State of the game - Address our concerns please

[Oheck]

I guess the best way I can explain my feelings about the game is to link a video I made just before Horizons launched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWCEqC5PKHw

Since then I've added a number of issues to the list including NPCs and all of the ones Robigo smugglers are encountering.

I started saying right after 1.3 dropped: I really wish Frontier would devote an entire major patch to just improving what we already have instead of adding something totally new. Fix the long-standing bugs. Improve half-done placeholder mechanics. Give us those little Quality of Life features we've been asking for since beta. Fix reward and income scaling.

I guess I'm just tired of the ol', "Hey guys! Instead of fixing missions and signal sources we decided to copy/paste them and call it Power Play / Points of Interest".

I second that.

 

[mk1md0]

I guess the best way I can explain my feelings about the game is to link a video I made just before Horizons launched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWCEqC5PKHw

Since then I've added a number of issues to the list including NPCs and all of the ones Robigo smugglers are encountering.

I started saying right after 1.3 dropped: I really wish Frontier would devote an entire major patch to just improving what we already have instead of adding something totally new. Fix the long-standing bugs. Improve half-done placeholder mechanics. Give us those little Quality of Life features we've been asking for since beta. Fix reward and income scaling.

I guess I'm just tired of the ol', "Hey guys! Instead of fixing missions and signal sources we decided to copy/paste them and call it Power Play / Points of Interest".

I'll third this. Sums up my feelings perfectly.

Fix and enhance whats there before tacking on more.

 

[Halp]

optimism is when we have the mechanics in the beta testing phase

not sure i got that. you mean you didn't know what you were buying ? hmm..

 

[Ghost1]

The only thing that bugs me is lacks of weapons and missile types. Also missiles need a huge huge bufff.


There are hardly any variety when it come to missiles, or weapons. Hell, torpedo's are pretty much useless. You only get one?
I think bigger ships should have access to full torpedo racks. The only way you get weapons is threw factions which seem kinda annoying,
i was hoping some stations would have rare weapons that could find which would make the game more intresting, instead everyone using the
same old load out. So

Also the alliance has no love in the game, they dont get any special ship or capital vessels. Frontier said that each faction will have a capital ships family, but
why no alliance love?

 

[TomoRosso]

In terms of addressing your overall concerns. Despite our best efforts and the hard work of the QA department and developers, sometimes bugs will fall through.

This is quite an understatement, every single release to date has been released with bugs that had been reported on day one of the beta. To say the have "fallen through" makes it sound as if they are just obscure bugs that you didn't know about. But it's not just the bugs that are the issue, it's also constant bias towards content over quality.

 

[tnxgalaxy]

I have to admit since the horizon update, I do not play much because of these missions bugs and very low rewards for anything at the planet surfaces.

 

[James Razor]

I have to admit since the horizon update, I do not play much because of these missions bugs and very low rewards for anything at the planet surfaces.

Well, i do go planetside. For those Smuggling or Transport Missions. For everything else i ignore it. As there currently is nothing worthwile there.

 

[Spudulika]

I guess the best way I can explain my feelings about the game is to link a video I made just before Horizons launched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWCEqC5PKHw

Since then I've added a number of issues to the list including NPCs and all of the ones Robigo smugglers are encountering.

I started saying right after 1.3 dropped: I really wish Frontier would devote an entire major patch to just improving what we already have instead of adding something totally new. Fix the long-standing bugs. Improve half-done placeholder mechanics. Give us those little Quality of Life features we've been asking for since beta. Fix reward and income scaling.

I guess I'm just tired of the ol', "Hey guys! Instead of fixing missions and signal sources we decided to copy/paste them and call it Power Play / Points of Interest".

Exactly my thoughts

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Hi everyone. Thanks Zac

Thank-you for taking the time to reply to the post and I can fully understand leaving things until the relevant people were back in work before responding. This is what I was hoping for/expecting. Confirmation that you are listening and taking our input on-board.

For many people the delays in something being fixed or balanced can be frustrating and that is what lead to my OP, I was more concerned about the number of posts from players who had issues with so many areas of Horizons and could not see anything being done, we are an impatient lot

I get to see it from both sides of the window, I know how frustrating it can be to see disparaging posts about your product.

As I've said in another post this morning maybe you could find time to update us, just once per month on the issues raised by us and the feedback from the development team - a little time and attention can do wonders for an unruly child

Thanks

Bran.

 

[orfeboy]

Personally, I know they are chasing down bugs. What is unfortunate is that the bugs that apparently are the hardest, are causing a lot of other unstable play throughout the whole game.

The mission system has problems...but some of those problems appear to stem from the BGS influence. The BGS has problems with certain issues that have been noted since the times of the original beta. Those problems expand into other parts of the system and create other issues. As more and more people play the BGS and see the cause and effect...and many more just realize the effect without understanding the causes, the hew and cry fixates on 'fixing the bugs in the game'.

All this ties into the calls for 'depth'. Not meaning to hurt anyones feelings, the depth in this game is going to expand out of a vibrant, fully functioning BGS. Any tools for players to play with to add to the galaxy are going to be switches and levers that the BGS will provide. The Stellar Forge is the provider of the canvas we all play on..the BGS is the paint brushes, tools, switches and levers provided so that we will use our desires to paint our galaxy with.

This is the design of E: D. The roles in the game are to teach folks how to fly and 'do things'. PowerPlay is there to train people how to play the BGS. The BGS is there so players having learned the latter, can create their own factions, grow them and become invested in the game. Anyone can stop at any one of these points and still feel they are playing a 'full and complete game'....but there is more if a person wants to look for it.

You left out a bit.... 'Then there is the forum, the forum is there for people who can't be bothered to play the game, or feel it is too lacking and the desire to rectify that through communication'.

 

[wstephenson]

The issue is not that bugs may slip through, but that lots of them have been with us through multiple major updates. And these are mixed with some intentional changes (sometimes undocumented or only briefly and cryptically mentioned in the change log) that are just outright baffling. Just to give you an idea what kind of things I am talking about:
- NPCs coming at full speed when they scan you (Why is this not top priority? It's devastating when multiple ships do this at the same time, potentially outright killing you instantly.)
- NPCs doing things entirely impossible for players. From clairvoyance ("You're hard to find" - yeah, that's why there are multiple NPCs appearing right at my location all the time), impossible reflexes (interdictions beginning the very instant you arrive in a system, switching target to you the very instant you shoot them even though they are busy with someone else, etc), impossible interstellar chases (Eagle keeping pace with a range-optimized Asp Explorer... what?), infinite ammunition (hello railgun spamming NPCs, utterly annoying), to scans going through chaff and silent running (and even when already docked) (for comparison, when I use KWS on an NPC and begin the attack, they often chaff and the KWS scan pauses and even slowly losed progress, so I have to wait until it is complete before I can attack lest I spend the entire battle trying to get the KWS through during a dogfight).
- "Magical reputation armour" = wanted pirate NPC belonging to legal factions yet you lose reputation when you attack and they are not wanted by their own people (even an independent corporation operating in a Federal system should necessarily respect the law and look down upon any criminal in their ranks).
- The "new" bounty system that is no longer new but still has the bounties utterly fractured to the point where some people intentionally suicide just to clear the dozens of small bounties in systems they were just passing through. Seriously, pirate interdiction in a system where you are not going to dock is 100% pure annoyance because even if you kill them you won't get to bounty unless you go out of your way and fly potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of light-seconds to a local station just to collect 2000cr... How is this still a thing yet we have no system to remotely claim bounties (which should be very easy to implement indeed)?

All good points. I would love it if the game logic that controls these would get the same resourcing and attention that StellarForge or Horizons terrain rendering does. I appreciate that as it stands at the nexus of many subsystems (BGS/Reputation/Legal/Combat AI) it is hardest to get right, and that it's hard to sell this kind of polish as a feature, but it would heave the game head and shoulders above the rest. Heck, even Galak-Z, an indie space shooter, has its bad guys retreat when you knock their shields down.

I hope SJA is back on the combat AI improvements she was teasing, but even more, I hope that there are some other unsung heroes in the gameplay team who are getting time to address the other joined-up-AI points. It would be nice if the high-level AI (ie non-combat) was implemented as a series of independent event-driven systems that are active all the time, so that NPCs can react spontaneously to anything that happens.

• You find a NPC pirate menacing a NPC trader, so you drop 8 tonnes of gold and the pirate starts troughing that instead
• You sideswipe a NPC trader whilst both exiting a station. He says "Get away from me! Are you drunk?" and changes course away from yours.
• You collide with an NPC miner in a bigger ship for the 3rd time whilst in an unpatrolled RES in an Anarchy. He extends hardpoints and opens fire on you!
• A wing of Wanted players enters a USS consisting of a NPC trade convoy. They immediately begin charging hyperdrives for a high wake exit.
• You enter a high security system in a FdL with a high bounty on your head and an NPC authority vessel passes with 500Ls of you. He says "Wanted felon sighted, calling for backup", and a wing of well-armed cops appears at the nearest (non-criminal) station and says "Stand by, ETA X seconds" whilst setting an interdiction course.

I appreciate that these behaviours are harder to implement in 3D and in a complex, dynamic environment like an asteroid ring or Supercruise, but the high level AI scripts don't need to break new ground in AI research to have a few variables like 'greed' 'fear' 'bravery' 'foolishness' and assess threats as the product of ship size and pilot skill, and choose an appropriate behaviour based on the events they notice and their state.

 

[X-Terminator]

that's not optimist. optimist is when you see a cat catching a phaesant and you run after the cat, jump into the bushes like superman and manage to scare off the hungry cat and getting the phaesant for yourself hoping it's healthy pray and cooking it.
for the record, i played E-D for 5 days, unlike you lot who probably didn't play it at all

i.e. I am optimistic I am prepared just in case I get more ED (confirmed optimism via buying the lifetime deal)

 

[lysan]

Thank-you for taking the time to reply to the post and I can fully understand leaving things until the relevant people were back in work before responding. This is what I was hoping for/expecting. Confirmation that you are listening and taking our input on-board.

For many people the delays in something being fixed or balanced can be frustrating and that is what lead to my OP, I was more concerned about the number of posts from players who had issues with so many areas of Horizons and could not see anything being done, we are an impatient lot

I get to see it from both sides of the window, I know how frustrating it can be to see disparaging posts about your product.

As I've said in another post this morning maybe you could find time to update us, just once per month on the issues raised by us and the feedback from the development team - a little time and attention can do wonders for an unruly child

Thanks

Bran.

Information is important, however there is a fine balance as it can take to much time from the devs, however that is what we have the community reps for