Things Elite Dangerous can learn from No Man's Sky

[Devari]

To those of you who say ED has little to learn from NMS, you couldn't be more wrong. I know you are here because you love ED, but take the rose tint glasses off yo.

I have been highly critical of some of the decisions FD has made with 2.1.05 and I had every reason to give NMS a chance to "lure" me away from Elite at least as a temporary distraction until 2.2 launched. It couldn't even manage that.

Even on the most simple of levels I can reel off a good number of things ED could learn from NMS :

* Multiple inventories and being able to transfer cleanly from one to another and back again without all the associated aggro, we can't even do that with the SRV yet.

Don't get me started on this. The only thing your suit/ship/multitool are in the game is INVENTORY SLOTS. That's it. The different ships and multitools in the game are just placeholders for inventory slots. They are purely cosmetic and the only goal is to get a "bigger" ship with more slots or a "bigger" multitool with more slots. The promised differentiation between fighter/trader/explorer ships is COMPLETELY absent in the game. I was hoping for a least some meaningful ship choices and customization options, it turns out all the ship does is provide an array of inventory slots to "fill" with weapons/cargo/mods. The only reason inventory "management" exists in NMS is because your "ship" is nothing more than a collection of inventory slots.

* Walking around space stations, NMS does that pretty slickly, ED just gives you a text menu. Sure there's new interiors but you're not going to be able to get out and investigate them.

You have a few small rooms to access on a station, that's it. You don't even have access to a shipyard, you have to literally wait for an NPC ship to fly to the station and land, then walk up to the ship and ask the purchase price. There is nothing you even need to do on stations that you can't do at any of the trading outposts that have market terminal access, with the possible exception of having ships arriving at regular intervals if you want to buy a larger ship.

* Featured, detailed terrains on landing, NMS's might be as shallow as ED's barren planets, but critically there's -more- types. We're STILL on Barren planets, if we're not at least on Volcanic, Frozen and a few others by 3.0 something has gone badly wrong.

Don't even go there, NMS planetary terrain is terrible. The graphics are even worse than the nerfed textures we got when they had to downgrade the original 2.1 planetary textures in Horizons due to performance/pop-in issues. Not only that, but all of the NMS planets have similar (if not exactly the same) gravity and size, there is no discernible differences between my run and jump speeds on the 6 different planets I visited in my starting system. There is also no difference in planetary geography in terms of axial tilt, polar ice caps, etc. I can't even fly to a planet's pole or equator and see any difference in the weather. You basically fly to a planet and it's just a giant, repetitive sandbox with the exact same terrain covering the entire planet's surface, there is no point in going to different parts of the planet to see anything different.

* Being able to play offline. This is the kicker, you can PAUSE in No Mans Sky, go get a tea, or go to the loo, and you can resume right where you left off, even in mid flight, try doing that in ED, or better yet, try maintaining a game in ED with a flaky connection. Go ahead, I'll wait

Offline play is actually the biggest flaw in the game. Other than naming/uploading your discoveries the game is EXACTLY THE SAME whether you play it online or offline. There is NO POINT in even being online other than this issue. There is no multiplayer, no way of interacting with other players, it is not even an online game at all in terms of gameplay. The only reason NMS can provide an "offline mode" at all is because it simply does not use the online connection to interact with the players in any meaningful way.

Now there's some -real- lessons ED can learn from NMS.

Asking what Elite can learn from NMS is like asking what an Honor roll student can learn from the delinquent, pot-smoking kid who doesn't attend classes because everyone told him he was a "genius" growing up when it turned out he really wasn't.

 

[h347h]

It isn't like people here don't know the faults of Elite, I criticize it well enough but IMHO fairly. I try and look at it from a game perspective, a developer perspective, a business perspective, and an immersive experience perspective(which is eroding a bit) and try and balance my criticisms based on all those angles. The faults of Elite get brought up every day every one knows what they are and every one has their little bugbears but right now FD is doing a relatively good job, despite some miss steps here and there.

 

[vitz3]

To those of you who say ED has little to learn from NMS, you couldn't be more wrong. I know you are here because you love ED, but take the rose tint glasses off yo. Even on the most simple of levels I can reel off a good number of things ED could learn from NMS :

* Multiple inventories and being able to transfer cleanly from one to another and back again without all the associated aggro, we can't even do that with the SRV yet.

* Walking around space stations, NMS does that pretty slickly, ED just gives you a text menu. Sure there's new interiors but you're not going to be able to get out and investigate them.

* Featured, detailed terrains on landing, NMS's might be as shallow as ED's barren planets, but critically there's -more- types. We're STILL on Barren planets, if we're not at least on Volcanic, Frozen and a few others by 3.0 something has gone badly wrong.

* Being able to play offline. This is the kicker, you can PAUSE in No Mans Sky, go get a tea, or go to the loo, and you can resume right where you left off, even in mid flight, try doing that in ED, or better yet, try maintaining a game in ED with a flaky connection. Go ahead, I'll wait

Now there's some -real- lessons ED can learn from NMS.

/facepalm

I would disagree with your reaction h347h. Fuzzy did present some points that may be worth considering if the initial thoughts would be explored.

* Some kind of inventory management or storage has been a thing the community has requested ever since the engineers first came out (hell even before? With things like FSD boosts?) However, I don't expect us to just teleport things to our ship from our SRV the way NMS does that between your exosuit and ship. That's not consistent with the universe AFAIK. Also, NMS is also at fault with inventory management, it's, paltry at best and a constant frustration. So to summarize, in both games, people want to get and keep more loot.

* NMS does do space stations, but poorly. Very very poorly. This whole UNIVERSE with unstructured formless galaxies has space stations in every system? What? For what it is, I would love to be able to romp around space stations in Elite some day, I know it's on the road map and I'm sure they'll do something great with it. So the lesson to be learned from NMS is, do space stations, but do them well. Not just have them be a drop-in replacement for what can be already be done in the services menu.

* NMS has atmospheric planets. ONLY atmospheric planets. The clever guys at FDev are taking their time to do things right and are most likely trying to make sure they follow through on what they promised. It's called having a plan, a realistic one and keeping your mouth shut otherwise. So far they're doing well, I'm a patient person and will wait for something done right and most importantly FUN. NMS did planets and has some variety if you don't analyze it too much. Just keep the horse blinders on a bit and let imagination fill in the spots they under delivered on. </delusion> Also, ED's texture work is leaps and bounds above NMS's odd and occasional N64-level low-res textures. So they can learn from this mistake. Do atmospheric planets right, because if you intend players to spend any significant amount of time on them and have fun, the implementation better be up to the original spec doc or what was promised.

* I have an always on Internet connection. Playing offline is not a big thing for me so my voice on this is biased. I enjoy that what myself and other players do in ED in single player or open play all have an effect on everyone's galaxy. Persistence is a wonderful thing. NMS's galaxy (I used the term loosely for a psychedelic amorphous cloud of stars and dust) is more or less static. Nothing moves, nothing ever changes. What was generated by the seed and RNG is what will always be. Pausing, while a great thing, it's not that hard to drop out of SC and log out. If you get blow'd up in a fight. Pick your battles or be that guy and Combat Log. :|

Anyway, I really just wanted to address ThatFuzzyTiger's post without just dismissing it.

 

[GluttonyFang]

To not lie about its support for PvP/Multiplayer.

*Coughs*

Oh sorry I meant to say...

To not lie about its support for PvP/Multiplayer.

 

[Moonax IRL]

No thanks, cartoons are for kids.

 

[vitz3]

It isn't like people here don't know the faults of Elite, I criticize it well enough but IMHO fairly. I try and look at it from a game perspective, a developer perspective, a business perspective, and an immersive experience perspective(which is eroding a bit) and try and balance my criticisms based on all those angles. The faults of Elite get brought up every day every one knows what they are and every one has their little bugbears but right now FD is doing a relatively good job, despite some miss steps here and there.

Agreed. FDev is trying to do right IMO. They're working hard, learning from the feedback, accepting the criticisms when valid, feeding and growing a good community along side it.

 

[GluttonyFang]

Agreed. FDev is trying to do right IMO. They're working hard, learning from the feedback, accepting the criticisms when valid, feeding and growing a good community along side it.

This I agree with, FD does listen, it's just some issues are either too controversial or there isn't enough resource/time needed to solve some of them.

 

[Devari]

This I agree with, FD does listen, it's just some issues are either too controversial or there isn't enough resource/time needed to solve some of them.

I actually think that FD is one of the most responsive gaming companies that I've seen in the sense that they readily incorporate feedback from various sources and quickly make changes to improve gameplay when it's needed/warranted. My main issue is that lately FD has been doing some knee-jerk reactions to vocal forum groups rather than taking a coherent approach to ask what's best for the game long-term. At this point Engineers is sort of a lost cause in this regard as is the state of the NPC AI so I've sort of moved on from those issues, but I see the same problems being an issue going forward with 2.2. I already have a sense that we will spend a good 1-2 months after 2.2 launches doing the unofficial "beta testing" for them where fighters will go from completely OP, to completely nerfed, back to OP and so on until the loudest forum faction "wins" and the game balance gets even more disrupted in the long-term. What FD needs to do at this point in make sure that they have a coherent plan for what they want any given expansion to achieve and stick to that overall plan no matter how loudly a given section of the playerbase might complain if they feel it is best for the long-term development of the game.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

You are talking about astmosphere planets , something that is not in the game. (yet. it will happen however)

NMS is trash in my opinion , it has no large bases , no missions , no gas giants , no airless worlds , no astroid fiels , unrealistic dull space and so on

Oh come on. It's nice having the only real gameplay be landing on a planet, finding outposts, and collecting minerals that allow you to go land on another planet, find outposts, and collect more minerals that allow you to go land on another planet, find outposts, collect minerals, that allow you.... All for AAA pricing!


Yeah.

 

[Cmdr Chaos]

Things to learn?
No.
Things to avoid, yes.

Why do the ships look like they were taken from a shelved Starfox sequel aborted ten years ago, because the ships looked so terrible?
It's what Elite would look like if it was made by Nintendo in my nightmares.

That was one of the most painful launches of an overhyped pile of ill thought out ideas i've seen in the last few years. And lying never helps does it, outright blatant lying...

 

[crushdepth]

Pretty much everything you listed requires an atmosphere, we can't land on planets with significant atmosphere yet.

 

[piugattuk]

Is this thee commander chaos from YouTube, I love your videos, if not, forgive FD and David, they forgot to release it under pre-alpha, early release...got submitted as a full release by mistake.

 

[Devari]

Pretty much everything you listed requires an atmosphere, we can't land on planets with significant atmosphere yet.

That was really just an excuse for FD to avoid having to code any actual terrain/plants/animals, they are not really going to be "modelling" atmospheric interactions in any real way. We have basically zero effects from gravity other than slowing down ships in supercruise so they are not going to be putting in some type of sophisticated atmospheric properties. It is probably just going to be a "dampening" effect that atmosphere causes to your ship handling and a decrease in visual distance and that's it. The much larger amount of work will be the issue of producing a sufficiently "realistic" set of alien plant/animal life on the inhabited planets, not to mention the massive areas of planets covered by cities and buildings. I suspect they will use some type of procedural generation system for this as well so that they don't have to manually code everything, i.e., they will probably use a similar "seed" that originally generated the planet in the first place to determine subsequent surface properties.

 

[vrseven]

Didnt you already post this on the steam forums and it was locked. Geez some people are really desperate.

 

[Mengy]

It isn't like people here don't know the faults of Elite, I criticize it well enough but IMHO fairly. I try and look at it from a game perspective, a developer perspective, a business perspective, and an immersive experience perspective(which is eroding a bit) and try and balance my criticisms based on all those angles. The faults of Elite get brought up every day every one knows what they are and every one has their little bugbears but right now FD is doing a relatively good job, despite some miss steps here and there.

I will agree with this. I do not always agree nor like the direction that FDev is going with Elite, I'm primarily an explorer in game and I feel like they have focused WAY too much on combat and mostly ignored exploration, BUT, what they have done with Elite has been mostly decent work even if it has not been to my tastes. I can only hope that someday they use their time to flesh out the game in areas that I want improved too.

Comparing Elite to NMS has really showcased just how impressive a job FDev has done here.

 

[X-Terminator]

A few things really put me off in NMS:

• the colours look like RGB
• the flight seems to have no drag resistance nor realism
• its way too big to be a mmo
• same wherever you go with stuff attacking you
• it has no real point

 

[piugattuk]

Wait, wait just one ushima minute, checks Japanese watch, ok, second is up;

You said;
*same wherever you go with stuff attacking you*

Don't rip my theme off man, I don't appreciate that, strokes beard, NO wait, I approve.

 

[Devari]

A few things really put me off in NMS:

• the colours look like RGB
• the flight seems to have no drag resistance nor realism
• its way too big to be a mmo
• same wherever you go with stuff attacking you
• it has no real point

I'm playing NMS right now, and I've got a few more to add:

The graphics look like Dr. Seuss was handed a box of crayons and then had a seizure.
The game takes 5-10 minutes to load.
The game makes my CPU hit 85 degrees due to poorly optimized code.
My ship has only two types of guns with no options for turrets, missiles or other equipment.
I can only have one ship at a time and can't even leave an old ship behind to retrieve later.
The ships are only collections of inventory slots and the size/design features are not reflected in performance.
Alien creatures are surprisingly repetitive in terms of appearance, even on planets that have completely different atmosphere/temperature/properties.
I can literally see all 6 planets in my starting system just by looking at them from my ship, there is no sense of scale to the planets at all and essentially they are all in the same "location" with no distinct orbits or other planetary properties.
There is no system map to navigate between the planets.
Flying within the system using the pulse engine looks like the screensaver from Windows 95.

I'm sure I'll find other issues to complain about but that's a pretty good list so far.

 

[Cynaqq]

That was really just an excuse for FD to avoid having to code any actual terrain/plants/animals, they are not really going to be "modelling" atmospheric interactions in any real way. We have basically zero effects from gravity other than slowing down ships in supercruise so they are not going to be putting in some type of sophisticated atmospheric properties. It is probably just going to be a "dampening" effect that atmosphere causes to your ship handling and a decrease in visual distance and that's it. The much larger amount of work will be the issue of producing a sufficiently "realistic" set of alien plant/animal life on the inhabited planets, not to mention the massive areas of planets covered by cities and buildings. I suspect they will use some type of procedural generation system for this as well so that they don't have to manually code everything, i.e., they will probably use a similar "seed" that originally generated the planet in the first place to determine subsequent surface properties.

I agree with some of your post but, gravity has a lot more to do in the game than you make it out to be.

It doesn't affect the ships as you think it should in supercruise because supercruise is bending space-time. It's not normal space flight with ludicrous speeds.

Near planetary bodies in normal space flight though, oh boy. Is gravity ever simulated in normal flight...

You probably never flew near a planet with more than .6 G if you are saying this because especially from 1G and up, gravity affects the hell out of how the ship handles. Try to find planet with higher gravity than 3G and land there, or don't even land, just bank your ship sideways and see what happens.

You are right about how they'll distirbute biomes and life around the planets but they'll surely model atmospheres as realistically as they can. They'll probably won't make re-entry a hassle for gameplay purposes, but use the glide mechanic as a workaround, I'll give you that; however, I won't be even surprised when a wind which you see shaking the trees hit your ship and push it around.

 

[vitriol]

I'm a bit sad that NMS bombed as hard as it did. Elite Dangerous needs proper competition, and competition is healthy. Frontier keeps getting away with content-free patches and ignoring bugs. Someone needs to kick their butts into gear so they start delivering new mechanics.