The Wasted Potential of ED

[Greybeard Seawolf]

I'm an old guy and thankfully not dead yet. I played the original on a Speccy and the sequels on a 128k Spectrum and an Amiga. after getting married and having kids I couldn't afford a PC or console for many years and missed the launch of ED.

In 2018 I finally got an XBox and started playing this incredible iteration before switching to PC. Like many people I was overwhelmed at the start and watched every YouTube tutorial I could find. It was in some ways a blessing but ultimately it was a curse, for while I learned a lot of things I also came to believe that the only way to play the game properly was to grind everything to grade 5 as fast as possible. It almost destroyed the experience for me until I finally realised that grinding was a personal choice and entirely unnecessary for most aspects of the game.

The enjoyment I've had in game since I stopped the grind is incredible, I missed so much of the early game experience because I was obsessively trying to gather mats and running from engineer to engineer to upgrade stuff. I really can't express the difference it's made just relaxing, doing as wide a variety of missions, choosing rewards carefully and gathering everything you could possibly need while actually enjoying the experience.

If you want to rank up and get a corvette or an FC within a few weeks, that's fine but if it burns you out and ruins the experience in the process, it's unfair to then turn around and blame the game and it's Devs because of a decision you made. This isn't aimed at anyone in particular, just my experience. There is no end game, there is no rush.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Having POIs with derelict ships doesn't necessarily mean a requirement to add Ships interiors, but a sort of several rooms in a ship-look-alike derelict.
I mean it could be much easier for them to add those more or less static assets, but without adding ship interiors for player owned ships.

I think they'd probably need to do both - the "other ships" to add gameplay and the "own ship" to add ARX sales and immersion - with a lot of shared assets to make it easier.

 

[Northpin]

I think they'd probably need to do both - the "other ships" to add gameplay and the "own ship" to add ARX sales and immersion - with a lot of shared assets to make it easier.

Still, it would be much harder to have ship interiors - fully fledged ship interiors - for 38 flyable ship, than to have 2-3 derelict type of assets.
Plus, they said they wont add ship interiors without having designed a gameplay around them - and technically i dont see much gameplay around my ship's interiors.

And not at last, Ship Interiors will be sort of a trap for FDev.
The die-hards Ship_Interiors_Players will always compare ED to SC (even tho the scope of the 2 games is completely different) and will slam them down for doing a half-baked job while most of the player will simply not care or - if they make more tedious the board/disembark process - will join in slamming FD even more.

So, realistically speaking i see ship interiors as a lose-lose for FD no matter what they do.

And to be honest, with DBOBE gone from FDev helm and JW taking the chair, it's more probable to see PZ2 and JWE3 than another major update for ED

 

[Northpin]

"own ship" to add ARX sales and immersion

Regarding this specific part - i was really surprised when they added Carriers interiors and they basically gifted us 3 variations of interior "paint jobs"
I really expected to pay arx for them (and i was willing to anyway).

 

[Cmdr Derzelat]

If you don't want to just jump on and do the activities you enjoy, why do you need to fill some engineering shopping list?

Like I said before, the activities don't magically change once you've got engineering; they stay exactly the same. So if you're not going on and doing them now, why will engineering change that?

It is this last part that i was answering for, i dont think is absolutely "alt tab related" . Being a sandbox means everyone can try its path of doing or set objectives. I was trying to explain, from my point of view, why people might want engineering and still complain is grindy. I am not saying engineering is a grind. The gameplay required to obtain the materials that stand behind engineering feels like that because it might not be related to what one wants to achieve.
Saying "solely raw materials" its saying 1/3 of the materials needed i will have to play something that i dont want to, and based on "trail your own blaze" philosophy i should have an alternative. Sorry for edit, slippy fingers.

 

[Jmanis]

Plausibly, ship interiors could add a few more uses for them - you'd find some derelict ships in a POI (surface or space) and can go inside to retrieve objects. Recon limpets could then let you assess which ones have the most valuable salvage before you go in, or extract access codes from the ship's computer core so you don't have to use a bunch of e-breaches when you get there.

I can think of all sorts of reasons to poke around other ships' interiors and ways it could be integrated with existing ship-flying mechanics. But is that the "wrong sort of ship interiors"

i see people refer to that more as "EVA"ing about.

Personally, that would be definitely be good... but i would hate for that effort to happen without first putting Recon and other interactive limpet capabilities through the paces properly first. If all on-foot in spaceborntructures did was replace basic limpet functions (e.g get in board to hack a console to jettison cargo), that would be a huge waste.

Imagine this... mission: Raid the pirate outpost and kill their leader.

Fly out to the USS... there's a pirate outpost guarded by ships and outpost turrets... destroy the pirates, hack or disable the turrets with recon limpets or by destroying their respective power grenerators. Then hack open a docking port and fly on in and dock. Disembark and you're in the target ship hangar... then fight or sneak your way through to the command... maybe you just blast everyone apart, maybe you hack security systems to turn on the occupants... maybe there's also spearoffs into other missions. Maybe there's even some mechanism to access high value cargo while you're there.


Truth be told, if FD did that, the pay would be peanuts compared to the effort. .. but regardless, it would be good fun.

I may not have wanted Odd nor really think much of it, but it's here, and should be used to its full potential regardless.... but that shouldn't come at the expense of the space game's mechanics. The above example i gave would equally work if you just left it at "clear out the pirates, disable turrets, loot cargo bays (with decent loot for gods sake)" to stay in the spirit of Odd being standalone.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I'm an old guy and thankfully not dead yet. I played the original on a Speccy and the sequels on a 128k Spectrum and an Amiga. after getting married and having kids I couldn't afford a PC or console for many years and missed the launch of ED.

In 2018 I finally got an XBox and started playing this incredible iteration before switching to PC. Like many people I was overwhelmed at the start and watched every YouTube tutorial I could find. It was in some ways a blessing but ultimately it was a curse, for while I learned a lot of things I also came to believe that the only way to play the game properly was to grind everything to grade 5 as fast as possible. It almost destroyed the experience for me until I finally realised that grinding was a personal choice and entirely unnecessary for most aspects of the game.

The enjoyment I've had in game since I stopped the grind is incredible, I missed so much of the early game experience because I was obsessively trying to gather mats and running from engineer to engineer to upgrade stuff. I really can't express the difference it's made just relaxing, doing as wide a variety of missions, choosing rewards carefully and gathering everything you could possibly need while actually enjoying the experience.

If you want to rank up and get a corvette or an FC within a few weeks, that's fine but if it burns you out and ruins the experience in the process, it's unfair to then turn around and blame the game and it's Devs because of a decision you made. This isn't aimed at anyone in particular, just my experience. There is no end game, there is no rush.

Vey much this. This is why I am so hypercritical of all those minmaxing-best-start-meta guides out there, not only do they convey the (wrong) impression that the grind is necessary to play the game, they directly contribute to players having the life and fun sucked out of the game.

Of course we all want the shiny toys as fast as possible... or do we? With the two alts I started last year I found that (I admit, with the prior knowledge I gained with my main) the early game is wonderful. Everything you do has "meaning", if you will. Sure, especially with prior knowledge it is easy to skip the "I am too poor to outfit my ship" phase, but actually having to think about what to do next, what do buy for the task at hand and what to skip because you cannot afford it is fun.

Also, as for this special longing to get your Anaconda ASAP: Personally, I have completely grown out large ships. I was very proud when I was able to outfit my first (and only) battle corvette, which cost like a billion or so overall, but at some point... I got bored of it. It collected dust until I recently started scrapping it for parts.

I say: Eff the grind, embrace your limitations and enjoy the progress you can make buy just playing the game. Outrageous concept, I know.

 

[Northpin]

Of course we all want the shiny toys as fast as possible... or do we?

On my Epic account i happily played more than 2 months with basically no engineering and then took me more than a year to unlock Palin
So i did a lot of combat with only G3 drives... preposterous!!!

 

[LuxDez]

5. There's almost no in-game story development except little excerpts that players must piece together.

I think that this is not a minus, but a huge plus. The only disappointment is the frequency of updates.

 

[Astaran]

Mass Effect also has the benefit of being a dedicated single player game. Elite is in that weird place where it’s kind of multiplayer but also not… and the players would riot if the Thargoid War “simulation” actually made them a completely overwhelming force.

Just look at the reaction that the first week of the war kicking off received. People just called it quits immediately because lots of effort was pushed into one system and it reset to zero (then they turned around when it became evident that wasn’t the intended/final balance).

Yeah, I said in a different thread that I believe Elite combines the worst of both worlds when it comes to Singleplayer vs. Multiplayer. It lacks the easy ways to socialize and play with other players that MMOs offer, but also lacks the player agency, narrative and character progression of a singleplayer game. Obviously, I do not expect my NPC crewmember in Elite to be a Liara T'Soni, a Garrus or Tali, but in Elite there's really nothing to them at all. It's just a portait that drains money at every transaction and allows you to use a single module (fighter bay). Even Lydia in Skyrim had more depth to her.

I think the idea of the "overwhelming Alien enemy" is more of a perception and emerges from a good narrative. In Elite and in Mass Effect, I can kill the minions of my enemy by the thousands. But in Mass Effect (due to it being a singleplayer game), there's still the perception of fighting against overwhelming odds and that there is something at stake (it also helps that combat in Mass Effect is just a lot more fun than in Elite). In Elite, I just don't care about the survival of the Bubble. Most dramatis personae are just voiceless and faceless random names in GalNet anyway (like my NPC crewmember). Being a MMO is no excuse, though. One of my fondest memories in gaming are the opening on Ahn'Quiraj on my WoW Server ~2006 or the Demon invasion that preluded the opening of the Dark Portal (Burning Crusade). I was heavily invested and engaged in both narratives and had a lot of fun participating.

 

[Planewalker]

The existing tutorials do a decent job of explaining the basics of moving, shooting, flying the ship and walking around. But then they stop abruptly. There's probably a need for an optional multi-stage tutorial mission once you've got into the game proper that just introduces the basics in-game - e.g. it'd get you to search the map for an Industrial system, fly there and buy some Animal Monitors, and then meet your contact - who, it turns out, only needs one of them and suggests you sell the rest at an Agricultural station. Your contact could potentially offer quite a long chain of missions introducing various modules, game mechanics, and so on - which you can always just ignore and do your own thing instead, of course.

That is a really good idea!

Wrt mechanics, elite is an exploration game through and through.
-this applies to both controls, mechanics and interlinked systems imo.


I have to ask, when looting why are people not taking everything but the kitchen sink?

It lacks the easy ways to socialize and play with other players that MMOs offer,

Adding friends and then flying with them is not something i would say is particularly difficult in elite, so unless i am misunderstanding something i will have to disagree on that.
(the added bonus of exploring the game with others is that you find out things faster and have better testing grounds)

The NPCs are talking about the election ingame when you are at concourses btw, they also talk about thargoids so i see work being done on making the world more alive.

 

[Uiros Ueramos]

Yeah, I said in a different thread that I believe Elite combines the worst of both worlds when it comes to Singleplayer vs. Multiplayer. It lacks the easy ways to socialize and play with other players that MMOs offer, but also lacks the player agency, narrative and character progression of a singleplayer game. Obviously, I do not expect my NPC crewmember in Elite to be a Liara T'Soni, a Garrus or Tali, but in Elite there's really nothing to them at all. It's just a portait that drains money at every transaction and allows you to use a single module (fighter bay). Even Lydia in Skyrim had more depth to her.

I think the idea of the "overwhelming Alien enemy" is more of a perception and emerges from a good narrative. In Elite and in Mass Effect, I can kill the minions of my enemy by the thousands. But in Mass Effect (due to it being a singleplayer game), there's still the perception of fighting against overwhelming odds and that there is something at stake (it also helps that combat in Mass Effect is just a lot more fun than in Elite). In Elite, I just don't care about the survival of the Bubble. Most dramatis personae are just voiceless and faceless random names in GalNet anyway (like my NPC crewmember). Being a MMO is no excuse, though. One of my fondest memories in gaming are the opening on Ahn'Quiraj on my WoW Server ~2006 or the Demon invasion that preluded the opening of the Dark Portal (Burning Crusade). I was heavily invested and engaged in both narratives and had a lot of fun participating.

In terms of drama and epic storytelling, the original Mass Effect was...

 

[Planewalker]

The enjoyment I've had in game since I stopped the grind is incredible, I missed so much of the early game experience because I was obsessively trying to gather mats and running from engineer to engineer to upgrade stuff. I really can't express the difference it's made just relaxing, doing as wide a variety of missions, choosing rewards carefully and gathering everything you could possibly need while actually enjoying the experience.

That is how you level up in elite.

It's just a portait that drains money at every transaction and allows you to use a single module (fighter bay).

It is also a sublime deterrent when fighting higher level enemies.

 

[RolloTreadway]

I don't agree with everything that Nyxson says, but he has some valid criticism.

Nyxson:
Plus points
1. Beautiful experience and graphics (wallpaper engine),
2. Virtual reality is amazing, but no VR support for on-foot gameplay in Odyssey.

Minus points
1. Insane grind for (engineer) upgrades, even for people who like to grind.
2. Necessary information about prices in other star systems is unavailable in-game. Players need third party tools to see the best and most lucrative buy/sell prices and round-trips.
3. The first-person-shooter stuff is bad compared to Halo, CoD and even Fortnite.
4. A gigantic galaxy, yet only a tiny percentage is used. The travel time through the galaxy compared to the amount of activities are difficult to justify.
5. There's almost no in-game story development except little excerpts that players must piece together.

Suggestions in the comments:

NONSTOPPE9
"There are a few ways to fix this. Some of them might sound very complex but I think they can do it with their very small team.
-Introducing an AI voice system for all the characters to make it feel lively
-live companions, you can get companions in the game but there is no content, liveliness, or anything beneficial other than controlling some guns for you. Better Faction Wars for example in the Oddessey DLC they could add on-planet fights and create warzones within the game.
-Adding a better mission system, with better pay, which can make it an alternative to grinding the combat or mining in the game
-New types of missions for example exploration missions, maybe where they will pay you to explore more or to reach a final system, so you can get the cartographic money + the mission rewards
-Rank Up missions and Permit missions that give you the following as rewards
-Lighten the Grind by creating a more robust mission system and increasing the rewards as you rank up for example being an elite could give you a better reward than the Novice
-And finally optimizing the game"

mojeiglu​

"players: we want new ships. FD: no, you don't want to
players: we want ship interiors. FD: no, you don't want to
players: we want to actually build bases. FD: no you don't want to
players: we want to explore new things in space... FD: no you don't want to
FD: you want to fight on bases. players: no, we don't want to..."


Update: Nyxson made a second video about how to save ED:

I've been away from the game for a few years, but it's nice to know that people are complaining about exactly the same things as in about 2018. Don't ever change, folks!

 

[Uiros Ueramos]

I've been away from the game for a few years, but it's nice to know that people are complaining about exactly the same things as in about 2018. Don't ever change, folks!

 

[Sysmon]

In terms of drama and epic storytelling, the original Mass Effect was...

You had to buy into a single story though (with numerous variants, of course). That's not the open world (or ED) way.

S

 

[Planewalker]

Minus points
1. Insane grind for (engineer) upgrades, even for people who like to grind.
2. Necessary information about prices in other star systems is unavailable in-game. Players need third party tools to see the best and most lucrative buy/sell prices and round-trips.
3. The first-person-shooter stuff is bad compared to Halo, CoD and even Fortnite.
4. A gigantic galaxy, yet only a tiny percentage is used. The travel time through the galaxy compared to the amount of activities are difficult to justify.
5. There's almost no in-game story development except little excerpts that players must piece together.

1. Endgame content is not meant to be fast.
2. Flat out not true. "Trending Trade Data"
3. Nonsensical comparison.
4. Space is big, yo.
5. Explore.

 

[Ronzer]

My recall is significantly at odds with this. The demand for ship interiors has existed ever since Frontier trailed the feature back in 2012.

Nope. Even as Odyssey was coming out, I recall suggesting to players who only want new ships, and dont want to get out of their seat, to just not click "disembark". Stay in your seat if you dont want to walk around! It's fairly simple! But there are some who enjoy having the ability to walk around all over the galaxy.

Obsidian Ant actually just made a really good video detailing a large amount of incredibly interesting gameplay loops all involving ship interiors.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pmnD8WoeQg&t=5s


The problem is Frontier can't do big projects with their tiny team and budget in a reasonable time frame and would prefer to obscure and mislead their customer base than be transparent about the future of the game.

I dont have to watch that video to know he probably points at a few other games that do 1 or 2 things well. Those games are there to provide those things, so if you want to do those things, check them out! That's literally why they exist. ED, as far I can see, provides this unique experience of being able to do a few (they're still miraculously adding things) levels of gameplay, set in our whole Galaxy. Guess how many other games do that? If you guessed zero, you're correct! Even the kids over at Starfield are only doing 100 systems. Guess why? I bet dollars to donuts they started with the idea of having 10,000 systems and it got widdled down to 100. Guess what else? You probably dont get the 100 right off the bat, which gives them time to figure out how they're going to do that, at 60fps, on anything, including PC's and XBoxes.

Then there's that other game with all the money in the world, and they literally, after many many years of trying and still trying, cant finish 1 star system, with how they're doing it.

Then there's that other game with the multiudes of galaxies, rng to the max! Do they have the milky way though? Can you get to Sol/Earth in NMS? Thats a legitimate question! I'd love to see it, if you can, but have this feeling you cant, so it's almost baseless. But really, cant they just whip up our Milky Way and stick it in there? Easy, no?

I think there is a disconnect between what people are wanting/expecting and what is achievable. All at the same time having first hand experience that whenever FDev adds one tiny bit to the game, it literally breaks it for months. "gee FDev why'd it break?"
Figure it out folks...they've put as much as they can into the game as it is, so the bits they're adding is a great thing, not small.

 

[MUTILADOR]

Ok, todo es perfecto, ED no hagas nada solo quédate como estás

 

[amigacooke {macOS}]

Even the kids over at Starfield are only doing 100 systems. Guess why? I bet dollars to donuts they started with the idea of having 10,000 systems and it got widdled down to 100. Guess what else? You probably dont get the 100 right off the bat, which gives them time to figure out how they're going to do that, at 60fps, on anything, including PC's and XBoxes.

Starfield is claiming more than 1000 worlds from launch day. You don’t have to guess, just look it up.