The dynamic universe and background simulation leaves something to be desired

[WalterHWhite]

There can most definitely be more depth and it is feasible, I don't think anyone disputes that.

Give it time is my suggestion. Pushing these ideas and comparisons to other games is a good thing.

Hopefully over time we'll have a combination of better informaiton about the game mechanics already there, and what's planned to be added.

 

[Viajero]

OP is probably spot on in most aspects and I really hope FDEV keeps this thread and other similar ones in mind.

There is got to be ways to reflect in a meanigful way what the background simulation does with NPC ships acting accordingly, even if it is a fraction of the volume suggested by the background sim and player activity. I.e. if certain station/system is trading XX tonnes of berylium with another then represent that with a XX % of NPC traders doing that etc. Similar logic for everyhting else, mining, piracy reflecting security levels of the system etc etc.

Similarly all actions of players, once aggregated and after a certain threshold, should be able to be translated to a specific visible effect in each concerned system, including type of ships, load outs etc.

Judging by M Brookes and other devs direct involvement in the Mikunn, Lugh et al threads it also seems FDEV has the background simulation among its main priorities, so we ll see.

 

[Johnny Spaceboots]

OP is probably spot on in most aspects and I really hope FDEV keeps this thread and other similar ones in mind.

There is got to be ways to reflect in a meanigful way what the background simulation does with NPC ships acting accordingly, even if it is a fraction of the volume suggested by the background sim and player activity. I.e. if certain station/system is trading XX tonnes of berylium with another then represent that with a XX % of NPC traders doing that etc. Similar logic for everyhting else, mining, piracy reflecting security levels of the system etc etc.

Similarly all actions of players, once aggregated and after a certain threshold, should be able to be translated to a specific visible effect in each concerned system, including type of ships, load outs etc.

Judging by M Brookes and other devs direct involvement in the Mikunn, Lugh et al threads it also seems FDEV has the background simulation among its main priorities, so we ll see.

Agreed. I'd really like to get some feedback straight from the devs, so that we know what's just a bug, what's not implemented yet, and if they have plans to expand it and in what direction.
A dynamic universe is something that is just essential for a game like Elite. With scale at this level, we can't expect the developers to basically be the Dungeon Master and provide enough interesting content to make up for the lack of a autonomous game. Everything about this game has seemingly been built for an NPC driven sandbox, but the driver is so far asleep at the wheel

 

[fergal]

Looks like the whole Onionhead event was resolved in the Federation's favor. I wonder how much the players influenced that, and how much of it was just scripted from day one.

I must have killed 30 or more federatio generals.
Was involved in killing another 30-50.
Drove away many players form the fed faction at the high intensity combat zone. Killed quite a few.
Chatted to many that were running, got them to change sides.

Look like the federation was losing big time. The influence of the farmers faction even increased a bit, I thought that was locked until war is over.

 

[Viajero]

I must have killed 30 or more federatio generals.
Was involved in killing another 30-50.
Drove away many players form the fed faction at the high intensity combat zone. Killed quite a few.
Chatted to many that were running, got them to change sides.

Look like the federation was losing big time. The influence of the farmers faction even increased a bit, I thought that was locked until war is over.

If the Federal´s won squarely according to proper background simulation processes and player aggregated input then it may very well be that your efforts were "less" than the other side.

I am not saying that is what happened, but either way FDEV needs to come up with a much better, more direct, clear and impactful way to show progress of a conflict including the specific info about "that contribution you just made". It should have been clearer to you all along that you were indeed on the "losing side" and more importantly: WHY.

The current faction influence screen in the right UI panel is severely lacking in that aspect.

Here my 2p:

A good conflict feedback UI should be very detailed, clear and specific about all categories or levers that players can apply to push the conflict towards one side or the other. I.e. trade, faction missions and direct combat (maybe there are a couple more). Each one should deserve its own specific detail and info including at least "an indication" of their weight in the bottom line result so players can choose which aspect of the conflict they want to influence based on perceived criticality and their own play style.

Trade info: should include info about which commodities have the largest impact on the conflict for each side. Prices should reflect that criticality.

Missions info: Should be generated relevant to the conflict (i.e. main factions issuing missions to kill own authority vessels is a no-no...). The conflict UI should also point out a top list of most critical missions with the largest impact in it.

Direct conflict zone Combat info: Although more obvious to identify where, the conflict UI should explain how the war is progressing, casualty numbers both NPC´s and player numbers and tonnage, and overall value indicator of how the combat is progressing etc.

All three above could also include a list of player "aces" for each aspect and for each side of the conflict.

NPC interdiction levels: Should reflect the overall faction control of the system in conflict and be relevant for each player´s level of "friendliness" or lack thereof to each side.

Overall "scoreboard": There should also be a bottom line or overall chart that reflects the total aggregated result of the conflict state at any given point in time, and also historically so people can see its progress and evolution since the start.

A conflict UI may be relevant only to those systems where there is a conflict so it would need to be properly tied up with the current generic "faction status" UI we have at the moment. Having said that a "peace time" UI could also be modeled along the same lines, except the bottom line result would not be a conflict resolution "figure" but the current faction status screen.

 

[fergal]

If the Federal´s won squarely according to proper background simulation processes and player aggregated input then it may very well be that your efforts were "less" than the other side.

I am not saying that is what happened, but either way FDEV needs to come up with a much better, more direct, clear and impactful way to show progress of a conflict including the specific info about "that contribution you just made". It should have been clearer to you all along that you were indeed on the "losing side" and more importantly: WHY.

Agree 100%
I have no idea what happened in other instances at the same time I was there, and I have no way of knowing what happened when I was offline.
The number of NPCs spawning at the conflict zone didn't seem to change to show some sort of shift in balance. Everything seemed the same, then there was an item on galnet.

 

[nosscar]

I hope the FDEVS can see this, and take note, some really good feedback and idea's, i have played this game since beta, i probably have a few hundred hrs in by now, and this has always been my major gripe.
The universe is not "alive" it is a selection of pre set scenario's instigated by the devs.
The USS zones, and the conflict zones feel like staged sets, same everytime you enter one.

The script needs to be more autonomous, acting more upon players actions as they happen, with much clearer output to the player on what if anything is changing.
I read on the forum of groups staging wars with each other, or a system being a no go zone for anyone because a certain group is blockading it.
My thoughts when i read these are that this just cannot happen really, not with the game as it is now, impossible, especially with the instancing and different play modes (solo ect).
They might have a very minor impact on a few players, and that is all.

if i believed that my actions really did matter, this game would increase my interest to play by a big margin.

 

[bassman]

Let's not fool ourselves here. Yes, X3 does manage all NPCs, both while you're in the system and when you're not. However, there are approximately 200 systems in the X3 universe for the game to keep track of. There are two levels of simulation with X3. When you are in a system, it's a very detailed sim, with keeping track of ships in real-time, putting the assets into physical space where they need to be, navigating hazards like stations, other ships, and asteroids. The rest of the systems are simulated, but those ships don't have to follow rules like object collisions. That's why it's always safer to have your AI-controlled ships dock at a station when you're not in the system.

Elite: Dangerous has over 1000 inhabited systems. And at any point in time, every system could have one person in it, which would be the equivalent of X3 simulating all of its systems in the detailed mode. Something that X3 just can't do. You cannot compare the scope of Elite: Dangerous with the scope of X3 in regards to the simulation.

And let's not mention Limit Theory. That game doesn't exist yet. No one outside of the single developer has ever played it, so we don't know what's actually going on in that game.

Well FD obviously think its doable in principal since they have a very detailed description of persistent NPCs in the DDF. They just havnt got around to implementing any of it yet.

Remember that tactical AI for all NPCs is already handled by handing it off to players PCs, all thats needed is to "join the dots" i.e. give selected NPCs some persistent state between their appearances in players instances and SC and give them some simple overall goals and travel routes. NPCs that arnt interacting with players can be subsumed into statistical simulations of trade routes, mining, piracy etc and then recreated when necessary. Its all eminently doable IMO.

 

[BigBadB]

I am not saying that is what happened, but either way FDEV needs to come up with a much better, more direct, clear and impactful way to show progress of a conflict including the specific info about "that contribution you just made". It should have been clearer to you all along that you were indeed on the "losing side" and more importantly: WHY.

This. So much this.

 

[Majere]

Very interesting thread.

What we have so far is a remake of the original Elite but with multi-player. From what people are saying, the NPCs are behaving just as they did in the original game in '84. Randomly appearing and with no real purpose of their own.
For people like me who don't actually have that much time so don't get too involved in a depth, just fly around and enjoying the action with no real purpose that is fine but I can see how it would be disappointing to those who want more.

They have done the conversion of original pretty well I think but now it is time to add flesh to the bones and would be amazed if they didn't. I think they made a bit a rod for themselves by 'releasing' it with only the basic systems in place but
as they have said, this is going to be under constant development for years so these things will come, I think they just misjudged the appetite for that level of depth.

This game will come out for consoles, so walls of text are unlikely to happen. That doesn't mean that the NPCs can't be made to be more logical which they should and to be honest, I am surprised they are not as that is pretty simple to do.

As for the number of NPCs that you need to track, only those that are visible. If they are not being observed, they do not exist, there is no need to individually track all possible NPCs.

Hmm, sorry this is a bit of brain dump with no real connection to any parts. Delete or post? Ah, go for it.

 

[CMDRKNac]

Sadly, is better to consider this part of the game as being in alpha, because it's what it is.
Not only is lacking functionality, balance or what else, the barebones that we got are barely working and there are a plethora of bugs breaking the simulation.

Also there is a distinct lack of real consequences out of state or political landscape changes, at the end of the day the most we can manage is to change the color of the system in the galaxy map right now, and that's about it. Zero other consequences. Still better than nothing, if it worked as it should! Right now we got two major bugs breaking it in many systems, plus probably many other minor bugs and balance issues hidden by the fact that the simulation is not working in many place and is opaque and we cannot discern what's going on.

Notice how complex games go with a manual because the player needs it to get the most richness out of the gameplay, when things are hidden behind excuses of 'black boxes' it stinks of lack of functionality and buggy code, and excuses are used as a wild card against players to avoid questioning. All rather disappointing, but they cannot simply stick a "alpha" label to the game when it's in theory released.

If all the software industry worked like this there would be thousands deaths every day because of accidents, fortunately it does not, but the gaming industry can get by with this behaviour because it's just entertainment I guess.

 

[CMDR MassDef]

A good conflict feedback UI should be very detailed, clear and specific about all categories or levers that players can apply to push the conflict towards one side or the other. I.e. trade, faction missions and direct combat (maybe there are a couple more). Each one should deserve its own specific detail and info including at least "an indication" of their weight in the bottom line result so players can choose which aspect of the conflict they want to influence based on perceived criticality and their own play style.

Trade info: should include info about which commodities have the largest impact on the conflict for each side. Prices should reflect that criticality.

Missions info: Should be generated relevant to the conflict (i.e. main factions issuing missions to kill own authority vessels is a no-no...). The conflict UI should also point out a top list of most critical missions with the largest impact in it.

Direct conflict zone Combat info: Although more obvious to identify where, the conflict UI should explain how the war is progressing, casualty numbers both NPC´s and player numbers and tonnage, and overall value indicator of how the combat is progressing etc.

All three above could also include a list of player "aces" for each aspect and for each side of the conflict.

NPC interdiction levels: Should reflect the overall faction control of the system in conflict and be relevant for each player´s level of "friendliness" or lack thereof to each side.

Overall "scoreboard": There should also be a bottom line or overall chart that reflects the total aggregated result of the conflict state at any given point in time, and also historically so people can see its progress and evolution since the start.

A conflict UI may be relevant only to those systems where there is a conflict so it would need to be properly tied up with the current generic "faction status" UI we have at the moment. Having said that a "peace time" UI could also be modeled along the same lines, except the bottom line result would not be a conflict resolution "figure" but the current faction status screen.

Since you are a mod, would you be kind enough to forward this post to a dev? Or may be send them your cv asking for a dev job? Cause this how you can bring immersion into a game.

 

[Cpt.Badger]

I cringe everytime I hear something about "planetary landings" in a game where I can't even interact with placeholder NPCs.

 

[Viajero]

Since you are a mod, would you be kind enough to forward this post to a dev? Or may be send them your cv asking for a dev job? Cause this how you can bring immersion into a game.

lol, thanks, but I have no illusions that my proposals are just that, a proposal (which I am sure has plenty of flaws), along with all the other ideas being discussed in this thread and the others testing in Mikunn, Lugh etc etc. I really wish devs acknowledged all these issues, that they are indeed working on it and telling us their plans (some devs including M Brookes are already quite active in hose threads so that is a good sign) but I am just a lowly international mod for the Spanish subsection of this forum that is all. Being a mod does not guarantee any kind of special privilege about the development of the game sadly!

 

[Johnny Spaceboots]

I cringe everytime I hear something about "planetary landings" in a game where I can't even interact with placeholder NPCs.

Agreed. Planetary landings is not what this game needs at this juncture, nor does it need on-foot content. They still have a great deal of things that they need to implement in their core game.

 

[medwyn]

Agreed. Planetary landings is not what this game needs at this juncture, nor does it need on-foot content. They still have a great deal of things that they need to implement in their core game.

I agree. I really don't want to disappoint those players who are awaiting to get the planetary landing feature (I would like to see it myself) but overall it would not help the game as it is now.
There's this term "sandbox" thrown around very vaguely and easily without really agreeing what it does mean for us. However it contains a certain factor of self initiative and imaginery.
But even classic sandbox games have multiple layered game-driven purposes - the reason leveling up is rewarding. A chain of "why for" questions are describing these levels.

Why can I fly for in ED?
- for fun and pure joy because it's beautiful. (This is one of the self-initiative parts of the sandbox - a kind of metagaming level which requires a suitable mindset to be rewarding.)
- for earning money. (This is the only scalable in-game response a player gets from ED right now - everything else is metagame)
- for acting in a role properly - pirating, bonty hunting, trading, exploring, etc. (These roles are framed by the game's rules and encoded schemes - technically the in-game result is more or less money. If I could join a faction of pirates/smugglers etc. I would consider these roles as different ones, right now they are metagame elements.)

Why shall I collect money?
- for buying ships and modules. (This is the only outcome allowed and supported by ED right now. Money can not be transformed into any more in-game reward but some metagame differences like how it does feel to fly another ship and play another role to make fun/money.)
- ?? (this is where the chain breaks the more painfully)

... and the chain is actually broken. I see there are experiments to change government faction and/or sub-faction in some systems. Let's say they manage to do that and now I build that in to pick up the broken chain of "why"s.

Why shall I play for changing a political setup in a system/planet?
- ??? (Nothing further I can go here as I see no outcome in this branch either. The gameplay stays the same except a little metagaming reward for the mind: "we've done it" - but no in-game benefit.)

It's very hard to dig my shovel deep enough in this sandbox if I want to play with the sand
I'm sure FD is aware of that too. Personally I'm a kind of a guy who can be happy with metagame elements using more imagination and roleplay to find ED enjoyable. This is related to my game culture and the fact I loved the original Elite helps a lot to build up an emoptional pool what I can slowly consume while flying around.
However I do understand the newcomers who jumped in hoping that they get an innovative all-round space sim MMO and being disappointed because ED lacks in very basic features, it's full of bugs and it's not intuitive on the way they formed their expectations according to their previous multiplayer gaming experience. It won't help to make judgements of how valid their approach is but finally ED can loose them as players which I would be sad about.
And planetary landing will not bring them back either nor keep them here if it gives only an increase in quantity but not in quality.

I hope FD can make this very hard decision and make their effort towards qualities now. The quantities are here already and they are beautifully crafted, very enjoyable and immersive above all.
"There's onoe way to go - which one shall I choose?"

 

[Viajero]

Agreed. Planetary landings is not what this game needs at this juncture, nor does it need on-foot content. They still have a great deal of things that they need to implement in their core game.

Although I wholeheartedly agree the background simulation needs to improve A LOT (as do many other things...), I am afraid I need to respond to these comments with a question:

"Planetary landings (or any other major expansion) is not what the game needs at this juncture"... Ok, but from whose point of view?

From the point of view of the community fraction that d like the background sim to be deeper and better you are probably right. From a commercial point of view and in order to grow units sold doing that may be suicidal unless the background sim happens to be so spectacularly ground breaking that it would command new sales all on its own.

Things are not just black or white, binary, all or nothing. FDEV has stated recently that they plan to EXPAND their team so, in addition to work on the base game and what is missing, they can ALSO work on expansions. To all accounts they do not plan in diverting significant existing resources for expansions, they are hiring for them.

I think FDEV need a compromise between the two aspects (base game improvements and expansions) if the game is to live long term.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

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

Slow content rollout has been the downfall of many MMO launches - almost all of which have had to go F2P with microtrans and even then some have barely clung on with their fingernails. I know this isn't strictly an MMO, but it's not an "all content included" game either, so MMO is the nearest type whereby ongoing content expansion is a accepted part of the timeline - problem with that is: (next quote)

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.

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

I'm not going to wait a year for a cash injection so FDEV can make this game a semblance of what was promised to be released on 16th Dec 2014; and when the next paid for expansion comes around any gamer who considers buying this game may well read reviews about it and if any of them in a years time are still saying things like the OP, they won't buy it, which means no further cash injections.

FDev need to pull their fingers out and make sure that all the really buggy stuff that is already in the game NOW is flawless inside 6 months, because if it isn't and they launch an expansion at the end of the year (which seems to be the norm now for most games using this model) they will be crucified for not fixing what was considered broken before introducing more polyfilla content (to cover the cracks).

This game is also not designed to be a subscription based MMO. Content type is wrong, NPC activity is also wrong, as is being made very obvious in OP. To make this game worthy of a regular subscription (or even F2P) everything apart from the graphics would have to be re-done from the ground up; a total re-write, which will never happen.

And Eve Online has an 11 year headstart, so they would be wasting their time.

As far as the 400 billion stars - for playable game content, and by playable I mean something more involved than a place to visit and eyecandy - a working fully interactive system - it's 399,999,999,000 too many - I don't think Eve O has even 1,000 systems and everyone seems happy enough 11 years later. It's been pointed out several times that it's not even possible to visit all of them in any human lifespan - and apportioned down it would take thousands of players with separate lists an entire lifetime to visit just their list.

So what's it all there for?

On reflection as cool as it is to have all those systems, it's seems unrealistic to keep them if it's become an achilles heel for both FDev in terms of cost and content delivery and for gamers if the experience as a whole suffers and I think the suggestions to reduce the galactic size as a whole in order to make the remainder better and more like the "dynamic universe" (TM) they promised.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

Although I wholeheartedly agree the background simulation needs to improve A LOT (as do many other things...), I am afraid I need to respond to these comments with a question:

"Planetary landings (or any other major expansion) is not what the game needs at this juncture"... Ok, but from whose point of view?

From the point of view of the community fraction that d like the background sim to be deeper and better you are probably right. From a commercial point of view and in order to grow units sold doing that may be suicidal unless the background sim happens to be so spectacularly ground breaking that it would command new sales all on its own.

Things are not just black or white, binary, all or nothing. FDEV has stated recently that they plan to EXPAND their team so, in addition to work on the base game and what is missing, they can ALSO work on expansions. To all accounts they do not plan in diverting significant existing resources for expansions, they are hiring for them.

I think FDEV need a compromise between the two aspects (base game improvements and expansions) if the game is to live long term.

All the above really depends on how the existing team does with making better all current content - as my previous post states, if the new expansion adds polyfilla content while the existing stuff is still buggy, FDev will have difficulty keeping all the current (now) players from abandoning ship as the first expansion is usually a good marker for how a game dev views their playerbase. (current content from launch still poor with new expansion release usually = money money money.)

 

[ollobrains]

maybe the economic changes arent reflected in system view. Not even the balance of poer but the standard of living, economic and wealth statistics of the various factions could play a part