EliteThoughts
Been playing the game for about a month now, often online with a couple offriends, and I only hit my stride after a couple of weeks.
First off, the game is very good and addictive: too addictive in fact. But for the running-in period I often found myself annoyed and frustratedat the same time as enjoying myself, which is perfectly possible.
Itis the hardest game to learn that I have played for many years: it’s complex and frankly fiddly, laden with pitfalls for the noviceplayer. The fact you might avoid them by reading the manual doesn’t always help! Easing the path for new players would be nice. The game is also buggy, even after you allow for blaming things you don’t understand on faults.
But the big thing I am worrying about at the moment is other people and game exploits. I have met one PC pirate (which was good) but three griefers, which weren’t. Then there was my first community goal,where someone sent me a wing invite then shot me in the back. I am prepared for people wanting my cargo, my bounty, or my life in a war;not for a majority of PC adversaries just out for random pain, or who exploit the game system in some artificial fashion.
Wewant a vibrant galaxy of traders, explorers, bounty hunters,soldiers, smugglers, pirates and the occasional space psycho; not onewhere you only ever leave solo play in your most tooled-up warshipand never turn your back on someone entering a space-station.
The overall experience is positive, and I offer the following thoughts asconstructive criticism in the hopes they can be improved.
Severe non-bug annoyances:
-Wing beacon turns itself off whenever you do anything. How about a mappable button, an on-screen indicator when active, and a focus-menu option where you can set it to remain on until further notice?
-When you look at the ships around you in supercruise, you have to g oback through the menu to retrieve your nav target distance/speed thing, and sometimes even the compass. Suggest the “select next system in route” button double as “select the last station,system or beacon targeted”
-There are so many things you might like to use, but you’re limitedto only two fire buttons in each group. Suggest upping this to threeand allowing you to map more keyboard buttons forwake/warrant/discovery scanners etc. Or perhaps let the third firebutton be used as a “utility” button: the last non-weapon youused is mapped to it automatically so that its use can be repeated,or is context sensitive
-The wing system really doesn’t seem to make it much easier to helpyour friends when they get interdicted, or even just find out wherethey are! If you can beam data on hull and shields, why notlocation? Suggest increasing the range of effective Nav-lock,allowing you to select them as a target whenever they are in the same system, and having a tag appear whenever your view is pointing at them.
-The enormous fiddliness of dropping into signal sources. You don’tneed any great skill to get there in the end; all it does is consume time and aggravate. How about making the blue bands bigger?
-The inability to store a ship with cargo in its hold. If you’re doinga Rare Trades run and your mates come online to do some warzoning, you face a big loss of time and money.
The pitfalls:
-Plotting a hyperspace route, buying your cargo, then finding you’re too overladen to fly it. I actually ragequit from this one! Perhaps have a little marker flashes at the bottom of the Navigation pane to tell you “this route becomes unplotable at full load”
-Buyinga new ship and putting undersized stuff in its compartments, thenwondering why everything’s gone crap. Perhaps have a warning panel flash up on screen the first couple of times in each play-session when you try putting a car engine into a lorry.
-Getting stuck without enough fuel and nowhere to replenish. Perhaps littlered fuel pump icons should appear at systems where you cannot refuel(no station, no scoop or no scoopable star) when you click “plotroute.” Perhaps friends should be able to fly out and dropcanisters of fuel for you!
Minor annoyances:
-Especially in a station, you don’t know who’s around you becauseyour ship can only scan forwards. Suggest letting sensors do everything in, say, 1/3 their max range in any direction from yourship as well.
-Sometimes you plot a route, launch, and find it’s cleared.
-The “match speed with target” button in Tie Fighter was one reason it was such a great game. Can we have one please?
-When you go to buy/sell all your stock or a holdful, the number selection seems to “overshoot” and you need to go back a few to get the right number selected (yes I discovered you can still just press space, but I like to see the figures). Perhaps have it only go overby a maximum of 1?
-Sometimes a ship that’s quite close-by vanishes from your sensors, even if you’re fighting it
-Canwe have a “target nearest hostile that’s targeting me” button please? Or a “target nearest enemy”? “Target highest threat”rarely seems to work usefully or consistently.
-Some of the missions, especially where you get a counter-offer, are lessthan clear in how they’re displayed and what you’re expected todo.
-Sometimes when you’re nav-locked to a wingman and go into supercruise, you drop straight out again (presumably you run straight into yourpartner’s wake or beacon or something)
-How about a third shipyard option of selling the stored ship and keepingyour current one? Otherwise you have to wait through two loading periods.
-Istill don’t understand the reputation, influence or faction system,but I gather this should improve in the next update.
-Ona crowded radar, it’s often hard to see which target has bracketsaround it. What about a red dot appearing on your nav compass toindicate the heading of your local target?
Apparen bugs:
-Clicking“Current location” in Galaxy Map doesn’t usually work
-Evenwhen nav-locked blue to a wingman, don’t always seem to drop whenthey do, or appear at a big distance from their target
-Killwarrant scanner sometimes freezes with bar all the way across but no“complete”
-Wing invites never arriving, although sometimes sending a text message seems to clear this
-Signalsources that are only visible to one wingman
-wingman vanishing off scanner even when close up
-Hardpointsshowing “out of range” even when they’re clearly not, andneeding to be retracted and redeployed
-Notseeing fire coming from your weapons on screen, although from theammo use it seems they are firing
-wingmanhaving a blue lock on you, but yours is red
-I spent ages finding and blowing up the Gen. Lee for a mission, but the mission didn’t bloody update because I had chased it into a different system
-Travelled a long distance for the Feds “Invitation” and they nevercontacted me, so I travelled all the way back
-Often cannot take a wingman’s target if it is a distant star system;makes travelling as a Wing harder.
-Getting an assault bounty for shooting a Wanted criminal! Incrediblyannoying and possibly fatal. Nonsensical if it’s a deliberate feature.
-Turretsnot firing
-In a warzone, the “target highest threat” button often seems to pick a far-away mine or missile, not a hostile ship
-Sound breaks up even on super desktop system
Other Suggestions:
-Ramming needs to be dealt with urgently, as it is being used as a weapon without repercussions. It’s like it being fine to fill someone with a baseball bat, but not to shoot them!
I would suggest that if you ram someone clean more than once within 3minutes and do more than 10% damage to them each time, it’s anassault. If you destroy someone clean by ramming them and doing morethan 20% damage, or damaging them by more than 30% total in the last3 minutes and they hit a station or asteroid, it counts as a murder.
Yes this could happen by accident, but that would be a risk of the game you had to guard against, similar to not being blown up because of pad loitering.
Perhaps this same system could be adapted for Friendly Fire?
-There’s no obvious reason why there are so many ships in sublight around Navbeacons. Perhaps if you plot a route in “economy” mode, youshould drop out of hyperjumps into sublight by available beacons fora 5% fuel consumption discount
-It seems incredibly bizarre that a space station will let the worst pirate or war criminal in the gqlaxy dock and have a cup of tea while their ship is fixed, but you get blown up for parking violations! It also strains credibility how being destroyed wipes your legal status clean even if you keep the same name, same bank account, and all the factions remember you.
If there isn’t lore about this already, how about this: space stations were established early on as having universal diplomatic immunity,and police forces were bound by universal treaty in what they could do in space and how they could identify and track offenders. As time went on this was abused, but it was too convenient because many factions were playing dirty tricks on each other—rather like the way America refuses to recognise the International Criminal Court.
-Igather there is a problem with people running up huge bounties andthen letting a friend kill them for the bounty. Severalsub-suggestions for this one, all with pros and cons:
-Huge bounties actually have the excess added to the player’s rebuy costs at up to 90% until repaid. This would not be considered law enforcement but recovery by the Insurance companies; I suspect big money can be more tenacious and wide-reaching than justice
-Bounty above 10k accrued in solo player is not claimable in open, nor does it show up on the highest bounty postings
-Bounty increases are proportionately less as the amount climes, but NPC response ramps up faster.
-While the warzones are good for no-strings combat play, it does seem a bit artificial how few repercussions there are in the rest of the game world; all those missions where they don’t care what side you blow up, or even pay you for blowing up their own ships, are a case in point. Just a few more strings or a bit of colour might be nice
Apols for my word processor which seems to like spaces that don't transfer with a cut and paste...