The Thargoid War: System States Clarifications

Screemonster

Screemonster
rootsrat said:
The weekly reset of the progress is "a bit" harsh IMO. Could be very discouraging to take part for many people.
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Makes it literally pointless as someone that doesn't play as part of a big group. If you don't coordinate to hit the same system as everyone else, your progress gets nuked.

Makes me feel really sorry for that little 20-member squadron that the third maelstrom landed on. There's no way they can pull the numbers of BLOP or CEC and with progress resetting they might as well not even try - and setting a target that would be reasonable for them to achieve in a week would mean the systems around the others would be cleared in a matter of hours.
 

shevek

S
The resetting at the end of the week seems odd, if we can’t do it the first time what would make it more likely to be completed the following week?

Maybe the targets to reach are high when within a certain distance of the maelstrom and we won’t be able to reach them until we’ve got better equipment from the CGs. Or it may be that we are competing the other missions in the wrong order.

It might be that the targets get lower after a certain distance from the maelstrom and are easier to complete.

Once we get the better kit and know the best way to move the status bar we can go back on the offensive and reclaim the lost systems with a big boss fight at the maelstrom.
 

Rick Boobtron

R
Or maybe Thargoids get a bonus from being surrounded by controlled systems, so we need to claw those back in order to make faster progress in other systems. It's Elite, I don't expect the tactics or mechanics to be immediately transparent or obvious. That's why this peek under the hood feels like such a bummer, but also why I don't want to assume a game I love has an ill-conceived mechanic after all this anticipation.
 

Tetra Trash

Tetra Trash
Artie said:
I must concur with the opinions here - I was under the impression that the progress is not being reset in the weekly cycles, only the events are happening on the weekly "tick" (like new systems invaded based on the progress, etc.). As even the current focused effort for a SINGLE star system apparently achieved nothing (if the progress will be reset tomorrow as mentioned), I am afraid not just that the war is basically unwinnable, but more importantly - it's very demotivating. How long will players enjoy to run against the wall?
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I agree with this and similar sentiments expressed by other CMDRs. Being able to only save one system while the thargoids spread to 10s of others? A desperate fight, sure, and maybe unwinnable, but it’d still feel like a fight worth fighting. But resetting to zero each week if the community doesn’t meet some impossible number so all your effort was a waste of time? Why even bother participating? And also if this was the case it should have been communicated to the player base immediately at the start of the invasion, and not after people collectively have spent hundreds of hours only to get all their progress set back to zero. To put this out there at the last minute is extremely disrespectful of players time. I’d been running rescue missions and it was really nice seeing lots of people in instances again. But I’m not going to bother with the effort anymore with progress just being reset. If the thargoids come take my home system, oh well I guess, time to find something else to do or another game to play.
 

Ralph Vargr

Ralph Vargr
YeOldeTraveller said:
The problem is scale.
The reset is not even necessary as we are only making significant progress in a single system, While we defend that system, other Invasions are progressing.
At this stage, winning one and losing ten would still show that effort makes a difference. Over time, we get better organization, and better weapons, and other items that improve the effectiveness of the human effort.
Also, there is a level of intensity that can be maintained. The higher that level, the less time that intensity can be maintained.
To expect that twice the current level of intensity can be achieved and sustained for the couple months needed to deal with just one system in each zone is not reasonable.
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Meanwhile, In RL, gamers get tired out.
 

Laszlo Plasma

L
Bruce G said:
This is our first time simulating a real-time galactic war. We'll adjust things from the original estimates as time goes.
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Yes, you are simulating a real-time galactic war, inside a game that's supposed to be fun. I understand that you are trying to simulate early setbacks in the war, but by wiping out the progress each week and starting again from scratch all you're doing is making me feel like it was time wasted. That's not much fun. It's fine if this is the in-game mechanic you have decided to use to measure the player progress, but just don't tell me about it if its going to kill my sense of accomplishment and motivation to keep participating. I'll just find something else in the game that I'm interested in doing.

I'm not saying "fun" has to be equated to "success". I had more rebuys this week than I've had in the previous 2000 hours of playing time, but it was still fun knowing that I was contributing to something bigger in the game. If this contribution appears to count for nothing it's hard to be motivated to continue.

I mostly play solo, but I love the fact that larger player groups took it upon themselves to start organizing the war effort on behalf of the community - this definitely pointed me in the right direction to get me started. I see that those groups are now giving up after this game mechanic has been revealed. Very sad. This is a setback to the narrative because many new players won't find a way to participate.

LP
 
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HaulerPauler

H
Seeing that all you do will accomplish nothing made me realize, that this whole thing is just a Ingame Event that is designed to be dragged out as long as possible. The current phase of this event is so badly designed, that I'll just wait out for the next phase.
Heck, I even hauled tons of mats so that we get new/better AX weapons, even somehow made it into the top 10%, but now, I'm no longer motivated to join the fight. Heck, I even killed my first big boy bugs, hoping I'll do something, but now It feels like I wasted my time getting an somewhat acceptable AX ship and collecting rebuy costs.

So please, Fdev, if this is just the start for the "real thing" just swarm the bubble with bugs already and get over with it, don't waste our time. Don't drag this out for months, If we can do it in weeks.
 

Riverside

Riverside
OrdinaryMan said:
I can understand the logic behind the "reset" situation. "Thargoids need to be dangerous not only on the battlefield but also politically". But 1 week is really too short.

Do 1 month. More reasonable time.
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I think you are right that there should be the possibility to lose, and it not be only a matter of time (which makes more sense with station repairs after the Thargoids have been ejected).

However a lot of existing game mechanics are tied to the weekly tick. The same effect should be possible with a rebalance of the weekly targets (ie reduce the target rather than extending the time).
 

Screemonster

Screemonster
OrdinaryMan said:
I can understand the logic behind the "reset" situation. "Thargoids need to be dangerous not only on the battlefield but also politically". But 1 week is really too short.

Do 1 month. More reasonable time.
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Not even a month.

Here's what I'd do in a game like this.
Give each maelstrom a finite amount of reinforcements each week that they can spend on pushing the progress bar back, or expanding to invade other systems.
Each week, they spend these resources on trying to undo up to half of the current progress in each system.
Prioritise doing so in the systems with the most progress until all reinforcements are consumed or every system has had some reinforcements, with the extra going towards further invasions.
That way, individual players that aren't in a position to coordinate heavily can still contribute by hitting other systems where the thargoids won't prioritise spending a lot of resources to undo the damage (thereby setting the system up for a big push when a sizable number of other players can move in and finish the job) or simply doing as much damage as possible in order to eat up resources that the thargoids would otherwise be able to spend on expanding.
 

Grevsnes

G
Whilst I understand that FDEV will be monitoring and tweaking the numbers. I believe a weekly reset might not have been the best plan of action. Though I can see how it might be the better of two evils if it was not possible to implement a way to tweak the numbers and keep the players progress week to week.

The main arguments I am hearing against a reset in the discords I frequent are:
-It hurts player motivation.
-Makes it feel like one does not have the ability to make an impact.
-Chases away new players that were drawn to the game because of the war.
-Chases away old players that gave the game another chance because of the war.
-Makes the player faction leaders look like they don't know what they are doing.
-Splits the community into smaller less focused factions as they loose trust in the already established groups.

If the players I have been talking to are right this will look mighty bad for FDEV and might cause what looked very good initially to look really bad. I hope that FDEV understands that they have a fire on their hands. And that they will have to find a away to tweak the balance without resetting progress.

Where the difficulty of defending a system is concerned I believe that they will have to significantly reduce it if they are to keep the reset mechanic to the point where a dedicated group of 20 to 30 players can defend a system as the player group shrinks again and others loose interest in the war and set their sights on easier and less frustrating parts of the game.

I think FDEV might also be forgetting that not all of their players have done the Guardian or Engineer grinds. Both are very time consuming grinds. If they are expecting all of us to focus on the war. Then they need to reconsider the difficulty of getting in system. Even using heat sinks and silent running whilst drifting with flight assist off I was most of the time unable to escape the hyperdictions and was forced to go grind out Professor Palin for the dirty drives I needed in order to increase my odds of survival to the point where I might not go broke trying to partake in the war effort.

Finally I would like to point out that if the players are expected to figure things out as they go along then they need to be encouraged to do so. Wiping out what little progress the players have made and forcing them to start over only serves to punish them for trying and discouraging them from taking part.
 

Angelpichu

Angelpichu
I feel like it might make a little more sense if progress isn't fully reset each week, but instead has Thargoid reinforcements that push down the repel bar based on how many systems the Maelstrom controls, with the idea being that a Maelstrom, while having a massive amount of supplies to reinforce invasions, has a limit, regardless of how high, and that if the reinforcements would push the bar towards the Thargoids too much, the system would be lost then.
 
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