Why I regret joining the DDF and not a fan of Open Development...

[The Wallet Inspector]

Do not forget that the game was released there is less than 1 year. Many things will come in the future. And I am almost sure that the archives of the DDF remain a solid base of ideas for Frontier

Yes but 6 months in they announce the next paid expansion, and it is clear we are getting hardly any new content until then. The same station, the same ships, the same missions, all in orange,,,

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Agreed. And that's along the lines I envisioned it would work.

When I look back with hindsight, the biggest single mistake FD made (personally speaking) was opening up the entire galaxy with all its predefined hyperspace routes already in place. That one decision made a gameworld of 400 billion destinations paradoxically small and shallow due to the ease in which we could race out to its furthest reaches and explore anything we liked, unopposed.

I honestly think if the original DDF travel mechanic, with players having to create hyperspace routes one at a time, the galaxy (and game as a whole) would still hold that mystique and awe we were all so excited about during the DDF days. Players would most likely still be consigned to the Orion Spur as a whole, and probably only now beginning to make tenuous 'highway' links and headway towards Sag-A, with the far side possibly still a year away. That would have bought FD an enormous amount of time to seed meaningful content out there for players to discover, a little at a time. Sadly as it stands, we know how shallow exploration is and some of us are just hanging on hoping for FD to throw exploration a bone.

(As Mad Mike also alluded to) I too keep hoping the UAs have been sent from someone out there who has become wary of humans spreading far and wide unopposed, and are seeding human space with a computer virus that will wipe out all predefined hyperspace routes from our databanks and navigational archives, confining us back to the bubble... Would love to see something like that implemented as a way that gives us back at least one fantastic idea the DDF mentioned.. an exploration/travel mechanic that took time and a semblance of skill to get anywhere, and kept us in suspense of what the next jump that little bit further out would bring.

I would like to have seen an interstellar supercruise mode, as opposed to a jump mechanic. As it stands exploring is too repetitive for me. Being able to cruise between stars freely as the fuel churns down, checking for pirates using warp based interdictors, or even Thargoids... that would have been cool. Dropping out in the deep black between star systems to conduct business with nefarious traders, or having a real time flyby between star clusters. We will forever be stuck with the endless cycle of jumps, thanks to the original design decisions.

 

[Darkfyre99]

It's not something I did very often, so in recent weeks when I tried and failed I assumed I'd just lost the knack. I hadn't realised it was down to design changes. Shame. I don't even bother trying now. Unless the planet is huge and/or the station is in a very low orbit, I resolve an overshoot simply by flying the lazy loop. Dull, dull, dull.

Come to think of it, ISTR that full-on emergency dropping -- flying straight into the planet -- used to cause significant damage. The couple of times that's happened recently, as a result of an interdiction chase or a wildly misjudged approach, damage has been insignificant. Is that the result of another difficulty nerf?

Both are the result of FD deciding to nerf the effects of mass shadows, because players complained that hitting the 70% throttle button and pointing at their destination "took to long." Of course it took too long, they were taking the least efficient route, and taking their time as well.

We're still getting complaints that Supercruise takes too long, primarily because newbies get taught the 70% method as a way to avoid overshooting your target. I've tested it, and overshooting your target is faster by a full minute on average.

The economy is another result of player complaints early in the testing process. Everyone wanted to haul gold and other high profit/ton goods. Nobody wanted to haul the ores, staple food, or biowaste required to start the production chain. Sort of reminded me of the early days if Ultimate Online, where the early design included a realistic ecosystem, which was quickly denuded by player actions. Everyone wants to captain the Enterprise. Nobody wants to haul garbage.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

The economy is another result of player complaints early in the testing process. Everyone wanted to haul gold and other high profit/ton goods. Nobody wanted to haul the ores, staple food, or biowaste required to start the production chain. Sort of reminded me of the early days if Ultimate Online, where the early design included a realistic ecosystem, which was quickly denuded by player actions. Everyone wants to captain the Enterprise. Nobody wants to haul garbage.

Again tho, FD could help a little here however by having the commodities market a bit more tied into the game.

When I read that a planet is in turmoil and read posts that there is famine or there is a community goal to send medicines due to an outbreak, i do not expect to get to said system and find demand for food and medicines to be low, I expect them to pay top dollar and see the mission bullitin board full of people offering serious top dollar as well as paying an arm and a leg for pilots to ferry them away from said system (even more so if the system is under quarantine - though should a CMDR be caught smuggling people from a quarantine zone... heaven help them)

right now the BGS does not seem flexible enough to reflect this. at one of the CGs recently where they were after medicines I was stunned to see one of the stations in question SELLING medicines and i was making a profit on them selling elsewhere.

I will happily haul the lower profit items but only if there is something in it for me

maybe an outpost cant pay a huge amount for food, however if I sell to them on a regular basis then maybe they could give me a really good deal on any expensive metals they mine, or give me a good deal on ships or equipment (better yet show me the under the table warez that not everyone gets, like a slightly tweaked laser etc)

 

[Maelkhor]

The game development reminds me a bit of Kerbal Space Program (which I really like) development process, adding new unrequested optional fancy features before fixing obvious unfinished placeholder core components of the game. Things went better when the game reached the end of (3 years long) beta, but I don't see this planning correction coming for ED since devs seems totally silent about those core issue and literraly handwave them with "this is as we wanted it to be". At least KSP devs had the gameplay correction planned for long.

I really like ED, but it is still an early beta for me in many important aspects. And as much as I want it to become the reference of space sim, I'm not really optimistic when I see how it is heading currently. The base game is broken, and they are totally focused on adding new features on top of it instead of finishing the game.