Intro: This is just such a well thought out and put down post by
Darkfyre99, that if i could like it multiple times or take an action to ensure Sir David absolutely saw it i would (Mods take note!). I want to dive into this and expand each section
To bring this thread back around to its original topic, I was thinking about what are my five biggest blockers to play this game more frequently than I do.
#5: The timers to complete missions that elapse in real time, rather than game time. ED is a game that requires me to have at least an hour to play the game, assuming I want a variety of mission objectives to complete during my play session, and a variety of systems and worlds to visit, and still have time for more spontaneous content like mission wrinkles, investigating USSs, and bounty hunting. I’m at a stage of my life right now where large blocks of uninterrupted game time are difficult to come by, so I just have half an hour to play a game, I’ll choose one I can save my game with, and continue later.
I suppose I could just grind away at one and only one activity, but IMO that just sucks the joy right out of the game.
This is the nature of an online MMO type game where ALL players need to share the same playing time frame. It is one of the 'sacrifices' this version of Elite has had to make compared to the previous single player only versions (and no doubt behind the decision to ditch the actual single player version of the game, if that really existed in an advanced stage at all).
This is what i do, my time demands are that at any moment i might be called away from my PC and that might require 5 mins or 5 hours depending. The only way i can currently play ED(H) is in Solo mode so that i have time to find a relatively 'safe' place in space to throttle down and float while i leave the PC to deal with the interruption of play. The AI in ED(H) being what it is, as long as i'm in a high security system i'm mostly safe doing this (so at worst i need to quickly find a high security system and jump to it fly away from the sun a little in SC and then float in 'idle mode'. If i have pending missions i sometimes have to sacrifice them, and that is just part of the game cycle i have come to accept (and in truth making money is not a challenge, so these failures make little overall impact).
#4: The Decaying Verisimilitude. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, verisimilitude is the appearance of truth. This is different from modeling reality, because this can include things like magic and sci-fi technologies. The important thing is to be internally consistent, and to think through potential applications of new tech/magic to the setting. If you ever find yourself thinking "Hyperdrives don't work like that!" or "Why don't they use the macguffin from two seasons ago?" that's a violation of verisimilitude.
When Elite Dangerous was still in development, it had very tight verisimilitude. The game was not only internally consistent, but also consistent with previous games in the franchise. I was especially pleased that the Frame Shift Drive was less a completely new technology to the setting, but instead a logical progression from the FTL technology from FE2 and FFE. True, there were some gameplay compromises, but Frontier never bothered to explain them via lore, which made it easy to headcanon away those inconsistencies.
After release, though, as the game changed leadership, maintaining verisimilitude stopped being a thing. History from previous games that had been established in game as having happened were retconned. We were all given pockets of holding for tons of material. Engineered modules were eligible for rebuy. The whole telepresence thing. Nonsensical prices and ridiculous demand. Each of these makes it harder and harder to make the world this game is set in make sense. Nothing takes you out of the moment faster than realizing "You could buy a ship for that! What do you need me for???"
As a total new player to the game (Kickstarter backer 'all access and updates' level that never took part in any alpha/beta or gameplay outside of a few of the early training missions) as of a few weeks back i completely get what you are talking about here, and it is one of the criticism's i will be addressing in detail later when i feel the need (and have enough in game experience) to post my 'New players impressions (2022)' as my misguided attempt to 'help' Frontier 'rescue' their game (something like that
).
#3 The Monty Haul Campaign. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, a "Monty Haul Campaign" is one where the game master rewards their players with excessive riches and power... usually in an attempt to bribe players uncertain about the game into continuing playing. This can also be a sign of an inexperienced game master, who doesn't know how to keep things balanced to make their game more interesting. Frontier has been in this mode for years.
Between credit reward inflation and power creep, I haven't gotten a decent sense of accomplishment in this game for years. Once you've learned the basics of this game, its really hard to fail at this game unless you deliberately try to fail, and its the possibility of failure that makes success so sweet.
Man this really makes me wish i had been playing much earlier before the wheels started to fall off, then again never having known the 'better' state the game had been in, and the fact that you are forced to play with the latest updates (online MMO reasons), i guess i won't feel the loss and pain of these changes as much, so maybe i am actually going to enjoy ED(H) more as a new player than an old one?
#2 Decreasing Depth. Before delving into this topic, I think its necessary to define some terms. Depth is how many
viable options you have available to you to accomplish your goals. Complexity is the amount of information a player has to keep track of. And for completeness's sake...
grind is what you do when you have
too few options to accomplish your goals.
Dangerous has a reputation of being an inch deep and a mile wide. While I don't think it's as bad as that, there is
some truth to that statement. It wasn't always this way. While the game was in development, it had a
lot more depth, but Frontier kept filling in the depth they created due to player complaints... who then complained about the grind.
This has led to Frontier to substitute complexity for depth, which is fairly common in the games industry. While this game hasn't yet reached the level of
needing 3rd party websites, I think Frontier could remove 90% of the commodities currently in the game, because the function they once served in the game was effectively dummied out. There are other areas in the game (especially engineering) that could be streamlined without affecting the outcome.
Be careful with 'streamlining', anything. Sometimes in any game it is simply the number of variables that ADD to the deeper game experience, even if seemingly superfluous, they can provide the 'mind food' for the player to better construct their existence in the game world, especially where the game itself is falling down in this (see your paragraph about 'verisimilitude' above).
#1 The Increasing Lack of Interesting Decisions. I don't play games to fulfil power fantasies.
Sadly this is the biggest problem that an MMO-like design template brings to the table, MMO's and MMO players are nearly ALL about the power fantasy over other aspects of a games design and playing options. It's why i got bored quick in the only MMO i played previously (WoW), and why as a rule of thumb i avoid them.
I play games to make interesting decisions. I want to weigh the pros and cons of the actions I'll take. When Elite Dangerous was in development, I really had to weigh the pros and cons of each action I took. Credits were tight, there was a functioning economic simulation in place, ships had operational costs... so the right mix of commodities; as well as how you outfitted your ship, could mean the difference between profit and loss.
Unfortunately, thanks to #2 and #3, as time went on, the number of interesting decisions I had to make decreased. Missions went from augmenting trade to replacing trade, and from having pros and cons to weight, to just having pros. BGS manipulation went from a delicate act of balancing credits, influence, and reputation between various factions to achieve your goals, to not having it matter what you do, because you'll get all three while still achieving your goals.
Even exploration has reduced the number of interesting outfitting decisions you need to make. At the start of the game, you had to balance operational costs with jump range and outfitting choices. Then operational costs were removed, so you didn't have to balance between jump range and outfitting choices anymore. Horizons introduced the SRV, and the necessity of having shields to land on planets safely, which did reintroduce compromising between ship cost, jump range, and outfitting choices again... until credit reward inflation grew to the point where it removed ship cost from the equation again. And then the number of exploration modules decreased, while the number of available slots increased, which meant that even a lowly Hauler could fit everything you needed to explore, while still allowing for some optional extras.
Again this just helps explain to me the changes the game has gone through, and from my point of view much of that would count as a negative to what i prefer to find in any Elite game (MMO or not). It is kind of saddening to read this, but i also understand perhaps why these changes were made as the general 'culture' around game design in this modern era has mostly fallen in the direction of chasing whales and appealing to the instant gratification crowd vs providing coherent internal narratives (to the game play systems) and 'realism' based simulation. Frontier are not the only developer guilty of falling into this trap, it's endemic in the industry as a whole (and wider afield in TV series and movies also). We are the era of dumbing down and reaching for the lowest common denominator.
What I most wanted from Elite Dangerous was to play a struggling commander, who made hard, and sometimes morally dubious, decisions about getting ahead in a cutthroat galaxy. For years, I've been playing a wealthy dilettante whose decisions are more at the level of "What do I want for dinner?"
At least I still have the pleasure of trying to optimize my flight path afterwards. And EDO has helped personalize those morally dubious decisions, at least for me.
Elite IS playing as that struggling commander Jameson, anything else is not actually Elite imo.
Now even taking all the above great points you mentioned, i would say this, I'm actually still really enjoying my time in ED(H). I've put down FFED3D for now, and even if having to suspend my disbelief quite often, the sheer act of having this incredible galaxy to explore (forget how deep it is or is not!) in familiar Elite robes, is currently a very satisfying experience for this very traditional longtime Elite gamer from the 80's, even one that hates MMO's (for their game design compromises and flaws). Certainly IF ED(H) were a single player game i would be modding the pants of it to address the glaring imbalances in in-game progress, fixing the economy etc etc. But even with all that as a very real and obvious concern i still love flying around in ED(H) and i feel Sir David and the Frontier devs have done a great job, especially compared to any of the other games like it
Edit: Contentious perspective about ED(O).
If i had been persuaded as chief big wig that ED needed an on-foot fps section (because like Fortnite is HUGE and what all the kids want to play) that might JAR terribly with the overall Elite gameplay arcs and the ability of the tech and dev team to deliver without an insane amount of cash investment (see Star Citizen). I would have probably invested in a complete standalone IP related to FPS combat in the game world of Elite (Pick a Solo or MP campaign, pick a faction your soldier belongs to at game start, pick a location to fight in, usual FPS combat ensues etc). Then if that worked well enough either look to construct something new that combined Elite and this FPS, with a robust tech in place to handle that (money from the standalone FPS could have gone into this), or work even harder and fit it into the ongoing ED(H) adventure.
Of course hindsight is what it is, and i'm not privy to the details of the tech or the nitty gritty of the dev situation. This is just a punted idea.
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