5661

I love how you find new ways to say the same shit over and over again. We get it, they didn’t make the game you specifically wanted. Our condolences.

5662

I wouldn’t say it’s puzzling - i think it’s actually pretty rational.

The problem statement is pretty well-defined(the players want quick action) and the game already supports most of the solution already. So for a fraction of the resources you probably need to spend to address real problems, you can deliver something that looks tangible, whose success can be directly measured and evaluated, and which keeps people playing ‘your’ game.

Of course, it’s a short-term solution to long-term problems. In an effort to ‘get/keep numbers up’, you almost certainly divide your playerbase (particularly in MMO games, where a substantial point of the game involves interacting with ‘real ingame players’), and then you need to support two separate games (because in effect, that’s what you have).

For me, the curious thing is how does it gets introduced - and maybe someone with industry experience can shed light on it? I’d think that maybe someone in sales approaches the developers ‘with an idea to boost revenue’, or perhaps the distributors/publishers (which actually is really sales said another way) offers some additional funding ‘if you can deliver on this idea’. I kinda doubt it’s the lead developer/producer or the creative team, as i kinda think those people would have a vision for their game and they would have the experience to recognize that they cant be everything to everyone(and if they wanted to build an arena game, they’d have started by building an arena game). But then again, maybe it’s them looking for a way to hold onto their dream for a little longer…

Obviously, talking a little more generally than just ED, but i think its all applicable…

5663

I know, i know! And the worst thing about it, i’m here for the long haul, as an all-expansions kickstarter backer. So ten years of bitching and head-scratching ahead! This is still the worst version of Elite ever, and two of the previous attempts were infamously buggy messes (that did get fixed eventually, so that might be the same road-map for ED?) :)

5664

Dammit!

5665

Yeah, sorry about that, blame Frontier Development ;)

5666

But blaming you is way more fun! ;-)

5667

…i dunno Brian, once you get past the pretty stuff of ED, and see it for the shallow stinker it is, you can have WAY more fun than actually playing that piece-of-shit-game by blaming the incompetence of FD; the forums are full of such people/threads, and somehow it feels like less a waste of our time than the game grind? ;)

5668

Jesus Zak, give it up already. Every now and then I drop into this thread to see how things are going, and without fail you’re there somewhere on the current page whinging about how disappointing you find the game. It might be way for fun for you than playing the game, but it’s not way more fun reading about it.

5669

I am stoked as fuck about 2.1 and the mission overhauls it will bring. The last few dev blogs had all the right words in em. We’ll see.

Also yeah fuck off zak and report back when you do find something that you like. I much rather read about what you love and why and how you love it than about what disappoints you.

5670

i like the graphics and sound? They are way better than all three previous versions.

5671

5672

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.

Well, my days of taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.

5673

That’s the answer I was suggesting a while back: this expansion-driven business model encourages them to find discrete features that can be packaged separately and draw the attention of new customers. And since this is what gives them money then it means it progressively takes the focus from the core of the game, which is actually what everyone else wants.

So, if they actually put all their work on the actual core of the game, then it means that for the year they wouldn’t have anything to sell as an “expansion”, so no money.

It’s a broken business model for this specific game type.

5674

Isnt it strange then that the currwnt expansion is a straight fix toward tbe blandness of human space and what you can do in it?

Whatever, haters gonna hate and fanbois gonna boy their fans (?!)

5675

I am looking forward to 2.1, we’ve had faces for NPC’s since 1993 with the awesome Frontier (a huge step-up for Elite at the time), so this is a sorely needed feature to bring much needed personality to the rather bland spread-sheet like game world we have so far (if astronomically speaking stunning!).

I’m sooo looking forward to persistent npc’s also, the current all instances method is one of the biggest immersion breaking parts of the game (coupled with the truly awful ‘spam’ interdiction model they use to create ‘fun’ etc) and make it pretty impossible to role play as i used to in the previous games. Once we have all npc’s persistent that will be a huge step forward in being able to become immersed in the game world around you.

But we always feel like this when a new expansion/feature set is announced for ED, and so far, based on past form (Powerplay, Horizons etc) FD somehow manage to miss the pure awesome mark they could/should be hitting with these additions, normally because they ‘break’ something that was working half ok before. So yeah, like i said this games development is forcing me to be extremely patient and i am not joking (at all) when i say i’m not expecting to be able to actually enjoy this game until near the end of it’s 10 year dev road map, just based on where we are right now. YMMV, but this is my honest opinion on the way ED has been developed.

FFED3D+AndyJ mod is my current ‘best’ Elite experience to date (although modded Oolite had it’s charms), and remains so, maybe for a good while longer?

5676

We know. Its only the twentyfourth time you told us in this thread. Does that game have persistent NPCs? Diverse and bugless missions? Idk, i bounced off the dated graphics and old school pc harcore tweaking vibe when i tried it.

5677

I was laughing along the same lines as well (“why are you explaining yourself again, we get it!”) but I understand. From his posts, Elite is a very important franchise to Zak and unlike a lot of us he can’t look past all it’s (numerous) shortcomings and enjoy what it does well. Because it’s an important franchise, and because it has potential, he’s still engaged with the development of the game. And being engaged means constant reminders of all the blunders and shortcomings of Frontier’s development of the game.

I had a similar relationship with Civ5. It was one of the formative franchises of my youth and while there were things about the game that I liked, there were a few things so bad that it ruined the game for me (mostly AI and the incomplete/buggy multiplayer). But because the potential was there and because I was such a fan of the franchise, I stayed engaged with the ongoing development. Despite improvements, the game continued to be a disappointment for me, but it didn’t make me want to talk about it less.

In any case, it may be annoying to some, but I get where he’s coming from.

5678

For you, maybe, but hey, what does anyone else’s opinions matter when you’re so sure you’re right, right?

5679

The best Elite experience to date is in my pants, bitches

#KeepingItClassy

5680

Is that a Cobra in your pocket or are you just…

OH GOD IT’S AN ACTUAL COBRA WHAT ARE YOU DOING RUN