New players opinion on E:D

First of all, this is not my post, i just saw it on the Star Citizen forum. But it does reflect the way i think about E:D (unfortunately).
PS: for the annoying ED fanboys: I almost own a Python in ED and have spent more time playing ED than i have spent time being on SC forums or even playing Arena commander. So please, start up your brains and don't call me a SC fanboy. And even after all those hours, my opinion still remains the same. I want both games to be awesome but if you bunch of little kids cry everytime someone critisizes the game you play, you seriously need to grow up. And yes, some things that the guy i quote wrote are incorrect. But remember, it is an opinion of a new player. And most of the time, unlike most of you, most people dont spend 10 hours a day to learn everything there is to learn on a game.


https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/4184389/#Comment_4184389

-Queequeg | HermanM said: "What's happening to new players in E:D?"

-Xbob42 | Xbob42 replied: "As a newish player to Elite (I got it on launch day, never played any previous Elite titles.) the game is opaque. You start off in a station, there's a pre-flight check where you can see what each button press does... then you're off. No one talks to you, nothing gives you any idea of what you should do, or if we're going for the "freedom" route, it doesn't even begin to tell you what you CAN do, you just kind of fumble around with it or watch some tutorial videos.
Personally, I think it's like that to disguise how thin the universe is in that game. Nothing about the game is complicated, I taught myself just about everything in a few hours, and was having fun, then I hit a wall where I was just repeating the same thing over and over. The game has 400 billion star systems, but none of them matter. You get a/some sun(s) (or very rarely a black hole) and a selection of planets. Some planets will have a station. Some planets will have "resource extraction sites," which is a fancy way of saying "a ring where you can mine asteroids" and... that's it, really. You can't land on planets, you can't get out of your ship, you have no home base, the mission selection is miniscule and repetitive, trading is boring and super safe, the NPCs are awful pilots so even someone like me who hasn't used a hotas in 15+ years (I bought one just for Elite) can completely destroy Elite high-tier enemy ships... in the starter ship.

So the game only has dogfighting going for it, but that's no fun because all of the enemies you'll fight are brain dead. The online is busted so you can either play online and maybe occasionally see a few strangers (granted you stay in the first few starting systems, thus killing the 400 billion star systems selling point) or you can play with your friend(s)... in a private match. You can't group up in open play, so playing with your friends is almost impossible outside of private matches, so PvP is totally meaningless, which is fine because even if it worked anyone doing dogfighting is going to be loaded to the roof with shield cells, which basically have no cooldown and refill your shields instantly, meaning anyone killing anyone else is almost impossible unless someone's not using shield cells. Even if you get someone low, you can always just warp away.

Basically, the entire game feels like a fairly early alpha with a dead universe. All of the "political" stuff is essentially a Twitter feed when you're in stations and a bunch of stats that go up or down very slightly when you complete missions. Nothing in-game actually ever seems to change at all.
There's no trading between players, at best you can jettison some cargo for someone else to scoop up, but there's no real trading, no buying stuff from each other (can't exchange credits) and you can't steal ships or anything even vaguely interesting.

To compound all of these issues, the game is super heavily instanced. If you try to Supercruise (FTL, non-warp travel) instead of Hyperdrive (basically a warp/teleport) to a different system or (normal flight to) even stations... you'll wind up in empty space. You are forced to use Hyperdrive or Supercruise to act as a loading screen, which makes the universe feel even more segmented and fake. Don't even get me started on Supercruise, the way it randomly speeds up or slows down as you travel in a straight line, a planet in a system 500,000+ light seconds away that you have to Supercruise to, taking 15+ minutes of staring at blackness as literally nothing happens, and unlike a trucking sim (Which is what some reviewers compare Elite to) there's nothing to see, you don't have to stay on the road, you are required to literally do nothing, so usually you just walk away or alt-tab. Thrilling.

In short, it's an enormous game, but it's as empty as deep space.

I was actually so devastated by how shallow it was (I LOVE a good space sim, and Elite has quite a legendary history as I understand it) that I finally backed Star Citizen. My friend told me about Elite and was super excited, so that's why I bought it. Then I saw Star Citizen, saw the ambition, saw the talent, saw the dedication, and I knew I had to support it. I've been aware of Star Citizen and its increasing pledge amounts for QUITE some time, but I'd never backed anything before on any service... Until now! And I'm so happy I did. The Arena Commander Module alone is so exciting for me. The dogfighting is super tight and fun, and there's no slow turning wars (at least in my Mustang Beta!) like there are in Elite. You basically are forced to turn off flight assist (decoupled in this game) for every single pass in that game, ugh. The environments are staggeringly beautiful, and my hangar already feels like a home for my character, which is so important for me in a game like this.
Basically I was so crushed by how much I disliked what's currently in Elite that it finally got me to break my no-pledge streak, and I'm super happy. I'm also excited for the future of Elite, because it's gonna have some seriously cool features... but not for a while. In any case, I'm glad both games exist."

I was wondering, how many of you think alike?
 
Last edited:
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I've backed Star-Citizen too. To the tune of $500.

Elite is a great game, and I want to enjoy them both.

Is this not allowed anymore, or do I have to pick a side?
 
In short it amounts to I hoped for more from Elite at launch and now I've transferred my hope to Star Citizen.
Neither game has as much depth as it needs right now.
So you either enjoy Elite as it is now and wait for it to be fleshed out, or you enjoy Arena Commander right now and wait for the game to be ready. Or you hold off on space sims for a bit longer.

What's pretty much pointless is compare Elite right now to what you imagine Star Citizen will be when it launches. That's just setting yourself up for another disappointment. Like Elite it's a very ambitious game, and it's going to take time to get all of its features in and ready - as we can clearly see with AC so far.

With any luck in a couple of years they will both be incredible.
 
Take out the Star Citizen part and everything said that is wrong with ED is valid. He's not the only one to notice the shortcomings.

But if you keep focus on the shortcomings you'd be selling yourself... er... short.

I know and acknowledge ED's flaws and so have decided to put them out of my mind and enjoy the game for what it is and my enjoyment of ED rose immensely.

But that won't stop either extreme camps from voicing their opinions but you know what opinions are like. So...

/popcorn
 
I dunno... I've put hundreds of hours since beta and I'm still coming back for more every day.

To address some of the reviewers comments:

1. Supercruise: you slow down and speed up based on local gravitation. The further you are from massive bodies the faster you go. That's why you slow down and speed up. The length of time SC takes I personally think adds so much to the game. People are expecting to get immediate satisfaction all the time. I love waiting, because it gives me time to appreciate the vastness of a to-scale recreation of space. If you don't want to SC to a station 500k ls away, don't, go to another system. Why is that so hard?

2. Instancing: this has been vastly improved. Busy stations (ones that have a good trading potential) are swarmed with players. I see CMDRs all the time. I don't feel like this is a huge issue, although there is still room for improvement.

3. Missions: think of them as a tutorial and a means to learn how to play the game. Once you have mastered the mechanics (which after hundreds of hours I still haven't, I don't know what the OP's reviewer is saying--learn to fly with FA off for starters) you go off on your own and blaze your own trail. I found rare trading routes, normal trading routes, good places to bounty hunt, good places to grief CMDRS etc.

4. The story: I love how it is presented. Its realistic. Not every CMDR is "the hero of middle earth" here. You are just a cog in a vast and complex machine. You wanna contribute? Do it. If not, go do something else.

I love this bloody game. I love how deep and immersive it is. I love that I built myself a head tracker to enjoy it more, and most of all FD has not let us down once. The game is going to have so much added to it.
 
I happen to agree with much it.
E:D in my opinion is a little shallow in its present state.
And, although I don't think money should be easy to get, the cost of living in elite is a little high and needs some balancing.
However.. I'm well aware it was released early due to the need to fulfil investor promises.
And I have come to accept that 4 out of 5 games these days get released with content missing.
(In fact, elite was surprisingly stable on release compared to some of the disastrous releases over the last 18 months.)

However... FD have shown an awesome willingness to patch and respond to issues so I am confident that much more depth will be added in the coming months.
That being said, despite its obvious shortcomings, I haven't been able to put it down since premium beta. :)
 
Last edited:
I dunno... I've put hundreds of hours since beta and I'm still coming back for more every day.

To address some of the reviewers comments:

1. Supercruise: you slow down and speed up based on local gravitation. The further you are from massive bodies the faster you go. That's why you slow down and speed up. The length of time SC takes I personally think adds so much to the game. People are expecting to get immediate satisfaction all the time. I love waiting, because it gives me time to appreciate the vastness of a to-scale recreation of space. If you don't want to SC to a station 500k ls away, don't, go to another system. Why is that so hard?

2. Instancing: this has been vastly improved. Busy stations (ones that have a good trading potential) are swarmed with players. I see CMDRs all the time. I don't feel like this is a huge issue, although there is still room for improvement.

3. Missions: think of them as a tutorial and a means to learn how to play the game. Once you have mastered the mechanics (which after hundreds of hours I still haven't, I don't know what the OP's reviewer is saying--learn to fly with FA off for starters) you go off on your own and blaze your own trail. I found rare trading routes, normal trading routes, good places to bounty hunt, good places to grief CMDRS etc.

4. The story: I love how it is presented. Its realistic. Not every CMDR is "the hero of middle earth" here. You are just a cog in a vast and complex machine. You wanna contribute? Do it. If not, go do something else.

I love this bloody game. I love how deep and immersive it is. I love that I built myself a head tracker to enjoy it more, and most of all FD has not let us down once. The game is going to have so much added to it.

Word.

Oh and using nearby planets as a brake when I accidentally overshoot the station I was aiming for while foolishly trying to absolutely maximise my approach speed is one of my favourite features of the game. It just feels epic :D
 
Quote ' I taught myself just about everything in a few hours'

Clever man, I've been in since Beta and still learning...!

Learning what exactly might I ask? Cos the only thing to learn is the next game exploit... like SCB's now.

Trading... straight forward. Combat... straight forward. Exploration... like shining a flashlight in a dark room.

C'mon, it is pretty easy you've got to admit but how it's all put together is really well done. Add some more depth (Soon TM) and this will be the definitive space sim. Star Citizen will be the definitive space fantasy sim.

Kinda like Star Wars (action, effects, fantasy heroes) v slightly more science based Star Trek (exploration, politics, trade). Both are great universes to get lost in.
 
From the Star Citizen forums or no, everything cited in original post is valid IMO.

Every lifelong gamer has what they consider the perfect game. twenty years ago I was just hoping that technology would advance far enough that it could be made and released within my lifetime. For the most part, that game definition was ED, or rather what ED could have been...

i was was excited for this game. I was not a beta backer because it goes against my core principals to pay someone for something that they can't even commit to delivering. That's not FD specific - I don't back any games early. That said, I've been eagerly waiting for release. I read enough online that I did decide to preorder the mercenary edition about two weeks prior to release.

...and I'm thoroughly gratified and disappointed at the same time. The galaxy is beautiful. The game is rock solid as far a bugs and glitches are concerned. The ships are sexy, and the sound is absolutely phenomenal. Sliding through the docking port feels a bit like easing the Nebuchadnezzar into Zion. It's like what I imagine sitting atop Everest to be like..stunning, beautiful, and an accomplishment all it's own, but once you're there there's not much to do except look around. Without additional features I don't see the game holding my interest much longer.

Some of the features that could keep me interested are:
wider variety of missions
planetary landings (with FPS mode and terrestrial exploration and mining)
spacewalk ship repairs
player-owned AI traders and fleets
more ships (including capital ships)
more meaningful exploration
and possibly even player owned factories.
 
If you ask my opinion... well. Played elite for ~30 hours. Mostly combat as i find missions and trading boring as hell. I wanted play some kind of space game so badly that i bought myself new pc, hotas etc. I was dissapointed. What can i tell? Played few days eve online. Am not comming back to elite for a while. Am feeling cheated. Theres no game inside it. I could put that money to others games whose worth more.

Game is beutiful, sounds are amazing and it flys nice.
Cant say anything more good about it.
 
Last edited:
Sorry OP, I have 2 words for you.. Lay zee!

If you want to express an opinion thats great, but just 'copy/pasting' someone elses opinion/review is very poor, very very poor! Opinions are great, we all have then, we should always be entitled to express them, but you should at least try to use your own words, and base it on your own understanding. I am going to take a wild guess here and suggest you have as little understanding and experience of the game as the individual you 'borrowed' the post from. I mean, I'm new to the game, picked it up on day of release, and would say my understanding from 2 weeks is better than your qouted source.

I'm making really good credits from trading and progressing nicely, Im organised and efficient which is probably helping, but i can guarentee I'm missing out on stuff, or not being as productive as I can. So anyone can jump into this game and start earning/progressing immediatly (would be pretty unappealing otherwise) but, its one thing to understand a ship and the mechanics that govern it while going pewpew with an NPC, and something altogether different to understand the game as a whole, that will take time. New players, like myself, will find their feet and start adding to the games evolution as well as our own personal progression, and the Devs will continue to tweak, develope and polish it!

Aside from maybe buying the game expecting something different, It may be worth considering that the formation of your opinion may be based on gaps in your in-game knowledge, experience or even a skewed perspective from another, seemingly biased, individual. Then again, sometimes we dont need a reason to like/dislike something lol, if you like it.. play it, if you dont.. dont.

Regards
 
Learning what exactly might I ask? Cos the only thing to learn is the next game exploit... like SCB's now.

Trading... straight forward. Combat... straight forward. Exploration... like shining a flashlight in a dark room.

C'mon, it is pretty easy you've got to admit but how it's all put together is really well done. Add some more depth (Soon TM) and this will be the definitive space sim. Star Citizen will be the definitive space fantasy sim.

Kinda like Star Wars (action, effects, fantasy heroes) v slightly more science based Star Trek (exploration, politics, trade). Both are great universes to get lost in.

i backed both games....ED definitely needs depth.......but i wouldn't change my decision to back it......just wish the group/social aspects would have been a bigger priority.
SC ill play it when its got a game to test modules dont interest me in the least
 
I don't find most of the comments invalid but I do feel they're over-exaggerated. I feel that there's flesh to come and enough to do in the meantime (at least with a casual level of playing) - I can't say why I feel confident about that, especially since I'm usually a pessimist, but I do feel it.
 
1. Supercruise: .....People are expecting to get immediate satisfaction all the time. I love waiting, because it gives me time to appreciate the vastness of a to-scale recreation of space. If you don't want to SC to a station 500k ls away, don't, go to another system. Why is that so hard?

I don't get why ppl are defending Supercruise? In a flight sim Supercruise would be considered some sort of autopilot mode. It keeps your attitude/course and levels your speed to a certain amount. It couldn't be any simpler than it already is.
 
I don't get why ppl are defending Supercruise? In a flight sim Supercruise would be considered some sort of autopilot mode. It keeps your attitude/course and levels your speed to a certain amount. It couldn't be any simpler than it already is.

I don't think people are defending supercruise as such rather that there should be sense that space is big... so big our minds can't comprehend it.

So putting in an in system jump feature is one more step in taking away that feeling of the vastness of space. It'd be like having portals to every major town and dungeon in a traditional MMO where players never get to appreciate the game that's in between.
 
ED is quite good at launch but has much to live up to now that we are launched.
Looking forward to a lot of content coming our way.
 
First of all, this is not my post, i just saw it on the Star Citizen forum. But it does reflect the way i think about E:D (unfortunately).
PS: for the annoying ED fanboys: I almost own a Python in ED and have spent more time playing ED than i have spent time being on SC forums or even playing Arena commander. So please, start up your brains and don't call me a SC fanboy. And even after all those hours, my opinion still remains the same. I want both games to be awesome but if you bunch of little kids cry everytime someone critisizes the game you play, you seriously need to grow up. And yes, some things that the guy i quote wrote are incorrect. But remember, it is an opinion of a new player. And most of the time, unlike most of you, most people dont spend 10 hours a day to learn everything there is to learn on a game.


https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/4184389/#Comment_4184389

-Queequeg | HermanM said: "What's happening to new players in E:D?"

-Xbob42 | Xbob42 replied: "As a newish player to Elite (I got it on launch day, never played any previous Elite titles.) the game is opaque. You start off in a station, there's a pre-flight check where you can see what each button press does... then you're off. No one talks to you, nothing gives you any idea of what you should do, or if we're going for the "freedom" route, it doesn't even begin to tell you what you CAN do, you just kind of fumble around with it or watch some tutorial videos.
Personally, I think it's like that to disguise how thin the universe is in that game. Nothing about the game is complicated, I taught myself just about everything in a few hours, and was having fun, then I hit a wall where I was just repeating the same thing over and over. The game has 400 billion star systems, but none of them matter. You get a/some sun(s) (or very rarely a black hole) and a selection of planets. Some planets will have a station. Some planets will have "resource extraction sites," which is a fancy way of saying "a ring where you can mine asteroids" and... that's it, really. You can't land on planets, you can't get out of your ship, you have no home base, the mission selection is miniscule and repetitive, trading is boring and super safe, the NPCs are awful pilots so even someone like me who hasn't used a hotas in 15+ years (I bought one just for Elite) can completely destroy Elite high-tier enemy ships... in the starter ship.

So the game only has dogfighting going for it, but that's no fun because all of the enemies you'll fight are brain dead. The online is busted so you can either play online and maybe occasionally see a few strangers (granted you stay in the first few starting systems, thus killing the 400 billion star systems selling point) or you can play with your friend(s)... in a private match. You can't group up in open play, so playing with your friends is almost impossible outside of private matches, so PvP is totally meaningless, which is fine because even if it worked anyone doing dogfighting is going to be loaded to the roof with shield cells, which basically have no cooldown and refill your shields instantly, meaning anyone killing anyone else is almost impossible unless someone's not using shield cells. Even if you get someone low, you can always just warp away.

Basically, the entire game feels like a fairly early alpha with a dead universe. All of the "political" stuff is essentially a Twitter feed when you're in stations and a bunch of stats that go up or down very slightly when you complete missions. Nothing in-game actually ever seems to change at all.
There's no trading between players, at best you can jettison some cargo for someone else to scoop up, but there's no real trading, no buying stuff from each other (can't exchange credits) and you can't steal ships or anything even vaguely interesting.

To compound all of these issues, the game is super heavily instanced. If you try to Supercruise (FTL, non-warp travel) instead of Hyperdrive (basically a warp/teleport) to a different system or (normal flight to) even stations... you'll wind up in empty space. You are forced to use Hyperdrive or Supercruise to act as a loading screen, which makes the universe feel even more segmented and fake. Don't even get me started on Supercruise, the way it randomly speeds up or slows down as you travel in a straight line, a planet in a system 500,000+ light seconds away that you have to Supercruise to, taking 15+ minutes of staring at blackness as literally nothing happens, and unlike a trucking sim (Which is what some reviewers compare Elite to) there's nothing to see, you don't have to stay on the road, you are required to literally do nothing, so usually you just walk away or alt-tab. Thrilling.

In short, it's an enormous game, but it's as empty as deep space.

I was actually so devastated by how shallow it was (I LOVE a good space sim, and Elite has quite a legendary history as I understand it) that I finally backed Star Citizen. My friend told me about Elite and was super excited, so that's why I bought it. Then I saw Star Citizen, saw the ambition, saw the talent, saw the dedication, and I knew I had to support it. I've been aware of Star Citizen and its increasing pledge amounts for QUITE some time, but I'd never backed anything before on any service... Until now! And I'm so happy I did. The Arena Commander Module alone is so exciting for me. The dogfighting is super tight and fun, and there's no slow turning wars (at least in my Mustang Beta!) like there are in Elite. You basically are forced to turn off flight assist (decoupled in this game) for every single pass in that game, ugh. The environments are staggeringly beautiful, and my hangar already feels like a home for my character, which is so important for me in a game like this.
Basically I was so crushed by how much I disliked what's currently in Elite that it finally got me to break my no-pledge streak, and I'm super happy. I'm also excited for the future of Elite, because it's gonna have some seriously cool features... but not for a while. In any case, I'm glad both games exist."

I was wondering, how many of you think alike?

A fair assessment of the current state of the game. To summarize it in my own words: the game feels like an infinite empty ocean with a number of core activities that represent a good bare-bone proof-of-concept but lack the depth necessary for long-term appeal.
 
As much as I hate to say it, this guy does bring up a lot of valid points. PvP combat is broken, PvE combat is far too easy, and there's little social interaction between players. FD has said they plan to change this, and I hope they do, but for the moment he's right.

But I don't see this as a reason to go throwing money at RSI either. While FD has a lot of work ahead of them, it pales in comparison to the monumental tasks RSI has to accomplish. I waited very late to back E:D, all the way to the last days of beta. I did so because I wanted to be sure it was actually going to make release. I do genuinely wish the best for RSI and Star Citizen, and I hope Chris Roberts accomplishes his vision, but caveat emptor.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Couple of ground rules for this thread folks:

1) Keep the discussion focused on Elite Dangerous and the gameplay points in OP. Excessive, unconstrucive focus on Star Citizen and/or engaging in fights over which game is better isn't welcome. There is a thread for discussion on SC in the off topic games sub forum.

2) Don't snipe, flame, or otherwise troll.
 
Back
Top Bottom