It’s a social and political experiment for sure just not at all like you’re thinking. 
"The game is almost a political and social experiment.”
- Thread starter Chaparral
- Start date
It’s a social and political experiment for sure just not at all like you’re thinking.
Fascinating. So what are you thinking?
Its not a good game, its great space flight sim and the graphics/sound are excellent, but its not a good game.
PVE content is shallow beyond belief. Every activity is worded differently but essentially entails in 3 or 4 basic activities: deliever something, kill something or go somewhere.
Whether its PP, BGS missions or CGs, its all the same activities.
The only saving grace is other players. There is nothing out there at least for me excpet other players. My entire game play involves interacting with other people.
They could drop every single PVE activity tomorrow and I wouldnt notice.
PVE content is shallow beyond belief. Every activity is worded differently but essentially entails in 3 or 4 basic activities: deliever something, kill something or go somewhere.
Whether its PP, BGS missions or CGs, its all the same activities.
The only saving grace is other players. There is nothing out there at least for me excpet other players. My entire game play involves interacting with other people.
They could drop every single PVE activity tomorrow and I wouldnt notice.
Just like what Anglomatic said. All the politics and struggle that comes from players pitted against each other.
Beyond that, take the obsession with credit per hour grinding. Folks will support the creation of super soldiers simply because there's a payout. Every excuse in the book will be used to justify this. 'It's just a game.' 'CGs don't really count.' 'Oh, c'mon, you can't be serious.'
And yet, that literally happened last week in Rind. Hmm.
Not sure about experiment, but OP is correct that the community has been used as a pillar of gameplay at least ever since i've started.
I think the issue is while this worked while elite was euro truck simulator in space.. now that elite is more mainstream (consoles) the community is much more diverse, and honestly as overtaken frontier.
For it not to snap off and away its probably been true for a long time that frontier need to be more active and one of the people in action as well as pretense, either that or build the game up so that the platform is rich enough it can stand for itself.
With the game implementation still pending all you have is destruction tornadoes of wants... possibly like... ugh.
I mean the community management really falls short, shows up acts like its fully about feeling the love, then goes silent for months. For all issues raised, not even an honest answer regardless out of basic respect for people that bother to ask it.
I think the issue is while this worked while elite was euro truck simulator in space.. now that elite is more mainstream (consoles) the community is much more diverse, and honestly as overtaken frontier.
For it not to snap off and away its probably been true for a long time that frontier need to be more active and one of the people in action as well as pretense, either that or build the game up so that the platform is rich enough it can stand for itself.
With the game implementation still pending all you have is destruction tornadoes of wants... possibly like... ugh.
I mean the community management really falls short, shows up acts like its fully about feeling the love, then goes silent for months. For all issues raised, not even an honest answer regardless out of basic respect for people that bother to ask it.
Last edited:
It really doesn't because player groups are handling most of it - as it should be.
Last edited:
I'm sick enough of IRL jack-donkey politics, for me personally that's the last thing I want more of in my game. EVE made my eyes bleed with the amount of Wheaton's Law violations that were against the players themselves and not just their ingame characters, as so much of EVE nastiness easily extends into IRL situations due to the arrangement of the game and the use of real-value currencies. IDK if I'd want all the nastiness without all the actual gameplay from EVE as well, as at least it is super deep for how terrible you can be to someone else.
But then, that game already does the angle of realpolitik waaaay better than could be done here; for those looking for it, it's perfect. Here we'd basically need a new game written to even start getting close to "Ima mole in your corp for years" gameplay.I agree the credit obsession here is weird, though I'd imagine in the absence of other more familiar progress markers, cash accumulation may show to some players as the most obvious counter for their gameplay experience. We certainly need more things to do with credits than hoard them till the number doesn't fit on a basic calculator screen.
Not convinced. I mean they try to, some even get away with it by figuring out how things work for real, as opposed to "as advertised". But no, the platform, community and any rational progression for a roadmap if there was one, got away from FD shortly after Horizons dropped. Much like Karrde Sun outlines.
I like your idea Phisto, but I think it's way too sophisticated for FD. It would require a level of knowledge share and intuitive decision making based on available information, that FD simply do not demonstrate.
Your criticisms of the game are fair, but the idea that FDev has done all this with the hidden motivation to conduct a social experiment is nuts. That's not what Braben meant and you know it.
Some games are fun, some aren't. Some movies are good, some movies are bad. No need to come up with conspiracy theories to explain these things.
Some games are fun, some aren't. Some movies are good, some movies are bad. No need to come up with conspiracy theories to explain these things.
Last edited:
These were early comments from Braben when he saw how people were playing after they released 'multiplayer'..
Looking back and considering the entire development of ED, I think whats more interesting is how he (yes Braben) acted to thwart how people play the game. Turning the mirror 180 degrees, all I see is a control freak.
At every step its Braben who has used the 'tricks up his sleeve' to control how people play the game.
Sandbox? 'Ultimate Freedom', its all pig dung.
Looking back and considering the entire development of ED, I think whats more interesting is how he (yes Braben) acted to thwart how people play the game. Turning the mirror 180 degrees, all I see is a control freak.
At every step its Braben who has used the 'tricks up his sleeve' to control how people play the game.
Sandbox? 'Ultimate Freedom', its all pig dung.
Last edited:
He's history's greatest monster.
Be careful. The lawyers might take you literally.
I'll take my chances. I'd rather be sued to bankruptcy than to ever use an "/s" tag.
/i know what you mean /m{ate}
Last edited:
It's not an idea. Countless player run groups are taking advantage of Elite's incredible sandbox right now. Have you ever joined one? If not, would recommend checking out Inara.
What's the matter? Don't like being beaten? Fight back!
Another of these threads? Where's Eagleboy? Naw, of course there's no 'conspiracy' to keep ED on 'maintenance mode". Beyond is still ongoing. It's just the lull before they report what's going on for 3.1.x , And of course JWE is a priority for Frontier until the May release date. A similar lull happened in the wait before the PS4 release.
Sad to see some folks say they would leave ED and "not look back" if there was another game approaching ED's simulation achievements. Which I'd doubt would even be the case. No other project has made it a main goal to approach or eclipse ED's simulated fidelity to the galaxy. Infinity Battlescape I'd agree is the main contender, but looking on their pages, they don't say they are trying to emulate ED's scope on a galactic scale and don't even mention more than one solar system. It sounds like >a< system could be generated for an mmo campaign space, then maybe a new system generated for starting a new campaign.. Sad to see ED's detail to astronomy get short shrift by some compared to IB. The new beyond textures have been a superb improvement, and FDev have constantly kept a balance between graphics flair and playable framerates.
Not to worry, the game is not 'doomed' and the best is yet to come. As usual patience requiring months, years, decades is needed to see the upcoming best glory days of ED and I'd still bet no other competitor is going to approach or even eclipse ED probably for the rest of this half-century.
Sad to see some folks say they would leave ED and "not look back" if there was another game approaching ED's simulation achievements. Which I'd doubt would even be the case. No other project has made it a main goal to approach or eclipse ED's simulated fidelity to the galaxy. Infinity Battlescape I'd agree is the main contender, but looking on their pages, they don't say they are trying to emulate ED's scope on a galactic scale and don't even mention more than one solar system. It sounds like >a< system could be generated for an mmo campaign space, then maybe a new system generated for starting a new campaign.. Sad to see ED's detail to astronomy get short shrift by some compared to IB. The new beyond textures have been a superb improvement, and FDev have constantly kept a balance between graphics flair and playable framerates.
Not to worry, the game is not 'doomed' and the best is yet to come. As usual patience requiring months, years, decades is needed to see the upcoming best glory days of ED and I'd still bet no other competitor is going to approach or even eclipse ED probably for the rest of this half-century.
Last edited:
Bought Subnautica. Nice game. Played it for a few hours, returned to ED.
Uh oh! CIG's lawyers will be onto you for using that word in relation to another game!
Similarly, I played Farcry5 up to one of the bosses' demise, had good laughs with the npc AI, then got tired of it after seeing all the routines and scripting start repeating, and have been back to ED since, hmm.
Uh oh! CIG's lawyers will be onto you for using that word in relation to another game!
Um, yep, I must have had some unconscious 'dsmart'wording slip out there.
Last edited:
LOL what?
It has way more content than ED has and a story to boot. It has more graphical assets, more story, more immersion, more stuff to work out, stuff to read, discovery - ED is repetition which you've mistaken for content. Just because you can repeat something a million times so you can eek it out for thousands of hours != content.
ED isn't a player story driven game, you are mixing up your genre's. For story driven space sims there's freespace2 and loads of mods., or X-wing.
Subnautica's game world is about three kilometers across (and deep), complete it in hardcore then again just messing about and uninstall until the planned arctic expansion. It's a very good game for about 40/50 hours then you've seen it all. ED is galactic in comparison.