o7 Cmdrs
First post, wanted to vent and offer my $.02 as a less established player.
Words cannot express the amount of frustration and embarrassment I have recently felt while playing this game. For both myself and the devs. This was Frontier's chance to redeem themselves after the Odyssey debacle. And it would have worked too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids! People were grooving and enjoying themselves! Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! I personally had my most enjoyable experience in game so far.. and it was produced from the simple fact of being in an instance with about 7-8 other cmdrs all happily communicating and shooting space bugs together without much lag. In fact I remember making a comment in that instance saying, "Now this is the Elite I've been wanting to play". It took much gnashing of teeth, heavy sighs, raised eyebrows and what moments to get there though. Before I address the most egregious thing folks are up in arms about, the reset, lemme list my grievances encountered prior to that.
1) Bugged instances. Obviously one of the first things noticed by many on day one of update 14. No biggie I thought, they'll hotfix this or get it fixed soon. We had a patch a week later and it didn't get fixed. That's pretty bad. I understand it has been acknowledged but a fix was not made ready in time for Thursday's patch. This should have been one of the top priorities.
2) Instancing in general. I fully understand Elite utilizes peer to peer networking. Many other games do so successfully. But it just shouldn't be so darn difficult to join an instance with other players. When someone in system chat says they need help at x station or y conflict zone and I go there, it is totally hit or miss if I end up in the populated instance or create a new one. Why don't we have a dropdown selection box on the navigation panel or somewhere that allows us to choose which extant instance we wish to attempt to connect to? Baffling.
3) Wings. So I learned from chat it is apparently a known issue that inviting someone to a wing in game is also a hit or miss thing. Not only that but it has been an issue for so long the accepted workaround is to add someone as a friend through the social tab to make it easier to be invited. Just to party up in an online game. Wow.
4) Chat. It's not only bugged half the time but very obtuse. Having your chat panel randomly close as you're typing, or proof reading your message before hitting enter only to watch it magically disappear, or heaven forbid you make a typo and try to go back and fix it, doesn't seem to wanna let you do that much either. Worst chat experience I've encountered since the early days of online gaming. If Elite had a global chat server it'd be game changing imo.
5) Multi-crew. Have to mention this as well as I took update 14 as an opportunity to get some friends to try Elite. Didn't go over so well when one friend learned that flying an SLF in an instance with other players usually makes for a lagfest. That was the straw that broke the camel's back on top of everything else for my friend, he then called it quits as he simply wasn't having any fun. You know it's bad when you end up feeling embarrassed having shared a game you like with friends.
6) Reset. There's 20+ years of online gaming history now that shows what can happen to a game and its reputation when the devs screw over the players in some way. All I'll say here is that the main problem for me is simply the fact they didn't communicate the mechanics of their system. If they did from the start this whole uproar would have been avoided, and I feel people would have been more understanding of the way the invasion would possibly pan out over time. I get the feeling from fdev's history that they want to be like a D&D Dungeon Master, in the sense that they want to play God and keep secret the mechanics of everything or leave other elements of gameplay for the player to discover.. but that doesn't always guarantee the experience intended. For example I'm sure many would agree that while a DM dead set on killing you and your party can sometimes be fun it can also devolve into a frustrating and abusive experience devoid of anything remotely related to something that could be called fun. I feel many folks are correct to point out the reset felt like a direct troll to the player base, because the alternative means the devs are just inept or unable to perceive their own game through the eyes of the player.
Whew sorry for the wall of text. Got into a bit of a general review there as well but hey, a friend just tried the game after I hyped up this alien invasion and he legit said "lol dude this game is broken". Ouch.
TLDR; I'm happy overall with Elite Dangerous and update 14, just disappointed in the delivery. Back to chasing after that multiplayer experience in the most un-multiplayer friendly online multiplayer game I've ever come across o7
First post, wanted to vent and offer my $.02 as a less established player.
Words cannot express the amount of frustration and embarrassment I have recently felt while playing this game. For both myself and the devs. This was Frontier's chance to redeem themselves after the Odyssey debacle. And it would have worked too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids! People were grooving and enjoying themselves! Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! I personally had my most enjoyable experience in game so far.. and it was produced from the simple fact of being in an instance with about 7-8 other cmdrs all happily communicating and shooting space bugs together without much lag. In fact I remember making a comment in that instance saying, "Now this is the Elite I've been wanting to play". It took much gnashing of teeth, heavy sighs, raised eyebrows and what moments to get there though. Before I address the most egregious thing folks are up in arms about, the reset, lemme list my grievances encountered prior to that.
1) Bugged instances. Obviously one of the first things noticed by many on day one of update 14. No biggie I thought, they'll hotfix this or get it fixed soon. We had a patch a week later and it didn't get fixed. That's pretty bad. I understand it has been acknowledged but a fix was not made ready in time for Thursday's patch. This should have been one of the top priorities.
2) Instancing in general. I fully understand Elite utilizes peer to peer networking. Many other games do so successfully. But it just shouldn't be so darn difficult to join an instance with other players. When someone in system chat says they need help at x station or y conflict zone and I go there, it is totally hit or miss if I end up in the populated instance or create a new one. Why don't we have a dropdown selection box on the navigation panel or somewhere that allows us to choose which extant instance we wish to attempt to connect to? Baffling.
3) Wings. So I learned from chat it is apparently a known issue that inviting someone to a wing in game is also a hit or miss thing. Not only that but it has been an issue for so long the accepted workaround is to add someone as a friend through the social tab to make it easier to be invited. Just to party up in an online game. Wow.
4) Chat. It's not only bugged half the time but very obtuse. Having your chat panel randomly close as you're typing, or proof reading your message before hitting enter only to watch it magically disappear, or heaven forbid you make a typo and try to go back and fix it, doesn't seem to wanna let you do that much either. Worst chat experience I've encountered since the early days of online gaming. If Elite had a global chat server it'd be game changing imo.
5) Multi-crew. Have to mention this as well as I took update 14 as an opportunity to get some friends to try Elite. Didn't go over so well when one friend learned that flying an SLF in an instance with other players usually makes for a lagfest. That was the straw that broke the camel's back on top of everything else for my friend, he then called it quits as he simply wasn't having any fun. You know it's bad when you end up feeling embarrassed having shared a game you like with friends.
6) Reset. There's 20+ years of online gaming history now that shows what can happen to a game and its reputation when the devs screw over the players in some way. All I'll say here is that the main problem for me is simply the fact they didn't communicate the mechanics of their system. If they did from the start this whole uproar would have been avoided, and I feel people would have been more understanding of the way the invasion would possibly pan out over time. I get the feeling from fdev's history that they want to be like a D&D Dungeon Master, in the sense that they want to play God and keep secret the mechanics of everything or leave other elements of gameplay for the player to discover.. but that doesn't always guarantee the experience intended. For example I'm sure many would agree that while a DM dead set on killing you and your party can sometimes be fun it can also devolve into a frustrating and abusive experience devoid of anything remotely related to something that could be called fun. I feel many folks are correct to point out the reset felt like a direct troll to the player base, because the alternative means the devs are just inept or unable to perceive their own game through the eyes of the player.
Whew sorry for the wall of text. Got into a bit of a general review there as well but hey, a friend just tried the game after I hyped up this alien invasion and he legit said "lol dude this game is broken". Ouch.
TLDR; I'm happy overall with Elite Dangerous and update 14, just disappointed in the delivery. Back to chasing after that multiplayer experience in the most un-multiplayer friendly online multiplayer game I've ever come across o7
