A certain group of people have been bashing Solo and PG from day one, and you can tell quite quickly who the gankers are among them. Those modes are not the issue, the issue is that the only real interactions between players are combat ones, and by combat I of course mean one heavily engineered and very over-powered ship versus some poor schmuck who can barely shoot straight. If there was more going on between players besides that, then more people would be in Open.
[O.A. VIDEO] Does Elite Dangerous Have a Content Problem?
- Thread starter Maro-Val
- Start date
A certain group of people have been bashing Solo and PG from day one, and you can tell quite quickly who the gankers are among them. Those modes are not the issue, the issue is that the only real interactions between players are combat ones, and by combat I of course mean one heavily engineered and very over-powered ship versus some poor schmuck who can barely shoot straight. If there was more going on between players besides that, then more people would be in Open.
content consumers will never be satisfied by the nature of their playstyle: to have and consume the most. no different in life...the people who chase money, shiny things are rarely satisfied with their achievement if their isn't more.
there is a lack of imagination though.
i'd much rather have a bunch of small pieces i can build into whatever i want then force fed a single playthrough story. and elite dangerous is a lego set of building blocks to create my story.
there is a lack of imagination though.
i'd much rather have a bunch of small pieces i can build into whatever i want then force fed a single playthrough story. and elite dangerous is a lego set of building blocks to create my story.
While Eros may have used another game as a data point for comparison it is far from unreasonable to do so in order to reinforce the case that those complaining about content are perhaps being unreasonable and having unprecedented levels of expectations.
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As many have already pointed out ED is not without it's flaws but it is still a good game - to claim otherwise is tantamount to trolling IMO.
Good by whose standards? Yours? Define good.
How about you define a "good game" since you seem to think ED is so bad.
As for by whose standards? By the standards of the par for the industry and the many players who are enjoying playing ED.
I actually like ED, so not sure what you mean there. A good game is one you enjoy playing, since "good" is hugely subjective.
Regarding supposed lack of content in the game, ED prioritized the galactic sim in its base infrastructure where much of the loops to populate thousands to millions of systems had to be done procedural , so it's hard for them to add the typical content found in most mainstream games. The galactic sim was the main selling point imo. If it was just 50 star systems and a fantasy made up starbox, I think it'd be doubtful players would stick around after a few hundred hours at most, even if they stuffed it with equivalent story "content" of ME:Andromeda. And then look at NMS. While the devs for NMS tastefully tried to add extra content after the initial release "lies", the active playerbase of NMS is literally just a fraction of ED's where ED clearly beats it as the procedural space king in their now-passe rivalry. To add spacelegs to ships first, then stations, and atmospherics, will all take massive resources, perhaps even massive restructuring of ED's foundations and networking which would probably have to be made more server polarized to support persistent player assets (home bases, spacelegs personal items, controllable npc's etc.) requiring a massive new investment of resources and funds. I still have faith ED will get there eventually, but not today, not this year, and probably not for years to come if not decades.
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Unlike most cases where other games are brought up as a point of comparison, Eros's case was in defence of ED not to promote any other game.
It seems to me that your reaction to date has not been for the reasons on this thread and more a knee jerk response to other games being referenced in any shape or form.
If you truly like ED, you should appreciate what Eros was trying to achieve as an illustrative and factual counter to those complaining about "content issues" with ED.
Engineers have eaten like cancer into the gameplay of ED. And that is pretty much all there is to say - too much is under that shadow of the hamsterwheel and power creep.
That only really applies where the cancer of meta-build addiction is concerned which seems to have greatest relevance where PvP is concerned. Where PvE is concerned it actually can enhance gameplay if you ignore the meta-build crowd.
Some really good ideas in this thread. I love elite and have played since the beginning but I do agree that some of the decisions taken are strange. Something not mentioned that I found odd was powerplay. When I first heard this feature I thought "great, I can slowly work my way up through the ranks and eventually become a trusted ally with all the perks that brings" etc. When I found out that your rep decays unless you work continually to maintain it I was stunned. Powerplay still has a purpose for those that are committed but if you want to belong to a faction but then decide to take a holiday and do something different you will come back to a faction that can't remember your name even though you might have done great things for them. This also leads to the empire/fed ranking. I could never understand why you can rank up with both. It seems crazy that you can be an Admiral with the feds and then go to empire navy school as well. I think it would give more purpose if you had to choose. You can rank up with the empire but you have to give up your fed ranks. Of course its too late to do this now and it would have to tie in with navy missions but this would make you choose a side and thus feel like you belong (would also need more of the content discussed to really work).
People want to belong to something and own stuff (player owned bases for example). This is the core foundation that content needs to rest on.
People want to belong to something and own stuff (player owned bases for example). This is the core foundation that content needs to rest on.
Some may want this, but others do not.
Personally, I think that is the wrong way to go - we do not want ED to emulate certain other games.
What exactly is "content"?
Whenever I see discussions about it, it seems to be linear path "story" stuff or "cut scenes" or something that I wouldn't have known that every game must, apparantly now have..not sure..apparently different to everyone that mentions "content", like it's always been a thing and everyone knows what it is. I have to admit. I don't.
I doubt many developers would make open world, online space games in future as you naturally end up with the problem of gamers expecting all things for all wo/men and consumers now feel they have a natural perpetual entitlement to endless expansion faster than I'd imagine any developer can create and both Elite & Star Citizen fail massively to please every man to this day. I wonder when that expectation came about?
Whatever it is...Seems to be something that people expect to be added endlessly beyond the initial purchase of a non subscription game?
Whenever I see discussions about it, it seems to be linear path "story" stuff or "cut scenes" or something that I wouldn't have known that every game must, apparantly now have..not sure..apparently different to everyone that mentions "content", like it's always been a thing and everyone knows what it is. I have to admit. I don't.
I doubt many developers would make open world, online space games in future as you naturally end up with the problem of gamers expecting all things for all wo/men and consumers now feel they have a natural perpetual entitlement to endless expansion faster than I'd imagine any developer can create and both Elite & Star Citizen fail massively to please every man to this day. I wonder when that expectation came about?
Whatever it is...Seems to be something that people expect to be added endlessly beyond the initial purchase of a non subscription game?
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People keep expecting more because what they were told would happen in the kickstarter still hasn't happened, while the game has hit 'mature' age and is still full of placeholders and half-finished things.
it's not the amount of things, but that once you do let's say every type of mission once you have done them all, once you went into a CZ you entered all, once you visited a station you visited them all, once you BH on a res site you have hunted in them all, it's not really the scope or quantity of the problem but that it's not engaging throught in game only mechanics, yeah sure Dark Souls is just "mash this button and that button and kill stuff" that's the barebones but it's engaging through lore (which you disover throught in game item descriptions) throught the variety of areas, throught items, throught the boss fights and even because of the soundtrack. ED atm only has the proverbial "mash X and orbs" barebones it still needs the layers on top of that, as always it boils down to Elite has the potential to be one of the best games ever made but it hasn't being exploited to it's full and it doesn't seem like they are making strides for it
From what I hear, nothing has been said "would happen" but much was probably said "would like to happen". The distinction seems to be lost on many of the kickstarter complainers - besides which to do certain things right takes time and unless you have an LEP of one form or another much of the "additional" stuff beyond what we have already (or is planned for Beyond) is more than likely going to require payment of some sort.
this response is as stale as the soup that has been sitting in my fridge for a week, every day, hell every hour there are great suggestions, see Mengy's suggestions for exploration thread, that thing is great, or the discussion on this thread about how to make the mission system better, here in Mexico we have a saying for people like you and the guys who think Fdev is incapable of doing wrong "No hay mas ciego que el que no quiere ver" I leave it to you to use google translate for that
My take is that ED has a persistence problem.
You need procedural generation (and thus RNG) to populate such a massive galaxy but, especially on this scale, is at odds with the needs of persistence. Persistence being characters, or places or pretty much anything that has some amount of state that carries forwards over time and is changeable in a recognisably meaningful way.
We do have this in terms of faction ranks but this doesn't do too much. I don't feel I'm building up a relationship with anyone in these factions, I'm not greeted with respect to my past actions in any specific way and my future actions will not change this. Stations don't change much (though the thargoid attacks have of course done this) and you can't, for instance, drop something on a planet and come back to it - things don't stick around..
So the world is very ephemeral.
So, if you want a personal narrative, which I think many do, it is a bit difficult to deliver within this. You can tick up a few counters here, you can unlock some things but I don't feel I'm really getting to know anywhere or changing anything much.
In some sense this is fine, but a bit more personal involvement would be good. It would be nice to feel a bit more personally known in my core allied factions and to be able to have longer term changes to notice.
I think some RPG light elements in relation to crew could do something here and maybe something extra around Engineers - that at least constrains where to do these things a bit. Maybe build out things in the contacts panel for contacts with allied factions that are outside the normal mission structure - something that might later lend itself towards spacelegs integration.
More ship related customisation and/or how they come - every Anaconda has those annoying wires? Why not differentiated wear and tear and idiosyncrasies (at least visually) in the cockpit so if your ship blows up the new one actually feels like a different ship. Have some wear and tear mechanics and more internal customisation.. Maybe do more will ship death and salvageable hulks - maybe you can go back and try to do something with your old dead ship..
Anyway.
Bit of a ramble
I think there are some relatively low hanging fruit here but, yeah, otherwise going to be tough. I hope FD can make some progress here, I think EDs great but it could be even better!
I think there is a difference between Procedural Generated objects & persistence. When I first started doing Assassination Missions, if they jumped away then they'd always be reset when I caught up with them (no persistence), however now they bear all the same scars they had when they first jumped away. This suggests to me that they have significantly improved persistence in just the last 15 months.....I believe they can improve that persistence even further, particularly if they allow these items to be stored at our end, rather than at their end ....as Max was talking about earlier.