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
(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
?"
-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?
