Space legs wouldn't have to be useless
- Thread starter obliterator
- Start date
Just look at deep core mining. They took a simple task (shooting an asteroid) and made it slower by adding a load of slower processes to it, and compensated the players for their time by making it more lucrative. And people are loving it. Nobody is bothered by the fact that it's a slower process, because it's more varied and just as lucrative.
Simple processes made more complex and rewarding are pretty much the best way to improve the game in my opinion. Instead of just pressing the same button all the time, you get up, move around in your ship, operate machines/terminals/tools through some kind of skill-based minigames, then get back to your seat. Gameplay becomes more varied as you switch between tasks more often, and you're compensated for your time with better results so it doesn't feel like the mechanics are there to slow you down.
Indeed, totally agree.
But here we are, with some people already criticising a feature before its even implemented, a year away before we even see it.
Constructive criticism is important for the devs, but not really much to be constructive about when we don't have anything to critique.
I've been waiting impatiently for space legs since the game dropped.
So I get a bit more value from my game when I am parked up on a planet far far away, I player singleplayer in open, so I don't have people who could "come join my multicrew" for kicks, nor squad up.
So a few more menus and interactions and walking around would be ideal and thus removing all the excess limpets stuff and repair modules.
Bye Bye Handwavium shortcuts and hello time-taking Animations that never existed up until space-legs.
The elephant in the room many bring up. Real-time space combat and game-loops to date, have had handwavium mechanics for things to happen.
Buying and selling cargo with a wave of the holy BrabeN and your cargo is in your hold automatically.
Ejecting cargo, is just a menu click away, but if someone is messing around in the cargo bay, or "inside the cargo hatch" what then. Do they see things move around?
Take the simple menu click to Enter your SRV, a simple fade to black now has a player walking to a lift. getting out on the right floor and making their way to the vehicle hangar bay. Which takes no time at all in the small ships, but it's boring ordeal doing it time and time again as you fly the bigger ships.
Are we to keep the fade-to-black? but then how do other players walking around the ship, then see you? Do you just dematerialize in front of their eyes?
Persistent NPC's - crew and Passengers logistical nightmare.
Passengers boarding? Are they to spawn in your ship
Will they spawn in a waiting room?
Can players enter that waiting room? (hopefully not).
Can players see the same NPC's passengers missions (a pool for the Background Sim) or is the board unique for each player, giving everyone an opportunity.
So if we have 50 players in the same instance, all trying to book the similar NPC passengers. Are they in the same "waiting room" or does each hanger have its own waiting room?
If space-legs are to expand into Space stations, and the dirt-n-grind mercenary-thug life, can we "tail" those passenger NPC's.
Just how long will a player then have wait for their passengers to turn up when they click on the "confirm" passenger mission button.
And if you are thinking, omg, I hadn't thought of that stuff.
You might then take to consider this stuff has been in the back of fdev's heads for every update, stubbing out, planning every feature to dovetail into this first-person world.
the noisy fans complained, passengers are just a menu click away, they are just cargo with a different name,
how could it take so long to put into the game - and the answer is Background Sim, with content for a couple of million players that with space legs, will have faces, bodies, animations to all of these menus and rough mockups and concepts how it would "work" in that future version needed to be prototyped alongside every concept to allow creating the framework for the code, so they don't need a massive re-write or re-think years down the line.
And naturally, those prototypes and basic plans will miss the mark somewhat, depending on the developer's experience of these things so some headaches and arguments of how to massage the features and code around the realities of the game and players will always prevail.
But if anyone can pull this off sucessfully (a concrete solid concept that is fairly enjoyable, and it works) I believe in the Devs at Frontier.
(not to bring up that "other" space sim, but I go with the guy who made the galaxy fit on a 3.5 inch floppy disk and have repetitive procedurally generated game mechanics, and not the guy who needed several floppies to have multiple cut-scenes of a b-rate movie, and a repetitive hand-crafted space shooter)
So I get a bit more value from my game when I am parked up on a planet far far away, I player singleplayer in open, so I don't have people who could "come join my multicrew" for kicks, nor squad up.
So a few more menus and interactions and walking around would be ideal and thus removing all the excess limpets stuff and repair modules.
Bye Bye Handwavium shortcuts and hello time-taking Animations that never existed up until space-legs.
The elephant in the room many bring up. Real-time space combat and game-loops to date, have had handwavium mechanics for things to happen.
Buying and selling cargo with a wave of the holy BrabeN and your cargo is in your hold automatically.
Ejecting cargo, is just a menu click away, but if someone is messing around in the cargo bay, or "inside the cargo hatch" what then. Do they see things move around?
Take the simple menu click to Enter your SRV, a simple fade to black now has a player walking to a lift. getting out on the right floor and making their way to the vehicle hangar bay. Which takes no time at all in the small ships, but it's boring ordeal doing it time and time again as you fly the bigger ships.
Are we to keep the fade-to-black? but then how do other players walking around the ship, then see you? Do you just dematerialize in front of their eyes?
Persistent NPC's - crew and Passengers logistical nightmare.
Passengers boarding? Are they to spawn in your ship
Will they spawn in a waiting room?
Can players enter that waiting room? (hopefully not).
Can players see the same NPC's passengers missions (a pool for the Background Sim) or is the board unique for each player, giving everyone an opportunity.
So if we have 50 players in the same instance, all trying to book the similar NPC passengers. Are they in the same "waiting room" or does each hanger have its own waiting room?
If space-legs are to expand into Space stations, and the dirt-n-grind mercenary-thug life, can we "tail" those passenger NPC's.
Just how long will a player then have wait for their passengers to turn up when they click on the "confirm" passenger mission button.
And if you are thinking, omg, I hadn't thought of that stuff.
You might then take to consider this stuff has been in the back of fdev's heads for every update, stubbing out, planning every feature to dovetail into this first-person world.
the noisy fans complained, passengers are just a menu click away, they are just cargo with a different name,
how could it take so long to put into the game - and the answer is Background Sim, with content for a couple of million players that with space legs, will have faces, bodies, animations to all of these menus and rough mockups and concepts how it would "work" in that future version needed to be prototyped alongside every concept to allow creating the framework for the code, so they don't need a massive re-write or re-think years down the line.
And naturally, those prototypes and basic plans will miss the mark somewhat, depending on the developer's experience of these things so some headaches and arguments of how to massage the features and code around the realities of the game and players will always prevail.
But if anyone can pull this off sucessfully (a concrete solid concept that is fairly enjoyable, and it works) I believe in the Devs at Frontier.
(not to bring up that "other" space sim, but I go with the guy who made the galaxy fit on a 3.5 inch floppy disk and have repetitive procedurally generated game mechanics, and not the guy who needed several floppies to have multiple cut-scenes of a b-rate movie, and a repetitive hand-crafted space shooter)
Last edited:
Thing is - OP is saying 'space legs are useful' because they could add mechanics that use them - and most people saying 'space legs are useless' are saying 'without extra mechanics there is no point in adding space legs'. So basically OP is on the side of the 'space legs are useless' proponents
The only people who suggest 'space legs are useful' in and of themselves are those who think wandering around the cockpit would be exciting. They must lead interesting lives if wandering to the kitchen is the limit of their imaginations
What would a new feature without new mechanics even be? That strawman is so tedious.
People would rather have atmospherics than space legs? Well, they can count themselves lucky, we already have atmospheric planets in the game. You just can't get too close to them. I guess atmospherics are just pointless without extra mechanics, right?
Imagine how great all that will be with the rubberbanding and connection issues. I can already hear imusion lovers losing their stuff over magically reappearing in pilot seat after glitching through geometry.
![[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos](https://d2aefvhu2f0gi9.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/234/234580.jpg?1612617334){kind=avatar}
This isn’t aimed at anyone in particular but I do laugh at this forum, a lot. People constantly asking for new stuff (nothing wrong in that) then when new stuff is announced the speculation soon turns to the almost accepted view that it will be rubbish and broken. I’m sure many will say that historically that is their experience.
It’s just a funny thing to see. It reminds me of an old, old comedian I heard once (think he was from before the 1930’s), he said, “Politicians! They promise you everything, give you nothing and before you’ve got it, they’ve taken it away”.
It’s just a funny thing to see. It reminds me of an old, old comedian I heard once (think he was from before the 1930’s), he said, “Politicians! They promise you everything, give you nothing and before you’ve got it, they’ve taken it away”.
Multicrew was a minor update to an expansion (horizons). Compare it to 2.0 Horizons and the rest of the updates as that is pretty much the same time frame we are talking about. You add in everything and horizons and all its smaller updates was pretty damn big. Whether we liked those smaller updates is another matter. If the next era is as big as those all put together, but concentrated on one aspect (like space legs or atmospheric planets and associated gameplay, which horizons minor updates should have done), then it could be something superb. I hope FDev have learnt their lessons from the Horizons minor updates, but we shall see.
Here's how to best make it useful: Design them in a dedicated game rather than trying to shoehorn it into a MMO that barely works.
No thanks. I don't want a seperate game just to get out of the seat of my space craft. Also FDev have said that the game has been designed around adding these things in.
Outside of the simple walking around the ship and docking bay, I can see the best simple use for Legs as salvage operations. It would be an easy opening, no combat, no complex mechanics.
Just pull up to a wreckage and investigate, planetside or Signal Source, and check out a ship. Could be a modified ship's internal model; break down sections to randomize based on the conditions of the ship and be accessible/damaged/inaccessible. Hunt through for data, credits, mission leads like coordinates for cargo, etc.
Space Legs certainly isn't going to do everything straight out of the gate. But it'll probably going to start pretty useless and get more useful as development continues.
Just pull up to a wreckage and investigate, planetside or Signal Source, and check out a ship. Could be a modified ship's internal model; break down sections to randomize based on the conditions of the ship and be accessible/damaged/inaccessible. Hunt through for data, credits, mission leads like coordinates for cargo, etc.
Space Legs certainly isn't going to do everything straight out of the gate. But it'll probably going to start pretty useless and get more useful as development continues.
The original expansion / milestone plan was to have "ship legs" then "station legs"
But if you fail to make decent "station legs" gameplay, then "ship legs" will be hated regardless of how good "ship-legs" gameplay is.
So the devs have to have the mentality of building the station-leg expansion as if it is its own standalone IP, to do it justice.
So Station legs should feel like it could stand on it's own two feet (pun intended), as it is hooked into the same NPC's, factions, stations and Background Sim, right?
So now we are talking a First-person Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing game of AAA standard set in the Elite Dangerous universe.
And you can buy the "station legs" expansion, like you would another expansion, and the life-time people get it for free.
By why stop yourself short of marketing and selling this expansion for the existing space sim players - who might not even like the experience.
Market it and sell it as a AAA FPS MMORPG, as it will be similar to an Metro or Stalker game, but set in the Elite Dangerous universe,
So you have the Pilots federation aka the elite dangerous space sim base game
and the Mercenary Federation aka the first-person RPG game base game
both are each other "expansions".
Both base games get "Ship legs" free of charge as that becomes the "cross over" point between both games.
So mercenaries can board your ship as a multi-crew, or passenger.
You both can repel boarders or salvage in ship-legs, even if you haven't bought the "other" base game.
Insanely ambitious.
But if you fail to make decent "station legs" gameplay, then "ship legs" will be hated regardless of how good "ship-legs" gameplay is.
So the devs have to have the mentality of building the station-leg expansion as if it is its own standalone IP, to do it justice.
So Station legs should feel like it could stand on it's own two feet (pun intended), as it is hooked into the same NPC's, factions, stations and Background Sim, right?
So now we are talking a First-person Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing game of AAA standard set in the Elite Dangerous universe.
And you can buy the "station legs" expansion, like you would another expansion, and the life-time people get it for free.
By why stop yourself short of marketing and selling this expansion for the existing space sim players - who might not even like the experience.
Market it and sell it as a AAA FPS MMORPG, as it will be similar to an Metro or Stalker game, but set in the Elite Dangerous universe,
So you have the Pilots federation aka the elite dangerous space sim base game
and the Mercenary Federation aka the first-person RPG game base game
both are each other "expansions".
Both base games get "Ship legs" free of charge as that becomes the "cross over" point between both games.
So mercenaries can board your ship as a multi-crew, or passenger.
You both can repel boarders or salvage in ship-legs, even if you haven't bought the "other" base game.
Insanely ambitious.
Well, you're half right.
People need to understand that it isn't that game devs don't "think big" enough when it comes to their game. Just look at NMS, they clearly had ambition, but nothing huge made it into the initial release.
It comes down to what's possible, given manpower, time, and the limitations of the technology and game engine. Creating a whole AAA FPS within ED is.. unrealistic. Yeah, I would love the snappy combat of Destiny paired with ED, but that's a huge ask, way more than the studio can take on just like that.
I for one am of two minds about space legs. A lazy, uninspired development team would simply make Legs a redundant way to do that which can already be done faster and more efficiently from one's ship- and if that's the direction Frontier takes it, it'll be the Fail to end all Fails for Elite. If, however, the devs craft Legs in such a way that it offers unique and interesting gameplay, then it'll have something going for it.
That being said, Legs has the potential to be absolutely stunning if done properly. Think back to the eeriness of the Thargoid hives- who wouldn't want to be eaten by a rampaging Thargoid in some dark corner? Or explore one of the defeated capships in a combat aftermath? Or do hands-on derelict salvage, downloading data materials from the ship's onboard computer?
That being said, Legs has the potential to be absolutely stunning if done properly. Think back to the eeriness of the Thargoid hives- who wouldn't want to be eaten by a rampaging Thargoid in some dark corner? Or explore one of the defeated capships in a combat aftermath? Or do hands-on derelict salvage, downloading data materials from the ship's onboard computer?
there are so many possible additions and substitutions to this sentence and all of them only fuel my darkest desires
One of my favorite parts of the previous Fallout series was the workbenches and tinkering to make this thing into that thing and working on my power armor to add something onto it. Hell, building a whole workshop dedicated to making gear and displaying it. Making engineering like this, something that I can do in limited fasion on the ship or get grease-monkey like working on it at a station would be way more entertaining and engaging than "Generate Modification". Yes, it's the same result in the end but one makes you feel like you have a ship and the other reminds you heavily that you are clicking a mouse button.
I think it could be neat if you opened a panel and did some work on engineering to make the in-between changes to the systems on the fly. You'd need to hit a station to get to the next level, but once you started that level if you gather the right mats then you can get-up and work on the ship to improve that particular grade closer to maximum.
X4 has this, you walk to all the major people you need to interact with. It's a small thing and yes after some time the novelty wears off but I still really enjoyed stepping onto the dock and walking upto, and into my ship. I often would go the extra time to walk out to the pad, hop into my small fighter/shuttle, fly off of my capitol over to another ship or station and walk into the bridge even though I could just 'teleport'. The reason was that sometimes it's just entertaining to 'be a captain' and take the shuttle. X4 did allow for you to bypass that though which is nice because at times I don't want to go walking, I just want to get something done.
It's way more engaging to walk up to the stores, offices, and people to interact rather than stare at some guy in a goofy pose for everything.
I think it could be neat if you opened a panel and did some work on engineering to make the in-between changes to the systems on the fly. You'd need to hit a station to get to the next level, but once you started that level if you gather the right mats then you can get-up and work on the ship to improve that particular grade closer to maximum.
X4 has this, you walk to all the major people you need to interact with. It's a small thing and yes after some time the novelty wears off but I still really enjoyed stepping onto the dock and walking upto, and into my ship. I often would go the extra time to walk out to the pad, hop into my small fighter/shuttle, fly off of my capitol over to another ship or station and walk into the bridge even though I could just 'teleport'. The reason was that sometimes it's just entertaining to 'be a captain' and take the shuttle. X4 did allow for you to bypass that though which is nice because at times I don't want to go walking, I just want to get something done.
It's way more engaging to walk up to the stores, offices, and people to interact rather than stare at some guy in a goofy pose for everything.
Last edited:
The sheer scale of EDs spaces will make walking to X and Y a total chore after a while. I wonder how soon players will ask for a fast travel option, or simply use the menu?
That option (just use the menus) should absolutely be there. Also don't make people walk 3 miles between POIs on the stations. Turbolift, transport pod, whatever. Enter the thing at one POI, select the next, and walk out at that POI. Keep it possible to do if they want to don't make it something they HAVE to do.