Played it for a couple of days. Played as trader, miner, bounty hunter and explorer. I like nearly every part of the game. Inner system flying - super cruise, system jumps and so on. BUT the game is missing everthing what maybe LT will have: to give me a reason to play it any longer than a couple of days. I want to see player driven stations, factions, sytems, wars... and not getting enslaved by dull, liveless NPCs that give me some missions or credits for trades. I was little bit disapointed when they dropped the single player mode but have to admit that I nearly forgot why I back it so I cannot say I backed it for the single player part only. As I said, most parts, rolles you can play in Elite are really fun for a couple of hours maybe days. But then everything starts to feel like simple grinding. To get either some rank, reputation by a faction or the biggest ship in the game isnt really much of gameplay to hold my attention....what is the reason I'm leaving Elite right now. I think It would at least take 1 or 2 more years of developement. As it looks to me they are heading to add more dull gameplay which gets you to have fun for a couple of hours but not MMO like giving u a reason to play for months. If the really move on to station walking and planet landing + walking features instead of letting players build stations, run stations, empires, factions, employ NPCs for security or employ players then it wont interest me and the MMO aspect would only hold up to throwing a bunch of players together without giving them reasons to work together or build up empire, alliances together.

So far just a nice 3d hull without much interesting live which hold interests for more than some days.

I made it to 1.7 Mio and the medium trade ship after 4-5 days or so. I played quit a lot but got bored to repeat things over and over again as e.g. trading between stations....for and back....for and back.... or the other repeating parts.

Good post Lemar. If there was a 'like' or reputation button on this forum, consider it pressed.

I'm finding E: D to be a game where I can drop in for an hour or two, and lose myself in it. I can't imagine me playing it for days on end - there is just too much grind there.

It's lovely in the Oculus Rift, and it's wonderful to go exploring that huge galaxy out there, but right now it's a game to drop in and out of rather than play constantly. To be fair, it's been like that since beta, and not a whole lot has changed from that to be honest.

Hoping LT offers me (and you) more of the gameplay I want.

Lemar wrote:BUT the game is missing everthing what maybe LT will have: to give me a reason to play it any longer than a couple of days. I want to see player driven stations, factions, sytems, wars...

Sadly we are not getting player factions (or possibly only limited player factions) when Limit Theory is released.

I worry that Limit Theory is going to end up the same way on release. It will look pretty and all but it seems the meaty player controled core systems are not making 1.0.

Just one more thing to add here. I think the whole AI driven universe or simulation like they call it at Elite is a fake. Its just an interpolation and not a single AI that has their own life or how u want to call it. I had to dock maybe a hundred time or so at stations for trading or changing parts on my ship when I saw that every time the station where shooting at some AI ships which didnt follow the stations protocoll. Ok that wasnt a bit of a downer as one could say once in a while AI routines just failes like not letting that AI ship find the exit and the same happens to human players too.
But yesterday I choose to try the pirate career so I headed to the asteriod field where I mined gold, silver, platinum and all that valuable staff. My plan was to raid some AI ship for that. All I found out was AI ships pretending to mine. They just sit there, shoot with the mining laser at asteroids but dont take the little pieces from the asteroid and dont realise when a asteroid is empty. All the cargo they had was grain, or mineral oil or something else but not what one could mine there. On one hand I guess it could be to easy to make money by raiding those AI ships if they had gold and silver but on the other it kills the atmosphere to a huge degree.

Looking at that AI behaviour from a developer perspective I would guess there isnt enough computing power (server) to really create a AI driven universe what tells me two things. They need players to populate the universe with intelligent life and drive the universe and they dropped the single player mode just because they would have to create a second game as the single player offline mode would need completely different AI routines to have NPC with their own life.

Thats the thing I like about LT. I remember that Josh talked about that sectors where the players isn,t will get some interpolation as simulating all AI life in all sectors would even be too much for LT. But at least in the sector where the player is I expect more intelligent AI life. He already showed AI mining and trading in the players sector so no fake AI to expect.

Sadly we are not getting player factions (or possibly only limited player factions) when Limit Theory is released. I worry that Limit Theory is going to end up the same way on release.

Thats just one thing missing in Elite but in LT I wouldn't miss that as one can create an empire and can employ NPC if I remember that right. That faction thing is more for a group of players to group up in a MMO. I think that LT at start wont throw boring NPCs at me doing nothing more than being there for me to not feel completely being the only one alive in the universe. What I read so far about LT and saw so far about Elite the difference is in Elite you have a couple of different mini games or call it career that doesnt hang much together or influence anything like mining, trading and so on. In LT its more the opposite you can there too choose a career as pirate, trader and so on but you influence the universe. Elite would just throw some random generated AI cops at you (e.g. if u are a pirate) but in LT I guess the faction you are raiding or trading with will react to this and not that random AI cops show up right the minute when you begin to raid something. Hopefully no one will call that percentage change in Elite how much a faction like you influence. It just more of that pretending staff that what you do influence something in Elite. I guess they just cannot compute a universe full of life that the big difference between Elite and LT or between a huge but lifeless universe with a couple of mini games or a rich universe full of life. So I dont think LT will disappoint or end up the same way on release. But will have its own limits of course and if I will enjoy it more than a couple of hours is something It will have to prove. But the path choosen to create a single player experience to simulate a rich lifefull universe is totally the right one. I expect more of the same problems I saw in Elite from Star Citizen.

Zanteogo wrote:

Lemar wrote:BUT the game is missing everthing what maybe LT will have: to give me a reason to play it any longer than a couple of days. I want to see player driven stations, factions, sytems, wars...

Sadly we are not getting player factions (or possibly only limited player factions) when Limit Theory is released.

I worry that Limit Theory is going to end up the same way on release. It will look pretty and all but it seems the meaty player controled core systems are not making 1.0.

Truth to be told, I'd settle with working AI factions and player-driven influence at this point. Elite's trading mechanics are frustrating at best - the supply is random and spawns out of thin air, the ship upgrades are random and spawn out of thin air (adjusted by planet type and tech level, but still RNG-based), and no amount of wares you move between A and B has an influence on either.
The example with the mining ships (which don't mine, and obviously never did) clearly shows that Elite is heavily relying on smoke and mirrors - there's pretty much nothing going on at the backend that would simulate a coherent universe besides correlating player activity and adjusting prices accordingly.

With no real economic system to back it up, there will be no emergent gameplay or reasons for players to team up. It's a single-player-centric game with a mandatory MP component tacked on like a bad aftertaste, and I don't care what highfaluting plans they have for the future - at the moment, it might as well be a single player only game. Except that it's grindy as hell and full of infuriating time sinks, just like an MMO, with the added option of getting shot to bits by other players. There is literally no compelling reason at all to play multi, unless you're looking for someone to shoot.

Bring on LT. So far, all the other recent space sims have failed, some more miserably than others.

-Hardenberg, who is slowly but surely getting frustrated at the lack of decent space sim sandboxes.

Hardenberg wrote:Truth to be told, I'd settle with working AI factions and player-driven influence at this point. Elite's trading mechanics are frustrating at best - the supply is random and spawns out of thin air, the ship upgrades are random and spawn out of thin air (adjusted by planet type and tech level, but still RNG-based), and no amount of wares you move between A and B has an influence on either.

I agree that allowing players having actual influence is at least something. It's unfortunate that the whole "the player and AI are the same", was dropped at some point in LT. Without being able to actually run a faction I think LT is going to be more of a cool looking space trucker simulation than what it was originally made out to be.

Hardenberg wrote:Bring on LT. So far, all the other recent space sims have failed, some more miserably than others.

Being better than crap is something, I only wish the faction system was going to be complete at the release of LT so it could totally over shadow garbage like ED. It's annoying when massive development time is spent on doing things like changing trade lanes into warp rails and other "bells and whistles" stuff when core stuff could be finished instead. It sort of killed the LT hype for me to be honest.

Zanteogo wrote: I agree that allowing players having actual influence is at least something. It's unfortunate that the whole "the player and AI are the same", was dropped at some point in LT. Without being able to actually run a faction I think LT is going to be more of a cool looking space trucker simulation than what it was originally made out to be.

where was that dropped?

its just that there will be no usable interfaces or methods for detailed faction management.

you can still build your empire, hire workers and executives and give them work to do.

For me.. the most basic thing that is required in any of these types of games is a working economy.. not just some randomised, pull stuff from thin air to meet demand style thing as seen in ED. I want planets and stations that need stuff for a reason (maybe they need food to feed an over populated world, maybe they need different kinds of metals and materials to create weapons in their factory.. whatever the reason, I don't care.. there needs to be one) "to drive demand". Supply and Demand.. the most basic of basic economy ideas. Without a demand, there would be no point in supplying.. so because there is no REAL demand (at least virtual real), then there is no point for the AI, or more importantly the player, to transport goods to and fro.

In Hardwar, there was a real (virtual) supply and demand structure setup.. and on top of that, you could also manufacture stuff to meet more high-tech/evolved demands. You couldn't manufacture at the start of the game of course but once you got a certain level of cash and resources etc, you could. Then of course you created a demand yourself to manufacture stuff.. and the AI should respond to that demand by changing their behaviour and gathering what you need to manufacture... something ED doesn't even come close to doing.

I doubt we will see proper economy within ED for a long time... and as there isn't a proper economy, there's little point to doing anything because it directly and/or indirectly affects EVERYTHING.

Zanteogo wrote:

Hardenberg wrote:Truth to be told, I'd settle with working AI factions and player-driven influence at this point. Elite's trading mechanics are frustrating at best - the supply is random and spawns out of thin air, the ship upgrades are random and spawn out of thin air (adjusted by planet type and tech level, but still RNG-based), and no amount of wares you move between A and B has an influence on either.

I agree that allowing players having actual influence is at least something. It's unfortunate that the whole "the player and AI are the same", was dropped at some point in LT. Without being able to actually run a faction I think LT is going to be more of a cool looking space trucker simulation than what it was originally made out to be.

Hardenberg wrote:Bring on LT. So far, all the other recent space sims have failed, some more miserably than others.

Being better than crap is something, I only wish the faction system was going to be complete at the release of LT so it could totally over shadow garbage like ED. It's annoying when massive development time is spent on doing things like changing trade lanes into warp rails and other "bells and whistles" stuff when core stuff could be finished instead. It sort of killed the LT hype for me to be honest.

Woah woah woah! What are you talking about? Player-AI symmetry is still a huge part of LT's development ideology, and is reflected in a boatload of places!

The fact that 'full' player-side faction ownership was slated as a post-released update (NOTE: that has been the case since the feature was announced during the KS!!) is hardly the same as canning that ideology! Besides, as I've said elsewhere, we've yet to see how it will play out at release. It's entirely possible that the player-side faction ownership mechanics will make it in. But even if they don't, I think maybe you're overestimating what that means. Regardless of whether or not player faction ownership is in 1.0, the fact that you can own as many assets as you like, set up projects, command fleets, control territory, etc. does not change!

I guess the whole faction ownership thing is seen as a matter of accountability.

You send your own/hired ships to destroy station X and X's owners get mad at you, not at the ships... which you scrap or sell afterwards.

If accountability works without that then faction ownership is merely a technicality.

Gazz wrote:I guess the whole faction ownership thing is seen as a matter of accountability.

You send your own/hired ships to destroy station X and X's owners get mad at you, not at the ships... which you scrap or sell afterwards.

If accountability works without that then faction ownership is merely a technicality.

It should also enable some kind of political control. I mean you should be allowed to own sectors and planets and have the ability to develop them. You may be able to found new colonies or build new trade lanes warp rails. In return you might obtain the right to collect taxes or you may set the status of the guy that served your last cereals in a squashy state to "criminal - punishable by death".

JoshParnell wrote:
Woah woah woah! What are you talking about? Player-AI symmetry is still a huge part of LT's development ideology, and is reflected in a boatload of places!

The fact that 'full' player-side faction ownership was slated as a post-released update (NOTE: that has been the case since the feature was announced during the KS!!) is hardly the same as canning that ideology! Besides, as I've said elsewhere, we've yet to see how it will play out at release. It's entirely possible that the player-side faction ownership mechanics will make it in. But even if they don't, I think maybe you're overestimating what that means. Regardless of whether or not player faction ownership is in 1.0, the fact that you can own as many assets as you like, set up projects, command fleets, control territory, etc. does not change!

My whole Limit Theory hype went down the drain after reading your response to Flatfingers Flighter podcast comment on how many people don't realise that faction ownership won't be making 1.0. To be frank I was ready to leave the boards but have grown an attachment to the community here and was "hanging around" for awhile before leaving.

I wasn't around during the Kickstarter, and failed to understand how certain goals were being pushed off to after 1.0. I will guarantee others didn't understand this either. (again, going back to Flatfingers and the Flighter podcast, it was the first I recall hearing it myself, before this I was only aware of planet ownership being moved ahead)

If you say I am over estimating what this will mean, then thank you for clearing this up Josh. (I just assumed controlling territory and controlling factions needed to be one and the same) I really want to get my Limit Theory hype back on this.

As for players and AI no longer being the same, IF players cannot own (or control) factions like the AI can, would it mean they are not the same? I'm not trying to be difficult on this. If faction ownership was removed for both players AND the AI then they would still be on the same level. (Else I would always be working for an AI "boss" if I was part of a faction) I understand what you are saying however, and it might make it in, and might be partially in.

Thank you for responding Josh. If you say it's not a big deal then I will go with it and see how it pans out in the end.

...ahhh the perils of public design

I think one thing to keep in mind is that our imaginations are very powerful and we have a tendency to invest/project a lot of our own idea's into things we are excited to read/hear about.

The best thing to do with the very open development of Limit Theory is every now and then go back and view all the dev vids, just to refresh ourselves on how awesome the game was near project start, and how far it has come since then. It may not be able to cook your dinner for you in the specific way you like, but it sure is going to be tasty enough for most of us

Yeah, it is still very amusing how people tend to get bad blood about something that they can't control, can't influence and have no rights to do in the first place.

Lum wrote:Yeah, it is still very amusing how people tend to get bad blood about something that they can't control, can't influence and have no rights to do in the first place.

It's amusing how people feel they have the authority to dictate what "rights" people have.

Oh wait.. putting a happy face at the end makes it all better......