What a waste...

[Arubeto]

The updates during the "Horizons" season of ED brought many cool new assets to the game, many of which I have been looking forward to for a long time:

• Megaships
• Structures inspired by CQC arenas
• Shipyards
• Several cool variations for station interiors (high tech, tourism, mining etc.)
• Alien crash sites and structures

In addition to that, we still have the awesome capital ships. I love all those assets, I think the 3D artists of ED did a splendid job designing and creating all these awesome locations.

And that's exactly what is such a shame: apart from the station interior variations, I rarely ever come across any of these cool locations if I don't actively seek them out / go looking for them. I know where some capital ships are stationed, but never really have any reason to visit them, because they just statically and meaningless orbit around a planet without any connection to missions or any interesting way to interact with them. I think they - as well as all the other cool stuff the designers created - should be much better integrated into the mission system then they are now, to actively show us the awesome stuff the game has to offer!

How awesome would it be to be send to defend a capital ship that happens to be in a system in the state of war (this should definitely also make capital ships more dynamic, like having a set of 30-50 capital ships for every super power that they actively move around the galaxy and could be tracked and followed by players, instead of the static locations and random Combat Zone appearances they have now).

In a similar way, bounty hunting missions could make use of the CQC inspired structures, since scum tends to hang out around those structures.

Community Goals that have the goal to build new Capital or Megaships should ask us to bring resources to capital shipyards, instead of the normal space station we visit every day anyway.

Right now, we need to follow Galnet news or forum threads and newsletters to know how to see new alien sites or megaships. Why can't this happen more in-game, incorporating those locations into missions as well?

As it is now, there are so many cool places in ED many people will never see, because they are not integrated into the normal gameplay at all or at least not well enough.

What a waste...

 

[Macros Black]

That's some very good suggestions here, CMDR. There's definitely great potential and many opportunities with the current assets in ED that has yet to come to fruition. More diversity and variety in the missions would probably be welcomed by many players, myself included.

I very much enjoyed the appearance of the Distress call, Threat 4 signal sources, where a pirate capital ship was attacking another capital ship and you could chip in either side. This particular USS happens very rarely, and it would be great to receive it from the mission board, leveraging the current state of the system you're in.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

There is definitely scope to put the assets to more use, but Sandro seems intent on having us run around doing aimless things again and again and again rather than creating actual first person narrative. Missions to prove your worth to a faction to buzz a capship's surface, or missions to bring back some ancient guardians artefacts from the ruins at [mission given location] or NPC's wagering you some uber rare materials for the winner of a race to see who can do the quickest laps of the cap ship shipyards, or naval missions to join a cap ship for a month as a fighter pilot. But no instead we get long range biowaste hauling missions, even the new chained missions take a dump on us, how many times have you scanned some surface base, bought them 10 tonnes of grain and when you look at the third step in the chained missions "Using the grain you donated we produced ten tonnes of biowaste which we have deposited in your ship and want you to deliver to......" They, the designers and thus their NPC's are literally taking a dump on us and rubbing our face in it.

Edited to add that some of the 3d / sound art work is stunning, the unknown structuires / thargoid bases / crashed motherships are stunning in VR with high levels of supersampling. The gameplay side of things.... not so much.

 

[Xious]

Good points OP.

It's almost like Frontier Development should change it's name to "Half-Ast Development".

 

[Marshall...]

Totally with you OP!

 

[Drelthar]

Some of the large new assets actually do have a purpose, and some interesting stuff regarding them.

The generation ships have cool voice acting, and some (all?) have listening posts and other means to actually figure out how to find them.

Similarly with Communications hub Zeta 12, which is linked to the new thargoid bases.

So they are doing cool stuff. Needs to be more apparent, and more of it is always good.

Good suggestions too though.

 

[askavir]

I agree.

Most of those installations and megaships look incredible. But they're completely devoid of purpose (at least worthwhile purpose), which makes then just scenery. You go there once, drop your chin, take a screenshot, and don't come back again - ever.

I have 2 wishes regarding those:

1 - They are made dockable (interior docking would be grand) and...
2 - They are given purpose, ideally some kind of unique purpose (like the engineer bases) linked to the installation type.

This is actually one of my biggest wishes for the post-2.4, aka "3.0: Base improvements". Those installations are far too cool and magestic to be mere scenery forever.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Fair points, I agree.
I do hope that all these assets were created with a purpose down the road.

 

[Apos]

That has been the case since the start of Horizons if you look deeper in other aspects.

For example, did you know that settlements (not surface ports), are not only completely useless for a faction to control as an asset, because it offers you no benefits whatsoever, but it actually is a harmful asset to have because skimmer missions damage the settlement owner?

Thus, grabbing a settlement is not just meaningless, but actually detrimental to a faction and the players supporting it.

As far as those assets go though. If they were everywhere, they would have stopped being special. Regardless of that, they do need a function for sure instead of being overworked eye candies.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

The updates during the "Horizons" season of ED brought many cool new assets to the game, many of which I have been looking forward to for a long time:

• Megaships
• Structures inspired by CQC arenas
• Shipyards
• Several cool variations for station interiors (high tech, tourism, mining etc.)
• Alien crash sites and structures

In addition to that, we still have the awesome capital ships. I love all those assets, I think the 3D artists of ED did a splendid job designing and creating all these awesome locations.

And that's exactly what is such a shame: apart from the station interior variations, I rarely ever come across any of these cool locations if I don't actively seek them out / go looking for them. I know where some capital ships are stationed, but never really have any reason to visit them, because they just statically and meaningless orbit around a planet without any connection to missions or any other interesting way to interact with them. I think they - as well as all the other cool stuff the designers created - should be much better integrated into the mission system then they are now, to actively show us the awesome stuff the game has to offer!

How awesome would it be to be send to defend a capital ship that happens to be in a system in the state of war (this should definitely also make capital ships more dynamic, like having a set of 30-50 capital ships for every super power that they actively move around the galaxy and could be tracked and followed by players, instead of the static locations and random Combat Zone appearances they have now).

In a similar way, bounty hunting missions could make use of the CQC inspired structures, since scum tends to hang out around those structures.

Community Goals that have the goal to build new Capital or Megaships should ask us to bring resources to capital shipyards, instead of the normal space station we visit every day anyway.

Right now, we need to follow Galnet news or forum threads and newsletters to know how to see new alien sites or megaships. Why can't this happen more in-game, incorporating those locations into missions as well?

As it is now, there are so many cool places in ED many people will never see, because they are not integrated into the normal gameplay at all or at least not well enough.

What a waste...

I just wrote a very similar thread, OP, especially in regards to the GalNet part. It turns out that in and around Maia there are communications stations where you can get into staged fights around structures. They also give you info on where Thargoids are and all of that. I would very much have liked the game to lead me to these things sooner (as opposed to just leaving them out there for me to maybe run across). And, like you said, the modeling of these communications outposts is top-notch. It's a shame more of the player base isn't likely to see them.

I still have never seen a generation ship. Came upon a prison megaship once and it was dead - nothing going on. Moreover, it just sat there. It might as well have just been a space station.

Agree with bounty hunting. Why can't a USS spawn a temporary structure for us to fight around?

Let's hope that 2.4/3.x introduce more of these things, and actively leads the player base to them, so that we can enjoy them without having to just "happen upon" them, or learn about them from the forums.

Agree with your whole post. This game, even with current mechanics, could provide a much more engrossing experience for the players.

 

[ebbrell]

I think U may find some of the development works will start to link together as 2.4 and beyond unfolds

 

[Arubeto]

The generation ships have cool voice acting, and some (all?) have listening posts and other means to actually figure out how to find them.

Yes, the voice records of the Zutara were really cool! Another reason why it's a shame so few people will actually ever get the opportunity to listen to them...

 

[Cervantes01]

I don't really have any confidence in the lead designer given the history of bad decisions and implementations on his watch. These may or may not be his fault, I don't know but I still haven't forgiven him for saying that he didn't understand why people wanted more ships, its a space game where the only meaningful progression is getting another ship and he doesn't get it.

That's all I can say without the mods doing me for wrong think, as they police these forums to death.

 

[Soon(TM)]

I agree. Most of the "small" updates are the best ones.

Mega ships, new station interior's, traffic control, asteroid bases to name a few

Was far more impressed with those than I was power play, CqC, Engineers or multipew.

I hope FD have learned from this last year of failed "features" and from now on will actually listen to their player base and hear what we want, instead of guessing what we want!

 

[Deleted member 115407]

I don't know what to think. Part of me opines that they've left it all out there to find on our own because there isn't much gameplay involved with a lot of it... just laying down the bricks, right? No reason to get everyone all excited.

Then another part of me thinks that they are under the impression that there are 2.x million players pouring over GalNet articles like they were some super exciting part of the game for us. I don't know about anyone else, but when I am getting ready to play elite dangerous, GalNet is the last thing I'm thinking about. When I do Open it up on those rare occasions that I'm waiting, or just out of vague curiosity, it is often laden with information that I have no use for. Who has gone on lockdown, who has gone into election. With 20000 inhabited systems and umpteen number of factions between them shifting states every day, none of that actually matters. Then some article about how some CG faction was able to build their space station which means nothing to me. Hell, I don't even read the damn text when I go do CGs. I just pick up on what's needed to get on the tiers and go do it.

GalNet is dry and uninteresting, and frankly when I click on it and it takes me out of game to a web browser I immediately tune out.

 

[Zwajo]

OP was just talking to my mate about this with all of Open... I enjoy PvP and would love to see other cmdrs in the black.. but as it stands from a gaming perspective there is no profit or motivation to play open and many expenses possibly incurred. Same with many of the new contents as you pointed out... if asteroid bases paid miners better or mega ships had rare goods.. or ANYTHING to warrant doing so it would be some much more useful. As it stands most of elite is wasted as a lot of players such as myself see no purpose in wasting resources "because".

 

[GraXXoR]

Some of the large new assets actually do have a purpose, and some interesting stuff regarding them.

The generation ships have cool voice acting, and some (all?) have listening posts and other means to actually figure out how to find them.

Similarly with Communications hub Zeta 12, which is linked to the new thargoid bases.

So they are doing cool stuff. Needs to be more apparent, and more of it is always good.

Good suggestions too though.

But how does one go about finding them without using a Wiki or other out of game resource?

 

[Ralph Vargr]

But how does one go about finding them without using a Wiki or other out of game resource?

Hey! NO Handholding!

 

[GraXXoR]

Hey! NO Handholding!

IKR.... which means that one ends up just flying around and around.... I actually did find an asteroid base called Gateway completely by accident... It was pretty epic.

But I do wish there were some more “organic” in game method of finding all that is interesting in ED. Then there’d be less likely all the whining about an inch deep universe.

NMS actually has missions which you can completely ignore, but if you do them, you’ll end up having tried most aspects of the game and visiting some wonderful places... when I first played NMS back at launch, it got old pretty quickly but with the new missions and chilled storyline I’m really enjoying it.

 

[krylite]

It'd be nice to see chained missions or passenger missions leading up to visiting a megastructure or megaships. Like meeting up with a ship fleeing one of those military bases and picking up the spy as a passenger , or taking a spy there to take pictures, etc.