Well this aint just your pet peeve Kev! In fact the AI programmer lady at Frontier Dev made it her mission to make this shit more reasonable. According to her postings, there should be a certain tolerance to accidental friendly fire. Keep your beams on that popo viper and he will go mediaeval on your ass though.
Some interesting new features: progress bars for Elite ratings, which I don’t altogether approve of, and variant gear as rewards for faction goals. The latter is especially welcome as the gear for ships badly needs expanding, but the progress bar for ratings seems too gamey. I liked the illusion of the ratings being arbitrarily awarded by the Pilot’s Federation (or trader’s/explorer’s guild) based on the telemetry provided to them by your ship. I know ultimately that it is a game, and of course there’s a formula at play, but it’s a little less immersive with a progress bar.
I flew into a High Intensity RES for the first time today, and they weren’t kidding. Two Couriers and Dropships at the same time, and I didn’t have one friendly fire incident, thankfully.
Torbe
4384
Steam Keys are now available to anyone that backed the kickstarter or purchased the game through Frontier. You’ll need to sign in on the store page and then look for “Partner Keys” in the left hand Column under your name.
Right on Commanders!
Thanks for the FYI, all liked up, just gotta find time to play now. :(
What has been one of the huge ‘turn-offs’ for me in ED is that despite a huge and detailed effort by the DDF from the very start of the Kickstarter, for whatever reason Frontier (and i presume David?) just decided to ignore most of it. This issue (friendly fire) had been covered extremely well in the DDF, it made perfect sense (no one accidental stray shot turning the police you were helping to deal with a high bounty target against you, for a mere 200cr etc).
I just have NO IDEA why so many annoyances like this are still (or even initially) like this. All the methods for avoiding these problems in ED’s design were pretty much thrashed out by the DDF years ago. And no i wasn’t part of that, but it is a source of endless frustration for me, so much so i still ‘wait from the sidelines’ for Frontier to get their act together and fix all the current issues that have been reported from the outset, and all the answers are right there in the DDF files for the most part. Seriously, everyone should go have a read of them. IF that was the game ED turned out to be, i’d be right in the thick of it not feeling i’m wasting my time.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=36
KevinC
4387
I’m really not happy with their design for how you gain access the Power Play faction rewards. I have no desire to try climbing a ladder and competing with the catasses for time so that I can try to get in the top X% and get access to the faction gear. It should be a matter of gaining enough rank or whatever in the faction, not being in the top X% of a given week.
The whole thing sounds like the awful PvP rank grind when the World of Warcraft battlegrounds launched. It was a terrible idea then, it hasn’t gotten any better now.
Bateau
4388
Yup. I think the whole game would’ve been much better if it was a single player experience.
KevinC
4389
I’m really happy with the multiplayer, as I really enjoy playing this with my friends, I just have no desire to play with/for/against random people on the internet.
I’m okay that other players are affecting the background simulation, I’m okay if other players are pushing the borders of the various factions. But don’t lock faction rewards behind a comparative grind against those players. I’m fine with getting access to a certain item taking X hours, I’m just not fine with it taking Y hours in a specific time period where Y is determined by how much other players are catassing in their basements. I want to be able to earn X in whatever increments I want.
For some reason clicking “Partner Keys” logs me into the German version of Steam.
Torbe
4391
That’s weird, it could possibly be because you’re in the US. It worked ok for me but then I’m in the UK.
This only went live yesterday so they could still be having a few teething troubles.
Maybe try again in a few hours and if still a problem raise a ticket with Frontier.
Has anyone else here from the US managed to get this working?
I’m from the US and it worked for me without any issue. I’m not sure who you were quoting, but maybe log into the steampowered.com web site and double check your language setting there and save it, so when you sign in through the Elite store page you get the right language?
I was the one having problems. I went through and deleted all my Steam cookies. All worked well after that.
Torbe
4394
Glad to hear you’re all sorted Gordon. :)
Torbe
4395
So anyone on the Powerplay Beta? Impressions?
Especially interested to hear what the new bounty system is like and also how the new factions work.
I’ve only been able to put in a few hours into PowerPlay but…meh…I don’t see the big deal.
Just another kind of progress grinding, Brian?
I’m more interested on the “fix broken parts of the game” bulletpoints of 1.3. It feels like this PowerPlay is just more Progress Quest-style stuff.
KevinC
4398
To me it’s worse than a progression grind, because it’s more of a ladder competition. You gotta be in the top X% to get the various rewards, which means you may have to devote more of your time in one particular week than you’d like in order to cross the Threshold of Catassery and get your shiny spacefoozle.
No thanks, for me. The “ranks” for the factions should work just like Pilot’s Federation ranks. I should be able to make progress at my own pace, whether I play 1 hour a week or 100.
This is all just based off of what I’ve read, I haven’t bothered trying myself. I was waiting for it to come out on the live servers, but not sure I’ll bother at this point. That kind of design is anathema to me.
I don’t really have a firm grip on what exactly the Power Play aspect brings to the table or screws up–it’s hard to figure out how much of the whinging on the Elite forums is hyperbole and how much of it has merit–but I am looking forward to trying out a couple new ships before heading on out into the black for a bit of long-range exploration trip. So unless one of the Power Play perks includes extending my trusty Asp’s jump range, I may just give it a miss and come back after they patch it all up.
Yeah, I’m not seeing the excitement of PowerPlay itself. Likely won’t engage in it.
