TLDR: To ensure the future of ED, give us a detailed mission editor, please.
Ed missions. as they stand, are all created by FD and generally follow a standard template. Consequently they are fairly boring credit farming ventures.
Now if you look at Arma 3 (and all previous versions) they have a magnificent mission editor available to the players for them to develop and publish their own hand crafted missions. This mission editor has evolved and developed over the years into a powerful and essential part of Arma. The user created missions range from rescues, attacks, ambushes, escapes and a huge amount more to even a space sim mod of sorts (Cosmos Engine). Some are huge multi-part campaigns and others single one offs. Some single player, some multiplayer and all are made by the players.
I believe that the mission editor in Arma has given this game a great deal of longevity (15yrs). Rather than keeping the players away from the development of the game, Bohemia Interactive have actively encouraged the players to be part of the process. This has made Arma a stand out game in my opinion and has a huge mission building community. This is something that FD should look at, it has made Arma into a long lived success in the military sim world and this is where ED could be in the space sim world. We have this huge galaxy so let the playerbase fill it with missions and adventures.
It has been said dozens of times, that FD have created a fabulous sandbox but with little depth, now in a way that's understandable, any game company would be hard pressed to fill such a vast space with interesting things to do, so a Mission Editor would give access to all the passionate players, groups, factions etc out there to develop their own stories and adventures, to then have them accessible on the mission board for other people to participate in, filling the bubble and beyond with more missions and advetures than you can shake a stick at.
Now, and this is the big now, This would mean that FD would have to develop mission editor software, something with proper tools, maybe with a graphical starting point of the galaxy map. We would need tools for routeing and mapping, allies and enemies, waypoints, text and video boxes, and a whole host of other tools to create meaningful, deep and fun missions. NPCs would figure big in all this so we would need a lot of tools to control their actions and whereabouts, branching controls and all sorts of things.
Also, a way of testing the missions content would be needed before being uploaded to the game, so maybe volunteer testers, similar to the forum mods, could do QA then pass them up to FD for final testing and then insertion into the mission board.
And I would like this by Christmas please.
Actually Christmas 2019 would be ok
Ed missions. as they stand, are all created by FD and generally follow a standard template. Consequently they are fairly boring credit farming ventures.
Now if you look at Arma 3 (and all previous versions) they have a magnificent mission editor available to the players for them to develop and publish their own hand crafted missions. This mission editor has evolved and developed over the years into a powerful and essential part of Arma. The user created missions range from rescues, attacks, ambushes, escapes and a huge amount more to even a space sim mod of sorts (Cosmos Engine). Some are huge multi-part campaigns and others single one offs. Some single player, some multiplayer and all are made by the players.
I believe that the mission editor in Arma has given this game a great deal of longevity (15yrs). Rather than keeping the players away from the development of the game, Bohemia Interactive have actively encouraged the players to be part of the process. This has made Arma a stand out game in my opinion and has a huge mission building community. This is something that FD should look at, it has made Arma into a long lived success in the military sim world and this is where ED could be in the space sim world. We have this huge galaxy so let the playerbase fill it with missions and adventures.
It has been said dozens of times, that FD have created a fabulous sandbox but with little depth, now in a way that's understandable, any game company would be hard pressed to fill such a vast space with interesting things to do, so a Mission Editor would give access to all the passionate players, groups, factions etc out there to develop their own stories and adventures, to then have them accessible on the mission board for other people to participate in, filling the bubble and beyond with more missions and advetures than you can shake a stick at.
Now, and this is the big now, This would mean that FD would have to develop mission editor software, something with proper tools, maybe with a graphical starting point of the galaxy map. We would need tools for routeing and mapping, allies and enemies, waypoints, text and video boxes, and a whole host of other tools to create meaningful, deep and fun missions. NPCs would figure big in all this so we would need a lot of tools to control their actions and whereabouts, branching controls and all sorts of things.
Also, a way of testing the missions content would be needed before being uploaded to the game, so maybe volunteer testers, similar to the forum mods, could do QA then pass them up to FD for final testing and then insertion into the mission board.
And I would like this by Christmas please.
Actually Christmas 2019 would be ok
)
