Whew...where to begin.

Considering this is the first post you've made I'll cut you some slack and loads of benefits of the doubt. You make good sense, back up most of your points with well thought out and expressed ideas...kudos.

First of all it's imperative I mention this...this particular topic has been raised by quite a few posters here in the past. We have a search on this forum but you're new to posting...there's some of your benefit of doubt.

Now onto the finer points. Missions feeling the same. Okay, that's fine they do but isn't part of the missions also the environment in which they take place? Point counterpoint...no way in hell you can tell me one mission fought in an asteroid field remotely has the same "feel" as fighting the "same" mission in clear space. So it appears as though not ALL missions are the same and by all accounts the design team didn't think so when they included such variety in which we play the game itself. Comparing apples to apples as usual.

Faction reps. I can say without a doubt ever single action you chose while playing FL HAS an effect on reputation. If you believe otherwise, you've simply not played the game enough to realize this as being a fact...period. Run the same trade route and pay attention to if your repuation change on ALL factions. Come back here and explain how nothing changes. Remember, a subtle change is still a change.

Difference tier ships should not engage out of something like repsect you inferred? Huh? Cocky pilots will always abound...be it live or NPC. Designing a game so weaker oppenents always run WOULD make the game boring as all get out. You've not delt with a pack of bounty hunter numbering 19 with lesser skills than you who intent on making you space dust lately huh? Yea, like they're going to run because you outrank them. They believe they can kill you with numbers man.

Faction sensitivety. Careful what you ask for here. Subtle changes in repuation in my opinion makes the game more realistic to me. If I (by accident) fire on a friendly during a firefight it would really by bad for them to turn hostile right there. But if I blow up storage depots to make a quick buck that is a short-lived occupation as well it should. After a while, you WILL be shut down from that profession in a given area.

Fake ID's...hmmm. Guess that would be better than bribes then huh? Oh, those appear to have the exact SAME effect now wouldn't it. Coparing apples to apples again.

No "mules" to hold stuff. EB once said this is freelancer not garagelancer and it still holds true. You get up to 5 characters per unmodded server. How many ships does it take to make everyone happy about the number? How many it too many where people start complaining there's too many to keep track of? You can some 20+ different ships in FL. Would 18739794 different ships be better?

OKay, so you're bored with the game, I realize that. But some of your points in retrospect do have some place in this game and some are already there you chose not to discuss them. Welcome to the family, enjoy your stay and keep the comments coming.





Rob "Stinger" Lordier
Moderator - Lancers Reactor
Creator Privateer FAQ
no good deed will ever go unpunished
Current server obsession - Boston Freelancer Server - very nice community
"Corwin02 spell-checked" for ackuracee

Edited by - Stinger on 2/16/2004 2:37:40 PM

Well thats definately a lot more intelligent and well thought through than my first post....

I realize I may not have expressed in full some of what I was writting. I was trying to keep it shorter than it otherwise would be. I think with more detailed descriptions it might not be so 'apple's n oranges.' I just didn't want to right a book and have folks leave the post before they finish reading. I'm grateful your cutting me some slack since I am sort of testing the waters here with my first post.

There is no doubt that the environment and system missions take place in make a big difference in the 'feel' of a mission. The differences between open space and a cloudy astroid field are enormous for combat and allow for flight style to play a big roll. That's not exactly what I was getting at. I was focusing more on the types of missions available and the predictability in the way the missions themselves play out. "Go to point 'A' ..engage...kill a couple guys..the last one or two run away...chase to point 'B' repeat till they are all dead. Again environment plays a roll but the format is the same. A bit more 'randomness' would go a long way to spicing it up. For instance, maybe the intelligence on mission object is way off and you run into a base or the level and skill of the enemy is not what was expected. The different kinds of things that could be put into an escort mission or transport of 'confidential' materials several sectors are enormous.

The faction rating system is really quite good, all things concidered. But again the faction ratings could really be played off of much better. I see what you mean about fake ID being much the same as a bribe, but that's sort of the point. Having a larger variety of ways to bypass would be hunters or enemies. And to be fair, I didn't really explain myself well with that idea. I guess let's say the ID or 'ship identity beacon' is altered by a third party to merely mislead athorities, but doesn't actually change the faction rating. And let's say that factions who never met you before really have no idea if your a Freelancer or not. They might be led to believe your part of their organization, especially if you have the same kind of ship they use. Perhaps the fake ID beacon is of poor or dated quality and is a dead give-away your an imposter and actually brings more attention to you from let's say the police or militaries.

Let's say, getting to a trade lane or docking ring doesn't give you a clean getaway. Some enemies could be more persistent in their pursuit or actually be able to 'lock' or 'block' the gate from activating without having to shoot it....I'm getting off subject though...

Your right..it would be boring if all 'lesser' ships bolted from engagements and I know some of them do do exactly that. Wouldn't it be cool though if they bolted and came back with reinforcements and some of the organizations Top Dawgs? So for instance I couldn't sit outside a Red Hessian or Outcast base with my Titan or Eagle loaded to the gils with alien weaponry and lvl 10 shield and know that they can't touch me no matter what they do or how many of em show up. This way faction ratings would be more difficult to fix by simply camping out at some peon criminal base with a juggernaut of a ship. I might have to worry about another Top Gun showing up loaded with double cannonballs or better yet antother player trying to make a name for himself with the faction. Fact is...I rarely have to run away or put some distance between me and the swarm of ships that might show up when I'm farming a place.

To be fair, I usually don't try that with let's say the corsairs or Outcast's because that can be suicide, and I try to keep my base privileges with those groups so I can buy the lvl 9 missles I need and move through those sectors at will. Again, wouldn't it be pretty cool if I wasn't assured of my safety in Ommicron Gamma or others because my faction rating is good with both the Corsairs and Bountyhunters Guild. I might have to worry about an NPC or PC Freelancer that was notified through private channels I docked at Tripoli Shipyard and now he's come to collect the bounty placed on my head from Samura Industies or other factions. He might even just miss me and then find out he's got to go to Theta. Perhaps the Independent Bounty Hunter waits for the right moment and hit's me when I've just expended most of my missles and have only a few shield battery cells left after I had some fun with the Nomads.

I don't think we should have all the space we could want, but it would be sort of nice to be able to keep a feighter in a hanger somewhere with a bit of space for valuable items. Not totally necessary and something I could live without. A 'mule' serves the same purpose. I really don't see how being able to have an extra ship or two would be a big problem.

Please don't get me wrong here. I love this game. It's one of the best I've played. It offers better play than Earth n Beyond and EVE , perhaps not as dynamic concerning the player interaction, but far as I'm concerned it's a much more rewarding game and it's free to play. The combat and mouse control are superb. The overall feel of the game is epic. All I'm really attempting with this post is to get some feedback on the ideas. I am fairly new to the online play although I've already got a couple profiles on a server that, excluding other players, virtually has the run of the galaxy. Unless I mess up royally I'm not dying from any NPC opponants. I didn get stuck in an enemy base airlock the other day and had to suicide myself with my own missles to respawn.

Please don't regard this post as a complaint. Rather I'm just trying to get some feedback and discuss the game with folks who have enjoyed it as much as I have. And maybe...just maybe..some of these thoughts might reach the ears of folks at Digital Anvil or MS and lend towards us getting even better games. Like I said in my original post. I know nothing about programming. I don't even pretend to know what would be involved in implimenting anything I've said here. It might even be that some of the MOD's already do much of this. In which case, all I can say is 'Right On!'

I do have to agree on the random mission generator point. It is one of the weak points of the game, they are unimaginative and get very boring, very quickly. I had always imagined that the mission generator would have you tracking across many systems in search of your prey, visiting stations and planets, talking to locals and picking up tips on the whereabouts of your target. It did come across as an area of the game that was heavily trimmed to make it out the door in time for the release. Still better to have it bland than have it crash your game.

However your title about FL not being a big seller, well im afraid it was one of the better selling games in 2003. It was never going to be a massive Sims like seller simply because of it's content, but I think it did pretty durn well for a space game, which are renowned as wall flowers.

Well, they only used one CD for it. That should be an indication there that it wouldnt' be as deep as we'd all like to dream of. Some day developers might actually decide to really go for it.

I agree with most of the points you brought up, and no, it wouldn't be too difficult to program all that; it would just take a lot more time, and another CD. As for missions being boring, I only do missions if I'm trying to be accepted by a faction offering them. I trade for everything else. Right in the beginning of the game, you can do Cardamine, and then after mission 4 you can go up to Kusari and even Frankfurt and trade diamonds.

...Oh yeah. And if you get stuck and need to respawn, you could always just reload the autosave without blowing yourself up.

All in all, FL is a lot deeper than most other games I can think of. Of course, a much deeper game would be awesome, and I can't figure out why programmers seem to, with every game they make, get "content" with doing so much less than they could. But still, the game is really good.

...except in the bar dialogue department.


Cyaron

"He who has the power to see
that which cannot be seen
shall see the truth." -Golden Sun

*sob* i wish they didn't cancel imperium galactica 3

the first thing i noticed was that everything is way off scale....and i don't really wanna discuss that cause i dont wanna look like a jackass again lol


this is my world; it goes round and round and round
The wolfy types like a cow

Those are VERY valid points.
Although I'm satisfied with whatever I have, thank you very much.
I've messed up many things by greed, like my processor when I overclocked it. You shoulda seen the core... or other crazy thing with computer I do...

I am the signature virus! Copy me into your signature so that I can take over the world! Moohahahee!

good post and I agree FL could have been mutch better instead of just a good game it could have been epic check out the many mods ,
some real good ones r
reballence 3.12full
freeballence 3.30 stay away from 3,20 it has cruise eng drain everybody on my server hates it am going to find another MP mod for my test server
TNG 1.7 also have this on 1 of my servers ( ore usa servers )
vic 1.63 on my friends server (ore usa servers )
wts world v1.2 just downloaded it and so far it seems stable
or u can mix mods together in opensp I have a lot of fun doing this


have a great day

I haven't really got bored with FL yet, there are so many mods to try out.

____________________________

The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place.

At a fork in the road between two cities, you see 2 people. One always tells the truth, and comes from the city of Angles. The other person always lies and comes from the city of Demons. They both look exactly the same. You must choose one of the persons, and ask him one and only one question (no compound questions either, such as "is this shirt red and which way to safety?" ). What question could you ask to find out which path leads to the city of safety?

@ Mustang

<< I had always imagined that the mission generator would have you tracking across many systems in search of your prey, visiting stations and planets, talking to locals and picking up tips on the whereabouts of your target. >>


So you plaid Elite, eh. That's just what you did in the very few missions in that prehistoric game.





Jose Chavez: "Trent! It's good to see my kind of scum."

I was really disappointed when I found out you couldn't be hired again to do an escort mission like the one Jun'ko hired you to do. Also, the capture missions aren't as in-depth as they were in the storyline.

Well if the missions were all as in-depth as the story then why have a story, why not just have loads of interesting missions and forget the story.

Thts an idea, why not be given a choice of different missions at the beginning at be able to choose which path you take.

I agree that there should be more kinds of missions, such as escort and tracking people accross systems, but it is possible to make missions at least a bit more interesting by modding, such as adding battleship missions

There is no objective truth other than schplurg,
Everything is relative to schplurg

I appreciate all the responses so far to this post. I wasn't certain how many folks actually spend time here.

Mustang- Thanks for correcting me on the point that Freelancer is a larger seller than I believed. I tend to play RTS games like 'Generals: Zero Hour,' and my buddies there hadn't even heard of 'Freelancer' when I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I've been playing it again. Also I noticed the price of the game drop drasticly fairly soon after release. Now it's only twenty bucks so I assumed it was sort of a dog on the market. Plus I've heard nothing about a sequel. Seems to me if it was a huge seller their would be some talk about a sequel.

Cyaron- Good to know I can simply respawn if anything like that airlock incident ever happens again. Ty. Ya, I decided to scout out good trade routes too rather than go the mission rout. Once the leg work is done there are some good ones. I too do the diamond run to New Tokyo.. then I return to 'The Ring' with Niobium. You know, it's sort of funny. I've got one profile 'midaus' that's not about 39 level. I lost five levels talking to the 'monkey men' in the unknown sector. Thing is. I have another profile I got up to lvl 35 in about five hours of play using freighters rather than fighters. It's somewhat imballanced the rate of increase the freighters give but hey, they're fun.

DRKmatter- I've been tempted to check out the MOD's. But since I'm such a virgin to that territory I've been a bit timid in trying them out. I've heard they can do strange things to my computer and I don't exactly trust them. I've been parousing the posts concerning them though and some seem very interesting, especially the onces that simulate 'real space' with the lighting and shading. They look downright awesome.

It seemed logical the programming of more complex and thoughtful missions wouldn't be so difficult with a little extra time. And the end result would be a much more epic and 'must have' type of game. In the end that makes more business sense to me rather than pushing something out the door that is in all truth 'generic.' So far it seems to me the games such as this really take the gamers for granted and simply insult our intelligence. It's a "well that's good enough for government work" sort of attitude that just tweaks me the wrong way. If they had combined some of those things I'd mentioned with the type of play this game does offer Freelancer would be a truly great game and would, in my opinion, be a benchmark others would have to copy or be left in the dust. The content is just not keeping pace with the technology. So far all the roleplaying games I've played take this short cut approach. One might argue this is an action game rather than a roleplaying game, but that's not what this game was billed as. The pre-launch hype and advertising was missleading and a real let down. Still, I really liked the single player mode and hope to see more in the future. I keep playing the multi-play and am experimenting with different ships primarily because I just love the 'experience' of flying through space and engaging enemy ships, especially in 'turret view' or 'cockpit' mode. Simply put it's flat out cool to see guns blazing and ships flying apart. I especially love the effects of my shield being hit and the slip sliding feel of engine kill mode. One thing for certain is the DEV's did a great job with the combat effects and feel of the game.

You want to know why something mentioned are "less-than-expected"?

Well...this game just barely made it onto the market! I belive (I read somewhere) that this game took 7 years to get out in stores! 7! SEVEN! So while I am very annoyed at the potential that Microsoft has wasted I am thankful that at least we have SOMETHING.

So, I am still waiting for the improved version of Freelancer to come out. I am learning programing...maybe check down the road in a few years; I might have something out!

Well...thats all for now...I am creating a mod and I need help...e-mail me at : [email protected]

Oh...and no junk...I have skillz to screw you over!

Thats all fokes!

~Saber~