Hello.
I'm writing this here in the meagre hope that FDev will pay any attention. I expect few onlookers will agree, but perhaps you'll not react without forethought.
I played the original game on C64, and it's other releases since.. and loved them all. ED is different in numerous ways, obviously, but notably, it exists in a very different world than did the others. It exists in a world where the internet has a huge influence over how we go about doing anything, including playing games. But think about that for a moment... has it really ?
To put things into context, I play in an "old-school" manner, and I encourage members of the group I'm involved with to do the same. For example, I'm not a fan of exploration using Advanced Discovery Scanners... I think they negate the whole point of, and therefore ruin, any challenge present in exploration. I've written about this at length elsewhere, so won't go over ground already covered. But there's one aspect to playing this game about which I'm finding it harder and harder to hide to hide my displeasure, and that's where players get their information from.
I don't play many games online any more... this, and ARMA 3 are pretty much it. More accurately, I've always leaned more towards simulators (and I consider these two titles to fit that genre). But as a gamer who has played many of the "landmark" titles since Castle Wolfenstein, I don't recall any of them requiring skills in using Google, or posting on forums, or message boards, or trolling through YouTube, Reddit, social media, or any other similar source, for information on how to actually play a game.
Is it unreasonable to expect that a game should contain everything the player needs to be able to play ? I don't think so. If a game has puzzles or requires problems to be solved (most of the better games do, IMO), then those puzzles or problems need to be able to be solved reasonably without going to external sources that have absolutely nothing to do with the game.
I'm going to use one example, hopefully best to illustrate what I'm talking about. As I avoid looking at external sources of information wherever possible, I may be wrong about certain aspects of what I'm about to say. Please correct me if I am.
With the new seasonal release of Engineers, we find that we have to find certain items before some of these people will deal with us. My example is that of having to find Meta-Alloys. Now, as I understand it, there were at one point some barnacles of unknown origin found at a particular location out in the Pleiades Nebula, which attracted a lot of attention from players. I did not travel there to look at them myself, but other players that I know did (I've already been to Pleiades twice exploring). I am of the understanding that some time afterwards, there was news that these barnacles were now being found in numerous locations elsewhere (not just Pleiades), although it's this that I'm not so sure about.
Now I've also heard most recently that there is some bug, and that players who visited the barnacles in Pleiades had reported that they weren't producing any Meta-Alloys, and so FDev, in a work-around, has apparently made them available for purchase at a nearby station, at least until the bug is sorted. My issue is with how information such as this is gained by players. Ignoring the case of this work-around for now, how do players learn about where Meta-Alloys can be found within the game ? I've put a lot of time into searching for them, following as many clues as I can find. GalNet News reported a station built recently where Meta-Alloys are sought for research purposes and, wondering why they chose that system to build the station, considered that to be a clue as to where these items may be found. Additionally, the station's Commodity Market description for Meta-Alloys includes this...
Alas, I must admit that since they were found in Merope, after many, many hours of searching elsewhere, I haven't found any... anywhere. Not one.
So my question generally is... what in-game clues are being reasonably employed to direct players to items that must be found ?
Although we are playing technically in a finite space, with 400 Billion systems, is it reasonable to only be able to find an item in one location, and one location only, when they're supposed to "common in certain parts of space" ? Would this not mean that, of all the rocks on all the planets and moons in all the systems in this galaxy, that it's reasonable to assume that they should probably be found in tens of thousands of locations ? We know that humans generally don't work well with large numbers, so even if they could be found in 100,000 locations, that means they would still be very, very hard to find... and practically impossible without appropriate clues.
So, where in-game can clues be found where players can reasonably solve such problems ? I thought I was pretty good at finding clues and solving puzzles in games, but now I'm seriously wondering if there are any pointers there to find.
I apologise for perhaps not being clearer or more succinct, but I am most disappointed and very frustrated at the lack of clues in-game. Please don't think I'm complaining about the game's complexity, or that I think the puzzles/problems are too hard... I prefer challenging games... but there has to be a reasonable chance of players figuring things out for themselves. I don't think players should be forced to look for answers outside a game. If there's a lot of people doing that, surely that's an indicator that there's something wrong with the game.
Kind regards,
CMDR TassieDevil
I'm writing this here in the meagre hope that FDev will pay any attention. I expect few onlookers will agree, but perhaps you'll not react without forethought.
I played the original game on C64, and it's other releases since.. and loved them all. ED is different in numerous ways, obviously, but notably, it exists in a very different world than did the others. It exists in a world where the internet has a huge influence over how we go about doing anything, including playing games. But think about that for a moment... has it really ?
To put things into context, I play in an "old-school" manner, and I encourage members of the group I'm involved with to do the same. For example, I'm not a fan of exploration using Advanced Discovery Scanners... I think they negate the whole point of, and therefore ruin, any challenge present in exploration. I've written about this at length elsewhere, so won't go over ground already covered. But there's one aspect to playing this game about which I'm finding it harder and harder to hide to hide my displeasure, and that's where players get their information from.
I don't play many games online any more... this, and ARMA 3 are pretty much it. More accurately, I've always leaned more towards simulators (and I consider these two titles to fit that genre). But as a gamer who has played many of the "landmark" titles since Castle Wolfenstein, I don't recall any of them requiring skills in using Google, or posting on forums, or message boards, or trolling through YouTube, Reddit, social media, or any other similar source, for information on how to actually play a game.
Is it unreasonable to expect that a game should contain everything the player needs to be able to play ? I don't think so. If a game has puzzles or requires problems to be solved (most of the better games do, IMO), then those puzzles or problems need to be able to be solved reasonably without going to external sources that have absolutely nothing to do with the game.
I'm going to use one example, hopefully best to illustrate what I'm talking about. As I avoid looking at external sources of information wherever possible, I may be wrong about certain aspects of what I'm about to say. Please correct me if I am.
With the new seasonal release of Engineers, we find that we have to find certain items before some of these people will deal with us. My example is that of having to find Meta-Alloys. Now, as I understand it, there were at one point some barnacles of unknown origin found at a particular location out in the Pleiades Nebula, which attracted a lot of attention from players. I did not travel there to look at them myself, but other players that I know did (I've already been to Pleiades twice exploring). I am of the understanding that some time afterwards, there was news that these barnacles were now being found in numerous locations elsewhere (not just Pleiades), although it's this that I'm not so sure about.
Now I've also heard most recently that there is some bug, and that players who visited the barnacles in Pleiades had reported that they weren't producing any Meta-Alloys, and so FDev, in a work-around, has apparently made them available for purchase at a nearby station, at least until the bug is sorted. My issue is with how information such as this is gained by players. Ignoring the case of this work-around for now, how do players learn about where Meta-Alloys can be found within the game ? I've put a lot of time into searching for them, following as many clues as I can find. GalNet News reported a station built recently where Meta-Alloys are sought for research purposes and, wondering why they chose that system to build the station, considered that to be a clue as to where these items may be found. Additionally, the station's Commodity Market description for Meta-Alloys includes this...
Alas, I must admit that since they were found in Merope, after many, many hours of searching elsewhere, I haven't found any... anywhere. Not one.
So my question generally is... what in-game clues are being reasonably employed to direct players to items that must be found ?
Although we are playing technically in a finite space, with 400 Billion systems, is it reasonable to only be able to find an item in one location, and one location only, when they're supposed to "common in certain parts of space" ? Would this not mean that, of all the rocks on all the planets and moons in all the systems in this galaxy, that it's reasonable to assume that they should probably be found in tens of thousands of locations ? We know that humans generally don't work well with large numbers, so even if they could be found in 100,000 locations, that means they would still be very, very hard to find... and practically impossible without appropriate clues.
So, where in-game can clues be found where players can reasonably solve such problems ? I thought I was pretty good at finding clues and solving puzzles in games, but now I'm seriously wondering if there are any pointers there to find.
I apologise for perhaps not being clearer or more succinct, but I am most disappointed and very frustrated at the lack of clues in-game. Please don't think I'm complaining about the game's complexity, or that I think the puzzles/problems are too hard... I prefer challenging games... but there has to be a reasonable chance of players figuring things out for themselves. I don't think players should be forced to look for answers outside a game. If there's a lot of people doing that, surely that's an indicator that there's something wrong with the game.
Kind regards,
CMDR TassieDevil
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