Player Retention

[Darkfyre99]

Okay, playing catchup on this thread after that long reply...

Yes, we've got some atmospheric planets and space flowers, but that's all. There could have been Space Legs content for Guardian Sites or Thargoid bases. Either by reworking existing sites or by the introduction of new POIs. There could have been abandoned settlements to explore on foot (with audio logs and short stories attached to them), utilizing the full scope of Odyssey tools (Maverick suit to get through locked doors or bypass debries, Artemis suit to scan data points, Dominator suit to fight automated defenses. Basically encouraging people to play as a team). There could have been liquids on planetary surfaces or better vulcanism.

I suspect there's a deliberate policy by Frontier not to make any of the story content an Odyssey exclusive until after the console release - which I think is the right decision if so but does mean they can't use a lot of the potential.

^^^
This. I'd already assumed that Odyssey oriented Thargoid and Guardian content wouldn't be released until Odyssey was released on console, which is why I didn't Buckyball it back to the Bubble, or hitch a ride via a Fleet Carrier, once I'd reached Colonia on my way back from Distant Worlds 2. I just explored my way back to the Bubble in Odyssey, and I'm now starting doing BGS missions while I waited for Frontier to optimize Odyssey enough to reach that point.

I'm planning on doing some on-foot Alien Archeology once that happens, but I've got other plans should Frontier disappoint me on that front. That's the nice thing about this game, there's always plenty of things to do.

I reckon (and this is pure guesswork) that one of the main challenges with Elite is just how much downtime there is while playing it. The sandbox is indeed big, but it's filled with a lot of emptiness. Jumping systems is one thing, but SC in particular is even grating on me on a regular basis despite me making peace with it, and recognising the necessity of how it's implemented (space is big yadda yadda). But the fact is, I spend significant amounts of my Elite sessions alt-tabbed out doing other things, while waiting for something in-game. I really don't get this with any other game in my library (bar long haul flights in MSFS2020 perhaps, but at least there I still can look out of the window observing weather & scenery, manage the controls, work with ATC while flying). In the aforementioned truck sims, I will be 100% engaged driving my truck, navigating through road networks and traffic.

This is one complaint that's long puzzled me. I've always been on of the opinion that 90% of the time, there's so much to engage with while in Supercruise, that I really wish that Frontier would return Supercruise to its pre-Premium Beta One version! Which is kind of ironic, because over half the time, travel times were faster in that version thanks to the increased effectiveness if higher-skill, and IMO much more fun, braking maneuvers.

But then again, I don't play the game in the "forum recommended" way, as I describe above, so that may be it.

I do agree with the longer-travel times while out exploring can be a bit dull, thanks to a lack of content to engage with in route, but I usually used that time to search along my route for more interesting star systems. I would've preferred to use that time in the FSS, because I also never bothered following the "forum recommended" exploration technique. I'd always looked for the potentially interesting planet to explore first, traveled to it, and then cleaned up the uninteresting parts of the system. Doing that en-route would make more sense IMO, but I can't do that because I have to set the throttle to zero to use the FSS.

I still don't understand why Frontier put in that particular artificial limitation, given that you can use the FSS while moving at multiples of the speed of light successfully, assuming you take advantage how Supercruise works. I find artificial barriers like this to be especially annoying, especially given how many non-standard ways of using the FSS I can think of that require the ship the be moving.

The difference with EDO engineering is that you have to gather a lot of mats (in much higher numbers) upfront before you can even apply a mod or upgrade. If it was more aligned with ship engineering in how it works I don't think I'd mind it as much (and obviously the ability to remove/replace mods from a suit/weapon, rather than having to do it from scratch - purely done to artificially extend the time you're busy with this content).

That's why I'm not bothering to engineer my suits at this time, and am concentrating on just gathering materials when the opportunity arises, and checking for G3 suits and weapons as I run missions. IMO, G3 is more than enough for most activities in EDO once you've developed the necessary skills. I doubt Frontier will leave the state of EDO engineering like this, given their past performance.

I just wish that I could access EDO missions from my ship, and ship-based missions from EDO consoles. I find artificial barriers like these to be rather annoying.

 

[d8veh]

I already said I flew a viper 3 but ok, it wasn't even fully engineered and with fixed mc's. At competant rank I was taking on master ranked medium ships with only g3 engines, g2 weapons and shields. And Deadly small ships posed no threat at all.

So going to the dnd analogy, I am already in a zone twice my level.

And then everything is still predictable and scripted, there are no unexpected dangers.

Just out of interest, did you try fighting Medusas with that ship, or did you go to Deciat or Shinrarta Dezhra in open?

 

[Northpin]

And then everything is still predictable and scripted, there are no unexpected dangers.

Well, maybe you are well over the average level player the game is aimed to. Which means you should be proud since you seem to be a good pilot.

Also, Elite Dangerous.... Dangerous does not refer to danger.
It refers to the Combat Rank Dangerous - as it is the level at which the Elite Federation of Pilots opens their inner gates (according to the lore, Deadly and Elite does not necessarily mean a skill increase over Dangerous, but it is a matter of perseverance)


Also, regarding unexpected dangers - the game is not built like that.
You need to search for dangers.

For example, the first death of my Epic account alt happened like this (keep in mind that at that moment i had like 4000-4500 hours in game - cumulated on my main and my first alt):
So i was flying my DBX - taxi/exploration build, which means crap PD, crap shields and no weapons. And i've seen a USS Weapon Fire (Threat 6).
And i was like Hmm, i dont remember ever seeing a Threat 6 Weapon Fire USS. Maybe i should drop in and check it. Maybe some pirates will attack some traders and i get to leech some and get to scoop some free materials.
So i dropped in. And there were several ships (3-4?) And i didnt even had time to scan them or check their types. They were all over me and my poor DBX went boom reaaaly fast.

 

[Sellias]

Well, maybe you are well over the average level player the game is aimed to. Which means you should be proud since you seem to be a good pilot.

Also, Elite Dangerous.... Dangerous does not refer to danger.
It refers to the Combat Rank Dangerous - as it is the level at which the Elite Federation of Pilots opens their inner gates (according to the lore, Deadly and Elite does not necessarily mean a skill increase over Dangerous, but it is a matter of perseverance)


Also, regarding unexpected dangers - the game is not built like that.
You need to search for dangers.

For example, the first death of my Epic account alt happened like this (keep in mind that at that moment i had like 4000-4500 hours in game - cumulated on my main and my first alt):
So i was flying my DBX - taxi/exploration build, which means crap PD, crap shields and no weapons. And i've seen a USS Weapon Fire (Threat 6).
And i was like Hmm, i dont remember ever seeing a Threat 6 Weapon Fire USS. Maybe i should drop in and check it. Maybe some pirates will attack some traders and i get to leech some and get to scoop some free materials.
So i dropped in. And there were several ships (3-4?) And i didnt even had time to scan them or check their types. They were all over me and my poor DBX went boom reaaaly fast.

I never mentioned anything about the title, but thanks for explaining it I guess. But the galaxy was advertised as cutthroat, there doesn't seem anything cutthroat about it.

And I'm not a good pilot that's the point. I'm average at best. Actually I'm rather .

Unexpected danger is what makes an adventure exciting. If I know what the outcome will be what's the point. So not only have I have to gimp myself I have to knowlingy and purposely fly myself into danger. So much for the living and breathing galaxy, sounds more like mmo theme park design.

 

[Northpin]

I never mentioned anything about the title, but thanks for explaining it I guess. But the galaxy was advertised as cutthroat, there doesn't seem anything cutthroat about it.

And I'm not a good pilot that's the point. I'm average at best. Actually I'm rather .

Unexpected danger is what makes an adventure exciting. If I know what the outcome will be what's the point. So not only have I have to gimp myself I have to knowlingy and purposely fly myself into danger. So much for the living and breathing galaxy, sounds more like mmo theme park design.

Well, if you really are after the cutthroat part... just fly in open and follow the choke points.
I mean the CG Systems or Engineering systems - Deciat, Wyrd, etc

For the PVE part - load 1t of gold and drop in a haz res or in a CNB or why not? in a Pirate USS (Threat 5-6-7)

 

[nemolomen]

So I should switch out of my viper 3 into, what? a hauler and try to ram other ships?

Gimping yourself intentionally is artificial challenge. And artificial challenge is a game design no no. That's like playing DnD and you ask the DM to Spice up the encounters because you are breezing through. And the DM says: lol just don't use your swords

I think the point being made above was more along the lines of danger as in unpredictability, rather than mere difficulty/challenge.
The combination of BGS and PP could have more and varied influence, giving rise to short lived (i.e. naturally unstable) situations where a system could be taken over by the local pirate lord where enemies would be dispatched with pretty quickly. Conversely, short lived high risk / very high profit trade routes, or simply very profitable routes that would bring people together would be nice too.
Just playing in open mode isn't enough as currently you need G5 engineering and it's mostly gank / be ganked or do arranged combat,

Specifically, a couple of days ago, I was flying around in Colonia with a set of in ship missions for the same system: 2 pickups and 1 take out some of Brian's Thugs (8 of them).

I'm currently flying an unengineered Crusader w/2 Med Beams, 3 small missile racks and a large frag which I built specifically for doing Ody missions. I'm at Master rank in combat.

So I decided to do the pickup missions first and then tackle the thugs, flew to the target system, found the first guy, dropped to meet them got the stuff and left. Missed the other guy on the first try but found some thugs to beat up and took out two of them reasonably short order.

So before I started looking for more thugs, I decided to try the second pickup again, found the guy but then got interdicted by a Deadly Anaconda. Was feeling pretty good about the performance of my build so I submitted to the interdiction. After fighting for a while I realized I wasn't going to win since I couldn't take their shields down due to the Annie's SCBs. So I eventually escaped but then go interdicted again by the same ship right away, barely made it out of that interdiction with just 18% hull left.

Decided to go turn in the mission that had the Annie after me so I could proceed with the other two...unhindered...looking over my shoulder the whole way...

Good times...I had a blast, it was difficult and unpredictable and caused me to think about and restructure my previous plan.

IMO EDO is merely a set of tools to explore the game world. As such, its entirely up to me to play it in a way that I find enjoyable.

 

[Sellias]

Well, if you really are after the cutthroat part... just fly in open and follow the choke points.
I mean the CG Systems or Engineering systems - Deciat, Wyrd, etc

For the PVE part - load 1t of gold and drop in a haz res or in a CNB or why not? in a Pirate USS (Threat 5-6-7)

So I have to again, jump through hoops, and fly knowingly into a select few places to find any semblance of danger, that is completely isolated, scripted and static.

That kind of design would be totally expected from a run of the mill theme park mmo, but not a sand box with a supposed living and breathing cutthroat galaxy.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

This is one complaint that's long puzzled me.

I'm puzzled that you're puzzled

I'm just not the explorer type (as I found out over the years despite trying long distance trips several times) as I get bored very quickly performing the same tasks over and over - which is why I spend the majority of my time in the game in the bubble, even though I like the concept of being deep in unexplored space - but when I actually do it, the repetition and limited interaction when it comes to exploration related gameplay really gets to me and I head back to inhabited space pronto.

The only fun (on a very basic level) I may have while in SC is evading other players trying to interdict me - but even that gets old eventually and is more a distraction than anything from what I was going to do in the first place at my destination, being a PvE player first and foremost.

Since most of my Elite-gameplay is in the bubble then, SC is indeed the worst distraction of it all - constantly fighting gravity wells , getting from one body to another closeby can take an age and a half because of said gravity well, and I find it utterly tedious (I'm aware I could use the orrery map to optimise the route, but I prefer to just slap on SC assist and do something else with my time, like Inara/forums/news browsing - feels more rewarding to me than say cutting off 30 seconds of a 5 minute trip). I get why it's there, but I don't enjoy it, never have. In a way, I'm amazed that I endured it over the years, but only because the stuff that happens in "normal" space makes up for it (usually).

The other space game I play where travelling can take some time (but still nowhere near like in Elite) is X4 - but unlike in Elite I'm not spending minutes tapping my fingers and staring at a counter, because the game lets me do all sorts of other things via the excellent map (which has a steep learning curve because it's very busy, but it is fantastic functionally speaking). Manage my fleet, my crew, buy/sell stuff, purchase and outfit ships remotely, develop and manage my stations, remotely fight wars, etc. etc. Very different game, but I wish Elite would give me something more meaningful to do than what it currently offers during these commutes.

I would love to use the FSS while travelling, though I assume it's disabled to not make life more difficult aiming at moving targets - and while I think it's much better than the old honk system of exploration, I'm not a fan of the FSS either as it's just a very basic and repetitive 2D minigame, but it does the job I guess.

 

[Northpin]

So I have to again, jump through hoops, and fly knowingly into a select few places to find any semblance of danger, that is completely isolated, scripted and static.

That kind of design would be totally expected from a run of the mill theme park mmo, but not a sand box with a supposed living and breathing cutthroat galaxy.

Well, you can keep that 1t of gold on you and lose an interdiction here and there.

But generally speaking yea - the galaxy is not really a cutthroat galaxy unless you go looking for the cutthroat places.
Like in any big city - you will not get mugged as soon as you leave the house - but there is definitely a time and a place for it

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Specifically, a couple of days ago, I was flying around in Colonia with a set of in ship missions for the same system: 2 pickups and 1 take out some of Brian's Thugs (8 of them).

I'm currently flying an unengineered Crusader w/2 Med Beams, 3 small missile racks and a large frag which I built specifically for doing Ody missions. I'm at Master rank in combat.

So I decided to do the pickup missions first and then tackle the thugs, flew to the target system, found the first guy, dropped to meet them got the stuff and left. Missed the other guy on the first try but found some thugs to beat up and took out two of them reasonably short order.

So before I started looking for more thugs, I decided to try the second pickup again, found the guy but then got interdicted by a Deadly Anaconda. Was feeling pretty good about the performance of my build so I submitted to the interdiction. After fighting for a while I realized I wasn't going to win since I couldn't take their shields down due to the Annie's SCBs. So I eventually escaped but then go interdicted again by the same ship right away, barely made it out of that interdiction with just 18% hull left.

Decided to go turn in the mission that had the Annie after me so I could proceed with the other two...unhindered...looking over my shoulder the whole way...

Good times...I had a blast, it was difficult and unpredictable and caused me to think about and restructure my previous plan.

IMO EDO is merely a set of tools to explore the game world. As such, its entirely up to me to play it in a way that I find enjoyable.

Nothing I could add to that really, it was good for you ;-)

Elite does plenty well I think, especially as it tries to be all things to all people, I would just like it to add a bit more flavour and colour, just here and there, to remind us that it really is living and breathing, as to a lot of players who aren't into either BGS or Power Play, it's not really apparent.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

getting from one body to another closeby can take an age and a half because of said gravity well, and I find it utterly tedious

Yes, this is one of my main complaints with the game, as I don't think adding time actually makes the galaxy seem any bigger.

 

[nemolomen]

Nothing I could add to that really, it was good for you ;-)

Elite does plenty well I think, especially as it tries to be all things to all people, I would just like it to add a bit more flavour and colour, just here and there, to remind us that it really is living and breathing, as to a lot of players who aren't into either BGS or Power Play, it's not really apparent.

I agree, I just have fun with whats available because, at the end of the day, that's really all I have to work with...

 

[sandkid]

It's a sandbox, hence player groups making their own content. I was going to ask if this is a doom thread, but the jury is still out.

It is a sandbox, I agree with you on that, but there's a marked difference between:

A) A sandbox
B) A sandbox with tools to play with the sand

Now, I'm a beach-goer myself and anyone who knows me knows I don't need tools to have fun. Big guy upstairs gave me fingers and toes, y'know? Gaming isn't so...expansive, but that's ok. Thing is, a sandbox 'game' has to have some tools. Haven't seen any massive communities build up recently around coding your own game.

I mean, anybody can code. Really. Just like anybody can build a sand fort.
Just might not look like it. The thought counts.

Comparing Elite to EVE is really unfair (to both titles, ironically, given recent history in both)...but EVE has the 'sandbox' thing down in spades, balance issues and all. The tools for making your own story and adventure - a hallmark of sandboxes - is almost unparraled in New Eden (EVE's world). Elite, on the other hand, is a glorified single-player ship simulator that happens to have (rarely stable) multiplayer capabilities.

I know that's a gross oversimplification, just hang in there.

I think players do make content for Elite (obviously) but the tools to do so are sorely minimal. And that's with massive 3rd party support to boot. OP is right that FDev could do more to foster player retention and - to your point - do so by encouraging more player made content. The trouble with emergent gameplay is:

1) You need players. A lot of them.
2) You need 'content makers' - who are a wholly unique, and very rare breed of player. It's estimated in EVE that you have one content maker for about every 5,000 players. A content maker isn't a ganker, nor is it a corporation leader, or even a warmonger. A content maker designs large-scale, long-lasting, impactful content through the gathering of and interaction with many players. DW expeditions are an excellent example of this.
3) Those content-makers need tools by which to architect their content.

#3 is the big hiccup. Elite has plenty of players (for now) and it did have content makers as evidenced by DW2. The PvP community has a few on the small-side, but PvP is sort-of its own beast in non-PvP-centric titles like Elite.

Why aren't there content-makers for PP? (Queue everyone saying, "We're here! You just ignore us!"
Why aren't there content-makers for Thargoids? (Queue AXI and anybody else...)
Why aren't there content-makers for S&R? (Fuel Rats, Hull Seals...)

None of these are BIG content-makers. I don't say that to be offensive. These are all really cool player groups. I say it to point out OP's not wrong: retention in Elite shouldn't be suffering with such great groups out there...except the tools to highlight them, support them, and most importantly - GROW them - don't exist. Squadrons as a feature is a huge miss, messy and unintuitive and not remotely useful to actually organizing large scale content. FCs were designed with some emergent play in mind, then completely ignored that Elite doesn't have a player-made economy.

The point?
I'd argue Elite barely qualifies as a sandbox. It's definitely a box - a big one, too - but I'm not sure there's much sand in it, let alone tools to shape that sand.

There is literally no difference between a player in Colonia and a player in the bubble, except one traveled a very long time to be surrounded by the exact same gameplay. It's no small wonder Elite's only newsworthy content has been the expeditions...because the only content of depth the game has is traveling absurdly long distances and preparing for that journey.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

......because the only content of depth the game has is traveling absurdly long distances and preparing for that journey.

I couldn't care about repetive stuff like that. I cared for repetitive stuff about the BGS. At least I could switch around the different repetitive stuffs. And I could at least go "hihi" and kill stuff in a combat zone. But they had to put the grind on each and every nippel of existing gameplay: the dratted engineers, ED's cancer that is a vicious circle of self perpetuating power creep.

 

[sandkid]

I'm puzzled that you're puzzled

I'm just not the explorer type (as I found out over the years despite trying long distance trips several times) as I get bored very quickly performing the same tasks over and over - which is why I spend the majority of my time in the game in the bubble, even though I like the concept of being deep in unexplored space - but when I actually do it, the repetition and limited interaction when it comes to exploration related gameplay really gets to me and I head back to inhabited space pronto.

The only fun (on a very basic level) I may have while in SC is evading other players trying to interdict me - but even that gets old eventually and is more a distraction than anything from what I was going to do in the first place at my destination, being a PvE player first and foremost.

Since most of my Elite-gameplay is in the bubble then, SC is indeed the worst distraction of it all - constantly fighting gravity wells , getting from one body to another closeby can take an age and a half because of said gravity well, and I find it utterly tedious (I'm aware I could use the orrery map to optimise the route, but I prefer to just slap on SC assist and do something else with my time, like Inara/forums/news browsing - feels more rewarding to me than say cutting off 30 seconds of a 5 minute trip). I get why it's there, but I don't enjoy it, never have. In a way, I'm amazed that I endured it over the years, but only because the stuff that happens in "normal" space makes up for it (usually).

The other space game I play where travelling can take some time (but still nowhere near like in Elite) is X4 - but unlike in Elite I'm not spending minutes tapping my fingers and staring at a counter, because the game lets me do all sorts of other things via the excellent map (which has a steep learning curve because it's very busy, but it is fantastic functionally speaking). Manage my fleet, my crew, buy/sell stuff, purchase and outfit ships remotely, develop and manage my stations, remotely fight wars, etc. etc. Very different game, but I wish Elite would give me something more meaningful to do than what it currently offers during these commutes.

I would love to use the FSS while travelling, though I assume it's disabled to not make life more difficult aiming at moving targets - and while I think it's much better than the old honk system of exploration, I'm not a fan of the FSS either as it's just a very basic and repetitive 2D minigame, but it does the job I guess.

Great post overall...

Just an added thought:

Solving FSS is really a lot easier than FDev makes it: open up a new interface rather than 'live movement' as it currently works. This interface is - ermagerd, this already exists! - an orrery. Just blank. Ship knows stuff is here, here, and here. Ship no know what is.

Now scan, via orrery, and similar/new mechanics for narrowing down the scans. And, lo and behold, what if you're actually looking for stuff while doing this? Why...you're already in the orrery with all the information right there. How handy is that?

Why someone(s) at FDev though the FSS needed to be live as you fly is beyond me. Because it seems like a cool concept, right up until they prevent it during moving SC. Massive missed opportunity, but the technical reasons are understandable...so why build it that way in the first place?

Ok, that's my rant.
I am also in the crowd for Supercruise is stupid.

It bothers me that - legitimately - well over 50% of my playing time for the game has been staring at a windshield doing nothing. At leats you actually steer in a driving simulator.

 

[Bottom Hat]

It is a sandbox, I agree with you on that, but there's a marked difference between:

A) A sandbox
B) A sandbox with tools to play with the sand

Now, I'm a beach-goer myself and anyone who knows me knows I don't need tools to have fun. Big guy upstairs gave me fingers and toes, y'know? Gaming isn't so...expansive, but that's ok. Thing is, a sandbox 'game' has to have some tools. Haven't seen any massive communities build up recently around coding your own game.

I mean, anybody can code. Really. Just like anybody can build a sand fort.
Just might not look like it. The thought counts.

Comparing Elite to EVE is really unfair (to both titles, ironically, given recent history in both)...but EVE has the 'sandbox' thing down in spades, balance issues and all. The tools for making your own story and adventure - a hallmark of sandboxes - is almost unparraled in New Eden (EVE's world). Elite, on the other hand, is a glorified single-player ship simulator that happens to have (rarely stable) multiplayer capabilities.

I know that's a gross oversimplification, just hang in there.

I think players do make content for Elite (obviously) but the tools to do so are sorely minimal. And that's with massive 3rd party support to boot. OP is right that FDev could do more to foster player retention and - to your point - do so by encouraging more player made content. The trouble with emergent gameplay is:

1) You need players. A lot of them.
2) You need 'content makers' - who are a wholly unique, and very rare breed of player. It's estimated in EVE that you have one content maker for about every 5,000 players. A content maker isn't a ganker, nor is it a corporation leader, or even a warmonger. A content maker designs large-scale, long-lasting, impactful content through the gathering of and interaction with many players. DW expeditions are an excellent example of this.
3) Those content-makers need tools by which to architect their content.

#3 is the big hiccup. Elite has plenty of players (for now) and it did have content makers as evidenced by DW2. The PvP community has a few on the small-side, but PvP is sort-of its own beast in non-PvP-centric titles like Elite.

Why aren't there content-makers for PP? (Queue everyone saying, "We're here! You just ignore us!"
Why aren't there content-makers for Thargoids? (Queue AXI and anybody else...)
Why aren't there content-makers for S&R? (Fuel Rats, Hull Seals...)

None of these are BIG content-makers. I don't say that to be offensive. These are all really cool player groups. I say it to point out OP's not wrong: retention in Elite shouldn't be suffering with such great groups out there...except the tools to highlight them, support them, and most importantly - GROW them - don't exist. Squadrons as a feature is a huge miss, messy and unintuitive and not remotely useful to actually organizing large scale content. FCs were designed with some emergent play in mind, then completely ignored that Elite doesn't have a player-made economy.

The point?
I'd argue Elite barely qualifies as a sandbox. It's definitely a box - a big one, too - but I'm not sure there's much sand in it, let alone tools to shape that sand.

There is literally no difference between a player in Colonia and a player in the bubble, except one traveled a very long time to be surrounded by the exact same gameplay. It's no small wonder Elite's only newsworthy content has been the expeditions...because the only content of depth the game has is traveling absurdly long distances and preparing for that journey.

Please note, this is not a sarcastic reply, I just don't remember what I was talking about in the quote, so thought ignoring you would be rude!

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Great post overall...

Just an added thought:

Solving FSS is really a lot easier than FDev makes it: open up a new interface rather than 'live movement' as it currently works. This interface is - ermagerd, this already exists! - an orrery. Just blank. Ship knows stuff is here, here, and here. Ship no know what is.

Now scan, via orrery, and similar/new mechanics for narrowing down the scans. And, lo and behold, what if you're actually looking for stuff while doing this? Why...you're already in the orrery with all the information right there. How handy is that?

Why someone(s) at FDev though the FSS needed to be live as you fly is beyond me. Because it seems like a cool concept, right up until they prevent it during moving SC. Massive missed opportunity, but the technical reasons are understandable...so why build it that way in the first place?

Ok, that's my rant.
I am also in the crowd for Supercruise is stupid.

It bothers me that - legitimately - well over 50% of my playing time for the game has been staring at a windshield doing nothing. At leats you actually steer in a driving simulator.

Personally I do think the FSS concept would've worked better as a logic game*, as opposed to moving the cursor around and resolve circles through multiple layers of zoom depth (based on your live ship location). This could've worked independently from the ship's live position (which is what you're getting at right?) and I would've personally implemented it just like the cockpit screen overlay you get when you buy a Fleet Carrier - why that system isn't used more frequently in the game is beyond me as it is very immersive, as opposed to the flat mobile-game-UI/design that is the FSS.

*A bit like a logic based game would've suited the reaction-based plant scanner during the Alpha, before it was merely binned altogether at release. I can't say I loved it, but the second iteration which was more forgiving is still better than hold-button-for-5-seconds "gameplay" we now have. A placeholder that I'm not entirely sure is indeed a placeholder for something else to come, a bit like the Scotty-beam-me-up-blue circle of boarding the ship. Oh well.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Since most of my Elite-gameplay is in the bubble then, SC is indeed the worst distraction of it all - constantly fighting gravity wells , getting from one body to another closeby can take an age and a half because of said gravity well, and I find it utterly tedious (I'm aware I could use the orrery map to optimise the route, but I prefer to just slap on SC assist and do something else with my time, like Inara/forums/news browsing - feels more rewarding to me than say cutting off 30 seconds of a 5 minute trip). I get why it's there, but I don't enjoy it, never have. In a way, I'm amazed that I endured it over the years, but only because the stuff that happens in "normal" space makes up for it (usually).

It's definitely a YMMV factor. Especially if you consider five minute Supercruise travel times the norm, which isn't the case in my experience. But then again, I enjoy flying small ships overall, which can take advantage of the mechanics of Supercruise more easily than larger ships do.

The majority of trips I make in the Bubble usually take less than four minutes, and that includes from undocking at my starting station, jumping to another system, traveling through Supercruise, and docking at my destination. It might take longer than five minutes (again station to station) if my destination is over 5000ls from arrival, but only about 16% of destinations are further than that IIRC. Those doesn't leave much room for extras like scanning wakes, USSs, and ships, but those don't add too much to my travel time, and IMO are frequently worth diverting over.

I'll grant you that dropping down to planetary destinations takes a bit longer, but that's primarily because the orbital cruise zone makes braking maneuvers less efficient overall. It's actually one side effect from playing Odyssey: there's a lot more planets with orbital cruise zones than there used to be, and removing the "planetary approach suite" if I'm not planning on landing on planets during a session no longer removes that zone completely. When you add in that there usually isn't enough time to during my trip to determine ahead of time if my destination is on the near or far side of the planet, trying to determine what my approach should be for a fast planetary descent while also trying to bleed off enough speed to actually perform that maneuver can be a bit... tricky. Which is a good thing in my book. Tricky approaches are far more interesting than more straight forward ones IMO.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'll grant you that dropping down to planetary destinations takes a bit longer

On the other hand the bit it makes take longer is the bit with hands-on-controls flying, so it doesn't seem longer. It's the couple of minutes of straight-line flying before that where I alt-tab and post on the forums... and that's the same regardless of destination details.

It wouldn't take that much conceptually to cover those bits at least outside of exploration - just the ability to browse the station news, mission board, commodity market at a station remotely and pre-accept missions, pre-set up trades, etc. (you still have to actually land to execute those instructions, of course) and then there's something to do there too.
(The Elite/FE2/FFE solution of "have pirates repeatedly attack if you're not in an ultra-safe system" being too late to include in ED, of course)

 

[Deleted member 182079]

It's definitely a YMMV factor. Especially if you consider five minute Supercruise travel times the norm, which isn't the case in my experience. But then again, I enjoy flying small ships overall, which can take advantage of the mechanics of Supercruise more easily than larger ships do.

The majority of trips I make in the Bubble usually take less than four minutes, and that includes from undocking at my starting station, jumping to another system, traveling through Supercruise, and docking at my destination. It might take longer than five minutes (again station to station) if my destination is over 5000ls from arrival, but only about 16% of destinations are further than that IIRC. Those doesn't leave much room for extras like scanning wakes, USSs, and ships, but those don't add too much to my travel time, and IMO are frequently worth diverting over.

I'll grant you that dropping down to planetary destinations takes a bit longer, but that's primarily because the orbital cruise zone makes braking maneuvers less efficient overall. It's actually one side effect from playing Odyssey: there's a lot more planets with orbital cruise zones than there used to be, and removing the "planetary approach suite" if I'm not planning on landing on planets during a session no longer removes that zone completely. When you add in that there usually isn't enough time to during my trip to determine ahead of time if my destination is on the near or far side of the planet, trying to determine what my approach should be for a fast planetary descent while also trying to bleed off enough speed to actually perform that maneuver can be a bit... tricky. Which is a good thing in my book. Tricky approaches are far more interesting than more straight forward ones IMO.

It doesn't help that I spent the past 4-6 weeks working towards engineering my 3 suits to G5, applying the mods I wanted for each, and doing this to a degree for various weapons also (max is G4 though). I tried to stick to one or two systems I'd base myself at, and improve my REP with all factions in the hope they'd yield better mission rewards (doesn't work as well with on-foot missions as it does for ship ones unfortunately, at least not for mission board stuff).

This involved stacking a number of missions (usually 4-8, depending on whether the mats I needed were available on the mission board at all), to minimise going back and forth between systems and the mission giver location, and would mean:

Jump to system A > SC to target destination 1 (usually between 500-5000Ls from the star) > SC to target destination 2 (depending on the system between 5Ls and 10,000Ls) > jump to system B and so on. Many of the destinations would be icy bodies swirring around gas giants, with the loathed gravity well that accompanies them, plus the next target would be on the other side of the planet I'd be departing from quite frequently.

Often, missions could be completed in a couple of minutes or less ("pick up X from a container") and that'd be my gameplay, before the next SC trip beckoned. It was soul destroying for that reason alone, and my account's playtime got a nice boost as a result, but the actual quality playtime was only a tiny fraction of that.