Questions/First impressions from an abject noob

[convoke]

Hey all. Just picked the game up on Thursday, and have been having a lot of fun (until I got the disappearing quests bug, oh well). I really think there's potential for a great game here. I've been skimming over the forums, and found answers to many of my initial questions, but some are still unanswered. If you vets would be so kind as to help enlighten me, I'd be much obliged.

1. Group play - Maybe that's a bit of a misnomer, considering all the group play stuff. I guess I mean something akin to a "party" system in MMOs. Maybe stuff like showing party members in green on your radar/hud, a group channel for you to talk in, sharing missions, objectives, warping together (ala /follow). I assume something like this is planned at some point, but are there any details as to exactly how it's going to work? I mostly play games with my friends, and while it has been fun flying around with a buddy, I didn't really feel like we were grouped it. It felt more like we were each playing our own game of solitaire while sitting at the same table. I'm just curious as to what the direction for this sort of thing is. Is E supposed to be a primarily solo experience, or do they plan to add the infrastructure to facilitate group/party/guild play (for lack of better words)
2. Storage space - Is it possible to rent storage space at a station? When I remove a module from my ship, it'd be nice to have a place to store it. Similarly, you could rent storage space to allow you to complete a resource quest with multiple trips. Is this something that's going to be added eventually? Or are they intentionally gating missions via the cargo capacity of your ship
3. Economy improvements - I've seen a lot of people... complaining (for lack of a better word) about the trade map. It's pretty, and I've had pretty good success using it to find the things I need. My biggest complaint is that it's *clunky* (no check all/uncheck all buttons, etc.). But really what I'm imagining would be more like a searchable database of what's available and where. Does this fly in the face of E's design decisions? Am I supposed to stumble around, looking for superconductors, only to find that a sector that's supposed to be producing them only has one available for sale? Presumably this would also include stuff for the Shipyard/Outfitter. Or maybe that's part of the "fun" - when you finally find a station that's has an FSD upgrade in stock, it's more like a random drop from a mob?
4. Galaxy Map - On the subject of maps, is anyone else really bothered by the load time for the galaxy map? I feel like it should be viewable in your cockpit, especially when you have to consult it fairly often during multi-system jumps. You don't even get the cockpit audio while you're viewing it (I think?) so no SFX to warn you that you're about to crash into the sun. At very least it would be nice to be able to program a route reminder, so you could plot out your jorney in the galaxy map, and then have a little waypoint system to tell you what system you need to go to next. I've found myself writing things down on a scrap sheet of paper, which doesn't feel very space age to me :S

Sorry if this post is redundant, or all of this stuff has been answered a million times before. Also, apologies if it sounds like I'm being negative or critical; it feels like the game has good "bones", and I'm excited and curious to see how the devs intend to build on that.

 

[Tiamat]

Welcome aboard Commander!

Group play - Maybe that's a bit of a misnomer, considering all the group play stuff. I guess I mean something akin to a "party" system in MMOs. Maybe stuff like showing party members in green on your radar/hud, a group channel for you to talk in, sharing missions, objectives, warping together (ala /follow). I assume something like this is planned at some point, but are there any details as to exactly how it's going to work? I mostly play games with my friends, and while it has been fun flying around with a buddy, I didn't really feel like we were grouped it. It felt more like we were each playing our own game of solitaire while sitting at the same table. I'm just curious as to what the direction for this sort of thing is. Is E supposed to be a primarily solo experience, or do they plan to add the infrastructure to facilitate group/party/guild play (for lack of better words)

We don't know a lot about what is planned yet. I believe "slaving" your drive to another ship is planned though. You might want to take a look over the Design Discussion Archive at the bottom of the forum to see what is planned. I have not really checked it myself as I don't want to ruin the surprise.

Storage space - Is it possible to rent storage space at a station? When I remove a module from my ship, it'd be nice to have a place to store it. Similarly, you could rent storage space to allow you to complete a resource quest with multiple trips. Is this something that's going to be added eventually? Or are they intentionally gating missions via the cargo capacity of your ship

I don't think this will happen. You get pretty much the full cost of gear you sell so you don't really lose anything by refitting. You would have to go back to the station where you stored the gear so unless you stay within a small group of systems storage would be really inconvenient unless you had a way of having items transported to you. I am happy to sell and re-buy as needed as long as equipment way more commonly found than it currently is.

Economy improvements - I've seen a lot of people... complaining (for lack of a better word) about the trade map. It's pretty, and I've had pretty good success using it to find the things I need. My biggest complaint is that it's *clunky* (no check all/uncheck all buttons, etc.). But really what I'm imagining would be more like a searchable database of what's available and where. Does this fly in the face of E's design decisions? Am I supposed to stumble around, looking for superconductors, only to find that a sector that's supposed to be producing them only has one available for sale? Presumably this would also include stuff for the Shipyard/Outfitter. Or maybe that's part of the "fun" - when you finally find a station that's has an FSD upgrade in stock, it's more like a random drop from a mob?

This is a bit of a double-edged sword really. If you could just search what you want and go straight there the game would be a bit too easy and for me the fact that I have to explore and find good trade routes/equipment is part of the fun. Having a global search would please about half of the player base and annoy the other half. I agree the map could use some polish though but polish would be right at the end of the development phase so we could be in for a surprise when gamma drops. FD are being very fairly secretive over what they are withholding and I suspect they have only given us the bare-bones to test.

Galaxy Map - On the subject of maps, is anyone else really bothered by the load time for the galaxy map? I feel like it should be viewable in your cockpit, especially when you have to consult it fairly often during multi-system jumps. You don't even get the cockpit audio while you're viewing it (I think?) so no SFX to warn you that you're about to crash into the sun. At very least it would be nice to be able to program a route reminder, so you could plot out your jorney in the galaxy map, and then have a little waypoint system to tell you what system you need to go to next. I've found myself writing things down on a scrap sheet of paper, which doesn't feel very space age to me :S

I think a waypoint system is coming as beta 3 gave us a big improvement on the calculated routes (beta 2 just showed you exits on selected systems) and there are a lot of people suspecting that screen between your legs in the cockpit will be your waypoint list. The map is a bit slow to open at times (sometimes it is instant for me) but again I suspect it is bare-bones and not much polish yet. To give you an idea of potential polish to come in beta 2 when you opened station services you could not actually flip to your ship UIs without exiting the menu so checking destinations when looking up bulletin board missions was REALLY painful. I think they allowed this change to slip in because of the number of complaints about it.

Another important point to remember is that E: D is a labour of love for FD and they aren't just going to release it and forget about it. They are building the game they want to play themselves so there will be endless tinkering and polishing for years to come and that is pretty much the only thing I am absolutely certain of regarding the future of the game.

 

[convoke]

Thanks for your reply. I'll admit that a lot of the stuff that "makes sense" to me might be against the design principles of the game. And your last statement taps in to what I mean when I talk about the game having good bones... Similarly, I've been playing DayZ back since the days of the mod (if you follow that at all), and through all the ups and downs, I've always known that it was a work in progress... something to be iterated on and develeoped and grown over time. I see the same kind of potential here.