontier could introduce new narrative that's engaging enough to appeal to much of the player base with a minimal effort on their part, relatively-speaking. They could even tie this in with hard NPCs (bringing it back to the OP), kinda like that prototype ship we had to search and destroy in the original Elite.

 

[Strangepork]

Anyone remember some time back when the npc's were actually dangerous, and subsequently got nerfed? Would like to see them back and think they would fit the game nicely now.

What even more chaffing and SCBs?

 

[Sylow]

Why would you do that though? He is dismissing any criticism and recommends to leave, if you don't like the way ED is. I would call that ignorance.

I do understand his point. As there's a number of people around who are like "I engineered my ship, i have to be powerful" and "there is no challenging content to be found" at the same time. That's even before mentioning that we have some players here who, merely by spending a few thousand hours in the game, are far above and beyond the abilities of any normal player and who also request that the game would be adjusted to provide a challenge for people of their skill.

Despite what people think, there still are new players around. According to the FDs last business reports, the sales of the game still are the biggest parts of the profit, while the ARX-store is a rather small contributor. So either people just buy the game with the intention of never playing it, or there are new players around all of the time.

Now consider that the game already in the current state is tough for any new player. Their experience is harsher than ours. We started without engineered enemies and even then the games steep learning curve drove away many people. Later we got engineering before the NPCs gradually started using it. We had all the time to adjust, learn and improve. In contrast new players today get directly dropped into the world, with fully engineered NPCs being part of it. They do not receive all the pampering we older players got. (And no, a restart for us is not the same. We might be in the Sidewinder again, but we skill have the skills and knowledge we built up over many years. Which also means that new players don't know what to expect on an NPC, on how it flies and what engineering it might have. )

So no matter how much a small but vocal minority of people wishes the game to become even harder, it would only cater to them, while making the game even less accessible than it already is. This would sacrifice a significant part of the playerbase, which already now is much smaller than it could possibly be if the game would be less punishing.

Mind you, i very much admire our top pilots, who spent all the time and effort to become as great pilots as they are. But adjusting the game to be a real challenge for them would at the same time kill it. Which just doesn't seem to be a prudent move.

 

[photomankc]

The trouble is hard to FD is Big 3 or FDL. Making them G5 is a start, but they become bullet sponges that still act wonky from time to time. FD should sit down and design NPCs that are varied across the ship classes and engineer them in various ways. Imagine fighting a wing of 6 phasing Sidewinders, or a nest of Vipers with reverb munitions, actually stretch a player rather than mash fire and facetank a lord in a Corvette.

Yeah the Spec Ops in CZs are about the only ones like that. Those two freaking vultures and the phasing disco ball of the Asp pounding on you while you work on a bullet sponge Python or FDL, starts to suck in a big dang hurry. I've found the wing assassination missions are no slouch either... at least for me. I used to have to run from those almost every time, but now I can often win but with some serious damage. I've yet to make a big-3-tank yet though so maybe that is a function of the mediums I like to fly.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yeah the Spec Ops in CZs are about the only ones like that. Those two freaking vultures and the phasing disco ball of the Asp pounding on you while you work on a Python, starts to suck in a big dang hurry. I've found the wing assassination missions are no slouch either... at least for me. I used to have to run from those almost every time, but now I can often win but with some serious damage. I've yet to make a big-3-tank yet though so maybe that is a function of the mediums I like to fly.

FD were ball achingly close first time with the old style wing pirate missions (cloud of weak enemies and one strong FdL). All they had to do is juice that up and its good to go- that, or have say five or six different mixes of ships / weapons etc to keep things fresh.

 

[Sylow]

I've found the wing assassination missions are no slouch either... at least for me. I used to have to run from those almost every time, but now I can often win but with some serious damage.

Same here. But i also dare to mention that i massively reworked my ship setups when i started doing wing assassination missions solo. It's not my superior piloting abilities (which i don't have), which allow me to win these missions withough utterly wrecking my ship. It's merely the ships setup and using overpowered engineering to allow my ship to shrug off even the worst beating for a surprisingly long time.

 

[Cosmik_Debris]

Same here. But i also dare to mention that i massively reworked my ship setups when i started doing wing assassination missions solo. It's not my superior piloting abilities (which i don't have), which allow me to win these missions withough utterly wrecking my ship. It's merely the ships setup and using overpowered engineering to allow my ship to shrug off even the worst beating for a surprisingly long time.

Yeah, they smart a bit, but a Vette or Conda with stacked gimballed MCs and well built shields can kill them without any piloting skill. Just fly backwards holding down fire until the FDL dies, then either kill the Vultures or wake out of there. I imagine a Cutter would do it even easier with those god level shields, but i dont fly Cutters in combat because i like being able to change direction sometimes.

 

[Sylow]

Yeah, they smart a bit, but a Vette or Conda with stacked gimballed MCs and well built shields can kill them without any piloting skill. Just fly backwards holding down fire until the FDL dies, then either kill the Vultures or wake out of there. I imagine a Cutter would do it even easier with those god level shields, but i dont fly Cutters in combat because i like being able to change direction sometimes.

I use a Krait MK II. But wing assassinations start to feel really cheap and easy if you open up on the target with a pair of reverb cascade torpedo launchers, then freely apply shock cannons while using a thermal vent beam to keep your ships temperature under control. (It's only slightly more challenging if you use fully engineered pacifiers or multi-cannons. ) And all of that while completely ignoring the other ships, which might at some time break my shields, but merely leave some scratches on my ships hull.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Why would you do that though? He is dismissing any criticism and recommends to leave, if you don't like the way ED is. I would call that ignorance.

Read what I wrote again - preferably twice as the simple wording appears to contain content I didn't include

There are a minority of players for whom the game presents both no challenge or engaging content, they 'suggest' global changes in the game in order to tailor the 'difficulty' to their perceived ability.

The rest of us just enjoy what the game offers and have fun - then when the game doesn't provide entertainment any longer, will surely move on rather than demand the game be changed

Where was the dismissal of criticism and recommending others to leave? I missed those comments!

 

[Viscera]

Npc ships should scale with your combat rank, then you should get a foe at the level you have worked up to.

It is supposed to work like that i believe, but reality is the cap stops a bit low perhaps.

It would also give the rank some meaning then other than i shot a bunch of ships until there combined value was x much.

Obviously cz and res sites are a different kettle of fish, but these do tend to be ok on the whole and feature mixed ability foes. But the odd hard guy in a res site would be good to see occassionally.

 

[EUS]

My thoughts from Dec 2016:

 

[Sylow]

My thoughts from Dec 2016:


View attachment 181357

So, do you still think today?

 

[Amanojaku]

Take a wing pirate assassination mission by yourself. I think it's hard enough. There were times when I was stalemated in a good M size combat ship like the Chieftain and had to get my Corvette to actually finish the mission without the chance of the target running away first, or me having to run because I was getting swarmed.

Threat level 6+ npc encounters can be harder than some players.

 

[EUS]

So, do you still think today?

Well yeah, read the OP.

 

[Morbad]

Just finished assembling my 720t cargo T-9 the other day and took it for a spin:

Source: https://youtu.be/qE12qcu_15s?t=190


Further encounters at 6:30, 10:50, and 16:00. Keep in mind I just put that ship together and this is my first time flying it since the 3.0 beta, and my first time fighting an interdiction, or actually looking for combat in one, ever.

The handful of missions I picked up at the time didn't spawn many high ranked NPCs, but I never encountered an interdiction I wasn't going to beat (and I'm not particularly good at the tunnel game, so I always submit to any CMDR interdiction), including that initial one from the Elite vulture, and had to submit at the last moment when I was interested in actually testing the ship in combat.

Will max out the cargo capacity later on some Elite missions so I get 1-2 high rank NPCs at the same time...but I don't expect even two Elite NPC anaconda mission target in the same instance to really pose a serious threat, and since NPCs can't win an interdiction even against a T-9, unless I submit, the combat is still entirely optional.

My thoughts from Dec 2016

The problem isn't what CMDR's have, it's what NPCs will not and cannot do.

They are just as dumb and just as passive whether my CMDR is in a completely unEngineered Viper III, or his every-module-maxed-out FDL, Krait, or Corvette.

Take a wing pirate assassination mission by yourself. I think it's hard enough. There were times when I was stalemated in a good M size combat ship like the Chieftain and had to get my Corvette to actually finish the mission without the chance of the target running away first, or me having to run because I was getting swarmed.

Threat level 6+ npc encounters can be harder than some players.

Wing assassination missions can be a challenge for a medium vessel, but it's still something one has fully opt into. You will never encounter these targets unless you go out of your way to find them and when you do force an encounter their behavior is still highly formulaic. A big problem with difficulty is how NPCs are only reactive, rather than proactive, so NPC encounters are always on the CMDR's terms.

Since none of you appreciate MoM's genius

The problem isn't with SJA, it's that she has her hands tied and has to work within limitations not conducive to providing an immersive or persistent challenge.