Caltrops - Elite FUCKING 4





	[quote name="Roop"]Today is the big patch day that adds multicrew and the face creator, and I haven't seen anybody anywhere use my awful thread title, but maybe it's because I don't read crap like PC gamer anymore. Who needs them? I can think up the horrible headlines on my own. Anyway, today's the big day, servers updating as I write! I could care less, myself. Well, they also worked on making their mission system less ass again, but they are always doing that every patch, thank God. People were asking some Dev if they were going to expand on this multicrew system, let passengers do more than just be a gunner or man a fighter. He's like, "Maybe one day, if people actually use it." So even that guy thinks nobody cares. Can't blame him with the QVC tournament whatever it is, where you queue up for deathmatch battles, which nobody uses today. They also spent dev-time on the giant, autistic Power Play thing where various powers hold territory somehow in very complicated ways, but people avoid that shit mostly unless they fly to space with ship discounts, whatever. A lot of people still wing up, but most players I see aren't doing it. Everybody cried out in agony on their forums, when they announced while on another's ship, you'd earn credits based on your combat rank. Lot's of people predicting the patch will be ignored, but I thought a bit, and am happy with the patch, even I don't really give a shit about it. The problem with winging up was always trying to find each other. Now you can jump on your buddies ship, and fly to wherever the other ship is parked, then wing up. So this kind of fixes the existing game. To fix their QVC tournament, just let people queue for it within the main game. I get the QVC deathmatch is a separate program, their mistake was not putting its queueing system in the main game. People won't stare at a queue screen when they can be out doing shit. Then I read somebody said if you really want to understand Power Play, you have to join the Discord server for your faction. Maybe that was my problem with it: never really knew what the hell was going on, and rarely saw people from my own faction even though we were all working together, so for this big system where players can affect this big system together, it needed a way for players to connect. Maybe I was just playing it wrong. In some way I think development intentionally left that part out of the game because they knew people would come up with a better way outside the game anyway. Why did we bother coding in-game voice-chat if most people won't even try it and use their existing outside programs, they probably ask themselves. It's adding a searching for group feature, now that you can teleport to the person. You pick a category, like new player, that's nice. Bounty hunting, exploring. Exploring? So... I can jump in some guys ship, while he's out in the middle of nowhere, and sit there kinda watching him fly around and slowly scan bodies? All the tedium without having to even touch my joystick? I'M IN. I can make a big Dagwood sandwich and queue up to explore! And so I am Elite ranked which means I can queue up for bounty hunting without penalties. So instead of wiping out a haz res on my own and making the big bucks, I can go fly some dude's fighter when I get bored. I guess I'll try it but it does seem sort of pointless. I joined a small guild when they added Wings. Reached a point where I was trying to afford something or other, searching for the next spawn, making less credits. I'd eventually groan when enough came on, because winging up was fun and all, but I needed to buy new thrusters bitches. Maybe it was the guy who could never figure out the concept of a push-to-talk button, and lived with several Peurto Rican women who didn't speak English and they were always screaming and banging pots and pans, and the kids. O shit. They'd show up and start in with the screaming. I'd be out on some lonely, dusty planet outside the bubble, cruising in my dune buggy listening intently for signal sources... if it wasn't for all the foreign kids screaming and women yelling at them and the fish mongers outside join in and I don't hate any of these fucking people, right? But they're spoiling the motherfucking mood. I had to get outta there. Good luck with getting a faction named after you guys, sounds fun, but... No real reward other than screwing around, isn't it? Gotta go! The game is great single-player, and the effects of players on economies and such is nice. But I like building up the NPC I hired. I'm hoping this all means they've laid the groundwork so we can hire NPC crew and all the different stations they'll work. I own a Federal Corvette and that's something that feels like it's missing. At first, landing on planets sucked, but then they added engineers and it made it fun because there was something to actually do down there, looking for rocks to blow up. The engineers are great, kind of grindy in parts, but the you'll naturally collect most of the junk you need just playing the game and not worrying about it. The grindy parts are when the engineers require you do certain things, like make multiple runs of exotics. It's only to get in good so it doesn't last, and all these things might help players realize the different kinds of things you can do. If you never made rare runs, doing engineers makes you try it, so I'm fine with it. And the system is fun. I took some guns out to engineer some special effects on them with a load of spare crap I needed to clear. I didn't "win" the slot pulls and get any specials, but I managed to engineer the guns better at the end of it so it didn't feel like a waste of time. The other good thing about the way they designed it, the best engineers just will give you slightly better numbers. The first engineer, Felicity Farseer, all you have to do is go to her and get the better jump range and faster thrusters, and you just got the best bump. Now that I finally mastered planetary approaches where I can do it fast, can I bear sitting in some dude's stinky sock smelling Adder while we watch him putter along at 6 seconds to go, or will I wish I could reach across in the new scenic camera mode and throttle him? How long will it take? Fuck that, I have Wanda Fuchs and she's almost Dangerous. [/quote]