Because it is constructive criticism of the presentation of the argument, if you want people to take the time to read the post and make considered points supporting or countering your arguments it pays to cut to the chase. Seeing as you seem to have summed up the OPs points in a couple of sentences why couldn't the OP do the same at the start or end of his post.
What Happend to the Dream?
- Thread starter Sidey
- Start date
Because it is constructive criticism of the presentation of the argument, if you want people to take the time to read the post and make considered points supporting or countering your arguments it pays to cut to the chase. Seeing as you seem to have summed up the OPs points in a couple of sentences why couldn't the OP do the same at the start or end of his post.
Yep. Pretty much this.
I do find it bizarre that people think it appropriate to post "tl;dr."
"It was too long so I didn't read it because it might be a waste of my time, but I'll continue to waste my (and others') time by posting that it was too long and so generally derailing the thread." Surely the most efficient thing to do would just be to move on?
With regard to the OP, I'm inclined to agree. I tend to think of the game as a black box puzzle. Imagine buying a new ship without resources such as Coriolis. What sites like that do is democratise the knowledge so that anyone -- even a neophyte with a week of play -- can see how their upgrade path will go. Sure, player experience provides context for the data, but without that data it would all be down to the impressions of the individual player. It's difficult to learn the information, for two reasons: first, the information is obfuscated, and second the information is dense and needs to be managed. This makes learning the game an engaging challenge. However, once the player has developed their understanding of the mechanics and has developed some finesse in applying the mechanics to their situations, it really does become a question of time. How long will the fight last? How long will it take to trigger a lockdown? How many ships do I need to kill to counter action X?
The problem is that both PvP and PvE can often be terribly one-sided (isn't that right, Mysteron?) The reason for this is that the information is obfuscated and difficult to manage.
Incidentally, a summary at the beginning of a piece of text is usually called an introduction. If there isn't an introduction, it generally helps to read the section headings and the first and last sentences of each paragraph. You know, y'all could skim the text. The criticism of the OP, to my mind, hasn't been particularly constructive either.
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The thing is that summary misses so much of the useful information the OP contained, so it is missing the point, not by as much as "TL;DR? Yawn..." sort of replies do but still missing significant parts all the same.
I've all but given up on season 2. I have little/no hope 2.4 will offer any gameplay/mechanics of any note/worth. ie: I cannot see the ethos that gave us the rest of season suddenly doing a massive change of direction for 2.4.
So 2.5--> V3 is where my hope lies. If that doesn't show some actual commitment to more involved and impressive mechanics and gameplay, then I think that's my hope all spent!
Wow...............
Think I'll wait until October before commenting. Did you know they have an expo where the future will be discussed. Also some of the tech their demonstrating in other games is looking quite good and i like the noises their making about 3.0 which hopefully will fix most of your concerns...
I'm going to sit somewhere away from the PC now, that was quite a read and well done, structured as you said but more rant than you originally stated.
Think I'll wait until October before commenting. Did you know they have an expo where the future will be discussed. Also some of the tech their demonstrating in other games is looking quite good and i like the noises their making about 3.0 which hopefully will fix most of your concerns...
I'm going to sit somewhere away from the PC now, that was quite a read and well done, structured as you said but more rant than you originally stated.
Well, it was an entertaining read of the OP's post for me. Some decent points about recognizing the state of the work in progress of Elite. I don't agree with the EVE-like clan wishlist he put out, but I'd agree small player bases and stations and perhaps npc escorts would be fine. I believe the game has been continuously worked on and Obsidianant's visit to Frontier where he saw at least 200 staff working on the game reinforced my optimism. I still believe spacelegs and a whole bunch of other gameplay elements will come and disagree with the OP about the "dream" being dead. What the game has already is still astounding with a whole galaxy and changing skybox of locations. And development resources were probably diverted for the PS4 release but imo FDev will continue to work on the game for years to come. Perhaps spacelegs will be more to the OP's liking where players or player groups can buy or rent "office" or "residential" space and have their own shops or sections within a station or city.
Some valid points, but ED is a casestudy of when idealism meets reality. Many, many many times things have been changed and the players squeal 'treachery!' and it goes back to a rather neutered baseline.
More backbone is needed, IMHO.
Frontier: We did something.
Players: Treachery!
Frontier: Suck it up, buttercups.
Players: ... er .. *unsure how to proceed further after realising Frontier are serious and they aren't going to get what they anymore*
...or is released as such? eg: Powerplay released as basically a board game with vapid in game gameplay? CQC which wasted the chance to improve the core game and now sits collecting dust? The Engineers grind-tastic-rebadging gameplay creating a pointless unbalanced higher tier with magic side effects? Multi-crew released so it's basically of no real significant purpose at all?
And even if we look at non-head line gameplay the ethos goes on? Generation ships? Just point and click gameplay... Asteroid bases? Just reskinned stations... etc...
IMHO a significant design ethos needs to come about now... If we get more decisions resulting in stuff of this "nature"... Oh dear!
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Yeah I tend to waffle quite a bit when posting stuff. TBH I couldn't really think of a way of writing those points without turning the whole thing into wall of text.
I know that the clan/player group stuff is not something that everyone wants. To be quite honest I didn't want it either. The problem that I find is that in order to keep interest in the game, individual players like to have their own narratives, their own stories. Even in our dreary RL we all have our own unique stories which we can talk to each other about. The problem is that without RP or some kind of player level story then you really are at the mercy of the sandbox. In order to keep interest long term either you need very very imaginative players who can imagine whatever they need. Or, you give the players tools such that they can create their own RP and stories. Clan/Guild/Corp tools etc is just a mechanism to allow that to happen in a different manner.
My personal preference would be simply to have story arcs for the individual players to pursue (when I first heard about powerplay I thought that this was part of what they were doing). However, at this stage I think its more likely that FD will add a new feature in (guild/clan features), rather than go back and revamp some of the mission systems which have already received an update in the past.
I know that the clan/player group stuff is not something that everyone wants. To be quite honest I didn't want it either. The problem that I find is that in order to keep interest in the game, individual players like to have their own narratives, their own stories. Even in our dreary RL we all have our own unique stories which we can talk to each other about. The problem is that without RP or some kind of player level story then you really are at the mercy of the sandbox. In order to keep interest long term either you need very very imaginative players who can imagine whatever they need. Or, you give the players tools such that they can create their own RP and stories. Clan/Guild/Corp tools etc is just a mechanism to allow that to happen in a different manner.
My personal preference would be simply to have story arcs for the individual players to pursue (when I first heard about powerplay I thought that this was part of what they were doing). However, at this stage I think its more likely that FD will add a new feature in (guild/clan features), rather than go back and revamp some of the mission systems which have already received an update in the past.
I love how CQC keeps becoming bigger and bigger in your stories. CQC was part of 1.4, which came four months after 1.3. Read the patch notes here:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/188174-CQC-Update-1-4\
The new ships are integrated in the main game, the main assets as well. The patch also included, among other things, higher-tiered RES and nav points, three more ships and new mission types, while they had a good part of the team working on 2.0 which launched just a few months later. This notion of 'if they hadnt done CQC the game would be AWESEOME now' is completely fabricated nonsense and you have been around way too long to spread such stuff. CQC is part of four months work of part of the team, and most 'new' parts of CQC were needed for the main game anyway. Those are facts. If you check the stats you'd notice loads of people are into powerplay, and I myself think Engineers expended the life of ED more than anything else for me.
If you could re-write it all just as:"I never liked anything at all that happened, and I hope something really super-drastic will happen!" then I think we can just skip to the inevitable conclusion: the game will continue to improve, and you will continue to be disappointed.
"Asteroid stations are just re-skinned different stations!"
Darn, and I thought they were going to be radically different! Instead asteroid stations are just stations in asteroids, who had thought that? Definitely a super valid reason to become angry and complain again, that doesnt look at all like you are looking for stuff to dislike.
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RP/Imagination/Player Groups
The biggest mistake (and I say this as a predominantly solo player) is the lack of ingame tools for corporations/clans whatever. Now as an original Elite and FE player I fully understand the idea of the elite experience being "you all alone in a galaxy which tries to kill you" so I get why initially the decision was made to try and keep that single pilot vs universe feeling, and I guess they reasoned that corps/clans would massively change that aspect of the game. (Which is true, it would). However, whilst elite has lots of potential for emergant game play, there are no cues to help a person RP, aside from their imagination. ED never bothered making any bespoke missions (they existed in the first alpha of the game for the mastopholese mining corp, and I think that if they had kept that style that alone would be enough to keep me playing), granted its a lot more writing work, but good games are not built on coding alone. So without the RP hook of bespoke missions, this is something that player groups can fill in. If you belong to a player group there is always an idea, some goal, some thing that you're trying to do (if you have the tools for player group bases, wars what-have-you).
Having neither of the two creates some weird disonance, basically the BGS is working so your actions have an effect on the macros scale of the universe (a small effect but an effect nontheless), powerplay is another layer on the macro scale which allows for galaxy wide story telling, we have the thargoids and the arc showing their arrival, again macro level. We have the CG's and again individual pilots can see their efforts doing something (sometimes) on a macro level again. However there is nothing on a personal level, and this is where the "imagination" stuff comes in. Some people have great imagination and can quite happily link their actions to that larger outcome, for these E
Power Creep and Engineers
This here is a classic, and it happens everywhere. It even happens in films, and series. Good examples are Marvel films. The heroes are powerful, the supervillains are really powerful that you need some kind of special power to beat them, so in the sequal, well the supervillain needs to be even more powerful than the one before, so the heroes need to band together and get some even greater special powers to beat them, and so on and so forth. Other good examples are DBZ, the enemies and the heroes just get more and more powerful each story arc.
The same thing happens in a lot of games, we gain resources, we use the resources, we get more powerful ships, now we all run around in Anacondas and we've hit the ceiling, so along comes engineers, this raises the ceiling again (in a horrible grindy RNG way, but whatever) so off everyone goes again, and their ships become even more powerful, so we need more powerful enemies, so now the enemy ships have engineered modules, but the community doesnt like that, so we just increase the number of enemy ships that we destroy. So the NPCs arent a challenge for a proper engineered PvE ship, so along come the thargoids, we'll probably need some new even more powerful weapons to defeat them.
In the mean time, that part of the game is getting further and further away from the new players who are coming in, and so the only solution is to allow them to reach that content faster, so we make missions pay out greater amounts of money etc. Strange how even though the E
This type of (admittedly classic) solution to end game or game ceiling problems is what has caused all this issue. E
AI and combat feel
This for me is a really big issue (for others perhaps not so much). When I started in alpha each of those little missions you were given a preconfigured loadout and ship and had to take on some enemies. They were tough, the enemy AI was crazy accurate with their guns, they would hit you with pinpoint accuracy at the edge of their range. If you got into a fight with a similar NPC ship, you knew about it afterwards. You needed to be good to come out unscathed. Then the AI was nerfed so that it wasnt so crazy accurate, this coupled with the larger ships that players can have vs the smaller ships that you tend to find in combat meant that the player had a distinct advantage in combat zones. Then when you add engineers to the mix and the nerf of engineered weaponry from the AI and you end up in a position where you enter a CZ and just run around destroying everything until you get bored/run out of ammo/run out of SCBs.
You get given this crazy feeling of "I am a flying god taking out these elite ships like theyre nothing" inside a CZ. Then you leave the CZ go run a mission and the universe has forgotten you again. Elite, and FE were never about these grand old space furballs with hundreds of ships shooting each others to pieces in a war. It was more individual than that. Each NPC should be a threat, and any ship that isnt a trading ship or exploration ship should have a harder time of waking out.
PvP and community
The state as to which PvP was set up and encouraged in E
The problem is you cant fix the latter without fixing the former. Otherwise if TTK gets shorter across the board it makes it harder for player who are PvEing to get away from the PvPer. With no real consequences for performing illegal actions in the game, there is no disincentive to running around murdering people left, right and centre. The only way to give the PvErs a chance is to increase TTK so that they can actually have a chance of high-waking out. In the mean time PvP duels have become ludicrously long and boring. I think this is another area where the vision for the game has affected game decisions in a negative way. E
Dev game focus
This last one is tricky as I dont know the first thing about developing computer games. It appears as though FD have been going through a design process where the base systems for gameplay are put in place, and then they move onto another base system. I get this as they had a roadmap in mind, they have lots of crazy things they want to do (atmospheric planets, space legs whatever). Then they flesh out the mechanics and details later on. This has led us to some very seemingly half baked implementation, and some really REALLY sketchy lore (telepresence), all just to justify a feature that FD want to develop. Powerplay as a feature has not been great, but its not too bad. CQC, why have it separate from the main game, just make an ingame simulator which you access when docked at a station for a bit of random PvP fun, it could be like the armax arsenal arena from ME3 in the citadel DLC. Multicrew and SLFs (imo) have been an utter disaster... direct telepresence, really? 3rd person turret view!?!? (yes I know when you die you teleport back to the station and that concessions have already been made for gameplay, but the lore they made up to justify this feature was just ridiculous, there were much better solutions).
Of course all of this has been at the expense of developing the original features which were put in. Features get added, and then left in this weird half-baked situation, it seems as though only the framework is added, but then the polish is left behind. Its little surprise that the description of "mile wide, inch deep" persists.
RP/Imagination/Player Groups I agree, though I'm personally all for the Universe failing to regard me.
Power Creep and Engineers I fully agree, but this is a classic problem for which I know no solution.
AI and combat feel No, I don't agree. By the time I get my Panther, I want to be able to laugh in the face of the poxy NPC Anaconda threatening me.
[video=youtube;HpvuWNb0K3M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpvuWNb0K3M&feature=youtu.be&t=401[/video]
PvP and community I agree, and not just for PvP. I've had fewer NPC interdictions trading in low security systems than high. Might just be my luck, of course.
Dev game focus I agree. The problem is that if you want to make it two inches deep, the game needs to branch out in maybe unthought-of directions. Maybe the issue is that we are hewing too closely to the old Elite model. TBH, I'm a crowd-funder who didn't start to play until 2.4. The reason was that many things I wanted weren't in the game at the start. And looking at it from the outside, the game has developed in directions that I wouldn't have expected back then, so I'm generally hopeful.
In any case, I'm extremely happy to be playing ED and not FFE in emulation mode.
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OP, read your wall of text. Agree, ED is a great game, the Devs, when adding many features, have painted themselves into many corners, the simply decided to live there, instead of doing the required work to fix them. I'm really hoping 3.0 brings a total revamp of the existing game, but we'll see.
OP ..
In all honesty you could have just condensed what you said to i want ED to be more like Eve.
Next ....
In all honesty you could have just condensed what you said to i want ED to be more like Eve.
Next ....
When video games become too important in your life, that's when you write such wall of text, compensating something that no game developer can give to you. Get well soon.