I don't know if you play the stellar forge, bgs or stay all day outfitting a ship but as you keep talking mining, trading, combat and exploration still shallow and barebones.
I'm sure you will play the holo-me for hours and hours.
Please define "content" and "gameplay"
- Thread starter Junky Juke
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I don't know if you play the stellar forge, bgs or stay all day outfitting a ship but as you keep talking mining, trading, combat and exploration still shallow and barebones.
I'm sure you will play the holo-me for hours and hours.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
It's internet mate. People don't know what they want. They want "content". This vague, mythical and not-quite-captured-yet beast, that nobody has ever seen and nobody has ever confirmed it actually exists. "CONTENT!" you hear them yelling. "CONTENT!" thousands of mouths express loudly. "CONTEEENT, FRONTIER!" echoes around every single starport in the Bubble. They demand. They scream.
Yet they don't have a clue.
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You can't really define them in absolutes because in many instances they are ever shifting, subjective and fairly meta buzzwords that people tend to adopt to describe some nebulous aspect of gaming that is personal to them. Many definitions people tout are only superficially similar but when you tease them apart start to differ a lot.
Right now the claim of "Shallow gameplay" can mean I just don't like it or be a genuinely thought out critique about the design priorities of a game. When it comes to Elite it's tough because it is a loosely guided game anyway and people are free to overlay their own concepts of what the game should be atop of it, unfortunately many then suffer dissonance when the game and their vision do not align. People often say "poor gameplay" at this stage but to another player who's vision of the game neatly aligns with the reality of it it can be great gameplay. As gameplay is itself a very vague term I can only say that personally it's the artifact of game mechanics and players meshing; if you have broken or badly designed mechanics gameplay suffers.
Content, I think, has a touch more tangibility. Pesonally I take content to mean deliberately designed functional inclusions to the game that target the player in a pre-meditated way, or in other words the things a player is expected to experience using the mechanics laid out in the game. I would not class something like Canonn as content, despite it having an in game presence because it is emergent and player originated so while it is contained in the game it is not content but the galaxy is probably the highest level of content I can identify, because we use the game mechanics to experience it.
It's all very subjective, from an end user point of view, in a community like this where the way people see and define these things will clash.
Right now the claim of "Shallow gameplay" can mean I just don't like it or be a genuinely thought out critique about the design priorities of a game. When it comes to Elite it's tough because it is a loosely guided game anyway and people are free to overlay their own concepts of what the game should be atop of it, unfortunately many then suffer dissonance when the game and their vision do not align. People often say "poor gameplay" at this stage but to another player who's vision of the game neatly aligns with the reality of it it can be great gameplay. As gameplay is itself a very vague term I can only say that personally it's the artifact of game mechanics and players meshing; if you have broken or badly designed mechanics gameplay suffers.
Content, I think, has a touch more tangibility. Pesonally I take content to mean deliberately designed functional inclusions to the game that target the player in a pre-meditated way, or in other words the things a player is expected to experience using the mechanics laid out in the game. I would not class something like Canonn as content, despite it having an in game presence because it is emergent and player originated so while it is contained in the game it is not content but the galaxy is probably the highest level of content I can identify, because we use the game mechanics to experience it.
It's all very subjective, from an end user point of view, in a community like this where the way people see and define these things will clash.
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I find it also tiresome to read here and other sites about games "what they should do".
I am going to focus on your 2 words for my reply to keep it short and concise.
Content.
ED has content but it does not have a single player story, a single player story of you rescuing a damsel and making her fathers tiny mining operation into a federation opposing conglomerate is just horsehsit, you are a space ship pilot in a space you cannot control. You have a minor effect on things happening but cannot control space.
Gameplay.
Not sure what to put here ED has without doubt the best ship flying/fighting mechanicism ever made, its not even close how good it is. There are load screens, those load screens get you to where you want to be for whatever reason you are going there. But the combat is awesome.....mining not so much but it works.
"what they should do"
Is have an idea of a game and do whatever they can to meet that goal, we either buy it, play it or dont.
The sense of entitlement from modern day gamers is kinda weird, i do not think it affects any game ever made but yet they still whine about "what they should have".
Blackcompany
Banned
Complexity. In Elite.
That's funny. Non-existent, but funny.
Elite is as lacking in complexity as it is in interactive game play..
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
ship equipping and combat maneuvers are very complex, but most other features aren't
Blackcompany
Banned
So when you can't field a logical argument you just mAke fun of people?
The BGS does nothing. A few numbers change in the background. And how do you make that happen? By doing the same missions over and over again. If which 90℅ is watching loading screens.
Exploration and Hauling are basically Loading Screen Sim 2017. Beyond boring. There's no actual game play there.
Combat is pointless. Never ending spawns that mean nothing. It's all just a numbers grind. Much like the terrible RNGineers, that offer no new game play...Just more reasons to watch tons of loading screens while you grind the same old shallow activities.
The game has no depth and very little interaction. This needs fixed.
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The flight model has the distinction of being both the only deep and only finished mechanic in the entire game. After two YEARS of development.
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Well OP, you seem to know what gameplay means in one of your other posts today:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/329578-Chapeau-to-the-guys-from-Frontier?p=5154318&viewfull=1#post5154318
So it's not clear if you're trolling or simply instigating for emotional responses here with this post. But I'll humor you with a reply...
Content = stuff used in the game that results in gameplay
Gameplay = it's what you do with game content stuff
But you know this already. And you know what is implied when folks say they want more content = they want more content that gives them better gameplay. And the 2.3 character thing adds content but very little to no gameplay unless you think of it as a mini-game to play with virtual dress-up or dolls or something. Maybe the question to ask is why do some folks think 'holo-me' adds good gameplay?
We haven't seen the multi-crew reveal yet but this is also easy to predict from what has been described by Sandro: it's yet more content that adds little to no gameplay. Wings added some gameplay but, in the end, teaming up with 3x others to do the same interactions with NPC's or players isn't adding much gameplay if anything. Players could have done this as a group before. Multi-crew is simply a variation of Wings for the most part.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/329578-Chapeau-to-the-guys-from-Frontier?p=5154318&viewfull=1#post5154318
So it's not clear if you're trolling or simply instigating for emotional responses here with this post. But I'll humor you with a reply...
Content = stuff used in the game that results in gameplay
Gameplay = it's what you do with game content stuff
But you know this already. And you know what is implied when folks say they want more content = they want more content that gives them better gameplay. And the 2.3 character thing adds content but very little to no gameplay unless you think of it as a mini-game to play with virtual dress-up or dolls or something. Maybe the question to ask is why do some folks think 'holo-me' adds good gameplay?
We haven't seen the multi-crew reveal yet but this is also easy to predict from what has been described by Sandro: it's yet more content that adds little to no gameplay. Wings added some gameplay but, in the end, teaming up with 3x others to do the same interactions with NPC's or players isn't adding much gameplay if anything. Players could have done this as a group before. Multi-crew is simply a variation of Wings for the most part.
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I know this is a very cliche question, but why are you here then? You are still playing Elite, yes? If so, why are you playing it?
I'm as harsh on the game as anyone, but i still love it. It's very strange. I love it and at the same time hate so much within it.
Didn't you have issues with adding incorrect thruster kit to your ship and couldn't figure out why you couldn't out-turn anything anymore? That seemed pretty complex.
I was going to write out an answer to the OP's question, but Ignition already did it for me. Well said, and my sentiments exactly. Elite needs to build and expand on it's core rather than add new foundations, IMHO. Ideally the game's development would be a combination of the two, but it has not been that way for the past two years. Lot's of new mechanics but little content for development for the old mechanics that really need it too.
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Blackcompany
Banned
Yep. I did. Sort of figured high performance thrusters actually, you know...Would be. Turns out, the ship has to so light that the thrusters have no practical use except racing bare bones ships.
Excellent design. Really.
But yeah. The flight model has depth. Nothing else does, but yeah, they nailed flight. That's the one thing keeps me coming back to the game despite all.
Sadly, everything else is really lacking. I would love to see this change. For the game to become a sim. I really would. But I am losing hope quickly.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
No, in fact I have plenty of logical arguments to counteract yours, but from previous experience in topics like that with people like your good self I know that the discussion is pointless. You have clearly made up your mind about Elite and NOTHING what I'll say is going to change it, so what's the point? I will prove you wrong and you will just argue and argue and argue, and repeat all the same stuff all over and all over and all over, that Elite has no depth and no content and no gameplay and it's no fun and it's a grind and it's so boring and all the planets look the same and all the missions are the same and you refuse to use your imagination a little and FD can't develop a good game and they wouldn't even recognise one even if someone put it on a table in front of them and yada yada yada, been there, done that, 0/10, would not discuss again.
What's left, is either to cry or laugh. Being an optimist in life, I choose the latter.
You really need to stop focusing on what there isn't and when it's not here because you're never going to be able to enjoy the game that way even if/when Feature X is added; you're pre-programming bitterness with expectations instead of dealing with the holes or doing something else. This is a "you personally" comment, not a "you out there in forumland"; you spend enough time hating and wishing on this game that you probably could have spent that time actually playing a game that has more than one core feature you like.
Evochron Legacy is supposed to be the ugly-yet-more-fun younger sister of Elite, maybe it might get you by till ED or SC or whomever hits nextphase scifi gaming. It wasn't that long ago that "space gaming" at all also meant "totally dead genre" so have some patience.
I've read that before but I've always disagreed with it.
You see, video games are a very different medium than books or music. Games are interactive, they require input from the consumer in order to gain enjoyment from them. The word "gameplay" is in reality often used in place of the word "interaction". It's a video game specific form of interaction, hence the coined term.
I think the author was trying to use logical analogies in an attempt to make an intellectual point, but the very fact that his analogies are bad is why the commentary fails for me.
"Good gameplay" equals pleasing game mechanics coupled with meaningful positive interaction, while "bad gameplay" means boring or empty game mechanics saddled with poor interactions.
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This is well said! Perfect!
Game mehanics are what makes game a game. Complexity, variety and number of those mehanics. Game or mission can't have depth without them.
Elite example:
: accept, launch, loading screen, straight level flight for 2min, loading screen, kill, and repeat all before.
It is simple trip go from point A to point B with one kill obstacle. Same goes for trading or mining.
Now some day when all updates come in ED i hope it will look like this: accept, get inside ship, loading screen, find target and folow him to the planet, carefully enter the atmosphere so ship don't fall apart(risky part), fly inside canyon so radar can't detect you, get in srv and sneak near base, get inside base on foot undetected, when you see the target and it's contact kill them or whatsoever than run run run, try to escape from planet while everybody is searching or pursuing you. Flying and avoiding obstacles, cos we need obstacles to keep us awake. Sorry i couldn't make any better.
Even truck simulator have slipery and curvy roads as obstacles and some challenges or mehanics to get from point A to point B more exciting.
Small mehanics giving us challenge and making mission harder will give it depth. But it can't be all achieved in a single day so we will wait for them trought seasons and hopefully they will come. We need to be patient.
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To me, "content" and "gameplay" are the stuff you actually spend most of your time doing while playing the game.
The thing is, in a complex game it requires more and more "stuff" to create a foundation that "content" might actually be built upon.
That being the case, I assume 2.3 is simply "foundation" that future content might be built upon.
in my opinion the major issue is the system to system jumps on the stellar bodies. it makes every travel beeing way to samey. if the game would consist of harzardours environments here and there and if we could set jump courses unbound from the stellar bodies, effivcient route planning would become part of the game, which then includes avoiding harzards (or taking the risk going through them) as well as proper planning for refueling. my most enjoayble exerience about travel so far was in evochron, you set course and the ship basically flies there with the required jumps on it's own. All you have to watch for is not running out of fuel in nowhere. It made travelling far very enjoyable becuse you could just sit there and relax while supertrival tasks like initiating jump after jump was done by the PC taking off the boring repetition of manual tasks from the player.
But I guess the way how flight is mechancially implemented and being used as laoding screen will never change for this technical reasons.