It's due the setting of the game.
I am not so sure stations and colonies would benefit ED that much (mostly because of the P2P infrastructure it wouldn't even work probably), but I can understand why these requests are getting made. And FD should understand it too, and devise a better communication strategy to new players:
You have an almost completely empty galaxy, and you can become a millionaire in this game. What have adventurers done if they got money, crew, unclaimed land and a ship? Ever heard of conquistadors? I mean there's a reason why "Elite clones" progressed to this base/factory building in the first place (even Frontier had a "base-precursor" with the MB4 machines).
Read again the Frontier: Elite 2 manuals, about all the stories how worlds got colonized by small pioneer independent crews, about explorers finding new worlds for colonization. That was a re-occuring theme throughout the lore. ED's "problem" is the setting: It just asks for expansion and colonization. Sooner or later, after getting a battlecruiser and millions, you just almost automatically ask the question: Hey, why can't I claim this super far away planet? Why was Maurice Grant (Ross 128) able to do this, but not ME? Every human being could own a few dozen star systems and there would be still enough for everybody. The thought of "claming your own stuff" in this wilderness just screams in your face.
It's like making a free-roaming MMO in the wild west, with most of the gaming world being painfully empty: Requests for pioneer cities etc. would develop naturally.
That's the crux of ED: Its setting just asks for something (as acknowledged be Frontier themselves way back, when they wrote the lore for Elite 2 and FFE) that they don't want to provide in this game. Many new players are going to demand this stuff, and not just because of Eve, but because it's almost inherent to the setting.
The other common complaint is the "small cog in wheel" feeling, and that's again something that's actually foreign to the "space western" setting Elite plays in and actually feels like a retcon. Pilots with a hefty ELITE rank are NOT "small cogs". I mean the Frontier manual talks about fame and riches the original Jameson accumulated throughout his career. In Privateer, Elite, FFE, Freelancer, Archimedean Dynasty, Sid Meier's Pirates etc. there was actually never (with the exception of the very beginning maybe) the impression that you are a total nobody in the machine (Han Solo wasn't a nameless cog in his setting either) By comandeering a ship in the first place you are almost automatically above the "land bound dwellers". Titles like "Prince" and "Admiral" embolden that feeling. I mean in ED you can be a Prince, a veteran of dozens of battles and piloting a huge cruiser armed to teeth, yet the environment treats you still as a totally unimportant "small cog" all the time. That's cognitive dissonance right here. It's telling Francisco Pizarro to clean shoes.
The setting of the game conflicts all the time with the design decisions of the game. That's just glaringly obvious.
I am not so sure stations and colonies would benefit ED that much (mostly because of the P2P infrastructure it wouldn't even work probably), but I can understand why these requests are getting made. And FD should understand it too, and devise a better communication strategy to new players:
You have an almost completely empty galaxy, and you can become a millionaire in this game. What have adventurers done if they got money, crew, unclaimed land and a ship? Ever heard of conquistadors? I mean there's a reason why "Elite clones" progressed to this base/factory building in the first place (even Frontier had a "base-precursor" with the MB4 machines).
Read again the Frontier: Elite 2 manuals, about all the stories how worlds got colonized by small pioneer independent crews, about explorers finding new worlds for colonization. That was a re-occuring theme throughout the lore. ED's "problem" is the setting: It just asks for expansion and colonization. Sooner or later, after getting a battlecruiser and millions, you just almost automatically ask the question: Hey, why can't I claim this super far away planet? Why was Maurice Grant (Ross 128) able to do this, but not ME? Every human being could own a few dozen star systems and there would be still enough for everybody. The thought of "claming your own stuff" in this wilderness just screams in your face.
It's like making a free-roaming MMO in the wild west, with most of the gaming world being painfully empty: Requests for pioneer cities etc. would develop naturally.
That's the crux of ED: Its setting just asks for something (as acknowledged be Frontier themselves way back, when they wrote the lore for Elite 2 and FFE) that they don't want to provide in this game. Many new players are going to demand this stuff, and not just because of Eve, but because it's almost inherent to the setting.
The other common complaint is the "small cog in wheel" feeling, and that's again something that's actually foreign to the "space western" setting Elite plays in and actually feels like a retcon. Pilots with a hefty ELITE rank are NOT "small cogs". I mean the Frontier manual talks about fame and riches the original Jameson accumulated throughout his career. In Privateer, Elite, FFE, Freelancer, Archimedean Dynasty, Sid Meier's Pirates etc. there was actually never (with the exception of the very beginning maybe) the impression that you are a total nobody in the machine (Han Solo wasn't a nameless cog in his setting either) By comandeering a ship in the first place you are almost automatically above the "land bound dwellers". Titles like "Prince" and "Admiral" embolden that feeling. I mean in ED you can be a Prince, a veteran of dozens of battles and piloting a huge cruiser armed to teeth, yet the environment treats you still as a totally unimportant "small cog" all the time. That's cognitive dissonance right here. It's telling Francisco Pizarro to clean shoes.
The setting of the game conflicts all the time with the design decisions of the game. That's just glaringly obvious.
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