So anything new

[Alex Brentnall]

<Snip>

To start with your last line, they arn't lies, all the DDF/kickstarter discussions wer a directional plan. A statement of intention. If you misconstrued it as a promise then its a bit silly. Its like me promising I will buy a car in 3 years time, I want to, and there is a good chance of it happening but anything could get in the way between now and then and I may end up with a motorbike instead.
Im going to leave this (it is Kotaku but read between the lines, the facts are fairly solid): http://kotaku.com/12-successful-kickstarters-that-never-delivered-1687019268


Ok on the topic of realism. I've had this debate with a number of people. It's the problem Frontier have of selling a mixup between: RPG/Simulator/Retro-game/Combat flight game. They can't make everything work without compromising another thing. To take Combat zones and RES as a example: Would you prefer to drop in a ring system, travel for 40 minutes, find one ship mining. Then travel another 40 minutes and find another pirate ship flying around like a lost soul looking for a friend?
Space is literally huge, 3D and impossible to fill. Some are already complaining the number of ships we see is unrealistically large, imagine if they didn't cluster around these set points, you'd never see more than 3 ships in any one place at a time and It'd be incredibly realistically boring. Yes I would like to see combat around stations but their change to make stations invulnerable and have massive guns kinda makes it impossible unless they contrive a reason to disable the guns. I do hope they move towards station combat in the future though.
I'd also like to see all ships enter normal space at the Nav beacon after a hyperspace jump. Keep the current supercruise standard for places without a beacon but at least make it a convergence point for ships.

And finally addressing your points at the top:
-Blockades haven't really played well I agree
-Assassinating other players carrying passengers. Well if you'd have the patience to wait for passengers then you may find it there. Lets not judge on the quality until they've actually put it in game. Yes I too would like it, I even have an Orca ready, but I'd prefer them to do it properly than put in a half effort with passengers equal to cargo racks.
-Wars over exploration, agreed but others would argue with all the masses of space to explore why would they fight unless the literal planet of gold was found. Not sure how it really fits.
-Fluctuating market based on supply and demand, have you never traded? I mean talk about routes drying up over a day then when it eases off overnight its fine again the next morning only to dry up again. Go check some threads on T9/Anaconda trading.

Overall:
You make a lot of good points, actually I'm a little surprised. Whilst I know my replies come across as a fanboy or white knight type figure I can honestly say the game is flawed and I want change and welcome criticism like this since it does point out flaws. I do also like to play devils advocate though so if I can think of a valid arguement I will usually post it (as above), please try to take it with a pinch of salt
On the whole gameplay vs realism seems to be an issue as well as the background sim. Yes there are problems in both of those aspects that need resolving but to say we are roughly 3(ish) years into development after the initial person sat down and started writing code I would say its probably about as good as it can be considering how many other key aspects there are like flight models, graphics and so-on in this mammoth of a game. Would I like to see continued improvements to make it more realistic and like Braben imagined it being: yes. Can I wait another 2-4 years like I expected to when I bought the game: Probably..

Looking back this reply seems quite serious, after all we are talking about a few of the smaller details in a single game in my library, so im going to finish with a quote and a smilie face
"Gaze ye not into the Abyss, lest the Abyss' boyfriend get narky".

Edit: I've been slightly ninja'd on one or two points XD

 

[Mad Doctor X]

The last patch moved assassination targets out of USS into Supercruise. Hopefully this means that some of the other stuff can be shifted there as well. We do have Power specific transports and security vessels out there.

The CQC assists could hopefully become the focus of some of the combat zones, which to be fair in my experience are often close to stations or planets. Of course at the moment the planets don't have anything on the surface that would be worth fighting over, but I think I heard a friend of a friend met someone down the pub who said that might change shortly...

 

[Henri]

To start with your last line, they arn't lies, all the DDF/kickstarter discussions wer a directional plan. A statement of intention. If you misconstrued it as a promise then its a bit silly. Its like me promising I will buy a car in 3 years time, I want to, and there is a good chance of it happening but anything could get in the way between now and then and I may end up with a motorbike instead.
Im going to leave this (it is Kotaku but read between the lines, the facts are fairly solid): http://kotaku.com/12-successful-kickstarters-that-never-delivered-1687019268

That video is from the Dev diary not the the DDF/kickstarter discussions but be that as it may, I have trouble accepting the "but everyone does it" as a reason from anyone older than three or four, what's more promises to yourself you can keep because they are yours to keep, promising to someone else however...

Ok on the topic of realism. I've had this debate with a number of people. It's the problem Frontier have of selling a mixup between: RPG/Simulator/Retro-game/Combat flight game. They can't make everything work without compromising another thing. To take Combat zones and RES as a example: Would you prefer to drop in a ring system, travel for 40 minutes, find one ship mining. Then travel another 40 minutes and find another pirate ship flying around like a lost soul looking for a friend?
Space is literally huge, 3D and impossible to fill. Some are already complaining the number of ships we see is unrealistically large, imagine if they didn't cluster around these set points, you'd never see more than 3 ships in any one place at a time and It'd be incredibly realistically boring. Yes I would like to see combat around stations but their change to make stations invulnerable and have massive guns kinda makes it impossible unless they contrive a reason to disable the guns. I do hope they move towards station combat in the future though.
I'd also like to see all ships enter normal space at the Nav beacon after a hyperspace jump. Keep the current supercruise standard for places without a beacon but at least make it a convergence point for ships.

I think we largely agree except that the USS system is not RPG/Simulator/Retro-game/Combat flight game, it is arcadey. I am sure that with the amounts of metal present in stations the mining operations have to be massive, especially considering how mining is done. These rings could be filled up with lots of interesting stuff, relics, garbage, salvage, illegal outposts, you could have many many mining operations throughout the rings and maybe with a bit of persistance pirates which travel from a pirate base...there could be minefields all manner of things and to be discovered (could even have scanners or something), hubs where ore is collected before it is transported to the station. I'd rather travel somewhere for 40 minutes and have an adventure than fly circles for 40 minutes and shoot an endless stream of pirates. How hard can it be to program an instance that follows the player around spawning stuff in when the player comes across it? Place some factories around the place that require sublight travel. I agree with you space is huge and impossible to fill but mineable rings, asteroid belts (5 rocks? really????) and the area around stations are not. Create assets to fight over, docks factories and we already have the nav beacons (they are just not used for the players AND THAT IS A REAL PITY). The stations have a no fire zone, battles could take place there while cap ships blockade the nav points or even players...oh wait....there could be checkpoints....we have those already....but because the whole blockading has been nerfed before it was implemented they are just silly

Overall:
You make a lot of good points, actually I'm a little surprised. Whilst I know my replies come across as a fanboy or white knight type figure I can honestly say the game is flawed and I want change and welcome criticism like this since it does point out flaws. I do also like to play devils advocate though so if I can think of a valid arguement I will usually post it (as above), please try to take it with a pinch of salt
On the whole gameplay vs realism seems to be an issue as well as the background sim. Yes there are problems in both of those aspects that need resolving but to say we are roughly 3(ish) years into development after the initial person sat down and started writing code I would say its probably about as good as it can be considering how many other key aspects there are like flight models, graphics and so-on in this mammoth of a game. Would I like to see continued improvements to make it more realistic and like Braben imagined it being: yes. Can I wait another 2-4 years like I expected to when I bought the game: Probably..


Looking back this reply seems quite serious, after all we are talking about a few of the smaller details in a single game in my library, so im going to finish with a quote and a smilie face
"Gaze ye not into the Abyss, lest the Abyss' boyfriend get narky".


Edit: I've been slightly ninja'd on one or two points XD

Don' t be surprised I am neither a fanboy or white knight merely a serious fan of the genre, the franchise and a serious consumer and your reply is just fine. It is important we keep communicating what needs to be implemented, changed and how lest the devs think it is oke like this. Like you say the game benefits most from that in the end lest we stop playing and investing.


-have a nice day

 

[KRONFROMGALVATRON]

Just saying I loved this game like anyone else until about 40 hours into it... got boring real quick. just waiting for some content.

Understandable that there's a limit for some on how long you can play until you feel like you've done everything there is to do multiple times, but 40 hrs seems too low to me, unless you're just a savant and have mastered the game already. I was still discovering basic elements of the game mechanics at 40 hrs (yes I read the documentation, it's just sparse which I think is a bit intentional to allow the player to figure stuff out on their own).

Are you absolutely sure you haven't missed anything key? Although each style of gameplay (trading, exploring, combat, PP) can get repetative, I find that if I spend a few hours doing one thing I'm ready to go back and spend time on another again.

That said, I'm looking forward to some added content. Branching missions would be great. There's tons of variety in the types of missions available but for whatever reason they all sort of lack a real 'spark' of interest in my opinion. Missions that lead to other missions and/or more alternative outcomes to missions would help this. More of a quest type of scenario than a mission might liven things up a bit. As it is, they're all pretty much varying difficulty levels of go find this thing and bring it here, go kill this guy or that guy, give us a donation... It's a solid start and cool that missions feedback into the galaxy background simulation, but lots of room for enhancements I think.