SC isn't a released product so I don't know why you're bringing it up or why you think comparing released games to games that are in development is relevant?
Repeat the same Guardian unlock 18 times? Really?
- Thread starter Mr_sukebe
- Start date
SC isn't a released product so I don't know why you're bringing it up or why you think comparing released games to games that are in development is relevant?
I found this odd too - basically the only mission that came close to being fun with challenge and a risk to lose everything and they decided nope, we don't like that kind fo fun in our game don't nerf it.... remove it entirely!
To be fair though, making a game is an awful lot of work, and it’s not easy. Particularly for a game as complex as ED. I’ve made a few games in my lifetime but nothing worth selling (yet?) because yeah, it’s a lot more work than most gamers realize. Getting a concept playable is one thing, getting it polished and bug free and actually FUN to play is a whole different ballgame entirely. From my limited experience though as both an amateur developer and a game tester for real developers, good planning and management is absolutely crucial to making a good game. Bad planning or terrible decisions early on can mean the difference between a complete rework or accepting a bad game as your result. Good design docs are a very important tool to game development, but they need to be living documents that change as you go. You can’t be afraid to admit when something you’ve made just doesn’t work or ends up being horrible to play.
Frontier has a lot of tremendous talent, their art and sound guys really are some of the best in the industry today, particularly for a crew of their size. And the Stellar Forge itself is simply awesome. I’ve made my own galaxy simulation for one of my games (or rather I attempted to) and what they’ve accomplished with the galaxy in Elite makes me so envious I cry thinking about it. But frack if their insistence on shallow repetitive game mechanics when it comes to the core mechanics of the game are just so glaringly in contrast to the rest of what they’ve made. The criticism of these grind mechanics has been constant for four years, yet even the most recent content patch still implemented not only grinds, but some of the most lackluster grinds the game has seen yet.
Why isn’t the design focus changing? Why are horrible grinds still being implemented? Why can’t Frontier change their ways to develop a more robust and fun game to play? We can only assume that the grinds are intentional, that for some reason Frontier really wants the game to play like this. It certainly isn’t a plethora of mistakes, the game’s development has focused on grindy mechanics since 1.0 so it is intended. If they’ve heard our opinions on this then they do not agree or do not want to change their ways, because with only a minimal amount of effort and reworking the Guardian Ruins + Tech Brokers could have resulted in some very fun and engaging content. Instead we got super time consuming repetitive loops of simple grinds. There are a myriad of ways the content could have been made more interesting, but Frontier didn’t do any of them. That wasn’t accidental, it was on purpose.
It was by design. It always is.
Actually, I don't remember why I brought it up either, now... Erm, let me go back and re-read a few pages, see if I can figure out what my point was!
Z...
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I remember that I did the missions for a start and then did trading to get rich. Didn't bother with the missions anymore. I must admit, I did mostly the same in E
. But the passenger missions are fun for me, and adding rare materials as rewards provides an incentive to do them.Plus, the exploration stuff is new as well.
Yes, we get older and more demanding, but we must keep in mind that the video game industry deteriorated a lot in the past decade. Many games have become boring with less freedom and the software developers haven't been able to keep up with technology (back in the day, they were pushing it forward).
So while I still have a lot to complain, E
is still one of my most played games in terms of hours in the past years.I think the people like to complain a lot about the wrong things. Other titles just have 10 to 15 hours of gameplay, people buy it, play it and then move on quickly without complaining in the forums for years about it.
Yes, of course games take a look of time and thought to make and work out, just like every other business takes time and thought and effort to work - developers are not a special case. My point was really that there's feedback about upper management not lsitening and not letting there staff do their jobs and stuck in their ways. Some people defend FDev by saying " you're not a developer, you don't know!" when their own devs are saying it about them.
I remember that I did the missions for a start and then did trading to get rich. Didn't bother with the missions anymore. I must admit, I did mostly the same in E
Plus, the exploration stuff is new as well.
Yes, we get older and more demanding, but we must keep in mind that the video game industry deteriorated a lot in the past decade. Many games have become boring with less freedom and the software developers haven't been able to keep up with technology (back in the day, they were pushing it forward).
So while I still have a lot to complain, E
I think the people like to complain a lot about the wrong things. Other titles just have 10 to 15 hours of gameplay, people buy it, play it and then move on quickly without complaining in the forums for years about it.
I can't disagree with the state of the gaming industry to date. Microtransactions are going mental and there seems to be minimum effort being put into games apart from a few games. Subnautica is top of my play list right now and worth every penny if it was £40 - i got it for £7.99. Arma 3 is worth every penny. Falcon 4 BMS is free. I even got Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 (I think it is) - the one set in bolivia? Where you live in a cave - anyway - that's actually really good. There's also The Forest, GTA V, PUBG could be on the list except for the cheaters.
RDR2 is coming out soon as well which I'm going to presume will be good but will wait for reviews. Things like BF1 SWBF and Cod are simply awful. Far Cry series are pretty good for what they are so there are really good games out there
StarDew Valley!!
Was........that......a joke?
Did you make......a "funny"?
I can never tell...
You need to walk that back, before the Knights Council bring you up on charges of "Banter with intent to Hold Position" under Clause 44.8 of the Spurious Act. ;-)
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Rafe Zetter
Banned
I don't disagree - at all - SC has it's own drama to deal with but here's the thing - right now ED is the only real viable Spacesim.
I'm not saying it's the best spacesim, and I'm not saying that "No Man's Sky" isn't viable either - but out of the two ED, was up and running, with arguably a lot less major bugs and issues.
If I were FDev, for the last four years I'd have been throwing EVERYTHING I HAD at ED, because of thier somewhat unique position of "this spacesim doesn't suck (as much as the others)"
If EVER there was a time when the phrase "make hay while the sun shines" - the last fours years were it.
ED should have been developed with the mindset of "we are going to spend this time when there's almost no real competition, to develop this game so that it's a SERIOUS CONTENDER to the "best space sim to play" - EVEN when NMS gets it's act together, the next X game with it's historically complex economic model, and Star Citizen goes live.
FDev are not doing this - CLEARLY and VERY OBVIOUSLY not doing this, even though they now have the financial resources to get really bloody close to making the "space flight & combat" part of the game as good as what you will experience in SC.
2 years from now - NMS will have by far the most complex "living planet" system, X4 will have the best "ingame actions have measurable consequences" economic system, and SC will have the best flight, combat & 1st person systems and overall experience.
ED won't have anything remotely viable to counter any of those, not even graphically - apart from the whole 200 billion stars - all of which are devoid of interaction worth a damn. NMS will have them beat hands down on that score.
With the three biggest types of preferred gameplay - exploring - trading and combat all going to the other games, what has ED truly got left?
anyone?
Rafe Zetter
Banned
People have been playing the predecessor Frontier - Elite II for many, many hours as well, which has far less content. And that hasn't been an issue either. So now they buy E
That game was made during a different time with different technology available - The original game is incredibly sparse of "content" etc, but when it was made it was a feat of near perfect coding, it was without doubt the most perfectly optimized software ever created by man.
IIRC there was not a single byte of "superflous" bloatware code - there couldn't be.
In 2018 we have computer games with complex "changes in real time" economies, NPC interactions that create emotional ties where choices MATTER, with sometimes UNIVERSAL BGS consequences, "crafting and gathering" systems that go from mining to end product in logical and engaging steps, games where problems have multiple solutions depending on playstyle, games where finding that "one thing" in the middle of nowhere has meaning, because you took the time to step off the linear path that so many others tread.
And quite a few of those have been around for 10 years and more. The economic system of the original X -BTF game is almost 20 years old, and STILL better than what FDev has created.
And most of all we have games that respect the time you invested - even the ones that you only play for an hour or two on occasions, like call of duty etc.
Right now - ED is none of those things, has not been to any significant extent since powerplay was introduced (the original "grindfest") and doesn't look like it will be anytime soon.
Rafe Zetter
Banned
1 - they are anonymous for a reason - that should be obvious, but there are enough of them to assume they are real.
2 - any company that creates a product and only focuses on the positives - are probably going to end up with the same problems the Ford motor company had with their car - the PINTO.
- "This car sucks"
Look it drives, it gets you from A to B in reasonable time, and it's affordable, what's your problem?
- "It still sucks"
Ok..WHY does it suck?
- "because when you get rear ended by another car it has a tendancy to EXPLODE" (this is a fact not hyperbole)
oh.
Fixing the NEGATIVES of any product is what keeps you in business.
Rafe Zetter
Banned
Here's a challenge for ya:
Break down each section of the game - combat, trading exploration etc and weigh it against another game made in the last 20 years.
leave graphics out of it - because there are plenty of games that are graphically incredibly inferior, yet have playerbases many many times greater than ED does. *runescape* *minecraft* etc etc.
let me know how you get on.
(or read my other post where I've already essentially done that.)
![[VR] optimal_909](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/109/109067.jpg?1553781733){kind=avatar}
Elite is the game that kept me engaged the longest ever since I started gaming 30 years ago, so I don't care how some of its bits compare to Minecraft.
For the record -I posted this elsewhere too-, the unnecessary gameplay complications incl. Engineer changes, the brokers and this Guardian unlock is firmly a step or two backwards. In general FDev is shaping up like a powerhouse in game development, but in Elite's case I'm starting to believe that Sandro is the weak link.
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The annoying part about this is the repetitive nature. Heck, if they even kept the time expenditure the same and gave you a linked multisite mission like the original ram tah ruins one (instead of allowing relogging at the same site) I bet a lot more people would be happy.
I will probably wait a little while to see if they fix this mechanic before unlocking them. I have other stuff to work on anyway - I need to upgrade my fleet to the new engineering system.
I will probably wait a little while to see if they fix this mechanic before unlocking them. I have other stuff to work on anyway - I need to upgrade my fleet to the new engineering system.
That is good to hear! I've not engaged in any of the new tech modules after I heard that they were only slightly better than currently available modules. The only one that did interest me was the FSD boost and that was bugged and has now been removed until they can fix it. I'm still very unclear on how to even go about all of this though, even if I felt that such repetition was worth the effort.
I had misgivings about how this would play out from the moment they were introduced into the game. I have yet to see FDev introduce something like this without it being bugged somewhere along the line...
I agree with you, completely.
Here’s my own personal viewpoint, which has devloped over the years.
Livestreams...
Here’s some awesome new content! Check it out! Awesome new ships! Legendary new weapons! Look at all this new stuff to interact with!
Reality....
do the same thing 18 times over for htis item. then another 12 times fir item #2. New Engineer/broker/whatever is just a repackaged “repeat this x times so that you spend the itme to earn things” box.
The gam eis fun, it really is - once you have whatever it is you were actually working for. I truly feel I was having more fun before Engineers. Balancing a Vulture or FDL for combat pre Eng. was more far more enjoyable than engineerin your ships ever has been. Sadly, if you play in open, you *need* engineering to have a survivable ship. I’m not talking about being competitive in PvP, I’m talking just being able to survive a random attack. No, solo and PG is not the answer, I like risk in my games.
Now, on top of that, the grind actually almost seems to be a by-product of the placeholder development that we’ve had since.. well, day one that I’ve been here. Odd bets get developed here and there, but never really finished. Then, no one really enjoy those bits (or a very small portion do), and thus, it never gets developed further, and here we are.
CQC, to me, is th eperfect way to have conflict zones. Battles should be fought to win valuable assetts. (A station, a platform, a profitable planetary ring (in terms of mining) . It would basically be CQC, without powerups, but with a cap ship or two, and a station/asteroid field/platform. You enlist for service, you can’t swap sides while the war is on, and your ship is supplied. No rebuy - but you ar elimited to the ships that CQC has, so, basically, SLF’s, with your choice of CQC style fitout based on your combat rank.
There would be no re-buy, when was th elast time a fighter pilot had to cough up for the plane he just got shot down in? Sure, if your K ration is too low, you’ll be refused a ship after a certain number of losses, but hey, GIT GUD, you’re not losing money, and you can practice in CQC.
Anyway, my point is, it seems that FD are so used to placeholders, that placeholders have become the standard gameplay. The original Elite did a better job here, well, the Atari ST version I played. Getting hold of the cloaking device was one of the most exciting things I’ve done in my gaming life. It would be cool if Engineers was done mor elike this. To acquire a blueprint, you have to steal it, then you have access.
It kind of shows how much the playerbase (even the ones that no longer play) n*want* this game to be taken tot he next level. People who no longer play still linger on the forums, waiting, hoping... And each udate brings shiny stuff, and the same old grind re-skinned.
Shame.
Z...
Here’s my own personal viewpoint, which has devloped over the years.
Livestreams...
Here’s some awesome new content! Check it out! Awesome new ships! Legendary new weapons! Look at all this new stuff to interact with!
Reality....
do the same thing 18 times over for htis item. then another 12 times fir item #2. New Engineer/broker/whatever is just a repackaged “repeat this x times so that you spend the itme to earn things” box.
The gam eis fun, it really is - once you have whatever it is you were actually working for. I truly feel I was having more fun before Engineers. Balancing a Vulture or FDL for combat pre Eng. was more far more enjoyable than engineerin your ships ever has been. Sadly, if you play in open, you *need* engineering to have a survivable ship. I’m not talking about being competitive in PvP, I’m talking just being able to survive a random attack. No, solo and PG is not the answer, I like risk in my games.
Now, on top of that, the grind actually almost seems to be a by-product of the placeholder development that we’ve had since.. well, day one that I’ve been here. Odd bets get developed here and there, but never really finished. Then, no one really enjoy those bits (or a very small portion do), and thus, it never gets developed further, and here we are.
CQC, to me, is th eperfect way to have conflict zones. Battles should be fought to win valuable assetts. (A station, a platform, a profitable planetary ring (in terms of mining) . It would basically be CQC, without powerups, but with a cap ship or two, and a station/asteroid field/platform. You enlist for service, you can’t swap sides while the war is on, and your ship is supplied. No rebuy - but you ar elimited to the ships that CQC has, so, basically, SLF’s, with your choice of CQC style fitout based on your combat rank.
There would be no re-buy, when was th elast time a fighter pilot had to cough up for the plane he just got shot down in? Sure, if your K
ration is too low, you’ll be refused a ship after a certain number of losses, but hey, GIT GUD, you’re not losing money, and you can practice in CQC.Anyway, my point is, it seems that FD are so used to placeholders, that placeholders have become the standard gameplay. The original Elite did a better job here, well, the Atari ST version I played. Getting hold of the cloaking device was one of the most exciting things I’ve done in my gaming life. It would be cool if Engineers was done mor elike this. To acquire a blueprint, you have to steal it, then you have access.
It kind of shows how much the playerbase (even the ones that no longer play) n*want* this game to be taken tot he next level. People who no longer play still linger on the forums, waiting, hoping... And each udate brings shiny stuff, and the same old grind re-skinned.
Shame.
Z...
Hi Rafe,
I'm surprised that you are still posting here as I thought you had folded your hand and cashed in your ED kickstarter account?
Anyway, for my money you make good sense in your posts as usual. I find myself agreeing with this comment particularly... While I don't doubt FDev's ED development team is still reasonably substantial (I'm taking this at face value after they let OA have a look around etc to reassure us mere players). It's not keeping pace with SC and despite my reservations about NMS, NMS have gone a long way towards fixing their game (albeit not enough yet to get me to reinstall it).
And there in lies the rub. Once you lose faith with your customers and they decide to walk, you then have to walk a lot of miles if you are ever going to regain their trust. It's something you can lose very quickly but takes a long time to recover, if ever.
FDev have repeatedly shown that they do not really get this. They seem a law unto themselves. Yes, you could argue that Beyond is about rebuilding the ED brand. That they have listened to the community and responded accordingly (not always for the better unfortunately). FDev are trying to improve the game mechanics during 2018 (and we haven't had to pay for these). I think there is some acknowledgement of the issues by FDev in there somewhere. It's these things that keep hope alive that they can turn this **** storm around. That said, I don't think a month goes by without something getting nerfed into the ground, something getting broken and removed, something new turning out to be a waste of time and just another grindfest (I'll let you figure out what I'm referring to in each of those instances...).
So has FDev missed out on an opportunity to be Top Dog Space Sim in 5 years time? TBH, I don't think they care. That is not a viable financial model. By divesting and pumping development time into other games they can improve their profit margin and grow the company.
And since we live in a capitalist society, and FDev plc has share holders, that is inevitable I guess. FDev are never going to be able to compete with SC because SC is based upon a different underlying financial model. FDev was a public liability company before they started the kickstarter for Elite Dangerous, as they went public in 2013. I hope all you kickstarters feel that you have received good value for money and I hope you bought shares in the company as well. What you have really done is built a company, not a space sim. Personally, I'd feel like Rafe if I had been a kickstarter (and if I'd heard about it in time, I'd very likely have been one too). It's a salient lesson for the future and one that doesn't bode well for kickstarter initiatives. If the kickstarter is for a plc or any company with shares for that matter, your money is really to build the company, not the product.
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It seems to me that most posters here have either forgotten or didn't listen what S.S. and his flock of mindless minions had said in Beyond Beta:
namely that, though they eliminated the 'RNG' part of the grind mechanics for those wanting to min-max, they didn't eliminate the grind at all but just replaced it with a now predictable long (oh so very long) grind for everyone.
If you didn't like that method, you should have spoken up ('loudly', as FDEV is known to be hard on hearing anything differing from their own ideas) during the Beta phase.
It's too late now to whine and mope about.
namely that, though they eliminated the 'RNG' part of the grind mechanics for those wanting to min-max, they didn't eliminate the grind at all but just replaced it with a now predictable long (oh so very long) grind for everyone.
If you didn't like that method, you should have spoken up ('loudly', as FDEV is known to be hard on hearing anything differing from their own ideas) during the Beta phase.
It's too late now to whine and mope about.
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Holy cow. Maybe check out this forum section: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php/234-Beyond-Series-Focused-Feedback
There you find thousands of post of "speaking up". FD even asked for it! They opened the "Feedback section". They decided to ignore it entirely.