So these new changes in chapter 4 all sound really good. But I must come back down and remind myself that some of the biggest issues with the game are still alive and well as of these announcements.
Issue #1: Persistent NPC's
One of the small things that really break the immersion of the game is very simple, NPC's that come from nowhere and are going nowhere, and only spawn around you after some time. Now obviously a full simulation of every NPC in the galaxy would be a tremendous waste of processing power and probably not even doable, but simple things like giving them clear goals like docking at a station, going to a war zone or mining area, or even a signal source, so that if you decide to follow them to see what they are doing they will carry out that task, would go a long way. Pre-simulating NPC's as you are coming into a system so that it is already populated, instead of it taking 10 seconds for any NPC's to appear is another thing that would really help sweep that ugliness under the rug.
Issue #2: The invisible wall called Supercruise
Apart from the persisting issues of boredom this feature presents, it does one thing which is very important and damaging to the game. It completely isolates you from all activity in the system unless you choose to engage with it. Unless you are equipped with an interdiction module you are utterly cut off from all others, player or NPC. While NPC's can use them, the evasion mini-game at some point becomes so trivially easy to do that engaging with an interdiction is once again completely voluntary. This almost removes all sense of danger from the game. In the original games the rule was very simple, as long as you were close to another ship, you could not use space skip or the star dreamer. This forced you to interact with any ship that came your way, even if it was just passing by harmlessly, the moment of uncertainty as one appeared in the distance was palpable. Supercruise is a blanket of safety that dulls the game to an extreme degree. Even crashing into a star or planet at maximum speed is utterly harmless, rather than the certain death you would expect it to be. Even wars are harmless affairs that take place only inside designated fighting arenas. You can enter an anarchy system at war and be every bit as safe as in a heavily police system at peace.
Perhaps the new persistent signal sources will ease the problem slightly, as you are no longer caught in your own parallel dimension safe from all incursions. But this would appear to only hold for those exact instances. I presume that if you drop from supercruise at a random place you are still safe from all other ships. I'd like to see that even if you do this, your position is broadcast to other players via a signal source that allows discovery, and perhaps, as was promised long ago, that this broadcast appears or is hidden based on your emission level.
The dynamic NPC behaviours and interactions that you see at the completely vestigial nav beacons from the time before supercruise, should be moved out into supercruise for the game to really shine.
Issue #3: The Dead Space around Stations
Similar to supercruise, all stations are dull safe havens due to their use of extremely powerful death rays that none can escape. David Braben once said that police vipers that could be defeated appeared if you broke the law in the old games because it was more fun that way. All the way back in the beta the station weapons were weak enough that popular stations were popular dueling grounds for PvP. All this came to an end with the introduction of the death ray. It is simply another feature that kills the dynamic and interaction of the game. NPC's should again display their dynamic behaviours here, and players should be allowed to risk engagements that can be survived.
Issue #4: The single-purpose ship
Relating somewhat to the issue with interdiction modules, almost every kind of system in the game has this problem. There is a module for scanning, there is a module for finding bounties, there is a module for following high wakes, there is no less than four modules just for mining, - with more to come as I understand, we'll see in the next stream - there is a module for landing on a planet, there is a module for refueling, there is a module for this and that and every little thing. And if you don't have the module you can't do the activity. In order to do something you must return to a station with an outfitter and hope that they have the module you need to do the thing, and then go and do the thing. Combat ships must have combat modules and so can't engage effectively in combat without those modules, and so can't really do anything else.
Compare and contrast this to the older games, to mine, you simply opened fire on an asteroid, bounties were automatically awarded upon killing the criminal, and looting ships were a simple matter of flying into the cargo they dropped on death. This meant the whole game was open to you at any time, making the experience much more varied and exciting, and you could react effectively to the opportunities that arose. There were some exceptions like cabins for passengers, but generally the game was much more accessible like this.
The simple fact is that you must build your ship for a single mission to even perform at that mission at a minimally acceptable level. And every other mission is basically locked out to you. This divides the game up into "that time you flew the mining ship", or "that time you flew the exploration ship", or "that time you flew the combat ship", with no real unexpected events. Like supercruise, it walls up the game for no benefit.
That is all, please consider.
Issue #1: Persistent NPC's
One of the small things that really break the immersion of the game is very simple, NPC's that come from nowhere and are going nowhere, and only spawn around you after some time. Now obviously a full simulation of every NPC in the galaxy would be a tremendous waste of processing power and probably not even doable, but simple things like giving them clear goals like docking at a station, going to a war zone or mining area, or even a signal source, so that if you decide to follow them to see what they are doing they will carry out that task, would go a long way. Pre-simulating NPC's as you are coming into a system so that it is already populated, instead of it taking 10 seconds for any NPC's to appear is another thing that would really help sweep that ugliness under the rug.
Issue #2: The invisible wall called Supercruise
Apart from the persisting issues of boredom this feature presents, it does one thing which is very important and damaging to the game. It completely isolates you from all activity in the system unless you choose to engage with it. Unless you are equipped with an interdiction module you are utterly cut off from all others, player or NPC. While NPC's can use them, the evasion mini-game at some point becomes so trivially easy to do that engaging with an interdiction is once again completely voluntary. This almost removes all sense of danger from the game. In the original games the rule was very simple, as long as you were close to another ship, you could not use space skip or the star dreamer. This forced you to interact with any ship that came your way, even if it was just passing by harmlessly, the moment of uncertainty as one appeared in the distance was palpable. Supercruise is a blanket of safety that dulls the game to an extreme degree. Even crashing into a star or planet at maximum speed is utterly harmless, rather than the certain death you would expect it to be. Even wars are harmless affairs that take place only inside designated fighting arenas. You can enter an anarchy system at war and be every bit as safe as in a heavily police system at peace.
Perhaps the new persistent signal sources will ease the problem slightly, as you are no longer caught in your own parallel dimension safe from all incursions. But this would appear to only hold for those exact instances. I presume that if you drop from supercruise at a random place you are still safe from all other ships. I'd like to see that even if you do this, your position is broadcast to other players via a signal source that allows discovery, and perhaps, as was promised long ago, that this broadcast appears or is hidden based on your emission level.
The dynamic NPC behaviours and interactions that you see at the completely vestigial nav beacons from the time before supercruise, should be moved out into supercruise for the game to really shine.
Issue #3: The Dead Space around Stations
Similar to supercruise, all stations are dull safe havens due to their use of extremely powerful death rays that none can escape. David Braben once said that police vipers that could be defeated appeared if you broke the law in the old games because it was more fun that way. All the way back in the beta the station weapons were weak enough that popular stations were popular dueling grounds for PvP. All this came to an end with the introduction of the death ray. It is simply another feature that kills the dynamic and interaction of the game. NPC's should again display their dynamic behaviours here, and players should be allowed to risk engagements that can be survived.
Issue #4: The single-purpose ship
Relating somewhat to the issue with interdiction modules, almost every kind of system in the game has this problem. There is a module for scanning, there is a module for finding bounties, there is a module for following high wakes, there is no less than four modules just for mining, - with more to come as I understand, we'll see in the next stream - there is a module for landing on a planet, there is a module for refueling, there is a module for this and that and every little thing. And if you don't have the module you can't do the activity. In order to do something you must return to a station with an outfitter and hope that they have the module you need to do the thing, and then go and do the thing. Combat ships must have combat modules and so can't engage effectively in combat without those modules, and so can't really do anything else.
Compare and contrast this to the older games, to mine, you simply opened fire on an asteroid, bounties were automatically awarded upon killing the criminal, and looting ships were a simple matter of flying into the cargo they dropped on death. This meant the whole game was open to you at any time, making the experience much more varied and exciting, and you could react effectively to the opportunities that arose. There were some exceptions like cabins for passengers, but generally the game was much more accessible like this.
The simple fact is that you must build your ship for a single mission to even perform at that mission at a minimally acceptable level. And every other mission is basically locked out to you. This divides the game up into "that time you flew the mining ship", or "that time you flew the exploration ship", or "that time you flew the combat ship", with no real unexpected events. Like supercruise, it walls up the game for no benefit.
That is all, please consider.
