Using a message board to complain endlessly in the hopes that a developer might stop by and then might take those complaints seriously has got to be one of the most passive aggressive things I’ve ever seen. And I live in fucking Seattle.
I’ve never needed forum software to ignore someone, you can ask my wife. But to put my feelings in terms you can understand: my days of taking you seriously are definitely coming to a middle.
That’s not why I complain endlessly, someone else brought that possibility up. Keep it together, son.
I COMPLAIN because this game once brought me so much joy…then I hit a part in the game where I realized nothing I did mattered at all. This was maybe two or three years ago. Nothing done to the game since has changed that, and it doesn’t look like they plan to change anything in that regard until next year, so when I see an update that does almost nothing to such a massive game, I’m gonna be upset.
I mean I shouldn’t be surprised, it took them how long to add freaking waypoints to the damned map? But still, I’m just sad, and I’m not one to keep such things to myself.
At the risk of bringing this up again and going into a groundhog day type scenario in this thread, I forgot what your ideas were for fixing the issues.
What are the issues? How would you fix them?
For me, I personally prefer the Privateer approach of having storylines and talking NPCs in bars and such in the universe to make it feel like a lived in place. But Elite was never that type of game, and I didn’t think they wanted to go in that direction, right? So you’re either fascinated with exploring the universe they’ve created, or you say, well, I prefer a more narrative approach than a sandbox approach that they’re doing here, it’s just not my thing. I kind of did both with this game. I enjoyed the exploration, but without a narrative center, I tend to drift away from the game. But I don’t get mad at it for not being Privateer.
They really need to make an economy that actually works, rather than just being a bunch of numbers and inventories that mean nothing. EVE shows it can be done. Stations need resources to make products to sell to pilots and other stations. Jumpgate still does it. Specific stations need specific parts to make specific pieces of equipment, which in turn need specific resources to make those parts. Those resources can be acquired by mining or other methods. It made what you did felt like it mattered to the larger universe around you.
Right now Elite’s “economy” is there to drive short-term repetitive trading and missions, and that’s it. It doesn’t affect anything besides community events and stuff like rares trading which can be done ad infinitum because nothing really changes.
It’s basically the Whose Line Is It Anyway space sim.
Not Brian, but I just want things to matter. Nothing matters right now. Players have no impact. Famines have no impact. Supplying food to famines has no impact. Power Play has no impact.
They are very adverse to player agency. They have things like famines or whatever to populate simple missions on a mission board (ship food to station), but that’s it. There’s really no point in caring a whit about any of it.
There’s the thinnest veneer of a “simulation” going on, but it’s just a thin cosmetic coat, there’s nothing actually happening. Wars, civil wars, faction conflicts, famines, droughts, disease outbreaks, resource shortages, there’s no point to anything. If all you care about is taking pictures of planets/stars you see or taking a pleasure cruise in different ships, that’s enough (and there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s fantastic for people that just want to do that). But if you want more, there’s nothing there. There’s not really a game, there’s a very impressive engineering demo with a great flight model and the best audio design in the business.
Thank you Kevin. Mad respect.
So your saying I should start playing again ;)?
Everything you outlined if my basic problem with the sim, I only put ~60 hours into it at launch and it just feels like… nothing. I WANT to pretend to be a heroic, Davos like smuggler, hustling food to stations in need. I would LOVE to go ratting and have it mean more than a number getting slightly larger on the grind to a bigger ship. Exploration was where I settled, but never had the clams to get anything bigger than the Power Loader looking ship (and the cheap one at that)…
It’s installed, I bought the expansion a year ago and landed on one planet, then turned it off again… should I go back? (Just recently upgrade my PC so the pretties ARE tempting) What compels y’all to keep undocking?
Thanks to you and @KevinC for the explanation of what you guys want.
For me personally, I don’t care about that stuff. A more robust “economy” would add nothing to the game for me. I’d want more story in the world, not more “economic impact”. If I take wheat to a particular planet and it lowers the price of wheat as a result because they don’t need as much of it, personally that doesn’t affect me much. I never really understood why minor changes make people feel like the world is changing and they’re making an impact. For me what makes an impact is if there is a story, and you help certain factions on a particular planet rebel against the local militia, or something like that. For me that would make a difference. But a more robust economy? I personally think that would be a complete waste of resources for the developer, it would change a few numbers around and not really affect the game much (again, to me personally). I’m personally glad they’re not wasting their time with that stuff.
I play the game (and to be honest, I don’t play it much these days, though I keep meaning to) partly because my choices aren’t significant. Elite depicts a vast, indifferent and beautiful universe that I can explore at my leisure. There is other stuff to do but very little captures my imagination as much as just getting out there and getting lost. I find @krayzkrok’s posts capture the desire to keep pushing onward very well.
It wouldn’t do much for me either, that’s not really what I’m looking for. Let me see if I can whip up a brief picture of the type of thing I would enjoy.
Okay, this is what I would like. I would like to go fly to an independent star system. Once I arrive, I see that the local democratic government is in a power struggle with the space mafia. Miners are getting obliterated by pirates, the mob has taken over two of the space stations, and as a result the system is in a bad place. The economy is tanking and it’s dangerous to fly around, but this system has potential.
The asteroid belt in this system is rich in a particular resource that’s pretty rare and is used heavy in energy weapon and shield components. I happen to know a system about 20 jumps away that manufacturers those components, and they are starved for this resource. Because they’re the only supplier of those components in this whole region of space, that means that A) They can’t manufacture the highest level of plasma weapons and shields, which means I’m stuck using my class C stuff and B) the components they do have are extremely expensive due to those resource shortages, which is a huge problem for me when I have to rebuy my ship.
So, now when I see this democratic system rich in potential, there’s a motivation for me to help. I hop in my Cobra Mk3 and head to the asteroid field and start clearing out the pirates. Sure, the bounty is great (although the local government can’t afford much at the moment), but I’m mostly there to make sure some miners can get back to the station with their ore. Unfortunately, after I’ve spent a little time in the system, I’ve now drawn the attention of the mafia. In particular, Tony “Knuckles” Russo, who is a lieutenant for the local mafia and resident tough guy. He comes at me in a bootleg Federation gunship with a couple Eagles flying escort. It’s a harrowing fight, but I manage to make it out alive.
Now that I’ve killed one lieutenant, a new mission opens up. If I can get the local spacedock enough materials, they’ll be able retrofit enough civilian ships to be combat capable and piece together a posse. These materials can be supplied be me, other players, or of course NPC traders that are working in the area (assuming I can keep the shipping lanes clear from the pirates!). Once those materials have been assembled, a new mission pops up on the board for me: lead the ragtag fleet of pissed off miners on an assault on one of the two pirate held space stations. This is crucial, because it’s the only refinery in the system. The local economy will get a big boost if they’re able to convert raw ore into refined materials, which I know I can make a killing on in that system 20 jumps away. It’ll also mean the local government will be able to pay out more for bounties and other missions, and prices for imported goods will rise. A boon for traders in the area!
I’ll leave it there, as I’ve already rambled on too long. All of that stuff can be done procedurally. But it means that my actions have had an impact. I’ve pulled some levers and things have changed in the game, and now I can make better money or equip better plasma weapons and shields. It also gives me something to care about. If I fire the game up and a disease has broken out in this system? Well damnit, I’m going to go get the medicines they need. This system is important to me now, both because of the time I’ve invested in it, but also because I’ve been instrumental in helping it grow and because it provides an important base for how I make my money and upgrade my ship. Losing this system in a war or revolt or the pirates return wouldn’t be game-ending, but I would care because I’d have to go start over somewhere else.
Hope that clarifies where I’m coming from a bit, rather than just have cost of goods change a bit in a spreadsheet when I deliver wheat. :)
I was with you until this part. What? Done procedurally? So are you making up a lot of those story details in your head as the player then? Because let me tell you, the game is not going to provide that kind of detail procedurally. And if you’re making it up in your head, then yeah, I’m glad that will work for you, even though it wouldn’t for me.
What in there don’t you think can be done procedurally? From a code point of view, there isn’t story. There’s just interconnected game systems. Games like X4 already do more than that in a lot of ways.
There’s not really any story there. If a system is set to a state where crime lords have taken over (either through the original procgen of the galaxy or dynamically by other factors occurring nearby in the simulation) set the following:
The individual components of those missions would have to be built (attack on space station for example, or boss_lieutenant_with_escort) but they those components can easily be combined with others and re-used, it’s not unique to this particular star system.
Games like X4 already handle the trade aspect in far greater detail. To build any item, the station requires the right number of resources. The item the station produces is a component used in other components all the way up to ship building. Nations need ships. Ships are lost in war and need to be replaced, driving up the demand of components. Either feed those resources and making a fortune yourself (or your AI traders) or try to cut off those resources by killing the NPCs providing it and prevent the nation from rebuilding their warfleet. Watch other nations encroach on their territory. Granted, X4 like any Egosoft game is a buggy monstrosity, but those systems already exist.
Hell, there are similar things going all the way back to Pirates! on the C64. Nations can fight over cities, the more you traded with a particular city the richer it got and the more money they had to buy your goods, etc. Raid a city and leave it poor and open for invasion. And that was on an ancient machine with 64kb of memory total.
Also, Elite: Dangerous already has a bunch of these pieces, they’re just not hooked up to anything. Systems can already enter states of conflict (spawn conflict zones), famine, booms. Factions can expand or retract, the whole Power Play thing, etc. Systems have certain space stations and produce (and consume) particular goods. It’s just a bunch of Legos laying around, though, they haven’t assembled it into anything which I think is the type of stuff that drives @BrianRubin nuts.
Oh yes by all means, let’s summon Brian Rubin so he can complain more.
Heh, I was sort of speaking for the guy so I wanted him to have the opportunity to correct me.
I wonder how much of this lack is driven by this being a multiplayer game. In a single-player game, it doesn’t matter if you push the systems out of whack – that’s your own private instance. In a multiplayer game, the economic systems have to be a lot more durable, or many players will have a crappy time. Their vision of shared economics may be ruining the fun.
I think a fair amount, unfortunately, and I say that as someone who really likes MP. Of course, my type of MP is more “here is my server that I can play around in with my friends” rather than the MMOish stuff. Right now, I think Frontier has a lot of the drawbacks of a shared galaxy with few of the positives. Distant Worlds expeditions and Fuel Rats are a couple exceptions.
In the end, it is what it is and it aint what it aint. No use crying over that. No use at all.
I love it for what it is, and think its interesting and different and yeah sure it aint perfect. So there’s room aplenty for other, different things.
Growing older I start believing that dwelling on negative things is not a good use of my time. So why spend time looking at something that coulda been shoulda been better? Why not look at what it is and enjoy what it does right?
It’s how I approach all my games, but then I’m a consumer, not a critic. you do you @BrianRubin, I do me. Cheers. Have a kitten cus I lubs ya :)
