[O.A. VIDEO] Does Elite Dangerous Have a Content Problem?

[CMDR Valleys]

There is something in this video (which is a good discussion generator Mr Ant). It’s all been said before that what we have at the moment is placeholders everywhere, and even the Thorgiod content added feels the same. I think the Game needs a lot of work, which is what this season is about. My thoughts though always go to the missions and the potential to develop detailed and lasting relationships with NPCs, i’ve put some of my thoughts below and would love to see some of these picked up and developed.

NPCs
- high paying missions need to be locked behind the Allied rep and spawn at the end of a mission chain. Making Credits harder to make
- NPC missions should be more closely linked to community activity, ie if 100 cmdrs decend on a system the missions for that faction drys up and raises as other faction gain support.
- NPCs sometimes throw in rouge missions if you have done a load of missions for a competing faction. Effectively putting you up against their best assassin (whose rank is linked to the current faction support)


Gamplay
- we desperately need a reason to stay in normal space when arriving at USSs, this would allow for sustained encounters with local missions or trade opportunities. These should not be too heavily scripted and should involve a lot of scanner interpretation like the SRV one and work at extreme ranges. My thinking here is situations where you drop out of Super cruise 100mil away from a station, you see something big in the distance and have to travel to it.
- Situations could be generated procedurally from a large number of events ie. 2 Vipers searching for targets, requiring the cmdr of rely on stealth or attack which again generates another situation based on the actions of the cmdr. Much like the USSs with the sidy followed by the vipers.
- exiting super cruise should have more randomness to the drop location, when entering USSs, not stations as beacons/tech should help. This with the exception of damaged or attacked stations/facilities which require you to travel some distance in normal space to get through hostiles or environment or encounters.
- Missions from USSs. Coming i think but needs a mention, hopefully some will require us to stay in normal space.
- i would also like to see less need for repeated actions as the range of activities diversifies.

I’ve been looking at the videos on Outsider the FD project that was cancelled and a lot of the gameplay seems to fit.

I would appreciate the communities thoughts on the above and some discussion as i think the game really needs to be worked in this direction.

Flay safe

CMDR Valleys

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Some things that might help, as I have suggested elsewhere.

A system in a state of war should look, sound & feel like a system at war, immediately. Same with Outbreak, or Famine, or Civil Unrest. System state should be immediately obvious-& meaningful-to the visitor.

Along with all other Faction Info, there should be a section for which Factions are currently enemies of the Faction you are looking at. An increased Rep with one faction should lead to a corresponding Rep decline with that faction's enemy/enemies.

We need more nuanced mission text based on the current or pending faction state, the type of faction employing you & the rank of the mission. This text should then be an indicator of what kind of complications you will face & what kind of chain missions might appear. It should also lead to a more situation specific "end-mission" text.

More close interrelationships between Super-powers, Powers, Factions & Engineers.

Longer lasting, but more meaningful, Bounties & Notoriety.

More ways to interact with the galaxy.

Those are key ones for me.

This is what I said in another thread about "grind" which is very similar to what you are talking about:-

My main issue is when I got a station/system in a specidic state such as war, famine, plague it looks no different to a system that is in boom. They only way you know the difference is when you see it underneath a faction name.

Make all those different states graphically and NPC obvious, this well then give a bit more meaning to the missions available, thus giving you a purpose to do these missions other then credit gain. Have it like the Evacuate/repair station mechanics but specifically tied to each state.

For me that is the main thing that is missing. After/if that gets added then they can add more complex scenarios.

What has caused the famine, a natural disaster or a war on the nearest earthlike planet has caused it. The surrounding systems need food pellets or whatever they are to survive, the system with the earthlike has enough food for themselves but need machinery to help fix the natural disaster or help to end the war and fix thier economy. You are given a choice on who to help.

Slowly make it deeper with more choices on what you can do and what effects it has.

That is just one example.

 

[Brimstone]

Imagine if, when the Thargoids arrived, one of us could have set up a little outpost in the Pleiades to sell the specialized weapons and equipment for fighting them? What if we were able to craft all of that equipment ourselves from the ore we mined? I think that elements like these from Eve, seeing an opportunity and being able to capitalize on it, would be far better than what we have now. You were lucky to find a spot in the Peiades that sold everything you needed for a Thargoid encounter, it was better to just fit your ship in Shinrarta Dezhra and make the trek out. What if you could set up ammo depots outside of conflict zones for community goals?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Imagine if, when the Thargoids arrived, one of us could have set up a little outpost in the Pleiades to sell the specialized weapons and equipment for fighting them? What if we were able to craft all of that equipment ourselves from the ore we mined? I think that elements like these from Eve, seeing an opportunity and being able to capitalize on it, would be far better than what we have now. You were lucky to find a spot in the Peiades that sold everything you needed for a Thargoid encounter, it was better to just fit your ship in Shinrarta Dezhra and make the trek out. What if you could set up ammo depots outside of conflict zones for community goals?

To be honest, I am not at all interested in "running a shop" kind of gameplay, we are meant to be space ship pilots, not product manufacturers. I would much prefer them to sort out what is in the game and improving that before they start adding stuff like that.

 

[NeilF]

I feel the game does have "content" in general.

SRVs
Multiple ships
Multiple weapon types
Multiple star systems to explore
Multiple stations and outposts
Multiple missions
Power play
CQC
Mining
Combat
Trading

Elites single biggest problem is that no matter how much content is added, it's always added on top of the bare bones basic game mechanics that were created in 2014.

You can paint an empty house as many times as you like, make it look as pretty as you like, but in the end, it's still the same empty house underneath.

This empty house needs turning into a hotel with lots and lots of furniture.

Agreed...

If you consider we'll be at four years since release until FD finally make a committed effort (hopefully) at moving some core gameplay forwards (mining and exploration). That in itself is worrying.

But what is even more worrying IMHO is that while the core gameplay content/depth has generally been ignored, what has instead been green lit for development has so very often proved highly questionable. ie: All too often it's resulted in shallow bolt on assets, many of which basically collect dust for most CMDRs (eg: CQC, Generation Ships, Multicrew etc).

The game needs actual mechanics added to it with depth and which ideally feed off each other. As a simple example here's my mining suggestions to add stateful resources to the game, while also giving Squadron Fleet Carriers a role in them - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...eful-resource-hot-spots?p=6054187#post6054187

This lack of investment in depth is slowly strangling the game IMHO, and is for example a major reason why Multicrew was - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...is-now-coming-back-to-bite-ED-in-the-boosters!

 

[lenna]

A system in a state of war should look, sound & feel like a system at war, immediately. Same with Outbreak, or Famine, or Civil Unrest. System state should be immediately obvious-& meaningful-to the visitor.

I disagree with the principle of a more "in your face" approach to these aspects, at least with things as they are currently (with space legs and atmospheric planets there are potential opportunities though). We do currently have station comms and station board conversational text that does reflect at least some aspects of the various faction states. The current indicators may be subtle in the main but other than adding perhaps more POIs like perhaps quarantine/plague convoys, humanitarian/refugee convoys, and other concepts along the same lines I do not think there is much FD can truly do in that area without risking it getting irritating in a repetitive in-your-face way (i.e. random pilot text chatter).

Along with all other Faction Info, there should be a section for which Factions are currently enemies of the Faction you are looking at. An increased Rep with one faction should lead to a corresponding Rep decline with that faction's enemy/enemies.[/QUOTE
That is reasonably easily derivable from the "war" states, but I agree it would perhaps be nice to have better indicators regarding relative relationships between factions... could get messy if done wrong, but should be doable using existing tools at FD's disposal (assuming there are direct reputation factors between factions in addition to local influence league tables).

We need more nuanced mission text based on the current or pending faction state, the type of faction employing you & the rank of the mission. This text should then be an indicator of what kind of complications you will face & what kind of chain missions might appear. It should also lead to a more situation specific "end-mission" text.

Personally, I think the current mission text and variety selections are more than good enough.

More close interrelationships between Super-powers, Powers, Factions & Engineers.

I disagree with this general principle - especially if it leads to a more axiomatic and confrontational faction system.

Longer lasting, but more meaningful, Bounties & Notoriety.

V3.0 C&P has already irked some, not me, and I think FD need to tread very carefully in this area.

More ways to interact with the galaxy.

Those are key ones for me.

Providing those ways do not include "player faction empire" or "individual player empire" building and does not lead to RPG-focused gameplay then I am on board with that.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

This is what I said in another thread about "grind" which is very similar to what you are talking about:-

Yeah, I confess that comment is what inspired me to write what I did .

Another thing that would be cool is if there were more ways to pick up missions. Scanning NPC ships, salvaging certain items (Black Boxes, Escape Pods, Military Intelligence, Encrypted Data) saving NPC ships in Distress Call USS's, scanning Private Data Beacons & Data Cores, scanning Settlement Data links.....thwt kind of thing.

 

[Jonny Shiloh]

I've got nearly 400 hours in Elite so they must be doing something right... but my main issue really is that most of the "story content" passes me by. I've never met a Thargoid, I've never visited a Guardian ruin, and I've only once seen a Thargoid crash site. In the last case, I'd never have known about it unless I'd seen it on one of OA's YouTube vids and then googled it. PowerPlay remains opaque to me, and don't get me started on whatever's going on with C&P.

Don't get me wrong, I love exploring the galaxy, and am generally happy enough pottering along from A to B via C, but I do feel the game desperately needs more in-game tools to bring the content to the players. With that in mind, and with my explorer's hat on, I've a lot riding on the Q4 update.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Yeah, I confess that comment is what inspired me to write what I did .

Another thing that would be cool is if there were more ways to pick up missions. Scanning NPC ships, salvaging certain items (Black Boxes, Escape Pods, Military Intelligence, Encrypted Data) saving NPC ships in Distress Call USS's, scanning Private Data Beacons & Data Cores, scanning Settlement Data links.....thwt kind of thing.

Agreed. I think USS's should be much rarer but give much more oportunity for good gameplay with missions available at most of these from either a black box or picking up an occupied escape pod or from a ship in distress. Then you get the required mats for certain blueprints from those missions.

 

[Chris Simon]

This is what people often say, but in fact, most parts ingame are more developed, than the exploration part!

That is sadly the truth. Hopefully it will change with 3.4

 

[lenna]

I do feel the game desperately needs more in-game tools to bring the content to the players.

I am not convinced of that, GalNet could be improved upon and perhaps the addition of news flash alerts would help... talking about something akin to a news ticker perhaps (ok, new tool) or mail box flash alerts (existing tool reuse) that gives GalNet readers a prompt to view the relevant articles on GalNet.

The GalNet audio playback was a step in the right direction as it allows people to review GalNet at the click of a button - essentially making the GalNet feed more accessible.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Agreed. I think USS's should be much rarer but give much more oportunity for good gameplay with missions available at most of these from either a black box or picking up an occupied escape pod or from a ship in distress. Then you get the required mats for certain blueprints from those missions.

I don't think they need to be rarer per se, but would like their discovery tied in with use of the upcoming exploration mechanics. It would be nice to see USS's potentially tied into the mission system, as I mentioned though.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I think that the game should spawn a number of USS when entering SC from the get go and provide basic info about them prior to scan. Details upon scanning. If they where semi-persistent it would help a lot with concealing their RNG nature.

I also think that the game could be a bit more clever about ship spawns in SC. If a player has interdictor + hatch breakers, maybe tilting spawns toward cargo ships would be nice. Same goes for bounty hunters and such. If a number of ships where spawned from the get go in SC it would make the "oh a player, let's populate the instance drop by drop effect less jaring. Even better if said npcs where somewhat persistent.

And tying SS like HGEs with missions would also go a long way.

 

[verminstar]

I wont even go near the guardians based on the salt alone...why go through the trouble of going there just to find my voice joining the many other voices complaining about it? And as we all know, complaining about stuff is just so rewarding and frontier so sympathetic and understanding

Couple years ago, I came to a conclusion about this game...now, that conclusion is still relevant. It feels as though the content is aimed at a very specific group of players and everyone else just gets to tag along as spectators. Im not a good spectator...if I dont feel like I can be a part of it then I dont see the point in giving it the time of day at all. I dont play games just to watch others playing it or take part in someone elses roleplay idea, which is what this game feels like sometimes.

Theres actually fairly large chunks of the game that I ignore completely...half the engineers I cant unlock cos I dont know how to...gotta leave the game to figure out how to and I lose interest and wander off. The entire thargoid nonsense...very badly implimented, very much on the rails content and a hugely confusing and conspiracy bloated backstory...lost interest and wandered off. I dont even complain about them because by complaining, yer interested in them at some level, but Im not even interested enough to complain...thats how thin it feels to me personally.

I think OA certainly hits the nail on the head...as much as I love the game, and I do love this game, Im not sure Im liking the direction its going in as I basically only have half a game to love in the first place. The white knights are doing the best they can to make it worse by demanding all the credits get the squeeze..even though in their minds its improving not making it worse. And therein we have the problem of a divided community once again. Made worse by the part where frontier supports one side of the argument and totally rejects the other side entirely...that makes them biased and that makes them very hard to like or trust.

The wall of silence in response? That demonstrates a certain level of contempt and arrogance fer the playerbase. Im not having a dig at frontier with this one...just saying thats the impression I get from them. Their game, their rules they can do as they like and nobody can do anything about it...but ye cant force players to be happy about it. And when ye visit the forums to raise the point, yer told to go play another game or maybe ye should have researched the game before buying...our fault basically.

This self righteous attitude does more harm than good...which is a shame cos those stating such things seem like intelligent creatures who fail to see the most obvious faults which are right in front of them. One things fer sure, this problem isnt gonna go away and by all accounts, its just gonna get worse...because frontier are making the game ¨they¨ want to play, but not what their players want to play.

Which once again brings it back to the part where it feels like they are catering to a small subset of players only with the rest of us along fer the ride ^

 

[NeilF]

I've got nearly 400 hours in Elite so they must be doing something right... but my main issue really is that most of the "story content" passes me by. I've never met a Thargoid, I've never visited a Guardian ruin, and I've only once seen a Thargoid crash site. In the last case, I'd never have known about it unless I'd seen it on one of OA's YouTube vids and then googled it. PowerPlay remains opaque to me, and don't get me started on whatever's going on with C&P.

Don't get me wrong, I love exploring the galaxy, and am generally happy enough pottering along from A to B via C, but I do feel the game desperately needs more in-game tools to bring the content to the players. With that in mind, and with my explorer's hat on, I've a lot riding on the Q4 update.

I made this suggestion a year or so ago about the game trying to make more of the trail of dead end assets left that many/most CMDRs know nothing about, or have little/no reason to go to - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...of-quot-galactic-breaking-news-quot?p=5439127

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I think that the game should spawn a number of USS when entering SC from the get go and provide basic info about them prior to scan. Details upon scanning. If they where semi-persistent it would help a lot with concealing their RNG nature.

I also think that the game could be a bit more clever about ship spawns in SC. If a player has interdictor + hatch breakers, maybe tilting spawns toward cargo ships would be nice. Same goes for bounty hunters and such. If a number of ships where spawned from the get go in SC it would make the "oh a player, let's populate the instance drop by drop effect less jaring. Even better if said npcs where somewhat persistent.

And tying SS like HGEs with missions would also go a long way.

See, I want to see USS's created the moment a ship enters a system, but be invisible to the ship until a passive scan is done. More detailed scanning can ultimately tell a player everything about what is in a USS. As I said, for me its about tying together various game mechanics into a cohesive bundle.

 

[Kathryn Kando]

There was a time when OA made fine videos about the game that ED is and how you can have fun with it. Recently there is a lot more about what else ED could be in terms of additions to the game.

Nothing wrong with it and additional content will be appreciated by everyone in general (except endless complaints about how bad the new content would be implemented).

I just do not like the increasing undertone of generalization declaring new content ideas as some must-haves or the game would be bad and die because it would be significantly lacking features. Elite has a lot to offer even after thousands of hours and many folks who are pressing for new features have indeed their money worth from the game a hundred times (while it is still mighty fine to be bored after all that time and play something else - why not be grateful for the good times you had with it?).

Other games will have to take a long way to keep players interested the way ED managed so far. The shoes of ED are big. Just saying.

 

[Stigbob]

I wont even go near the guardians based on the salt alone...why go through the trouble of going there just to find my voice joining the many other voices complaining about it? And as we all know, complaining about stuff is just so rewarding and frontier so sympathetic and understanding

Couple years ago, I came to a conclusion about this game...now, that conclusion is still relevant. It feels as though the content is aimed at a very specific group of players and everyone else just gets to tag along as spectators. Im not a good spectator...if I dont feel like I can be a part of it then I dont see the point in giving it the time of day at all. I dont play games just to watch others playing it or take part in someone elses roleplay idea, which is what this game feels like sometimes.

Theres actually fairly large chunks of the game that I ignore completely...half the engineers I cant unlock cos I dont know how to...gotta leave the game to figure out how to and I lose interest and wander off. The entire thargoid nonsense...very badly implimented, very much on the rails content and a hugely confusing and conspiracy bloated backstory...lost interest and wandered off. I dont even complain about them because by complaining, yer interested in them at some level, but Im not even interested enough to complain...thats how thin it feels to me personally.

I think OA certainly hits the nail on the head...as much as I love the game, and I do love this game, Im not sure Im liking the direction its going in as I basically only have half a game to love in the first place. The white knights are doing the best they can to make it worse by demanding all the credits get the squeeze..even though in their minds its improving not making it worse. And therein we have the problem of a divided community once again. Made worse by the part where frontier supports one side of the argument and totally rejects the other side entirely...that makes them biased and that makes them very hard to like or trust.

The wall of silence in response? That demonstrates a certain level of contempt and arrogance fer the playerbase. Im not having a dig at frontier with this one...just saying thats the impression I get from them. Their game, their rules they can do as they like and nobody can do anything about it...but ye cant force players to be happy about it. And when ye visit the forums to raise the point, yer told to go play another game or maybe ye should have researched the game before buying...our fault basically.

This self righteous attitude does more harm than good...which is a shame cos those stating such things seem like intelligent creatures who fail to see the most obvious faults which are right in front of them. One things fer sure, this problem isnt gonna go away and by all accounts, its just gonna get worse...because frontier are making the game ¨they¨ want to play, but not what their players want to play.

Which once again brings it back to the part where it feels like they are catering to a small subset of players only with the rest of us along fer the ride ^

The guardian unlocks are not that bad, I enjoyed it and the weps are really funky. Why not try unlocking one, you might actually enjoy it.

 

[Jonny Shiloh]

I am not convinced of that, GalNet could be improved upon and perhaps the addition of news flash alerts would help... talking about something akin to a news ticker perhaps (ok, new tool) or mail box flash alerts (existing tool reuse) that gives GalNet readers a prompt to view the relevant articles on GalNet.

The GalNet audio playback was a step in the right direction as it allows people to review GalNet at the click of a button - essentially making the GalNet feed more accessible.

I agree, the GalNet audio playback is a baby step in the right direction of making in-game information more accessible... however, I've recently been asking myself the question - if I played the game using only the in-game information sources, without ever looking at YouTube, using Google, reading gaming websites or frequenting these forums, how would I get to see all this cool stuff?

So how to answer this? Well, as others have said, I think the mission system could be used much more effectively, for a start - tip offs, rumours, strange tales from the black, stuff like that. Admittedly, this panders to my prejudice as an explorer but it would make me feel much more invested in a living galaxy, and would go some way to obviating the need for me to go to external sources to find out what's going on in the game.

 

[verminstar]

The guardian unlocks are not that bad, I enjoyed it and the weps are really funky. Why not try unlocking one, you might actually enjoy it.

Cos Im currently broke, skint and otherwise on the poverty line...struggling with the credit grind. Thats why Im still salty over the removal of all the exploits and cash farms...nothing to look forward to now except doing it the hard way.

One grind at a time is what I can manage...taking on another grind would see me playing mass effect every night instead of elite. And to what end anyway? I have zero interest in thargoids and the npc wildlife are already easy with just bits n pieces of engineering...so what exactly am I working towards?

One grind at a time m8, one grind at a time...one I can handle and even enjoy in a twisted and warped way, but two? Beyond me Im afraid, I know me own limits ^