Parasitic Game Design and ED

Unique Username

U
What is Parasitic Game Design?
The Google definition says: "If content is created for the sole purpose of being a time sink and is not added on to later and basically abandoned in future updates"

Now tell me, doesn't that sound familiar?
-BGS
-Superpower ranks
-Powerplay
-Engineering / CQC
-and now Odyssey

Lets be real, ALL of these were created just to make time sinks.Dont get me wrong time sinks are not a "bad" thing necessarily but too many is. ED is borderling on feature creep and that's SC and NMS territory and that's a sinking ship that we DONT want to get on.⛵

How do we fix Parasitic Game Design?definitely not crying about it on the forums lol .

To fix the problem you have to understand that there is 3 basic types of game design
-Core: Ed's flight model
-Secondary: combat,mining,tradeing
-Parasitic : bgs, cqc, superpower ranks, odyssey, etc

So we just cut out the Parasitic parts and call it a day? No. It's never that simple.

My suggestion is FD needs to utiliz odyssey's on foot feature as a another Core Game Design,
This is what that could looked like:

-Odyssey Focused BGS: on foot story based missions from the bgs leader!

-Odyssey Focused Superpower Ranking: unique on foot covert missions!

- Odyssey Focused PowerPlay: at the highest ranks in pp you can actually meet the head of your chosen power faction on foot!

- Odyssey Focused CQC: an on foot lounge were you can watch people play cqc and take bets on who would win.

This isn't a simple fix I know,. It's just as import to focus on future updates as past ones. we as a community and devs alike need to take a look at the foundations of the game and find what we really want from it.

That's my 2 cents. I'm sorry if I came off as a back seat "Developer" but I love this game and I hate seeing it go down the same road every mmo does. Oh and Btw I typed this on mobile 📱 if you see any spelling mistakes let me know and I will fix them.
 
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Danieros

D
ED with its universe size isn't the kind of game for handheld storytelling, at least not until you'd be able to have an AI generating human-quality stories for tens of thousands of populated systems... Most stories come from the freedom in the parasitic design - you'll find a lot of folks from BGS/PP with their stories to share.

The storytelling in ED comes through galnet and CGs.

But yeah... they do tend to release a feature and then take years to re-visit it (if ever), even for simple bug fixing or improvements.
 
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Unique Username

U
Danieros said:
ED with its universe size isn't the kind of game for handheld storytelling, at least not until you'd be able to have an AI generating human-quality stories for tens of thousands of populated systems... Most stories come from the freedom in the parasitic design - you'll find a lot of folks from BGS/PP with their stories to share.

The storytelling in ED comes through galnet and CGs.
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Back in the day missions had a paragraph or 2 of story abd there is no freedom in Parasitic design it just takes. I wrote a whole post about it, you should read it 😀
 

varonica

varonica
Unique Username said:
This isn't a simple fix I know,. It's just as import to focus on future updates as past ones. we as a community and devs alike need to take a look at the foundations of the game and find what we really want from it.
Click to expand...

Most of that is not a fix at all, in fact for most players who purchased and have been playing the game for a while, in some cases years, that's not the game they payed for.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
The 'parasitic' parts have to leverage the core aspects better, because they rely on the core unsurprisingly.

For example Powerplay- although it has a higher level of planning and teamwork required, you still have to use your ship to engage with it. The feature fails because the gameplay is very thin ship wise.

I'd argue the parasitic aspects are the enforced timesinks (allocations, merit decay).
 

Unique Username

U
varonica said:
Most of that is not a fix at all, in fact for most players who purchased and have been playing the game for a while, in some cases years, that's not the game they payed for.
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They paid for a shooter 6 years ago?, I don't understand
Rat Catcher said:
So, from your presentation, you wish to replace "parasitic game design" with the same "parasitic game design", but as an EDO feature? OK.
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Secondary game designs* they don't just take away from the core , they add on to each other😀
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Unique Username said:
Secondary game designs* they don't just take away from the core , they add on to each other
Click to expand...
But, are you not suggesting implementing the very same "time sinks" you dislike so much as a 'feature' of EDO?

And, of course, you appear to have forgotten that PP and Superpowers are only extant in the bubble - fortunately Colonia has neither - so your outline would not 'benefit' any player outside of the bubble - but then, I suppose those 'out in the sticks' are unimportant anyway... ;)
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Unique Username said:
They paid for a shooter 6 years ago?, I don't understand
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Shooter? I guess you don't play EDO 🤷‍♂️

ETA: EDO installations provide faction specific missions, good trade opportunities to support specific factions and exploration on exactly the same scale as EDH.. Which isn't surprising as it is just an addition to EDH, not a stand-alone game.
 
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Unique Username

U
,,v
Rat Catcher said:
Shooter? I guess you don't play EDO 🤷‍♂️

ETA: EDO installations provide faction specific missions, good trade opportunities to support specific factions and exploration on exactly the same scale as EDH.. Which isn't surprising as it is just an addition to EDH, not a stand-alone game.
Click to expand...
It's a shooter
 

Unique Username

U
Rat Catcher said:
But, are you not suggesting implementing the very same "time sinks" you dislike so much as a 'feature' of EDO?

And, of course, you appear to have forgotten that PP and Superpowers are only extant in the bubble - fortunately Colonia has neither - so your outline would not 'benefit' any player outside of the bubble - but then, I suppose those 'out in the sticks' are unimportant anyway... ;)
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So your mad I didn't mention explorers? What are you trying to say?
 

varonica

varonica
Unique Username said:
,,v

It's a shooter
Click to expand...

So we must abandon all other development and concentrate sole on the "shooter" side of the game?

Unique Username said:
So your mad I didn't mention explorers? What are you trying to say?
Click to expand...

I guess it might be that explorers make up a substantial part of the player base and redirecting all efforts to "improve" the shooter side will just result in losing players who aren't interested in playing a "shooter". Of course it might surprise you that there are such players, which is probably why none of your suggestions to "improve" the game actually do anything for large part of the player base.
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Unique Username said:
So your mad I didn't mention explorers? What are you trying to say?
Click to expand...
No, I just think that all you 'added' in your suggestion was to bring to EDO the very same things you project as loathsome - whilst ignoring what the expansion provides.
Unique Username said:
It's a shooter
Click to expand...
This is beyond hilarious... Thanks, I needed a good chuckle! (y)

It is an expansion to the base game, which, in essense, is a shooter then?
 

CMDR Nathan Atterlein

CMDR Nathan Atterlein
Unique Username said:
If you didn't read it you don't have to be mean 😀
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Did read it, most of what you said are factually false. The rest is your personal preference.

Features "not added on to later and basically abandoned in future updates"

-listing bgs here proves you've little to no experience in this aspect of the game. Since Odyssey released, bgs for turned inside out for the better. I will not go into detail here, ask anyone about the functionality of the new settlements, and how conflicts work differently for them.

-Odyssey is an entirely new gameplay feature to ED, which is constantly being expanded as time goes on. Your comment regarding it is absolute nonsense.

-Engineering. You do something in exchange for getting something. What else should be there?

-Superpower ranks: -//-

-CQC. Maybe the only valid objective argument in the op.

-powerplay. There are talks about updating that post-Odyssey. I'll believe it when i see it, but it's a returning topic on fdevs streams.

The rest of the OP just goes into a direction of personal preference, which I'll simply won't argue with.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Unique Username said:
The Google definition says
Click to expand...
What you mean is "Google summarises the talk about this term as", because it all seems to be "streamers come up with a negatively biased term to discuss games they are unhappy with". And it doesn't apply to most of the things you mention. Classic case of the "golden hammer" antipattern (which actually does have a proper definition).
 

Brrokk

Brrokk
Unique Username said:
What is Parasitic Game Design?
The Google definition says: "If content is created for the sole purpose of being a time sink and is not added on to later and basically abandoned in future updates"

Now tell me, doesn't that sound familiar?
-BGS
-Superpower ranks
-Powerplay
-Engineering / CQC
-and now Odyssey

Lets be real, ALL of these were created just to make time sinks.Dont get me wrong time sinks are not a "bad" thing necessarily but too many is. ED is borderling on feature creep and that's SC and NMS territory and that's a sinking ship that we DONT want to get on.⛵

How do we fix Parasitic Game Design?definitely not crying about it on the forums lol .

To fix the problem you have to understand that there is 3 basic types of game design
-Core: Ed's flight model
-Secondary: combat,mining,tradeing
-Parasitic : bgs, cqc, superpower ranks, odyssey, etc

So we just cut out the Parasitic parts and call it a day? No. It's never that simple.

My suggestion is FD needs to utiliz odyssey's on foot feature as a another Core Game Design,
This is what that could looked like:

-Odyssey Focused BGS: on foot story based missions from the bgs leader!

-Odyssey Focused Superpower Ranking: unique on foot covert missions!

- Odyssey Focused PowerPlay: at the highest ranks in pp you can actually meet the head of your chosen power faction on foot!

- Odyssey Focused CQC: an on foot lounge were you can watch people play cqc and take bets on who would win.

This isn't a simple fix I know,. It's just as import to focus on future updates as past ones. we as a community and devs alike need to take a look at the foundations of the game and find what we really want from it.

That's my 2 cents. I'm sorry if I came off as a back seat "Developer" but I love this game and I hate seeing it go down the same road every mmo does. Oh and Btw I typed this on mobile 📱 if you see any spelling mistakes let me know and I will fix them.
Click to expand...
But all those things are still in the game and people are continuously doing them. I don't think any can be described as abandoned.
 
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