Has ED improved it's main issues, like grouping, "guilds" and any kind of decent communication sys?

Stevon

I left ED because frankly with it's incredibly poor communications and collaboration features it was no longer fun to play.  It felt significantly more like a single player game than a group game.    

Have any changes been implemented to address this?  I have a fairly large group of gamer friends that left as well and this kind of improvement would go a long way to bringing us back.

rpmcmurphy

Never had any problems with communications, chat and text have always worked fine for me.
I also seem to be lucky with the people I wing-up with (perhaps due to their location) but there are quite common discussions about how tempermental grouping can be. What the factors are for causing this, I don't know.

If you left before the Wings patch then you'll find quite a few changes, if after you might have to go into more detail of what you're looking for.

The expansion is meant to be adding more group content, ground assaults via SRVs supported by air support etc, but there's not a lot of details about that yet.

Jacxolope

IDK but if they pull off what they claim with the expansion (even just most of what they claim) I'm buying on the spot.

Still waiting to see- I played elite a few months back on a buddys account and it felt...lacking. However, it sounds like they've really had a good plan in the way they are adding things if what ive read about the xpac is even remotely true.

EDIT- @ RPM... man,I read an article the other day about the Xpac and there was alot of detail.planetary landing., multi crew ships, walking around... A good portion of the things promised by SC and by the end of the year- released.

i'll look for the link.

Jacxolope

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2015/09/25/a-tale-of-two-space-sims-or-how-elite-dangerous-is-about-to-overtake-star-citizen/

 Elite Dangerous: Horizons will add planetary landings, ship-launched fighters, cooperative crew modes, and a Commander Creator to render in-game human avatars. Updates to the main game will add new flyable ships, more enemies to fight, and a CQC mode that will concentrate on competitive team matches separate from the campaign. Elite Dangerous: Horizons will launch on PC later this year.

-Worth the bump, I think.

rpmcmurphy

Yeah there's certainly a load of great additions on the way. An updated thread here keeping tabs on stuff - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=172362

I'm wondering how much of what they have announced is coming at Horizon's release. I keep thinking that people should remember that Frontier are spreading content over the year but at the same time it doesn't make much sense to announce stuff 3 or 4 patches away. Fingers crossed.

DarLorkar

rpmcmurphy said:

Yeah there's certainly a load of great additions on the way. An updated thread here keeping tabs on stuff - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=172362

I'm wondering how much of what they have announced is coming at Horizon's release. I keep thinking that people should remember that Frontier are spreading content over the year but at the same time it doesn't make much sense to announce stuff 3 or 4 patches away. Fingers crossed.

Ya i do not think you will see most of that new stuff for many months.

But no one but the devs know for sure. But i would wait to buy till after they release something to get an idea of exactly what will come first anyhow.

Erillion

@Stevon

When the multi-player ships and ship-launched fighters are being introduced, you should take a second peek for sure.

There is also a potential that the faction gameplay, especially in combination with ground assault gameplay against planetary bases forms the core of a future "realm confrontation" gameplay. Where different groups of players support various factions and fight each other over strategically important systems (by influencing the political opinion via PvE missions and by direct fighting on ground and in space).  Strategically important = various jump routes, large stations with big commodity and ship (part) market only a short distance from jump point, with favorable trade routes to other systems.


Have fun

Stevon

Thanks for all the info. For me communications improvements, and "guilds" (along with tools to facilitate) are a necessity. As I mentioned we had a lot of people leave simply because it was too difficult to communicate/coordinate effectively. Travelling to people was also a major issue and needs addressed imo. IE if you are out exploring and your friends want to run some missions... you are sol. No one wants to wait for someone to come back, and no one wants to lose all the time returning to where they were afterwards. Would love to see some kind of "avatar" system where you could port to an avatar and jump into a ship in another region. I realize this is how Eve was (ie lots of travel)... but just relating what killed it for us. I'm still hoping to see improvements in this area.

Velifax

I'm afraid obviating travel would take with it several crucial game systems, which would change the game immeasurably. I agree finding other players needs to be in, although I suspect it is now. On communication, I'd rather let the voip solutions that are legion, suffice, and let the developers spend effort elsewhere.

but I'm not a huge social gamer anyway.

Asm0deus

No they haven't improved much of anything in that regards. They have confirmed today via the live stream for the Horizons release that there will be multi crew ships of up to 4 players but the caveat is these multicrew ships will count as a wing. Therefor you can go into  the game with a wing where each member has his own ship or as a single "multi crew" ship.

Also no npc crew mates will be possible.

Lame.

  I really like this game but in some things, like this for example, they really show their rinky dink amateur hour side when it comes to coding and making things actually work.

Axxar

Can you cooperate on missions yet?

DAS1337

Well, they have a friends list in the game.  They have in-game chat which works splendidly.  They have wings, which, once you figure out some of the kinks, works the majority of the time.  I don't think they have guilds yet though.  From my estimation, based on my.. 80 hours or so of game time, it seems that they are still working on adding core game elements.  I am certain that guilds is a priority, it's just a matter of time.  Right now, you'll have to handle your guilds through a website/forums and a 3rd party chat program.

And no, I don't think you can share missions yet.  Though, if wing mates meet the requirements, you'll be able to accept the same mission. 

Someone mentioned that they don't like that NPC crew mates aren't going to be added at the moment, or ever.  I'm not sure why it matters.  I mean, I suppose a randomly generated crew mate could be sitting in a seat for immersion.  But, anything past that doesn't really make sense.  Adding NPC AI to the game seems a bit irrelevant and a waste of development time.