So I checked out Elite after ditching it for Star Citizen

[Northpin]

(On "mile-wide inch-deep")

True, but there's a question here about the distinction between depth that affects gameplay and depth which doesn't. And the former sort isn't necessarily "better", either.

I spent quite some time building up a complex model of how the Economic Sim part of the BGS works and interacts with the Political Sim. There's quite a lot of depth there in terms of how all the bits fit together, stock levels rise and fall, prices and political states interact and even potentially feed-back on each other, etc.

It is of almost no practical use to know any of that stuff. In normal circumstances it doesn't give any better trade profits over what the in-game tools provide or the 3rd-party databases can tell you about; you can in theory use it to set up optimal political states for your own trade routes, but in practice the opportunity costs from doing so are massive compared with just using a 3rd-party database to find ones which already exist.

It has been useful in practice precisely once so far - the Colonia half of the Colonia Bridge CGs - where combining the model with extremely detailed data on the parameters of the Colonia stations allowed local Political operators to set up states to maximise the output of key refineries, and so ensure sufficient cargo was available to complete the CGs. And even then, the majority experience for CG participants was sitting semi-AFK on a landing pad pulling output off every ten minutes until their hold was full [1], which wasn't the most fun for them: having the trade sim depth be something which people routinely needed to engage with would be relatively straightforward for Frontier to do: just turn down the production caps and rates very substantially - but wouldn't necessarily make for a more fun game for people who aren't me.

[1] Which was quicker if they went to the specific stations I told them about, obviously, but if you want "depth = following the hauling orders of the few people who know what's actually going on", Powerplay is right there.

Yea, but the "depth" is there if someone wants to dive in, but it's not really mandatory if someone just want to go with the flow or if they follow an organized group whose leaders know what they're doing (PP or BGS based)

Edit: and even knowing just the basics, like what states may lead to restore missions, is still providing a benefit even tho inara now has a button for that too

 

[Frankymole]

Now the bad things...

What happend to developing this game ? Where are all the new things that were promised, where is the feature rework that they talked about ?

That's still being worked on, they said in a livestream it would be later this year.

Now the bad things...


What happened to fixing optimization for ground combat ?
New ships ? Hello ? There are so many role gaps, price gaps on the market ?

They have optimised ground combat. It didn't run on my potato, now it does. Though there is still the occasional "NPCs glued to the spot" bug.
What role gaps?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

BGS isnt shallow - it's cluttered, unintuitive, yes - underdocumented and geared not for the SP experience. It is a pain to keep track of, maybe today's 3rd party apps have alleviated that, but I rather think they brought more players with even less clue than me to claim the BGS as gameplay.
It is an ideal gameplay for group play. The MP in the bag that actually was good in ED.
It needed a couple of bright heads to figure out and give some direction to group members.
Then you'd get a couple success stories and feels accomplis.
I dont think it was never meant to be gameplay. It's just intended as randomiser mechanic to make the world dynamic. X4 world sim lite. It was players that discovered it as gameplay for their purposes - emergent gameplay innit's truest sense.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

And of course playing the BGS didnt pay out anything in the sense the devs imagined. It paid even less of the rewards that ED was designed with - but unlike the "regular gameplay" it was gameplay rewarding by it's own merit. It was not credits or some stupid trash mats for idiotic upgrades being fun - it was succeeding in doing something with a group of people.
A gameplay incentive FD never figured on their own - it's just materialistic loot spirals fornthem.

 

[Old Duck]

The BGS is shallow.

Umm.... Compared to another game I like but dare not mention, yes. Compared to Eve, yes. But to those who play the BGS like a game of chess, it's actually quite deep. I used to belong to a BGS Squadron, and the "admiralty" spent a lot of time, thought, and strategy in considering what systems to flip in what order and how. Part of this is diplomacy with other groups of players. I rather quickly grew bored with it, however, because this level of BGS manipulation is similar to Eve, where you get some people at the top having all the fun of playing this chess game, and the rest of us are delegated to playing the "arcade" game loops necessary to flip a system (kill X ships, delivery Y tons of Z, etc), and that part is shallow IMO.

Stellar Forge is shallow. It generates different colors and stats for the same empty planets you'll find everywhere in the galaxy.

As a huge fan of the Stellar Forge (as incomplete and broken in spots as it may be), I can't agree with this. My detailed defense of it can be found in this post, along with countless others stretching back in time on the forum.

Other games have much more interesting procedural generation, some because of what you can do with what it creates, like Minecraft, Rimworld, Terraria, and some also generate an entire history and culture like Dwarf Fortress.

I will agree that ED is lacking a lot of PG, especially considering David Braben's apparent love for the technology. I'm not talking about the Stellar Forge, but rather various assets like space and planet outposts and even small cities, along with other currently handcrafted elements like NPC comms and flora on planets. I'm not saying that generating an outpost or city procedurally would be easy, but I do think it's doable, and it would add a ton of variety to the game. Perhaps using a combination of PG and AI will be the future of video games. Until then, we get a few cookie-cutter handcrafted assets repeated over and over. Though I'm sure someone will argue that this might actually be realistic:

 

[sutex]

On readin

People always seem to read intent into my posts that isn't there. I'm not trying to convince* people to quit Elite to play a different single-player game, I'm just wondering why some people say they would have ZERO interest in ED had it been released as a single player game from the beginning, despite being very nostalgic for the rest of the Elite franchise, which was, you guessed it, single player games.

* Of course I admit I've offered a certain single-player game as an alternative to those currently frustrated with Elite in other threads. That's not what I'm doing here, however. I'm just a little suspect that all these "I only play ED because it's an MMO" diehards would have patently ignored ED had it been released as a single-player game instead, like all the Elite franchise before it. I'm specifically talking about those who enjoyed those single-player Elite games. But, if that's what they claim, I guess I have to take them at their word.

Ironically you could say I'm defending ED with my question, as it could be easily a good enough single-player game (had it been built that way from the ground-up) to be worthy of purchase and play. Heck, it might have been downright amazing, seeing that parts of it already are.Ive been around long engough to know you're one of the sane one

I've been around long enough to know you're one of the sane ones. Which is the only reason I replied to your previous post

 

[sutex]

I could not comment on Northpin reply, as I had only a minor understanding of BGS, and that was many years ago, and even less understanding of Stellar Forge. But thanks for clarifying what I already suspected, given that I'm a survivor? of Gnosis

 

[Christopher Roberto]

Umm.... Compared to another game I like but dare not mention, yes. Compared to Eve, yes. But to those who play the BGS like a game of chess, it's actually quite deep.

I don't see it. Other than for the "arcade" part as you call it, which is more about grind than chess as it's so susceptible to botting, the multiplayer strategy is just what occurs naturally in games of that genre like Risk.

I think that, like most systems in ED, they had bigger dreams for it. Like, the rare spawns tied to faction control suggests someone wanted the BGS to be deeper than shuffling names around. But they fell short and left it shallow and abandoned.

As a huge fan of the Stellar Forge (as incomplete and broken in spots as it may be), I can't agree with this. My detailed defense of it can be found in this post, along with countless others stretching back in time on the forum.

While it's neat that it's big, it generates a galaxy that is largely non-interactive. The skyboxes are pretty, but is skybox generation gameplay depth? Do realistic atmospheres mean something for gameplay? They put a lot of work into attempting to accurately simulate things but very little into making any of them matter for a game.

 

[Rubbernuke]

While it's neat that it's big, it generates a galaxy that is largely non-interactive. The skyboxes are pretty, but is skybox generation gameplay depth? Do realistic atmospheres mean something for gameplay? They put a lot of work into attempting to accurately simulate things but very little into making any of them matter for a game.

The Forge creates a game world to exist in, and the BGS (as its name implies) acts as a set of rules for the factions, so both do a good job considering as they (via abstractions) have to deal with a fair amount of challenges such as being massively linked between players in almost real time.

I would say its when these two meet where gameplay could happen (and sort of does re station distances, binary systems, gaps between star systems etc so its a puzzle for explorers). I say could in that bases should have radar that can be evaded by clever use of the terrain (so some bases on plains are hard to sneak up on, while ones next to tight canyons is like a WW2 plucky raid).

 

[Zeeman]

People always seem to read intent into my posts that isn't there. I'm not trying to convince* people to quit Elite to play a different single-player game, I'm just wondering why some people say they would have ZERO interest in ED had it been released as a single player game from the beginning, despite being very nostalgic for the rest of the Elite franchise, which was, you guessed it, single player games.

* Of course I admit I've offered a certain single-player game as an alternative to those currently frustrated with Elite in other threads. That's not what I'm doing here, however. I'm just a little suspect that all these "I only play ED because it's an MMO" diehards would have patently ignored ED had it been released as a single-player game instead, like all the Elite franchise before it. I'm specifically talking about those who enjoyed those single-player Elite games. But, if that's what they claim, I guess I have to take them at their word.

Ironically you could say I'm defending ED with my question, as it could be easily a good enough single-player game (had it been built that way from the ground-up) to be worthy of purchase and play. Heck, it might have been downright amazing, seeing that parts of it already are.

Sorry, I may have not made it clear - I absolutely would still have been interested. I would still have enjoyed it about as much, and just would have been posting "I wish they made an MMO version of this!" on the forums.

Z...

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

...

As a huge fan of the Stellar Forge (as incomplete and broken in spots as it may be), I can't agree with this. My detailed defense of it can be found in this post, along with countless others stretching back in time on the forum.
...

Do you defend the "legacy" stellar forge or the crappy new one?

 

[Old Duck]

I don't see it. Other than for the "arcade" part as you call it, which is more about grind than chess as it's so susceptible to botting, the multiplayer strategy is just what occurs naturally in games of that genre like Risk.

I think that, like most systems in ED, they had bigger dreams for it. Like, the rare spawns tied to faction control suggests someone wanted the BGS to be deeper than shuffling names around. But they fell short and left it shallow and abandoned.

While it's neat that it's big, it generates a galaxy that is largely non-interactive. The skyboxes are pretty, but is skybox generation gameplay depth? Do realistic atmospheres mean something for gameplay? They put a lot of work into attempting to accurately simulate things but very little into making any of them matter for a game.

I've met my quota for defending Elite in this thread, but I'm sure someone more loyal than I will step up to bat.

 

[Fizzatron]

Absolute rubbish and a disservice to all the players who have left due to the way the game has gone.
Starforge is just endless empty planets and the bgs has been dumbed down to accommodate all the whingers.
All that is left is an arcade game where you shoot stuff.

Calling Elite an arcade game next to Star Citizen is laughable. Both games have shooting but arcade games tend to have pretty backgrounds that follow the action. Tell me, which game's starfield is just a pretty background?

 

[Fizzatron]

I do see your point, but, and there is a but!. Star Citizen is not an arcade game in the way Elite Dangerous can be described as.

Interesting choice of words "can be described as". I guess we pick the one way it could be described and then say that it's the de facto description of the game? I'd say that Star Citizen most certainly 'can be described as' an arcade game. Having trash mechanics doesn't change that as I guess the standard is to apply what it 'can be described as' rather than 'what it is' in a greater context.

What's the common depiction of ED we have all heard, "A mile wide and an inch deep." SC, on the other hand, is about longevity in the game;

Been playing Elite for close to a decade, not taking the previous games into account. That's not 'longevity in the game'?

the MMORPG accepts being committed to your character's well-being in the short and long term. For that to be "realistic" and thus meaningful, "trashcan and coffee-in-a-cup physics," just to use your example, adds to that overall worldly vibe, simple as it may be. You can quite easily ignore the coffee and the trashcan, until you don't, as you spend a few moments trying to lob your empty can into the trashcan, just to see it happen.

So we are redefining the pinnacle of space games to being able to throw empty cans into a trashcan? Is this what provides the 'longevity in the game' for you?

Star Citizen is in Alpha, and my best guess is that it will be for at least another 3 years. This is when CIG, who are doing things no other gaming company has ever done before, adds everything they can to the game, "stacking the house full of furniture", to see what fits where. During that time, some proper gameplay loops will appear and then disappear as the furniture is moved about; this is what SC in Alpha is about. The last 12 months of the Alpha stage and the first years of Beta are when most of the core "game play loops" will be set; polishing will be an ongoing process.

The only thing that CIG have thus far done that hasn't been done before is raise a record amount of money and fail to deliver on their promises for over ten years, with no end in sight.

 

[Uiros Ueramos]

I do see your point, but, and there is a but!. Star Citizen is not an arcade game in the way Elite Dangerous can be described as. What's the common depiction of ED we have all heard, "A mile wide and an inch deep." SC, on the other hand, is about longevity in the game; the MMORPG accepts being committed to your character's well-being in the short and long term. For that to be "realistic" and thus meaningful, "trashcan and coffee-in-a-cup physics," just to use your example, adds to that overall worldly vibe, simple as it may be. You can quite easily ignore the coffee and the trashcan, until you don't, as you spend a few moments trying to lob your empty can into the trashcan, just to see it happen.

Star Citizen is in Alpha, and my best guess is that it will be for at least another 3 years. This is when CIG, who are doing things no other gaming company has ever done before, adds everything they can to the game, "stacking the house full of furniture", to see what fits where. During that time, some proper gameplay loops will appear and then disappear as the furniture is moved about; this is what SC in Alpha is about. The last 12 months of the Alpha stage and the first years of Beta are when most of the core "game play loops" will be set; polishing will be an ongoing process.

 

[Northpin]

Do you defend the "legacy" stellar forge or the crappy new one?

StarForge is the same
The only thing that changed is the "skin" of landable planetary bodies.
But the star systems, orbits, planetary characteristics, the skybox is the same (well, a bit darker)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

StarForge is the same
The only thing that changed is the "skin" of landable planetary bodies.
But the star systems, orbits, planetary characteristics, the skybox is the same (well, a bit darker)

No, it's not the skin - it's the repeating terrain features. Hills aren't skin. Mountains aren't skin. Valleys aren't skin. Chasms aren't skin. Textures are skin, but I ain't talking about textures.

 

[Shabine]

The only thing that CIG have thus far done that hasn't been done before is raise a record amount of money and fail to deliver on their promises for over ten years, with no end in sight.

To be fair, there aren't any other space sims out there that allow a player to take off from a planet's surface, enter space, disembark from their ship, float through space to another ship, board it, fight the crew, then take a seat and start flying it around. I'll give them that. It's ambitious, just like their ship designs and the immense detail they've poured into them.

That said, Elite Dengerous is an enjoyable and, far more importantly, reliable experience. I never need to worry about getting bounced out of my ship for no reason, exploding for no reason, have my cargo disappear for no reason, or having all of my progress wiped and being unable to log in for days on end while the game I play learns how to walk again every few months. Because ED is proper game; a fully released digital product that, despite bugs, provides a rich and endlessly fun environment I can actually depend on.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

No, it's not the skin - it's the repeating terrain features. Hills aren't skin. Mountains aren't skin. Valleys aren't skin. Chasms aren't skin. Textures are skin, but I ain't talking about textures.

How do you even know what the output of the Stellar Forge looks like? From a few screenshots where people drew red circles on?

 

[Fizzatron]

To be fair, there aren't any other space sims out there that allow a player to take off from a planet's surface, enter space, disembark from their ship, float through space to another ship, board it, fight the crew, then take a seat and start flying it around. I'll give them that. It's ambitious, just like their ship designs and the immense detail they've poured into them.

That said, Elite Dengerous is an enjoyable and, far more importantly, reliable experience. I never need to worry about getting bounced out of my ship for no reason, exploding for no reason, have my cargo disappear for no reason, or having all of my progress wiped and being unable to log in for days on end while the game I play learns how to walk again every few months. Because ED is proper game; a fully released digital product that, despite bugs, provides a rich and endlessly fun environment I can actually depend on.

Empyrion allows you to do that, and a lot more that Star Citizen doesn't do.