Engineers Why is Elite Failing (in my opinion)? Negative Feedback Loops - An Analysis

[Barking_Mad]

I've heard the "mile wide, inch deep" line thrown around plenty of times in the past. I've always assumed FD's development plan would be to build out sufficient breadth so that they can really do depth well. Unfortunately, I don't really see how Engineers really helped with that. Maybe it isn't their plan at all. I don't know.

At the risk of repeating myself - I think ongoing game development is both a blessing and a curse, especially when the scope of the game is large. The game can't be developed for 10 years and then released, so it has to be done piecemeal. That means that features come in an order that has to be right for development, but not necessarily right for the players. It means mistakes and bugs are there for all to see. Ideas that don't work behind closed doors can be scrapped and started again with players being none the wiser. In ongoing development you have to commit and hope you've made the right decision. Or scrap them and start again - which is just not going to happen.

It also means that each release has to have some headline feature that sells enough copies to continue the development - in the case of Engineers it was understandably a headline feature and as such it gained a lot of attention. But in the context of the finished game (or the game in another 6-12 months) I'm not sure that it will be that significant. I see it as something else to do in a game that has/will have a myriad of other things to do. Players however understandably focus on the next feature and that's understandable. It's seen as 'the next thing to do', rather than something else to do.

Personally I've avoided the mental choice of going for 'X Upgrade' and instead just played the game and had fun collecting stuff on planets etc. I've done missions and got rep with factions, had fun doing a variety of stuff and enjoying the many small quality of life features in the 2.1 release. I don't really need any of the stuff the engineers offer - but at some point Ill drop by and see what I can get.

That said there's clearly stuff that needs sorting out and many people have made some excellent suggestions.

 

[Sylow]

What we are seeing is the process of agile development. A MVP is produced which is delivered to the customer. They use it, then give feedback. The developers then update the application. The cycle is then repeated. Alternatively there is the big bang approach which according to the road map ED will be finished in 10 years time. What we get each time is a vertical slice 'something for everyone'

Except that Frontier already has clearly shown with previous expansions, that this is not what they are doing. Previous expansions got well thought out replies, comments and improvement suggestions.
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They were ignored. Now with Engineers, the community tries a new approach: scream your lungs out and see if they have ears at all. Of course, there's only two ways this can go in the future:
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1. Frontier does not listen and things go south fast for the game. (If you don't know what I mean, check out recent videos of the most prominent youtubers of this game. If those who up to now advertised of this game get sour, things are grim. )
2. Frontier listens and adjusts. That's the only reasonable move for the game, but I have serious doubt that some manager or whoever makes the timing decisions gives the programmers enough time to get things really in order. (If he would've done so beforehand, we wouldn't have the problem. ) The other drawback of course is, the community will "learn" that only loud screaming is the only way to get problems fixed in this game. Getting out of this again will take a long time, but Frontier brought that upon themselves.

 

[Sylow]

My plan is to visit the engineers I can access when I'm nearly out of material space and see what is immediately available or that I'm just missing a commodity / material or two.

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It's really very obvious that you haven't taken a look into Engineers yet. What you describe will get you one or another G1 upgrade. If you lucky you can access the Engineer for that immediately, most likely you will have to grind your way to the Engineer who can use your materials, though.
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Just ponder how many Engineers you have to bring close to the fourth rank of loyality (when Inara writes "rank three required" it actually in many cases means "75% to rank four required") so you can finally access those upgrades which are useful to you.
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And if "if you have everything but one or two components", you might not be aware yet, but this statement can easily also include 20 hours of grinding.
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Completely agree - I'm just tired of the repetitive whining now.
I'm pretty sure everyone who wants to, including me, has had their say on what's wrong with Engineers - FD can't possibly have missed it.

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In theory: yes. In practice, why is the best feedback we got up to now a "I will forward it to the developers"? The forum is raging just a little bit of feedback would help a lot. I don't know why this is not happening, but not doing anything is a good way to let things boil up even more.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

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It's really very obvious that you haven't taken a look into Engineers yet. What you describe will get you one or another G1 upgrade. If you lucky you can access the Engineer for that immediately, most likely you will have to grind your way to the Engineer who can use your materials, though.
.
Just ponder how many Engineers you have to bring close to the fourth rank of loyality (when Inara writes "rank three required" it actually in many cases means "75% to rank four required") so you can finally access those upgrades which are useful to you.
.
And if "if you have everything but one or two components", you might not be aware yet, but this statement can easily also include 20 hours of grinding.
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.

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In theory: yes. In practice, why is the best feedback we got up to now a "I will forward it to the developers"? The forum is raging just a little bit of feedback would help a lot. I don't know why this is not happening, but not doing anything is a good way to let things boil up even more.

I've been to 3 of the engineers and I know how it works, I took a few upgrades that I already had the stuff for.
This is my choice about how to deal with them but then I'm not in a desperate hurry to pimp my ride with very specific upgrades.

I'm not going to get my knickers in a twist about the grind because I'm deliberately not going to grind it.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

What we are seeing is the process of agile development. A MVP is produced which is delivered to the customer. They use it, then give feedback. The developers then update the application. The cycle is then repeated. Alternatively there is the big bang approach which according to the road map ED will be finished in 10 years time. What we get each time is a vertical slice 'something for everyone'

Tee hee hee.. he said "vertical slice"...

 

[Eymerich]

Wanna join to the discussion, in the meanwhile my ships reach its destination (225.949 ls away from the main star).

Honestly, I have read only Op post.

Honestly I don't think 2.1 is a failure or Elite it is: quite the opposite.

To me game is improved a lot since 2.1 was released.

Grinding aspect, once you know where to get the materials are almost inexistent. I have 4 tryies for example in Fsd 5 level.

Mission are far better know and better integrated in the Bgs simulation.

The ability to customize your ship is a great thing, and it is, let's say, a new meta or goal. Enough however to keep me stiked to my pc.

There are flaws it's true: RNg aspect, some reward's material never spawn, some other bug (o haven't syrius permit) but honestly at the end I disagree with the title of the thread.

Edit***

Fd is doing a great work and 2.1. is a step in the right direction (with flaws, ok, but in the right directions).

Also: I have a job, a wife, and a dog so usually I play I hour or 2 a day (in the week end maybe a bit more)

**Edit

I am having more fun now than when horizon was realesed...

 

[myrr mac]

Op, elite is failing because it is bad, and the devs are idiots or greedy.

Last time they made a good major patch was wings.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Op, elite is failing because it is bad, and the devs are idiots or greedy.

Last time they made a good major patch was wings.

I wouldn't call them greedy at all. Who wouldn't love to make a good living making a game? Its just simply what they think is fun vs what the majority of people think is fun. Its a science now and a psychology. They need to read some books on it and redesign how it works.

 

[boxxedin]

Honestly, if FD did 2 things, 99% of the player complaints would be addressed:

1. Roll the AI difficulty wayyyyy back - possibly give players the option of adjusting AI difficulty to their liking
2. Make engineer upgrades less of a grind - either by making mats more plentiful or lowering the mats required

And if players aren't complaining, they're not leaving 1 star reviews, and if they're not leaving 1 star reviews, the game's rank will increase in stores, and if the game's rank increases in stores, FD makes more money, and if FD makes more money, FD can devote more resources to development, and so on.

For every hardcore player who loves the new AI/grind/whatever, one or more casual players will have the opposite reaction. The players who post on forums/reddit tend to care more about the game and generally make their pleasure/displeasure known. But what percentage of the player base actually take the time to do that? Anecdotally, I find more people are likely to quit from frustration and click the 1 star button on Steam or the Xbox Store to share what they think of the game. If too many people go that route, everyone loses in the end.

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

Honestly I don't think 2.1 is a failure or Elite it is: quite the opposite.

Yes, but consider that the OP doesn't think that 2.1 or Elite in general is a failure, somehow he seems to know it. Hence the closed question/loaded title "Why is Elite failing?", which is reminiscent of his loaded poll "Do you like to grind? Yes/No", completely ignoring the fact that many of us don't grind in the game, because grinding is always a choice.

Elite is failing only in the OP's mind. An absence of facts or supporting evidence seems to be irrelevant to him.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Yes, but consider that the OP doesn't think that 2.1 or Elite in general is a failure, somehow he seems to know it. Hence the closed question/loaded title "Why is Elite failing?", which is reminiscent of his loaded poll "Do you like to grind? Yes/No", completely ignoring the fact that many of us don't grind in the game, because grinding is always a choice.

Elite is failing only in the OP's mind. An absence of facts or supporting evidence seems to be irrelevant to him.

Bordering on ad hominem insulting the person.

The facts are clear. It was NOT a loaded question. Loaded questions are like "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

The "Do you like to grind" is a valid question. It asks people if they enjoy that sort of gameplay or not. It wasn't asking if Elite was a grind. It was asking if people liked that type of gameplay. THere have been other polls asking "do you think ED is a grind" that is a different angle.

Supporting facts are in our favor. The traffic in this forum is in my favor. Statistics are in my favor. Scraping keywords from the forums are in my favor.

Its also why I probably over over 100 rep from this thread alone. How much did you earn from this? It is only a validation that of my fact.

So lets not start making this personal. If you disagree with the Psychology of what we are discussing we can. If you want to discuss ME take it to private message.

 

[Insomnia]

Bordering on ad hominem insulting the person.

The facts are clear. It was NOT a loaded question. Loaded questions are like "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

The "Do you like to grind" is a valid question. It asks people if they enjoy that sort of gameplay or not. It wasn't asking if Elite was a grind. It was asking if people liked that type of gameplay. THere have been other polls asking "do you think ED is a grind" that is a different angle.

Supporting facts are in our favor. The traffic in this forum is in my favor. Statistics are in my favor. Scraping keywords from the forums are in my favor.

Its also why I probably over over 100 rep from this thread alone. How much did you earn from this? It is only a validation that of my fact.

So lets not start making this personal. If you disagree with the Psychology of what we are discussing we can. If you want to discuss ME take it to private message.

Tried to rep you for that but it appears I've already done it earlier.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Honestly, if FD did 2 things, 99% of the player complaints would be addressed:

1. Roll the AI difficulty wayyyyy back - possibly give players the option of adjusting AI difficulty to their liking
2. Make engineer upgrades less of a grind - either by making mats more plentiful or lowering the mats required

If they roll back the AI to the awful version I'll complain. Loudly. The revamped AI is the best that ever happened to ED.

About Engineer and mats... This is where ED need more functions. Like auction house or player to player transactions, general chat functions, guilds/fleets, etc... FD is relying on the grind itself and has proven to never trust the players with things like transactions - "It just has that horrible scam warning on top of player to player transactions", said Braben himself in one of Horizons live streams.

 

[Cybermykl]

Interesting stuff, I do think however no matter what you do and how interesting you make it, sooner or later more or less everything becomes tedious in the end?

This is all well and good. Could you apply this model to say Eve, which has had a successful run for going on 10 years. It, too, is an online participatory game with PVP and PVE. I think it is too soon to call for Elite. It has only been out for a little over a year.

 

[AveMe]

I feel like devs don't play their game like everyone else...
They play it, but in cobras(ASPs at best). They know where to find resources and they don't care about progress because they seen all ships and probably flied them. They can't try PvP because they don't have time and they use their real names as nicks so everybody is trying to kill them.
I love this game but they are turning it into some wow-like MMO with tons of grind.
At least in WoW you don't have to google blueprints because you can pin only one at time (and it bugs out so you can't really pin anything, at least I can't). Same goes for places to find things you don't know if you're looking at wrong place or RNG hate you.
Another problem: NPC are annoying. They should attack you rarely and get buffed. Look at DayZ: this game is 3 hours of running and 5 minutes of PvP but those 5 minutes are great time.
Storage is something that should have been in game since 1.0 god damm it. I fell like this game shouldn't have been released at all: It's early beta!

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

Bordering on ad hominem insulting the person.

The facts are clear. It was NOT a loaded question. Loaded questions are like "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

The "Do you like to grind" is a valid question. It asks people if they enjoy that sort of gameplay or not. It wasn't asking if Elite was a grind. It was asking if people liked that type of gameplay. THere have been other polls asking "do you think ED is a grind" that is a different angle.

Supporting facts are in our favor. The traffic in this forum is in my favor. Statistics are in my favor. Scraping keywords from the forums are in my favor.

Its also why I probably over over 100 rep from this thread alone. How much did you earn from this? It is only a validation that of my fact.

So lets not start making this personal. If you disagree with the Psychology of what we are discussing we can. If you want to discuss ME take it to private message.

Touched a nerve there, I think...

 

[TheDude]

In ED this is rarely done. Say you need polonium : well you got to go to the surface or pray the RNG gods for a mission. What would be much smarter is : game sees that you pined a blueprint with polonium in.
You get on a planet with SRV => start shooting rocks. no polonium, but the game spawns a ship crash sites => investigate, no polonium but contains information about a hidden cache of materials and stuff in the planet rings
=> invesitate cache, yes ! polonium, but triggers an alarm => buddies of the smuggler show up and think you killed him => ???.

This is exactly on the mark. These type of missions need to added. The number of redirects in the mission should be reflected with higher rewards. The main problem with background AI rules are that they are too simplistic. Besides for rare interdiction, you should not be interdicted unless there is a reason an interdiction might occur as stated above. There is no reason an explorer should be attacked once scanned because the scan would show that the ship is configured for exploring. There is not enough intelligent AI behavior in the background processes of the game engine.

Before the update, I used to do the long distance smuggling runs for the great profit. It made sense because I had to complete a task that took 2+ hours in one sitting and I expected to be paid for it. Once I took the mission, the NPC's magically knew what I was doing and came after me. I used to chuckle because even though it made sense it was just so dramatic. My expectation was that as I successfully emptied my cargo hold, that I would become less desirable for interdiction but quickly realized it was just kind of random. Then after I emptied my hold, "bam" I'm utterly alone in the universe again. With the game knowing I was a repeat smuggler in my smuggling ship I was looking forward for some combat practice on the way home, but nope nothing. It was utterly comical and illustrates the kind of things that should be focused on to make the game more engaging for players.

I know there are a group of players that concentrate on the combat aspect of the game. How hard would it to be to identify those players and only present the challenge to only them that desire it in game? You see a player that has nothing but trading and exploring points, present a toned down combat experience until their skill level indicates the highest level of combat encounters.

I see missions for finding somebody, now I may be wrong because I haven't taken those missions since the upgrade, but based on what I've seen it is probably just a difficult combat encounter. It would be nice if the mission was more about tracking down the person using your equipment and finding clues docking at stations leaving the combat portion of the mission an easily winnable secondary aspect of the mission only because its expected at some point. The game has to evolve from a chopping wood experience to a cerebral experience, or make both available.

 

[Bzek]

Really good post, OP. This is exactly the kind of stuff I was talking about in this thread.

I really don't think they either understand how effort/reward models work or they just didn't bother to study it at all and just tacked RNG and figured it would all sort itself out in averages.

Really good ideas, horrible, horrible implementation...

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Touched a nerve there, I think...

Not touching a nerve - if I can't get away with personal attacks without the mods being on my butt, neither should you be able to. Instead of whining about someone who is getting a lot of positive attention for being right on the matter, the few people who are (I believe the internet slag for it is) "butthurt" about it have nothing left but to attack the person for tarnishing their precious. How about trying to argue the actual point, or is that a little too difficult?

That is the sign as to when the battle is won. When they start the personal attacks on the person making the argument.

 

[Eera]

What we are seeing is the process of agile development. A MVP is produced which is delivered to the customer. They use it, then give feedback. The developers then update the application. The cycle is then repeated. Alternatively there is the big bang approach which according to the road map ED will be finished in 10 years time. What we get each time is a vertical slice 'something for everyone'

http://www.strategicstaff.com.php53...link.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/AGILE.jpg

This is what 2.1 should be !

 

[Sans Daring]

Bordering on ad hominem insulting the person.

I hate doing this, so I apologise, but I need to break some stuff down.

No it wasn't ad hominem. It did what the OP did with the game, took an opinion and then looked to justify it. The thread offers an assertion that Elite IS failing, then looks to prove a subjective with an argument that seeks to be logical, thereby making the subjective topic factual. Same way you could say that that the reply took a subjective opinion about the OP and justified it so it was arguably factual. Neither are ad hominem, both are subjective points with justifications.

The problem with the former is that the singular OP speaks for the wider audience and tries to explain what is quantified as wrong with Elite. It's not factual, it remains subjective to how particular players play Elite and what they want from the game. It does not speak for me, so it is in fact, not factual, nor does it explain anything. It is subjectively the OP's opinion justified. Which is fine, the OP can feel that's how the game is for him, just don't topic it as a factual situation: Elite is not failing from any evidence I seen in the OP. I rather enjoy it, as do many.

The facts are clear. It was NOT a loaded question. Loaded questions are like "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

Loaded questions are "Elite is failing" - that is loaded. We are to assume that is fact before we can go onto why it is fact.

Its also why I probably over over 100 rep from this thread alone. How much did you earn from this? It is only a validation that of my fact.

You can't own a fact by definition. You can own an opinion. Some people agree. Those who are unhappy are always more vocal than those who are. Content people have no urge to comment, and this forum does not speak for the wider thousands who play Elite.

So lets not start making this personal. If you disagree with the Psychology of what we are discussing we can. If you want to discuss ME take it to private message.

The problem isn't the science, it's the application. It's like enjoying white bread, and then doing a psychology of those who like white bread and then topicing it "Why is brown bread failing?" to bread-eaters. You are not justifying an issue for bread eaters, only white-bread eaters.