The dynamic universe and background simulation leaves something to be desired

[possessed]

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/member.php?u=42257

You heavily edit your original post! so my last post is it is little bit irrelevant now...

 

[Armour]

I want a LOT more procedurally generated content, especially in terms of both lore and news events. Injected events on a galactopolitical scale are all well and good, but the ratio of injected events to PG content is almost homeopathic in dosage, and about as effective in terms of making things better.

If I'm a pilot trundling about between the same few systems doing my trading/mining and the odd mission, I'm unlikely to care much about the machinations of Senator Blowhard and his War on Credit, or what the various Federation bigwigs and/or Imperial aristocracy are up to. I'm going to be far more interested in what's happening in the systems I currently ply my trade in. Right now, there seems to be nothing much happening in any of them. Can we get some more local news, please?

 

[arfonfab]

It certainly seems 1000ly wide and an inch deep.

I was a Kickstarter backer, but I didn't sign up for the alpha/beta and I didn't keep up with development process. The first time I really paid any attention was for the gamma. I'd assumed that the model would involve throwing a shedload of servers at a massive persistent world. When I found out that it was going to be small P2P islands interacting with a central economy, I initially thought it sounded like a clever solution to avoid the cost of server hardware. The more I play, though, and the more I read the forums, and especially reading the design document linked above, the more it seems like they've backed themselves into a corner.

The design document specifies low storage, low processing power and low data access as priorities. If it wasn't for the core "400 billion worlds!!!" expansiveness, they could meet those requirements by comprehensively simming a few tens of worlds. If it wasn't for the online play, they could fake it by comprehensively simming locally the worlds the player visits. If it wasn't for the requirement to do it on the cheap, they could have comprehensive simming of all the worlds that players are currently visiting. However, that's not how it is. They want 400 million worlds, they want players to be able to interact with each other, and they want to do it on the cheap, so we're left with a system of few variables, implemented in an unimaginative way, with a lack of imersiveness that's glaring enough that the forums are full of threads about it.

I think the best we can hope for is that they at least fix the bugs, make it logical (weapons, not cupcakes and anime, for a civil war, etc) and polish it. I don't think we're ever going to see an NPC miner chip at an asteroid, collect it, fly to a station, sell it, and see the demand go down by 8 tons.

 

[oRGy]

The design document specifies low storage, low processing power and low data access as priorities. If it wasn't for the core "400 billion worlds!!!" expansiveness, they could meet those requirements by comprehensively simming a few tens of worlds. If it wasn't for the online play, they could fake it by comprehensively simming locally the worlds the player visits. If it wasn't for the requirement to do it on the cheap, they could have comprehensive simming of all the worlds that players are currently visiting. However, that's not how it is. They want 400 million worlds, they want players to be able to interact with each other, and they want to do it on the cheap, so we're left with a system of few variables, implemented in an unimaginative way, with a lack of imersiveness that's glaring enough that the forums are full of threads about it.

Good point, but it should be noted that of those 400 billion systems, only a couple of thousand actually are inhabited.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

It certainly seems 1000ly wide and an inch deep.

^^ Sadly this pretty much sums it up at the moment.


You should read the design discussion archives that were pitched during the kickstater.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=36

It'll make you weep seeing the vision and depth that was touted in there and then comparing it to what we got.

But, its still early days. We're due a content patch soon... lets see what FD deliver.

 

[arfonfab]

Good point, but it should be noted that of those 400 billion systems, only a couple of thousand actually are inhabited.

Yeah, I should have been more clear that I meant the "400 billion" as an emblem of how expansive they want the game to be. With a just a few tens of inhabited systems they could do a lot more simming with the same hardware, but at the expense of making the universe seem small.

 

[Johnny Spaceboots]

I don't know if anyone else has commented on this so far, but here are my findings regarding NPC spawning in "real space" (non-supercruise):

At belts or rings, even in very, very remote systems (the Pleiades Nebula is absolutely writhing with activity) NPCs will start spawning at your location, regardless of that system's supercruise traffic (or lack thereof). Sometimes it will be police, and they will do their routine scan ritual. Most of the time it will be pirates, who will scan you and, if you have no cargo, hang around for ages, repeatedly scanning you as if they have no short term memory.

Eventually, the pirates will leave, and the spawn system will kick in again; once again, it can be police, pirates, or very rarely a psychotic NPC who will attack you on sight.

If you start flying in any direction, and just keep going at top speed, NPCs will keep spawning at the edge of your sensors. They will try to follow you, or leave, and spawn again. Over the course of 15 minutes, I witnessed literally every type of ship spawning on me in a remote system.


Additionally, miner NPCs appear to be broken. I witnessed two different mining teams (a lone Asp, and a Type 6 with two sidewinder escorts) do some pretend mining (no chunks of rock ever appeared, but the ships pretended to scoop them anyway)... and then all four ships flew away together, parked a few hundred meters from the rocks, and sat there.

For an hour.


I rather find myself looking back at X3, and remembering with great fondness the impressive scale and persistence of AI activity. Ships in that game would not only have objectives, they actually did complete them without pretending - watching a trader NPC dock at a station, you'd see the quantity of goods at that station take a big dip as the NPC bought a load of them. Similarly, your stations and assets could be attacked when you were in a completely different system. Freelancer had pretty good AI too, with ships whose pilots actually knew where they were going and where they'd come from, and could tell you.

Elite certainly has some growing to do.

Posts like these make me sad with what we ended up with. When the sole purpose of NPCs is either to be killed, or to just look busy, it makes me wonder what they were thinking.

 

[ollobrains]

Posts like these make me sad with what we ended up with. When the sole purpose of NPCs is either to be killed, or to just look busy, it makes me wonder what they were thinking.

Placeholders will be upgraded , eve online worked on AI and u had sleepers, im sure like the rest of the skeleton game currenlty, that they will expand and add and make things better over time, but until they hire nore devs and expand the team we will have a slow development curve

 

[fergal]

Placeholders will be upgraded , eve online worked on AI and u had sleepers, im sure like the rest of the skeleton game currenlty, that they will expand and add and make things better over time, but until they hire nore devs and expand the team we will have a slow development curve

Eve online was subscription based like most/all mmos I assume?
That gives you a steady stream of income to pay for additional content.

No subscriptions here.

 

[ollobrains]

not yet, paid expansions wil fill the void, i dont mind paying a subscription if they put it towards delivering on their promises

 

[Johnny Spaceboots]

not yet, paid expansions wil fill the void, i dont mind paying a subscription if they put it towards delivering on their promises

Assuming that they even want to expand on the current system, though. Judging by a lot of their statements, it seems that the galaxy is less dynamic and more curated by them by design. I really wish we could get a dev response clarifying exactly what they intend to do/not do about this.

 

[fergal]

Assuming that they even want to expand on the current system, though. Judging by a lot of their statements, it seems that the galaxy is less dynamic and more curated by them by design. I really wish we could get a dev response clarifying exactly what they intend to do/not do about this.

I would have thought setting up to be dynamic is the best way to go with so many systems.
Its ridiculous, from a staffing point of view, to think an actual person would be used to review all the systems and determine when civil war or expansion happens.

 

[SE-Apocalypse]

Assuming that they even want to expand on the current system, though. Judging by a lot of their statements, it seems that the galaxy is less dynamic and more curated by them by design. I really wish we could get a dev response clarifying exactly what they intend to do/not do about this.

If they won´t expand than their income will dwindle, it really as easy as that. The only thing that stops me from throwing money at them right now is the very basic implementation of basically everything. I am not saying it is bad game, just that it needs expansion to be worth of more of my money.

 

[ollobrains]

well the trade simulator seems to respond to volumes by raiisng production, try high end items over a few days.

 

[Phier]

I rather find myself looking back at X3, and remembering with great fondness the impressive scale and persistence of AI activity. Ships in that game would not only have objectives, they actually did complete them without pretending - watching a trader NPC dock at a station, you'd see the quantity of goods at that station take a big dip as the NPC bought a load of them.

If it makes you feel better, X3's AI was pretty broken too. Sure they would buy stuff etc, but whole sectors would shut down because the AI couldn't figure out what to bring where and everything would run out. Plus they used the same fighter AI from a scout to a capital ship. What X3 had were mods that could fix a lot of those issues at least.

 

[fergal]

well the trade simulator seems to respond to volumes by raiisng production, try high end items over a few days.

Yes prices do change, but I don't think there is an underlying economy.
Each station has a supply or demand amount, low, high, etc, can this be changed?
Is there anything you can do to decrease demand for a commodity, other than supplying more of it?

Nothing seems to be manufactured. There is no supply and demand for ships or their components. Buying a python should effect the economy to a similar degree as buying 50 million credits worth of commodities.

There needs to be a way to not only change prices due to players buying and selling goods (which is already in game) but a way to change the underlying station supply and demand.

 

[ollobrains]

Yes prices do change, but I don't think there is an underlying economy.
Each station has a supply or demand amount, low, high, etc, can this be changed?
Is there anything you can do to decrease demand for a commodity, other than supplying more of it?

Nothing seems to be manufactured. There is no supply and demand for ships or their components. Buying a python should effect the economy to a similar degree as buying 50 million credits worth of commodities.

There needs to be a way to not only change prices due to players buying and selling goods (which is already in game) but a way to change the underlying station supply and demand.

Playing with an unnamed station in an unanmed system, over the course of the week i have raised the production of a high end export by sucing up supply and trading nearby and importing high priced low demand items, demand for items seems unresponsive for now but supply of said item have been rising as a baseline when supply is allowed to respawn. Micheal indicated in 2013 there would be stanardad of living statistic, ive seen evidence today that more npc traders appear in heavily traded economically wealthy systems ( tho we dont see it directly yet) there are some rumours of more modules on outposts - yet to be confirmed. But yes day by day the supply of said item is going up ( it ws 8 its now up to about 20 at max supply) and after todays dt im expecting it to rise further. Im making a lot of credits to just on this one run because the buying station next door is a larger station and larger pop and has a constant demand of 2000 for said item so im a far way off reaching that. Need a few more days to test it out tho

 

[starjump]

I hope FD will make the missions and commodities realistic regarding what a system needs to go to war etc. Cupcakes being enough to build an army with feels a bit so so. But at least cupcakes have an effect so FD should be able to tweak it to the correct commodities? If a system are gearing up you would think they need metal, tech, weapons etc and not pastry.
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The other issue being that your NPC's are not "seen" by other players. That they arent "there" for them. I noticed this as well when commanders around and being pulled inti interdiction just to see no NPC there. So that commanders NPC "saw" me and interdicted me, but when we then should been locked together it vanished. With "Wings" i guess grouping will fix that, but it has to be fixed when not in a group as well. So my hopes are that they will sort that soon enough.
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NPC's just flying about and not doing anything "real". i hope FD can sort out as well. If an industry system is in need of metal and tech to build weapons/armor/ships then there should be NPC's coming in with it. You should in reality be able to shoot down ships that come with metal which in its turn will slow production of said weapons/armor/ships down. Of course with more stations in a system you wont alone do much of a dent that way (picking single targets), but if you were a group covering all stations and taking out all NPC's with metal it should slow production down, and even halt it if you do it long enough. Question is, would it be too much of a strain on performance to track these with correct commodities to help a faction group? Is it completely unrealistic because the system works in a completely different way where having actual NPC's hauling the commidities instead of a hidden (from player) background system that provides all the system needs would simply bee too much to do as it would mean to change the game at its core? Im sure the coders and system design lead would want to make a "properly" (more realistic) functional system, but it comes down to budget and time frame in the end. Since i cant influence this much (i will buy the expansions) i can just sit back and see where FD takes us. Their goals might be up already and it is what we see, with some polish on top. That it doesnt matter what commodities you bring, like "cupcakes" builds an army and that NPC's arent vital to the core system but rather there to be shot and looked at. No body knows (well, we dont know).
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Elite is massive and there is so much potential, but the main thing imo being what you talk about here: that the underlying mechanic for how events builds up, and how all the factions behave is one of the most important if you want a deeper more alive game. I can live with an economy that isnt super realistic player based, but it surely would feel nice if systems that are gearing for war actually have NPC's hauling commodities that matter and make sense, and player created missions that makes sense for these.
I'll be patient, and i will read the changelogs with enthusiasm. I see ED as an investment that hopefully will grow over time. The money i paid personally i feel i gotten back already. I had many hours of fun. Its just that i see ED as a game that can be majestic and uber epic given more time and effort put into it. I hope it will reach for the top and end up somehwere close. Keep the faith.

 

[LordBad]

The OP makes some good points but as an amateur developer and a gamer I can explain at least some of this stuff to you.

Illusion Mechanics: The first is illusion mechanics. Despite what you may think 99% of everything you have ever played is based on this. That monster that is attacking you isn't really attacking you, he is following an orchestrated script that gives that appearance aligned with animations. It feels like he is attacking you and that's all that matters, but if you read the script and realized what that monster was actually doing, what the code was actually doing, how the code responds you would begin to see the flaws in it. What you would really be doing however is lifting the veil of the effect that illusion mechanics have and this is effectively what issue you are having.

NPC's don't go anywhere even if they appear to, they don't serve a purpose even if they appear to. I agree that Frontier could have done more to keep up the illusion in a few places, its particularly bad when your playing and you can spot a lack of intelligence in the code but if you are actually looking under the hood looking for how things work, I promise you that you will always be disappointed in all games. There is no magic or intellectual AI's, its just software doing what it's told and 99% of the time its doing it for nothing more than the illusion for the players benefit.

The important thing I'm here to tell you is that you need to stop looking under the hood if you want to enjoy this or any other game. Its become common place among gamers to dissect the inner workings and functionality of games, discover the illusions and complain about it. Your ruining your own experience. Stop analyzing and let the illusion trick you.

 

[Joe Spivey]

To be fair, the background simulation is still gathering momentum. It can only evolve to events.