Note: I play in solo mode. No player commanders were harmed in the making of this Easter present.
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I've been out exploring for over a week, and I was returning to Hay Fever, on the other side of the "bubble" from Borscht, for a landing at the Fed aligned port. I had been building a friendly rep with almost all the local factions. There is a reasonable amount of security in the system, and I had few troubles carrying out ordinary trading and short exploration trips.
Until today.
I'm quite used to being insta-interdicted by NPC's on returning from an exploration run (there has to be a trigger value in data value, somewhere), but this one was special. It started with an Asp Scout, firing kinetics and missiles. I ran. The only good thing to report is that point defense is still a great investment. Then, the rest of the Easter Bunnies arrived. I was not able to get a count, or type of them before my attempt to jump out failed, and I was looking at a rebuy screen.
900 KCr and many MCr of data lost in less than thirty seconds. Worse, an entire week of gameplay lost.
I've seen some persons on the board gleefully remarking that explorers were getting it too easy, and the game was getting more "dangerous". I have been putting up with the increased rate, and intensity of interdictions for some time now, and it has not increased my enjoyment of the game.
Attention players who wish for more combat: Dangerous is not necessarily equal to "fun".
If the stats on the EDDM pages are to be believed, about 3% of the players participating there are ranked Elite in combat. Yes, it's only those contributing to EDDM, just in the same way participation on this message board is not totally representative of the player base. Or the Steam charts.
This has happened before with other flight simulation titles, where an, *ahem*, elite group of players shout down the 97% who are not, *ahem*, "elite", and get their way. This is no longer December 2014, and the NPC's have gotten better. Lots better. There are now and again bleatings from players claiming that the NPC's "cheat".
In other words, the NPC's are winning more and more engagements. The NPC threat level was cranked up (in all modes), due to complaints that the game was too easy.
This does not make for player retention.
I literally had to lie down for two hours, to avoid a major negative medical event. Fortunately, my military and medical training/discipline saved my body, and my PC's hardware...
I'm going to fly Alison The Asp back to Borscht, collecting what bits of data I can on the way (there are a few scraps to be had inside inhabited space). Then, she goes back in the hangar. I will then switch to Gladys the Cobra 3, for her 400+ meters/sec speed, and the much lower rebuy cost. Also, no more week-long trips. I know the Great Explorers will laugh at that, but when you work rotating 12 hour shifts, that personal time becomes even more precious.
Arguing with Frontier is pointless. We have all seen the endless forum threads. It seems that Frontier is going to continue to try to compete with upcoming space sim titles in terms of combat action. Hopefully, there will be no cartoon dinosaurs. There might be some strange NPC hairdo's, though.
When watching reruns of Downton Abbey is more fun than playing Elite Dangerous, the game has a problem, not me. I have over two thousand hours invested in this game. It's personal time that determines what I wish to do for entertainment. When the game kills me to make other people happy, it's time to find other things to do.
Time to fly Alison back to Borscht. Fortunately, unlike the games with aircraft and mecha I have bought with real-world cash, Elite will have some value to come back to.
*********************************************************************************
I've been out exploring for over a week, and I was returning to Hay Fever, on the other side of the "bubble" from Borscht, for a landing at the Fed aligned port. I had been building a friendly rep with almost all the local factions. There is a reasonable amount of security in the system, and I had few troubles carrying out ordinary trading and short exploration trips.
Until today.
I'm quite used to being insta-interdicted by NPC's on returning from an exploration run (there has to be a trigger value in data value, somewhere), but this one was special. It started with an Asp Scout, firing kinetics and missiles. I ran. The only good thing to report is that point defense is still a great investment. Then, the rest of the Easter Bunnies arrived. I was not able to get a count, or type of them before my attempt to jump out failed, and I was looking at a rebuy screen.
900 KCr and many MCr of data lost in less than thirty seconds. Worse, an entire week of gameplay lost.
I've seen some persons on the board gleefully remarking that explorers were getting it too easy, and the game was getting more "dangerous". I have been putting up with the increased rate, and intensity of interdictions for some time now, and it has not increased my enjoyment of the game.
Attention players who wish for more combat: Dangerous is not necessarily equal to "fun".
If the stats on the EDDM pages are to be believed, about 3% of the players participating there are ranked Elite in combat. Yes, it's only those contributing to EDDM, just in the same way participation on this message board is not totally representative of the player base. Or the Steam charts.
This has happened before with other flight simulation titles, where an, *ahem*, elite group of players shout down the 97% who are not, *ahem*, "elite", and get their way. This is no longer December 2014, and the NPC's have gotten better. Lots better. There are now and again bleatings from players claiming that the NPC's "cheat".
In other words, the NPC's are winning more and more engagements. The NPC threat level was cranked up (in all modes), due to complaints that the game was too easy.
This does not make for player retention.
I literally had to lie down for two hours, to avoid a major negative medical event. Fortunately, my military and medical training/discipline saved my body, and my PC's hardware...
I'm going to fly Alison The Asp back to Borscht, collecting what bits of data I can on the way (there are a few scraps to be had inside inhabited space). Then, she goes back in the hangar. I will then switch to Gladys the Cobra 3, for her 400+ meters/sec speed, and the much lower rebuy cost. Also, no more week-long trips. I know the Great Explorers will laugh at that, but when you work rotating 12 hour shifts, that personal time becomes even more precious.
Arguing with Frontier is pointless. We have all seen the endless forum threads. It seems that Frontier is going to continue to try to compete with upcoming space sim titles in terms of combat action. Hopefully, there will be no cartoon dinosaurs. There might be some strange NPC hairdo's, though.
When watching reruns of Downton Abbey is more fun than playing Elite Dangerous, the game has a problem, not me. I have over two thousand hours invested in this game. It's personal time that determines what I wish to do for entertainment. When the game kills me to make other people happy, it's time to find other things to do.
Time to fly Alison back to Borscht. Fortunately, unlike the games with aircraft and mecha I have bought with real-world cash, Elite will have some value to come back to.
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