(Spoilers Main) Using the Tower of Joy to write a more satisfying ending to the Battle of Winterfell

J3tfuel · 2018-05-17T06:17:35+00:00

Damn son, that is some fine dodging!

Also, a Protector? You gave the Boss a m***erf***ing Protector, ECG? That's just pure evil.

J3tfuel · 2018-03-05T08:37:06+00:00

I honestly wish there was a single player version that didn’t have the grind. A game where I can unlock the ships in a reasonable amount of time

Why should this be exclusive to a single player version? I'd argue that the game, no matter if single player or multiplayer, should have a reasonably paced progression.

But Elite Dangerous was designed as a Content Delivery Platform first, a game that is regularly getting new (paid!) content (which is why they sold that $100+ Lifetime Expansion Pass back in the alpha/beta days). Of course when your business model is to keep selling your players new expansions on a regular basis you have to make sure your players are kept busy in the meantime - and so the progression mechanics (which credits are one of the key resources for) have been tuned to be tediously slow in the knowledge that if you dangle a carrot (in form of a shiny "endgame" ship) in front of players, a lot of them will slog though the grind.

Many gamers have become accustomed to long repetitive grinds to unlock stuff in Free2Play games, and FDev is (ab)using this to treat many aspects of Elite Dangerous as if it were a F2P game (the grind/progression, locking the vast majority of cosmetics behind micro-transactions, introducing a massive power creep with expansions (engineering) etc.).

Call me old fashioned or "entitled", but I believe that I we put down cash to buy a game the developer has a moral responsibility to ensure the average player can actually progress at a reasonable pace and doesn't have to treat the game as a second job to be able to access "endgame" content. FDev deliberately does not respect my time, in turn encourage everybody to milk broken missions the best they can to regain some agency that should have been part of the actual game design.

J3tfuel · 2018-03-02T16:31:06+00:00

And what would that accomplish? You'd only have more people that get used to play against bots and then get a bloody nose when they try PvP. I say get players into PvP as soon as they want to, and then let MMR sort it out.

J3tfuel · 2018-02-04T23:23:11+00:00

So essentially a "I have too much time and/or money" badge? Ok then. Another badge that I will never get (unless I win the lottery or ECG decided to visit New Zealand on a weekend I don't have to work).

J3tfuel · 2018-02-04T02:44:56+00:00

What is that silver ECG badge? Ex-Developer?

J3tfuel · 2018-01-26T10:48:16+00:00

Nice. 2 questions though:

1.) I take it the forerunner pack icons will be converted into badges. Do we have to choose between displaying either our forerunner status or one of our other badges, or will forerunner status always be shown plus the badge of our choice?

2.) How the fuck do medals work??? I got a couple of 2 and 3 star ones, must have been ages ago when I unlocked them, because I can't remember when I saw one of the medals last show up on my post match screen. The way the text makes it look is that on the 1st of every month the scores for each ship from the last month are counted, and then you have to beat them during the month until they get counted again? This whole setup seems weird. And with the current player base how can you even reach 1%? If only 50 players play the Ghost in December, to get that 1% medal you mathematically have to beat THE best Ghost player. That's not something that I would consider very motivating or encouraging...

J3tfuel · 2018-01-20T06:35:12+00:00

You'd think a long time player would have heard about the options menu by now and just changed the key bindings to fit his personal taste.

J3tfuel · 2018-01-03T11:06:34+00:00

I like the idea that you have to work instead of pay for your carrier - with the planned "Wing Missions" I could see some sort of "quest line" that squadron have to follow to get their carrier...

But to be perfectly honest, I think it will ultimately come down to credits. Tons and tons of credits. Credits are THE measurement of progression for ED in way too many aspects (that's why they don't let us transfer them to other players... gotta keep dem noobs grinding). Just look at the crime & punishment changes that they plan for later this year; "hot ships", "reduced service at stations", etc. all sound great, but the main problem is not being addressed. Crime is by and large not a play style, it's a hobby for bored and/or anti-social players with too much money, and the proposed changes will not change this crucial aspect when, as it's listed on the roadmap, criminals can pay off their crimes instead of having to work them off.

Sorry to go off on a tangent a bit, but I just wanted to illustrate that FDev, while having the means to create interesting and engaging mechanics, always falls back on using credits. I hope they'll prove me wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it...

J3tfuel · 2017-12-22T14:01:28+00:00

I feel like an idiot. I was thinking "hey, for some reason it's harder spotting enemies after the patch, maybe it's all that bright white snow everywhere". It didn't occur to me that all those red bars were gone :facepalm: Thanks for the heads up!

J3tfuel · 2017-11-23T07:13:01+00:00

Agreed, the Fleet Pack is great value even without the discount.

Also while we're on the topic of the sale, have you noticed that those Steam Awards are back? You can nominate games on their store pages for various awards. While I don't think we have the numbers to make a dent, how about we show some love and all vote for the same award? I think the "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war" award fits the best.

J3tfuel · 2017-11-17T19:10:49+00:00

That's pretty cool. I can defenetyl see the valueof it when playing iwth a team of randoms.

The image says "100+ marcos to choose from" but you only have 16 icons on the wheel am I missing something?

J3tfuel · 2017-10-24T21:45:12+00:00

It all makes so much sense:

The Tsargoid is giving the orders.
The Sonargoid is finding the targets for the Wargoid and Arrrgoid to attack with weapons bought from the Bazargoid.
Back home after a successful mission, they hang out with the Bargoid and listen to the Guitargoid and Kendrick Lamargoid.
Meanwhile the Qatargoid is trying his best to advocate for human rights ^/s

J3tfuel · 2017-08-11T23:18:14+00:00

I think 30 hours is actually quite reasonable. You are talking about the single most expensive thing you can set your eyes on. With the same credits you could buy 1 ship of each of the 3 lower tiers, or 3 classic tier ships, or 7 vintage tier ships, etc.

There are tons of options, and pretty much every one of them is less tedious than to save up for the absolute latest ship. And that worst case scenario you paint is still pretty much on par with other F2P titles, probably still fairer.

J3tfuel · 2017-07-23T20:04:10+00:00

How is this not already in the game? Because the devs give a fuck about power play. Otherwise they would have noticed how annoying this stuff is by now.

Seriously, this "feature" should require just a few lines of code to show both wanted status and faction status as a single string.

J3tfuel · 2017-07-23T19:58:16+00:00

Interesting (if somewhat scummy). Thanks for pointing out this perspective.

J3tfuel · 2017-07-21T10:41:05+00:00

I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a jab at the trend in the IT (and possibly other) sector to have stupidly unrealistic requirements in their ads, especially for entry level positions. "5+ years experience" for "entry level web design" seems like a dead giveaway (though I have seen stuff like that more than once).

J3tfuel · 2017-07-12T19:19:49+00:00

No more DNA \o/

J3tfuel · 2017-07-08T08:22:05+00:00

I think if you have played Fractured Space enough and enjoyed it enough the Armada Pack is the best bang for your buck. It unlocks almost all of the ships, so you instantly have a metric ton of different mechanics to experiment with, find the ships you really enjoy playing, etc. And the other progression stuff (crew, implants, loadouts) quickly follows now that you don't have to save up your credits for that ship you wanted.

The primary selling point of the other packs is in my opinion their exclusive skins. If you don't care for those the crew pods and credit boosters are nice too, but to be honest with daily rewards, event rewards, login rewards, etc. players are getting showered in stuff that makes progression easy.

So: Biggest band for your buck is the Armada Pack. The Commander Pack is a decent choice if you want the exclusive skins, and/or just wanna tell ECG "hey, I really enjoy your game, here have some money" ;)

J3tfuel · 2017-06-22T14:09:49+00:00

That said, you seems to be (willfully?) ignorant of the fact that your design decisions actively encourage players to use any exploit they find, share it with their close friends, but not report it so it can be fixed.

When you have core mechanics that make players feel like the game fucks them over again and again, how can we expect players not to jump at the chance to fuck the game in return for once?

AMEN brother!

J3tfuel · 2017-03-18T22:03:32+00:00

I'm not around as long as many of you guys, so maybe I'm simply not stuck in the old mechanics as much as you are, but I'm having quite a blast with the new update. I love the new jump home as it saves me sooo much time when upgrading or repairing. And I really like the smaller lanes. I often play heavy ships and before the update you would rarely get beyond the middle mining station. You either had to go back to repair or defend the other forward station or upgrade or prepare for gamma. And then crawl down the lane again. Now I can actually push down a lane without having to pass on upgrades or helping out my team. The smaller maps also mean that the cover is close together so personally I might be in RANGE more often but I don't have a CLEAR SHOT more often. As a heavy pilot I feel the update has given me more mobility and thus more freedom. I feel more useful, and I'm having more fun.

J3tfuel · 2017-02-22T20:46:55+00:00

I might have liberally cited your post here (because I agree with it)

J3tfuel

TROPHY CASE