Why is ship interiors something that is not planned to be included if at least half the player base wants it?

[Amy Pendergast]

• Half the players want Earth Like Worlds, they're not planned
• Half the players want the Panther Clipper, that's not planned
• Half the players want Open Only everything, that's not planned
• Half the players want caves, they're not planned
• Half the players want donkey punching, that's not planned
• Half the players want the moon on a stick, that's not planned

fdev eh, so lazy

What, no donkey punching? Outrage!

 

[K-NINE]

I'd like to see ship interiors but I can't say I blame FD for not putting them in. What's the point? Seriously: once you've wandered round a bit (and sniggered when finding the bog), what's the actual gameplay element? There isn't one, unless you own one of the bigger ships and can perhaps fight to repel boarders.

About three seconds after FD put ship interiors into the game, these forums would be melting down as people complained there was nothing to do so they're on a hiding to nothing if they ever decide to go down this route, not to mention the grind to unlock a new set of Engineers to "interior design" your ship...

 

[Deyangelo7]

Where did the "half the playerbase" figure come from? Not being rude, genuine question.

I'm not judging by an exact figure written somewhere. Maybe I haven't been around for too long but have you heard of a feature missing from the game that is more desired from the ED community than "ship interiors"? And even if you have, it is clearly something that a large number of players want and they are saying "no" to it. Isn't that enough reason for concern?

 

[Deyangelo7]

I'd like to see ship interiors but I can't say I blame FD for not putting them in. What's the point? Seriously: once you've wandered round a bit (and sniggered when finding the bog), what's the actual gameplay element? There isn't one, unless you own one of the bigger ships and can perhaps fight to repel boarders.

About three seconds after FD put ship interiors into the game, these forums would be melting down as people complained there was nothing to do so they're on a hiding to nothing if they ever decide to go down this route, not to mention the grind to unlock a new set of Engineers to "interior design" your ship...

Well, if we go by your logic, what is the point of the hangar then?

Why not just press a button and find ourselves in the planetary mall or whatever it is called?

What is the point of space legs at all?

We can move around in our SRV-s just as easily.

I think the point is immersion. Which is why they are messing up hugely by not adding ship interiors.

Also not finding a way to use ship interiors with a gameplay purpose means they just lack creativity.

They could come up with thousands of things:
1. Introduce NPC crew members that can repair your hull and modules from the inside
2. Repairing modules and hull on the inside by yourself.
3. Boarding (which they have presumably planned)
4. Interrogating NPC prisoners that you have captured
5. Talking to passengers and finding out information
6. Managing corrosive cargo.
7. Picking up crew members through the cargo hold or in emergency situations in space and whatever.
8. Adding additional crew to bigger ships - let's be honest, a Federal Corvette, an Anaconda or a Cutter being flown by one person is stupid either way, to say the least (in terms of realism I mean).
If it takes too long for the commander to get back to the pilot seat with the bigger ships, the NPC crew members could start the ship for him and they could do a million other things. And the use of crew members for something other than SLF-s is CLEARLY set up by the additional pilot seats.

This stuff might sound ambitious or whatever but all of these are possibilities that suit the current gameplay and could be developed in the future.

Look, I don't think all these ''reasons" - no gameplay purpose, blah blah, are anything more than excuses for their failure to live up to their promises and all the gameplay elements they have set up in Horizons, etc. Now I am not saying their failure is unfair towards us. Maybe I shouldn't even call it a failure - maybe it is just my overblown expectations. Perhaps they lack the resources or the time, I don't know. But I prefer they tell us the truth and I hope "ship interiors is useless" is not the truth for them. They can just say, we don't have the time or the resources or we are focusing on other things. They should not say stuff like "It has no place in the game" because Im sure they know that's not true.

 

[Murfelton]

Ship interiors were never planned to be in Odyssey. At best they would be in a future expansion.

Who is going to be interested in an expansion that promises to slow down framerates in space?

 

[dannysquid]

I suppose another question is, if they were to do ship interiors next how many months/years would you want them to spend on it?

 

[Lone_star]

Frontier has made a lot of mistakes..... but choosing not to develop something that they feel would be a poor return on effort just because players want it is not one of them.

I've worked for enterprise software companies for over 20 years.... let me tell you - doing something just because a customer wants it can sometimes be one of the worst decisions you can make.

 

[aRJay]

Today, the Arthur dude on the live stream just said that it is not being considered at all. Why? I don't get it. On every video, every trailer, in every forum, people are asking for it and they are saying no. The only explanation was the stupid reason that it is too much trouble going to the pilot seat and through the entire ship, which makes absolutely no sense because right now, the larger the ship, the more distance has to be traveled through the hangar and to get to the blue light in general. It makes no sense.

Are they simply trying to dodge saying that they are lazy?

Also is someone from FDevs overseeing these posts? Is no one from their team supposed to respond to these questions in the forum?

Keep in mind that the player base is much bigger than all the people who use the forums and create and comment on videos combined so it is difficult to be sure just what proportion of us want this.

Other than sightseeing on the way through what is there to do in a ship interior other than maybe be forced to suffer more shooting if boarding actions were allowed?

The are looking at what is posted but are not obliged to respond as far as I know.

 

[aRJay]

Braben promised it and according to the OA poll 97% of commanders want it.. they just mustn't be able to do it right now.

That is 97% of people who watched OA and voted, how many people was that by the way?

 

[Deyangelo7]

Keep in mind that the player base is much bigger than all the people who use the forums and create and comment on videos combined so it is difficult to be sure just what proportion of us want this.

Other than sightseeing on the way through what is there to do in a ship interior other than maybe be forced to suffer more shooting if boarding actions were allowed?

The are looking at what is posted but are not obliged to respond as far as I know.

Again, why are we then moving around a hanger?

Why not just spawn us in the base/station lobby when we land in a station.

Why not just spawn us in the pilot seat when we enter the elevator on the way back to boarding our ship?

Why is the hanger worth it but not ship interiors?

They are coming up with the "It has no gameplay purpose" excuse but to me that doesn't make any sense.

What is the gameplay purpose of long-distance trips to stars then?

What is the purpose of long-distance surface mining on planets?

Why not have everything we need in plain sight at a click of a button, cause that's what we are doing with getting in and out of the ship right now.

To me not having ship interiors is the equivalent of me being able to instantly teleport to a station without having to go through the effort of supercruising to there, low waking. maneuvering through the mail slot and docking.

Personally, the lack of the feature is absolutely ridiculous to me.

There are actually people out there who want it so much that they have created it themselves through animation.

I get it if they want to delay it but NOT HAVE IT? This is insane.

 

[aRJay]

I suppose another question is, if they were to do ship interiors next how many months/years would you want them to spend on it?

Enough to get it working with no performance issues on the hardware of the time.

 

[karpacho]

"Theres no plan for ship interiors now" MEANS no ship interiors now...
BUT
it doesn't mean that a ship interiors plan couldn't be made later
AND
any ship interiors will be available AFTER, not before -sorry guys-, a ship interiors plan
SO...
let's just keep asking for it

 

[Murfelton]

Again, why are we then moving around a hanger?

…

I get it if they want to delay it but NOT HAVE IT? This is insane.

• It’s not exactly a mature argument to state that because we don’t have ship interiors, we can’t have anything else that is immersive.
• You are raging about a completely non-existent issue. Interiors were never going to be in Odyssey. They would only appear in a future expansion. Does it look like FDev is going to launch a major development effort right now for an feature that has extremely limited gameplay opportunities and will slow framerates?

 

[PureEvilPie]

• It’s not exactly a mature argument to state that because we don’t have ship interiors, we can’t have anything else that is immersive.
• You are raging about a completely non-existent issue. Interiors were never going to be in Odyssey. They would only appear in a future expansion. Does it look like FDev is going to launch a major development effort right now for an feature that has extremely limited gameplay opportunities and will slow framerates?

I don't understand this myth about limited gameplay opportunities, take a look at Pulsar or star wars galaxies.

 

[Mogen Teras]

I think the reason they are avoiding it is because the Cobra Engine is simply too spaghettified and incompatible with such a feature, and no one at FDev knows how they could ever work around all that to get it to work.

My guess is the engine was never designed to have interior instances that are also moving, and considering how difficult it was for them to just have interior instances with concourses that dont even move, I wouldn't be shocked if I'm right.

 

[aRJay]

Again, why are we then moving around a hanger?

Why not just spawn us in the base/station lobby when we land in a station.

Why not just spawn us in the pilot seat when we enter the elevator on the way back to boarding our ship?

Why is the hanger worth it but not ship interiors?

They are coming up with the "It has no gameplay purpose" excuse but to me that doesn't make any sense.

What is the gameplay purpose of long-distance trips to stars then?

What is the purpose of long-distance surface mining on planets?

Why not have everything we need in plain sight at a click of a button, cause that's what we are doing with getting in and out of the ship right now.

To me not having ship interiors is the equivalent of me being able to instantly teleport to a station without having to go through the effort of supercruising to there, low waking. maneuvering through the mail slot and docking.

Personally, the lack of the feature is absolutely ridiculous to me.

There are actually people out there who want it so much that they have created it themselves through animation.

I get it if they want to delay it but NOT HAVE IT? This is insane.

Well there are only a few hangers that are essentially a big nearly empty box a lot of which was already modelled as we could see them from the ships as we docked so that is a relatively small job.
There are 38 ships of different sizes and layouts to produce with little or nothing beyond the cockpits to start from that sounds like an epic task unless they just did one at a time which would go down worse than doing none of them.

There are people that regularly ask on the forums for us to be able to jump anywhere in their ships much like an FC but without all the waiting about for cooldown etc.

Talking to passengers is the one thing that sounds worse to me than boarding actions and interrogations.

 

[karpacho]

I think the reason they are avoiding it is because the Cobra Engine is simply too spaghettified and incompatible with such a feature, and no one at FDev knows how they could ever work around all that to get it to work.

My guess is the engine was never designed to have interior instances that are also moving, and considering how difficult it was for them to just have interior instances with concourses that dont even move, I wouldn't be shocked if I'm right.

i dont agree, after what they have made for Odissey I believe their engine is more than capable with all those nice interiors, what's the difference?

 

[Deyangelo7]

• It’s not exactly a mature argument to state that because we don’t have ship interiors, we can’t have anything else that is immersive.
• You are raging about a completely non-existent issue. Interiors were never going to be in Odyssey. They would only appear in a future expansion. Does it look like FDev is going to launch a major development effort right now for an feature that has extremely limited gameplay opportunities and will slow framerates?

Nah, you have misunderstood. I came under the impression they have completely scrapped it and it might as well have been. I am not expecting them to include it In Odyssey and have never said that, are you kidding me .

They can't even launch the game with the gameplay elements that worked properly in Horizons let alone fix the new gameplay they have added. I just know that it was part of their development plan and Braben said it will be part of it and today Arthur said there are no plans for it and early on he even gave a reason for it, which makes absolutely no sense.

As for it not being a mature proposition, I could say the exact same thing for your statement. It is a game that allows you to experience everything in real-time and just this one element - going in and out of your ship is experienced through an underwhelming fade in and fade out to black (Well, and death, but that's understandable - even though I wish they could add some kind of animation of you going into a capsule before your ship blowing up - in distant future obviously).

We can walk in gigantic stations and across the surface of humongous endless planets but we can't walk across the interior of what - 30 small ships (in comparison), which by the way should be modeled in the exact same way cause they got the same design. It is pretty stupid, from a certain point of view to be honest. They don't even have to animate the engine room or whatever, they could just animate the stairs and the freaking path to the bridge that is already designed. Some ships don't even have a bridge, they just have a cockpit. So they can animate various versions of station interiors and humongous planets, thargoid bases, guardian sites and what not but they can't let us walk through the ships that we spent the whole game in? Come oooooon.

 

[Mogen Teras]

i dont agree, after what they have made for Odissey I believe their engine is more than capable with all those nice interiors, what's the difference?

Consider how poorly the engine seems to be working in odyssey even with what we already have. I've seen plenty of posts where concourses end up instancing themselves outside the station, or people constantly running into problems with instancing with friends in the concourse. And that is all purely with interior instances that are stationary.

With ship interiors, it also has to be compatible with rapid motion and ensuring the interior stays instanced with the exterior properly. And I say instanced because I'm quite sure they wouldn't be able to let you walk seamlessly from the ground into the boarding ramp/cargo bay; they would likely have a fade to black just like with SRVs and ships.

 

[Monk]

I I'd rather have atmospheric worlds (and gas giants, and lava worlds!) if they're prioritising things.

Ditto. Interiors are definitely on the "nice to have" list.