I think you missed the point a little. Your example has you making a delivery of some goods to ONE station - There are literally thousands of them. At any one a CMDR can be doing exactly the same as you. All you are doing is delivering goods. This in no way makes you the Hero of the game in the way that being one of the three main characters in GTA is the 'Hero' of that game. Your actions have an impact on that one tiny part of the human bubble.
Blowing up ships... Happens every second in Elite. Attacking a battleship - any CMDR can have a go or get their mates to help them. Each of these was an event the first time it happened, now it is common place, again, making the actions no different from those of any other CMDR. Discovering something such as the Thargoids or Jaques - that is special. That has an impact on Everyone. Their name gets remembered. Nobody remembers the person who delivers goods that have been ordered.
As for the impact the AI has... Do you know how many ships would be in space trading goods in the Elite universe? I can honestly say that I have no idea other than seeing 1000's more AI ships than CMDR's. I would think they have a bigger impact then we do except in CG's.
Imagine your the hero by all means but don't expect a real medal.
Sorry for being slightly off topic, just needed to clear this up. A shame Lilly never posted in my original thread on the matter... Always next time though!
which original thread?
Well the issue is, we should make an impact even in the small bubbles we act, but currently we don't. The game feels grindy because relative to the local problems our effort is just a rather hardcoded behavior. the BGS does take system popualtion into account, but not on a realistical scale. The Universe doesn't feedbakc my actions properly.
I also agree with us not havign to be the heroes. But when you look at the current scale in which things happen you realise it is starting to be a mess, because the relations to each other aren't fitting and in some areas you would have a huge impact, but don't. And on other areas you should have a lot less, but you do have the same. it is all so extremely static on an unrealistic scale compared to what scale the game tells us in numbers.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't that the entire point of Elite : Dangerous? You're not the dragon born, you're not the chosen one, you're a single induvidual which is subject to destruction if he/she loiters too long around a starport. That's what elite does so well, making you feel like you are nobody, and that your actions are insignificant. A lot of RPGs struggle with trying to convince the player that he or she is special, but by telling the player that they're absoloutley worthless, elite really makes it believable. Because after all, what have you done to be the chosen one? Nothing. What have you done to be nothing? Nothing.
I don't know, I don't find it believeable when I delver 35kg of food per pop to a famine and they are still starving. But who knows maybe in th future people eat just 30kg food per day?
I don't know how I am not a dragon born when I can disable an entire farragut solo, that feels very much like slaying a dragon.
No elite is in my opinion NOT doing a good job showing this believable. Because lets have a look:
A station can blow me up rather instant. Yep its a huge station, Beliveable? NO. if stations have such wepaons,why does no one slap those in a Farragut to rule battlefields? Because those station superweapons do only server a gameplay mechanic to not abuse/exploit stations. But this is not believable. Believable would be the station able to remote control my ship and force dock it. But the current implemention is just badly done. It's a god mode station with a superweapon which magically no one ever considered to build in a battleship.
I can stay 2 hours in a CZ and blow up one after the other easily, Hows that not drgaonbornlike?
As cool as graphcis in ED are, but with implemention of the Engineers they surely gave you dragon born gene injections. And the entire rets is doing a horrible job making my "insignificance" believable. Because I have no impact where I should have by the given scale. Yet on other scales we have huge impact where we shouldn't (shooting down a farragut singlehanded). I miss the bleiveable part of my insignificance.
And this is also where the game loses imerrsions for me, as I can clearly see the shallow mechanics slapped into the game which have no proper connection to what the Elite universe is supposed to look like with the given numbers and sizes of many things.
If you can't see the grind there's something wrong with you IMHO.
