What DDF Proposals would you like to see Frontier work on?

[Cryptonomica]

Give me all the things! Oh, you're going to make me pick and choose? Fine, then I'll go with

• NPCs (including deeper NPC interaction, greater variety of NPCs, better NPC comms, etc.)
• Exploration
• Ship Crews
• Ongoing improvements to the background sim (including integrating things like Powerplay properly with the BGS)

I would also welcome Ironman mode to the game though I probably wouldn't play it personally, unless we're given an extra character slot.

 

[Ryder35]

Thinking about what exploring should have been is just making me a bit sad!

 

[el_tel]

No: implementing them all as implied during early development when they got my £200 would do it

The point of the poll is to find out from the community which of the DDA topics FD should prioritise. Obviously in an ideal world, they would all be worked on simultaneously, but with limited resources this is not practical.

 

[Kulin]

Tbh., it's less that different stars can look similar - I suppose this is quite scientifically accurate and makes the odd blue shining white dwarf quite interesting - but rather all the interesting concepts of how exploration was supposed to work. Finding new systems via scan instead of all systems in the galaxy being visible from the beginning, the possibility of missjumps, dark systems etc. There were so many cool ideas in the DDA of how exploration could be a complex and interesting trail to blaze. It's sad that it has been reduced to "jump, scan, scoop fuel, rinse and repeat".

Some of them yes. But when you look at for example a T Tauri Star it should more look like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Tauri_star. Accretion Disks, Hot Gas Erruptions with the size of a star system and so on. The same with Wolf Rayet of Herbig AE/BE. Stars. They are not just balls but have enormous amounts of gas and matter surrounding them. Such a sight would be really awesome to discover.

 

[Wicz]

Anything even remotely interesting would be welcome. When I say interesting I mean anything that does not resemble fetching and carrying something/someone from point A to point B again and again, over and over to infinity and beyond, or shooting something/someone until they explode and repeating ad nauseam.

Something mysterious would be nice too, and maybe something unexpected ( not more bugs ).

I won't be holding my breath.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Three? Just three? Sorry, i couldn't.

I selected everything except for player to player trading.

Player to player trading i'm not sure exactly what is meant by that. I mean, you can do player to player trading, and now we have collector drones its easy. Not sure what extra is required here, at least in terms of something that wouldn't likely be exploitable. If it means somehow credit transfers, then definitely against.

 

[Alien]

Three? Just three? Sorry, i couldn't.

I selected everything except for player to player trading.

And the next time I do this, it'll have more options and no multiple choice selection.
The idea is to select three, just three, thou shalt not stop at two, unless it is to proceed to three. Four is right out.
If you abuse the poll and select as many as you want, or all of them, it defeats the point of the poll.

 

[Cadw]

I selected salvaging, exploring and the background simulation, but I would also really like to see the multiple commander slots!

 

[CaptainKremmen]

I also thought about that. But the DDF has the answer, like everytime. Dark Systems, Planets and Deep Space Signal Sources. This thing could easily build on top of the current planet structure because they don't change anything to the current system structure. Its a complete new layer of content, on top of the current star systems. The DDF also describes how this would be done:

There needs to be a scanner, that scans about 10-50 ly around your current position(depending on scanner quality). The scanner gives back a heat map result with different resolution(depending again on scanner quality, to make some especially precious objects only be scannable by the best scaners).

Then you can send hyperspace probes to this regions to scan them and answer with data about the target region. If they find something they are being used as a FTL Anchorpoint you can warp to. Then you can scan the system with in system scanning equipment(as described in the DDA). The things you can find could be:

• Planets to scan(and later land on),
• Black Holes,
• Asteroid Belts,
• Thargoid bases(when they finally arrive),
• Ancient Space stations and other things of completly unknown origin who hint to some precursor alien races.
• Ships stranded in the void in cause of a hyperspace malfunction(both: wrecks and still alive in need of some fuel).
• Pirate hideouts
• Unknown Artifacts

and so on.

Some of this thing would be random generated/scripted like signal sources. Some of them are persistent like normal star systems but hidden and more preciours because completly unexploited.

Sold...!

 

[Tinman]

Anything even remotely interesting would be welcome. When I say interesting I mean anything that does not resemble fetching and carrying something/someone from point A to point B again and again, over and over to infinity and beyond, or shooting something/someone until they explode and repeating ad nauseam.

Something mysterious would be nice too, and maybe something unexpected ( not more bugs ).

I won't be holding my breath.

All missions will always be "move from A to B" or "destroy/interact with something".

"How about a spy/photo mission?"
Fetch mission - Move the item (in this case the photo) from location A (where you took it) to location B.

"Ok, how about a escort mission then?"
Fetch/kill mission - "Move" one ship from location A to B while at the same time destroying other ships when attacked.

"Salvaging a wreck!"
Fetch mission - Move salvage from A (the ship) to B (the station).


At it's core everything is a combination of move/interact...the biggest challenge is rather to make these missions and events feel more natural and integrated into the game world instead of just being stats (which they always will be in the background of any game).

As for the poll: I selected persistent NPCs, passengers and salvaging as my picks of focus.

 

[Agrar Therenus]

I'd be happy with a newsletter this week that actually gives us some future information, rather than what it's almost certainly going to be-- yet another self-congratulation about E3 and the Xbox release.

No dev update now for two weeks.

Speak to us FD.

 

[Wicz]

All missions will always be "move from A to B" or "destroy/interact with something".

Then it seems I won't be playing again anytime soon.

How about a mission to attack a station or base, with or without friends? Maybe a mission to map a distant system, and upon doing so you discover something "mysterious" or not? Maybe we could have missions to visit an area to investigate reports of "insert occurrences here"?

None of those are fetching and carrying ( of course there is interaction but I'm not complaining about that ) and they were the first few that popped into my head without having to think too hard

There is no excuse for the same old same old, over and over again I'm afraid.

 

[deusx_ophc]

great poll alien ^^

the poll result is in: posters in a game forum want approximately all of the features listed in a "what next poll", and they want them pretty much with the same priority.

really looking forward to how this pans out

tldr: FDEV giev soj!!1!1

 

[W4rSkuLL]

Nice post and poll. I voted for persistent NPCs, background simulation and salvaging. I would change background simulation for hireable wingmen if it was in.
There are so many players that want to see persistent NPCs that I guess Frontier will implement this soon. To implement something that is persistent which trigger feelings and continuity. Something to form, control and develop. Elite Dangerous will benefit a lot on this if it can be implemented well into the game.

 

[Tinman]

Then it seems I won't be playing again anytime soon.

How about a mission to attack a station or base, with or without friends? Maybe a mission to map a distant system, and upon doing so you discover something "mysterious" or not? Maybe we could have missions to visit an area to investigate reports of "insert occurrences here"?

None of those are fetching and carrying ( of course there is interaction but I'm not complaining about that ) and they were the first few that popped into my head without having to think too hard

There is no excuse for the same old same old, over and over again I'm afraid.

All of these are fetching/destroying something at its core:

How about a mission to attack a station or base, with or without friends?

Go to location A (station) and attack (destroy).

Maybe a mission to map a distant system, and upon doing so you discover something "mysterious" or not?

Go to location A (the system in question) and fetch/get the information/object, then return this info/object back to location B.

BTW:

Spoiler

Maybe we could have missions to visit an area to investigate reports of "insert occurrences here"?

Once again...go to location A and fetch information about it, then return that info to location B.


As I wrote earlier, what you did with those examples was integrating them into the game world in a more natural way.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

I agree. When reading interviews with David Braben, I was under the impression that exploration and landing on unexplored planets were particularly important to him. How we could end up with this bare minimum of exploration mechanics I really can't understand.

Actually, I can understand it: prioritisation. To be fair to Michael, he made comments during the alpha/beta phases that implied that exploring would not be feature rich on release. So I was not expecting much all along. Then when they basically stopped doing stuff so they could concentrate on bugs before the release, we got whatever happened to be 'done' at that stage, rather than a well rounded release full of complementary features. They had to have the galaxy map working pretty much as it does inside the populated bubble, so folks could fly around to do trade and other stuff. So no probs there. The galactic forge functionality had to be complete because most of the systems inside the bubble are not 'hand crafted'. So not probs there. I guess they sat down to decide what to do with exploring pre release. Adding the very simplistic scanners and point at an object stuff would not have taken much effort: I suspect they thought that was better than nothing.

And, of course, it is better than nothing. But if the way they implemented it means that they cannot find a way to get to the DDA proposals (or a significant subset thereof) because they have painted themselves into a corner, then it certainly is not better than nothing: as in no exploration at all, but DDA stuff following when time allows would have been better, at least IMHO. Certainly there would have been trouble in t' forum, but they were damned if the did, and damned if they didn't.

 

[W4rSkuLL]

I also thought about that. But the DDF has the answer, like everytime. Dark Systems, Planets and Deep Space Signal Sources. This thing could easily build on top of the current planet structure because they don't change anything to the current system structure. Its a complete new layer of content, on top of the current star systems. The DDF also describes how this would be done:

There needs to be a scanner, that scans about 10-50 ly around your current position(depending on scanner quality). The scanner gives back a heat map result with different resolution(depending again on scanner quality, to make some especially precious objects only be scannable by the best scaners).

Then you can send hyperspace probes to this regions to scan them and answer with data about the target region. If they find something they are being used as a FTL Anchorpoint you can warp to. Then you can scan the system with in system scanning equipment(as described in the DDA). The things you can find could be:

• Planets to scan(and later land on),
• Black Holes,
• Asteroid Belts,
• Thargoid bases(when they finally arrive),
• Ancient Space stations and other things of completly unknown origin who hint to some precursor alien races.
• Ships stranded in the void in cause of a hyperspace malfunction(both: wrecks and still alive in need of some fuel).
• Pirate hideouts
• Unknown Artifacts

and so on.

Some of this thing would be random generated/scripted like signal sources. Some of them are persistent like normal star systems but hidden and more preciours because completly unexploited.

Sold to! I like the name Deep Space Signal Sources. These could be rare, but really enhance the journey of explorers. They could contain rare alien cargo which could sell for millions of credits or surprise Thargoid attacks. Or anything exiting.

 

[el_tel]

I selected salvaging, exploring and the background simulation, but I would also really like to see the multiple commander slots!

Sorry this is OT, but your post reminded me of an idea that I had regarding multiple commander slots.

Although it wasn't specifically promised, MCS is something many people are hoping will be added at some point. We also know that FD need revenue to support ongoing development of ED. So how about this:

Give players the ability to purchase additional slots for a small fee. It would need to be on a sliding cost scale to avoid the situation where a player buys lots of extra slots rather than separate 'full' copies of the game. Eg:

£5 for a second slot
£10 for a third slot
£20 for a fourth slot
And so on.

Only one slot can be active at any time, to avoid multi-boxing.

I can imagine that there would be some complaining about paying for something that many were expecting to get for free, so a compromise would be to give the second slot for free, then start charging for the third slot onwards.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Sold to! I like the name Deep Space Signal Sources. These could be rare, but really enhance the journey of explorers. They could contain rare alien cargo which could sell for millions of credits or surprise Thargoid attacks. Or anything exiting.

The problem is not so much what we want (just read the DDA on exploring), but how we get there from where we are.

 

[Wicz]

All of these are fetching/destroying something at its core:


Go to location A (station) and attack (destroy).


Go to location A (the system in question) and fetch/get the information/object, then return this info/object back to location B.

BTW:

Spoiler

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=32895&d=1430475867

Once again...go to location A and fetch information about it, then return that info to location B.


As I wrote earlier, what you did with those examples was integrating them into the game world in a more natural way.

Can you explain how for e.g "investigating reports of something" is the same as fetching and carrying? I understand that I will have to go to the location, see what I can see and then possibly return with the info ( unless by some miracle we get the ability to communicate - we already have FTL travel so why not FTL communication? ). This is not the same as collect 'x' boxes of commodity 'a' from the menu, run the loading screen a couple of times until I arrive at the destination station, dock and then sell 'x' boxes of the commodity in the same menu. Then buy 'x' boxes of commodity 'b' from the menu and repeat until you can't take anymore?

What I want to see is variety ( I was going to say more variety, but just some variety would be a start ), depth and less time wasted on pointless loading, charging, cruising, menu surfing, fighting with the map e.t.c.

What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yes, gameplay, I would love to see some more gameplay.

Nice pic btw