[Serious] Where Horizons Failed (and almost every update in Elite)

[CMDR GTR2014]

Ok, Ok I got a long time thinking about it... now i think it's time to start writing about it.

Disclaimer THIS IS MY OPINION.

So right now i think the "mile wide , inch deep" meme is long gone , but the effect is still in game. we have a long area and many thing to do, from trading to pirating, to explore to combat. But none of those things can be said to have any depth on the career it self. Missions for example comes into any kind, you can't come and say, HEY I"M A BOUNTY HUNTER, and have only things for a bounty hunter to do,and it's the same for a Trader.

So what Is the I think is wrong with the way things are done since i joined the game (2.0!)

Well, I think it's how the updates are planed, and the objective of each update.

"Wait, what the hell does this mean?"

It's simple, instead of focusing on "functions" and "gameplay mechanics" Focus on careers trough the development plan.

So lets see a simple comparative between games that i know and LOVE:

----

Elite dangerous 2.0:

2.0 Horizons

launch : landable planets

2.1 Engineers

2.2 Ship launched fighters

2.3 Multicrew/ Holo -me

2.4 ????

------

Arma 3 post-Apex (aka bundle 2)

DLC JETs

DLC orange box

DLC Tanks

DLC Tac Ops

Ok, now lets understand why that i think Arma 3 had a better plan on DLCs/Updates

Arma 3 is a Combined arms game, that already have the JETS/TANK/TATICAL ops already in game. so they are not aditing anything NEW to the table, they are actually getting what they already did and polishing and inserting new functions.

Why this is good?

First, it actually encourage everyone to try the new stuff, some people might never tried to fly fixed wings might give it a try.

Second, While they add new functions to all vehicles (like new navigation tools and interactions , and new stuff for editors and etc.) this is not the MAIN theme, it's not a RADAR DLC, It's a new package for the lacking of good fixed wings physics , and depth that Arma 3 was lacking!

So how can Elite use this into a better , more interesting Updates for US?!

Well , Why not start by getting the most beloved activities(careers) and make Updates based on them and only them?

One Example :

3.0 (whatever it will be)

3.1 The Bounty hunters

Spoiler

10 new bounty hunter missions each with 3 optional chained missions.

New wanted board showing NPCs and Players and tracking capabilities (both would have missions critial messages about NPC and player whereabouts leading us to them!)

New USS , "Call for help!Good payout!" , Big trade NPC having trouble with pirates would broadcast that you'd receive a lange credit amount if you save him.

New USS, "Bounty hunters Wanted" (or "opportunity beacon") , on arriving you get in comms with someone interesting in hire you for some killing, could be good or bad.
(like those old 2.0, "follow my wake so we can talk" stuff I miss that somehow...)

3.2 The Traders

Spoiler

New 3 ships made from other company (NOT LAKON PLEASE!, MAYBE DELACY!)

New Missions reward : Subsidy contract (taken from the old school Transport Tycoon Deluxe!)

A Transport Subsidy or Subsidy is an incentive for you to transport a designated type of cargo from one specific location to another. The Local Authority will usually notify all players about the subsidy through the Newspaper.

The Local Authority will increase the amount of revenue made by delivering the designated cargo type between the two locations mentioned in the subsidy in the next year, which can range from two up to four times the original revenue.


Translating it to E.D. would be something like extra 50% discount on Bought products (maybe one kind only!) or extra 50% on selling for X station (again one kind of product only)
It will have an expiration date of maybe 1 week.

Also, Some USS that SELLS stuff should be added and making trader might have some interest on getting some Collector limpets on their ships?!

USS mission giver that ejects cargo for you to Deliver , Motives might be a lots of those, maybe he dont have time to deliver the cargo or they are with Ship problems , or he dont actually want to go there (ha ha) and he dumps the cargo and you go deliver for some money.

3.3 The Explorers

3.4 The Mercenaries

3.5 The Pirates

And so it goes...

Of course we would be able to get some nice features like SLF and Multicrew yeah! but when they are not the MAIN thing would make more sense since they would be immersed into ONE CONTEXT, for example Multicrew IN It's actual state would go into the Bounty hunter update, since is a focused BH tool right now!

What do you think? Am I crazy? or Am I thinking it right?

 

[evanevery]

I guess I'm going to agree with you! (Yes, I know - this will invalidate my Internet Membership . Actually agreeing with somebody...)

Anyway, It would be kind of neat to add some new mission types. As a software developer, I think that would be actually EASIER to implement than much of the stuff they are TRYING to add..

Holo-Me: One of the most absolutely useless and uninteresting additions EVER! If I wanted to look at myself (and I DON'T) I'ld simply put a mirror on my monitor. In fact, just give me a holo Brad Pit, etc and move on. Useless... Pointless...

External Camera: Ok, fine. Snap, Snap, done. Selfies for ED...

Multi-Crew: Not for me, but I get it. I'ld probably try it once or twice and then never again. I do appreciate how some people might like this but its not for me. (I also understand how Holo-Me is related to this. Kind of ironic how a support mechanism for multicrew made it into the game but now multicrew itself)

There are still also a bunch of bugs which really effect game play that should have been addressed. Mission Screen Lockups, Refinery Lockups, etc...

..and there are SIMPLE things which could be added to help gameplay. Give me hard tab stops (left/right) on the cockpit panels so we can reliably engineer Voice Attack macros (I play in VR so no keyboard). Give me a simple audio player (MP3, Internet Audio) in the cockpit for those long haul missions...

10-4

 

[Bit.Slade]

Only problem I see with this is that people would be paying for an expansion that essentially fills out the careers.
Imagine trying to sell that:

FDev: "Hey, here's the new expansion."
Customers: "Wait, I have to pay for depth for the pillars of the gameplay?"
FDev: "Yep, that's right."

So, no, I don't think that's necessarily a good idea. I agree that it's needed, but locking career depth behind a paywall seems like a pretty terrible way to go.

 

[Dogeh]

I have a Lifetime Expansion Pass and I am a patient man.
I always look forward to what FDev have in store for us!

I have found initially, that a lot of the expansions haven't really applied to me and it takes me a while to warm up to them (like the engineers) and then I realize why FDev added them.

 

[evanevery]

"Wait, I have to pay for depth for the pillars of the gameplay?"

I guess I'ld rather pay for something which added depth to the game then useless crap like Holo-Me...

Besides, its probably best not to assume how the point releases will be financed. After all, isn't the 2.3 "Holo Me" update free? (Worth every penny! ...but I still want a refund!)

 

[Mohrgan]

The way that I see it, FD have to get the bones, the framework of the game's mechanics in place, and sorted, before they can start hanging the decorations. They do incremental changes to bolster the features along the way, but the bulk of the job near term is to get the fundamental aspects of the base mechanics in place. Flying, Winging, Multi-Crew, Avatars, Legs ect. all have to be firmly in place before the Dev's can start creatively applying those tools to missions and tasks.

Maybe I'm just too patient, but I can see, to my satisfaction, what they are up to, and I am excited by being around through development. I feel like I was never a noob, because the game was noobier than me when we started.

To go along with this,

 

[Jack Schitt]

I've said this before and it's still my gut feeling: in the desire to hit the pre-announced December 16th 2014 launch date FD wrote themselves into a corner by pushing out a product that still contained much placeholder, with MVP code rushed into service to hold it all together. And while each subsequent iteration has largely improved on what came before -- some updates more than others -- the frequent need to push out new features to drive sales, as well as balance the increasingly asymmetric multiplayer aspects, has left zero opportunity to actually go back and rebuild the game's restricted core.

The more time passes, the less inclined I am to believe that this can ever be fully resolved. FD will no doubt add new features, or apply heavy reworking to some aspects such as the mission system, and some will be successful while others will fall by the wayside. But the underlying structure of the game is not going to change now. The economy will always be a giant everlasting firehose of credits with a series of BGS-adjustable taps rather than a structured simulation of galactic commerce. NPCs, beyond the static mission-givers and magic teleporting crew, will never be semi-persistent or interact with player characters in a meaningful or memorable way. The "solid" mechanic of exploration will always be jump-honk-scan, even if we get prettier things to honk at.

ED remains a remarkable technical achievement, presenting as it does a game world of such scale and beauty and, yes, immersion. But the way in which we interact with that world will always be hamstrung by the decisions made in 2014. Much of what was written in the DDA, hugely ambitious yet eminently achievable had the time been allocated, I believe will now remain firmly in the realm of what might have been, rather than what may yet be.

It's still a great game, still the best incarnation of David Braben's three-decade-old vision, and can still be terrific fun to play especially if, like me, you're old-school enough to appreciate its slightly retro charms. But it gives the appearance of having been rushed to release on very shaky foundations, and I fear those foundations just aren't capable of supporting the structures the game would need to reach its true potential.

I would never be happier to be proven wrong than to be proven wrong over this.

 

[STARFIRE REVMEUP]

Love Horizons, ALL OF IT.
Love the game, play it daily.

I rotate all aspects of the game, keeps it interesting.

If you only explore looking for new earthlike worlds and scan systems, you may get bored
if you only mine roids ...you may get bored
if you only do combat... you may get bored
If you only do engineering... you may get bored
if you only work the back ground simulation... you may get bored
if you only ship cargo... you may get bored
if you only used the docking computer and never learn to fly it in all ways... you may get bored
if you only play solo... you may get bored
if you only fly the same ship... you may get bored
if you only play one mission type... you may get bored
if you only drive the SRV and collect rocks... you may get bored
If you only do power play.. you may get bored
if you only search Unidentified signal sources ... you may get bored
If you use the same weapons and never try others.. you may get bored
If you only play it safe... you may get bored
If you can't use your imagination and never role play.. you may get bored
If you read the forums too much.. You may get bored
If you never add new music while playing.. You may get bored
If you are hoping this game will fill some kind of void in your life... you may get bored, depressed, angry, despondent, NO GAME HELPS HERE.

This is just a partial list.
Rotate every couple of days and the game holds you easily.

Its a game, relax, enjoy it. I do somehow. others do. yes.. we are due for this update. It adds more. happy with most of what i see coming. GL

 

[Manticore]

ED remains a remarkable technical achievement, presenting as it does a game world of such scale and beauty and, yes, immersion.

Quote of the week, if not month.

 

[evanevery]

Flying, Winging, Multi-Crew, Avatars, Legs ect. all have to be firmly in place before the Dev's can start creatively applying those tools to missions and tasks.

"flying" and "winging" sure. Multi-Crew a very soft maybe (but not for me). However, Avatars and Space Legs are worthless and simply open the door for needless complication, challenges, bugs, and failed implementations...

 

[DeathStroke]

OP, your premise is flawed, Elite: Dangerous is the first space sim FD have worked on in ~20 years, which means they basically had to start from scratch, Bohemia on the other hand, had been working nonstop on arma games for about 7 years before they started on arma 3, which means they had a much greater starting position, and subsequently, were able to release add on content much more quickly.
To be fair, wait 5 years, then you can compare E to arma 3.

 

[Cosmo]

The careers need to be expanded, but they shouldn't make the headline feature of a major update about 1 career, because a lot of players don't have the same. It should be a major aspect of an update though.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

Also I'd like tol show how Arma devs do their road map... cause i find it very interesting.

https://arma3.com/news/arma-3-roadmap-2016-17#.WOvs3We1uUk

I'd like to see something like that implemented on Elite once we get post-2.4 ....

Mix of free updates and DLCs, DLCs that improve some aspects of the game BUT have some good QOL that make it interesting to the general public. maybe locking some cool ships for DLC owners(not better ships!)...

Another traders ships to compete with the T-9,T-7,T-6... can be locked to anyone on the base game but to be similiar (have something better and something worse) than each of these...

Is it pay to win? Maybe, But does Engineers are P2W?? I think so a BIG Pay2Win in my opinion.

I'm all for better things, more diversity , more interesting things to do in game...


Oh just some thoughts on the "Trader" Update

New 3 ships made from other company (NOT LAKON PLEASE!, MAYBE DELACY!)

New Missions reward : Subsidy contract (taken from the old school Transport Tycoon Deluxe!)

A Transport Subsidy or Subsidy is an incentive for you to transport a designated type of cargo from one specific location to another. The Local Authority will usually notify all players about the subsidy through the Newspaper.

The Local Authority will increase the amount of revenue made by delivering the designated cargo type between the two locations mentioned in the subsidy in the next year, which can range from two up to four times the original revenue.


Translating it to E.D. would be something like extra 50% discount on Bought products (maybe one kind only!) or extra 50% on selling for X station (again one kind of product only)
It will have an expiration date of maybe 1 week.

Also, Some USS that SELLS stuff should be added and making trader might have some interest on getting some Collector limpets on their ships?!

USS mission giver that ejects cargo for you to Deliver , Motives might be a lots of those, maybe he dont have time to deliver the cargo or they are with Ship problems , or he dont actually want to go there (ha ha) and he dumps the cargo and you go deliver for some money.

 

[Pyrotiger]

I've said this before and it's still my gut feeling: in the desire to hit the pre-announced December 16th 2014 launch date FD wrote themselves into a corner by pushing out a product that still contained much placeholder, with MVP code rushed into service to hold it all together. And while each subsequent iteration has largely improved on what came before -- some updates more than others -- the frequent need to push out new features to drive sales, as well as balance the increasingly asymmetric multiplayer aspects, has left zero opportunity to actually go back and rebuild the game's restricted core.

The more time passes, the less inclined I am to believe that this can ever be fully resolved. FD will no doubt add new features, or apply heavy reworking to some aspects such as the mission system, and some will be successful while others will fall by the wayside. But the underlying structure of the game is not going to change now. The economy will always be a giant everlasting firehose of credits with a series of BGS-adjustable taps rather than a structured simulation of galactic commerce. NPCs, beyond the static mission-givers and magic teleporting crew, will never be semi-persistent or interact with player characters in a meaningful or memorable way. The "solid" mechanic of exploration will always be jump-honk-scan, even if we get prettier things to honk at.

ED remains a remarkable technical achievement, presenting as it does a game world of such scale and beauty and, yes, immersion. But the way in which we interact with that world will always be hamstrung by the decisions made in 2014. Much of what was written in the DDA, hugely ambitious yet eminently achievable had the time been allocated, I believe will now remain firmly in the realm of what might have been, rather than what may yet be.

It's still a great game, still the best incarnation of David Braben's three-decade-old vision, and can still be terrific fun to play especially if, like me, you're old-school enough to appreciate its slightly retro charms. But it gives the appearance of having been rushed to release on very shaky foundations, and I fear those foundations just aren't capable of supporting the structures the game would need to reach its true potential.

I would never be happier to be proven wrong than to be proven wrong over this.

Brilliant post.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

Love Horizons, ALL OF IT.
Love the game, play it daily.

You got me wrong. I don't think Horizons is a complete fail. that's why I USED THE WORD WHERE, not HOW...

I something like you do to!

But i stick into PvP , Piracy and missions mostly,sometimes BH...

And yes I play it mostly daily and even held a YT Channel for my adventures.

So by any means i think Horizons ans a WHOLE failed. Just the way it was presented for us or Developed into.

- - - Updated - - -

The careers need to be expanded, but they shouldn't make the headline feature of a major update about 1 career, because a lot of players don't have the same. It should be a major aspect of an update though.

YES , MAJOR updates 1.0 , 2.0 , 3.0 ,4.0 should be major features and expansions, but Updates yes , also one thing that some people might find good is seeing that delivering a road map with the careers makes people understand better that their career will be there some time, and their game will be drastically improved and getting better careers can also have good side effects on the other ones... Like the idea of a Bounty board, can make a good interesting feature to track wanted CMDRs and make trade places more safe... (and also warn CMDRs traders that are dangerous people nearby his position!)

 

[RamirezKurita]

The way that I see it, FD have to get the bones, the framework of the game's mechanics in place, and sorted, before they can start hanging the decorations. They do incremental changes to bolster the features along the way, but the bulk of the job near term is to get the fundamental aspects of the base mechanics in place. Flying, Winging, Multi-Crew, Avatars, Legs ect. all have to be firmly in place before the Dev's can start creatively applying those tools to missions and tasks.

I see it as the other way around, all this additional stuff like multicrew and avatars are just the decorations that they are trying to just about balance on a struggling skeleton of a game. The core gameplay mechanics are things like the stellar forge, the combat basics, the BGS and the general framework the game is built upon, not the shiny extras that plug into it. FD are building a cluttered mess of disparate mechanics with the potential promise somewhere along the way of bringing them all together into a cohesive whole, rather than making things cohesive and keeping that cohesion while adding new content later.

From the Season model, I quite like how they are adding extra content into the game, things like multicrew are exactly the sort of thing that belong in DLCs rather than the core game. However, they aren't updating the core game to keep up with the pace of new content, which makes sense from a short-term business perspective as the core game doesn't directly get people to buy DLC, however updating the core game becomes exponentially harder as more decorations are placed upon it as they are then trying to connect many dots at the same time.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

Only problem I see with this is that people would be paying for an expansion that essentially fills out the careers.
Imagine trying to sell that:

FDev: "Hey, here's the new expansion."
Customers: "Wait, I have to pay for depth for the pillars of the gameplay?"
FDev: "Yep, that's right."

So, no, I don't think that's necessarily a good idea. I agree that it's needed, but locking career depth behind a paywall seems like a pretty terrible way to go.

Yes it sucks, but I dont see another way... if it's not done this way we will only be working into gimmicks and things to work with THAT gimmicks... once we had land-able atmo words we will have lots of missions locked to that DLC... same we had with this one... so it's already in game...

 

[Loskene]

The most important aspect of the Arma 3 DLC that you neglected to mention is that most of the work done in the expansion is made part of the base game for free to all players.
The only thing you actually pay for in the DLC is to be able to pilot some of the new jets or tanks that they add. This is to have something they can sell to make it worthwhile for them to invest the development resources to go back and do a major pass over a part of the game they feel is lacking, without actually having to paywall off all of the improvements and features they add.

If FD were to adopt the same practice, the way it would translate would be a role-focused mission system overhaul (say as part of 3.0 or 3.1) that would affect everyone who owns the game, but with people who fund the work by buying the season expansion would get access to a new ship or something, as well as whatever content is specifically earmarked for season 3. They already kind of do this since many of the changes that went into the horizons expansion altered the mechanics of the base game in ways that would have made it impossible to lock off from season 1 players. Horizons players only really paid for content that was completely new and could be filtered out from the start, like planetary landings.

So while I'd consider in a lot of cases I get a better deal from Arma DLC, and they tend to be much more upfront and concise about exactly what we're getting and when than FD have been, I can't say their methods of delivering content updates are strictly all that different as-is. The only major difference is that FD charges for all of their updates in a single season (which so far is working out to over a year each already) while the Arma devs charge for each of their DLC updates separately with no subscription model required to keep the game fully up to date with the newest features. I'm not sure what FD would change to make their offerings more appetising but that might be one avenue worth exploring if they're up for it.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

I've said this before and it's still my gut feeling: in the desire to hit the pre-announced December 16th 2014 launch date FD wrote themselves into a corner by pushing out a product that still contained much placeholder, with MVP code rushed into service to hold it all together. And while each subsequent iteration has largely improved on what came before -- some updates more than others -- the frequent need to push out new features to drive sales, as well as balance the increasingly asymmetric multiplayer aspects, has left zero opportunity to actually go back and rebuild the game's restricted core.

The more time passes, the less inclined I am to believe that this can ever be fully resolved. FD will no doubt add new features, or apply heavy reworking to some aspects such as the mission system, and some will be successful while others will fall by the wayside. But the underlying structure of the game is not going to change now. The economy will always be a giant everlasting firehose of credits with a series of BGS-adjustable taps rather than a structured simulation of galactic commerce. NPCs, beyond the static mission-givers and magic teleporting crew, will never be semi-persistent or interact with player characters in a meaningful or memorable way. The "solid" mechanic of exploration will always be jump-honk-scan, even if we get prettier things to honk at.

ED remains a remarkable technical achievement, presenting as it does a game world of such scale and beauty and, yes, immersion. But the way in which we interact with that world will always be hamstrung by the decisions made in 2014. Much of what was written in the DDA, hugely ambitious yet eminently achievable had the time been allocated, I believe will now remain firmly in the realm of what might have been, rather than what may yet be.

It's still a great game, still the best incarnation of David Braben's three-decade-old vision, and can still be terrific fun to play especially if, like me, you're old-school enough to appreciate its slightly retro charms. But it gives the appearance of having been rushed to release on very shaky foundations, and I fear those foundations just aren't capable of supporting the structures the game would need to reach its true potential.

I would never be happier to be proven wrong than to be proven wrong over this.

I don't normally agree with guys in bear avatars, cause you know I'm a bad guy

But that's right.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

The most important aspect of the Arma 3 DLC that you neglected to mention is that most of the work done in the expansion is made part of the base game for free to all players.
The only thing you actually pay for in the DLC is to be able to pilot some of the new jets or tanks that they add. This is to have something they can sell to make it worthwhile for them to invest the development resources to go back and do a major pass over a part of the game they feel is lacking, without actually having to paywall off all of the improvements and features they add.

If FD were to adopt the same practice, the way it would translate would be a role-focused mission system overhaul (say as part of 3.0 or 3.1) that would affect everyone who owns the game, but with people who fund the work by buying the season expansion would get access to a new ship or something, as well as whatever content is specifically earmarked for season 3. They already kind of do this since many of the changes that went into the horizons expansion altered the mechanics of the base game in ways that would have made it impossible to lock off from season 1 players. Horizons players only really paid for content that was completely new and could be filtered out from the start, like planetary landings.

So while I'd consider in a lot of cases I get a better deal from Arma DLC, and they tend to be much more upfront and concise about exactly what we're getting and when than FD have been, I can't say their methods of delivering content updates are strictly all that different as-is. The only major difference is that FD charges for all of their updates in a single season (which so far is working out to over a year each already) while the Arma devs charge for each of their DLC updates separately with no subscription model required to keep the game fully up to date with the newest features. I'm not sure what FD would change to make their offerings more appetising but that might be one avenue worth exploring if they're up for it.

Excellent I didn't want to go into money stuff, cause this is always a dividing point to everyone...

I think you made it perfectly BTW...

I wouldn't mind paying for a Update that will enrich my game play and give some different (NOT BETTER) ships! If the package is also comes with extra flavors... call then ships paintjobs and customization EVEN BETTER.

So my idea for FDEV would be UPDATES based on careers , new ships NOT BETTER SHIPS , some paintjobs shipkits that can only be granted by the UPDATE/DLC, maybe some stuff like USS ,"premium" new missions and stuff might be locked for DLC owners too, (but they SHOULD ONLY appear to those with the DLC, so those without it would have to deal with "oh you cant play this one because you havent paid me!")

I think this is a good model...