Elite Dangerous is an MMO. I know, a lot of people do not like that idea, but it is a Massively Multiplayer Online game whether we pretend it isn't or not (even if you play Solo you cannot escape most aspects of it). The challenges, and to be honest, some of the mistakes made, have been classical of MMOs (faction issues, mission troubles, no "high level" content etc). I am not entirely convinced that FD sees ED as an MMO, and therefore reinvents the wheel unnecessarily. I hope at least a couple of designers on the FD team have MMO experience, or I fear we will struggle with mission and faction issues for longer than necessary.
To take a classical example of the last (no high level content): some of the most enthusiastic players are now "rich". They have Anacondas and Pythons (me and my friends all have Anacondas), but there is no content yet for any player with Cr100m or more in total assets. With no content I meant that there are no missions that are worth the fuel expense and no NPC targets that are neither challenging nor offer rewards worth the time. The only thing we can do is trade or explore, but it starts getting rather repetitive (anyone having traded their way to an Anaconda has seen everything there is to see with regards to trading a long time ago, for example).
This matters, because the most enthusiastic players are very valuable to any MMO, and to have no content for them is risky for ED and FD. I'm sure FD will get around to this eventually, and I for one make no threats of leaving. I'm just a bit concerned that FD seems surprised that this happens. If you had a team with people experienced with MMOs, they could have told you that from the start. It is the kind of issue that early MMOs used to suffer from, but fortunately not so much anymore, as developers have caught on to the issue. Keeping your most enthusiastic players happy is very good for business, as they are vocal supporters and great advertising for the game.
The same goes for creating that sense of loyalty to a faction, or emotional attachment to missions or places. Currently everything is very cold and impersonal. Even the old Elite games had talking heads or something that made interacting with faction a or station x feel different from faction b or station y. Having a massively huge galaxy is cool. Having a massively huge galaxy that makes you feel that you are the only living being in it feels a bit depressing after a while. I don't think it takes all that much to alleviate some of these issues, and I don't pretend to have all the answers, but unless the game is treated by FD as the MMO it is, there is a risk of repeating a lot of the mistakes in early MMOs that ought to be extinct. I personally think ED is awesomeness waiting to happen, and naively optimistic that I am, I would love to hear some thoughts from the devs. Or given that the chances of that being slim considering they are busy people, what do you think? I'd especially love to hear from anyone with experience from other MMOs - do you see things that could easily be transferred to ED from other MMOs to make ED better or fix current issues?
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