Well Done FD, however a long road is still ahead...

[CMDR Muy Bien Gato]

I agree with most of what you said, although I don't find the game "boring". I think what it mostly lacks is incentive and maybe a personality.

For instance...

I want incentive to read GalNet. I want to hear about specialized NPC's that have huge bounties. I want to flee from murderous rogues through name recognition alone, but also have incentive to wing up and take them down and split the multimillion cr bounty. This is all the more possible with the engineers update!

I want engineers to give more direction as to what I am even doing. I want to know which planets are ripe with the materials I'm sent out to retrieve. I want the engineers to send me on rad missions where I need to steal cargo from a specific NPC, or fixed position. I want less RNG and random instancing.

I want power play to be FUN. I want to actually have a reason to join up with all of this newly introduced risk. It's so off balance right now. I want there to be actual differences between the powers other than this forced philosophical role playing.

Most of all, I want the dang bugs fixed. The ones that have persisted since day one. I really empathize with FD in this regard. I work a job where I constantly have to put projects on standby in order to meet deadlines from new projects, so I know what sort of pressure these wonderful devs must be under (at least, I imagine I do). I just want less "new", and more polish. Get to the new stuff later.

I think ED is a fantastic game, and I have sunk countless hours into both the Xbox and PC version, but if the majority of players spent more time singing its praises, and less time speaking about its flaws, there would almost certainly be less turnover and higher turnout. I can only speak anecdotally, but every one of my friends who used to play ED quit around 40 hours. That's good for a single player game, but not good for a game with a projected lifespan such as Elite proposes. As well, every one of my friends who haven't played it still refuse to because of the widely publicized grind fest.

 

[Don Alvarez]

He lost me at "pvp".

 

[Mengy]

Constructive criticism -

Too many subjects for discussion in one thread.
There's whole forums of threads discussing all these subjects.
Thread will become convuleted and disjointed as everyone rages on about one point or another.

Yeah, I can agree with this, the OP hits on so many topics that discussion about it will be haphazard and disjointed. I really think the main points of the OP can be summarized in one sentence:

Elite Dangerous is a really good game but it's core mechanics still need to be fleshed out, and that is much more important than adding new features on top of unfinished old ones.

 

[Insomnia]

The game is rather boring I agree with that. Credits farming seems to be the main objective in the game (completely subjective feeling) because there's no endgame content that people actually could strive for. There's no sense of personal achievements. However, with the newly improved AI, killing NPCs provides such glorious satisfaction that it becomes the actual achievement itself.
It's very far from being innovative in general but with each patch it becomes a better experience. 2.1 brought a lot of great additions and I do believe that Elite Dangerous will evolve to something spectacular. It just takes a very long time.

 

[Mohrgan]

I would say, FD is well aware of the road ahead. They are putting in features that are the basis for future improvements as they go, and they have from the beginning. I for one feel that FD are pretty realistic in their timetables.

 

[Krieger]

Hello fellow commanders and dear FD staff.
<snip>...
-Beta testing has a purpose LISTEN to the bug reports and act upon all of them. Also cut it out with the payed beta access philosophy, smart people with not pay to essentially do YOUR job. You are sacrificing quality for a quick buck… That in my opinion is short-sighted
<snip>...

I think Frontier should create a (anonymous) test group for ED that is representative of the whole player population. The beta-test group is self-selected and probably consist mainly of players from the high percentiles (both in skills as well as time and money investment). A representative test-group also gives better test coverage of all aspects of the game. This will also help in finding the coveted "balance" in game play otherwise it will stay a hit-and-miss affair.

 

[KillSwitch69]

-Beta testing has a purpose LISTEN to the bug reports and act upon all of them. Also cut it out with the payed beta access philosophy, smart people with not pay to essentially do YOUR job. You are sacrificing quality for a quick buck… That in my opinion is short-sighted

Though I agree with some of what the OP has said above and disagree with some points, this without doubt the biggest bugbear for me ,, I find it insulting that they would ask people to pay to BETA test there product.
I mean W T F !!!! we pay for the game and expansions and now have to Beta test this for you ? .
Thats just taking the p1ss!.

This does not fill me with confidence and looking at the recent debacle with the AI it obviously didnt work.

Giving access to Beta to anyone who wishes may cause some technical issues such as server load not being able to handle that many players. I do not know if this is the case, but giving payed access one would assume they would be able to upscale their server capacity based on and financed by the player base. This makes sense from a financial perspective but at the same time sends the wrong kind of message to the players themselves.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I think Frontier should create a (anonymous) test group for ED that is representative of the whole player population. The beta-test group is self-selected and probably consist mainly of players from the high percentiles (both in skills as well as time and money investment). A representative test-group also gives better test coverage of all aspects of the game. This will also help in finding the coveted "balance" in game play otherwise it will stay a hit-and-miss affair.

This shouldn't be too hard to manage, say making a first come first serve subscription form/forum thread to each beta test?

 

[KillSwitch69]

I agree with most of what you said, although I don't find the game "boring". I think what it mostly lacks is incentive and maybe a personality.

For instance...

I want incentive to read GalNet. I want to hear about specialized NPC's that have huge bounties. I want to flee from murderous rogues through name recognition alone, but also have incentive to wing up and take them down and split the multimillion cr bounty. This is all the more possible with the engineers update!

I want engineers to give more direction as to what I am even doing. I want to know which planets are ripe with the materials I'm sent out to retrieve. I want the engineers to send me on rad missions where I need to steal cargo from a specific NPC, or fixed position. I want less RNG and random instancing.

I want power play to be FUN. I want to actually have a reason to join up with all of this newly introduced risk. It's so off balance right now. I want there to be actual differences between the powers other than this forced philosophical role playing.

Most of all, I want the dang bugs fixed. The ones that have persisted since day one. I really empathize with FD in this regard. I work a job where I constantly have to put projects on standby in order to meet deadlines from new projects, so I know what sort of pressure these wonderful devs must be under (at least, I imagine I do). I just want less "new", and more polish. Get to the new stuff later.

I think ED is a fantastic game, and I have sunk countless hours into both the Xbox and PC version, but if the majority of players spent more time singing its praises, and less time speaking about its flaws, there would almost certainly be less turnover and higher turnout. I can only speak anecdotally, but every one of my friends who used to play ED quit around 40 hours. That's good for a single player game, but not good for a game with a projected lifespan such as Elite proposes. As well, every one of my friends who haven't played it still refuse to because of the widely publicized grind fest.

You make some very interesting points, however some are a bit vague and hard to translate into a suggestion for improvement. I'll go trough them in order.

-When you speak about incentive I'm assuming you mean something that goes beyond simple financial gain? I think that is exactly what has been attempted with engineer mods and personally I think it's a step in the right direction.

-Galnet atm is written by hand and that is part of the problem. More time spent writing stuff in GalNet means less manpower elsewhere. Either GalNet needs to be partially automated or community run under supervision with occasional imputs by FD for special events. Rogue NPC would probably have to be handled with a RNG scenario to spawn them. Say a rogue NPC is know to attack traders in a certain system, this would require players hunting it to cooperate and have one play bait in a fully shielded T9 and the rest waiting to intervene.

-I'm trying to extrapolate here where exactly the problem is, I'm assuming if for example materials remained random but where weighted depending on planet type or ring type it would be less frustrating? As for missions from engineers I personally think that problem is more related to missions in general.

-Define what would FUN look like to you. As in the differences to each faction I'm assuming you mean ships and station designs, this would require a huge amount of work on the part of frontier.

-More polish, having bugs persisting for such a long time is not acceptable. However it's the new stuff that keeps players buying seasonal passes. It sounds like it's a workload processing problem, too much to do and not enough manpower.

-Is this a customer loyalty issue or more a game design issue causing burnout in your opinion? How would you improve the situation and what do you think could help recover those lost friends of yours?

 

[Enderby]

At this rate it should be ready for release some time early next year.

 

[KillSwitch69]

At this rate it should be ready for release some time early next year.

That's based on the assumption all of the points mentioned where to be implemented at once.

 

[Insomnia]

I agree with most of what you said, although I don't find the game "boring". I think what it mostly lacks is incentive and maybe a personality.

For instance...

I want incentive to read GalNet. I want to hear about specialized NPC's that have huge bounties. I want to flee from murderous rogues through name recognition alone, but also have incentive to wing up and take them down and split the multimillion cr bounty. This is all the more possible with the engineers update!

I want engineers to give more direction as to what I am even doing. I want to know which planets are ripe with the materials I'm sent out to retrieve. I want the engineers to send me on rad missions where I need to steal cargo from a specific NPC, or fixed position. I want less RNG and random instancing.

I want power play to be FUN. I want to actually have a reason to join up with all of this newly introduced risk. It's so off balance right now. I want there to be actual differences between the powers other than this forced philosophical role playing.

Most of all, I want the dang bugs fixed. The ones that have persisted since day one. I really empathize with FD in this regard. I work a job where I constantly have to put projects on standby in order to meet deadlines from new projects, so I know what sort of pressure these wonderful devs must be under (at least, I imagine I do). I just want less "new", and more polish. Get to the new stuff later.

I think ED is a fantastic game, and I have sunk countless hours into both the Xbox and PC version, but if the majority of players spent more time singing its praises, and less time speaking about its flaws, there would almost certainly be less turnover and higher turnout. I can only speak anecdotally, but every one of my friends who used to play ED quit around 40 hours. That's good for a single player game, but not good for a game with a projected lifespan such as Elite proposes. As well, every one of my friends who haven't played it still refuse to because of the widely publicized grind fest.

Nicely put.
But what if the designers ideas of 'fun' doesn't correspond with what your idea of 'fun' is? I think FD learns as it goes on with designing this. They haven't done a whole lot of narrative games that draws the player into various plots but with the introduction of 2.1, they have shown a great deal of progress with weaving the player in the new features. Power Play needs to do this as well. And also, Power Play might need a strong overhaul to engage players in PP.
Right now, it's a second sandbox.

 

[Cosmo]

-Game is boring and repetitive at it’s core, the only interesting aspect are when human interaction is taking place be it PVP, socializing or whatnot. This brings me to my next point

-The game lacks complexity which brings me to my next point

-The game is too predictable use the RNG to generate random encounters with special mission/rewards etc. The psycho pirate and or an occasional natural

-lack of coherent and illogical behavior of NPC in most cases

-Lack of social tools like wing finder, mission cooperation, community goals chat channel & wing finder etc etc

-Reward customer loyalty and make those customers feel special on a regular basis. Also try and get feedback from customers that have left and act upon it if possible. Retaining customers is just as important as development! Lost customers can return if you play your cards right with them.

I think these are the most important points.

 

[CMDR Muy Bien Gato]

You make some very interesting points, however some are a bit vague and hard to translate into a suggestion for improvement. I'll go trough them in order.

-When you speak about incentive I'm assuming you mean something that goes beyond simple financial gain? I think that is exactly what has been attempted with engineer mods and personally I think it's a step in the right direction.

-Galnet atm is written by hand and that is part of the problem. More time spent writing stuff in GalNet means less manpower elsewhere. Either GalNet needs to be partially automated or community run under supervision with occasional imputs by FD for special events. Rogue NPC would probably have to be handled with a RNG scenario to spawn them. Say a rogue NPC is know to attack traders in a certain system, this would require players hunting it to cooperate and have one play bait in a fully shielded T9 and the rest waiting to intervene.

-I'm trying to extrapolate here where exactly the problem is, I'm assuming if for example materials remained random but where weighted depending on planet type or ring type it would be less frustrating? As for missions from engineers I personally think that problem is more related to missions in general.

-Define what would FUN look like to you. As in the differences to each faction I'm assuming you mean ships and station designs, this would require a huge amount of work on the part of frontier.

-More polish, having bugs persisting for such a long time is not acceptable. However it's the new stuff that keeps players buying seasonal passes. It sounds like it's a workload processing problem, too much to do and not enough manpower.

-Is this a customer loyalty issue or more a game design issue causing burnout in your opinion? How would you improve the situation and what do you think could help recover those lost friends of yours?

Yes, the only real incentive in this game is buying bigger and badder ships, and then getting bigger, badder parts for those ships. The engineers are definitely a step in the right direction, but the meat of the update, in my opinion, boils down to whether or not you want to spend hours and hours farming materials. The problem with this current situation, as brought up in countless threads before this one, is that there is no real guide to how you get these materials. The engineers don't offer missions, but simply say "Hey, I need material X". The problem with this is that you could search an entire system only to find out that the numerous planets you've landed on, scoured endlessly, and left empty-handed, never even had the material you were looking for in the first place. So then on to the next system you go. Rinse and repeat! As it stands now, there is absolutely no way of knowing this without spending hours, days, even weeks, searching for a needle in a haystack (arsenic, for example). This is all exacerbated by the fact that really, you're only gathering materials for the first couple hundred hours only to grind the engineers to a point where you can actually craft quality components that warrant more than a 1% increase in stats. On top of that, you're only really doing it for one of your ships, as there are currently no storage options. Blah blah blah, this whole thing has been discussed to death, so I'd direct you to the many other threads, as they've made plenty of excellent suggestions. But the post 2.1 grind is quite literally multiplied exponentially when you take into consideration each aspect of it. Quickest way to solve this? Probably by scanning planets and unveiling their resources in the system map.

Now about GalNet... I feel as though GalNet should keep the hand-written aspect, as the majority of this game is generated to some degree. This injects a decent amount of humanity into an otherwise automated system. However, the thought of missions tying in to GalNet has always been fascinating to me. Something that is client-based rather than community based. For instance, how cool would it be to read a story about how a rogue pirate who had recently assassinated a diplomat for the Empire, then making it your goal to track down that agent, and decide whether you kill him/her and support the empire for a chunky bounty, or enter a dialogue with said agent (much like the alt. missions you get on the Comms panel) and lend your support to a shadowy pirate faction (and thus gain a permit to their system). Then, much like a choose your own adventure, GalNet updates itself client-side depending on which path you choose. Just a loose idea, but this goes back to incentivizing something other than the grind, and also lends personality to an otherwise automated system of missions that update every 5 minutes. I'm not going to concern myself with what is possible and what isn't. I'm a consumer, not a game designer. I'm not too keen to profess armchair game design, but I know what sounds fun to me, and a narrative focus for each individual player sounds exciting to me.

Like I said, I find ED fun, but the vastness of the game is also it's main deterrent. I'm not concerned with new ships, or new stations. While that would be nice, this would be a short-term fix as it will only stay fresh for so long before we're back to square one. A lot of my friends who used to play this never had any interest in getting bigger ships. Power Play, for instance, was this crazy thing we were excited to try once our CR grind got stale. But immediately, we knew that it was just another form of the grind. I don't really have any suggestions for PP, because it's purpose is so lost on me at this point I wouldn't even know where to begin. And much like my friends who quit, they felt that way about ED. Some of us are totally okay with farming RES, or farming trade routes, or farming long-range smuggling missions; some of us are not I suppose. I feel as though I belong to the former group, since I'm obviously still playing.

I think the best way to recover lost players would simply incentivize a reward system that doesn't necessitate grinding for CR. Instead, reward the player with a rich narrative. Just my two cents.

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Nicely put.
But what if the designers ideas of 'fun' doesn't correspond with what your idea of 'fun' is? I think FD learns as it goes on with designing this. They haven't done a whole lot of narrative games that draws the player into various plots but with the introduction of 2.1, they have shown a great deal of progress with weaving the player in the new features. Power Play needs to do this as well. And also, Power Play might need a strong overhaul to engage players in PP.
Right now, it's a second sandbox.

Hey, if they don't, then they don't. I don't expect the developers to change their direction based on what I would find fun by any means. But I definitely think massive space operas, as well as small individual stories, have a welcome place in ED.