More Atmospheric Gameplay Is Needed

[Donut]

We need more gameplay that involves less combat, and more exploration. Granted that it is coming eventually, we need a lot more of it. With the death system the way they see it, combat should be only 1/50th of the game for example. 

What game mechanics do you guys feel we need in the game for a more atmospheric experience in the game?

 

[Mondain]

We need more gameplay that involves less combat, and more exploration. Granted that it is coming eventually, we need a lot more of it. With the death system the way they see it, combat should be only 1/50th of the game for example. 
What game mechanics do you guys feel we need in the game for a more atmospheric experience in the game?
 

Depending on how they implement the permadeath (if it's true permadeath vs. Eve like death where you only loose everything you have with you at the point of death) I welcome the latter. Coming from eve it brought a unique strategy when you are in a war and you run out of ships to fly and are stranded in a station deep in wormhole or nulsec. But I do agree I can't wait to see how they implement exploration in the game


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[faquarl25]

I would love them to really punish players for deaths to make combat actually really risky. However, I do not see them doing that as a good chunk of their base are players who love to shoot (It would also make Pirates the most dangerous profession in the verse and really difficult to build reputation). I would like to see exploration closely tied to industry. Rather than being a man jumping into the unknown I think it would be more realistic for them to work for companies the way oil companies drill exploratory holes. This would mean exploring could get going at the same time as mining. 

[Fizzlefuse]

I may be biased towards salvage but I'd like to see more on that.
the salvage profession should provide some of the most atmospheric gameplay since your job is to find abandoned, possibly alien, wrecks and in many cases, wander through unlit corridors and crawlspaces to find items of value. The bigger the derelict, the better. These things will be in deep space, in orbit around a star, planet or moon... or even on the surface. Bring on the salvage!

Also, what I really want to see is the basic survival mechanics in terms of player vs environment on planets and in space. Oxygen levels, radiation, gravity, acidic/toxic atmospheres, extreme temperatures and weather conditions.. stuff like that. I imagine a massive storm rolling in and the player(s) needing to find shelter. or perhaps having a limited time to salvage/repair a ship in space, before radiation levels become too high.

[faquarl25]

3 hours ago, Fizzlefuse said:

I may be biased towards salvage but I'd like to see more on that.
the salvage profession should provide some of the most atmospheric gameplay since your job is to find abandoned, possibly alien, wrecks and in many cases, wander through unlit corridors and crawlspaces to find items of value. The bigger the derelict, the better. These things will be in deep space, in orbit around a star, planet or moon... or even on the surface. Bring on the salvage!

Also, what I really want to see is the basic survival mechanics in terms of player vs environment on planets and in space. Oxygen levels, radiation, gravity, acidic/toxic atmospheres, extreme temperatures and weather conditions.. stuff like that. I imagine a massive storm rolling in and the player(s) needing to find shelter. or perhaps having a limited time to salvage/repair a ship in space, before radiation levels become too high.

Salvage would be great. However, beyond finding a few things here or there or getting the new cutlass done to pull cargo out, I am not sure there is much that can be done with salvage. Crawling though wrecks is great, but there needs to be a reason. That could just be mission like in the 3.0 demo, but that is not salvage. I do think it would be cool to see salvagers wearing weird/ ancient equipment they have picked up. 

[Fizzlefuse]

11 minutes ago, faquarl25 said:

Salvage would be great. However, beyond finding a few things here or there or getting the new cutlass done to pull cargo out, I am not sure there is much that can be done with salvage. Crawling though wrecks is great, but there needs to be a reason. That could just be mission like in the 3.0 demo, but that is not salvage. I do think it would be cool to see salvagers wearing weird/ ancient equipment they have picked up. 

Agreed that having a fully working salvage mechanic shown so soon wouldn't be realistic, but I was thinking of more of a scavenger mission. Go on board, find some kind of equipment/box/device, pick it up and get back to the ship. I reckon they could just show a team of "salvagers" coming upon a derelict, opening it's cargohold and EVAing crates over to their ship, while someone goes and explores the rest of the ship...

[Rocket Man]

4 hours ago, Fizzlefuse said:

I may be biased towards salvage but I'd like to see more on that.
the salvage profession should provide some of the most atmospheric gameplay since your job is to find abandoned, possibly alien, wrecks and in many cases, wander through unlit corridors and crawlspaces to find items of value. The bigger the derelict, the better. These things will be in deep space, in orbit around a star, planet or moon... or even on the surface. Bring on the salvage!

Also, what I really want to see is the basic survival mechanics in terms of player vs environment on planets and in space. Oxygen levels, radiation, gravity, acidic/toxic atmospheres, extreme temperatures and weather conditions.. stuff like that. I imagine a massive storm rolling in and the player(s) needing to find shelter. or perhaps having a limited time to salvage/repair a ship in space, before radiation levels become too high.

In terms of searching derelicts, I hope there is a horror element.  Hostile aliens, primitive or advanced, that could take your life.  I would love for a team to find a derelict, and HAVE to proceed with the utmost caution, to protect their own lives while finding treasures buried within.  A way to keep the Risk/Reward balance in check other than a team of pirates waiting in the darkness for the next curious salvager.

An for space-like environments, you could have pulsars messing with the electronics, or the Nebula gases hiding hostile elements, etc.

[Fizzlefuse]

1 minute ago, Rocket Man said:

In terms of searching derelicts, I hope there is a horror element.  Hostile aliens, primitive or advanced, that could take your life.  I would love for a team to find a derelict, and HAVE to proceed with the utmost caution, to protect their own lives while finding treasures buried within.  A way to keep the Risk/Reward balance in check other than a team of pirates waiting in the darkness for the next curious salvager.

Indeed, something I'd like to see as well... but I doubt seeing lifeforms crawling around in derelicts any time soon.

[AdmiralBoom]

I think having head tracking (i.e. TrackIR etc) and voice commands natively supported in-game are going to do a lot for the immersion. I know both are there now, but I wouldn't mind if they spent some CIG resources polishing each.

The other big piece is having solid NPCs. They should be interesting and capable. I know a lot of us have big ships and my wish would be to see Mass Effect type of character depth with the smarts to perform their job on board as well as a newbie human player. 

[faquarl25]

On 4/6/2017 at 10:35 AM, AdmiralBoom said:

I think having head tracking (i.e. TrackIR etc) and voice commands natively supported in-game are going to do a lot for the immersion. I know both are there now, but I wouldn't mind if they spent some CIG resources polishing each.

The other big piece is having solid NPCs. They should be interesting and capable. I know a lot of us have big ships and my wish would be to see Mass Effect type of character depth with the smarts to perform their job on board as well as a newbie human player. 

Smarts? I would not exactly call the combat ability of characters in ME3 like Liara smart.... But hopefully CIG will be better, making them more risk averse. 

[Porcupine]

A fascinating subject that I - as a self-professed fledgeling explorer - am quite closely interested in. I like the PI mission exactly for the reasons presented in the video, albeit the intentionally unsettling nature of it already forced me to take a good hard look at my choice of profession; I'm not a fan of the fact that Covalex is often the target of campers shooting incoming ships from what I hear, and drawing my sidearm "just in case" getting ready to duck back behind a corner is the first thing I do even now every time I return there. In short, Covalex does a wonderful job of ratcheting my nerves to eleven, and I have to admit that's not something I particularly enjoy, even if I hardly ever encountered anyone there in the end. I don't subscribe to the belief that high stakes (like permadeath) are necessary to make gameplay meaningful - that's not how it ever worked for me - and I don't particularly like horror as a genre, so I'm understandably not keen on this aspect. I do have to admit though the tension makes the PI mission even more atmospheric, and that is certainly an aspect I welcome in any game.

That said, the mechanic I'm most looking forward to is various means to scan your surroundings, both in-ship and on foot; the lack of any such thing right now makes discovery essentially impossible in the game right now - unless something has a flashing light of some sorts on it, stumbling upon it by pure accident while wandering around aimlessly is basically impossible. How difficult locating even something the size of Grim Hex can be, even when you know its rough location, is an excellent lesson in that regard. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't want to just press a button and get a list of POIs back with "go check these out" - hopefully we'll get some sort of more nuanced mechanic for scanning / exploration instead, leaving room for some ambiguity in results and some skill involved in the process. Yes, I know they keep saying we should expect exactly this sort of thing but ever since the infamous golf swing I never take anything for granted any more...

 

[Fizzlefuse]

20 hours ago, Porcupine said:

A fascinating subject that I - as a self-professed fledgeling explorer - am quite closely interested in. I like the PI mission exactly for the reasons presented in the video, albeit the intentionally unsettling nature of it already forced me to take a good hard look at my choice of profession; I'm not a fan of the fact that Covalex is often the target of campers shooting incoming ships from what I hear, and drawing my sidearm "just in case" getting ready to duck back behind a corner is the first thing I do even now every time I return there. In short, Covalex does a wonderful job of ratcheting my nerves to eleven, and I have to admit that's not something I particularly enjoy, even if I hardly ever encountered anyone there in the end. I don't subscribe to the belief that high stakes (like permadeath) are necessary to make gameplay meaningful - that's not how it ever worked for me - and I don't particularly like horror as a genre, so I'm understandably not keen on this aspect. I do have to admit though the tension makes the PI mission even more atmospheric, and that is certainly an aspect I welcome in any game.

That said, the mechanic I'm most looking forward to is various means to scan your surroundings, both in-ship and on foot; the lack of any such thing right now makes discovery essentially impossible in the game right now - unless something has a flashing light of some sorts on it, stumbling upon it by pure accident while wandering around aimlessly is basically impossible. How difficult locating even something the size of Grim Hex can be, even when you know its rough location, is an excellent lesson in that regard. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't want to just press a button and get a list of POIs back with "go check these out" - hopefully we'll get some sort of more nuanced mechanic for scanning / exploration instead, leaving room for some ambiguity in results and some skill involved in the process. Yes, I know they keep saying we should expect exactly this sort of thing but ever since the infamous golf swing I never take anything for granted any more...

 

I think the possibility of there being something on board a derelict ship is more appealing to me than there actually being something on board. The fact that some people just shoot you when you're exploring Covalex does bother me. Often enough I didn't even had enough time to type "don't shoot" before getting blown away. currently there's just not enough room for peaceful exploration to coexist next to the pirates and gankers who just want to blow shit up. Hopefully 3.0 will change it for the better.

[Porcupine]

10 minutes ago, Fizzlefuse said:

I think the possibility of there being something on board a derelict ship is more appealing to me than there actually being something on board. The fact that some people just shoot you when you're exploring Covalex does bother me. Often enough I didn't even had enough time to type "don't shoot" before getting blown away. currently there's just not enough room for peaceful exploration to coexist next to the pirates and gankers who just want to blow shit up. Hopefully 3.0 will change it for the better.

I get the feeling CIG isn't particularly interested on cracking down on any but the most onerous forms of player harassment - for them it's all "social interaction" and "emergent gameplay", so I don't expect much to change any time soon. Then again, I wouldn't really say "evil" players are the majority - my favourite story is the one where I was exploring the "fire at will" section of Grim Hex a while ago (with BFG rifle drawn - obviously), returning to the "shoot / no shoot" boundary only to see the airlock cycle and two dudes exit. Face to face, it's an open corridor, nowhere to hide, so we just stared each other down with weapons in hand - then we just passed each other, me entering the airlock, they going on to explore the area. Nobody fired... Sure, you can't count on this sort of thing happening but it still happens more often than one might expect...

[RogueRaptor]

Being a Redeemer owner I'm too interested in more atmospheric flight modes. Since the Deemer is a gunship/drop ship, this role one of which maybe supporting ground troops would bring a necessity for in atmos flight. But since any ground mechanics are still a whisper who knows. 

Funny thing is my Deemer seems to fill a multitude of roles in game and so far since I have no scooby what path I'll take in game it maybe my go to ship. That or my MIS (with extra arse end shielding)

@Porcupine @Fizzlefuse Lurking out in to deep space and finding a derelict space craft or landing on a planet and finding old ruins is a main part of what drew me to this project. Exploration in games Bethesda has made has had me hooked for hrs on end. Introduce the vastness of space and of the possibility of what maybe out there has a huge draw than just pew pewing people on site. I have BF1 for that. 

I just hope that things aren't made too linear and hopefully exploration has the finer details we all crave. 

[Porcupine]

5 hours ago, RogueRaptor said:

Being a Redeemer owner I'm too interested in more atmospheric flight modes. Since the Deemer is a gunship/drop ship, this role one of which maybe supporting ground troops would bring a necessity for in atmos flight. But since any ground mechanics are still a whisper who knows. 

Funny thing is my Deemer seems to fill a multitude of roles in game and so far since I have no scooby what path I'll take in game it maybe my go to ship. That or my MIS (with extra arse end shielding)

@Porcupine @Fizzlefuse Lurking out in to deep space and finding a derelict space craft or landing on a planet and finding old ruins is a main part of what drew me to this project. Exploration in games Bethesda has made has had me hooked for hrs on end. Introduce the vastness of space and of the possibility of what maybe out there has a huge draw than just pew pewing people on site. I have BF1 for that. 

I just hope that things aren't made too linear and hopefully exploration has the finer details we all crave. 

Speaking of derelict stuff - you know some of the "usual debris" around Yela has been replaced with more Starfarer debris, right? Not the Two big near-complete ones; these are smaller Starfarer corridor sections, I'm not sure whether there's anything to find on them outside the obvious medpack box...

[Black-Dahlia]

One of the things I'm most excited for is just exploring. I would hate to constantly be  in the middle of combat, to enjoy the planets and moons.

[Fizzlefuse]

20 hours ago, Black-Dahlia said:

One of the things I'm most excited for is just exploring. I would hate to constantly be  in the middle of combat, to enjoy the planets and moons.

Fully agree with you. I hope the game systematically makes things challenging in other ways then just spawning more pirates or aliens as you go further into deep space.
I've played a few games that forced people into certain gameplay, for instance, forced PvE players into PvP and vice versa, or stealthgames that suddenly force you to beat up people face to face and it never quite works for me. People have their own likes and dislikes, and if you screw with that it rubs people the wrong way.

[Grizzlyb]

On 17-4-2017 at 10:35 PM, Fizzlefuse said:

Fully agree with you. I hope the game systematically makes things challenging in other ways then just spawning more pirates or aliens as you go further into deep space.
I've played a few games that forced people into certain gameplay, for instance, forced PvE players into PvP and vice versa, or stealthgames that suddenly force you to beat up people face to face and it never quite works for me. People have their own likes and dislikes, and if you screw with that it rubs people the wrong way.

I think this is a good post, pinpointing a direction that, in my opinion, is the only way that will keep SC "in the air" in the long run.

My favorite job will be more the "grinding-like" job. Scanning the verse mathematically for countless hours, in hope of finding valuable stuff, minerals, derelict items etc. I contradict all the people that keep saying that SC NEEDS player pirates. For what I have seen, that mostly ends up in a slaughter frenzy.  And with Permadeath in place, that is exactly the seem as greefing and bulling. Maybe the combat oriented players like and need the "thrill", I don't. And with me countless other players. Never understood the reason why the combat oriented players NEED the thrill of killing an unarmed Prospector or small Aurora with their SH or Sabre. They have no other goal then greef. 

That said, Pirates will be there for all that want that kind of play.  Let us hope CIG make it more profitable for them to attack NPC's and not start blowing up the noncombat players. That Explorer or miner is not fit for fighting, and permadeath is real. 

This forced PvP thing is the only reason I don't buy anything past my Aurora. All talk, about killing will lower your reputation and can get you in trouble with Bounty Hunters, is just an extra incentive, a bonus for players that like to blow up other players. 

When "death by pirates" results in restoring the victim to the same situation as before he was killed, and the pirate loses double amount of damage credits and an extra live closer to permadeath, that would make piracy against human players a lot less attractive