Yes I realise that and even said as much. But I think the game's level of difficulty is set by the Cobra MkIII. It's just my opinion.
Stuff that makes us come back
- Thread starter Moriarte
- Start date
Yes I realise that and even said as much. But I think the game's level of difficulty is set by the Cobra MkIII. It's just my opinion.
The BGS is the main reason I still play this game and pretty much only this game. I login everyday to work my PMFs goals and help direct my fellow members. It's just the day by day of watching my PMF grow is so satisfying. Then on days I have too much free time I hop on my exploration alt and go probe thangs.
I'm currently (when I play, which is very infrequent during summer months) out surveying a region of unexplored space in my fleet carrier. I switched to my high-speed Eagle to do some surface skimming, and I decided just to stick with it to explore some new systems. Right quick I noticed how I needed to be much more cognizant of my fuel level, as I almost got myself stuck by jumping to a non-scoopable star (a single jump can use 2/3rds the fuel in an Eagle). My reaction was, "Wow, exploring can actually be challenging and even risky!"
I find it ironic that end-game for me has been returning to small, early-game ships to have the most fun. Not that I'm selling my already minimalist collection of larger ships, but these days they are more collector's items sitting in my Howard Hughes garage than they are mainstay tools. Now if only Frontier would give us the equivalent of a small ship for a fleet carrier (give me a tiny carrier with only a couple small pads), my life would be complete!
I never really left the smaller ships. I'll occasionally fly the larger ones in my stable, primarily to remind me how how much I don't like large ships, but the smaller ones are the most fun to fly. Their limitations increases the number of meaningful decisions I have to make, which can only be a good thing in my book. Combine that with not allowing 3rd party sites to do all my thinking for me, and it helps keep the game fresh.
I'm currently running missions out of Weber Legacy to practice my high-g (4.74g), high speed approaches, in preperation for the next Buckyball race. I decided to finally see how far I can get with the Federation rankings, considering the only missions I ever took for the Federation was to undermine them, at a time when you actually could effectively trade negative faction states for influence. Doing it all in my Cobra Mark III. Having a blast, despite the absurdly high credit rewards, even though I'm mostly taking the material or reputation rewards.
You do realize that any new ships purchasable by commanders are likely to be odyssey only?
You might remember me recently saying that the most fun I had trading was recently when I avoided 3rd party trading tools and "researched" the local markets myself. It added an exploration element to trading, and I'm much more of an explorer than a trader. But trading is the one time where I actually feel "at home" in a larger ship like a T9, and I feel it's more challenging than if I were trading in almost any other ship due to it being the one large ship that feels properly "large" (as in sluggish and vulnerable).
For awhile there was a combat squadron on PS4 that flew only Vipers. I always thought that sounded amazing - a wing of Vipers (or Eagles or Cobras) taking on large targets in a HAZRES, for example. I've never experienced that myself - whenever I join a random wing on PC, everyone else is flying a stereotypical metaship - FDLs, Corvettes, etc. I'm almost always the only one in a small ship (and always the only one in a shieldless ship). The meta ships in the wing kinda spoil the fun as they remove all the challenge, unless I get separated from the pack. Oh well.
I was maybe able twice to find good routes that way and it was after Horizons. No matter what logic or knowledge you applied the price and deman system remained a mystery to me. I made more money off missions. Cargo I used for deliveries. Trade I just dismissed as "not feasible".
Once I tried 3rd party and found a good route for hi-tech goods. Basically the only stuff that earns decently, because cargo space is either not enough (for bulk trading) or margins are just not worth it.
That makes three of us.
More utility that nostalgia I say. They are fast and that means chores can be done more quickly. Properly tuned small ship is a perfect escape artist. Easy to rotate, probably jumps far. And a capable pilot, which you would be after thousands of hours, can kill just about anything the game can throw at him in a cobra. A little challenge there is the seasoning. My cobra has an srv, small shield, minimalistic hull, two premium size 2 rails and rev. mines. The latter I found useful in mat gathering and blasting the occasional ship, who doesn’t yet know how to counter mines.
Viper is pretty great too, as is the courier. Although, cobra mk3 is the absolute king of small multipurpose.
I tend to favor source and return missions myself, but I’ll fill whatever cargo space left with trade goods as I do so. My C3 also has a passenger bay, just to keep things more interesting. Never fly empty!
Maybe is because I’ve playing since the original Alpha, but I’ve never had problems with simply trading off the cuff. I did an experiment a while back, and the trades I’d do off pure instinct were at worst 90% of the “ideal” trade… assuming I didn’t misread the situation entirely. When you factor in the time savings, I’d make money faster that way.
Misreads tended to have a silver lining. Famines and Outbreaks are the most common cause IME, which provided opportunities to run missions out of that station and get materials common to those faction states.
Maybe it's different in the middle of the bubble. When I used the in-game tools they weren't of much help. And going by the states that should match for good profit runs there either was no supply or demand was already satiated or some other reason why it wouldn't be lucrative. Mining usually gave me missions for minerals I had no interest in.With Horizons new states, economies were introduced and new commodieties. I had good runs with basic stuff then. In Outbreaks or epidemics, don't remember there was particularly good earning. That was the only time the economy made any sense to me and could reliably be used. Before it was more a random outcome.
The one thing that keeps me interested in Elite is VR.
If VR is dropped from Elite I would never boot Elite again.
If VR is dropped from Elite I would never boot Elite again.
Well, I disagree:
- about the game getting in the way of itself (I could even go as far as to say the game is holding itself back; look at how multi-limpet controllers were implemented)
- about the circumstances of "Monty Haul"
- about the presence of creative god-mode
- that artificial limitations creat anything approximating even the most ideal versions of 'depth'
- about the premise that this game is a shade of what was (that is, I believe it is measurably improved in many respects, but has outstanding issues in the rather core aspects of combat & the Engineering experiencee, as well as general performance and the antialiasing problem)
- about sacrifice of your exercise or sleep being a good thing
- about decisions about contributing to BGS vs upgrades being that meaningful (because the ostensible procedure is upgrading your ship first so that you can contribute more and faster)
- about random-encounter USS's as being worth anybody's time in their current implementation, outside the lone purpose of Engineering (The subject of USS's, the current flaws in their implementation, and the immense potential of what could be done with them and even with what already exists is worth a whole topic of discussion on its own.)
- about the "fun" of choosing whether to get ganked or not by another player
- that deciding what one wants for breakfast is a trivial matter
- that the game lacks things gated behind combat (not that gated content is my original personal goal in pursuing triple Elite)
but I do agree that:
- the economy has been overly generous with credit-printing
- games need to have meaning (a subtle but crucial statement)
- emotional investment in a game is wonderful
Yeah, that sums up the whole thing about being me.
What about you? What makes you come back to this thread and Elite. (hint-hint, the title of the thread)
My hope that the things I put in my first post in this thread will come into fruition, even partially.
The "quantity some guy/gal set up during their coffee break", as you blithely put previously, is the target that has been set in the game that we have been given. Your advice to "just ignore it" in order to have fun has no bearing on that fact one way or the other. That's the meaning of the idiom "doesn't enter into the equation". Are we finished being facetious?
What of the freedom to play contrary to your advice and blaze one's trail towards that goal - and have fun doing it? Do you really think you should be accusing me of only considering 'one equation', here?
I have no interest in crafting & trading numbers based upon entirely individual and anecdotal experiences. (And I believe there's reason to be skeptical whether you would be able to actually sustain 350 DPS using 6 rails at once, even fully Engineered.) A 'precise discussion' is besides the point.
The point is that hitpoint inflation means that any DPS increases by having a larger ship are marginalized by the presence of said hitpoint inflation.
Hence my original statement, which I will now try to reword for you: the impact of bigger ships in the current hitpoint inflation environment is largely in having more endurance and sustainability in the forced combat of attrition that hitpoint inflation brings; in comparison to that, the DPS increases are not nearly as significant.
It's not a matter of "think it cannot be done", it's a matter of observable fact. There is not a single competitive team-based combat game that has balance. Every single game of that type inevitably devolves into a slightly evolved version of rock-paper-scissors. Everything starts existing as a counter to something else, and NOT as a balanced feature of the game that is being played. Such games are not balanced - to the contrary, they have an inherent absence of balance.
To your commentary about meaningful fights:
Fights are not more meaningful because the HP bar is bigger, forcing fights to take longer regardless of how well you are playing.
That is a misconception common to RPGs and MMORPGs in particular. There are any number of ways to make fights meaningful without HP inflation or invulnerable phases or other such lazy gimmicks (as, again, is commonplace in MMORPGs) - and they are lazy: how many copy-paste RPGs and MMORPGs have we been given over the years that have the exact same, tired, boring approach to ramping up "difficulty" by inflating everything ad nauseum?
It is important to note that Elite Dangerous is not an MMORPG. It's not even an RPG. It is a space exploration simulation game in a shared universe with a unique setting and story of its own. Attributing (highly flawed) RPG or MMORPG design to this game is a mistake, one that Fdev themselves have made more than once.
Going back to meaningful wing fights: You will find meaningful wingfights when your group tactics are more important than how many hitpoints and "regen" you have brought. And you will only arrive at that by balancing the core of your game, not by trying to put the wing-fights cart before the ship-combat horse.
There's definitely plenty room for improvement with mission wrinkle behavior and timing, including 'bonus payments'. But there have been periods of the game where, inverse to this "can't really ever fail" situation, you were essentially prevented from ever succeeding any of the bonus payment wrinkles. Of the two extremes, I prefer the former (rather, the current). But it would be nice if Fdev could revisit the situation.
There's just many other bigger things to worry about.
Meh, if I hadn't put so much time in ED I would have kept ranting. It's a two-sided thing.
If you are content with partial completion, 1 star out of 3, the bronze medal in a gold medal event, then so much the better for you. (I did my trade and exploration 'right' too, for what it's worth.) It's a title prestigious enough to be the literal name of the game...and as a completionist gamer at heart, it's in my nature to pursue it.
Ideally, of course, I would love if the title were meaningful because of the effects it has ingame on how NPCs approach and address and deal with you, where you are permitted to enter and explore, or even unlocking new narratives to enjoy - instead of being an extremely plain "quantity reached" medal.
But such things can come after correcting more immediate problems.
That's precisely the reason I can't enjoy ESO. I was in the beta, and was disgusted by the Guild Wars: Tamriel Edition that had been created. All I ever wanted was Skyrim/Morrowind: Co-op Edition. Seeing other players just waddling and jumping and flying around by the hundreds...I just can't stay immersed, which is doubly difficult with the tendency of these MMORPGs to have dialogue vomit around every sidequest corner.
Had much the same sensation dabbling in FFXIV and Lost Ark, albeit Lost Ark struck a neat balance between trying to be an RPG and just being a game...up until endless bot invasions and endgame RNG grindfests turned me off.
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I'm hesitant about such a thing, only because Battletech did something similar with "Flashpoints" and it didn't really go very well. (And the developers, having made their coin from players desperate for more meaningful missions, responded by shrugging and ending development on the title.) I'd prefer it simply be treated as improvements to missions overall.
edit: I will say, I think Elite has plenty potential for expanding the tutorial narrative experience.
I was rather simply pointing at how reaching Elite works. Reach a stated quantity of XP, and that's it. I have no preference for it, but it is what it is.
Yes and no...if you deliberately head to specific locations or even re-"instance" your chosen site to do combat in, you can get high rank enemies in smaller ships.
But certainly, in terms of the general 'pirate' encounters the game throws at you, they tend to get spongier.
I could live with that...if the rewards we got were increased in proportion to the additional sponginess; I'm no stranger to grindy games.
Elite is the only game I've stuck with, however, that not only hasn't made any changes to keep rewards proportionate - it even introduced ways to reduce those rewards further, if you dare to have a crew or be grouped with other players.
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