Proposal Discussion Why Elite: Dangerous should not try to be like Star Citizen!

[Echo Seven]

I should add that the subject of the toilet is even controversial on the SC forums. It is the only ship that has it I might add - But it is a very large, iconic ship (Skip to 12:20) designed for upwards of 4 people (It is a multiplayer ship). There are discussions of having it activate news feeds / log activities, which would be kind of interesting. I don't think it is part of any sort of SIMS mentality however..

I will add, getting back on topic, that ED should not go in this direction, I was never arguing that it should. They SHOULD be different, and the different focus will what makes them BOTH marvelous too play. I don't want them too similar.

 

[Oss133]

I should add that the subject of the toilet is even controversial on the SC forums. It is the only ship that has it I might add - But it is a very large, iconic ship designed for upwards of 4 people (It is a multiplayer ship). There are discussions of having it activate news feeds / log activities, which would be kind of interesting. I don't think it is part of any sort of SIMS mentality however..

The other ships DON'T have toilets?!?! That's going to get very unhygienic.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Toilets are ok on ships, I think some people took it too seriously, and some saw it as a joke as news from other development segments were lacking.

 

[Zak Gordon]

Well, I wasn't all that clear in my post - SC should not be referred in the title of the discussion of graphics vs gameplay within ED. Just because it is a "labelization" that may be fair or unfair, as the game is not out yet. XR would have been a far more pertinent example.

Ah, i had made a post recently about X: Rebirth being a better actual example, but that game had not been announced when this thread was originally posted. I had thought i might have edited the opening post (the thread is now huge, so it is easy to miss pertinent stuff like that) to include that, but you have reminded me i didn't do that, so i will. Yes X: Rebirth is the almost perfect example of a game that obviously had most of it's 'resources' spent on the graphics to draw the punters in, while being a 'shell' of a game in terms of it's current gameplay.

And i'm using your posts here because you initial issue about the set up of Elite: Dangerous vs Star Citizen and the Graphics vs Gameplay thing is a very common complaint, but one that at first glance misses the deeper message about modern game dev and what that 'costs' us all (as gamers) in terms of the games we mostly currently get to buy and play.

Looking deeper (or trying to ) into the issue, in fact there is no specific graphics vs gameplay issue. The issue is resources, and game design and management is also a limited resource (not only money).

In fact, gameplay is harder to define even than great graphics - e.g. it takes but a few seconds to say that minecraft graphics are crap, but you need to play it in order to evaluate gameplay. And, at the end, it is gameplay that gives a game its value: level design, storytelling, "gaming", ambiance,... but graphics interplay with that.

True. Good 'Gameplay' is a nebulous concept, as a designer myself i find it has no exact perfect formula for success each time. Whereas with 'better' graphics you mostly increase the texture size and detail, so that is a more measurable 'improvement'.

However what the whole Graphics vs Gameplay construct is designed to highlight is that in most cases it really comes down to the resource management aspect of game design, and in that, in many cases, the concerns of the graphics means less resources for the rest of the overall game (one reason why games are often more buggy these days on initial release etc).

While the article you linked about paymium age does a good analysis of the situation (I think), there is a small angle that I'd like to refer... Gaming is a reaaally low cost entertainment medium. Even online games MMO - like WoW - that charge 15usd per month, have average playing times that lead to sub 50 cents cost per hour. Comparing that with cinema or renting movies and, from a vendor perspective, it is a lot of disposable income that can (and should) be captured - costumers have a different POV . But the biggest problem is when the effort to monetize actually cripples the gameplay.


TLDR: ED should be focused on gameplay and certainly can have decent graphics. Do not let monetization get in the way of gameplay.

One of the biggest issues for the current state of modern game dev is exactly the movie industry comparison. It's only been in the last decade or so where i've seen people make 'value' comparisons in terms of 'dollars per hour' of entertainment in relation to games.

It is off course a symptom of the growing issue of dev costs (mostly because of the push to graphical realism), so publishers (often now business people first and foremost, coming from outside gaming, everything from grocery retail to the actual movie industry) have been keen for a while now to reduce the amount of playtime in any given title (exceptions thankfully still exist, Bethesda etc). This heralded in the current 10-15 hour AAA title, or 'weekend' gaming as i like to call it (finished both Halo and Halo 2 each over a weekend myself). They (the publishers) want you to finish the game as soon as possible (ideally) so you then rush out to buy their next game etc.

The cost of better graphics has been very high in many aspects imho. So high i pretty much got of the bandwagon of AAA games and found more value and care for the medium in AA or Indie games, at least that has been my pattern of game purchases these last few years.

 

[Variform]

I suppose in SC there is artificial gravity so the loo makes sense. In ED we, I assume, have to go by way of what astronauts do on the ISS.

The fact that FD chose this way of life causes some immersion boundaries.

Like in books, e.g. The Lord of the Rings, we do not read about Frodo or Gandalf going to the forest bathroom so to say. In have rarely read about people relieving themselves in stories.

Looks to me that writers avoid it perhaps using an excuse as 'it is not functional for the story'. But if the story is about a journey, like in LotR, then why mention the hardships of weather and traversing hard landscapes but not the 'inconvenience of the bodily functions'? Writers are uneasy with that and readers don't want to be confronted with these things and there is a deep psychological reason for it.

I will spare you those insights. But if immersion is a goal onto itself, then biological functions are uncomfortable. I could hardly imagine roleplaying, even to my own immersed mind, going to the ISS method of 'toilet'.

No gravity aboard ships therefore is an immersion breaker at least from the standpoint of human need to deny bodily functions.

But not just the loo is an issue. How do we cook in 0-gravity? How do we sleep? How do you even brush your teeth.

And more importantly, how do you roleplay - or at least come to terms with for yourself - health issues? Astronauts who come down from the ISS have atrophied muscles. So would spacers like us be very weak when coming to a space station. Would we even be able to more or less comfortably endure high g flight in atmospheres while landing. Our bones could be brittle.

So would only large sips have a sports facility on board? So that we might train our muscles and hearts? A clipper or a Boa might have space for one of those treadmill things you can run in. But smaller ships have no room for this.

So I imagine health being quite an issue amongst traders. Miners spending weeks or months in space might cross into a situation where arriving on a station will be a precarious medical emergency, with specialists standing by just to get you in a wheelchair and putting you through training to repair your muscles tissue.

Space exposure would be like a chemical substance that you get hooked onto and having to wean off again because of its physical disruption.

 

[Cosmo Bozo]

And more importantly, how do you roleplay - or at least come to terms with for yourself - health issues? Astronauts who come down from the ISS have atrophied muscles. So would spacers like us be very weak when coming to a space station. Would we even be able to more or less comfortably endure high g flight in atmospheres while landing. Our bones could be brittle.

Well, you're not just floating serenely in orbit all the time, you will often be pulling heavy G maneuvers and experiencing more gravity than we do on earth, visiting planets, etc..
But there would possibly be supplements you could take to prevent atrophy, or your suit could have built in resistance to make you use your muscles for every movement..
I reckon they are already working on this problem somewhere at NASA, can't see it being an issue in a future where space travel is common.

 

[Cosmo Bozo]

The other ships DON'T have toilets?!?! That's going to get very unhygienic.

So if you have that ship, you will constantly get people asking to dock to use your toilet?

 

[Mephane]

Well, you're not just floating serenely in orbit all the time, you will often be pulling heavy G maneuvers and experiencing more gravity than we do on earth, visiting planets, etc..
But there would possibly be supplements you could take to prevent atrophy, or your suit could have built in resistance to make you use your muscles for every movement..
I reckon they are already working on this problem somewhere at NASA, can't see it being an issue in a future where space travel is common.

By the year 3300 I would expect genetic engineering to have taken care of those issues.

 

[insanephoton]

I'm don't think that the pilots in Elite would be spending long enough in zero g for health issues to arise (with the possible exception of explorers). Think of them more like truck drivers than sailors, At the most they might spend a few days at zero g before docking with a station with simulated gravity.

Given that hyperspace jumps between systems will be more or less instantaneous and the frame shift drive will allow pilots to rapidly traverse a system, a single trade run would take minutes or perhaps in extreme situations hours.

 

[Variform]

Well, you're not just floating serenely in orbit all the time, you will often be pulling heavy G maneuvers and experiencing more gravity than we do on earth, visiting planets, etc..
But there would possibly be supplements you could take to prevent atrophy, or your suit could have built in resistance to make you use your muscles for every movement..
I reckon they are already working on this problem somewhere at NASA, can't see it being an issue in a future where space travel is common.

Well, that is a way of coming to terms with it. And a good one, thanks for these ideas!

 

[Perseus]

It's interesting to think about waste products generated by ships, be that the toilet or anything else. I know we should try to stay away from too much micro management but I do the like the idea of voiding the ships septic tanks either as an insult or combat tactic. A pursuers screen could be compromised (soiled) if they flew through a cloud of jettisoned waste. Maybe screen wipers (physical of force field) could be an upgrade.
I like the idea that there could be different types of debris with different characteristics. It would be better to avoid debris clouds than hit them. I know we have shields but could the shield be covered in effluent, lubricant or some other liquid blocking visual perception for a short time as the shields burned away the offending substance? A ship that was covered might be like a comet for a while!
Think of an Anacondas waste footprint.

Obviously, jettisoning anything in space is illegal.

 

[Nazarene]

Elite - it has this name for a reason...

to be the best, to reach the higher echelons of possibility.

Elite Dangerous won't be like any other game other than Elite, all others will be adapting to Elite's original design (IMO). This is where I believe ED has the edge; it's not adapting it's previous titles it's evolving them.

Perhaps higher res skins for planets, ships interiors etc could be available to download as updates etc moving forward, but ultimately I would like Elite to shine a light on all space sims out there and the ones to come as a reminder to us all of 'How it's Done'.

Nazarene - 'The Prince of Peace'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76UF2gnLKho

I've talked in a number of threads why it would not be a good idea for David and FD to try to focus too much on making the graphics of Elite: Dangerous too costly to make(dev side) and run(customer side in terms of hardware requirements).

I think this recent video on the detail Star Citizen is aiming for is a perfect example to show what to avoid in E: D!

I wonder what the base recommended system requirements are now going to be for Star Citizen! Just because you can do it, does not always mean you should!

Since the first Elite: Dangerous video's i've been more than happy with the graphical fidelity, knowing these would have just been rough versions based on early render code etc, but also that they do not need massive improvement to make an engaging and believable game world.

So i'm hear to argue for not over egging the graphics as Star Citizen is doing, to keep the game as hardware efficient as possible, and to focus more on the gameplay content.

So i'll run a poll for just that. Do we want more graphics or more gameplay in Elite: Dangerous (as the two are mutely exclusive unless you have a bottomless fund pool and at least 5 years to develop the game).

Edit: Update. X: Rebirth would be the perfect example in this thread if it had been around when the thread was first posted. But SC is still good value as a benchmark in relation to the graphics issue.

 

[MarcusAurelius]

I'm don't think that the pilots in Elite would be spending long enough in zero g for health issues to arise (with the possible exception of explorers). Think of them more like truck drivers than sailors, At the most they might spend a few days at zero g before docking with a station with simulated gravity.

Given that hyperspace jumps between systems will be more or less instantaneous and the frame shift drive will allow pilots to rapidly traverse a system, a single trade run would take minutes or perhaps in extreme situations hours.

Perhaps we can simulate muscle atrophy and early osteoporosis for your character so that you need to have a medical facility on board every long range explorer to counteract these changes and micromanage your health through sliders like a typical The Sims game. J/K

Btw you reached 1000 posts mate.