My new player experience (262 hours of play time) - It doesn't have to be this way

[ꝁestrel]

I got pulled into some corp full of new players lead by a couple of experienced guys. It was during one of the media hype cycles and player spikes, so new players were abundant and these guys knew they had an opportunity to gather a bunch of noobs together for cheap manpower. PLEX prices plumeted. They taught us how to build small cheap ships to be effective at combat. Our strategy was to win any conflict by sheer numbers. We weren't part of any of the big alliances. I don't know what our long-term goals were as a corp, but we were friendly with one neighboring system. We mined and built some infrastructure, and I contributed to that. It was fun to see things grow. Eventually another group nearby took notice of us and started conflict. Our strategy worked well as we did manage to take out a few of their larger ships incurring a significant cost to them. The problem was that because we were mostly new players and mostly casual, the combat drained our resources faster than we could replenish them. It was that point where I realized that the biggest downside of EVE is that success comes from dedication and consistency (like any endeavor). I stuck with the corp, but started spending more time in Jita where I could set up contracts for a few minutes and then go off to do other things, which was still compelling but allowed me to have a successful life outside of the game.

I was trying to understand how much experience you have in the game. Based on your previous descriptions my suspicion was that you only had surface level experience in Eve. But I didn't want to assume so I asked for some more info.

You're essentially drawing comparisons against things you don't understand and haven't experienced yourself. So most of your ideas are rooted in your imagination. With Eve it's what you imagine the game experience like at a deeper level... but not something you've experienced first hand.

This is really really important if you're trying to give constructive feedback.

Eve is famous for being interesting in theory but in practice quite boring and grindy. Once you actually play it as your main game that becomes apparent. What you experienced sounds like what gamers call the "honeymoon period" of a game.

If you don't understand the game at a deep level then you also won't know about the drawbacks of the features you're suggesting get ported over. Eve has a lot of flaws but they only become apparent once you've really learned the game. Then once you learn the flaws you might end up saying "wow I really wouldn't want that in Elite".

It was clear I had to be all-in or step away. I chose real life.

Not true at all. Just look at WH corps. That's a whole subset of the game where you can krab, pvp, explore, and build. I did that for a long time while basically casually playing on weekends.

Part of the problem is you've only seen the potential for Eve (not the reality) and think that Elite should adopt that potential. What you haven't seen are all the downsides/pitfalls because you haven't done it.

Think about why you left Eve. You claim that it was because Eve requires going "all in" but that's just not true. It's just so completely not true. Even outside of WH life you can just join a big corp and show up for events on weekends and whenever there's a big battle. You can even just solo rat in nullsec (in your corp's space) and no one will care because your earnings will be taxed.

 

[Linux Kernel]

Eve is famous for being interesting in theory but in practice quite boring and grindy.

Interesting. Swap Elite for EVE in that sentence, and it remains true. I would argue, even more so. I had way more fun and engagement in EVE than I did in Elite. I didn't have to search very far to find it either. I simply am looking for a reason to keep playing Elite. EVE gave me reasons, and I had to make a decision. Elite did not.

Part of the problem is you've only seen the potential for Eve (not the reality) and think that Elite should adopt that potential. What you haven't seen are all the downsides/pitfalls because you haven't done it.

Interesting that I listed several downsides to EVE and yet apparently I haven't seen them. So address the point directly. What are the downsides of my proposals? I've been clear that they should be implemented in a similar but not identical way. Or at least, with the goal of facilitating player interaction. So go ahead and tell me what are the downsides and pitfalls of adopting features that players have consistently been asking for these past 10 years? Are they also unaware of these downsides and pitfalls? My ideas aren't novel or new. I just came to the same conclusion independently. I wonder why.

Think about why you left Eve. You claim that it was because Eve requires going "all in" but that's just not true. It's just so completely not true.

Actually for me that was definitely true. I was either going to be dedicated, or not at all. That's how I am with a lot of things in life, but especially with games. But you tell me that EVE doesn't require dedication and consistency. Well shoot! That's the biggest downside of EVE according to a lot of people who have played it. So I guess adopting features similar to EVE wouldn't have a negative impact then?

Again. Articulate what exactly the downsides and pitfalls are. I keep listing features that could be applied in a measured way to make the game more engaging and compelling. I've shown examples of many other players coming to similar conclusions. People in this forum repeatedly say that this feedback is common and regular. Yet nobody has yet articulated how some small improvements would negatively affect the core mechanics of Elite, which we all have enjoyed and agree don't need to be changed.

 

[ꝁestrel]

Interesting. Swap Elite for EVE in that sentence, and it remains true. I would argue, even more so. I had way more fun and engagement in EVE than I did in Elite. I didn't have to search very far to find it either. I simply am looking for a reason to keep playing Elite. EVE gave me reasons, and I had to make a decision. Elite did not.

Right, but an easy counterpoint is that plenty of players do find Elite fun and engaging.

Another easy counterpoint is you stopped playing Eve. You claim that you're going to go back but the fact is that you did stop playing Eve. If the game was so fun and engaging then you would just keep playing. The "all in" argument doesn't fly because, like I said, you could just join a big corp and play the game.

I'm not even exaggerating. Join Eve University. They'll even supply you with ships. Then you hop on Discord, join a channel, and you'll be doing small gang PvP before you know it. Or join the people mining, ratting, etc. Every night or just on weekends. Or just a few times a month if you want.

Interesting that I listed several downsides to EVE and yet apparently I haven't seen them. So address the point directly. What are the downsides of my proposals? I've been clear that they should be implemented in a similar but not identical way. Or at least, with the goal of facilitating player interaction. So go ahead and tell me what are the downsides and pitfalls of adopting features that players have consistently been asking for these past 10 years? Are they also unaware of these downsides and pitfalls? My ideas aren't novel or new. I just came to the same conclusion independently. I wonder why.

I don't remember what your proposals are. Your original post didn't have any concrete proposals. Since then you've written like 200,000 words that I'm not going to re-read. The closest thing to a proposal in your original post was to add more social tools so people would have things to fight over. I'll address that below.

Actually for me that was definitely true. I was either going to be dedicated, or not at all. That's how I am with a lot of things in life, but especially with games. But you tell me that EVE doesn't require dedication and consistency. Well shoot! That's the biggest downside of EVE according to a lot of people who have played it. So I guess adopting features similar to EVE wouldn't have a negative impact then?

This is the issue with referencing things you don't know about. There was a time (like 15 years ago) when playing Eve was like having a second job. That's ancient history. It's not the "biggest downside" anymore. Eve's issues over the past years have nothing to do with it.

Yet nobody has yet articulated how some small improvements would negatively affect the core mechanics of Elite, which we all have enjoyed and agree don't need to be changed.

The meat of your original post: "Just give them some simple trade, resource, territorial, and political tools to make all that happen themselves."

It's very hard explaining the pitfalls of that kind of system to someone who has no experience in it. I'll try...

Any game where people fight over finite resources has massive problems with players abusing the game's systems and/or stacking things so much in their favor that it's not fun for the average person. It's incredibly hard to balance. Games like Eve, Albion, Tarkov, and DayZ all have these problems in their own unique ways.

The first issue you run into is cheating and exploiting. If there's something worth fighting over then people will do anything they can to obtain it. Even if there's the perfect anti-cheat and zero exploits (actually impossible) then you'll run into game balance issues. Everyone will use nothing but meta ships and cheesy tactics.

The next issue you run into is what people call "blobs". A blob is when a group of players get together and stack the odds so much in their favor that it's impossible for the average person to even compete. You're probably imagining a scenario where you and a couple buddies are gonna fight over some system in Elite. Yea... no. What's going to happen is this. If the system has any value whatsoever you and your buddies will face off 25 vs 3 and get smashed. You won't even stand a chance.

And then there's the toxicity. Eve is world renowned for its toxicity (still one of the funniest videos of all time). Competition over resources always draws out big egos and jerks. The higher the stakes the worse people are. It's not as bad in games like Tarkov/DayZ because the resources are ephemeral. If you die, just respawn and try again. But in games where the resources you're fighting over are permanent (like fighting over a system) then it gets unhinged very quickly.

Last, but not least, there's the sweats. Sweats are people who spend 10 hours a day playing the game and training their skills. It's an unavoidable byproduct of competition over limited resources. These highly competitive people will scoop up all the resources and the average player will have nothing left but crumbs.

All of these problems can be addressed. But this is why I say that the game needs to be built from the ground up with this type of gameplay mind. You don't simply add a location with a few game mechanics and let things play out. It took Eve decades to get it right. These are all major issues in Star Citizen and Tarkov. There's a reason why people avoid public servers in DayZ and stick to one of like 10 servers (that are always full) with active server admins and server settings that avoid these issues (like no base building).

Anyway that's just a small example of why you're getting so much push back. It's not that people think the game is perfect or that no changes are needed. It's just that when you suggest "let the players fight over it and figure it out" the players with MMO experience know that it's a Pandora's Box.

 

[Linux Kernel]

Right, but an easy counterpoint is that plenty of players do find Elite fun and engaging.

Another easy counterpoint is you stopped playing Eve. You claim that you're going to go back but the fact is that you did stop playing Eve. If the game was so fun and engaging then you would just keep playing. The "all in" argument doesn't fly because, like I said, you could just join a big corp and play the game.

I'm not even exaggerating. Join Eve University. They'll even supply you with ships. Then you hop on Discord, join a channel, and you'll be doing small gang PvP before you know it. Or join the people mining, ratting, etc. Every night or just on weekends. Or just a few times a month if you want.

Yes. I found some things engaging as well. Yes I went back and played EVE a bit and also Star Citizen. Star Citizen was hard to get into because of some serious bugs, but that's another story. I spun up some new skill research in EVE and explored a bit. I need to decide what my ultimate goal will be though. That's another advantage Elite has on EVE. There's much more galaxy to explore and build in Elite. Now if only the game mechanics lent themselves to long-term goals. Thank you for the suggestions on where to get started again.

Since then you've written like 200,000 words that I'm not going to re-read. The closest thing to a proposal in your original post was to add more social tools so people would have things to fight over.

Oh. So you didn't even read what I was suggesting. That's fine. I just figured you might want to comprehend it before trying to make arguments against it.

This is the issue with referencing things you don't know about. There was a time (like 15 years ago) when playing Eve was like having a second job. That's ancient history. It's not the "biggest downside" anymore. Eve's issues over the past years have nothing to do with it.

So you're saying it has changed a lot since I last played? I checked my character account creation dates. I have one account with a character created 2007.12.13 and the main character I played most was created 2009.04.28. Well that clears everything up. I look forward to seeing the adjustments they've made. It's good to see a developer taking the health of their game seriously and being willing to tweak a few things here and there.

Any game where people fight over finite resources...

I stopped reading at "finite resources".

If you had read and comprehended my proposals, you would know I never suggested resources should be finite. In fact I propose that allowing many resource extraction and hauling systems to be automated to a small degree, but guided by players, would make resources relatively less time-intensive to acquire. People are already requesting this feature today without any other tweaks or adjustments. I did consider if finite resources were necessary, and I wondered if it was in any related to the "pristine reserves" stat on planets and rings. I never found out what that meant while playing Elite. But ultimately I thought finite resources (at least the base ones used to craft other items) are not necessary for the improvements people want to see in Elite. Player-driven economies, however, are frequently requested by a large portion of people who have played Elite.

So because finite resources are not a relevant issue, I guess we're back to square one.

 

[Rhialto]

It comes up often, huh? Maybe the people are telling you something?

https://steamdb.info/app/359320/charts/#6y

Don't worry I expected to get a bunch of flack for daring to suggest this game could be so much more than it is. I'll be fine.

Just gonna' post this again because I re-watched it and it's SO analogous.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_ZO_Ffa11E


Different genre entirely, but so many space games were made this past decade and none of them really nailed it. Elite is so close. I really just want it to succeed, and my feedback (which I realize will likely be ignored) is given with just the smallest glimmer of hope that maybe this game is heading in the right direction now (starting with colonization, even if totally broken now).

According to the steam chart the player number almost tippled in a years time, that doesn't seem dead.
The numbers have been higher in the past, but are on the rise again.
Also, a lot of people, including me, play the game through the stand alone launcher, or via Epic.

 

[ꝁestrel]

Yes. I found some things engaging as well. Yes I went back and played EVE a bit and also Star Citizen. Star Citizen was hard to get into because of some serious bugs, but that's another story. I spun up some new skill research in EVE and explored a bit. I need to decide what my ultimate goal will be though. That's another advantage Elite has on EVE. There's much more galaxy to explore and build in Elite. Now if only the game mechanics lent themselves to long-term goals. Thank you for the suggestions on where to get started again.

You're citing these games as examples but you don't have any experience in them. It's all your imagination.

Oh. So you didn't even read what I was suggesting. That's fine. I just figured you might want to comprehend it before trying to make arguments against it.

You put very little effort into formulating a clear suggestion. You can't expect someone to read 200,000 words for a concept that can be explained in 1 paragraph.

I look forward to seeing the adjustments they've made. It's good to see a developer taking the health of their game seriously and being willing to tweak a few things here and there.

And yet you're comfortable using Eve as an example... when you don't know anything about Eve.

I stopped reading at "finite resources".

This is why it's difficult to explain it to someone without experience. You have to be taught every concept from the ground up because you've never seriously played a game with a player driven economy. That would explain why these "ideas" don't make any sense.

All player driven economies are based on finite resources. Full stop.

If you want your ideas to be taken seriously then spend some time learning player driven economy systems. The best way to do that is to actually spend some time in those games. Otherwise your ideas won't make any sense to anyone but you.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What exactly is it that we disagree on as far as game design? On one side, all I see here is "we don't want Elite to be EVE" and a bunch of dismissive comments. On the other side I see a group of players repeatedly and consistently saying "Elite is great and I enjoyed it for a time but why hasn't it evolved in this obvious direction?".

Yes, but which obvious direction? You're not sure why Frontier spent a bunch of time adding a FPS mode to Elite Dangerous (and with hindsight, there were certainly better things they could have spent the time on) but that was one of the major player demands before Frontier did it ... and one of the giant threads on this forum is hoping that mode be extended to cover the interiors of our own ships in greater detail. Others want a wider variety of landable planets to increase their range of exploration scenery. Lots of people agree that ED needs "more features" - there is quite widespread disagreement on what those features are.

I have yet to see one response explaining how any of these commonly proposed improvements would disrupt the existing core mechanics that people already love almost universally.

Exactly! Where?!?! It's not a money issue because Star Citizen and EVE are still going strong. Star Citizen is super beautiful but totally broken and yet it pulls in $100M a year of crowd funding 13 years later. No Man's Sky apparently resurrected itself through a miracle and scratches the itch for some people (I should try it even though I'm the kind of person who sees through dynamic procedural generation pretty quickly).

NMS I bounced off but the reasons I did are extremely me-specific (related to my main complaint about ED, which I've never seen anyone else really express). I still think it's worth a try if only to see someone else's take on "giant world space game" - though if you want an example of a game where the multiplayer really was bolted on as an afterthought, it's NMS: treat it as singleplayer.

No no no. Elite has all the hard work done. The core game mechanics are already built and work well. It's expensive to add an FPS to the game, but they did it for some reason. It's not bad to have it, but it doesn't take advantage of the existing mechanics that would work well if you just let the players build more of the in-game assets themselves and drive the economy themselves. They're adding more and more ships because ships sell well (as Star Citizen clearly shows).

Sure. If some other company makes a game with a galaxy based on our own, at the same scale, with the same appropriate level of detail, I and many others would flock to it. That's why people are talking about Elite and not some other game. Nobody has those core fundamentals so perfectly positioned.

What? That's the most compelling thing about "set in space". There's so much to explore and places to build and resources to find and ways to maneuver.

And here is the fundamental problem.
- you want a game with multiplayer interaction, with things like a player-driven economy and construction and competition and so on
- you want a game with the physical scale of an entire galaxy filled with star systems the size of star systems containing planets the size of planets
The two aren't compatible. It's not "missed potential", it's "you can't do both of those things well in the same game".

Colonisation is a great feature in isolation (subject to implementation, bug fixes, polish, etc.) but it obviously massively exacerbates the "there are fewer online players than inhabited systems" problem. I've never seen another player in "my" system, and the traffic report suggests that I'm possibly missing a couple a week by not spending 24/7 sitting in supercruise watching out for them. I'm surprised that I still see as many other players as I do. Now, this is fine for ED as it stands - meeting other players is optional, you can make an appointment if you want to do so, it's not too difficult to meet up with your friends - but would be breaking the balance of any "you need to interact, at least indirectly, with other players" features in full chaos, if ED had any. And it makes it so much harder for ED to add any of those later, not that Frontier are likely to try.

Similarly a player-driven economy. The context of "Elite sequel" rather than "generic space game" means that there needs to be a way for players to (reliably!) make money by hauling cargo. The size of economy in terms of number of stations which could be supported purely by player hauling is tiny compared with the hundreds of thousands of markets there actually are. So even where player-driven economies exist in Elite Dangerous (Tritium, maybe some freight of colonisation supplies now) they're very much a sideshow.
(And also: it's easy to imagine a PDE for commodities and trading and maybe extending from that into ship-building. But what about for bounty hunting? Or exploration? Or salvage missions? Or passengers? Do those just largely vanish as paying activities because no other player has a motivation to pay you to do them, or do they stay as a static NPC-fed source of credits which pushes ridiculous inflation on the PDE trading side?)

You said you were disappointed to realise that most of the ships you met were NPCs; the alternative, given the scale of the galaxy, was for you to almost never see another ship (and the entire combat side of the game to collapse due to lack of targets, since no-one is going to volunteer to be "comedically incompetent RES pirate #33"). Dual Universe just had [1] a single star system (though again a realistically-sized one) and couldn't even fill that properly purely with real players even at its height despite implementing a full shopping list of "EDs missing features" to attract everyone.

Huge amounts of ED gameplay, especially on the multiplayer side, is constantly running into the "space is really big and therefore you need an appointment to meet anyone" problem. Conversely, a game with all the multiplayer interaction you desire couldn't have anything approaching ED's scale (certainly not for inhabited space; maybe uninhabited space; even realistic-sized star systems would be a tough thing to include)


[1] Technically still "has", I guess, but it's really not going to fill it with players now.

 

[shadowhand]

It never made sense to me to use the Steam key that I got with the game. So I've never played it via steam. Mostly because I find it obnoxious to be told "you've played this game for x hours" before I even click "launch"

But also wouldn't that just be loading a launcher with an interface I don't want to see or interact with on top of the launcher? That's just weird.

 

[marx]

Some side notes:

Yes, but which obvious direction? You're not sure why Frontier spent a bunch of time adding a FPS mode to Elite Dangerous (and with hindsight, there were certainly better things they could have spent the time on) but that was one of the major player demands before Frontier did it ...

It was also one of David Braben's promises ever since Elite 4 was announced, back around the early 2000s. For better or for worse. The idea certainly didn't come from ED players first.

Others want a wider variety of landable planets to increase their range of exploration scenery.

It would also be a good feature for colonizers now, since it would add more places - with good scenery! - where they could build.

 

[Cosmo]

This isn't a subscription game. You don't need to give me a grind to keep me chasing the end game so I keep paying monthly. Let the players make the game fun for you. Let them make their own powerplay. Just give them some simple trade, resource, territorial, and political tools to make all that happen themselves. Sure, give them some characters or something to champion, but you don't need to build a grind system for them. Let them blow up each other's stuff and fight over who controls the galaxy.

The Vanguards update will improve guild play. The colonization stuff should be a lot better in 5-10 years if Fdev keeps improving it and adding new features.

Speaking of blowing each other up. Where is everybody? I played open the whole time and maybe I saw a player once near the end when I went to Achenar. Are you all hiding in solo mode? Why does an "MMO" even have a solo mode? What is this game? Who is in charge here? How does a game have so many really awesome little things in it and then also just so many confusingly terrible things in it?

The multiple play modes are a bit unfortunate, because it separates players. Many play solo or private group. This won't change anymore though.

It's soooo sad that it's been 10 years and this game hasn't built on any of the things that made it so hypeable back in 2015. Also forget these Thargoids. There are no aliens. Humans only. Let us fight eachother in space. It's what humans do. I don't need some elaborate alien civilization backstory. I just want to defeat enemies for the Empire and expand humanity to Sagittarius A.

I'd like some story-driven missions for the factions. Another living alien species would be cool, but it's unnecessary. First they should add Thargoids on-foot.

 

[geoffrey.hdt]

[...]First they should add Thargoids on-foot.

YES

And make them as hard to defeat as their space Interceptors are, with their biggest varient requiring a "wing" of on-foot players (and hopefully not something that can be killed via dumbfires...).

And if there could be some kind of bridge between space and onfoot content, that would be nice. Also, that the rewards for doing on-foot stuff would be applicable to your ship, and vice-versa.

 

[starman]

Ignoring the three modes people could be in and technicalities involved with creating an instance with another player who is playing at the same time as you. There are far more locations than players which makes encountering another one extremely unlikely unless you arrange things to improve you chances.

It is Elite reworked from the 1984 original, while it may be massive (billions of locations) and multiplayer (some say marginally) and is online that is about the limit of its similarity to a traditional MMO.

The game is essentially a sandbox so apart from things like the Thargoid War which finished last year there isn’t much story to Dungeon Master.

Because it has so much room for things, even things we don’t like, and all of them are pretty much optional.

I have only been playing for just under 9 years but I am grateful that despite the efforts of some on the forums I still get to play the game I bought of course there is stuff I wish they would add but there is even more stuff I wish they wouldn’t and there is some stuff I wish they hadn’t added (or at least not in the way they did).

Hopefully I will still be here by then.

Still trying to get to Hutton orbital to collect free Anaconda.

 

[starman]

• 2015:
  1. "Hey man, what's that game. Is it like EVE Online? I'll give it a try."
  2. "Cool we made lots of money trading. Did it actually matter though? Does it get used to build anything or is it just something to waste my time? Oh... well can you attack starports or cut off trade routes or actually affect anything? No. Meh..."
• 2025:
  1. "It's been 10 years since I last tried Elite Dangerous. Let's see what it's like now. COLONIZATION!?!?!?! IT JUST CAME OUT LAST MONTH!?!?!?!? LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO!"
  2. Mining for money. Easy.
  3. Type-9. Find a system. "Cool I got a semi-rare star with lots of places to build."
  4. Hauling. zzzzzzzzzz
  5. "Well that sucked but at least it's done. Now what else can I build? There's no steel near me so let's do a refinery and some extraction facilities."
  6. Refinery done. Surface military outpost for more security. Nice! Can't land at the refinery though. Also the extraction facility (near a red dwarf with metal rings) construction pad is inside the red dwarf influence. Can't get to it. Ok... beta.
  7. Extraction around a small gas giant with metal rings. "Ok cool. Done. Wait... I left the system and came back and it isn't completing. And the construction yard is still there? Oh well."
  8. Try to build an agriculture facility around a moon in co-orbit with another moon. Can't land with any ship. It's moving too fast. Not even turning off flight assist works.
  9. "Is anybody else running into this? How am I supposed to make this refinery work so I can land there?" (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSuzxnuOdLg) "Oh it's totally broken. Well great. I'll wait until it gets fixed before building anything else."
  10. "I guess I'll explore around and do some combat." Saw a neutron star and a black hole. Probably the most fun I've had this whole game.
  11. "Let's try Powerplay!!!!!" Had some success. "Nice, but... any epic battles against players? In fact, are any of these other ships even players? Oh..." Apparently I've never seen another player in this game. "Ehh.... I like the different characters and stuff but I'm not grinding just so I can turn some triangles from one color to another on the map if it doesn't actually do anything meaningful."
  12. "Ok well let's go fight in one of those civil wars I saw on the map once." (A few moments later...) "Good god these guys take a lot of shots. I'm not really affecting anything at all. I must be doing something wrong. Let me go watch a combat guide...
  13. "Oh... I guess I need to do engineering. Let's figure out what that is. (One minute later) "Yeah no way, I'm not doing some galactic where's Waldo scavenger hunt" (Note: It has no impact on the galaxy or other players or the story or anything other than my ship capabilities. It's literally just a time sink for a game that isn't even paid for monthly. THERE'S NO REASON FOR YOU TO WASTE MY TIME JUMPING AROUND THE GALAXY NOT INTERACTING WITH OTHER PLAYERS. !!!!! WHO DESIGNED THIS ?!?!?!?!)
  14. "Well what do I do now?" ... look around the map "Hey cool that extraction facility back in my colony is finished. Let's go see what it does."
  15. "Oh it does nothing. I can't land at it either. I swear it said medium landing pads in the description. Also why is it an Industrial Facility? Not extraction?" (Bug I guess)
  16. BEEP BEEP BEEP! ALERT! THE FACILITY IS UNDER ATTACK WE NEED YOUR HELP! "Yeah! Dynamic event!" Eventually I figured out how to respond in the chat menu.
  17. I throw everything I have at them but barely get their shields down before they destroy 10/10 of the plasma cells or whatever. They jump away. "Engineering... why???????????? Well did they actually affect anything? Can't tell by looking at the stats on the facility. Oh well I guess it didn't matter."
  18. "Yeah this isn't working. I think I'm done. Everything in this game is a grind or a dead end. I'll log out in my colony station. Maybe it will still be here in 10 years when I try again.
  19. I fly back to the little outpost station that took me forever to build. Docking request denied. "Sometimes there's a slow ship taking off the only medium pad. No big deal. It'll be 30s at most."
  20. A Krait with a wanted tag lands on the pad and sits there for over a minute.
  21. I shoot the Krait. It's wanted right? I'll just pay the fine. No damage. "You can't damage ships sitting vulnerable on a pad in this game? Come on...."
  22. "What if I shoot the outpost?" <dies> "lol"
  23. "Well I'm 14 jumps away getting out of a prison. Let's disembark maybe the station is different than all the other stations."
  24. "Oh cool it is different! And there are some prison cells." Walks back to the ship. "Wait... nah what am I going home for?" Back into the prison cell. Close the door. Exit to desktop. Uninstall.

My experience wasn't that bad. There are far worse space games. What hurts the most is that this game has so much potential. So much low-hanging fruit. And all the developer effort put into this game is just to make more grind (Engineering, Powerplay, and maybe Thargoids although I never tried them).

This isn't a subscription game. You don't need to give me a grind to keep me chasing the end game so I keep paying monthly. Let the players make the game fun for you. Let them make their own powerplay. Just give them some simple trade, resource, territorial, and political tools to make all that happen themselves. Sure, give them some characters or something to champion, but you don't need to build a grind system for them. Let them blow up each other's stuff and fight over who controls the galaxy.

Speaking of blowing each other up. Where is everybody? I played open the whole time and maybe I saw a player once near the end when I went to Achenar. Are you all hiding in solo mode? Why does an "MMO" even have a solo mode? What is this game? Who is in charge here? How does a game have so many really awesome little things in it and then also just so many confusingly terrible things in it?

It's soooo sad that it's been 10 years and this game hasn't built on any of the things that made it so hypeable back in 2015. Also forget these Thargoids. There are no aliens. Humans only. Let us fight eachother in space. It's what humans do. I don't need some elaborate alien civilization backstory. I just want to defeat enemies for the Empire and expand humanity to Sagittarius A.

See you all in another 10 years. It was... sorta fun?

What games do you normally play? Is your real life full of super exiting things?

 

[Linux Kernel]

According to the steam chart the player number almost tippled in a years time, that doesn't seem dead.
The numbers have been higher in the past, but are on the rise again.
Also, a lot of people, including me, play the game through the stand alone launcher, or via Epic.

Yes. As I've said, it is encouraging that Colonization has brought back a lot of players. Myself included. Sadly, I think the poor execution of that feature is causing people, like myself, to slowly try other parts of the game and lose interest. https://steamdb.info/app/359320/charts/#6m That's an execution issue though, not a design issue.

You're citing these games as examples but you don't have any experience in them. It's all your imagination.

I've been playing EVE since 2007 and yet it was all in my imagination. Please, sir. Take a moment to read and comprehend the warning from our moderators to stay on topic. Refusing to read what I've earnestly proposed and inventing reasons why I'm not qualified to discuss the topic are not on-topic: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...esnt-have-to-be-this-way.636509/post-10612964

You put very little effort into formulating a clear suggestion. You can't expect someone to read 200,000 words for a concept that can be explained in 1 paragraph.

You haven't read my suggestions, as you yourself stated. If you have something constructive to contribute, by all means let me know.

And yet you're comfortable using Eve as an example... when you don't know anything about Eve.

You're trying to shoot down my suggestions when you know nothing about them.

All player driven economies are based on finite resources. Full stop.

Wrong. It's not an all-or-nothing requirement. Take Elite, for example. Trailblazers hit the BGS pretty hard for some resources and there was a high demand for them in specific areas. Players have been putting carriers filled with these resources near places with high demand. Players are using what little ability they have to make other goods and services available to their peers. They've been trying to build facilities to create these resources themselves too, and it might have worked if Trailblazers was functional. Even WOW has a marketplace which allows a few minimal aspects of the game to be player-driven even though resources aren't finite.

If you want your ideas to be taken seriously then spend some time learning player driven economy systems. The best way to do that is to actually spend some time in those games. Otherwise your ideas won't make any sense to anyone but you.

Perhaps if you actually read and comprehend what I've proposed, you would have some constructive dialogue to provide.

Yes, but which obvious direction?

The one everybody here keeps telling me I'm not the first person to mention. "Build systems and features that facilitate and encourage player interaction." I've made several viable suggestions in this thread, many of which are also similar to what people have asked for over the past decade. Here is a 10 year old video where a player correctly identifies the #1 issue with Elite, "player interaction". He recommends improvements to the mission, squad, and instancing system, and FDev has implemented a few of these things, which is great.

Source: https://youtu.be/Lgu9XtQqaFg?feature=shared&t=324


Here's another video from 2 years ago where a player is lamenting the lack of player interaction and features to facilitate it. He specifically says FDev should take a look at EVE online () for inspiration on how to create systems for groups of players to collaborate. Thankfully, the Vanguards update for Elite appears to be a step in the right direction here.

Source: https://youtu.be/0Gumgk7db6Y?feature=shared&t=647


Here's another video from just two weeks ago where a player is learning about Trailblazers for the first time, not fully understanding the mechanics, but still getting excited for the possibility that the game is heading in a more player-driven direction with player driven colonization and economies.

Source: https://youtu.be/PxoA8wHpbZ8?feature=shared&t=845


Note that all of these players and many people in their communities are all hoping for a better experience in Elite and not just bashing the game. The same is true for me. FDev likely won't implement systems to encourage and facilitate player interaction exactly as we've described them, but that's ok. They just need to be nudged in the right direction; the direction obvious to so many players over the years.

And here is the fundamental problem.

• you want a game with multiplayer interaction, with things like a player-driven economy and construction and competition and so on
• you want a game with the physical scale of an entire galaxy filled with star systems the size of star systems containing planets the size of planets

The two aren't compatible. It's not "missed potential", it's "you can't do both of those things well in the same game".

I understand your argument. Indeed 300B+ star systems and the time it takes to travel across them is very large. But I wouldn't say it "can't" be done. We've already seen FDev add SCO drives and some ships with longer jump capabilities. I don't know what the upper-limit on that would be, but that is one small change that allows players to move about the large galaxy more quickly and meet up with each other for various interactions more quickly. New players should absolutely start with short jumps just to get that feeling of scale that Elite provides, but it might be worth pushing the jump distances up for more advanced ships or adding more advanced ships and modules beyond what we have.

There are other ways to encourage player interaction even with a large galaxy. Give them more reasons to meet and interact. Several of my suggestions are intended to do just that. I actually think the size of the galaxy is good because even if the game were to see a population explosion it would allow everybody to hide out in more remote regions and potentially create their own assets there. Right now there is a 15LY limit on colonization but perhaps that could be adjusted and limited in some other way. There was a video from CMDR Mechan a while back that I can't find where he mentioned 15LY limits just creates a bunch of systems with a single outpost and it clutters up the galaxy, and he suggested some ideas for how to allow colonization at more remote systems but with a time-based cooldown relative to the distance. Something like that could work.

Colonisation is a great feature in isolation (subject to implementation, bug fixes, polish, etc.) but it obviously massively exacerbates the "there are fewer online players than inhabited systems" problem. I've never seen another player in "my" system, and the traffic report suggests that I'm possibly missing a couple a week by not spending 24/7 sitting in supercruise watching out for them. I'm surprised that I still see as many other players as I do. Now, this is fine for ED as it stands - meeting other players is optional, you can make an appointment if you want to do so, it's not too difficult to meet up with your friends - but would be breaking the balance of any "you need to interact, at least indirectly, with other players" features in full chaos, if ED had any. And it makes it so much harder for ED to add any of those later, not that Frontier are likely to try.

Similarly a player-driven economy. The context of "Elite sequel" rather than "generic space game" means that there needs to be a way for players to (reliably!) make money by hauling cargo. The size of economy in terms of number of stations which could be supported purely by player hauling is tiny compared with the hundreds of thousands of markets there actually are. So even where player-driven economies exist in Elite Dangerous (Tritium, maybe some freight of colonisation supplies now) they're very much a sideshow.
(And also: it's easy to imagine a PDE for commodities and trading and maybe extending from that into ship-building. But what about for bounty hunting? Or exploration? Or salvage missions? Or passengers? Do those just largely vanish as paying activities because no other player has a motivation to pay you to do them, or do they stay as a static NPC-fed source of credits which pushes ridiculous inflation on the PDE trading side?)

You said you were disappointed to realise that most of the ships you met were NPCs; the alternative, given the scale of the galaxy, was for you to almost never see another ship (and the entire combat side of the game to collapse due to lack of targets, since no-one is going to volunteer to be "comedically incompetent RES pirate #33"). Dual Universe just had [1] a single star system (though again a realistically-sized one) and couldn't even fill that properly purely with real players even at its height despite implementing a full shopping list of "EDs missing features" to attract everyone.

Huge amounts of ED gameplay, especially on the multiplayer side, is constantly running into the "space is really big and therefore you need an appointment to meet anyone" problem. Conversely, a game with all the multiplayer interaction you desire couldn't have anything approaching ED's scale (certainly not for inhabited space; maybe uninhabited space; even realistic-sized star systems would be a tough thing to include)

Your points here are all valid. I would just encourage you to think outside the box a little bit. Player interaction is partially a scale issue as you have stated but it's also a design and UI issue. Players do rely on hauling and mining to make money in the game, but many players have made it clear they are tired of pressing J (especially after Trailblazers) and would like the ability to hire or coordinate NPC operated haulers. The game already lets players build facilities that create resources automatically (at least after they fix Trailblazers), so in theory if they get it working right there could be a small trickle of mined resources into systems with refineries and players could schedule trade routes of those resources to specific systems. The BGS is supposed to handle this now, but it's very hand-wavey and doesn't let the players make these decisions. You could keep some aspects of the BGS operating at a smaller level while allowing players to make larger trade and resource allocation decisions themselves. The simple act of opening up these mechanics to the players makes the game more compelling to a large audience who has been asking for this type of thing for years.

With the potential changes in Vanguards, they're using a few simple UI changes to help players find each other and collaborate in game. That's great. There are lots of other UI changes and mechanics you could add that would encourage players to find each other; see the video above from 10 years ago where a player asks for FDev to look at what EVE built and learn a few things from them. Maybe you could even gamify it in some way by using the D-Scanner or Nav Beacon to help you identify other systems with a player population heat map, or something similar to that. Maybe it doesn't work in remote or relatively uncolonized areas to let players hide out when they want to.

One player did say that Elite needs to cut its number of star systems down by half or more. I don't know if that is the right move today. People have invested a lot of time exploring and scanning remote systems so cutting down their number would hit a lot of dedicated players. Maybe there's some way to do it, but I think other mechanics are far preferable.

What games do you normally play? Is your real life full of super exiting things?

See my post here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...esnt-have-to-be-this-way.636509/post-10613249

And yes. I am grateful to have lived a good life.




Well, gents. This has been an interesting discussion, but it is time for me to take my leave. I learned a lot and certainly was surprised at the response. To those of you who engaged constructively, thank you. I appreciate your thoughtful analysis.

I look forward to seeing what FDev does in the next few years. If it is compelling, I would love to return and I'm sure many other players would also love to see this game be revived. Until then, fly safe (or dangerous). o7

 

[SteveWW57]

"Players are using what little ability they have to make other goods and services available to their peers. They've been trying to build facilities to create these resources themselves too, and it might have worked if Trailblazers was functional. "

I agree that it has been a bit hit and miss, but it has been possible for players to set up facilities to produce most of the main commodities like aluminium, steel, titanium and liquid oxygen. Some have even managed iirc to produce CMMs. So, it has partially worked, and is therefore partially functional. It will get more functional as time goes on.

 

[sidereal6]

Finally an interesting question

Thanks for the answer. One thing you mentioned was "adventures" in games like WoW. I think that the best thing FDev could possibly do for ED is to give us something analogous to a "dungeon" that spawns just for your party, and has a boss or something to defeat.

It could take the form of a solar system that, if you're on the quest, when you and your party go there, you end up in a private session. and the quest starts running.

So you would start in open to party-up, and you'd see other players, but then when your party of three or four jumps to that system, you're alone there and you fight the boss (or whatever the quest is).

The other thing that FDev really should do is make the mission system open source. No, I don't mean that any random person should be able to create a mission and have it show up in the game. That's not how open source works. I just mean that the way FDev makes missions (the script language that's used) should be given to the community. Then the community would design missions, and vote on which ones sound good. FDev could then accept the best ones, or veto them.

The community would LOVE to do that. It's free development labor. Any new mission would be put on a development server first, and people would happily debug the hell out of it. There is literally no downside.

The current mission paradigm is: (1) go get this thing or scan this thing or deliver this thing etc. - warning there may be pirates. (2) go kill this person

There is CLEARLY a lot more power available in the mission system. That is super, super obvious. You've experienced how things spawn, how NPCs communicate with you, even how missions can chain together ....but FDev clearly doesn't have the time to make new missions and debug them. The community absolutely would do that, if we could.

So, you asked for something meaningful, and then explained what you meant - and a lot of what you want, I think, would be delivered by these two things: (1) let the community design missions (2) improve the mission system and the tutorial system and let us have complex "quests"

 

[Tzebra]

According to the steam chart the player number almost tippled in a years time, that doesn't seem dead.
The numbers have been higher in the past, but are on the rise again.
Also, a lot of people, including me, play the game through the stand alone launcher, or via Epic.

That's a false positive.
The question to ask is how many listed new player accounts are actual current player alt-accounts, and alt-alt-accounts.

 

[ꝁestrel]

I've been playing EVE since 2007 and yet it was all in my imagination. Please, sir. Take a moment to read and comprehend the warning from our moderators to stay on topic. Refusing to read what I've earnestly proposed and inventing reasons why I'm not qualified to discuss the topic are not on-topic: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...esnt-have-to-be-this-way.636509/post-10612964

You're citing Eve to support your arguments for more "meaningful" player interaction.

You're then dishonest about how much you actually know. You may have installed the game in 2007 and dabbled a bit here and there. But when asked what meaningful experiences you had in Eve the only example you have is sitting in Jita and trading. That barely qualifies as playing that game.

This is just dishonest plain and simple. You're imagining what it might be like to participate in a player driven economy (probably with help from Youtube and Reddit) but you haven't experienced it yourself. Therefore you don't know the pitfalls of any particular idea. I listed those pitfalls but you ignore them because you can't respond.

You haven't read my suggestions, as you yourself stated. If you have something constructive to contribute, by all means let me know.

Link to a concrete suggestion and I'll be happy to respond.

You're trying to shoot down my suggestions when you know nothing about them.

I addressed one specific thing you pointed out in your original post. It doesn't even qualify as a suggestion because it's not specific enough. But I gave you the benefit of the doubt, quoted you, and went deep into the topic of "players fighting over" something.

You completely evaded that because you have no response. You don't know anything about that stuff so there's no way you can respond. Here it is again:

My new player experience (262 hours of play time) - It doesn't have to be this way

I got pulled into some corp full of new players lead by a couple of experienced guys. It was during one of the media hype cycles and player spikes, so new players were abundant and these guys knew they had an opportunity to gather a bunch of noobs together for cheap manpower. PLEX prices...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Wrong. It's not an all-or-nothing requirement. Take Elite, for example. Trailblazers hit the BGS pretty hard for some resources and there was a high demand for them in specific areas. Players have been putting carriers filled with these resources near places with high demand.

CMMs were in high demand because they were finite. Once the developers increased CMM production in stations then player trading evaporated.

 

[ꝁestrel]

It could take the form of a solar system that, if you're on the quest, when you and your party go there, you end up in a private session. and the quest starts running.

WORMHOLES!

I would love love love this. Think of all the possibilities. It could take you into a chain of systems in another galaxy with unusual characteristics. Like gravitational anomalies, space storms, weird aliens, etc. They could even use black holes as entry points. Some blackholes would have a permanent link to a certain chain of systems. Others would be very random. There could even certain mass restrictions where the mass of your ship can't exceed a certain amount to jump through.

Imagine wormhole/blackhole exploration.

 

[Koma Pahu]

That's a false positive.
The question to ask is how many listed new player accounts are actual current player alt-accounts, and alt-alt-accounts.

It’s far easier to run alt accounts through the FDev launcher than Steam, so I’d imagine that most of the Steam accounts are unique players.

Unless you have specific evidence to support your claim?

It could take the form of a solar system that, if you're on the quest, when you and your party go there, you end up in a private session. and the quest starts running.

The way instancing works, there’s not much difference to a raid/private session anyway. And if you’re in a wing you’ll always get back to the same instance.

Actually having a “quest” with a narrative and end goal/boss would be a nice addition to the game though.

I live in perpetual hope that we’ll get better missions, who know maybe with the Vanguards update something similar may come about.

You're then dishonest about how much you actually know. You may have installed the game in 2007 and dabbled a bit here and there. But when asked what meaningful experiences you had in Eve the only example you have is sitting in Jita and trading. That barely qualifies as playing that game.

I’ve been playing guitar since ‘92, but not consistently enough to be any good, or have any deep understanding of music theory. It’s not quite the call to authority they seem to think it is.

Well, gents. This has been an interesting discussion, but it is time for me to take my leave. I learned a lot and certainly was surprised at the response. To those of you who engaged constructively, thank you. I appreciate your thoughtful analysis.

Well as they’ve moved on, I don’t see much reason to engage with their ideas further.