Space is messy, and when the vicinity of a blackhole, not only should it look more terrifying (accretion disk viewable as it devours a nearby star, but it should cause a nearby commander extreme distress, or death if too close. Asteroid fields, have rotating rocks, but no collisions between rocks. I'm not saying have it be a huge field of 500 rocks colliding, but perhaps a few slow moving 'rogue' asteroids would collide into others occasionally so that a commander has to keep on their toes when mining. Neutron stars are just as bloody terrifying as blackholes, perhaps adding updated effects, and 'player status effects' to enforce the idea. Lastly, it would be nice if you added "proto" solar systems, these would be solar systems in various stages of being formed, so there would be partially formed planets and moons, volcanic plannets, lots of space dust, and fields of asteroids coalescing into planets. The universe is a chaotic place, at least some of the systems should represent this! Thanks for listening.
Please make astral phenomenon more dangerous (black holes, neutron stars, asteroid fields, etc..)
- Thread starter coojw
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They used to be, but every time something in the black gets remotely dangerous the screaming on the forums soon results in it getting nerfed, so no such luck I am afraid. The fearless combat crowd seems a little bit timid the moment some astronomical phenomena gets the tiniest but dangerous, so this is what we are stuck with.
Those who want more danger out in the black - try this one neat trick!
... roll a couple of dice every time you jump. If you get a double 6 self-destruct.
There ya go - danger exploring!
... roll a couple of dice every time you jump. If you get a double 6 self-destruct.
There ya go - danger exploring!
It used to be Elite: Dangerous, but everyone screamed "TOO HARD - NERF IT" so they did and continued to do so until we now play Elite: Care Bear.
I miss the old days when you didn't have to beat a game every single time. The young'ens these days would die if they had game like Battle Toads or The Oregon Trail. I haven't had a single death from disentery once in ED.
I miss the old days when you didn't have to beat a game every single time. The young'ens these days would die if they had game like Battle Toads or The Oregon Trail. I haven't had a single death from disentery once in ED.
That's the "alternative ironman" mode...!
The games you mention were short experiences. Today roguelikes, soulslikes and challenging metroidvanias are among the most popular genres, with failure and hard knocks being an expected and integrated part of the gameplay.
I agree that it's silly Elite's black holes aren't dangerous, but arguably in a game that still expects players to invest hundreds of hours to make any progress you can't be quite as fast and loose with RNG death as you could in, say, FTL.
The old grumpy man Elite thing is a bit tired at this point. The fact that a portion of Elite's developers and fans haven't paid any attention to game design as a developing field since the 80s shouldn't really be celebrated. Imagine if your GP was that far out of date in medical research. Ironically there are modern games that provide much more challenging experiences than Elite does while also having... Gasp... QOL and a cohesive design philosophy.
Or, y'know, alternatively bring back national service, kids these days don't know their from their elbow. Where's my haemorrhoid cream, Margaret.
(I know your comment was just poking fun, and you weren't expecting a tirade, but here you go anyway.)
@Fake Newts - made a tl;dr for your post...
TL;DR - When all else fails, lower your standards.
I'm seriously grieved that you think guaranteed dying is a good game concept.
TL;DR - When all else fails, lower your standards.
I'm seriously grieved that you think guaranteed dying is a good game concept.
When did I say that? I was responding to the "there are no hard games like Battletoads anymore!" when... there are. Tons of them.
When were black holes more dangerous? And when did we have rogue asteroids or proto systems?
You're attempting to infer something that wasn't really present, which is a value judgement on my part about how games handle death. I didn't say that I personally liked the genres mentioned in the first paragraph. Some games deal with failure much better than others in various different ways - that's a big and nuanced topic and given I was already going off-topic as regards the OP seems like not the place for it.
I was playing games 'back in the day' as well, and honestly the idea that it was a better time for gaming back then, or that 'kids these days' are all playing some morally inferior (or "easier") trash simply isn't true. It's as flawed as the idea that music was better back in the day - it wasn't, it was different - you just remember it more fondly, there was significantly less of it, media focus was more acute and concentrated and enough time has passed for the classics to emerge from the dross. There was and is always plenty of dross.
My reply was focused on one common ED forums notion that I find irritating; that somehow Elite should always hark back to a golden age of dad-gaming and that its flaws must be the result of an uncultured bratty youth influence. Games development is an ongoing field, it would be better if Elite were looking to the future and making use of the abundant lessons it could've learnt from the industry at large... y'know... getting better at the things it sets out to do. Instead we watch it stumble again and again over solved problems and celebrate it for being obtuse in often totally meritless, worthless ways. There's something pretty amusing about a vidyagame community that's shot through with luddites though, if you'd told me about it 20 years ago I wouldn't have believed it.
(EDIT: Oh, and to bring it back on topic, yeah I also wish black holes were more dangerous and interesting.)
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I would settle for visually stunning accretion disks. They should be unique in visuals depending on what matter they are eating, where they are in relation to other objects, size/mass, etc.
Yeah, they're not bad looking in their current incarnation but they could be better.
Re. mechanics I think one of the issues with stellar bodies is Fdev don't really have enough unique systems in place to make them feel meaningfully dangerous - beyond crashing into stuff physically, like high-g planets, or heating up a lot, there's no interactivity. It's easy enough to say black holes should be dangerous, but really I don't think anyone would be satisfied by them just ramping up the heat damage - that's not interesting and can be negated with a heatsink. Having your ship jostled around in jet cones was added, I guess, so there's some precedent for making it an obstacle course in some way.
It's kind of a long-running joke that the only real direct form of interactivity in Elite is shooting stuff. You're either shooting bullets, probes or "scans" , but always shooting. Shooting a black hole would just be silly, but probably not worth holding your breath for anything more elaborate.
Re. mechanics I think one of the issues with stellar bodies is Fdev don't really have enough unique systems in place to make them feel meaningfully dangerous - beyond crashing into stuff physically, like high-g planets, or heating up a lot, there's no interactivity. It's easy enough to say black holes should be dangerous, but really I don't think anyone would be satisfied by them just ramping up the heat damage - that's not interesting and can be negated with a heatsink. Having your ship jostled around in jet cones was added, I guess, so there's some precedent for making it an obstacle course in some way.
It's kind of a long-running joke that the only real direct form of interactivity in Elite is shooting stuff. You're either shooting bullets, probes or "scans" , but always shooting. Shooting a black hole would just be silly, but probably not worth holding your breath for anything more elaborate.
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You are correct that I inferred your position from the material that You posted as that is the case with most people. My apologies for the incorrect position.
I do think that recent games have lost a fair amount of challenge because, "back in the day", the graphics were less important than the story. That may have something to do with the comparative capabilities of the hardware, but I find that many current products rely on the fact that most humans depend on their eyesight as primary sense.
Elite, in my opinion, is a victim of thinking that the ability to present visual spectacle can substitute for a lack of deep content.
Its an immersive bummer to not be able to crash into the sun, planets, asteroid belts and black holes! #dangerless
(1) There's no death in ED .. there's rebuy / insurance
(2) A pilot's decision not to fly into a star or black hole isn't RNG
Watching the carnage in Alpha Phase 2 I'm kind of hoping the community will fall in love with threats again.
My response was perhaps a bit confusing: I'm not against more dangerous black holes, but people do seem to think that just making it so black holes heat you up if you fly into them is the same as the game being challenging, which it isn't. "Oh I long for the day when Elite was challenging!"... not sure what day that was precisely, but sure, I also wish Elite were more systemically challenging, and not just challenging in terms of patience.
Not disagreeing with this, but Elite's not a very strong example of a modern game. It's archaic as hell in many significant ways.
Unless you're restricting your criticism to a broadly "AAA" release schedule this isn't really true - there are plenty of complex and challenging modern games, as well as veritable glut of games that opt for stylised, pixellated or low-fi graphics... they're frickin' everywhere mate. 10,000 games were released on Steam last year, a good portion of which was absolute garbage but still making sweeping statements about 'games of yesteryear vs games of today' is a bit reductive in the context. 2020 also brought us Crusader Kings 3, Factorio, Cuphead, Deep Rock Galactic, The Hunt, Noita, Squadrons, Spiritfarer... etc etc. Discussing trends in major studio productions is interesting, sure, but your statement is too broad to be interesting, imho.