I feel that the one thing ED is not giving me is a sense of connection to the universe, of having an adventure. I´m pretty much just engaging in money making actions aimed at upgrading components or getting bigger ships. I´ve been bounty hunting and exploring but not due to anything else than me wanting to do these things. The missions are pretty much generic and only differ in the name of the employer. No story arcs(?), nothing that really grips me and makes me want to help out the poor, abused people of system X in their struggle for a better life.
The foundations are there within the simulation, it´s just that I feel that they don´t jump out and try to grip me, to engage me. The closest thing to what I´m seeking are the advancement missions, but they are really just events that randomly-ish happen from time to time. I´ve gone exploring, but not because I´ve been asked by someone in-game to do it.
I understand that the sheer scale of the universe makes it difficult to have mission arcs á la MMORPGs, but I still miss those things. They give me background to the history, lore and going-ons in my surroundings. They guide me through an experience, which is also the great downfall of that system, what do you do when reaching the end of the story arcs. However, currently I feel that ED has the same sort of end game when I have the biggest, bestest(sic) ships, but I´m not given any adventure along the way.
Power play to me as a casual player is completely non-interesting. In ED I´m supposed to be a small fish in a very big pond. There is really nothing that gives me a personal motivation for why I should engage in Power Play, other than getting better options of making money in different ways. I´m a small fish asked to partake in the big fish machinations with no real sense of why? What if I add 0,001% to the effort? A small fish should be asked to help, or hinder, other small fish. Make it personal.
There must be ways to give goals and a sense of achivement to players? Actually seeing a space station being built by the materials I bring in. Seeing demand differ during the course of the construction, seeing decay starting to set in if no one brings material. Getting requests to bring passengers. Get requests to ship refugees from conflict zones, rescue missions for pirated ships followed by the already existing go-shot-Mr-X that pirated the ship in the rescue mission. Escort traders.
Getting rewarded for doing those things, not necessary monetary rewards .Perhaps being mentioned in the local stories, getting a local discount from the outfitter whos daughter you rescued. Things that make me want to stat locally a while and get entangled in the various stories there.
So, is ED basically just about making some cash and get the ship of my dreams? Should I resign to creating back stories in my own head? Or am I too casual too "get" the background behind the current mission system? Am I expecting too much, or rather, having the wrong expectations?
