Agreed again. Their explanations for needing CPU has been laxing ways that make sense. I thought it was going to be like an actual, CPU. Central Processing Unit and the more items you used that required power, would require your CPU to be faster and more powerful to be able to run it. That was an idea that made sense. My original postings about it months ago was about making sure the "CPU" was up-gradable enough that there was no actual hard-cap back then also, and to make sure that upgrades were not cheap and easy, to make it part of the game to have to progress and work to have large vehicles/bases.
Instead of core extensions just make new core types. T1, t2, t3, t4, admin customizable, alien, admin. So simple elegant. You could easily have more levels that way also to refine the cpu limitations. And for the love of all, give admins a few cores that they can mod to match the server needs. It would be so cool to be able to have a core that would set the limits of guns/turrets/ mining lasers/cpu. CPU would be easier to swallow if we could still make cool ships with it turned on.
I agree with what everyone is saying in regards to CPU not currently creating diversity and specialisation. I'd really love to see Eleon make it easy as possible to turn on and off, so they can have more freedom to experiment with it without turning off the player base. I disagree that specialisation is a bad goal, and I want to suggest people should give the goal, if not the implementation currently, more of a chance. In a game largely about spaceships, I think it makes sense to have a large variety of those spaceships. Whether for solo or MP, it makes the universe feel more alive and populated, and it adds more interesting game content. For NPC ships, I think it makes the game more interesting by far if each ship has different strengths and weaknesses, and you have to find the right tool and right strategy to defeat it. In a sense, you defeat NPCs with your creativity and brains, not solely just grinding until you have the single most powerful ship around. It's also more immersive if that variety emerges naturally - NPC ships follow the same basic principles as player ships. It's great if you create variety in player ships too. A significant part of the player base play coop or on multiplayer servers. Obviously in such cases its more fun if the other people in that world have ships that are both aesthetically and functionally different from yours. But solo play needs this too. Currently if you play effectively you can go from fresh start to an end-game battleship CV that does everything in somewhere between 3-10 days of gameplay. Fighting in it doesn't vary much. There's not much longevity to that part of the game. Now, imagine players are free to construct literally any ship they can imagine. In a sense, why would you want to limit this in a game with such a great building system? Well, you obviously need some restrictions to create challenge. It wouldn't be fun if you could just stack 20 shields and 1000 turrets on your ship and cake walk the entire game. The question is what is the best (least?) restrictions you can use to create challenge. In terms of variety, I don't think we want Eleon to create a system where the gameplay punishes you for exploring variety. But if there's one single ship layout that is most effective against everything, even in solo play, people might theoretically be able to build something different, but they generally won't because the game punishes you for it. You might want to role-play an alien race who only uses plasma weapons, or a short range brawler than uses only cannon turrets, but the NPCs are balanced to fight the do-everything battleship so your role-play ship is too weak. The gameplay supports the freedom of players when it matches the freedom of the building system, and it has to do so by creating multiple optimal designs that are very different from one another. The designs aren't just aesthetically different, or have their turrets in a slightly different spot, they have authentic roles, strengths and weaknesses. A single optimum, like the current gameplay, punishes that variety, and player freedom via gameplay. If there's just separate caps on guns/shields/production/cargo, everyone will just build the maximum. Challenge maybe, but no variety. If you broaden out ship using predefined classes in cores, you have variety, but it's the devs defining that variety, not players. But if you get rid of the restrictions on the specifics (eg. missile turret cap), and have an overall restriction on the total "things your ship is good at" and "weapons/modules your ship can use", then you are maximising the number of different, balanced, challenging and immersive gameplay experiences players can have. You're also reducing the number of restrictions that need to be in place, making building simple to learn, but hard to master (you have to think about your design and what it does). I agree the current CPU model isn't achieving all this. I'd like to see it as optional like mass and volume (which I love). But rather than creating a flood of negativity that punishes the devs for trying to make changes to their own (alpha!) game, can't we send a signal to the devs as players that says "we like that you're trying new things and working towards diversification, but we strongly feel CPU currently isn't doing it right. Here's why, and here's an idea for a model that fixes it".
If the NPC AI was top notch, challenging without feeling cheaty (aimbots, hacking stuff), with more diverse animations, if "stealth" was something real with crouch/ prone and cover, if we had more small missions that don't require hours of grind to get the tools to accomplish said missions, if we had a player skill tree and related progression that is not only based on materials to find for building, then players would surely be in better dispositions to endure testing CPU fine tuning even with bad implementation. IMO. Just think how many players mentioned that having to raid POIs to get the materials for CPU extenders was a turn-off. Why so ?
To be fair, much of the raiding turn off is the fact that you have to raid hundreds of POI currently to get a set of T4. It's somewhat sad that it is actually easier to farm the 5,000,000 or so credits and buy them.
I wouldn't enjoy it more if they lowered CPU component requirements just to avoid working on the aspects I mentioned. Those pre-date CPU by a stretch and affect lots of players that build small and are not so much into ship engineering. Forgot to mention the damn motorbike's handling and camera...
At this point No. No matter what they say now I will not believe it. They have given us at least 3 different and conflicting goals of CPU. Someone decided they needed CPU for some reason so they built it and once built tried to come up with a reason for it. They can not because there was no gameplay foundation for CPU. Now we are left with a game that is much less fun. We are also left with a flight mechanic that is difficult to understand and utilize. And the almost imposable task of trying to work with the flight mechanic while not knowing whether it is the flight mechanic or CPU that is our problem. I think the flight mechanic is a much bigger part of why I am not having fun but I have no way to know for sure. So I go back to WOT and 7D2D. Still, read the forum to see if we get anything from the developers, the silence is defining. Lots of players purpose many things of merit and not even a "that is interesting" from the powers that be. I am just disheartened.
Considering there's no rational reason why T3 and T4 couldn't use exotic Zacosium/Erestrum materials like every other goddamn high-end device, one must ask why special loot components are needed in the first place... Virtually everything they've done with CPU from the foundation up has been mishandled in ways I wouldn't have believed possible. I'm sure they're at least as sick of hearing about it as I am railing against it, but the truth of the matter is, I don't like being the angry, pissed-off tiger. I don't like seeing them fail, let alone this hard, and it's painful to see a mechanic with this much potential bastardized into... whatever this is. Eleon always runs silent, 'cept for Hummel putting out fires. That's not particularly telling. On the other paw, this little gem is deeply concerning, because if the devs think the "main issues" with CPU can be solved by tweaking Optronic drop rates, it suggests they are either entirely delusional about this mess or are intentionally turning a blind eye to the actual flaws in the CPU system.
They do usually run silent so to speak, but they usually would have at least recognized the flaws we pointed out from day 1. The fact that SO MANY people are saying the exact same flaws with the new systems and the developers are not responding to a single one of those issues is very telling. At a certain point we are just plain being ignored so the developers can keep their heads buried in the sand. That point was long past weeks ago. Seriously, how hard is it to say "we're aware of the issues and are working on it"? If they are working on it behind the scenes then tell us. The fact they aren't saying anything at all only leads me to believe they don't care one bit about our issues with the game, even if that isn't true. Perception is reality after all.
I suspect the closed testers made them aware of these exact issues prior to CPU being brought to EXP; it's not like the problems are difficult to discern. They were certainly aware prior to CPU moving to live. They do not believe the issues are real and/or important. For whatever reason, they feel CPU in its current form needs to move ahead. Two of the three communications we've had have been around tweaking the system as opposed to fixing it: adjusting CPU thresholds up/down and that poll asking if the problem is the drop rate or the purchase price. The third communication actually is making the system less useful: reducing the penalty range for going over the threshold maximum.
Exactly. We've already heard from at least one of the closed testers and they confirmed they did in fact point out these issues before it even went to Exp and the devs moved forward anyways. It's all being done intentionally and they aren't commenting one bit. It tells me we will be stuck with these broken systems for a long time.
Yeah, sigh.... I just saw that after posting my message and came back here to edit my post. That pretty much confirms everything I've been thinking since day 1. My remaining days with this game may be coming to an end soon...... I'm willing to bet they feel the exact same way about the flight mechanics and the HUD as well. Sigh.
If this is true this is heart breaking. Please Eleon (!!!) at least create avenues that allow interested server owners to try some of the things requested, like linking CPU to size somehow, removing tiers, and making it easy to switch on and off. The specific values for CPU costs per item can be tweaked, but freezing these features that we'll never be able to right now would be terrible for everybody!
Well if it is what it is and they dont care, go change your reviews of the game and stop recommending it. Perhaps if Eleon sees more negative reviews the fear of less sales will make them actually listen to their players...I cannot wrap my head around this idea that someone, somewhere believes its a good idea to handicap the core of their own game...this is one of the biggest WTFs I have seen in decades of gaming since Sony did a massive combat "upgrade" to Star Wars Galaxies that led to its death.
I essentially have. I still do my daily login to HWS but I have not flown a ship in over a week. I mostly do this to support my faction but i am not sure why at this point. We went from almost 30 active members to having a hard time getting to 10. There are many factors I am sure but the big dropoff happened when A11 was released.
If these changes continue to get worse. I have already changed my Steam review of the game to "not recommended at this time" with a long review why it has changed for me and giving a comparison detail for those who play survival games and what they should not expect if they want free-form building like the vast majority of survival games provide along with the current course developers have taken over the last 3 major patches and how, by the end of the games development, this could end up being a vastly different game than it currently is, positive or negative. This games core for many is building, because building is what this genre IS all about (no your personal opinion does not matter), survival games core is building. There is no changing that. Placing a system like this, is a literal game changer. And no, I would have never bought this game if I had known this is what they developers were going to do.
You still play it but will not recommend it ? Makes perfect sense... Well your perceptible degree of frustration is indicative of how much you appreciated the game up to now. Posted on another thread: That's not my personal opinion (which doesn't matter to you anyway), that's the developer's opinion, and it's also written on the store page since day 1. There is also the possibility to use an older version in the Beta tabs, there are custom scenarios, game can be configured in many aspects with the config.ecf, new tools get worked on regularly, etc. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another honest question : do you think it's fair to paint the whole game with negativity just because of one aspect (CPU) that, even so, can be disabled ? What would you speculate a reasonable person think of this ?
