Not exactly, for me surface wing missions for me is just another method to execute the core mechanics. And this should be about BGS, PP, trading states, System states (but some that really matter), Mining and Battle. Wing missions, Wing surface missions, squadrons, would just be different ways for people to organise to work with the core mechanics. implementign these emchanics without a proper core, what will they be good for? it will be similary dead as Multicrew, because none of the core mechanics atm make sense to be done in MC. Mining? doesn't makes sense. Trtading? doesn't makes sens,e 2 people with each a ship are still more efficient and effective. MC is badly designed not even fitting the shallow designed core mechanics.
Should we be that angry or annoyed about carriers? game development has changed!
- Thread starter Muzz UK
- Start date
Not exactly, for me surface wing missions for me is just another method to execute the core mechanics. And this should be about BGS, PP, trading states, System states (but some that really matter), Mining and Battle. Wing missions, Wing surface missions, squadrons, would just be different ways for people to organise to work with the core mechanics. implementign these emchanics without a proper core, what will they be good for? it will be similary dead as Multicrew, because none of the core mechanics atm make sense to be done in MC. Mining? doesn't makes sense. Trtading? doesn't makes sens,e 2 people with each a ship are still more efficient and effective. MC is badly designed not even fitting the shallow designed core mechanics.
Games are more complicated than before? Pretty sure at one point there were flight sims being made every month years ago as well as tanks and sub sims and they seem pretty complicated and the only reason devs have to work 70 hours is because of deadlines imposed mostly by publishers is it not?
Let's also remember before that games HAD to go out play tested and bug free to sell. These days, look at all the things making game devs way more money than every before and delivering a worse product..
No physical costs (CD's/manuals/overlays)
100 times the market
reduced QA/bug/beta testing
So we have games that are rushed these days that can be released buggy and broken. Having said that, there's plenty of games that release working and don't have any bugs worth mentioning AND are complicated. There's dozens of examples out there and even the ones that do have bugs, they get patched within a week or two so no, the OP's analysis doesn't tier in with what we see in reality.
A more accurate statement would be "Game development is hard for some game dev company's"
Let's also remember before that games HAD to go out play tested and bug free to sell. These days, look at all the things making game devs way more money than every before and delivering a worse product..
No physical costs (CD's/manuals/overlays)
100 times the market
reduced QA/bug/beta testing
So we have games that are rushed these days that can be released buggy and broken. Having said that, there's plenty of games that release working and don't have any bugs worth mentioning AND are complicated. There's dozens of examples out there and even the ones that do have bugs, they get patched within a week or two so no, the OP's analysis doesn't tier in with what we see in reality.
A more accurate statement would be "Game development is hard for some game dev company's"
You don't need to be a game dev at all you just need to have paid attention to the gaming industry for the last decade to know what you're talking about - see my above post. You'll notice that a lot of members here don't play games and aren't involved at all in gaming and yet think they have some value to add from the non experience they've built over decades from not gaming.
Given the thousands of examples of game devs that seem to find it easy, how do you work out what you say above? Maybe you don't really play many games or pay attention to the gaming world?
No, you just need to go see Hello Games and ask how these apparent wizards of the industry are performing magical miracles in the eyes of the ED community? It's either they are wizards or for some reason on these forums, the rules of reality get changed
So why don't pizza people charge more then? Or coca cola? They could chareg twice as much right? No, they can't because we know how much a pizza costs to make and there's paying a reasonable markup on a product and being entirely ripped off on one which is why nobody is buying $1000 pizzas (which I'm going to google right now lol......
[yesnod]
A lot of us are still waiting for those miracles with NMS. Still a poor game graphically and gameplay wise in my view. But if you like that kind of thing, thats fine.
... Quite. o7
Which is why - as difficult as it might be to tough it out - (methods to execute) the core mechanics need to be at the very least mapped out, before you can develop content with any real flexibility in it.
Putting content too far ahead of mechanics that support contents, glitters .. but it's a fools gold.
[video=youtube;Lp0iyRRIZQ8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp0iyRRIZQ8[/video]
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+Rep
Great post, but kind of a misleading title imo...
To the post title I say:
Neither. How about disappointed but understanding.
I say this as someone who has been gaming since the beginning of consoles and personal computers, and have seen time after time "features" get bumped from one release/patch/DLC to the next, so I just don't think it's something new.
But what's new is the amount of feedback provided by customers.
In fact, for certain demographics ranting and raving about everything online has become a way of life (too bad for them! it's self inflicted misery imo)
That said, I do think games with offline modes should work on day one without a patch, and I think most do.
I recently played several games of Madden 17 completely offline with no patches at all, and it worked without issue.
Oh I'm sure there are bugs, every piece of code man writes is subject to them. But I haven't found any big ones yet.
However, I completely understand online only games are likely to have regular patches because they are much harder to test.
I mean, no one can afford to hire 1 million testers to truly test an online game, while for offline games it's easy to hire several testers to test the game start to finish.
TLDR;
In summary, I think Game Developers with offline modes need to do their best to be sure the version that ships is playable without a patch.
And online Game Developers should prioritize fixing fun killing bugs and game crashes, especially those that make playing with friends online impossible (cough, 3.x SRVs on consoles, cough)
I also think all game companies need to work very hard to sift through the vast amounts of feedback provided today, in order to find the real gems hidden within all that noise.
Fly Safe
o7
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Yes, digital distribution eliminated physical copy costs and shipping, yes the market is bigger, yes, it seems bug and beta testing are often neglected.
However, tech has evolved, too. Your flightsims of yore ran on a LAN. Now they have to account for online play. A stable one. Now tech has advanced - new features like physics and gfx options emerged. That stuff often doesn't just replace the old. It's added feature on top. You can do a game with the same features of yore maybe for less. But it won't sell well today.
Yes they can. It's called a "public beta" and they've been around for years.
Remember the days when it was a privilege to be a beta tester, when it was something a select few got invited to by a developer based on their playtime and feedback? So they could actually test out the new features before the masses got their hands on it? And then the developers actually listened to that feedback!
Crazy days.
No, they ran online too and quite adequately too. I'm also not sure that there's much difference between running on a LAN or over a WAN because of TTL with the server packets. The server will wait to get the package which is where we can get lag. Anyway, it hasn't been a problem for a ton of game company's. Battle Field suffered because they didn't set the tick rate high enough. Once they did, things got a lot better. Access to better graphics doesn't equate to hard programming necessarily. What it does allow if a lot more detail in models and textures and some years ago, I forget who now, but a game dev was saying how really, graphics weren't an issue anymore as computers were good enough to do what they now wanted and it was more the physics side of things they had to concentrate on. Farcry did physics years ago though.
Also, who doesn't have stable internet these days? You're conflating modern programming with old internet - that's had major advances too you know
Yeah and some still do it. Battlefront 2, Battlefield (Games I don't play btw) I think.
FDev charged a fiver to be in their beta a couple of years ago...
Yeah...
I just get the sense there’s a lot of people who don’t even like the game and are, in a sense, trying to force it because they find it superficially interesting.
I only ask people really engage their brains and ponder the core fundamental mechanics of Elite; where is this much desired depth going to materialize? The game revolves around flying your ship in a simulated galaxy, and until things like Legs or Atmospherics materialize, the only thing you can really do is shoot stuff and see stuff.
Fortunately, Elite plays pretty well as a “shoot stuff” sim, balance issues aside. And as a “see stuff” game, the visuals and immersive presentation are the best I’ve ever experienced in any game. That goes a long way for me, for others it may not. But there is ZERO magic switch that will be flipped and suddenly the game will offer depth and content for those that find Elite “boring” now. It’s just not going to happen, ever.
If you can’t find enjoyment in what this game offers, your best bet is playing something else. That’s the honest truth.
I only ask people really engage their brains and ponder the core fundamental mechanics of Elite; where is this much desired depth going to materialize? The game revolves around flying your ship in a simulated galaxy, and until things like Legs or Atmospherics materialize, the only thing you can really do is shoot stuff and see stuff.
Fortunately, Elite plays pretty well as a “shoot stuff” sim, balance issues aside. And as a “see stuff” game, the visuals and immersive presentation are the best I’ve ever experienced in any game. That goes a long way for me, for others it may not. But there is ZERO magic switch that will be flipped and suddenly the game will offer depth and content for those that find Elite “boring” now. It’s just not going to happen, ever.
If you can’t find enjoyment in what this game offers, your best bet is playing something else. That’s the honest truth.
That's quite a good point actually. It's an area where FDev have (IMO) failed. They sold (& hyped) beta testing for a price, I took it, and I hated it, I don't think it's something I could do. Then they gave it away (Beta testing) The feed back they got was probably too much and a lot of it trivial/drivel. More selective testers/testing is probably the answer and perhaps a bit of pride and normalization/service delivery will occur.
Personally not worried or fussed about carriers. I still ponder how exactly they would work with the P2P interfacing.
I think their mechanics would have been excruciatingly clunky, and would have been the source of countless of hours of fdev patching and re-designing and the target and focus of much unrest.
They have a chance to put aside an idea that probably wouldn't have worked out as intended, for content and flavour that is intended, and will help drive the next evolution of ED gameplay...
I'm personally happy that someone had foresight enough to hit the breaks before the crash, but divert the metaphoric train to new and interesting territory.
Now, that said... I'm going back to my diet waters.
I think their mechanics would have been excruciatingly clunky, and would have been the source of countless of hours of fdev patching and re-designing and the target and focus of much unrest.
They have a chance to put aside an idea that probably wouldn't have worked out as intended, for content and flavour that is intended, and will help drive the next evolution of ED gameplay...
I'm personally happy that someone had foresight enough to hit the breaks before the crash, but divert the metaphoric train to new and interesting territory.
Now, that said... I'm going back to my diet waters.
If Carriers tied into lots of gameplay mechanics they could be really nice.
But:-
a) We've not had lots of gameplay mechanics invested into the game over the past couple of year of the type Carriers could utilise.
b) The fear would be as such, give the past two year history of design choices, Carriers would just be yet another grind-upgrade-loop goal.
Hopefully FD have delayed carriers so the new core gameplay they're putting in means that when Carriers are added, they have more of an interesting set of purposes.
No, they ran online too and quite adequately too. I'm also not sure that there's much difference between running on a LAN or over a WAN because of TTL with the server packets. The server will wait to get the package which is where we can get lag. Anyway, it hasn't been a problem for a ton of game company's. Battle Field suffered because they didn't set the tick rate high enough. Once they did, things got a lot better. Access to better graphics doesn't equate to hard programming necessarily. What it does allow if a lot more detail in models and textures and some years ago, I forget who now, but a game dev was saying how really, graphics weren't an issue anymore as computers were good enough to do what they now wanted and it was more the physics side of things they had to concentrate on. Farcry did physics years ago though.
Also, who doesn't have stable internet these days? You're conflating modern programming with old internet - that's had major advances too you know
They ran online for a server players linked up with. I was more thinking about P2P architecture for more ad-hoc matching of players. You may not need more programming, but you gotta add the detail to the better and more fidelitious work.
I'm not saying the cost din't go down massively. It's more like that chunk of cost is mostly in the realm of BigCo. publisher. There is only but a select few self publishing big players. On the dev side I rather expect it bumped budgets to higher levels and also marketing cost inflation. When you see marketing budgets the same (or more) size of the actual dev budget blown away in weeks - there is something going wrong.
Mate, with a 400 billion star galaxy if FDev don't have the imagination to fill it with something interesting and engaging then they fail at game design. We have Beyond to address - some people think FDev will deliver it by the end of the year.
Most flight sims have a P2P config for network play. There used to be a thing called hyperlobby for IL2 but that still used P2P afaik. Whilst not "Flight Sims" things like Arma3, Battlefield games all have vehicles in them as well as battlefront - all work pretty much fine. In fact, you probably hardly even need to code it as there must be open source stuff you can grab and configure/modify to your needs.
As for budgets, Star Wars BattleFron cost $20 million to make and they spent $40 million of marketing. I'd love to know how much Rockstar spent on GTA for marketing.