Multi-crew (or the lack of it)

[Captain N]

I maintain, Multicrew is shallow and combat-focused, because the game itself is.

Almost any other activities for the crew that isn't turreting or fighter con, would require new game mechanics to be implemented. (SRV's are an exception, I guess that was just difficult to implement) It seems FD weren't interested in coming up with new mechanics for MC, so they just worked with what they already had.

What would an MC crew member do on a trader ship or an exploration ship? Press the honk button? Extend and retract landing gears? You can already ride along for a ship going around scanning stuff or trading goods, and that's about as good as it's going to get unless those activities are made significantly more complex and involved so that sharing labour between multiple crewmen starts making sense.

Even the combat-based MC basically boils down to splitting the ship into multiple ships because otherwise you're just having multiple people do something a single player could do.

One approach to making MC more interesting, I suppose, would be to add mechanics that simply make MC'ing harder but don't affect solo players. Like an MC ship requiring one player to be an "engineer" who plays some sort of engineer minigame just to hold the ship together. I'm not sure how far you can go with this before solo players start whining about how they are denied access to content.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew's approach to multi-crew is mainly based on compartmentalising and preventing crew members from accessing functions not directly related to their jobs. The pilot cannot use weapons or targeting, the weapons officer cannot steer the ship. The captain can only respond to comms and bark orders. Interestingly the game mechanics themselves aren't more complex than ED - in a lot of ways it's a much simpler model of a spaceship. The approach works because the entire game revolves around the concept of multi-crew. However, if you had a mode where a single player was given a console with easy access to all of the functionality of the starship, that would make the multiplayer mode redundant. That's wherein lies Elite MC's problem - it's a game where a single player can easily do everything, so what's the point of splitting that between multiple crewmen?

 

[Van R Flyheight]

If I'm doing combat of any kind and don't have a wingman online then I always open the seats up. However, I know what you mean. I've gone looking myself and can never find one plus I've had multiple players tell me I'm their first(pun totally intended). I was excited by the prospect of multi-crew but two things became immediately apparent.

One is the quality of the system itself. it's a 50/50 chance at best that someone can actually launch a fighter without being booted back to the menu. Lag becomes crazy and from time to time, the game boots me too. It's not my connection or anything because I can do a full wing of 4 with no problems. It's something about multicrew that really messes with my game.

The second is the quality of people joining. You are kind of a guest on my ship. Not like I expect a hamper but you could atleast try to communicate with me. I always invite players to a Xbox party when they join but 9/10 just ignore me. We don't have to have a full blown conversation. Some people accept, then message saying "no mic", "french only" etc. That's fine, doesn't bother me. But when someone is sat in the gunner seat, blocking me from my second fire group and then spamming shield cell banks without a heat sink insta-boot.

Well that's my gripe with it and I feel like they are simple fixes. Why is instancing in multicrew so bad when it's fine for everything else? Why can't I lock he gunner role seat? Simple stuff.

 

[ZeroAi]

Multicrew - the biggest add on that no-one worth listening to ever asked for.

A lot of players like myself would love to have MC expanded to include making money from professions other than combat.

Oh, and who you personally think is worth listening to is none of my business, just yours.

 

[Jukelo]

One fundamental problem with multicrew is, what task in the game requires so much multitasking that you'd actually benefit from having two players share the workload? The gameplay is already barebones enough for one player.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

One fundamental problem with multicrew is, what task in the game requires so much multitasking that you'd actually benefit from having two players share the workload? The gameplay is already barebones enough for one player.

there are lots of fundamental issues with MC imo in its current implementation.

not least including..... why does multicrew get a magic extra pip..... something which boosts the power of the ship even if the crew person is sitting their whilst completely idle. how does a crew person affect the power distributor when they are not doing anything (often literately doing nothing just going afk getting free money whilst their captain gets free power boost)?

 

[Kayweg]

I think your keyboard might be faulty?

His' was a swear, not an insult, important difference...even when neither was called for.

As for MC, that was from the beginning a feature that could only ever reach a subsection of players....namely those interested in interacting with others.
When you then implement it in a way that even those players find underwhelming, you end up with a subsection of that subsection actually making use of it....aka not very many.
We'll see where it goes, but it currently seems to have the "potential" to share CQC's fate.

 

[Captain N]

there are lots of fundamental issues with MC imo in its current implementation.

not least including..... why does multicrew get a magic extra pip..... something which boosts the power of the ship even if the crew person is sitting their whilst completely idle. how does a crew person affect the power distributor when they are not doing anything (often literately doing nothing just going afk getting free money whilst their captain gets free power boost)?

Band-aid solution to the fundamental problem. If there are no practical advantages to using MC, let's invent some.

 

[Jukelo]

there are lots of fundamental issues with MC imo in its current implementation.

not least including..... why does multicrew get a magic extra pip..... something which boosts the power of the ship even if the crew person is sitting their whilst completely idle. how does a crew person affect the power distributor when they are not doing anything (often literately doing nothing just going afk getting free money whilst their captain gets free power boost)?

To play devil's advocate, there is some sense behind the extra pip: it can be said to represent the character tweaking power management on the fly to get a bit more out of the ship.
Unfortunately this explanation implies a level of abstraction to our characters actions which doesn't fit well with the rest of the game. ED isn't an action RPG, we are supposed to play our characters directly, not via an abstract system, so that magic peep does feel utterly out of place.

 

[GG7]

As we can already swap between the Fighter and Pilot role, I'm assuming that you'd like to swap the pilot and Gunner roles with NPCs?

Please, NO. NO and thrice NO.

It will turn the game into freelancer, with everyone flying around in 3rd person view.

It's a pity because Bounty Hunting in Multi-crew is fun (if you get good talkative crew) but it really needs to be usable in other modes, like exploration. I think they may have missed a trick by not making the thargoids a little bit more vulnerable to multi-crew ships.

Colin,

I think the point is that it would have been better to provide BOTH an NPC as well as an MP option to the feature to allow "everyone" to try it regardless of their play style/size of their friends list.

Personally, I have no interest in flying ships in this game in third person view, so in my case, you would have had nothing to worry about.

Cheers.

P.S. Missed you on LAVE radio last week.

 

[Ignition]

With multicrew I thought we were getting something similar to Star Trek but it ended up to be a 3rd person turret camera.

It looks like this game will never evolve and Beyond looks like little little baby steps in improving the poor gameplay this game has.

I thought multicrew was going to have an engineer. Imagine how cool would be to manage differential shielding (sides, front and rear), hack stations for smuggling, hack instruments on another ship, overcharge ship systems to have an edge...
And the best of all it would be an usefull crew in ANY SHIP.

Another missed opportunity.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Colin,

I think the point is that it would have been better to provide BOTH an NPC as well as an MP option to the feature to allow "everyone" to try it regardless of their play style/size of their friends list.

Personally, I have no interest in flying ships in this game in third person view, so in my case, you would have had nothing to worry about.

Cheers.

P.S. Missed you on LAVE radio last week.

whilst i disagree with your views on mode swapping, I dont think i can agree with you more on this one

I wouldnt mind, but after following the DDF closely and knowing exactly all the cool stuff planned for multicrew, I was overjoyed when it was announced as a feature for Horizons....... and I foolishly thought even after it was announced it would launch as MP only, that, well, never mind, npc crew surely will be hot on its heals.... (i should have learned from wings i guess)

which now leaves me worrying about what the megaships content is going to be later this year... (though i have a fairly good idea )

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

People that join MC, dont get any rank increase.. altho they gain skills from doing it.

thats not true, but not totally wrong either.

crew gets rank progression. my friend got his first two trade ranks just because he was sitting idle in my ship. (doing real trades, not missions)
the combat rank on the other hand is in theory distributed between the crew. helm, npc crew, player crew.

i got the feeling something there is bugged.

 

[Red Fox Four]

What is the point of multicrew?

Besides the SLF's it utterly boring for whoever joins your ship.

The rewards for multicrew do not equal simply bringing separate ships. Not by a long shot.

Multi-crew mining? Reward for your friend is what?

Multi-crew in a Vulture? Really? You literally just get a passenger who can control 1 pip.

Multi-crew by using a single ship, landing on planet and heading out in an SRV each... oh wait, not doable, only ship owner can use SRV.

Multi-crew is literally the worse thought-through feature of the game. In a simple 1 hour brainstorming session you could have identified all the flaws with the current multi-crew implementation and come up with 150 other, better, ways to do it.

Anyways... as far as multi-crew goes I have zero faith in Elite and rather rely on games like Star Trek Bridge Crew, Pulsar and the upcoming Sea of Thieves. Those games understand what multi-crew, teamplay and cooperation is about. Elite does not.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Colin,

I think the point is that it would have been better to provide BOTH an NPC as well as an MP option to the feature to allow "everyone" to try it regardless of their play style/size of their friends list.

Personally, I have no interest in flying ships in this game in third person view, so in my case, you would have had nothing to worry about.

Cheers.

P.S. Missed you on LAVE radio last week.

If it was a case of you swap to gunnery view but your ship fly's straight, then I might agree but otherwise, (IMHO) the gunnery view is too overpowered with a good npc pilot and we'll just end up with a freelancer mode which will ruin the game. (I loved the universe of Freelancer but hated the ship to ship combat).

Unfortunately, I don't think we'l get a new pass of multi-crew until space legs, or elite feet, comes along (I love Pulsar and would love to see Frontier do that in Elite), which is a real shame. Fingers crossed for something when they redo the exploration in Q4 but I'm not holding my breath.

P.S. You Missed me - Reload! ;-)

 

[Spacecat]

Multicrew — love it when playing with friends. We also play together in other games that have multicrew (tank gameplay, aircraft gameplay etc.)

But never, ever, EVER with random strangers, period.

I've had randos join my ship many times and only had a couple that intentionally fired on unwanted ships or fired off all my SCB's intentionally. Sure their skill level varies, and sometimes they make mistakes, and I have also, but that makes it interesting.

 

[Spacecat]

even whith the DUMBED DOWN controls for a gunner, that part of multicrew is tooo much to handle for someone who doesn't play elite dangerous alone.
i have a whole week several MC sessions with a close friend, to have him learn all the things he should do, and not do.

now that he learned the game controls himself, he started to use the SLF fighter more often then the turrets.

The gunner portion is lacking the most. They couldn't even bother to assign default controls. You have to have a friend to work it out with, which is stupid, because it should be the simplest thing you can do in the game.

 

[Kaocraft]

Multicrew - the biggest add on that no-one worth listening to ever asked for.

I was extremely excited about it when they first announced it. But that's because I thought they were going to do a good job.

As time went on I started to notice that Frontier don't always care about doing a good job, but I was still looking forward to Multicrew because I figured even the least imaginative, barebones implementation of it would still allow me to divvy up ship control duties with my friends; even if that were something which amounts to little more than duplicating the interface and reassigning control bindings to be controllable by someone else.

I was looking forward to having a friend plot routes for me, target subsystems, manipulate power priorities, or just take over "the wheel" during a long multi jump trip.

But instead Frontier went with holograms and two "crew" roles which barely qualify as "crew" at all: a gunner (who has less control over his guns than the pilot does), and . . . Someone who flies an entirely different spaceship which merely *launches* out of your spaceship.

Anyway yeah. If, back then, I had understood a little more about Frontier's development style, I wouldn't have been excited for Multicrew and I certainly wouldn't have asked for it. It's also one of the reasons I can't be excited for Beyond. I'm hopeful, but as far as I'm concerned none of it exists or should be treated as "real" until final release.

 

[Spacecat]

I was extremely excited about it when they first announced it. But that's because I thought they were going to do a good job.

As time went on I started to notice that Frontier don't always care about doing a good job, but I was still looking forward to Multicrew because I figured even the least imaginative, barebones implementation of it would still allow me to divvy up ship control duties with my friends; even if that were something which amounts to little more than duplicating the interface and reassigning control bindings to be controllable by someone else.

I was looking forward to having a friend plot routes for me, target subsystems, manipulate power priorities, or just take over "the wheel" during a long multi jump trip.

But instead Frontier went with holograms and two "crew" roles which barely qualify as "crew" at all: a gunner (who has less control over his guns than the pilot does), and . . . Someone who flies an entirely different spaceship which merely *launches* out of your spaceship.

Haha, ever tried joining a exploration or mining ship? Fun! (not).

 

[Falcon_D]

Pretty much all there is to it. I use multi crew on most sessions, same deal with most of my friends that fly.

Not having randoms onboard my ship, what's the point when you can have your friends onboard? I'd at least have to wing up with someone and have a chat before I let them onboard. Would never leave the ship open for anyone.

I know the community is a bit salty over the lack of npc crew, i'd like it too, but please stop talking rubbish about it being a waste of dev time, myself and many others waited patiently to have our friends and family ride along during game sessions. Multi crew couldn't have come fast enough for myself and my gaming buddies.

That’s just it. From what I read in the forums before MC came out, a lot of the people who wanted this feature, wanted it so that they could play with friends and family. They didn’t seem to be interested in the whole PUG style mechanic that was implemented as part of MC. Therefore, I’m not surprised that it’s not really fleshed out, nor am I surprised that it’s difficult to find a pick-up MC session.
FDev seemed to have spent a lot of dev effort just developing for this group.

I personally have no interest in MC. If I could have an NPC crew, fine. But otherwise no one is stepping into my cockpit with me unless I know them IRL and even then only for a short session.