Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

I just saw Obsidian Ant's video on CQC with that Frontier Twitch stream from inside the arena and I started thinking...

Elite has a huge galaxy (actually, that's an understatement), but the whole game suffers from one major problem - and that's monotony when it comes to places you visit. We have 400 billion star systems, yet all of them feel the same. It's a star with a random number of rocks floating around it. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

The problem lies in the fact that the whole galaxy is proceduraly generated and it's obvious that the systems don't have a "human" touch to them (yes, yes - i know it's a 1:1 replica of our galaxy and space is boring and empty - yes ). Take a second and look at the screenshots from X:Rebirthfrom example... It's obvious that each zone was hand-crafted and it has a "closer" feel to it. The nebulas are right there - not 1000Ly away, the planets are huge, station have multiple modules etc...

Now, the reason I mentioned CQC is the fact that the 2 arenas shown in the videos feel EXACTLY like they should - very close, very detailed, hand crafted and "close".

So... I'm not expecting Frontier to hand-craft all 400bil systems - BUT, I think this is a great opportunity for future expansions. I mean - we already have billions of star systems, what we lack is areas / systems that feel "close" and "cozy" due to the fact they are detailed and hand crafted.

For example - we already know about the Thargoids... Why not "discover" a special way of sub-space travel that alows us to "jump" to another galaxy where we get only a handful of systems but all of them are hand-crafted by frontier. Also - they could easily disable supercruise and just give us huge areas with several stations/planets to fly around in normal ship speeds. But if they add details to the zone - it will never feel empty.

What is your opinion on this? Even though i hate PvP and i'll probably try the CQC arena once-or-twice, it really gets my hopes up for future updates of "close quarter" systems.

The size of the map - and the sheer vastness makes it ideal for future expansions. Frontier could add other races in areas of uninhabited space for us to go investigate - making it less "same'y". Thargoids to start (where will they appear from on the map........ )

Babylon 5 style jump gates could give access to far off areas of the universe - for a toll fee - without the need to spend hours jumping from system to system.

Could go full "EVE" and have player owned stations orbiting uninhabited worlds.

Landing your ship at your own base on the surface of a planet - which you can build and upgrade like you do your ship.

My imagination is quite developed - further ideas to follow... hehe

I agree with you both, anything well thought out that gives more interest and more legs to the game .
I'm not a big PVPer but I'll visit the arenas once in a while to get my Asp kicked.

I am expecting to see future updates add to the atmosphere of the different regions of space, but I don't think that things will ever change outside of human occupied space. Working in the "confines" of human occupied space at least allows them to make changes but expecting anything different to the areas of space where you explore is probably a far fetched dream.

I prefer inky blackness with bright pinpricks for stars. I find it a little annoying seeing all the bright nebulae that you can't really see without a time exposure photograph (maybe up close they would be very faint), and the galaxy is way too bright too. But ED is still a very shallow game (that I've been playing for 8 months). I also thought it strange to build these big CQC stadiums inside asteroid fields; it seems like they would get smashed to pieces in no time.

I'd rather see more realistic damage. They've added little bobbles that you can shoot and they blow up, but if you crash into a holo generator or a light post you just bounce off. I'd rather see the holo be disabled and the light post knocked over, and gashes in buildings and parts flying off ships - stuff like that. Ideally, they would have graphics options and sliders so you could vary the brightness of nebulae, the galaxy, and even custom painted backgrounds. But I still prefer that the planets probably appear brighter than they would in reality - especially the far off ones.

Btw, if anybody knows, I'd appreciate an answer. I've wondered about the "light pollution" near suns, where things are washed out until you fly away from the sun. Is this realistic? Is there enough hydrogen in the vacuum of space to cause this, or is it just matter escaping from the sun that causes this, and it dissipates the further out you get?

Also, is CQC going to be included with the game, or is it a separate purchase? I got the impression that you'd have to pay extra.

CQC will be a part of the standard ED game. Expansions like planetary landings and walking on ships/stations will almost 100% be a payed expansion

Hmm... here's one more thing. I really wish we had REAL group missions. We have wings at the moment, and I love grouping up with people even though it literally means I'm losing tons of cash. But I love to help friends and people in RESes because it's easy money. Especially if people are just starting or low on cash.

But imagine if we had some real organized group missions with sub-objectives to follow. For example:

You pick up a mission that takes you to a system where you need to intercept a NPC. You get to fight him/them and pinpoint their HQ location. Then, you need to disable it's defenses before actually engaging the final "boss". However - you need special "dedicated" ships to actually finish the mission.

For example - Station shield generators can be hidden away in small "halls" like the ones in CQC, so you actually NEED a wingman in a smaller ship. While he's squeezing through, bigger ships spawn and you NEED a wingman in a big ship to take care of those. After all the shield generators are down you could perhaps group back up to clear the rest of the pirates and finally engage the boss.

Now, they could even take this one step further and make the "boss" actually drop in a capital ship - so again, you need to disable subsystems using different ship sizes as a requirement (for example, you can't hit specific crucial parts of the capital in a big ship).... etc...

This is really something I'd like to see in Elite. Something coherent and doable with a bunch of people. Also - it would make more sense to outfit smaller ships for combat instead of just hopping over to a ship with bigger guns.