that will go over well.
Vanguards / Squadron rework screencaps from stream......
- Thread starter Rubbernuke
- Start date
I play in a D&D group that's been running since 1984. Almost all of them are committed PC gamers as well. Not one of them wants to play Elite- not even the space and aviation nuts.
We had a grossly overstrength 29...
Oh, yeah. I had a gap from the Oddy release until late last year.
See, that's the thing.
Several people have suggested (possibly in a different thread) that the point of loaning ships is so that newbies can go for a spin in a half-decent ship so they might decide to stick around long enough to start building their own ships.
Sooo... what we're saying is we want to create a way to allow newbies to do stuff that didn't previously interest them enough to buy/play ED more easily, thus making it more frustrating when they attempt to do those things without assistance?
I'm no game-design expert but that doesn't sound like a great way to attract (and retain) new players.
Basically, I suspect the vast majority of people who might enjoy what ED has to offer are already players or they haven't heard of it.
At the risk of being a little bit harsh, you've only got to look through (page after page of) ED's controls to see why it might not be particularly attractive to non-players.
It is, fundamentally, a game that you have to want to play to make the required effort.
It's as baffling as DCS and as fantastical as Star Wars and I suspect there's only ever going to be a limited intersection between the groups of people interested in both of those genres.
Again, not a game-design expert so I don't know what makes, say, Fortnite or Minecraft or Eve Online a huge success while seemingly similar games fail but it seems like successful games just manage to hit on a "magic formula" that attracts people.
If FDev don't think ED has hit on that "magic formula", I don't think they're going to improve things simply by providing more tools for people to use to do non-magic-formula stuff.
I think "go for a spin" was me!
Not every feature is going to attract entirely new players – for this game, most realistically won't. But anecdotally, thinking about the people I've brought into the game, I'm sticking to my guns that this can help convert people from "eh, maybe" to being really interested. Two reasons:
1. It allows them to experience what's possible on the other side of The Grind. A lot of them just don't know. They know engineered ships are strong, but they don't really know that there's a world beyond "lasers and multi-cannons" and that it's a lot of fun. And so they feel they should play efficiently (so, lasers and multi-cannons) and perform The Grind, but they don't have a sense of why they're doing it, of if there's something to enjoy on the other side.
2. ED is a strange sort of RPG for a reason that's been brought up a bit in this thread: there's a real split between RPG-like progression elements and skill-based gameplay. I think most of the player base wouldn't be happy with a purist RPG-like progression alone, and that includes most of our newbies and potential players. The desire for skill-based gameplay craves a level playing field, even a glimpse of it, to begin to get a sense of what there is to actually learn and master.
Ultimately I know if I loan a G5 engineered ship to a few friends, they'll have fun and come away more enthusiastic about playing the game more. Those activities they have half-hearted interest in now, they'll actually see the value of, and they'll also have more appreciation for much of the game is about how you fly, not just what grinding you've done.
Sorry to hear that. In that case, you know why? For i do know about my friends. For a few, it was a case of "too tedious" indeed, they wanted something more simple to play. But several of them enjoyed the game for a while. FDLs or FAS were frequent among them. Some even spent some time on engineering.
But due to lack of things to do together and the massive overhead of "now we have to first travel for an hour to meet" it finally died. I mean, you have people who have limited time. You can then travel to each other for an hour first, or go to another game where you can play together right away. And then, in ED, if you meet: what to do? Which is not, basically, by how things are implemented, better done solo?
So, what i am proposing and propagating here, throughout the thread, is very much based on my experience with my friends. And yes, those who found flying the ships too complicated, who would never invest the time to learn to fly properly, no change will ever attract here. But those who played for several months, put in the effort to get a good ship, in preparation of the wings upgrade, which then disappointed, then returned when squadrons were annouced, updated their ships in preparation of squadrons, some spent enough effort to engineer their ships, to then find out that squadrons added merely the ability to put a nametag to your ship, but not adding any actual squadron related gameplay...
I am not speaking of people who all dismissed the game immediately, but some really put some time and effort into it, hoping it would turn into an enjoyable multiplayer experience. I have confidence, that if squadrons mattered more, and came along with actual cooperative gameplay (not just some "now mine more" and "carrier is bigger"), they would return again.
Just out of curiosity went through the rooster of our squadron:
Last ship they used: Cutter, Asp Explorer, Type 8 (have to ask him, when he got that... he must've spent some time in game again), Python, DBE, Anaconda, Anaconda, DBE, Krait MK II, Python, DBE.
Combat ranks between harmless and dangerous, some having reached elite in the trade rank. And two of the DBE pilots having reached Elite rank in exploration, actually. So, definitely not people who hated the game. They played their share of solo around.
Yet most of them did all that gearing up at times when hope was on the horizon, that the multiplayer part of the game would be strengthened and become interesting. We all know, how that turned out. Wich resulted in them again dropping the game.
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Oh, I agree that it can't hurt.
At the risk of being a bit "all problems and no solutions", my only real point was that if FDev think there's still potential customers for ED out there, there's probably not much in the game that interests them so providing extra tools to help people experience the stuff that doesn't interest them probably isn't the "magic formula" they're hoping for.
If communal play is the new "thing", it might be nice if they had a look at the stuff that's already in the game and found ways to put a communal spin on it.
Maybe mining, for example, could be done more efficiently if a small, fast, ship fitted with a PWA and Prospector could locate and tag all the best 'roids, an agile medium ship with a bunch of C2 hardpoints could extract ore and then a large ship with a heap of Collectors could hoover it up?
Maybe we could have a C1 "Close Protection" module that worked a bit like SCA and meant that as long as you stayed within, say, 10Ls of a wing-ship you'd automatically drop out of SC with the wing-ship to make it much easier for players to act as "bodyguards" for a big cargo ship?
As I've said before, the game already has a bunch of stuff in it that looks like it's intended to allow 2 or more ships to work together (hatchways in Orbital Installations that open when you shoot a panel, relays that can be hacked to disable things on Megaships, etc) so how about some missions that make use of those things to create co-op play?
Etc.
That's a good way to put it.
Well said.
Elite's flight model and 1:1 Milky Way distinguish itself from most space games. But, the scale can be daunting. Also, many don't want to get a private pilot's license to play games.
I don't think any developer would advertise a new game feature that would end up not being available to the majority of its players. So these new squadron things will surely be accessible to one man squadrons, including the new carrier class.
Looking forward to having two carriers per commander, more cargo capacity, more ships stored, more range?
Looking forward to having two carriers per commander, more cargo capacity, more ships stored, more range?
It should be technically available to single player squadrons but not feasible for them. If Fdev balance it right.
I understand the reasoning and I do wish to support fdev, but this is not very useful. Maybe loaning engineered weapons for a limited time at a cost, is far more appropriate, get your ship with arx, try for a limited time like a few hours even. If you want further restrictions, can only be used to a certain level I.e. grade 3, or even to purchased ships.
I don't know why they, at least at this moment, are planning to have that "no engineering" restriction on shared ships, but I would guess that maybe it has to do with what I myself wrote earlier in this thread (and that other one by Mechan): Balancing things from the perspective of new players.
As I mentioned in that previous post, I myself oppose the idea of ship sharing completely, precisely because I think it ruins one of the most important core gameplay mechanics (not just in ED but in most video games): That of challenge, and getting a sense of achievement, accomplishment and reward for having surpassed those challenges. There's a reason why most games start you with just a pistol, at level 1, with 0 experience points, rather than giving you the best weapons and armor from the very start, and start you at the max level from the get-go: Because that would remove and ruin the challenge. It would remove the sense of achievement and accomplishment, a sense of having become better in the game through hard work.
Perhaps that's their motivation: Try to not completely remove that challenge from new players by restricting the sharing of ultimate end-game stuff.
But, as mentioned, if that's the motivation then I think the entire ship sharing thing should be cancelled. Or at least reworked significantly from what it apparently is currently planned to be (ie. anybody joining the squadron can just borrow a shared ship without any limitations or restrictions.)
I was a huge fan of Elite '84 and so excited about ED that I bought myself a new PC and HOTAS back in 2014 just I'd be ready to play it.
I set up my Frontier account, waited about 2 days for the game to download on my 1mb internet connection, started the game up, looked at the key bindings and...
...went away to think about it for, literally, 6 weeks.
My HOTAS had about 20 buttons and 4 hat-switches, which seemed like an overwhelming amount, but I allocated all of them in about half an hour and still had more than a dozen important controls that I didn't know what to do with.
Ended-up buying a USB numberpad with transparent key caps, so I could print out little icons for all the keys, and I thought that'd be enough to allow me to take-off and fly around a bit.
After 2 weeks I was ready to give it a try.
Took off, exited the station, flew about a bit, realised I didn't have keys allocated to access and operate all the on-screen HUDs, self-destructed my Sidey and then went away for another 4 weeks to figure out keys for the HUDs and how to use the system map and galaxy map.
And then, finally, I was up and running.
Once you've played ED, it's easy to forget just how daunting the controls really are for a total novice.
Every time FDev add new functionality, somebody's probably thinking "Ah, but it's only another 4 controls".
Yeah, it's only another 4 controls... which is fine as long as you're already familiar with the hundreds (literally) of existing controls.
I've been flying gliders, on and off, for 30 years and had no problems learning to fly a Robinson R22 helicopter.
It was harder to learn to fly ships (including learning to navigate and use the camera etc) in ED.
Better yet, to make it jump you will need player activity to make it jump, like a crew positioned at active stations, this way you prevent a one man army jumping all over the place.
A 1 man Squadron Carrier would be ineffective, because he can only fly 1 ship at a time. The upkeep could be too much for 1 player who already has a Drake-Class Carrier.
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