Deleted member 115407
D
Again I shouldn't have to impose arbitrary rules on myself just to make the game more engaging.
From now on I will only fly G2 ships and below.
From now on I will only trade in quantities of 10T max per run, just to make it harder.
From now on I will only "discover" every 25th jump, regardless of the star type.
From now on I will not go SR when I smuggle, and just hope for the best.
These are player-applied bandaids to un-engaging game design. No game should operate on the premise that the player should nerf themself in order to be challenged.
Yep
Last edited by a moderator:
I'd like to amend this - recon Engineers but rebalance the ships and modules. The 500 meter falloff for lasers is just silly IMO. I can also see being able to purchase modules with specific "perks", similar to special effects but without huge advantages, along with special ammo (if you want corrosive rounds, you buy these at extra cost back at the station). The key is balance - so perhaps ships post-recon would be the equivalent to G1 engineered ships today.
Oh, and retcon shield cell banks! These are the turds of the devil
Last edited:
Deleted member 115407
D
oops. dup post
Last edited by a moderator:
The hardest challenge I've gotten from this game (once well past starting out) was in a fully engineered Type-9 with 1k+ shields and 2k+ hull while running 6 120 ton delivery missions that all procced the hostile force mission add ons. I could always high wake out, but eventually I had to get to my destination so that really wasn't an answer, and while I was successful fighting off a couple if interdictions, it turned into chain interdictions I couldn't beat.
I high waked to another system to repair a couple of times before finally getting close to the station (and planet) then getting knocked out of super cruise by the planet during an interdiction which resulted in a long fsd cool down. Too many npcs jumped in and I got blown up.
As fun of an experience as that was (no sarcasm), all I had to do was buy a Cutter and now it will never happen again.
I high waked to another system to repair a couple of times before finally getting close to the station (and planet) then getting knocked out of super cruise by the planet during an interdiction which resulted in a long fsd cool down. Too many npcs jumped in and I got blown up.
As fun of an experience as that was (no sarcasm), all I had to do was buy a Cutter and now it will never happen again.
You say you shouldn't, but you expect others to. Why is this? The game design is engaging, it just isn't engaging to you any more, perhaps because you've played it so much.
If I find an Occupied Escape Pod I must try to rescue it. So all my ships have some cargo space. Just an example. An openworld game has some limitations.
I visited a port controlled by a faction that was hostile to me a while back, I didn't request docking despite needing to dock there to complete a mission. Instead I killed a few pirates nearby & cashed in the bounty at an interstellar factor to raise my local rep to unfriendly, then returned to complete the mission.
Last edited:
I think it's not so much that the game doesn't impose on the player - if I'm flying around with no cargo, no missions, no bounty, no factional enmity, then I probably should be largely ignored by the NPCs - as that the ways it does impose vary between ineffectual and annoying.
So unless you stack a *lot* of missions, you'll probably only get one interdiction attempt per system. And with a reasonably agile ship and good supercruise approach, you can usually reach the destination before they can even attach a tether. Stacking lots of missions half the time just means that you have three NPCs failing to tether...
You go mining and you'll find some pirates waiting in whatever anonymous bit of planetary ring you dropped into - and those things are huge - before you have any cargo, while the more interesting point for them to come after you is on the way back to the station.
You hunt down hundreds of ships of an Anarchy faction in a RES ... and they basically don't care.
NPCs don't really have a counter to ships which are faster than them. In my Cobra III I can hang back out of range and peck them to death with long-range lasers. In my Krait I can hit them, fight it out for a bit, and if my shields get low run out of range to recharge. These are multipurpose trade/mission ships without a full A-rated build or G5 engineering.
What I don't see is how to answer most of this without making such major changes to supercruise, interdiction, engineering, combat, etc. that they might as well just start over with a new game.
So unless you stack a *lot* of missions, you'll probably only get one interdiction attempt per system. And with a reasonably agile ship and good supercruise approach, you can usually reach the destination before they can even attach a tether. Stacking lots of missions half the time just means that you have three NPCs failing to tether...
You go mining and you'll find some pirates waiting in whatever anonymous bit of planetary ring you dropped into - and those things are huge - before you have any cargo, while the more interesting point for them to come after you is on the way back to the station.
You hunt down hundreds of ships of an Anarchy faction in a RES ... and they basically don't care.
NPCs don't really have a counter to ships which are faster than them. In my Cobra III I can hang back out of range and peck them to death with long-range lasers. In my Krait I can hit them, fight it out for a bit, and if my shields get low run out of range to recharge. These are multipurpose trade/mission ships without a full A-rated build or G5 engineering.
What I don't see is how to answer most of this without making such major changes to supercruise, interdiction, engineering, combat, etc. that they might as well just start over with a new game.
True. Also, based on this thread, I guess by now every new player starts out in a fully g5 engineered Anaconda?
If this is true, the thread is valid. If no, the thread only sees a veterans point of view and forgot the full scope of the game. What I mean is: we are veterans. We play since a long time. We know our ships and outfits, we know how to handle things, we can predict NPCs. To really challenge us, things have to be upgraded a lot.
But unknown to many, there are still beginners. And the game -is- murderous for new players. The learning curve is steep and player retention rates, as far as we know, are low. Staging difficulty up will perhaps make things a bit more interesting for veterans, but will absolutely kill any chance to still maintain the playerbase. (Any playerbase looses members. You need new players to keep it alive. )
And yes, it's one of the reasons why I say that FD painted themselves into a corner with engineers. Any content just being remotely challenging for an experienced player in an engineered ship will absolutely slaughter a new player. The gap is too wide. As long as engineering effects are as powerful as they currently are, it's impossible to balance NPCs to be challenging for an engineered ship while not massacring any new player.
So really, that's what should be pushed for: get engineers nerfed. Badly. Only once that has been done, you can reasonably ask for any of the other aspects of this thread, where things should be made more dangerous.
Blackcompany
Banned
Again, that's because multiplayer forced instancing. They didnt have the tech to do MP and allow persistence or conflict outside of instances, and they wont allow players sufficient agency to create consequences for actions.
Worst of both worlds.
Disclaimer - the following is based on my personal preferences!
Retcon the Engineers and make credits what they used to be, and this will go a long way to fix the game. Rewards are too big and payment for things like fuel and repairs are way too small. "Advanced Maintenance" menu is a vestigial organ of the great game this used to be, when you actually had to chose what you were going to fix because repairs cost so much.
Fix the AI. Now that said, if you turn ED into a Dark Souls game for everyone, that would be bad, but I appreciate that an Elite NPC in a ship equal to your own should be Dark Souls level of difficult. Harmless NPCs, on the other hand..... Of course Engineering is much to blame for the ease of combat in the game.
As an explorer, I'd love to have more reason to do "survival" type stuff. Perhaps equipment failure due to solar storms that force me to land and enact repairs. Junk the AMFU and repair limpets and give us a "mini game" that requires some sort of skill to implement these repairs. Perhaps this will require space legs to fully implement. However, don't overdo it - not every system should be dangerous, but at the very least, make things like Black Holes as dreaded by explorers as the Elite NPCs should be for combat pilots!
I'm not a fan of fishing, which is what current bounty-hunting is. Bounty-hunting should actually require hunting, which requires FDev give us at least some persistent NPCs. Get rid of the resource extraction sites! Remember that mission in Elite 1984 that requires tracking down and destroying a stolen experimental ship? Now that's hunting
On the other hand, I do think it would be awesome to replace RES with pirate asteroid bases in Anarchy systems with lucrative missions tied to them. While I don't think this should require fighting endless waves of pirates like a hazres, at least it would give the option for those who want this. Speaking of Anarchy, make Anarchy scary again!
But if you are going to make Anarchy scary, then Hi-Sec should be relatively safe. However, safe means "boring" and also means "not much money to be made". Reward should scale with risk.
Did I mention that Engineers need to be retconned? Get rid of PowerPlay modules as well, or at least make them available to the general public. As for Guardian weapons, I'm not sure how I feel about those...
The main issues with repairs is that people would self destruct in the old days as it was cheaper then repairing. Some modules are worth far more then the actual hull of the ship which is what created the issue.
I just enjoy flying a spaceship. I don't need or want the game to be constantly dangerous. I would like perhaps anarchy systems to be more dangerous as well, make it worth routing around them if in a trade ship for example, and of course, good profits if you can make it to the station in one.
NPCs can be dangerous enough when i want them to be. All i need to do is go to a Haz Res or CZ in a smaller ship. Unfortunately, FD added too much in the way of engineering and modules that make ships far too stong (in my opinion), and this has reduced the risk by a lot. There is a limit to how good MoM can make the NPCs so making defenses on ships too strong reduces the risk to players. Its also resulted in PvP fights largely becoming 20 minute long boring fights with people popping SCBs (as long as their opponent doesn't have that engineering thingy for rails) and it taking forever for people to either die or retreat.
Stations will refuse you docking if you are hostile to the faction - or at least they used to. Not sure if you can now request anonymous access if hostile, that would be a change for the worse if so.
I agree with some of your points, but i don't want the game to impose itself on me. I'd like the optional choice of danger. I mean, when i'm drinking then the last thing i need is dangerous NPCs popping up all over the place! I'm enough of a danger to myself.
Perhaps FD need to create a separate version of the game for people like me. Elite: Drunk as a skunk.
NPCs can be dangerous enough when i want them to be. All i need to do is go to a Haz Res or CZ in a smaller ship. Unfortunately, FD added too much in the way of engineering and modules that make ships far too stong (in my opinion), and this has reduced the risk by a lot. There is a limit to how good MoM can make the NPCs so making defenses on ships too strong reduces the risk to players. Its also resulted in PvP fights largely becoming 20 minute long boring fights with people popping SCBs (as long as their opponent doesn't have that engineering thingy for rails) and it taking forever for people to either die or retreat.
Stations will refuse you docking if you are hostile to the faction - or at least they used to. Not sure if you can now request anonymous access if hostile, that would be a change for the worse if so.
I agree with some of your points, but i don't want the game to impose itself on me. I'd like the optional choice of danger. I mean, when i'm drinking then the last thing i need is dangerous NPCs popping up all over the place! I'm enough of a danger to myself.
Perhaps FD need to create a separate version of the game for people like me. Elite: Drunk as a skunk.
Deleted member 115407
D
No doubt that new players will get frustrated (and this is also in response to Lightspeed above).
Hell, I got frustrated and made a rage quit post when I first started the game. Go look it up if you want, it should be there. I'm not proud of it
But it didn't take me long after that post to git gud. And once I got gud, the game just stopped being a challenge in any way. I don't mind having the flight mechanics down - it's great that I can win space fights, but this game isn't only about space fights. If the environment itself were to make it hard to survive, it would go a long way in improving the PvE experience.
Like your avatar by the way. Viper Mk IV fo life.
Blackcompany
Banned
This is the least engaging game in modern gaming. Take a look at purchase numbers versus player numbers if you dont believe that.
A sandbox game with no persistence, no feedback loops and no consequences cannot, but definition, be engaging.
Fly safe is our version of Good bye. Even the Starport Traffic Controllers say it to you when you leave the no fire zone.
Deleted member 115407
D
Every time you pop an asteroid while core mining, a USS should be created/maintained outside the ring for players to target. It should also ave a chance of drawing NPCs to your location.
This is a question I've asked myself, and I don't have a good answer yet. I have seriously entertained limiting all my engineering to Grade 1, hiring the max number of highly ranked NPC crewmates to heavily tax my credit earnings, refusing to accept rebuys upon ship loses, only bounty-hunting targets offered in the mission board (no RES), etc. I can easily make the game more challenging for myself, and yet it's actually not so easy.
I suspect it is for the same reason I can't keep sweets in the house for long - lack of will power!
Last edited:
Deleted member 115407
D
I don't own an Anaconda either.
But I see your point. And my point is that once the beginner gits marginally gud at combat and survival, the game ceases to impose any risk upon the player whatsoever. They are effectively free to just fly around the galaxy in god mode, bending all things to their whim.
Deleted member 115407
D
Well, in my version of the game you could just fly around in High and Medium sec space relatively carefree.
And you're focusing too much on the "combat" aspect. I'm talking about the game imposing risk in general.
they should make it so that there are certain areas of the galaxy where the all the outlaws are like the Elite assassination targets.