One Foot In The Game [Legs Assets & Design Decisions]

[CMDR Cknarf]

But do you want properly simulated ice in your drinks with a mo capped barman?

I don’t wanna ask for too much at once, now.

While I’m here, I would like to offer my services to Fdev.

You want someone to get hammered and stagger around for motion capture purposes, I’m your guy.

Fly me out there, and I’ll do it for free. I’ll even show up drunk to streamline things. Just give me a couch to crash on at HQ and I’m set.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Ahhh Skippy, I've missed you around the FSS threads, with your random non-sequiter responses to comments that people haven't actually made.

I'm just waiting for someone to convince me that spacelegs is something I'm going to want, and neither FPS, nor EVA and certainly not 'space bars' is going to make me spend money on a DLC.

Your call. Just stop pretending EVA, ship repair, exploring alien ruins etc etc have never been mentioned by people as to them interesting concept. Claiming no-one has mentioned anything beyond FPS is just weak, just say you like other stuff better and leave it at that please.

 

[Jenner]

Right now - today - in Star Citizen you can pick up a crate, walk into your ship, put the crate down, fly to another base, pick up the crate, walk down the ship ramp, walk into the base receiving area, and deliver your cargo. That is the base level, lowest common denominator implementation of space legs, and I love it. Right now - today - in X4 I can walk beneath my ship, admiring the size and scale of my transport and how it dwarfs the small fiighter craft parked nearby. I can enter the lift and go to the bridge, order my Captain to take off while I stand behind and admire the view. I can see crew members walk onto the bridge and take duty stations, and if I want I can do the same myself.

There is a ton more that could be done with it, as has been pointed out numerous occasions. Certainly when I think of space legs combat is not the first thing that comes to mind. That said, I think there is a lot of potential for bang bang shooty bits too, of course, but I really feel like Elite could benefit from even the most basic implementation of first person gameplay.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

Ahhh Skippy, I've missed you around the FSS threads, with your random non-sequiter responses to comments that people haven't actually made.

I'm just waiting for someone to convince me that spacelegs is something I'm going to want, and neither FPS, nor EVA and certainly not 'space bars' is going to make me spend money on a DLC.

I think i have said this a few times, but the best way to think of legs is a mechanic that frees the player from the ship. this opens up loads of options beyond just walking.

With the play free, they would be able to make use of transport ships. Want to move to colonia? Sell everything and hop on a transport to go out there. Chartering taxis to move around could be a thing as well. it would also open the option to have ship theft missions for the underworld, or yacht deliver missions where you are flying someone else's ship and have to mitigate damage or lose money on the contract. I also think that legs are essential for carriers to work. i imagine that carriers would have stations to be manned.

There could also be heist/assault missions that require a team to bard a ship/installation to retrieve data or disable key systems. Perhaps the federal dropship might be useful as a dropship in this case. There are really endless possibilities once you start thinking of the mechanics rather than some type of SRV-lite

 

[CMDR ROGER]

This is like the FSS discussion all over again, where people who don't like something just flat-out keep ignoring what piles of people have been saying for years just to to avoid having to acknowledge other perspectives. :/ Oh well, lets do this again:

1) FPS gameplay is not the only content people have proposed. EVA, repairing your ship, exploring derelict wrecks etc. Not only am I 100% convinced you have seen these arguments here many times, you even explicitly reference X4, a game you know has some of that. You just conveniently forget to mention that bit. You don't have to like it yourself, but can you please not pretend these ideas are never heard of?

2) Beyond that people like the concept of space legs in general. Asking 'but what would you do' is every bit as asinine as asking 'yeah, but what would you do beyond flying your spaceship with atmo planets?'. Some people like the concept of flying a spaceship on atmo planets in and of itself. Other people like the concept of walking around their spaceship, meeting other avatars in space bars etc in and of itself. You don't have to agree or like it yourself, but can you at least acknowledge these preferences are every bit as valid as whatever preference you have?

Whilst space avatars aren't useless, nor do I not like them, but space legs would make space avatars so much more useful and fun to use.

 

[VR Golgot]

Ahhh Skippy, I've missed you around the FSS threads, with your random non-sequiter responses to comments that people haven't actually made.

I'm just waiting for someone to convince me that spacelegs is something I'm going to want, and neither FPS, nor EVA and certainly not 'space bars' is going to make me spend money on a DLC.

His response wasn't a non-sequiter. He was responding to your strawman depiction of both potential Legs additions and the conversation that surrounds them:

There's a lot of talk of 'walking around' - naturally, because it's about legs - but nothing about what you actually do when you've walked to wherever you're going.

The fact that you define examples given to you as 'walk, shoot or scan' (even when they clearly extend beyond that) is one sign that you'd rather stick to your strawmen than have an actual discussion.

The fact that you don't define what would constitute your preferred gameplay further signals a desire to dump on something rather than engage in constructive conversation.

Whether or not you want such things is also wildly irrelevant to the topic (IE whether FDev have made structural plans within the game for such additions. I'll give you a little clue, the answer is yes )

Sling out blithe tautologies like this all you like:

Spacelegs for the sake of spacelegs just doesn't appeal to me.

But all you're doing is adding to the grumpy noise cloud you're generating, rather than making any kind of compelling argument.

 

[Bloodsign]

Why does everyone get so cranky and bent out of shape whenever space legs comes up? It was promised, lots of CMDRs want it, and it will likely solve a lot of problems as a positive side effect, even for CMDRs who never get their lazy butts out of their chairs (in-game, I mean).

For example, the ganking "problem" that everyone whines about; now we will have gankers in legs mode and gankers in ship mode. This is actually good though. Why? Fewer gankers in ship mode for those who just want to fly ships. More interactions and combat for CMDRs who want legs to be more FPS-y. On my planet we call this a win-win.

 

[CMDR ROGER]

Anybody noticed the emergency escape pod hatches on the sides of Anacondas? Maybe those could be usable when we get space legs.

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

I hope they let us jettison ourselves out and get stuck in space for being dumb lol.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Why does everyone get so cranky and bent out of shape whenever space legs comes up? It was promised, lots of CMDRs want it, and it will likely solve a lot of problems as a positive side effect, even for CMDRs who never get their lazy butts out of their chairs (in-game, I mean).

Because some people want other things instead, and they get upset when FD spend time on stuff they don't want. Even if others do want it. Even if it was promised from the start. Is it petty and unreasonable? Sure. But that is just how some people are when it comes to life&death matters like updates to a computer game.

 

[DMC831]

The things I want most:

Criminal gameplay overhaul, from the mechanics to better punishments (risk and reward etc etc), with lots of attention given to smuggling (I think smuggling fits the game-world perfectly and the existing mechanics are very well suited to making great smuggling gameplay with some tweaks) and of course piracy gameplay.

NPC comms; I was surprised back when I started in 2015 that we couldn't communicate with NPCs even in basic ways (beyond combat). Demanding cargo, requesting help, asking about POIs, receiving missions, tricking them, etc etc, most which we could do in Elite 2. Even if it was a very basic system, I think it'd add a lot to the core gameplay since so much of Elite is a single player experience.

More missions, a variety of challenges and rewards that make sense, classic space-simmy things like reconnaissance, escort, blockade running, perhaps exploration missions where a faction asks you to find 3 undiscovered terraformables for them to use as options for future projects, etc etc.

BUT, I do think Space Legs could be way rad and I'd be very excited if they can pull it off. And I'm fortunate that I'm one of those VR players who doesn't get motion sick from walking around, so I hope the experience is great. It could add a lot, and even though I'd be fine if the existing core gameplay was improved in a variety of ways and we never received Space Legs, I'm pretty pumped if Space Legs is coming.

EDIT: Oh, and I'd kill to be able to save loadouts that we can switch between with a few clicks of a button. The outfitting screen is so dang slow and I've spent perhaps billions just in spare ships decked out for different jobs to avoid the outfitting screen. But I'm easy!

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Ahhh Skippy, I've missed you around the FSS threads, with your random non-sequiter responses to comments that people haven't actually made.

I'm just waiting for someone to convince me that spacelegs is something I'm going to want, and neither FPS, nor EVA and certainly not 'space bars' is going to make me spend money on a DLC.

I'm starting to think that this game will have nothing to offer you next year.

Sucks to be in the minority. Trust me, I know.

I voted remain.

 

[bitstorm]

More ways to interact with stuff.

 

[K M Butler]

Looks at this thread. Looks at the alleged leaked Thargoid thread. You want spacelegs? There's your spacelegs!

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Looks at this thread. Looks at the alleged leaked Thargoid thread. You want spacelegs? There's your spacelegs!

As I said elsewhere, the writing is on the wall.

FD knew what the most requested feature was, (before the usual suspect says anything, requested by both existing players AND people yet to buy), and frankly, they'd be dumb to not capitalise on this. They have to do what gets more sales.

Here's the problem with atmos right now: There's a risk that it will end up being seen as more of the same. Basically a skin for Horizons.

Legs? Much easier to see how that can introduce a swath of new gameplay.

 

[Buck Cheeseman]

Wait, was that a glory hole I saw in the Mamba?

 

[JesusRocks1988]

There's a lot of talk of 'walking around' - naturally, because it's about legs - but nothing about what you actually do when you've walked to wherever you're going.
FPS gameplay seems to be the only concept people have, and it's going to disappoint people because if it happens at all it's going to be an incredibly simple implementation because there simply isn't time for FDev to create a fully featured version of it. Then there's the fact that FDev have no experience (I believe) of FPSs and certainly not in a multiplayer environment. Think PvP is unbalanced now? FPS PvP will be a complete catastrophe.

X4 has walking around on stations but it serves no actual purpose - it just adds time to do the things we can do in ED from the station menu. The EVA is better, but it still comes down to nothing deeper than 'flying' down a corridor to scan something - and I'd REALLY like FDev to add some gameplay that isn't just scanning or shooting things for mats.

You'll have the same problem with atmospheres, though: same gameplay we have in a prettier environment, hence why it's six and two threes.

I'm not going to even hazard a guess at what gameplay FD have planned for spacelegs. But in terms of pure variety of environments to do the same things we do right now, there's little difference between legs and atmos.

 

[Justor]

That leak said nothing about Atmosphere landing. My most desired update to ED.

Space Legs will need to come before Atmospheric landings. In a very early video long before the game was on steam David Braben talked about Atmospheric worlds stating that having an atmosphere wouldn't matter unless there was interesting stuff to do, he used an example of alien animal big game hunting, well for that to work you would need leg FPS movement, so legs before Atmospheric landings seems like a natural progression to me. Personal I cannot wait for both.. the idea of checking out the inside of my ships or space stations is so exciting, also the idea of alien animal big game hunting on an Atmospheric worlds would be so much fun! Also with space legs there is one piece of game play most people are missing, the idea of rescue and capture missions, shooting out a power supply or drives to make the ship "dead in the water" and then doing a boarding action with a FPS fire fight to take control of the ship like beginning of Star Wars IV New hope would be so much fun and exciting game-play. Maybe there will be recuse the imperial princess mission someday! Can't wait!

Here is the video I was thinking about. Check it what he says about Atmospheric landings stating at 51 seconds from way back in the Kickstarter days

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM0Gcl7iUM8

 

[Rochester]

Excellent post and I wholeheartedly agree. Its inevitable.

I'm 100% behind the need for legs - to breath much needed life into the game. The real question is what content will space legs herald?

On this I'm hesitantly optimistic, its coming 2020 of that I'm certain, FD have future proofed elements to encompass it and it fits with their initial plans; but it may not be all that we initially hope for; true freedom of movement.

I image what we will first see is ship exploration; then probably ship to ship boarding and then hand to hand combat...anything after that I imagine FD will drip feed.

I hope they give much thought to things for us Cmdrs to do when we're not in our chairs and there in lies FD dilema; and to produce something truly amazing FD will have to crack NPC AI interaction and crowd control, and completely alter the way missions are handed out... otherwise feet will get pretty stale quickly.

Will we be able to hand over the bridge to a crewman (npc or cmdr) and walk about during super cruise and fix stuff or talk to ship guests?

Will we be able to chase down ships to a planet surface and then search for the pilot on foot through crowed streets?

Will we have to obtain contacts by walking into bars and actually converse with someone instead of seeing all missions on one screen?

Who knows. And I think that's what will annoy a lot of the 'no-feet cmdrs'...having to do things that are already done for them - on one screen...and I think this is why I'm hesitant because FD have tended to bend to the easier play style rather than the overtly realistic...

Space is big, cold, dark but generally pretty boring...and complacency kills. I hope they make feet complex and not just some fist person shoot em up.

I'll probably just look at my cmdr float around the ship all afternoon...

 

[VR Golgot]

Excellent post and I wholeheartedly agree. Its inevitable.

I'm 100% behind the need for legs - to breath much needed life into the game. The real question is what content will space legs herald?

On this I'm hesitantly optimistic, its coming 2020 of that I'm certain, FD have future proofed elements to encompass it and it fits with their initial plans; but it may not be all that we initially hope for; true freedom of movement.

I image what we will first see is ship exploration; then probably ship to ship boarding and then hand to hand combat...anything after that I imagine FD will drip feed.

I hope they give much thought to things for us Cmdrs to do when we're not in our chairs and there in lies FD dilema; and to produce something truly amazing FD will have to crack NPC AI interaction and crowd control, and completely alter the way missions are handed out... otherwise feet will get pretty stale quickly.

Will we be able to hand over the bridge to a crewman (npc or cmdr) and walk about during super cruise and fix stuff or talk to ship guests?

Will we be able to chase down ships to a planet surface and then search for them on foot through crowed streets?

Will we have to obtain contacts by walking into bars and actually converse with someone instead of seeing all missions on one screen?

Who knows. And I think that's what will annoy a lot of the 'no-feet cmdrs'...having to do things that are already done for them - on one screen...and I think this is why I'm hesitant because FD have tended to bend to the easier play style rather than the overtly realistic...

Space is big, cold, dark but generally pretty boring...and complacency kills. I hope they make feet complex and not just some fist person shoot em up.

I'll probably just look at my cmdr float around the ship all afternoon...

Yes there's a minefield of possibilities out there, and even with a 2-year run there's a clear limit on the fleshed-out systems and content front.

I was surprised to hear there may be evidence of station work in the latest live build. The picture the 'leak' suggests is that of ship / EVA focus, and I figured that would be enough work for them (with them splitting 'ships' & 'stations' into distinct DLCs, as per the old roadmap)

If they do tackle both I'd expect lots of pragmatic compromises. Lots of inaccessible 'black box' bits to ships & curtailed access in stations. But hopefully enough vibe and gameplay benefits as the payoff.

I'm in the camp that hopes they preserve menu speed for existing loops, and leverage pragmatic 'short-cuts' like Holo-Me / Telepresence (something I'm also pretty suspicious was introduced with an eye on Legs). But provide gameplay advantages for taking 'the slow road'. IE involving gameplay at the end of that ship transit rainbow, and added kit, risk & reward for Cmdrs who are there 'in the flesh'.

The NPC side seems vital, I agree. And the whiff of stations makes me wonder if they're going there. (Personally I'm intrigued by both the idea of minor-faction dynamics in stations, and the pure carnage that proc gen NPCs could entail ).

But it's easy to get carried away dreamcrafting . Will be interesting to see what comes our way