[video] The need for more "CONTENT"
I'd prefer it if they fixed what is already there.
Maybe they should stop releasing content and spend a whole year going back to basics and developing all those placeholder mechanics and threadbare professions...they could call it "fix year" or "back to basics" nah too naff, they need a hook title to make us believe this in not the end but a bold new beginning, I know call it "Beyond"
What? It's already being done...really because I could swear there are more bugs now than before and not much seems to have changed.
Maybe they needs two years and can call it "Beyond II: This time we really mean it and will actually fix stuff...honest" I like it...catchy
Maybe they should stop releasing content and spend a whole year going back to basics and developing all those placeholder mechanics and threadbare professions...they could call it "fix year" or "back to basics" nah too naff, they need a hook title to make us believe this in not the end but a bold new beginning, I know call it "Beyond"
What? It's already being done...really because I could swear there are more bugs now than before and not much seems to have changed.
Maybe they needs two years and can call it "Beyond II: This time we really mean it and will actually fix stuff...honest" I like it...catchy
When they said they were spending a year on Beyond to squash Bugs I think people were not thinking of the same Bugs as FD, as certainly there are more Thargoids in the game than ever
When they said they were spending a year on Beyond to squash Bugs I think people were not thinking of the same Bugs as FD, as certainly there are more Thargoids in the game than ever
Yes there's a need for more content but imho when there are still bugs to be fixed from three updates ago then perhaps it's better to focus on that first.
I think the idea with Elite: Dangerous was that the future is now in game development and what you could do with and implement into a game, instead of just using your imagination alongside such as with the first Elite.
There's a lot of great stuff in the game, but if we're being honest here, I think we can admit that at least so far the game has fallen fairly short of its vision and potential, even just based on stuff like what the devs said they'd like to see implemented in the future with future expansions and the like.
A lot of people bought into that vision, maybe even the devs themselves, but the reality and direction of the game has deviated from that trajectory into something seemingly much more domestic and repetitive. There's hardly any survival gameplay that makes sense contextually within the game, for example; it's mostly just become working at getting specific materials or the like for that next new thing you might be after. Very meta and not very compelling, at least not for me.
YMMV
There's a lot of great stuff in the game, but if we're being honest here, I think we can admit that at least so far the game has fallen fairly short of its vision and potential, even just based on stuff like what the devs said they'd like to see implemented in the future with future expansions and the like.
A lot of people bought into that vision, maybe even the devs themselves, but the reality and direction of the game has deviated from that trajectory into something seemingly much more domestic and repetitive. There's hardly any survival gameplay that makes sense contextually within the game, for example; it's mostly just become working at getting specific materials or the like for that next new thing you might be after. Very meta and not very compelling, at least not for me.
YMMV
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I agree that, at this stage, more content shouldn't be the priority. They should work on fixing the core gameplay mechanics.
#1 The USS system is just awful.
#2 Engineering is basically an awful upgrade mechanic.
#3 Planetary prospecting is just a timesink.
#4 Skimmers missions are terrible and make no sense.
Easy fixes:
#1 Instead of USS flying past you display them on your contacts panel. Add more varied USS. Allow more engineering materials to be found in USS's. Have more distress calls like ship needing fuel. Ship needing evacuation. Ship under attack.
#2 Engineering materials should work like loot works in almost every other game. You kill an NPC you get loot. You search something you get loot. You finish a mission you get loot. They've made progress in that direction but for some unimaginable reason, they're cheap with the loot. Missions, shooting NPC pirates, pirating, investigating USSs should each give you everything you need to engineer. You should NEVER have to go do tedious prospecting or wake scanning to upgrade your ship. Like every game, you get upgrade materials just by playing the game as you like.
#3 Once you find your planet, it should just take you 10 to 15 minutes to find the materials you want. You should NEVER have to spend an hour on such a tedious boring mechanic. And the wave scanner is just dumb. It's the future and this machine is outputting vague lines that YOU have to interpret. It makes no sense that a system in the future would not just tell you what it's detecting. New players end up wasting hours. No in-game explanation. Moreover, it's utterly pointless.
#4 Skimmers are just a terrible enemy type. Why do they stop pursuing you after you go beyond a certain range? Why are your SRV shields seemingly as strong as your ships shields? Why can't you target them with your ship? Finally, why does system security almost never respond when you trespass and start shooting skimmers. It should take them a few minutes to supercruise and arrive to respond.
#1 The USS system is just awful.
#2 Engineering is basically an awful upgrade mechanic.
#3 Planetary prospecting is just a timesink.
#4 Skimmers missions are terrible and make no sense.
Easy fixes:
#1 Instead of USS flying past you display them on your contacts panel. Add more varied USS. Allow more engineering materials to be found in USS's. Have more distress calls like ship needing fuel. Ship needing evacuation. Ship under attack.
#2 Engineering materials should work like loot works in almost every other game. You kill an NPC you get loot. You search something you get loot. You finish a mission you get loot. They've made progress in that direction but for some unimaginable reason, they're cheap with the loot. Missions, shooting NPC pirates, pirating, investigating USSs should each give you everything you need to engineer. You should NEVER have to go do tedious prospecting or wake scanning to upgrade your ship. Like every game, you get upgrade materials just by playing the game as you like.
#3 Once you find your planet, it should just take you 10 to 15 minutes to find the materials you want. You should NEVER have to spend an hour on such a tedious boring mechanic. And the wave scanner is just dumb. It's the future and this machine is outputting vague lines that YOU have to interpret. It makes no sense that a system in the future would not just tell you what it's detecting. New players end up wasting hours. No in-game explanation. Moreover, it's utterly pointless.
#4 Skimmers are just a terrible enemy type. Why do they stop pursuing you after you go beyond a certain range? Why are your SRV shields seemingly as strong as your ships shields? Why can't you target them with your ship? Finally, why does system security almost never respond when you trespass and start shooting skimmers. It should take them a few minutes to supercruise and arrive to respond.
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More content or more features?
Multicrew is a feature. Where's the content for it?
The mission system feature has content but the content is pretty much a monoculture. It does have a link into the feature called Wings so it can be said to provide content for the Wings feature.
Is ED a role playing game? Is it a balanced game?
That word balance. What does it mean?
May be the balance is between how much role playing is provided by the game and how much is provided by the player.
Having a role to play, a character to play only works if that role or character has a story to tell and or follow. A story is content.
Multicrew is a feature. Where's the content for it?
The mission system feature has content but the content is pretty much a monoculture. It does have a link into the feature called Wings so it can be said to provide content for the Wings feature.
Is ED a role playing game? Is it a balanced game?
That word balance. What does it mean?
May be the balance is between how much role playing is provided by the game and how much is provided by the player.
Having a role to play, a character to play only works if that role or character has a story to tell and or follow. A story is content.
Instead of more content, FDev should work on making the current content better accessible. For all the players, without having to resort to external sites and forums.
#1 Mission arc(s) to take the player to see megaships, The ones that have been so far discovered
#2 Mission arc(s) to take the player to see thargoid crash sites, barnacle sites, thargoid bases. Preferably also with thargoid interdictions
#3 Mission arc(s) to take the player to see guardian sites, get access to ax weapons and modules, use them to attack thargoids
Sure it's an MMO (or is it), but there's no reason to underutilize the current content by making the "quests" community only. And why are there no rewards e.g. for visiting megaships?
#1 Mission arc(s) to take the player to see megaships, The ones that have been so far discovered
#2 Mission arc(s) to take the player to see thargoid crash sites, barnacle sites, thargoid bases. Preferably also with thargoid interdictions
#3 Mission arc(s) to take the player to see guardian sites, get access to ax weapons and modules, use them to attack thargoids
Sure it's an MMO (or is it), but there's no reason to underutilize the current content by making the "quests" community only. And why are there no rewards e.g. for visiting megaships?
Frontier has done nothing but release hand-crafted content with a limited shelf life for the past 3 years and it's never enough for those wanting ever more.
They need to stop and instead go back to the basics. Improve the ways we interact with the world, make that world more sensible and believable and finally reach the "living breathing universe" goal they touted back in the kickstarter.
Some of that will require more content, but more than anything the existing content and features need to make more sense.
We wouldn't need the silly Thargoids story arc and all that generic and telegraphed nonsense if the universe was complex and dynamic enough to allow stories to emerge by themselves.
They need to stop and instead go back to the basics. Improve the ways we interact with the world, make that world more sensible and believable and finally reach the "living breathing universe" goal they touted back in the kickstarter.
Some of that will require more content, but more than anything the existing content and features need to make more sense.
We wouldn't need the silly Thargoids story arc and all that generic and telegraphed nonsense if the universe was complex and dynamic enough to allow stories to emerge by themselves.
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While the game definitely needs more content, the content we do have could easily be made less shallow and less of a grind-fest. While I could make a very long list of gripes, they all can be summed up as:
Frontier needs to remember that Elite is a Video Game first, and a simulation second.
What does that mean? It means with every aspect of the game, frontier must ask themselves: Is this activity fun to do? More specifically: What skill does the player need to achieve mastery in this activity? How does doing this activity encourage the player to improve their skill in this activity? Does the player feel rewarded for doing this activity? What prevents the player from doing this activity? What things can happen that make players excited want to tell other players about what they did?
Frontier needs to remember that Elite is a Video Game first, and a simulation second.
What does that mean? It means with every aspect of the game, frontier must ask themselves: Is this activity fun to do? More specifically: What skill does the player need to achieve mastery in this activity? How does doing this activity encourage the player to improve their skill in this activity? Does the player feel rewarded for doing this activity? What prevents the player from doing this activity? What things can happen that make players excited want to tell other players about what they did?
It's not the content that we need more of, its that the existing content needs additional depth. More breadth is just going to clutter the game with random bolt-on features, more ships provides diminishing returns as players can only use a single ship at a time and any handcrafted content will just end up being glossed over without a care within a month.
Instead, they need to add depth. Integrate additional features into existing content, bring existing content together into a cohesive whole and generally offering exponential increases in playability for a given amount of content rather than linear. Ideally, everything they add should have multiple different ways of interacting with it and have knock-on effects on the rest of the game's content, rather than just being a basic "as is".
Instead, they need to add depth. Integrate additional features into existing content, bring existing content together into a cohesive whole and generally offering exponential increases in playability for a given amount of content rather than linear. Ideally, everything they add should have multiple different ways of interacting with it and have knock-on effects on the rest of the game's content, rather than just being a basic "as is".
If it were a simulator, we would be able to buy Engineer upgrades with money we made doing missions. That's how real economies work. Gathering materials for upgrades is a game.
In many ways, if it were more of a simulation, it would be much better. I play lots of simulators and there is not grind in a simulator.
I would like to be more content.
That is absolutely a good point. What few "game" aspects there are also totally fail in regards to the rhetorical questions I posted.
My main point is that the game needs gameplay loops that reinforce and reward playing the game; rather than just a giant pile of procgen missions, grind, and time-gates.
Edit: I actually have no problem with engineers requiring farming materials; and with the materials traders it is not nearly so frustrating. However the system does need some QoL improvements.
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verminstar
Banned
Im of the opinion they should fix at least some of the long standing bugs considering that was what the conversations were about this time last year. Seems a bit...weird that halfway through the year they said they would be spending doing just that, that not a lotta that has been done at all.
Ok so beigification was brought to an end but I did say not a lot...I didnt say they aint done anything. Be that as it may, the circumstances surrounding beigification dont exactly make fer happy reading either considering how long that little saga got dragged out.
Yes, new stuff is nice, Im certainly not trying to bite the hand that feeds...currently havin a mini love affair with the challenger. But even two nights ago, I got a reminder of why this whole thing grates me...a strange and unpredictable planetary camera view bug that leaves ye stranded on a planet unable to get back on yer ship without suiciding the srv.
Its a well known bug, it was first reported last september...no its not a gamebreaking bug, but its damned vexing to say the least...one might argue a quality of life bug. Strange then that a month after this bug was first reported, there was all sorts of talk about quality of life updates in 2018...
And thats just one singular example...and that alone doesnt really inspire a lotta confidence in the future unless they simply jam everything into Q4. But considering how long the list is fer Q4...?
Anyway...an even more sobering thought is that we had these same debates before...this time last year we joked about how many of would still be here if we were having these same discussions a year from now...
Funny how things have worked out so far, isnt it?
Ok so beigification was brought to an end but I did say not a lot...I didnt say they aint done anything. Be that as it may, the circumstances surrounding beigification dont exactly make fer happy reading either considering how long that little saga got dragged out.
Yes, new stuff is nice, Im certainly not trying to bite the hand that feeds...currently havin a mini love affair with the challenger. But even two nights ago, I got a reminder of why this whole thing grates me...a strange and unpredictable planetary camera view bug that leaves ye stranded on a planet unable to get back on yer ship without suiciding the srv.
Its a well known bug, it was first reported last september...no its not a gamebreaking bug, but its damned vexing to say the least...one might argue a quality of life bug. Strange then that a month after this bug was first reported, there was all sorts of talk about quality of life updates in 2018...
And thats just one singular example...and that alone doesnt really inspire a lotta confidence in the future unless they simply jam everything into Q4. But considering how long the list is fer Q4...?
Anyway...an even more sobering thought is that we had these same debates before...this time last year we joked about how many of would still be here if we were having these same discussions a year from now...
Funny how things have worked out so far, isnt it?
Yamiks, you miserable sod, love your videos btw.
Maybe FD just need to invest in the game and amount of staff. I guess it amounts to the same thing.
Maybe FD just need to invest in the game and amount of staff. I guess it amounts to the same thing.
I would rather have some QoL updates than more unconnected content.
And the content we do have needs to be joined up a lot more:
Some of this exists to a small extent, but it needs expanding on.
And the content we do have needs to be joined up a lot more:
- Missions following on from each other more logically
- Missions spawning from the outcome in a USS
- Persistent NPCs through mission chains
- Persistent and consistent NPC behaviour, e.g. miner loads up on limpets at station, jumps to closest system with good resources, SCs to nearby RES, mines until full, jumps back to home system, SCs back to station, repeat. Even if newly spawned, the NPC should be at a logical part of this chain and act accordingly.
- Make permits meaningful, in particular missions that require certain permits
- Make being allied to a faction more meaningful, not just for higher paying missions. In particular, how NPCs from a faction behave should depend more on your relationship and history with the faction.
- Navy rank missions need to be more logical, certainly more military focused
- Tie missions more to the relationship between different factions
- Blackmarket access should be more to do with your criminal reputation and relationship with criminal factions - the controlling factions or powerplay should have minimal effect
- Add some mechanics for systems to grow or decline in population, wealth, productivity, technology and security
- BGS states should effect system population, e.g. famine and outbreaks should reduce population, boom increase it
- Passenger transportation should affect system populations
- NPC deaths should affect system populations
- Colonisation and terraforming BGS mechanics
- More variations on faction type, e.g. anarchy isn't just criminal cartels, could be hippie communes, tribal societies, or just inept government. Missions and NPC behaviour should reflect this.
- Make more use of the commodities supplied to a system by both trade and missions, particularly with what
- NPC numbers should relate more to system population, trade and wealth
Some of this exists to a small extent, but it needs expanding on.