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Author Topic: Elite: Dangerous  (Read 662558 times)
apocrypha
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Reply #560 on: October 08, 2014, 03:01:50 AM

*WARNING* bloody great wall of text ahead, sorry.

Psycho!  why so serious?

There's too much in your post to really address I'm afraid Apoc, so I'm mostly going to ignore it. I can't be arsed to go through point by point with a "Yes but..." - not because I can't but because it'll be tedious for everyone involved. But the tl;dr is that it is still in beta and the devs have already said that a lot of the systems are WIP including things like the station and outfitting interface.  It's not that I don't agree with you about some of it - that interface is truly terrible - but I find it difficult to complain about something that is, by Frontier's own admission, highly likely to change and evolve. Also I'm probably more optimistic and less invested than you might be (and no, I don't think they'll release this side of January but I find myself not really caring about that.) Similarly, I think complaining about trading right now is like pissing into the wind. You know what it can be like given how easy trading was in Beta1 so why not wait until it's pretty much final before whining? It'll be better for your blood pressure.

I'm also curious about what more you want out of the game? I get your concerns about it ending up being a similar grind to Elite '84 and lacking interesting progression - those same concerns are pretty much the reason I didn't sign up for the kickstarter because hey, it's Elite and that's what it is - but what is exactly you want to see? You say that you feel it needs more "game structuring" but that's not really very meaningful. So specifically, and at the risk of another wall of text, what systems would provide that structure for you?

OK first off I'm seeing this on the official forums all the time - any criticism is instantly characterised as "whining". How is that helpful? This is beta, we're beta testers, surely feedback is crucial? Look at what happens when games are developed without concerns being heard due to a sycophantic echo chamber of a playerbase - you get Wildstar and TESO. I am trying to be honest about how I feel about the game as it is right now.

The other thing that happens a lot on the official forums (and that none of you have done yet, which I'm grateful for) is that someone criticises or comments on an aspect of the game that they don't like, e.g. that they find FSD'ing boring, and are met with accusations that they want to "dumb it down!" and "make it like every other game!" or "turn it into Call of Duty in space!". Two people are sat in an office and one says "It's a bit cold in here, mind if I ask them to turn the heat up a bit?" and the second one shouts "OMG you're trying to roast us all to death, we don't want it at 200oC in here ffs!!". No, nope, I don't want it to be a 200oC CoD space clone, I'd just like it to be a bit bloody warmer in here. Hyperbole serves to shut debate down and we're back to the echo chamber.

And let's not fixate on the trading. Yes, it's much more difficult to make money at in the current beta build than in the previous, but I've already said why I think that is and I don't have a problem with that decision. I have problems with the mechanisms of trading as a whole and the interface and the flow of information provided to the player.

As to what I want, well, I want there to be an actual game, not just a few separate grinding mechanisms with no real purpose to them. I'd like the galaxy to feel alive, not dead & sterile as it is now. I'd like some variety to how stars, solar systems, planets, etc look. Sure, there's pink stars and white stars and big stars and binary stars, and brown planets and white planets and, er, that's about it, but after the first few times I saw them I started to find them very repetitive. After the 1000s of times we'll have to see these things in order to get to the bigger ships and higher ranks (which serve no purpose) I think I personally will be bored to tears with them.

I'd like some kind of feeling of persistence in the game universe somehow, beyond the numbers in my credit balance. I'd like to feel a part of the galaxy, not an outside observer simply squeezing cash out of it in only three possible ways. I'd like NPC interactions to be less brain-numbingly stupid and more believable. I'd like exploration to be about more than clicking a button near a star that looks the same as every other star and that you had to blindly frameshift for 20 minutes through featureless space to find.

I think your discovered outpost is a perfect example. It's cool that you found it and my first thought on seeing it was "Cool, nice find!". But then what? It does nothing, there's no interaction with it, there's no missions connected with it, you gain nor lose nothing from finding it. It's completely pointless, and while the first few times you find things like this it'll be cool, it'll just be boring the 100th time, possibly even the 10th time.

I'm posting huge posts about this because I care about it, I want it to be a better game than it's looking like it is and I can't say the things that I feel need to be said any shorter way. Sorry.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.
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Reply #561 on: October 08, 2014, 03:39:37 AM

I tend to agree with Apoc here.

One one side, I am absolutley in love with the original Elite(s) and they were nothing more than this, so a carbon copy with better graphics makes me happy no matter what.
On the other side, it's impossible not to hope for something more. There is so much potential at this point that it is impossible not to wish and dream they can add somethin gon the original Elite framework, instead of leaving it untouched save for the visuals and some supposed but hard to come by multiplayer.

The feature list of promised things is amazing and does a lot towards the goal of adding more, but there is no way lot of that stuff will see the light by the end of this year.
I am pretty sure the "Launch" date is complete bullshit and they have to stick with it due to their stock company nature and some tricks that are related to the shareholding market, but I will keep treating this game as an Early Access one that will not be considered complete or worth playing/spoilering for another year or two.

Yes, I love it. But I distinctly feel that the more I can force myself to wait, the more I'll get out of it. In that regard, while lots of your concerns are more than valid Apoc, I think it's safe to say you played the beta too much, which in my opinion as a gamer is never wise.

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Reply #562 on: October 08, 2014, 04:54:01 AM

I think your discovered outpost is a perfect example. It's cool that you found it and my first thought on seeing it was "Cool, nice find!". But then what? It does nothing, there's no interaction with it, there's no missions connected with it, you gain nor lose nothing from finding it. It's completely pointless, and while the first few times you find things like this it'll be cool, it'll just be boring the 100th time, possibly even the 10th time.

Eh, it's a video game. Everything about it is entirely pointless from a sidereal perspective. I'm don't think they need to attach rewards to absolutely every part of the game. Those with gamier inclinations, those who want to minmax or achievement-hunt, will go after those aspects which have hard rewards attached; others who want soft rewards (e.g. to see neat things) will enjoy small touches like these abandoned stations.

But yes, it is a content challenge to make thousands of unique oddities for people to find. I think we're currently in a phase where "procedural content" has become trendy and, as a consequence, overutilized. Procedural content will churn out a ton of very similar things, things that trend towards whatever averages are dictated by its algorithms. As your personal sample of the game-world grows, the novelty of each individual experience regresses towards the mean.

"XX billion stars" is one of those things which sounds fantastic as box copy, but the actual player experience is a field of endlessly repetitive situations.

I think the biggest problem the game suffers right now is that the UI and systems are designed for a single-player experience in a non-networked world. It oddly assumes that the player is in an isolated bubble. It's basically as if they've learned nothing from the last 25 years of MMOs: the instant any information is available to any player, it will be available to all players. Their trade system, in particular, is annoying as it assumes that you'll do the Elite '84 thing of flying to various systems and taking notes; it assumes you'll build your knowledge-base yourself, but doesn't even provide internal tools for doing so. (Seriously, why can't I store prices for nearby stations which I've visited and have my ship's computer compare them with the local market? Shit, let me buy and sell that data just like I can buy and sell exploration data.)

No matter what they do, players will find a way to extract that market data and share it amongst themselves. Sharing information is a core purpose of the internet, after all. The UI and system needs to be redesigned to assume shared player knowledge at all times (which approaches perfect knowledge asymptotically).
apocrypha
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Reply #563 on: October 08, 2014, 05:03:23 AM

I think the biggest problem the game suffers right now is that the UI and systems are designed for a single-player experience in a non-networked world.

I agree with everything else, but I think the interface is specifically designed to allow console porting at a later date. Pre-consolitis if you will.

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Reply #564 on: October 08, 2014, 05:13:49 AM

Possibly. Or just a bad UX designer. I'd have a hard time believing "you can't see if any modules are available without going to each class individually" is pre-consolitis so much as "this isn't done".

They may also be trying to make a UI that works nicely with K/M, gamepads and flightsticks all at the same time. (And falling down, because that shit hard, yo.)
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Reply #565 on: October 08, 2014, 05:47:56 AM

I think your discovered outpost is a perfect example. It's cool that you found it and my first thought on seeing it was "Cool, nice find!". But then what? It does nothing, there's no interaction with it, there's no missions connected with it, you gain nor lose nothing from finding it. It's completely pointless, and while the first few times you find things like this it'll be cool, it'll just be boring the 100th time, possibly even the 10th time.

I have the same problem with this I had with finding them in Eve - you ought to be able to dock/EVA and claim either them or get salvage from them or something rather than them just being eye candy

While I'm in the beta I've only played for about 30 mins due to current RL demands - once someone discovers stuff like this (and sells the info) does it then get updated as 'known' for everyone or can everyone 'discover' the same stuff?
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Reply #566 on: October 08, 2014, 06:36:10 AM

I think the biggest problem the game suffers right now is that the UI and systems are designed for a single-player experience in a non-networked world. It oddly assumes that the player is in an isolated bubble. It's basically as if they've learned nothing from the last 25 years of MMOs: the instant any information is available to any player, it will be available to all players. Their trade system, in particular, is annoying as it assumes that you'll do the Elite '84 thing of flying to various systems and taking notes; it assumes you'll build your knowledge-base yourself, but doesn't even provide internal tools for doing so. (Seriously, why can't I store prices for nearby stations which I've visited and have my ship's computer compare them with the local market? Shit, let me buy and sell that data just like I can buy and sell exploration data.)

The UI - especially for the outfitting screen is "very much a WIP" as per their lead designer. Hell, even the items are currently wrong and don't go in the right slot and some are just fucked up entirely. They know that. They've admitted that on the forums. It's a WIP. How many of the other screens are WIP is anybodys guess - the trading screen? The Bulletin Board screen? The maps? Presumably most of them given the amount of information that is missing (simple things like "tell me the stats of the ships I can buy...")

But this is part of the problem and maybe part of the cause of frustration that Apoc is feeling perhaps? There are a lot of things that are meant to be a WIP but it's an easy claim to make by other forum goers without any need for substantiation.  The Design Archives not-yet-implemented features list give an outline for stuff still to be implemented in the game but we don't know for sure what some of that is or what form it's going to take. Apoc is absolutely right about that Outpost I visited - it was cool at first until you realise that there's nothing different about it. It's not even abandoned - you can dock at it and access exactly the same services as you can at any other outpost. There is nothing significant about it at all - except that I managed to arrive at it when it was on the dark side and it looked totally deserted. Cool story, bro!

What I'd like to have seen is that it was abandoned (and maybe salvageable) or protected by pirates/freelancers/isolationists or not be able to dock until I'd run some missions or similar. There's loads of potential around even that scenario but none of it is in game yet. Nor do we know if it's going to be although they certainly gave the impression they wanted the game to be more alive.

Basically, I still personally think it's a bit early for the "it's going to be shit" rhetoric given the amount of changes added to Beta 2, the amount of content still to be implemented and the amount of WIP systems that are (hopefully) not finalized. I think it's already a good game (hell, I've managed to accrue over 30 hours play since the beginning of Beta 1 and that's more time than I spend in some finished games!) and has the potential to be great. But equally, it has the potential to massively disappoint if they don't deliver.

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Reply #567 on: October 08, 2014, 08:28:27 AM

Apoc said what I've always assumed about this game.

Looking at the wormhole screen thing is going to get super fucking boring eventually.

I've yet to see a video of E:D that I watched all the way through. I was expecting something more like those old 2d space trading games where you would fly into a system and things would happen and you would settle some scores or run or whatever then make some dosh buying and selling then move on.

Instead this game is very much looking like Eve but with dogfighting combat. Which was something everyone who ever played Eve said they wanted but Eve is a MASSIVE multiplayer game where the other players are content. I haven't heard anything positive about interacting with other humans in E:D.

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Reply #568 on: October 09, 2014, 01:40:32 AM

They are having a poll to see if the flight model changes need to be reverted. This is good.

Also, Peek of the Week (refueling by getting close to a star).




« Last Edit: October 09, 2014, 01:45:49 AM by Falconeer »

apocrypha
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Reply #569 on: October 09, 2014, 02:41:24 AM

Basically, I still personally think it's a bit early for the "it's going to be shit" rhetoric given the amount of changes added to Beta 2

Well, I think I did say in my Psychowall ( awesome, for real ) something along the lines of "unless major changes are made before release", which I'm gonna stand by :)  There is a lot of potential, most definitely, but unless they achieve some of that potential it's going to be a 5-7/10 game with a tiny playerbase that never makes enough money to release the expansions without driving the cash shop prices even more ridiculously high than they already are.

Also, something I would like to clarify: wanting some changes doesn't mean I want to exclude or remove the things that other people currently like. Some people love the in-system frameshift travel, that's cool, I don't want to remove that and force everyone to insta-teleport to the station. I just want some kind of solution that makes it less boring for people who *don't* feel like that. I'm a firm believer in providing inclusive options to players in games. The more different tastes and playstyles you can support and encourage then the broader your potential market is going to be.

As an aside, something that's resulted from my voicing of my concerns about the game is that the Witchspace Diaries is now no more. I pointed Mike (the other half of the show and the guy who started it all) to it and he disagreed with my views so strongly that he's not prepared to do the show with me any more. I'm quite sad about that, but I understand his position and respect that. He and I are old friends and nothing's going to change that, but there will be no more Elite ship undercarriage porn or terrible piloting skills on display from us. We'd nearly worked out all our sound issues too!  why so serious?

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Reply #570 on: October 09, 2014, 03:31:58 AM

That's really sad. I can't really imagine two older men having such a problem over a game though. What's his story? He just wants to keep the blind hype up with no critical criticism of sorts?

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Reply #571 on: October 09, 2014, 04:13:11 AM

Sunk Cost Fallacy does crazy shit to old men who "invest" in these games. No amount of stupid from these founders/backers surprises me anymore.

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Jeff Kelly
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Reply #572 on: October 09, 2014, 04:30:14 AM

I'm sorry but I'm confused and that whole discussion is making me even more confused.

I get that the game right now is not the game you want it to be and I get that you fear the game might never become the kind of game you want it to be. I do take a little offense that you accuse us of shutting down the discussion by accusing you of "whining", though, which nobody in this thread did but maybe I misunderstand that sentence. Me seeing the state of the game and whether it is good or bad differently from you doesn't mean that you are wrong and that you should quit whining it just means that my opinion is different from yours.

That being said I'm still confused because the game in the current state is -give or take - exactly the kind of game that was advertised by Braben and Frontier development. He wanted to make a game that is basically a remake of the original Elite updated for today's graphical and computing capabilities. His vision has always been to give you a 'realistic' experience of the 'vastness' of space and to update the game mechanics of the original to what is possible today. He never advertised it as anything approaching X-Wing, TIE-Fighter, Privateer or Freespace. We can argue about whether or not he delivered all of the game systems he promised or if he even intends to do so, but having a more fleshed out mission system will not suddenly turn this into Freelancer. This game will always be an Elite game and Braben never claimed that it would be anything else at least not that I'm aware of.

We can debate if that is enough to ensure that the game will be sucessful (probably not, all the people who were interested already financed the kickstarter or bought early access). We can debate if all of the effort into galaxy building is really necessary and money well spent when there's little to do in there. We can also debate whether or not the Elite formula is really a good fit for a game in this day and age and whether or not it should have stayed in 1984.

I just don't get the criticism of this just being essentially an Elite game with updated graphics and mechanics though because that was the whole purpose of the kickstarter campaign.
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Reply #573 on: October 09, 2014, 04:34:12 AM

No this has nothing to do with sunk costs. If we were talking about Star Citizen I'd tend to agree but not as far as E:D is concerned where the maximum you could spend is a lot less.
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Reply #574 on: October 09, 2014, 04:41:36 AM

No this has nothing to do with sunk costs. If we were talking about Star Citizen I'd tend to agree but not as far as E:D is concerned where the maximum you could spend is a lot less.

nooooooooooooo it definitely is.

You see it just with jackoffs that spend full sticker price for the game long before it comes out. $60 is enough to turn a lot of people into complete gibbering retards with zero capability for objective or nuanced thought about the prospects of a game. Star Citizen may be the most extreme crazy example we'll ever see of the psychological effects of sunk cost but E:D backers are mainly going to have the same hard time swallowing any criticism at all because of sunk cost even if they didn't mortgage their house to back a space game.

A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation.
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Jeff Kelly
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Reply #575 on: October 09, 2014, 04:48:20 AM

I think we can learn a lot from games like E:D

- no amount of user generated or procedurally generated content can replace a good hand crafted campaign and/or story
- making huge open worlds doesn't make your game any better if there's not enough content in it
- making huge open worlds will probably divert important resources from actually making a better game, especially if you're a small team
- extensive beta access will cause your player base to burn out on your game before it even ships
- extensive beta access gives your players the illusion of being able to shape the game to their vision which is probably never the case.
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Reply #576 on: October 09, 2014, 04:50:07 AM

You see it just with jackoffs that spend full sticker price for the game long before it comes out. $60 is enough to turn a lot of people into complete gibbering retards with zero capability for objective or nuanced thought about the prospects of a game. Star Citizen may be the most extreme crazy example we'll ever see of the psychological effects of sunk cost but E:D backers are mainly going to have the same hard time swallowing any criticism at all because of sunk cost even if they didn't mortgage their house to back a space game.

I'll take your word for it because I can't even fathom how you could ever get into such a state of mind, especially when all you sank were $60 but the internet proves that you right daily.
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Reply #577 on: October 09, 2014, 05:15:51 AM

I think we can learn a lot from games like E:D

- no amount of user generated or procedurally generated content can replace a good hand crafted campaign and/or story
- making huge open worlds doesn't make your game any better if there's not enough content in it
- making huge open worlds will probably divert important resources from actually making a better game, especially if you're a small team
- extensive beta access will cause your player base to burn out on your game before it even ships
- extensive beta access gives your players the illusion of being able to shape the game to their vision which is probably never the case.

Going point-by-point.

- I'd rephrase this as "Algorithms and users cannot (yet) replace professionally-balanced pacing." Story, campaign, or other content, the key is invisibly leading the player along a path just right for their individual level of skill and investment. Keep the fish hooked long enough to reel it in (for sales, DLC dollars, word-of-mouth to friends, whatever).

I say "yet" because some companies are working on technology which does assist in adjusting pacing, but it still requires much UX, tech and design work ahead of time to make a scenario amenable to algorithmically-adjusted pacing. (See: Valve's AI 'director'.)

- Agreed.

- Depends, but generally agreed. Don't forget that "huge open world" is great box-copy and will incentivize internet nerds to evangelize/buy the fuck out of your game. If your goal is hardcore-nerd sales, it's not the worst wild goose to chase. Just make sure they can't actually play a "final" version before they commit their dollars. The "it's beta" card makes a beautiful trump here.

- Not necessarily, but likely. I can think of only a handful of counterpoints (Minecraft, KSP). This may just be because your game doesn't have a sort of gameplay amenable to long-term retention; most likely, a burned-out player base will generate poor word-of-mouth/press and you've killed your "release day" sales numbers. (See also: Planetary Annihilation.)

- This is a valuable illusion if you're good at community handling, and extremely dangerous if you shatter it. Engage tastemakers and give them an illusory stake in the product, and you can get excellent buzz/word-of-mouth leading up to release. (Positive example: Civ:BE's handling of the CivFanatics forum. Negative example: This thread.)

Velvet-rope strategies are great for this and become mutually-beneficial arrangements. Your tastemakers gain fans/followers/subscribers/whatever (i.e. eyeballs, i.e. ad dollars), you get cheap PR.

--

Anyway, coming back down to E:D, I personally think I'll enjoy it when it's "done". Most of what I feel is lacking right now comes down to pacing and content balance, which is out-of-whack for QA reasons. The space dogfighting is fun in-itself and I can see myself coming back to it every few weeks for an hour or two of shooting space lasers, content expansions or not.
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Reply #578 on: October 09, 2014, 05:32:33 AM

They are having a poll to see if the flight model changes need to be reverted. This is good.

Also, Peek of the Week (refueling by getting close to a star).






Is it the same as it used to be? i.e just fly directly at star with no 'skimming' actually required?
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Reply #579 on: October 09, 2014, 05:43:38 AM

Minecraft is essentially computerized lego and the textbox definition of a 'sandbox' game. People generally don't burn out as quickly on that kind of activity, you don't burn out on playing with Lego you just get bored with what you made and start over.

The big difference is that Minecraft puts you in the role of building and shaping the world which will engage people for months and years while still keping things fresh while 'open world games' promise you to have months of fun in a static world created by someone else.

I'm curious how No man's sky will be received since it will essentially being faced with the same kind of problems.

Anyway my approach to E:D is essentially thze same: I looked over it during beta and now I'll wait until release.
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Reply #580 on: October 09, 2014, 08:57:04 AM

I do take a little offense that you accuse us of shutting down the discussion by accusing you of "whining", though, which nobody in this thread did but maybe I misunderstand that sentence.

In fairness, I did actually use the word whining and hold my hands up to it. It wasn't really fair of me but I also don't think I was using it to shut down discussion either. Can't deny that it may have been deliberately provocative though.  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

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Reply #581 on: October 09, 2014, 08:59:42 AM

As an aside, something that's resulted from my voicing of my concerns about the game is that the Witchspace Diaries is now no more. I pointed Mike (the other half of the show and the guy who started it all) to it and he disagreed with my views so strongly that he's not prepared to do the show with me any more. I'm quite sad about that, but I understand his position and respect that. He and I are old friends and nothing's going to change that, but there will be no more Elite ship undercarriage porn or terrible piloting skills on display from us. We'd nearly worked out all our sound issues too!  why so serious?

 Heartbreak

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Reply #582 on: October 09, 2014, 10:15:26 AM

E:D *could* theoretically go more minecrafty, but it wouldn't be easy and it certainly isn't in the scope of recreating Elite84. If the game fizzles that might well be one of the reasons. Adding various forms of resources distributed unevenly across the galaxy and extraction/harvesting mechanisms would be the easiest place to start.  Players making persistent changes to the world seems incompatible with the core design choice of one universe experienced by all that they have gone with, unless it's extremely and annoyingly unnaturally restricted to the point of being almost meaningless as in landmark.  I think there is great potential for a good game along those lines , but I don't think E:D will be that game, sadly.

UI/UX also can't be ignored. Graphics aren't the only thing that's improved since 1984 though the average coder's skills at them seem unchanged since then.

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Reply #583 on: October 09, 2014, 11:42:00 PM

Jeff, the whining comment was partly a response to Drac, but more a reaction to how these (and any) concerns are treated on the official forums. There's a well-established cohort of posters there who are incapable of even conceiving that anything David Braben and the rest of the devs do or say could possibly be questioned in any way. Any feedback that isn't 100% positive is shut down ASAP with a range of accusations and over-reactions. I say is, it's actually been starting to change since the release of beta 2. I wasn't alone in hoping for more by now and the collective realisation from a lot of people that there's a huge amount missing from beta 2 in terms of features and gameplay is starting to raise eyebrows and questions.

As for what I want, well I think "hopes" is a better term than "expectations" right now. I had hoped that this dev team would be forward thinking and imaginative enough to see that simply recreating a 30 year old game wouldn't be a great success, but it's looking like I was wrong. Braben is a great salesman and orator - he talks in an incredibly enthusiastic way about ED and he'd convinced me that he wanted to make something that was, to quote, "a spiritual successor" to the previous games. He's a man who's entire career has been in game development, it didn't seem unreasonable to me to think he might have kept abreast of changes in that field since his one big success. Turns out I was wrong.

He's talked about a living, breathing galaxy and the vast gulf between that and the dead, sterile place we've been shown in beta 2 is shocking to me. If they can turn this around in 3 months then I'll be ecstatic but the impression I've got from playing for the last few months is that they don't even think there's a problem. And there are plenty of people who agree, and want the game to remain as it is, and that's fine, more power to them, I'm pleased that they're getting the game they want, I don't want to take that away from anyone. But it won't be a game that appeals for any length of time beyond a small group IMO.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.
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Reply #584 on: October 09, 2014, 11:44:31 PM

Oh and as for the thing with Mike and WSD, it's really not about sunk-cost or lack of objective analysis in the slightest, Mike's really not that kind of guy. Like I say, he's a close friend and will remain so, he just wanted to do a very lighthearted show and when there's a likelihood of disagreement or dispute then that's not his cup of tea.

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Reply #585 on: October 10, 2014, 12:54:27 AM

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you for the most part. Maybe I'm also too familiar with Braben's modus operandi. For thirty years all he wanted to make is another elite. Frontier, F:First Encounters they are all basically the same game just larger.
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Reply #586 on: October 10, 2014, 10:04:32 AM

Newsletter #44 is out.

A new ship, the Imperial Trader, is coming soon. Also, confirmation that multiple ships ownership will be in beta 3 at the end of the month.


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Reply #587 on: October 10, 2014, 08:09:35 PM

Smiley, hourglass body, spread wings, and that ladder whatever it is.
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Reply #588 on: October 17, 2014, 10:10:20 AM


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Reply #589 on: October 17, 2014, 12:22:57 PM

No comment about this "Premiere Event" but just to say that I love this pic:



(The relevance is that the event is taking place in the Imperial War Museum at Duxford which disappointingly does not have life size AT-ATs or TIE Fighters but does have a lot of old - and some new - aircraft. including Concorde.)

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Reply #590 on: October 28, 2014, 11:10:17 AM

Beta 3 is being released at some point today and brings mining, fuel scoops, interdiction & multiple ship ownership and will up the number of systems to 2406.  They also appear to be adding the Imperial Trader, the Lakon Type 7 and a ship called "The Hunter" which may, or may not be, the Imperial Courier.



Don't know how much I'm personally going to play this between now and launch though - might save something for December.

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Reply #591 on: October 28, 2014, 12:04:12 PM

I'll be giving it another whirl when beta 3 hits, see if any of my criticisms of beta 2 have been addressed. Beat 2 wasn't playable for several days after launch though so I might leave it til the weekend.

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Reply #592 on: October 30, 2014, 06:09:05 AM


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Reply #593 on: October 30, 2014, 07:09:41 AM

The new stuff introduced with Beta 3 is all good, but the game still suffers from the "what now and why? syndrome. I was talking with some friends trying to come up with ideas about what exctly is missing from Elite Dangerous that would make us want to keep playing (because it's great to play it, but it seems to have little longevity in its present state), and we pretty much concluded that it needs:

- more player interaction. Even if only on an economic level, there should be some sort of player trading.
- crafting. Mining with no crafting tastes like cardboard.
- the human element. There's no storyline, no arching plot, no multi-staged missions, no contacts or agents that you can befriend or no system that you can call home. No humans in stations and not even the procedurally generated mission-giving faces from Elite 2. Look at this screenshot from 23 years ago. None of that is in Elite Dangerous.




The sense of progression should be given you by the combat rank, from Harmless to Elite Deadly, but it's not enough if to get to the top you have to repeat the same very simple and spartan actions over and over for days. Again, this worked up to 1993, but now we all just need a few more layers of complexity and/or storytelling. The screenshot above says a lot: Elite 2 allowed me to tell myself my own story if nothing else, while so far Elite Dangerous doesn't since everything is colder and more lifeless than it was 21 years ago. 

I think so far this is an amazing space-trucker simulation, it's really really good and it's probably the foundation for something huge. But trucking simulations owe part of their charms to the scenery (which is obviously limited here) and their longevity or popularity are questionable at best. While Elite is already great at what it does, I really feel it needs more in terms of opportunities for players to generate content through interactions with each other (something stifled by the whole "I can go offline if things go bad"), and in terms of engaging things that can keep your attention to the game, be it bits of arching stories, big PvE tasks, reasons to fight, things to build or simply more unique things worth discovering.

The game is not finished so here's hoping for more. Since I love what is alraeady in it, I'd hate to be done with the game in a week because other than exploring 400 billion very similar stars there's nothing I can do aside from hauling smithore and fighting waves of identical enemies.

In a way, this feels like EVE with real dogfighting, but without the PvP and the Auction House. It definiltey needs more.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2014, 07:15:34 AM by Falconeer »

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Reply #594 on: October 30, 2014, 11:01:12 AM

I agree entirely Falc. Yes, it's beta, but it's the third major beta iteration and release is 2 months away. Why is there no *game* yet?

I think your criticisms could all share one factor - lack of imagination. These are all old mechanics just rehashed, and not very interestingly either. And I think that lack of imagination extends into all of the mechanics too. Have you tried or read about the mining? I've not had a go yet myself but it sounds like the most tedious, fiddly and pointless way of doing it ever. You equip a mining laser which then shoots chunks off of an asteroid which you then have to manually pick up with your cargo scoops (annoyingly difficult and frustrating and slow) and then refine them on-ship. People are saying that 20-40 mins of mining gets you 1-2 units of mineral.

The complaints about Frameshift drive being boring have been met with a greatly increased frequency of interdictions, so now you have 10 minutes of tedium, regularly interspersed with annoyingly being pulled out of FSD and shot at, oh and combat has got more lethal so you'll almost certainly take hull damage and often a fine for shooting back too. Facepalm

The continuing lack of multiplayer mechanics is bizarre. Still there is no grouping, no coordinated warp, very limited communication mechanisms, no bounty sharing or group objectives. The only logical reason for this I can think of is that they can't make it work. I wonder if their peer-to-peer system is making proper multiplayer impossible?

This game is turning out to be the polar opposite of Star Citizen. That's all imagination and no actual delivering, this is getting stuff done but with no imagination or spark at all.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.
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