Haven't read all the pages so hope I'm not repeating anything. Will start by saying I love this game, have put more hours into this than any game I can remember. And for what I paid I have definitely had value for money. But I do think they made a big mistake releasing the game in its current form, a great simulator of flying in space and pretty to look at, but has no soul. I don't feel as I'm in a living and breathing universe. Yes I know its a 10 year plan, but most casual players don't have the patience to wait that long for a fleshed out game, and without them how is it going to survive long term??
I think its quite telling that we seem to be seeing more and more of these threads. And as we have all paid our money and this is a FORUM, everyone is entitled to voice their opinion good or bad. And people moaning about them crack me up, as the titles are usually a good indication of the content. If you don't like them don't read them.
Hopefully 2.1 will sort some of the issues out.
1. They were very naïve in how people were going to play the PVP part of the game. You were always going to get people that just like going around killing other people just because they can, especially if there is no consequence. Crime and punishment should have been set in stone from the outset. In start systems the security should have been rapid and nasty. And bounties should have stacked up for killing people for fun in these systems. Chased across many systems,. But on the other hand, as you go further out it gets less and in anarchy systems anything goes. I wonder how many noobies went into open having played lots of multiplayer games and got crushed by someone in a Python and thought "sod this" and never came back.
2. The game needs more life. NPC's should have been available to hire and fly with from the outset. Trading would be a lot more interesting being able to hire 3 Vultures to cover your 3 million investment. And this would help solve some of the the PVP problems. Would certainly make certain players think twice. More life at stations and bases, just the appearance of things happening would add something.
3. Missions far to linear and for the most part too easy. Once you have done them a few times they become boring. In this day and age when you have games giving you dynamic and varied missions that make you think and give you options, I think launching with these was a mistake. People expect more these days, not 1980's missions. I'm hopeful 2.1 will sort this out. Getting missions right will give the game a brighter future, again keeping the casual gamer happy.
4. Horizons should have launched with more content from the off. The planets are pretty and for a while fun, but they offer so little. And once you have seen a few and the different coloured rocks to me it loses its appeal. I don't have the imagination of some of you guys, I don't see how blasting off to look at different planets is exploring. Its really just a fancy Galaxy sight seeing simulator!! You do nothing and interact with nothing. When they add life and species to find and discover Ill be the first blasting off, but until then it holds no appeal to me.
The passion seen on this forum shows how much people care about this game and want it to succeed. The reason I mention the casual gamer so much is I wonder if there is enough hard core gamers out there to keep the game going. I wonder if they had delayed a year or two and fleshed out the game more would we be seeing this sort of thread?? In the end its all going to boil down to money. If 3.0 and 4.0 doesn't sell enough, ill be surprised if we ever see 5.0 and beyond. And after reading this forum (never mind steam and others), selling 3.0 is not going to be easy. Lets all hope Frontier pulls something out of the hat that keeps everyone happy and draws more players in.
Solid post, I agree completely.
To this day the fact that a year after Wings we still don't have the ability to hire and fire NPC wingmen or otherwise conscript them in Conflict Zones is just embarrassing. Why do we even call ourselves COMMANDERS if we don't have the power to command anything?
Agency. It's a thing gamers expect in 2016.
And yes, Horizons has been a huge disappointment. FDev is going to look like a teen who didn't study for his exam and is trying to cram at the end. 2.1 is going to be out with less than 6 months left in the year. 6 months to push out 3 or 4 more meaningful updates when the first one took 6 months all by itself? My faith erodes along with my trust. And with my failing trust goes a closing wallet when it's time for FDev to ask me for more money.
--> Address the lack of player agency.
--> Give us NPC wings we can command.
--> Focus the effort to fix missions around persistent NPCs and drop about 100 persistent NPCs with at least 30% unique dialogue around the bubble in clearly marked, easy to find systems on the galaxy map.
--> Do something impressive with Horizons before that ship sails along with all the trust we gave you when we bought into it.
--> Find a way to fix plug-pulling in PvP.
--> Give exploration more depth than witchspace --> scan --> land maybe --> collect a rock --> repeat. Look at what other games in the same space are doing if you're out of ideas. Or ask explorers. They have lots of thoughts.
--> Balance the ships so that all ships have some sort of utility or uniqueness going for them that makes them worth owning. Give each one thing that they do that other ships can't do quite as well. Maybe a module or weapon variant only available to it (like what we have in PowerPlay)
--> Improve the clarity on where people are and what's going on in the bubble with the galaxy map. Maybe new icons or tick boxes pointing to where conflicts and civil wars are actively happening (along with if a cap ship is present).
--> Put a special circle around the systems where a community goal is active.
--> The burden of knowledge shouldn't always be a burden. Having to use outside tools to do things like find a piece of equipment for our ships or have to search potentially for hours shouldn't be a thing. It's bad design. No, it's
incomplete design. There's a lot of that here.
Ironically, this is the exact same list of things people were asking about this time last year. Yet here we are. Instead of getting what the vast majority of players really wanted addressed, we got power play and landings and bad ship rebalances (hello 5 relevant combat ship meta!). Those features are cool in concept, but just made the inch-deep ocean broader.
I'm as old as any here. Age has nothing to do with understanding and appreciating the evolving expectations of modern games or the value of purpose and player agency in gaming. But this kind of discussion takes this sort of course when people admittedly play only one game and own no other games. They have no perspective on modern games to offer a well-rounded opinion and their ideas are likely to lead to a premature death of ED more than anything else. I'd prefer if they simply kept their mouthes shut and expand their experiences with modern games before resuming being opinionated.
