Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

I havn't played in about a month, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

1) Missions broken for months - all the mission chains which require you to go and fetch 'mission specific' items have been broken and incompletable for over 2 months now. This includes some where that incompletable step is the second or 3rd in a mission chain. They've not only done nothing to fix them, but they've left them in the game instead of removing them.

2) Community Goals are a complete joke. It's funny they call them 'goals' because they will always move the goalposts. exactly half way through the CG (usually 1 week) the targets are changed based on the results of the first week, so you will ALWAYS finish the CG in tier 3 - it actually makes exactly zero difference how much effort you put in, the goalposts will always shift to match the effort.

3) The BGS - this didn't really bother me until I put in so much effort into the Exioce war for OoM and saw the completely broken result. Best part, the FDEV rep saying twice that the war ended in a draw, despite us pointing out multiple times that it ended after only 18 days and draws always go the full 28.

4) Back in 1.3 Micheal Brookes stated that the entire UA mystery was in the game and there for us to solve from start to finish. I put in a huge amount of time and effort, only for it to become clear later on that extra stuff had to be added before it could continue and he had flat out lied. So his lies wasted about 50 hours of my time. Extra bonus, pre-horizons FDEV stating that you did not need Horizons in order to continue the UA mystery, and then the next part of the story (remember, it was supposed to be all there in 1.3....) was on planets. GG

5) The bugs - so many small and irritating bugs. If you ever look on the bugs forum virtually every bug report gets a 'we're aware of this' responce but none of them ever get fixed. Case in point, back in OCTOBER a patch introduced a bug whereby you could no longer hold vertical thrust while launching and immediately take off when the clamps released. Loads of people reported it, FDEV acknowledged it as a bug. this is STILL not fixed 6 months' later. And don't get me started on exploding SRVs!

6) Cheating AI - I'm in 2 minds about this one, enemy ships performing impossible maneuvers in combat I don't mind so much, PvE combat needs to give them an advantage as their AI stands right now to make the fights interesting. But rubbish stuff like ships following you between systems that would be impossible because that ship can't jump that far, is complete rubbish, and they show no signs of changing.

I hope that one day this will all be addressed, or a significant enough amount of it that I regain the motivation to log in and play

I know exactly how you feel. I am in that "is that it, this is all there is" mode.

I log on, I go to kill transports in Mundigal for merits. I do this until the AI starts breaking every interdiction I try. I turn them in and then go to a high res site. Yes hitting a cop with a stray shot is a pain but its better for me to join in on a fight than be swamped like at a haz res site. Then its usually time for dinner. I come back and run missions in my Asp which includes exploration and some cargo hauling all rolled into one. Then I log and come here to post any adventures I had which is fun, but lately it hasn't been fun at all for me. All it is, is mundane step and fetch it against NPCs that cheat. They cannon fire, laser fire and multi cannon fire from an Sidewinder? I thought they 2 gun mounts! An Eagle that can jump as far as my Asp Explorer. blah

Zadkiel wrote:I hope that one day this will all be addressed, or a significant enough amount of it that I regain the motivation to log in and play

Did you also post/mail/report this to FD?
Although I sympathise with you there is nothing I can do about these issues.

IMHO...

1) Missions are not all bad. Not sure when you started playing, but being from the original 1.0 crew I don't think I have touched a mission that was not long range smuggling, a CG, or for charity in like 10 months. I usually see missions as what new players are forced to do before they have enough money for a good ship that allows them to take up bounty hunting, trading, or long range exploring. I have known a few new players that have taken a liking to the TS crew that had a great fondness for the mission system when they were starting out.

2) CG are not a joke, but you are right in one regard. Interest in a CG does drive Frontier to change the completion tiers for any given CG. I remember a time when CG were completed in 2 days time by those that got there first. This was a problem for Frontier because the majority of players, filthy casuals, were missing out and complaining.

People that are engrossed within the story lines that are taking place in the CG's don't want to miss out on taking part and many are not there for the reward. I have not taken part in a since CG since launch that even at the top tier would have payed out more than my normal RES hunt or trade route. It is also important to remember that while some experience CG's as interactive story other see every GC as an opportunity for combat. That is kind of why playing CG's in Open is so much fun.

3) The BGS can be set on fire, kicked down a flight of stairs, hit by a buss, dropped out of a plane, nuked from orbit, and finally laid to rest in the fires of Mordor. But in all honesty I try not to think about it.

4) I honestly don't remember because I have a general lack of interest in most things that seem like a breadcrumb trail. That being said I want your sources of information if you have them. I am not saying you are misremembering, but seeing as I did some digging on the UA's recently for my AMA post I would like to have the links for reference.

5)Bugs are something every game has. With the limited developmental staff trying to push out new content it is no wonder some things are falling through the cracks. I think that what it comes down to is that E:D is not yet a complete game and the "new content" is actually features that have been in the works since the DDF was still trying to put together a cohesive story narrative in 2013.

You can look at this as a complete game but I and many interest fans know that the list of planed features for E:D mean that the game will not actually be out of what would normally be considered an Alpha till the end of 2016.

6) Cheating AI, as you said, is something that falls into the category of both working as intended and in need of bug fixes. When it comes to ships following you well I am not real sure what you are talking about, but there are some basic fixes that FDev could implement to make things more realistic.

First, they could make all trailing or pursuit ships for whatever missions you are talking about Anacondas, ASP Ex, or DBXs. I mean with full weapons and the best possible shields those ships all have over 30 Ly jump ranges. Second, they could code more elaborate encounters into the game. For instance they could have CMDR's get properly owned on occasion through the use of AI wing mechanics. IE when you show up in a system instead of a single ship there would be a small train of ships interdicting you in order like a proper ambush. This would of course end with you in a 1 vs 4 or more situation. Lastly, they could just take the easy way out and say that the pursuit ships are using FSD boosts to chase you down. Or you know any combination of the three would be ok with me considering I am still not sure what you are talking about.

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I think what it comes down to for me is answering the questions, "Is it still fun?", "Do you have enough money in the bank?" and "Are there still things to do?". Personally, it is still fun, I don't have enough money even with like a billion in assets, and there are still things I want to do and have not done.

If you can motivate yourself I would suggest you try to earn as much money as you can whenever you can. Frontier has a habit now of taking away or nerfing the most lucrative paths within the game and just like in life you really don't have enough money until you can both afford everything you want now and everything that will be available in the future.

I backed the game on the basis that planetary landings would eventually be an included enhancement. I was OK with FD backtracking on the offline mode, but the need to pay more money for Horizons turned me off the game.

StaticRadion wrote:IMHO...

1) Missions are not all bad. Not sure when you started playing, but being from the original 1.0 crew I don't think I have touched a mission that was not long range smuggling, a CG, or for charity in like 10 months. I usually see missions as what new players are forced to do before they have enough money for a good ship that allows them to take up bounty hunting, trading, or long range exploring. I have known a few new players that have taken a liking to the TS crew that had a great fondness for the mission system when they were starting out.

I'm confused here, you say missions are OK, but then you say you only do smuggling and charity missions (the 2 mission types that are broken the opposite way), don't do any other missions and think they are worthless past the first few days. All sounds pretty broken to me!

And to answer your question, I wasn't in Alpha or Beta but I followed the game through development and came in on day1. I'm also an '84er

2) CG are not a joke, but you are right in one regard. Interest in a CG does drive Frontier to change the completion tiers for any given CG. I remember a time when CG were completed in 2 days time by those that got there first. This was a problem for Frontier because the majority of players, filthy casuals, were missing out and complaining.

You say they aren't a joke, but you're agreeing with me? Sure, when they grossly misjudge the CG tiers then they should adjust them, but the issues is that they ALWAYS adjust them. I promise you this, since CGs were added to the game, not a single one has ever finished in tier 5, not through lack of effort, but through the goalposts being moved. It's like a carrot on a stick - look at this tasty carrot, come get it, oh no, it's suddenly further away, come on, get it, nope it's further away again. I'm sick of chasing carrots.

4) I honestly don't remember because I have a general lack of interest in most things that seem like a breadcrumb trail. That being said I want your sources of information if you have them. I am not saying you are misremembering, but seeing as I did some digging on the UA's recently for my AMA post I would like to have the links for reference.

Alas, if I don't have the motivation to play, then I certainly don't have the motivation to hunt through a year of forum posts. The best proof I can give you is to look at the most recent UA thread on the official forums (they close them at 10,000 posts, they are on thread 4 or 5 I think), it used to be full of people chasing the mystery, now it's just full of people messing around and posting stupid memes, because everyone has just given up on it because they are frustrated at their time constantly being wasted. Worst. ARG. Ever. of the original 100 or so commanders who really worked on the mystery to start with, only about 2 or 3 are left, the rest have given it up as fruitless.

5)Bugs are something every game has. With the limited developmental staff trying to push out new content it is no wonder some things are falling through the cracks. I think that what it comes down to is that E:D is not yet a complete game and the "new content" is actually features that have been in the works since the DDF was still trying to put together a cohesive story narrative in 2013.

Yes, there will always be bugs, but in any other game, once a mission was reported as broken that mission would be pulled from the game (doesn't even need a client patch, as missions are generated server-side) until it would be fixed. In E:D they just leave them there for months. This is a terrible experience for the players and yet they just don't care. The fact they are pimping a new set of missions in 2.1 while there are still about 10 broken mission types in the game right now is frankly ridiculous.

6) Cheating AI, as you said, is something that falls into the category of both working as intended and in need of bug fixes. When it comes to ships following you well I am not real sure what you are talking about, but there are some basic fixes that FDev could implement to make things more realistic.

I'm talking about jumping 34LY in an Asp and an NPC in a Viper following you. And that's just one example, chaff blocks another player from scanning you but doesn't block an NPC. Speaking of scans some NPCs can scan you instantly and with no alert. The interdiction game between players and NPCs is completely broken, your attempts to affect the result are completely meaningless, the game just arbitrarily decides whether you win or lose... I could go on.

What it boils down to is that on release the game was a great and pretty space sim with combat, trading and exploration, and 14 months later, virtually everything they have added to the game to address the lack of content just simply hasn't worked, and what we have is a pretty space wim with working combat, trading and exploration and a whole load of broken mechanics. Wings is still hit and miss with all the networking and instancing problems the game has, I am STILL unable to wing up with 3 out of my 4 RL friends who play this game, and Wings came out a year ago! 1.3 was Powerplay which was and still is a complete joke. 1.4 was CQC which I have no idea about, I have no interest in PvP which is why I'm here in Mobius. 1.5/2.0 added planets which was fun for about 3 hours before you realised it was pointless at this point, until they add in the rest of the stuff to go with it. Maybe 2.1 will be amazing and add something fun, but I've been telling myself that about every update for the last year and I've given up.

Zadkiel wrote:What it boils down to is that on release the game was a great and pretty space sim with combat, trading and exploration, and 14 months later, virtually everything they have added to the game to address the lack of content just simply hasn't worked, and what we have is a pretty space wim with working combat, trading and exploration and a whole load of broken mechanics.

I will give them credit for the new ships, though. Given my 2 favourite ships are the Vulture (added in 1.2) and the Corvette (added in 2.0) it's only fair to say the updates havn't been /completely/ worthless.

Its all moot for me at this point as the Horizons launcher has me in a "redeem key" loop and he Elite base game has me in a verification code loop so I can't log in at all and I guess it what I needed.

I am at a point where I am so sore from being kicked by game companies and computer companies and people that make peripherals that if I could reach and out strangle them all and get away with it I would.

Commander Black Rose signing off.........

I almost didn't reply because even though we differ in some regards I think you will appreciate the game more after a break. That being said here we go.

Zadkiel wrote:I'm confused here, you say missions are OK, but then you say you only do smuggling and charity missions (the 2 mission types that are broken the opposite way), don't do any other missions and think they are worthless past the first few days. All sounds pretty broken to me!

Sorry to be unclear, what I was trying to say was that I have not actively run missions since I reached Post Commander in late Feb to early April last year. I don't think missions being "useless" past the first say week or month is really a bad thing. Like me you may remember the steep learning cure this game had and in some way still has. Missions were like a gateway to show people what they could do and I still feel that is still their primary role. I remember mostly running combat, delivery, and assassination missions with my favorites being to kill pirates or the odd "celebrity" in an Elite Anaconda and to fetch goods.

They taught me were to look and how to react to almost anything in the game universe. IE you don't take on a quarter million credit mission to assassinate someone when piloting a sidewinder; you look for pirates at Nav beacons and Res sites; you can find trade ships in SC and they drop stolen goods; bounty hunters equip KWS; the galaxy map can show you a systems size and economy so you can find items for a fetch quest; and USS are or were your go to.

I will admit that you are not the first person I have seen complaining about the new missions added so I will go back the the bulletin board and give them a try myself to see if I become equally irritated. PS Why do you think long range smuggling and charity missions are broken?

Zadkiel wrote:I promise you this, since CGs were added to the game, not a single one has ever finished in tier 5, not through lack of effort, but through the goalposts being moved.

I will admit I usually don't stick with CG's for long anymore, but in the past I did. You should review the active community goal thread 1 and 2 that were once run by Brokenstorm. Back when he was running the threads he not only kept a record of what CGs were active, but also noted the reward tier reached through almost daily updates. Of the ones I took part in that can remember by name "CITIZENS ARE MEANT TO FLY", "THE SPEAR OF LUGH", and "SAFE PASSAGE" all reached their respective final tiers of 11, 9, and 5.

Zadkiel wrote:The best proof I can give you is to look at the most recent UA thread on the official forums (they close them at 10,000 posts, they are on thread 4 or 5 I think), it used to be full of people chasing the mystery, now it's just full of people messing around and posting stupid memes... Worst. ARG. Ever. of the original 100 or so commanders who really worked on the mystery to start with, only about 2 or 3 are left, the rest have given it up as fruitless.

Well with my limited time, it takes me hours sometimes to respond because I walk away from my computer often, I won't be able to get through one let alone 4-5 of those forum threads. What I can say with definitive conviction is that the UA's and the story behind them goes back to 2013 and the days of the DDF or Design Decision Forum. If, I say if because I don't know, Brooks ever said that the UA mystery was solvable back when they were first found then yes, that was a lie.

Zadkiel wrote:Yes, there will always be bugs, but in any other game, once a mission was reported as broken that mission would be pulled from the game (doesn't even need a client patch, as missions are generated server-side) until it would be fixed. In E:D they just leave them there for months. This is a terrible experience for the players and yet they just don't care. The fact they are pimping a new set of missions in 2.1 while there are still about 10 broken mission types in the game right now is frankly ridiculous.

Like I said I will be looking into this first hand. I don't have any reason to doubt you, but I also don't read the bug forums because for some reason, no matter the game, I don't experience the problems others do. We will see.

Zadkiel wrote:I'm talking about jumping 34LY in an Asp and an NPC in a Viper following you. And that's just one example, chaff blocks another player from scanning you but doesn't block an NPC. Speaking of scans some NPCs can scan you instantly and with no alert. The interdiction game between players and NPCs is completely broken, your attempts to affect the result are completely meaningless, the game just arbitrarily decides whether you win or lose... I could go on.

I am the first person I know of to call the AI a cheating piece of garbage. Back then it was because npc ships didn't need to manage heat and were using equipment that they didn't have equipped. I feel your pain, but some things can be explained away while others balance the board so I live with them. I just don't see fixes to most of the "broken" components as being really that beneficial because the fixes would usually have an adverse consequence.

Like I said they could change a table to make all pursuit ships combat or pirate versions of the Anaconda, ASP Ex, or DBX, but FSD injections and synthesis does allow a Viper to jump over 30 Ly. I think the mechanics behind chaff could be tweaked to effect NPC's, but it would only be fair to first change NPC behavior so that they use Chaff to actively block scans. IE every or most pirates you start to scan in a RES would pop chaff the second the can started and possibly redeploy chaff on cool down if it was hiding a really sizable bounty. Currently there is not a type of NPC within the game that I know of that uses chaff to block a scan off any type instead they are just programmed to run.

In regards to the Interdiction mini game I think it is working as intended, but I can spend some time reading up on it with my ipad while cooking. Finally, Please if you do have other grievances against the game AI feel free to vent here, I am actually interested.

Zadkiel wrote:Wings is still hit and miss with all the networking and instancing problems the game has, I am STILL unable to wing up with 3 out of my 4 RL friends who play this game, and Wings came out a year ago! 1.3 was Powerplay which was and still is a complete joke. 1.4 was CQC which I have no idea about, I have no interest in PvP which is why I'm here in Mobius. 1.5/2.0 added planets which was fun for about 3 hours before you realised it was pointless at this point, until they add in the rest of the stuff to go with it. Maybe 2.1 will be amazing and add something fun, but I've been telling myself that about every update for the last year and I've given up.

Wings... way to go for the weak spot LOL. P2P has issues and I am sorry to say that they will not be as simple to fix. One of the main problems is that FDev can be blamed for choosing a flawed format, but they are not the only ones in the wrong on this one. P2P can misbehave or fail at one of many stages and that can result in, worst case, people living next to each other not being able to play together. Not pointing fingers, but the sad truth is that problems with P2P are often a result of the end user having a cheep router or an ISP being crap.

Finally, I like Powerplay and actually encourage people to participate; think CQC is nice and has helped to take a good number of griefers out of Open; and I like Horizons both for its introduction to crafting and the SRV.

StaticRadion wrote:I will admit that you are not the first person I have seen complaining about the new missions added so I will go back the the bulletin board and give them a try myself to see if I become equally irritated. PS Why do you think long range smuggling and charity missions are broken?

The broken quests are any one that requires you to fetch a 'mission specific' cargo. A good example of this is the 'Hostage' mission type which is like an assassination, but you are required to bring back pods containing the hostages from the wreckage, these pods are marked as mission specific, but when you collect them the mission doesn't update and you can't hand it in. This is the same for every mission that states the cargo is mission specific, there are a number of different ones. Once you take one of those missions, you have no choice but to abandon them and take the hit. There are also a number of missions who's timer doesn't work properly and will suddenly fail with hours left. The fun part of those ones is that if you take the mission when it's been sat on the BB for a while and it only has a few hours left, it instantly fails when you accept it.

As to Smuggling and Charity missions being broken, well if you can't see why those cheapen the game experience, then I can't really help you.

First smuggling which is far too profitable. Trading is supposed to be a core game mechanic, but no-one trades any more because no trade route is even a 10th as profitable as the smuggling missions. And you aren't even missing out on pilots federation rank, because it adds to trading rank! I slowly ground out about 150m over the coarse of the first 6-8 months of the game. I remember each and every ship purchase being a real acheivement as I'd worked hard for the money. Then I made 500m doing smuggling missions in about 3 days, and could just buy any ship I wanted, and it cheapened the entire game.

And raising your NAVY rank should not be about sitting in a station handing over tiny amounts of money to charity. I guess you could use it to justify the bad AI on NPC Navy ships, if charity donations is used as the primary route for promotion.

Not pointing fingers, but the sad truth is that problems with P2P are often a result of the end user having a cheep router or an ISP being crap.

You could not be more wrong. The biggest issue with their P2P system is that it relies on a system called uPnP, which is enabled by default on cheap consumer routers, but disabled by default on better quality equipment, because uPnP is regarded by many as a security flaw (because the damage that malware and viruses can do is greatly increased when your router will accept requests to open port forwards from devices on your LAN). I'm a network engineer and security consultant by trade, and I've spent some time looking into the ED networking code. Their initial implementation using STUN/TURN and uPnP was ill conceived and the game multiplayer will continue to have problems as long as they are using it.