Why build one of the largest game maps in history and refuse to let anyone build anything?

[Badben]

This is something that's bothered me since I started playing. Why bother to build a galaxy with 400 billion stars and life sized planets if all you can do is look at them? building moon bases or mines on a planets surface seems obvious to me in a game like this. I have several theories about this.

1, They don't want their game to become Eve online. FD are so scared of having certain players become god like, as they do in Eve, so they cap our potential, refuse to let us build anything that could potentially make us too powerful. If this is the case, that's like going to Legoland, but only being allowed to look at the sculptures and ride the teacup ride.

2, They technically can't do it. Having so many people changing the galaxy around on a daily basis would actually cause the game to crash. If this is true, then congrats to FD on painting the prettiest picture of a galaxy in game history.

 

[two quiet suns]

Because we will end up with every moon in the bubble decorated with male sexual organs.

 

[Vasea Azure]

I think you answered it with you're #1 - deliberate design decision. And I dont agree with this direction by FD, it does not make much sense with a full galaxy at players disposal, it would make game more fun, add to its longevity and pretty sure attracted many new players. Its beyond my why we cant build even a small mining outpost or even a physical sign "I was here".

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Why do some posters insist that Frontier must be 'scared' if they're not doing something? They're not letting us build stuff because it doesn't fit in with their vision for Elite at this time. That's all.

 

[Marcus Tullius]

This is something that's bothered me since I started playing. Why bother to build a galaxy with 400 billion stars and life sized planets if all you can do is look at them? building moon bases or mines on a planets surface seems obvious to me in a game like this. I have several theories about this.

1, They don't want their game to become Eve online. FD are so scared of having certain players become god like, as they do in Eve, so they cap our potential, refuse to let us build anything that could potentially make us too powerful. If this is the case, that's like going to Legoland, but only being allowed to look at the sculptures and ride the teacup ride.

2, They technically can't do it. Having so many people changing the galaxy around on a daily basis would actually cause the game to crash. If this is true, then congrats to FD on painting the prettiest picture of a galaxy in game history.

3. Building will be a part of paid expansion. It’s just not ready yet.

 

[DukeIronHand]

Because we will end up with every moon in the bubble decorated with male sexual organs.

I see you understand this community very well Cmdr!

 

[dm0815]

This is something that's bothered me since I started playing. Why bother to build a galaxy with 400 billion stars and life sized planets if all you can do is look at them? building moon bases or mines on a planets surface seems obvious to me in a game like this. I have several theories about this.

1, They don't want their game to become Eve online. FD are so scared of having certain players become god like, as they do in Eve, so they cap our potential, refuse to let us build anything that could potentially make us too powerful. If this is the case, that's like going to Legoland, but only being allowed to look at the sculptures and ride the teacup ride.

2, They technically can't do it. Having so many people changing the galaxy around on a daily basis would actually cause the game to crash. If this is true, then congrats to FD on painting the prettiest picture of a galaxy in game history.

I think 1. is not the issue. Eve runs on a server and has a persistent world. Elite is based on P2P with almost no persistence at all (your Commander and some BGS stats are, to name a few). Everything you could build would probably be instanced for you. Meaning that bases would disappear on logout or wouldn't be visibile to other players. Like bases spawned for you during a scan mission.

So reason 2 is most likely. It might be technically challenging and then you have to come up with meaningful gameplay. What could a personal base give you, which a station cannot? As long as you don't leave the bubble there a literally thousands of them. The only thing I can come up with right now is a sense of being at home?

 

[Wedgetail]

Speculation only here, based on very rudimentary server knowledge, but I think they tied themselves in knots during the design phase when they opted to go the cheap (i.e. no ongoing fee) version of always online, with no main galaxy servers, being limited to a transaction, authentication and comms server only (i think?)

Similar to sm0815's comment, In addition to the common problems involved with peer-to-peer rather than client-server architecture, (leading to the currently experienced drop outs, ghost ships and the like) there is not much ability to handle a massive, modifiable and persistent galaxy, as there is nowhere to store it and retrieve the galaxy from. pretty sure apart from the relatively small quantity of hand-placed and static assets your computer generates the galaxy on-the-fly from the galaxy seed

 

[verminstar]

Because there are a few score backers who despise eve so badly, they will object to even the rumour of player owned structures. Like hotel california, this is a really old argument that has been argued to death many times already. As much as I would love to see such a thing, others liken it to elites version of the apocalypse...I could even name some the main critics but that would ruin the surprise ^

 

[Arthur Shappey]

There are plenty of building games. I've grown out of lego.

I want to fly! In space!!!

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

This is something that's bothered me since I started playing. Why bother to build a galaxy with 400 billion stars and life sized planets if all you can do is look at them? building moon bases or mines on a planets surface seems obvious to me in a game like this. I have several theories about this.
…

I guess it depends on the size of those installations.
Anything resembling current spaceports would be insanely expensive. People would complain about "the grind" and then that they can't do anything with those installations (read: no permanent destruction).

A small base with maybe one one landing pad might be something possible, but then players would still complain about not being able to be the Emperor of the galaxy. In a game about flying a spaceship.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Picking up on the persistence problem from earlier in this thread, we all know FDev are building a new and larger HQ... I'm quietly optimistic that this new HQ will incorporate a server farm purpose built to get us away from the shonky P2P networking that has plagued this game from the get go.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Picking up on the persistence problem from earlier in this thread, we all know FDev are building a new and larger HQ... I'm quietly optimistic that this new HQ will incorporate a server farm purpose built to get us away from the shonky P2P networking that has plagued this game from the get go.

Would you care to rephrase that in the form of a wager?

 

[MadDogMurdock]

I honestly think FD would make a fortune if they released a separate tool specifically for building things.
Let people design Outposts, Stations, Asteroid Bases, Surface Installations, Race Tracks, etc. and then charge a micro transaction to place it in game.

The issues might be down to verifying the objects and then specific issues like terrain cutting - we already see issues with that for FDs own objects.

 

[Marcus Tullius]

Because there are a few score backers who despise eve so badly, they will object to even the rumour of player owned structures. Like hotel california, this is a really old argument that has been argued to death many times already. As much as I would love to see such a thing, others liken it to elites version of the apocalypse...I could even name some the main critics but that would ruin the surprise ^

Do you mean the same people who are dreaming offline mode? Man, you don’t understand what the true love is. They love the game so desperately that can’t imagine that servers will be turned off one day and they will lose their alter live. They love the game with the love of Miss Emily from *A Rose for Emily* and they prefer the game dead and herbarized on bookshelf to own it forever. They just don’t want your sh*t in their personal Universe. Some call them *white knights*, but *black widows* suits them more.

 

[NeilF]

This is something that's bothered me since I started playing. Why bother to build a galaxy with 400 billion stars and life sized planets if all you can do is look at them? building moon bases or mines on a planets surface seems obvious to me in a game like this. I have several theories about this.

1, They don't want their game to become Eve online. FD are so scared of having certain players become god like, as they do in Eve, so they cap our potential, refuse to let us build anything that could potentially make us too powerful. If this is the case, that's like going to Legoland, but only being allowed to look at the sculptures and ride the teacup ride.

2, They technically can't do it. Having so many people changing the galaxy around on a daily basis would actually cause the game to crash. If this is true, then congrats to FD on painting the prettiest picture of a galaxy in game history.

It's a deliberate design choice/limitation. ie: A direction they don't want to go in...

But look up "Dual Universe"... Single shard universe where you can build!

[video=youtube;W8cLaCn5A94]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8cLaCn5A94[/video]

[video=youtube;L-ftJKTKPiA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ftJKTKPiA[/video]

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I have no issues with people being able to build their own personal base like you can in NMS. I am sure it would be pretty fun too, but I don't see the need for that until we can get out of our pilot seats. What I am not interested in is buliding your own corporation and owning and controlling vast areas of space and controlling faction space stations. It goes against the roots of what Elite has always been about, and that is a pilot of your ship, not a corporation management game.

But I am open to new ideas as long as they are good and don't impact on the way I play in a negative way.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

I don't believe it's either of your points OP.
I just think they either don't want to do it, or don't have it as a priority item right now. I'd love to build a science station out in deep space, orbiting a quasar or whatever - studying it, collecting data then taking that data back to the bubble.

Would be fun.. deep-space science researcher. xD

 

[Han_Zen]

ED would need an asset server or something, where players uploaded what they built and downloaded what other players built.
Without this, you stuff would be gone as soon as you left the instance and not return until you did.

This is probably a relatively costly adition to the game.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

ED would need an asset server or something, where players uploaded what they built and downloaded what other players built.
Without this, you stuff would be gone as soon as you left the instance and not return until you did.

This is probably a relatively costly adition to the game.

I know NMS does it with other players being able to see the bases other people have created, so I see no reason why ED can't do it, but yeah not sure how costly it would be.