A consequence of your argument is to ask FDEV to stop building new content.
I think nobody wants that.
ship interiors - will they happen
- Thread starter Woakes
- Start date
I think nobody wants that.
An infamous "Open Letter" from a bunch of folk who considered they represented the whole ED community demanded exactly that, and have bug fixes done instead.
FD grabbed the idea with both hands and spent a year fixing a handful of bugs, leaving in 97.2% of the 'old favourites' just in case some other folk were going to be idiotic enough to demand the same once again...
Perhaps the only feasible answer is to sunset the game and switch the servers off at the end of the year? That should please EVERYONE! (/s)
No, the logical conclusion would be to ask them to properly fix whatever crap they have added recently before they add something new.
What they have been doing instead for years now is letting things rot indefinitely and building the next update on gradually shakier foundations.
PP2 is bug ridden? Who cares? Let's disable some random parts of it in a quick patch and forget about the rest. Colonization update deadline is upon us, after all.
And neither PP2 nor Colonization was a particularly complex update. Which is quite understandable BTW. There's a reason why they did not attempt to do anything radical like ship interiors.
We have players who
1. Would love Ship Interiors more that anything
2. Would love more Planets, but also like Ship Interiors
3. Would love Aliens, but also like Ship Interiors
4. Would love something else, but also like Ship Interiors
5. Want something else and DON'T like Ship Interiors
Even many posts in this very thread are a proof of that ^ , also many posts and comments across various mediums.
When players want something - they talk about it, ask for it, debate it, demand it, cry about the lack of it, etc. etc. - they start and/or engage in conversations and speculations about it by various means (videos, comments, discussions, threads...). Ship Interiors have it all, with very very big numbers, across various mediums and from various creators over the years. When players want something very passionately - they create even more - sketches, prototypes, examples... Ship Interiors have incredible projects too.
There is NOTHING even close to these amounts about any other feature. With how statistics actually work - it is a clear indication of a feature that has the biggest potential to be successful with the MAJORITY of players.
The only way to argue against that statistic/analysis/conclusion - is to provide data about a feature (polls, videos, comments, discussions...) that can indicate at the very least an equal level of desire/demand/engagement.
With all of the data available to us, for and against, the feature that majority of the community would like to see in the game is - Ship Interiors.
1. Would love Ship Interiors more that anything
2. Would love more Planets, but also like Ship Interiors
3. Would love Aliens, but also like Ship Interiors
4. Would love something else, but also like Ship Interiors
5. Want something else and DON'T like Ship Interiors
Even many posts in this very thread are a proof of that ^ , also many posts and comments across various mediums.
When players want something - they talk about it, ask for it, debate it, demand it, cry about the lack of it, etc. etc. - they start and/or engage in conversations and speculations about it by various means (videos, comments, discussions, threads...). Ship Interiors have it all, with very very big numbers, across various mediums and from various creators over the years. When players want something very passionately - they create even more - sketches, prototypes, examples... Ship Interiors have incredible projects too.
There is NOTHING even close to these amounts about any other feature. With how statistics actually work - it is a clear indication of a feature that has the biggest potential to be successful with the MAJORITY of players.
The only way to argue against that statistic/analysis/conclusion - is to provide data about a feature (polls, videos, comments, discussions...) that can indicate at the very least an equal level of desire/demand/engagement.
With all of the data available to us, for and against, the feature that majority of the community would like to see in the game is - Ship Interiors.
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Why are people trying to argue each other down? Why these hard lines? Why is the topic of ship interiors so emotionally charged? As if some here seriously believe that Frontier's decision for or against ship interiors would have far-reaching consequences for the game. But it doesn't. Neither would implementing interiors represent a misallocation of resources on Frontier's part, nor would foregoing interiors lead to a better allocation of resources for the development of more "content-rich" gameplay. No change or expansion will ever be able to alter the basic concept of the game, neither for better nor for worse. The number of bugs will also always remain constant - you don't have to worry about that either. So why jealously monitoring whether suggestions or requests for ship interiors are good or bad for the game? ED is a sandbox game — 90% of the gameplay comes from the players' minds. What are you afraid of? That your imagination will be swayed by bad decisions regarding game additions?
By the way, since Steam user numbers were touched here: The Steam numbers are excellent for establishing a relationship with other games. And they clearly show that ED (statistically speaking) is just at the limit of proof of its existence. Therefore, there's even less reason to debate the validity of majority or minority opinions. From a purely stochastic perspective, it would first have to be clarified whether ED's existence is sufficiently documented before engaging with content related to it...
By the way, since Steam user numbers were touched here: The Steam numbers are excellent for establishing a relationship with other games. And they clearly show that ED (statistically speaking) is just at the limit of proof of its existence. Therefore, there's even less reason to debate the validity of majority or minority opinions. From a purely stochastic perspective, it would first have to be clarified whether ED's existence is sufficiently documented before engaging with content related to it...
It is what it is and FDev has a rather small budget compared to some other space sims. I do not encourage them to leave bugs as they are but the death of ED would be to only fix bugs for a long time as mentioned in this post: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/ship-interiors-will-they-happen.625789/post-10589313
I'd dare to say that you underestimate the work spent on largely invisible features like PP2 and Colonisation - a lot of work goes on 'under the bonnet' or you destabilize the entire sim.
There can be only one way forward for ED and that is to attract new players and make ongoing and returning players invest into the game through DLCs, ARX and new storylines.
Therefore, I keep advocating for new features such as interiors, thick atmospheres, more bios, new alien races, relics, housing, etc. plus a reasonable amount of bug fixing in parallel. They may not be perfect, sometimes quite bug ridden but better than anything else on the market for this target group of players.
Just checked all the data available across 15+ big (multiple hundred users each) Elite-related discord servers I'm member of.
It's not impossible that there are a lot of ED players who are literally craving for ship interiors, but apparently they are hiding it extremely well.
The search phrase 'ship interiors' came up only a handful of times (0 to 10) per server, out of the 100s of thousands of posts that happened over the course of the last 5 years. Most mentions happened around Odyssey release, some of them were posts talking about Star Citizen, some of them were copies of an automated announcement about Odyssey, some of them were very pro-interior (that was typically the same 2 people having a conversation about the topic), some of them came from the 'who cares' crowd.
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and how representative of the entire community would those discords be? When I 'evaluate' a discord about classical music, very few heavy posts about the quality of Heavy Metal and HipHop will be identified...
How large a budget do you need to be able to fix blatantly obvious bugs, many of which are most probably just simple typos somewhere in the code? LOL
ED is a 10+ years old game. It's not going to get big updates affecting fundamental parts of the code. EDO was the last such thing and it did not go well to say the least.
ED's future is ED2 which can be built from the ground up with interiors in mind, if so they choose.
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Just as representative as the ones you were talking about.
The problem with ship interiors from a development perspective, is that's a lot of system overhead for very little gain. So you can go inside and ooh and ahh, great. Now what? The game is working its bum off showing the inside of your ship while everything else outside the ship is going on. You've only got to look at Star Citizen so see how broken this stuff gets when it's trying to track so many physical objects at once.
The problem I suspect FDev has, is implementing it in a way that wouldn't tax the engine isn't going to satisfy those that want it, and implementing it in a way that players think they want is impossible without breaking what's already there.
The problem I suspect FDev has, is implementing it in a way that wouldn't tax the engine isn't going to satisfy those that want it, and implementing it in a way that players think they want is impossible without breaking what's already there.
When players want something from a developer - official channels and big/global open platforms are a usual go-to for the majority.
But OK, Ship Interiors have many videos, comments, likes, posts, that very long thread, threads before, passion projects where people model interiors themselves, and these polls, one with 7K another one with 21K people.
Does any other (not yet released) feature have anything comparable? maybe a very biased poll with the similar numbers and participation? Anything that exists to show how something else is of equal or bigger interest?
for those of you who wish to talk about ship interiors without the negativity, trolling and flaming, I've started a new thread over
forums.frontier.co.uk
Expanding on foot gameplay
Positive Ideas for expanding on-foot gameplay that does not interfere with current gameplay loops and mechanics. Sorry if I nabbed/paraphrasing an suggestion from another thread but I want to start a thread with no fighting because (I get it) there are a hardcore sim-pilot who think this isn't...
"Ship interiors" search here shows 5 pages of hundreds of topics mostly about talking or requesting ship interiors, I'm not counting the posts replies.
Same search on reddit shows I don't know how many posts about it, some have hundreds and hundreds of replies and thousands of upvotes.
My old reddit post about the 21k poll is literally the top #1 post in the whole subreddit with almost 900 replies and 11.6k upvotes.
Since years you can see people all over youtube, reddit and here talking about it and requesting it.
It is a very very popular feature that a lot of people want, it just is.
That, and proper thick atmospheres with ELW.
I don't think popularity is in question.
It's more about feasibility.
So they go to these big platforms but absolutely keep their mouths shut and avoid the topic while they are chatting with their friends? Yeah right LOL
Yeah and people who enjoy things like PvP wingfights organize tournaments (sometimes months long ones), there's at least one regular weekly event on pretty much every day of the week, people keep streaming and posting videos about it (there's probably several thousands of them on youtube only) etc. etc. Everybody has their own bubble.
Forum users are an abysmally tiny fraction of the playerbase. In this very thread, for example, 90% of the posts have been written by the same handful of people on both sides of the fence.
Yeah that's precisely the other big thing that's also 100% not going to happen in this game.
Maybe in ED2.
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Look, you can turn it around a thousand times in every directions, it still doesn't change the fact that ship interiors is a popular feature that a lot of people wants.
Sure this forum, reddit and youtube whatever other platforms does not represent every single person that is playing the game, but when you have hundreds and hundreds of posts and thousand of replies, big polls, youtube videos, streams, comments and so on and so on about it, with an important players reaction, then it definitely mean something, no matter what.
I would say even more than most games communities since Elite is niche and a simulation, and because of how the game works and how it was made on certain aspects (easier to do certain things by using fanmade ressources and websites, asking on the forum/reddit) there is a lot of players actually involved in the community outside of 'just playing' the game, I'd say, a big portion even.
Hell, who remembers during Odyssey beta the exobiology minigame crazy outburst (had it's main thread IIRC) a lot of people, and I mean a lot, were not happy because it was not good and boring and made very little sense, I shared that same opinion.
Then, how many people, seriously, I mean how many including myself gave great ideas on how to improve it and make it engaging.
What happened? The devs straight out removed the f**king thing and never to be talked again lmao
Just to say my point is; while the forum alone does not represent everybody, our voices and feedback, ideas and whatnot actually do matter and is great importance, and FDEV knows that.. well.. doesn't always go our way but oh well, it makes a difference at least.
Sure this forum, reddit and youtube whatever other platforms does not represent every single person that is playing the game, but when you have hundreds and hundreds of posts and thousand of replies, big polls, youtube videos, streams, comments and so on and so on about it, with an important players reaction, then it definitely mean something, no matter what.
I would say even more than most games communities since Elite is niche and a simulation, and because of how the game works and how it was made on certain aspects (easier to do certain things by using fanmade ressources and websites, asking on the forum/reddit) there is a lot of players actually involved in the community outside of 'just playing' the game, I'd say, a big portion even.
Hell, who remembers during Odyssey beta the exobiology minigame crazy outburst (had it's main thread IIRC) a lot of people, and I mean a lot, were not happy because it was not good and boring and made very little sense, I shared that same opinion.
Then, how many people, seriously, I mean how many including myself gave great ideas on how to improve it and make it engaging.
What happened? The devs straight out removed the f**king thing and never to be talked again lmao
Just to say my point is; while the forum alone does not represent everybody, our voices and feedback, ideas and whatnot actually do matter and is great importance, and FDEV knows that.. well.. doesn't always go our way but oh well, it makes a difference at least.
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Yeah I remember when fdev made drag munitions super overpowered in an update years ago. There was an outcry and they reverted it.
It's easier to listen to the community when all they ask is to press DEL with a tiny part of the code highlighted (not that fdev are always willing to do even that).
Doing a whole hefty update that can potentially break everything is another question entirely.
But that's why companies actually have forums for their communities. It is the best platform to listen to their user base. If they wouldn't think so, they would switch them off because they cost money. We make our voices heard - hopefully and the rest is of course, up to the decision makers at FDev.Yeah I remember when fdev made drag munitions super overpowered in an update years ago. There was an outcry and they reverted it.
It's easier to listen to the community when all they ask is to press DEL with a tiny part of the code highlighted (not that fdev are always willing to do even that).
Doing a whole hefty update that can potentially break everything is another question entirely.
Idk much about other games' forums, but this one is definitely not the best platform for them to listen to their user base. Very few people use it and they are absolutely not a representative sample of anything.