Mind numbingly boring hauling

[Factabulous]

Could they have done more documentation? Sure

Would it have done any good? Probably not. A lot of the things people are still asking are well known by now - some people are just not big readers.

Plus: fdev aren't known for producing correct documentation. Look at all those Installations with their lovely Large landing pads ...

... and that's before fdev look at the way Colonisation is going and change the rules .. but forget to update the documentation. It's a difficult balance - certainly not as simple as 'just' documenting things.

 

[Cmdr Sylveste]

The other pain point is i think a lot of people went straight to this... where these structures need more supporting infrastructure to be properly effective.

To spin an analogy, they spent hours mining in order to buy a stock Anaconda, and wonder why it sucks at everything.

How many of those went that route by accident.
I asked one of the people I was helping out (I know, don't go there) why they chose the biggest starport.
The answer was that they were so worried about missing out on the claim, that they chose the first thing they came to.
You can't claim the system until you choose the primary starport, and the menu puts the T3 options at the top.
They didn't even notice that there is a list of materials required under the image of the structure.
Perhaps there should be an additional 1 hour limit after you have deployed the beacon, when you can decide what to build.
If you don't choose by then the system reverts back.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

March 31st is the end of the tax year, so a lot of companies do align their financial year to that to simplify certain calculations, if they don't have any particular reason not to. But you can pick whatever year you like (e.g. a calendar company might run January->December because they expect to spend money throughout the year on design and printing, then get most of their income from that at the end, so it makes annual budgeting way simpler to run)


Yes - certainly. Though if someone is trying to find other people for the explosions, the people with a Powerplay rank, in their own territory where they get free rebuys at a fairly low rank, were never going to be the targets anyway.


I'm not defending it so much as saying "and even if they had put out more documentation it wouldn't have helped with the actual problem"

To use Engineering as an analogy, the documentation for how you engineer a module is fairly solid in-game. There are missing bits here and there.
The documentation for why you'd want a System-Focused Power Distributor, or what combinations to use to make a meta combat ship, is entirely absent from the game and probably out of scope of what Frontier should be providing anyway.
A lot of people have wasted time engineering ships in terrible or at least mostly irrelevant ways, but it's hard to argue that the main cause of that was "bad documentation" as opposed to "half the blueprints being useless in the first place", for example, or that it should be fixed by sticking an "are you sure?" warning on the Shielded AFMU mod.


Yes. It's a perfectly valid assumption if you have for the last decade not had to care what system economy is. (If you know what system economy is, then the idea of something influencing it directly is sufficiently weird to make you look behind the sign saying "beware of the leopard" to figure out what they're going on about). That is the much bigger problem and why people keep coming to incorrect conclusions about how colonisation "should" work.

That is also Frontier's fault, of course - by a much longer chain of events - in failing to understand how the differences between a single-player game and a MMO would apply to an Elite-like commodities market, and then failing to do anything about it in the previous decade, so no-one has previously had to care about the differences between system economy and station economy, or even much less abstract details like "what economy sells Power Generators?" [1].

But it also means that not only would "better documentation" for colonisation need to answer a whole bunch of questions that Frontier wouldn't even think to ask (because they already know the answer) - but it also needs to answer a bunch of questions most players don't know they need to ask - for a concrete example, I think a lot of people are going to - now they do understand what System Body Economy Influence does - end up making hybrid-economy stations like Industrial-Refinery or even with three or four components - and from the point of view that says an Orbis Colony station is a waste, making a hybrid-economy station is also a pretty bad idea. But the understanding of that isn't the job of the documentation on colonisation, it's the job of the documentation on the economic basics of Elite Dangerous. Which also doesn't exist (in the form of documentation, rather than in-game observable information, at least), and players aren't complaining it doesn't, even though a lot of them are really going to need to know this stuff.



[1] To an extent it also resembles the common problem of people failing to distinguish between Anarchy system and Anarchy station jurisdiction when farming Odyssey settlements. But because there's a big enough subculture (BGS-focused squadrons) that care about the difference, there are plenty of people who can explain what you did wrong when you end up in a detention centre with ten notoriety, and stop misunderstandings becoming common knowledge a bit. The game doesn't have a subculture that's really into Gallium futures markets, so false assumptions about how the economy works don't get countered in the same way.

Documenting the game isn't some impossible task. It just takes a little time and money. Yeah, there's more stuff that "normal" (for lack of a better word) players are going to need to know, but they don't know enough to even know that yet. FDev should document that, too. They should document engineering. They should document the BGS. A new player shouldn't need to track down third-party sources of information to understand these things.

Just because they got away with not documenting how their game works doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. People like you, who take the time and put in the effort to figure it out and document it (for free) are the only reason FDev can get away with it, and while I definitely appreciate the work, you're enabling the bad behavior and making things worse in the long run, as we can see right now with colonization. There is not a doubt in my mind that someone at Fdev made the intentional decision not to provide that documentation because "our community will figure it out". Fdev isn't some mom-and-pop business being run out of a garage. We should demand better.

 

[Born Free]

How many of those went that route by accident.
I asked one of the people I was helping out (I know, don't go there) why they chose the biggest starport.
The answer was that they were so worried about missing out on the claim, that they chose the first thing they came to.
You can't claim the system until you choose the primary starport, and the menu puts the T3 options at the top.
They didn't even notice that there is a list of materials required under the image of the structure.
Perhaps there should be an additional 1 hour limit after you have deployed the beacon, when you can decide what to build.
If you don't choose by then the system reverts back.

yeah i didnt know. didnt realize an outpost would be much faster. the only thing i knew was i wanted an ocellus.
2 weeks later (actually about 2 hours before the 2 week mark) i finished the ocellus
built a bunch of stuff since. my primary station is refining, even sells tritium for 49k
i made 650K system architect bonus this week.

currently i'm building my second ocellus in the system.
you might think i'm a masochist, but... remember the 3rd station price gets doubled.
so i'll have 2 x ocelli that cost 207T each. i'm guessing my bonus will be 1mil + per week.

if i had done a tiny little outpost as number 2, the 2nd ocellus would cost double lol

and i really wasnt paying attention too much to the type of system. i wanted to head a certain direction and i saw one with pristine reserves.
but i got very very lucky. it has 2 icy ringed planets, one has diamond hotspot
21 icy worlds

 

[Robert Maynard]

I think it needs someone to speak for it.

Does it? The benefit of an increased play area is for each player to decide what they make of it.

Now that there are 20k more system, I can now do... what? Besides the BGS (which I can't tell if you're dismissing or not-- very unclear to me), was there some shortage of systems that I didn't know about?

The same things that can be done in the previously populated systems, noting that many of the new systems may not be completed in terms of their stations / outposts / settlements, etc., yet.

Not dismissing the BGS at all - it forms the backbone of the shared galaxy state that every player experiences and affects. There appeared to be a lack of space for PMFs to be added - which, given that most of the new systems will have only four Factions resident at this point, would seem to have been cured.

Maybe the Vanguard thing has a function that serves to tie colonization into the rest of the game in some yet unknown way, rendering many of my concerns moot. I have hope, at least.

I expect that most players have hope of new and interesting game features that they will enjoy. I look forward to seeing what Vanguards offer the player base as a whole, and groups of players in particular.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

most players have hope

I keep getting nastygram warning and there appears to be no way to contact the moderation team. Do you mind pointing me in the right direction?

 

[Robert Maynard]

I keep getting nastygram warning and there appears to be no way to contact the moderation team. Do you mind pointing me in the right direction?

It's in the Forum Rules.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

Could they have done more documentation? Sure

Would it have done any good? Probably not. A lot of the things people are still asking are well known by now - some people are just not big readers.

Plus: fdev aren't known for producing correct documentation. Look at all those Installations with their lovely Large landing pads ...

... and that's before fdev look at the way Colonisation is going and change the rules .. but forget to update the documentation. It's a difficult balance - certainly not as simple as 'just' documenting things.

You say FDev is bad at documentation and would just mess it up if they tried to do it. If there's english word for that sentiment, I don't know it.

 

[Markov Chaney]

Is this surprising? Would you gather engineering mats and unlock engineers if engineering's only function was to add a icon that indicates the module has been engineered, with no other stat changes? I'm going to go way out on a limb and say that no, you wouldn't, and almost no one else would either.

Finisher-completer Codex exobio is pretty popular, and you don't even get your name on anything doing that (at least not in the well-explored sectors.)

Despite some very adamant disagreements that I used the incorrect words, the gameplay loop is tedious and boring.

Some people like the loop, just like some people like pounding out laps of Nurburgring in the dark and rain. And yes, I am going to say this every time you deny the existence of these players. They exist.

I am giving up at my fifth structure, so I'm well above the average of 2. I'm willing to power through a tedious gameplay loop if there's a point to it, and I'm telling you it's going to get neglected after this honeymoon phase.

This is completely fair!

How has the game functionally changed now that there are 20k more populated systems? It really hasn't.

Yeah this is fair... there's a lot of overblown discussion around comparisons of how it was "before" - when those systems didn't get visited at all except by exobiologists. But now suddenly... well, I assume some of those worlds must have had rare species of oyster, because wow there's a lot of pearls to clutch all of a sudden.

I have a feeling there are a lot of people on this forum that are so invested in the game that they essentially have stockholm syndrome, and will try to polish any turd they're handed.

This is silly. Also, you can just ignore the occasional "well I liked obscure thing X and now it's gone" comment, ya know. The people who get silly oppositional about it don't usually last very long on this moderated forum and the people with throwaway opinions on it really shouldn't be an issue for anybody.

a first-party forum is probably not a great place to have an unbiased discussion about the thing. haha

I find it better here than Reddit because the absolutely unhinged on here get moderated and the rest of us can get on with having strong views without the abuse. (inb4: I've seen comments and commenters who support FDev in a... unhelpful... way disappear)

And while it's just a personal, vague concern of mine-- it's plausible that colonization reduces enthusiasm and engagement by player groups manipulating the BGS.

I colonised a system chosen specifically on a BGS and PP 2.0 basis and I am now engaging in faction-tilting for basically the first time.

We effectively have infinite expansion; there's no need to expand into another PMFs system and try to take it over if you can essentially just print out a new system to expand to; one system is generally just as good as any other.

Now if any word is subjective in a universe with the diversity Stellar Forge provides, it's the word "good" ...

I'm on the fence about how plausible this is, but I think the risk is there. The "one-off success" may end up being a net negative for player engagement. Maybe.

Nah. If you look over on the "help each other" thread it's very obvious faction play is driving colony play.

 

[AngryAntz]

To spin an analogy, they spent hours mining in order to buy a stock Anaconda, and wonder why it sucks at everything.

It does suck at everything

 

[BDelacroix]

The other pain point is i think a lot of people went straight to this... where these structures need more supporting infrastructure to be properly effective.

To spin an analogy, they spent hours mining in order to buy a stock Anaconda, and wonder why it sucks at everything.

One can save up to buy a surgeon rifle, but without the skill, the tool only gets one so far.

 

[Doctor Dread]

I dunno..... 2 hrs a day for a month of being on a Maldives atol with an all inclusive swim up bar sitting next to Jessica Alba***......................................

I think i could just about manage that without getting bored

**feel free to replace with whoever you like, it was a name plucked out at "random" (in truth at my age a reincarnated Sean Lock would interest me more, but i suspect some may get the wrong idea!).

...Maldives atol, all inclusive swim up bar, where Jessica Alba and Sean Lock play "Carrot In A Box".

 

[Shurimal]

But Frontier not being willing to have the Thargoids permanently wipe out 90% of the bubble (and most players unlikely to agree on which 90% should go), none of those problems really get materially worse if it's twice or ten times bigger either.

Ooh, in my opinion that would have been firstly a truly spectacular moment in the history of E: D, secondly, a really, really good way to introduce colonization to rebuild the Bubble from smoldering ruins; and thirdly, an opportunity of absolutely epic POI-s: imagine crashed Coriolis or Orbis station on a landable atmospheric planet!

and now we have that option. I genuinely never expected to have a station in game that I had named.... but now that is exactly what i have (admittedly its not the name i really wanted.... damn snowflakes with no sense of humour and so FD not daring to risk any double entendre.

I completely understand being risk averse when it comes to naming stuff that is visible to everyone in a PEGI-7 game. But, on the other hand, this is a perfectly valid and acceptable vanilla station name and the random name generator has given me other quite questionable options.

P.S. I would certainly build a surface port named Hell Landing in the future if I can claim a 3+G landable planet that has surface temperature of 1000K

 

[Darth Ender]

a single game loop to support an entire addon feature is sad but fixing that, while obvious, still doesn't address the 'why' beyond the basic 'because you can' and the 'what' for what does it add to gameplay

when you only really have 3-4 grindy low skill game loops, you have a very hard time balancing new things. and you end up not really adding to gameplay but rather pushing the same gameplay loops (generally done in more repetitions) .

it would have been nice if colonization added something new that wasn't based on an existing grindy no skill activity. and the only fix we seem to have is to add the other base level activities so we can have a variety of which extremely easy beginner activity to participate in.

i look forward to when we get some inspired new gameplay that maybe relies on mastering a mechanic that scales reward with risk and difficulty. maybe that will be colonization 2.0 (probably not), maybe it'll be a salvage mechanic or an escort mechanic or something else.

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

Maybe, maybe not - it very much depends on the players who are inclined to engage in this type of feature. Noting that the same may be able to be said of how a not insignificant number of players approach the game, i.e. interacting with some part of it a lot and most of it much less rather than splitting their time between all activities that the game offers.

If nothing else Colonisation will serve to increase the populated play area of the game over time, noting that in the month since release (with a period where new systems could not be claimed) players have increased the number of populated systems from c.20,000 to c.43,400, added nearly 48,000 starports and orbitals and over 27,000 surface installations.

Even if this was a one off it would be considered a success, in terms of adding to the game.

Robert I just want you to know he doesn't speak for all of us. I have long wanted the ability for players to expand "the bubble". It gets REALLY boring seeing billions of systems you can't do anything with.

Having said that, I am a bit let-down that Colonization is ONLY hauling goods and that's it. If my opinion means anything.

 

[BlueStar001]

Colonization right now feels like a double edged sword. It's a interesting idea but the speed at which it is progressing is staggering.
All the good systems were claimed in a week or 2....
I don't know how much was built so quickly but I don't have that kind of time!
At the same time if you're doing this by yourself you're looking at nothing but hours and hours of hauling...In the mean time others have finished building entire systems...
I don't have that kind of time and if I did I have better things to do...

I think other people have suggested this but I like the idea of being able to hire a "unloading" service for Fleet carriers.

Basically you would pay for NPCs to unload your carrier at colonization sites. Possibly a flat fee (10-100 Mil?) then 10% of profits from the sale.
Catch would be you couldn't move your carrier and it would take the same time you would've spent unloading it.
This would only apply to colonization sites because any kind of automated mass bulk buying / selling of commodities would cause trouble....

You've already purchased the material loaded it on your carrier and now you're just paying for a NPC to unload it for you and would be a lot less hauling.

 

[Klearoflauge]

It seems to me that, the lower the requirements, the easier it is to build. The easier it is to build the funner the game, due to time to do other things or plan out your system and build more, the funner the game the more time you spend doing it.

On the other hand, the bigger the grind, the less a lot of people want to do it. The less they want to do it, the less they stay in the game. Or, they attempt to spend countless hours trying to get through something just so they can finally do something they consider fun. (which sometimes makes me hate this game) lol but I still love most of it.

Just one person's opinion, but I for one get so frustrated hauling that I'll just quit playing for days.

When I attempt the smaller builds, I enjoy it more because progress seems to have an end in sight. Especially for one person. I feel like I want to build more and see my system grow... but when the grind gets in the way and seems endless, I'm like, screw it.

I had to force myself to build so that I could do something fun afterward. Seems detrimental. Again, I'm just one opinion.

 

[Jmanis]

When I attempt the smaller builds, I enjoy it more because progress seems to have an end in sight. Especially for one person. I feel like I want to build more and see my system grow... but when the grind gets in the way and seems endless, I'm like, screw it.

I guess this is always the thing though... Colonisation was always meant to be a collaborative activity. Regardless of opinions around whether the game has the necessary features to support that collaboration or not... that's the intent.

Towards that end, the smaller builds up to outpost in size are very manageable for an individual... I've got an outpost down to a 4 hour stint, so that's literally just 1 hour a week... and that's only valid for the primary outpost. After that, time is no object.

If the generalised view is 1 hour a week to meet the timeframe for a build for an initial port is "too much"... well... I don't know how people can stand things like a high intensity CZ or, well, almost any activity in the game. The claim simply doesn't match the reality of how much people might play the game.

Even a coriolis only looks like 2 hours a week (either 2x1 or 1x2, whichever way you want to cut it), so while a bit more of a slog, it's pretty achievable. An Orbis looks pretty heinous for an individual though.

Now... if the argument is "I don't like hauling"... that's fair... but there's also innumerate people who dont like combat, or don't like missions, or don't like mining, or don't like <whatever>. So it's a bit of a moot point; the Colonisation update is something some people don't enjoy... that's pretty much every update right?

On having diversity of activities, i think that would be fine... but nonetheless, is 8 hours of running errands so different to 8 hours of hauling?

Unless of course, we're pivoting into that taking drastically quicker or, as is being requested, skipped entirely by simply paying credits.

But here's the thing; the Thargoid War, or the Power goals in PP2 both seem pretty insurmountable from a solo perspective too.... yet they were both collaborative play options too. So why aren't people asking to "pay credits for NPCs to fight Goids/do PP errands". As highlighted, there are people who don't/didn't like those activities either... surely that would also be a "good thing"... to just pay credits to NPC and win the thargoid war or conquer a power's stronghold because that would be "hard for an individual".

No.. of course that would be pretty dumb, to win the Thargoid war by killing a bunch of pirates which earns you bounties to buy hamsters to throw at the Thargoids.

Really, the bits of feedback I think make the most sense is there needs to be better ways for people to collaborate on Colonisation. I honestly thought there would be a mechanism to self-publish minor CGs which people could subscribe to like missions in order to track and contribute, and a way to incentivise that directly. They're the real pain point here... it's a collaborative activity without good collaborative tools (even though there are still ways to collaborate).

Of course, they could just wholesale reduce the amount of goods needed for stuff... I guess FD could do that? But I also figure we're expanding pretty quick as it is... does it need to be faster?

But paying credits to skip an activity because someone doesn't like how long it takes or that it's hard for an individual, that's pretty unprecedented within the game when it comes to PP, Thargoid War, CGs, wing missions... heck... some mining missions would take more effort than hauling for a coriolis... but that's never been a problem for people?

 

[CMDR Vhi]

Just curious what the abstract issue most of y'all have is.

I have two main issues, neither of which are regarding time to build. Vaguely:

• Colonization serves no functional purpose in the wider game.
• The only way to interact with Colonization is mindless hauling.

 

[Jmanis]

Can I ask, is the time limit on the first station what you all have an issue with?

Not that I have an issue with it, but that seems like a big part of it... but that's primarily down to my previous analogy of a culture of "Day 1 G5 Engineered Anaconda"... people are going straight to an Orbis as the first, time-limited station, as a solo player, which is pure insanity.... compounded when you realise that unsurprisingly, these need more supporting infrastructure, so you don't get an "instant win" out of them.