Sounds good so far. They should have done this before their powerplay bull&$#t and the utter failure that is multicrew.
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And the orrery map.
Well this new Exploring Dynamics IS Multi-crew compatible so… yeah. Worth the admission price…
@Navynuke99 I know you’ll feel the temptation of crucifying me but… I think I can live without the Orrery…
You know, I love Elite a lot, and I do like FDEV for the enthousiastic nerds they are but there are some things that just bug me about that game.
That telepresence stuff just breaks the game for me. It does not fit the world they had established before they introduced that as a crutch to make it more multiplayer-like.
Then there’s the unfathomable economy of the Resource Extraction Zones. Think about it. There’s three (NPC) dudes mining stuff that’s worth less than one K a tonne. They pull in about 50 tonnes a run say? (being asps and stuff like that) So they have a hold full of stuff worth about 50K. Then there’s a constant stream of (NPC) pirates trying to steal that stuff in all kinds of l33t combat vessels. And they get blown up by police NPC’s and players. That economy just does not work out. Those ores are not worth the kind of risks the pirates are taking, let alone the miners themselves. It’s just BS and they know it but they dont give a F and it makes me angry. How can a crew that puts out a perfect simulation of the entire bloomin’ galaxy flub basic economy of their game so badly.
ah. venting. that felt good.
Like I said, I love the game, play it once in a while. Throw a tenner at FDEV for a skin or something once in a while. Will do so in the future. Just wish they’d listen.
I don’t disagree with you but for me it’s a matter of “Damn if you do, damn if you don’t”.
What would be a valid alternative to Telepresence?
About the REZ… I’d suggest you to watch this: How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology | War Stories | Ars Technica - YouTube
After a certain point, a game is just a game.
I feel it’s like being bothered there’s no demoralization in PvP FPS shooter, no vehicle revision or engine wear/tear for racing games and unlimited amounts of planes in DCS…
EDIT: feels to me that you’d be madly in love with Rogue System…
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Flying all the way across the bubble to meet up with your buddy. It would fit the hardcore simminess the game used to exude.
In the same mold, I would take some gaminess (FTL travel in itself is magic) but it wouldnt be that hard to make either the stuff in the belts worth enough to make the things happening there make sense or find another reason for endless waves of ships to be thrown there.
edit: and yes, rogue space looks right up my alley.
What they’ve proposed sounds like a good start, to me. Good to hear there will be a beta for all this. I don’t often partake in betas, but I may test and provide feedback on this one.
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If I can be honest- I’m glad they didn’t go that way. GIven the size of the complete map (Galaxy) it could be such a PITA…
Beside that I don’t actually feel Elite is that hardcore…
That said- I can’t wait soon enough fpr the Beta, and of course people already complain about the most absurd things- given they didn’t even try it yet.
Like :
- Discovering a planet names it : complaint is “But it can’t know all the planets in the system”
- “It’s too much of a timesink now”
- “too many button presses”
- “the scanners were three, now there’ll be just one!”
Etc. etc.
I can’t even, anymore.
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It’s the fundamental problem of democracy in a pluralistic society tbh. Opinions are like sphincters, everybody has one. And that’s cool.
But authoring a work of art (and I firmly believe entertainment software is that, from DCS to Senua’s Sacrifice) is not a democracy. It is best done in an aristocratic or autocratic way. This is my vision, and this is how I implement it. And the world out there may take it or leave it.
Art by committee (technocratic) or steered by the vox populi is bland (current hollywood) or straight up repulsive (try a thing called comedy night on steam)
Elite 2 was almost completely a two man affair. That’s less dilution of vision than the average rockband. It’s janky as heck, but it true to what it is. Elite D often tries to please too many different opinions on taste. It dilutes itself thereby and often struggles to even be coherent.
That said, I kinda like what they’re proposing to do with exploration.
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You lost me at Plurastil… Plasteelus… that word over there.
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^ @komemiute as a few paragraphs of philosophy are fired at him
Everywhere different people want different things. this is a problem if you want them all to have a say. I want chocolate, you want vanilla. Problem when making single bowl of icecream. people are very different. so cool! we get chocolate-vanilla swirly! yay!
Making something interesting or pretty (and I much think games are) is not something where everybody gets a say. Better to have one man, one say or few men at least. He say “this I find pretty, you may take it or leave it”.
When pretty things are made by a room full of people in suits (current hollywood) or by all of the internet, the things become boring or yuck.
Elite 2 was made by two men. That’s even less people than the average rock band. It has some bugs and is not always simple to use but it is very much unlike other things and the parts all belong where they are. Elite D tries to be not just a chocolate-vanilla swirly, but also wants chocolate cookie, whiskey, three dancing girls and a dog. It makes less sense. Not all parts seem to belong. So sad.
I do like what FDEV are going to do with finding new things.
There, better?
I must admit to also having been one who wanted non-telepresence for multi-crew. To my thinking, this would have added stronger reason for players to gather, giving a stronger reason and purpose to where I play. With telepresence, mutlicrew meetups are more disposable.
Certainly, “instant pick-up” and “quickly forgotten” are hallmarks of much online multiplayer activity. But within Elite, where player groups are supposed to be congregating and cooperating, contributors to the local BGS and the overall group situation by most aspects of their play… I dunno if typical disposable multiplayer is the best choice.
Further admission of guilt… I’m sort of sorry that multiplayer was even part of Elite Dangerous. So much development time spent, and design decisions focused on mitigating player abuses of nearly every mechanic, aimed at harassing and annoying (oh… sorry… INTERACTING) others. Time and design work which instead could have been spent on more meaningful gameplay, on almost every level.
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This actually makes a lot of sense to me. I feel a bit like Frontier assumed that “all players would be nice to each other” during the development.
If they’d taken even a brief glance at EVE Online, that assumption could have been put to rest.
I would have loved physical presence… but I’d hate the mechanic of having my character locked as a “Science Officer” on anyone’s ship, and when he can’t be online I’m forced to not play, just because we wanted to do some exploration last night…
So that would mean either no Multi-crew (and with these ne mechanics in Mining and Exploration is finally viable) or some “immersion breaking” feature.
All in all, this is a game- even in DCS we can jump (so to speak) from an airframe to another, fix damage that would write off an entire wing of four and so on…
Everyone is allowed to imagine the imaginary line of immersion-break-limit somewhere… for my it lies comfortably along the gameplay border.
In this case, while “ephemeral” telepresence allow for any form of quick turnaround from On-line to solo to multi-crew to whatever.
And by the way, all opinions I’ve read so far are logical and understandable- I’m NOT trying to convince anyone to change their mind. 
It could still be telepresence but it has to be activated from the same station. That way when you all log off, the telepresence ends, but you still had to be together to initiate things.
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Amen brother, but that station is passed already.
Regarding the telepresence thing:
This was covered in an interview with someone from FD I think. The crux of the matter is that no-one is forcing you to use telepresence from distant parts of the galaxy. If you find it more immersive to meet up at a station first so you are all in the same place you can do that. This is a sandbox game, and as such you are free to enact your own set of gameplay rules on top of those hard coded in to the game. Your gameplay choice is not affected by this mechanic.
On the other hand if they had enforced the need to all be together in one place prior to initiating multiplayer that would discourage players who either don’t have the time or patience to jump across the galaxy for a meet, or who are ‘stuck’ a long distance away exploring Beagle Point or wherever.
I take the point about trying to please everyone but in this case it was a choice between limiting no-ones gameplay or limiting the gameplay of a significant proportion of your player base. And as today’s gaming culture is very much focussed on immediate gratification this was really an obvious choice for the designers.
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Nicely put.
I agree on the first part of your proposition, but disagree on the conclusion. The choice is never obvious. But that’s what they did and there’s no use crying over spilt milk. I have only used multicrew once. It only left me with a wish to have an NPC puppet in the empty chairs, because it was cool to have someone there.
Guys. I try to avoid hype but…
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/449410-Round-Up-of-3-3-Impressions-FDev-Community-Visit
This sounds pretty awesome.
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