NO to "third party tools" for ED

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I know I don't speak for everyone, but I'm pretty sure many would agree with what I am about to say.

There are a lot of complaints about lack of depth and content. I understand that you are saying (I hope I understand you correctly) that by taking out trade route discovery and outfit experimentation, they are missing the depth and content. The problem seems to be... that is not the depth and content that people want to see.

So instead of challenge people want see more to "crunch" trough? I backed ED just because I did not want this. And I am very sure many did the same.
 
So instead of challenge people want see more to "crunch" trough? I backed ED just because I did not want this. And I am very sure many did the same.

It's poor implementaion, poor in-game tools and poor overall experience. Those make it a challenge, but not in a good way - it's like the challenge of driving to work in gridlocked traffic versus the challenge of driving a fast time around a race circuit... both challenging, only one of them fun! :p
 
It's poor implementaion, poor in-game tools and poor overall experience. Those make it a challenge, but not in a good way - it's like the challenge of driving to work in gridlocked traffic versus the challenge of driving a fast time around a race circuit... both challenging, only one of them fun! :p

Or it could be just this:

A bad workman blames his tools

Edit: to be said, I want to see more in game tools. However, information sharing is completely separate thing. Writing down prices and getting instant access to trading route netting you thousands per cycle.
 
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So instead of challenge people want see more to "crunch" trough? I backed ED just because I did not want this. And I am very sure many did the same.

I'm sorry. I'm not sure what you mean by "crunch".

What I am suggesting is that some may not consider trade-searching and outfit-guessing as a challenge, but more of an annoyance.

I wasn't in a position to back ED unfortunately. When I was in a position to, I purchased the game. When the opportunity was given again to purchase a lifetime pass, I jumped on it immediately. I did that because I view Elite as a construct where I can roleplay and explore without a set story to follow. There are things that I find annoying in the game. Some I can't change: like shield potions - argh! did it again - SCBs, so I think I will just generally try to avoid cmdrs who choose to use them. Some I can work around: like the weird concept that public marketplaces don't like sharing their pricelist.

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It's poor implementaion, poor in-game tools and poor overall experience. Those make it a challenge, but not in a good way - it's like the challenge of driving to work in gridlocked traffic versus the challenge of driving a fast time around a race circuit... both challenging, only one of them fun! :p

Yes. This.

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A bad workman blames his tools

Wouldn't a good workman use the best tools available??
 
Or it could be just this:

A bad workman blames his tools

In some circumstances, you could have a point. In the case of what I'm referring to you don't as the tools do not even exist! Trading (as differentiated from the background sim) in ED is just utter rubbish, no more evolved than the first game.
 
Not agree,
many of first party tools don't give advantages for the players: logbooks, Graphic enhancement, Ship fitting, input/output app...
For trading tools, okay at the launch of ED there was big advantage to earn money with trading
but Frontier now have balanced the gameplay and now it's possible to earn more easily money with combat, maybe less than trading but stay correct.
Also community Goals are a nice way to earn money easily :)

I don't think the problem are the Third Party tools,
in most of game there will be always players to run for cash as we have player playing just to kill other player:
it's a part of the ecosystem and not the majority of players.
 
Well, seeing as how the devs have greenlit the use of 3rd party tools, some of which are made by the forum mods themselves, I'd say there is no real point to this thread. The decision has been made and quite frankly if you disagree, you're disagreeing with Frontier. Maybe you should find another company that supports your weird views on cheating.

Or, you know, you could mind your own business.
 

wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
Sorry, but there is no need for third party tools to excel at playing Elite: Dangerous. They just sometimes make the game a little easier. Despite what you may have heard, Elite: Dangerous isn't difficult. Sure, it has a learning curve, but that gets sorted out by playing the game. This isn't a critique of the tools themselves nor is it regarding the morality of using them, so don't take this statement out of context.

I unfortunately missed KS and bought PB1 with lifetime expansion in May/June 2014. Hence I think I've a pretty good knowledge of what ED is and what its about. I'm not going to take your statement out of context because anyone is rightfully so entitled to his/her opinion. I try hard not to say users how to play ED - I don't like to be told either what I should do and why my usage of tools apparently decreases my enjoyment of ED. Given the popularity of my third-party tool thread (100+ K viewers) and now edcodex.info and its companion thread, to ME personally it gives the impression that a lot of commanders do like to use third-party tools and makes it more enjoyable for them to play ED. I could however be wrong, its just my interpretation/observation.
 
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Finding good trade routes and making good builds is fun for me, so I don't use these third party tools, besides them not being needed. Back when I was trading rares the route I discovered and used earned a few million credits an hour in profit trading in a Cobra with a capacity of 44t. Rares trading also meant that the upfront investment and risk was very low per run, but just the same, good luck to any pirate trying to catch me in that Cobra. Only one was ever able to.

This is something people who use these kinds tools will likely miss out on. So in this respect, these tools are more of a cheap hindrance of game-play. I won't belittle people for using them, but trust me when I say that you don't need them.
 
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I care because others do use sharing tools, then go on saying game is void of content because they effectively skipped one.

However, I know I can't change how others play the game. And yes, I am itching for a fight regarding these issues because other side have easily laughed off these arguments because hey, using tools is fun.

Without info sharing tools you would have to:
1. actually seek good trading routes (and risk sharing one you found because it will be tanked)
2. actually get your best out of outfit you *have* not outfit is deemed best by others (as well it might not be);

I did mistake in OP using general term 'tools'. Commander Log and writing down prices for individual usage should be addressed in game, I agree. But overall, info sharing is like drug - it's very easy to convince you to use one, but it changes your POV about the game very, very considerably.

If I have been sounding like trolling because I am angry about this. I have been trying to avoid this discussion for a year, hoping people actually will try to use 'info sharing' less and less. Still, that dominates landscape. As I said, I don't care people use tools. I care it skews their perception. A LOT.

Fun? No, that's not why i use the tools. I use them because they are USEFUL and helpful! For me they add to my experience. Do they change my POV about the game - eh ... nope. Do they make me think they game is void of content ... nope.

If these tools were actually an 'i win' then i might agree with you, but they aren't. Even with tools people still have to do both the points you make. You still actually have to go to a trade route and do the trading. You still have to kit out and fly the ship and find out if it suits you. If some people are happy just to go with what other people say then that is up to them, and they will probably get less out of the game. But that is not the fault of the tools - more the mindset of the people themselves.

I see these tools as valuable resources in order to start my own research. Similar to how i use something like wikipedia. It gives me an initial overview of a subject which i can then research in more detail myself.

People sharing info LESS? Not going to happen.

Out of interest, what about powerplay and all the reddit and forum discussions with people trying to organise powers? Surely that is people using tools to share info outside the game.

(\(\;;/)/)
 
Is this still rumbling along? Yaysayers in the nay thread, naysayers in the yay thread - good grief!
 
Tools available *in* game.

As jabokai said, there are no tools *in* game.

Maybe it's just me. If I was a workman who was missing a tool that would make my work more efficient, I would go out and acquire that tool.

I am a programmer. I could code in notepad. But that would be stupid. I have Visual Studio. It's awesome and has lots of wonderful 'cheats' like Intellisense. It makes my work sooo much more efficient. It doesn't mean that I don't still require a high level of expertise in the technologies I use. It doesn't mean that developing software has suddenly become fast and easy. It doesn't mean that I don't constantly run into problems and have to think my way out of them. It just means I'm not wasting my time on things that are unnecessary. I appreciate that. My clients appreciate that.
 
Or it could be just this:

'A bad workman blames his tools'



Wait, we are in the 34th century flying spaceships and hyperdriving the verse and we 'need to write down the prices on a piece of paper'??? Is that progress? Can someone please call Gutenberg to make some prints of the price list?
 
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Reading the post would have disabused you of that idea. Ironic, given your post.

Look, it's not on me if your posts aren't internally consistent. There's no evidence of pen and paper within the game world. In fact, there's more evidence of crowd sourced information being made available (galnet) than there is of pen and paper. I mean, at this point, you should probably take some time to come to terms with all of your own rampant cheating.
 
Wouldn't a good workman use the best tools available??

Tools available *in* game.

In the previous version of Elite that I'd played, trading was far more basic - food and agricultural produce from agricultural systems to hi tech systems, consumer goods and technologies to agricultural systems. In the end, it was more economical to go out, kill pirates, loot the remains and sell whatever you found.

I think that possibly the size of FD's universe means that in game tools can't reflect real world tools. There's no social media in the future and the only media there is is more concerned with Imperial politics - there's nowhere to gossip and share information. If Galnet did have information about every major development (a new station requiring materials, an outpost in need of more narcotics, a mining area after some kind of reactive chemical, and so on) it'd be swamped dealing with the millions of occupied systems. So that has to be done outside the game. So whereas in the real world I use media and friends to further my business and make it more competitive, in Elite Dangerous this is not currently possible. For Elite Dangerous traders therefore until in game information of that quality is available they are effectively visiting every shop in a 50Km radius to find the best deals on, and availability of, Popcorn.
 
I'm a bit confused now.

So they are increasing their margins by denying their *customers* access to the most basic information about prices and availability of their products?

But at the same time profits are slim, so all this secrecy actually works to multiply the number of transactions in order to increase earnings, because somehow people buy more when they don't even know how much things cost and where they can find it?

That's a very... innovative strategy.

It's how the robber barons made their billions, as well as how monopolies function. The general idea is to stop competition. Great for the bottom line, sucks to be their workers and customers.

Is that what the lore is? Really? I don't know because on the most part I tend to create my own lore if it's needed at all. But if this is what it is, it really doesn't make sense to me. Yes, the whole thing is fantasy, so I guess you can come up with whatever social rules you want and say 'yeah, that's how things work'. But this is pushing it.

So every system in the populated galaxy, regardless of type of government, even the independents, hold to this view of secrecy-is-best? Really? Every one?

Commerce just doesn't work this way. It's crazy. These aren't specialist items or anything. We're talking about selling fish! I don't understand how secrecy could possibly help markets be more profitable. There may be many cases where corporations choose not to disclose special pricing they grant with special trade deals. But that isn't general commodity prices.

This need to control everything for greater profit that you talk about sounds remarkably similar to the current problems with the media industry. They have been fighting to maintain that old method of commerce for so long. But the majority of people who understand how technology works these days are demanding something different. They want to buy things the way they want. They demand it... or they circumvent. Are you telling me that out of all of these populated systems, the general populace haven't figured out that there's potentially a better way of doing business? You don't think traders would be passing messages to each other or collecting this information together. I know if I lived in this galaxy I certainly would be.

I'm sorry. It just doesn't have the ring of truth for me.

You're right, commerce doesn't work that way, and we've known about that fact for three centuries now. And yet as soon as a corporation gets big enough, or an individual wealthy enough, they fall right back into the same destructive patterns. They still walk the halls of government, looking for any advantage over their competitors, any easement of a regulation that is in place because of destructive behaviour in the past, and any way to circumvent the law of the land. They fail to realize that the public health care, education, and transport they rail against will ultimately help them, because they can only see the bottom line. The drive for profits, when allowed to operate freely, hurts everyone except the top 0.01%.

The Elite Galaxy has, for the last thousand years, operated under one rule: travel is slow, and informaton can only travel via ship. This has allowed corporations to create company planets as oppressive as the company towns of the 19th century. It has allowed literal fiefdoms to flourish throughout human space. It is a broken galaxy with a broken economy, and this brokenness makes great game play. If the economy of Elite worked like it does today, you wouldn't be raking in credits hand over foot. That space ship wouldn't be your own, and the chances are you wouldn't be flying it in the first place. You'd be planetbound earning an ordinary living. There wouldn't be wars between corporations who need elite pilots to fight for them via proxy. And there certainly wouldn't be a cold war between the galactic powers. This broken galaxy is what allows the Pilot's Federation to exist.

And I've always maintained that while it lives to suck in a broken world (or galaxy) if you're not part of the 0.01%, it certainly makes great fiction... or a video game world.

But things are changing in the galaxy. The FSD is a very young technology, and FTL comms younger still. The status is no longer quo. What the new status quo will be remains to be seen.
 
...For Elite Dangerous traders therefore until in game information of that quality is available they are effectively visiting every shop in a 50Km radius to find the best deals on, and availability of, Popcorn.

aaaand we're back to the popcorn. Well done. :D
 
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