The Glass Is Half Full Positivity Thread

Ian Phillips

Volunteer Moderator
I spend a lot of time reading the forums......
then I start the game up and wonder "What are these people talking about?" The game is fantastic to look at, draws you(me) in sounds great and I find it a lot of fun.
 
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So I'll start with a few things that I think are good about the game.

Route planner will now plan routes up to 1,000ly

I too like the route planner system. It is so realistic! Just like a real Sat nav if you want to get from Oxford to London it tries to take you via Spain!

For me it's the individual ship engine noises. Nothing beats going from the powerless whine of a Hauler to the gutsy growl of a Cobra.

Also there is the addictiveness of the bulletin board. Many a time I have found myself locked to the keyboard for hours on end muttering "I'll just do this one last run before bed" Six hours later and I'm still muttering the same sentence.

In fact,.. I don't see what there is to not like about ED. It is beautifully made, well thought out work of art just like the original (which I still play when I get bored of your fancy new fan dangled graphics!)

If I were to complain about anything? ED gave us bobble heads for our dashboards and then cruelly snatched them away again! For shame ED,.. For shame!
 
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I spend a lot of time reading the forums......
then I start the game up and wonder "What are these people talking about?" The game is fantastic to look at, draws you(me) in sounds great and I find it a lot of fun.

I agree for the most part. The problem I have is the utter grind of some elements like trading which is ultimately just to buy a larger ship and begin the process over. I think many of the people who play make their goal "Wow, I want THAT ship!" then when they ultimately accomplish that goal there's not much in the universe to do.
 
The physicality of flying the ship with a HOTAS. To anyone who hasn't yet, get one. The muscle memory that goes into maneuvering with six degrees of freedom.

This turns into the tension of a PvP confrontation. My body is awash with adrenalin even before the tug of war of the interdiction ends. In the cluttered scanner of Lave on a Saturday night, I'm not even sure which hollow triangle is interdicting me. Which way will this one go? For one or the other of us, a considerable investment is about to go up in smoke. Does my interdictor realise I've built up this Adder specifically to surprise those preying on the Rares trade?

I wrestle the ship to get my attacker in my sights, as my brain blisses out from the bandwidth of information the game is feeding it. Will my guns come to bear first or his? He's not firing - time to put some pips into ENG. Going over my shoulder - roll that way so the dorsal turret can keep firing. One blue ring left and incoming fire from the light multicannons, my thumb slips onto a distinctively knurled four way on top of the joystick and twitches it backwards, and like when you pull the ring on a frosty can of pop under a glaring sun and hear the aluminium tear and the gas escape, I relax a tiny bit as the banked energy of the cell pours into my shields. Just in time, as his fixed beams rake my hull. I check our separation and roll ninety degrees so they won't both be able to hit me. Pip-pip-pip as I give the thrusters all the energy they can use and yank the throttle back into the middle of the blue zone. Pitch back and thumbstick down and as I start to slide backwards my attacker flies over my head. Satisfying cheeps as the burst turret lands its shots. The big flat Cobra hanging in the yellow starlight like half a pizza. Back up the WEP cap, track him and lay on the railgun. He puts on the power but I have no problem keeping the dot centred between his engines. His shields go down, 20% hull. He boosts and becomes a hollow rectangle. I boost to close but he's gaining. I have one bar left in WEP.

Right now he's asking himself, 'Did he fire six dumbfires or only five?' I line up the ridiculously broad sights and hit the pinky trigger and his Cobra turns into so much tinsel. I hit Escape and Exit To Main Menu, push away from the desk, and stagger to the bathroom.
 
As a space nerd I look up at the stars and wish I could be around when we all have our own space ships. This game allows a player to immerse themselves in the future we likely wont be around to see with its amazing flight mechanics, sounds and visuals. This is without a doubt the best purchase I have made in some time (and I buy a lot of games) - It must be as I even enjoy a bit of space trucking after work to relax.

Great job FD and thanks for the experience we have now and what you will evolve it to be in the future!
 
I spend a lot of time reading the forums......
then I start the game up and wonder "What are these people talking about?" The game is fantastic to look at, draws you(me) in sounds great and I find it a lot of fun.

The problem I have is the utter grind of some elements like trading which is ultimately just to buy a larger ship and begin the process over. I think many of the people who play make their goal "Wow, I want THAT ship!" then when they ultimately accomplish that goal there's not much in the universe to do.
Apparent you just have to look at it, is...umm...fantastic. Sounds good too. :rolleyes: After all what more do you want from a game?
 
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I spend a lot of time reading the forums......
then I start the game up and wonder "What are these people talking about?" The game is fantastic to look at, draws you(me) in sounds great and I find it a lot of fun.

Same thing happens to me. But sometimes I find myself hesitating, staying on here when I SHOULD be on there... and once I'm on there, I wondered why I spent so much time here worrying ;)
 
Apparent you just have to look at it, is...umm...fantastic. Sounds good too. :rolleyes: After what more do you want from a game?

I have the same frustration when reading dev responses (or lack thereof) but being sarcastic isn't going to motivate the dev team to make the game better. We all want the same thing, a better Elite.
 
Things I like:

-Going from planet to planet in the Empire and increasing the productivity of each system I spend time at and mapping new trade routes

-Exploring unknown systems. This still gives me chills with the loneliness and occasionally bizarre layout (those creepy dwarfs and black holes, not to mention binary stars with the twin(s) 10-20 minutes out in real time)

-Orbiting the earth-like planets like Major Tom and wondering what the surface is like (which have unreal amounts of detail).
 
This is Elite as I imagined it 30 years ago. I always loved the 8 maps with many planets in the original. Now it just so much larger and more beautiful. Our ten year mission to discover new worlds... has begun
 
Love the look and feel of the game. Didn't think I would enjoy exploring as much as I do... just.. one.. more.. Sure, wouldn't mind a few more things to discover, but finding that system with a few earth-looking worlds or cool gas giants is quite satisfying.
And I'm looking forward to see what happens with the 1.2 update. Multi-player goodies are always welcome to me :)
 
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Only the second game that I have spent a lot of time on since the first elite all those years ago. I had tried a few and thought that I had just outgrown games. But it was just that I hadn't found the right one yet. What do I like?
- that it's like the original but much richer
- the Philip Glass style music
- that I can persevere with something for a while, then when I feel like a change, I can do something quite different
- that I know that the game will continue to get more features
 
I love the game. Most of my likes have been said before, but one thing I would like to add is that I just love the solar flares!
 

Sarah Jane Avory

Retro Queen
1.1 ramps up difficulty quite a bit, and 1.2 is rumored to have even more. In 1.1 I can still take out the elite anacondas, but it's quite a lot harder; it took me about three or four failed attempts before I adjusted to the new difficulty. And I am someone that, while not the best pilot on the server, makes cash today mainly by assassination missions.

The code I'm working on for 1.2 will make the AIs a bit harder to hit. Oh, and they will try to avoid player's line-of-fire too.
I'm toying with the combat avoidance to try to make large ships less likely to ram the player by adding a tiny bit of avoidance when they get close. At the moment bigger ships don't care about small ships and will assume you're gonna get out of their way. This is to stop an Anaconda being "frightened" out of the way of a player in a Sidewinder.
I'm also re-writing the obstacle avoidance for docking to try to sort out all the collision problems and to stop AIs from getting stuck in the entrance tunnel.
And yes, I do read the forums in my own time. I do actually want people to enjoy the game more.

Sarah.
 
The code I'm working on for 1.2 will make the AIs a bit harder to hit. Oh, and they will try to avoid player's line-of-fire too.
I'm toying with the combat avoidance to try to make large ships less likely to ram the player by adding a tiny bit of avoidance when they get close. At the moment bigger ships don't care about small ships and will assume you're gonna get out of their way. This is to stop an Anaconda being "frightened" out of the way of a player in a Sidewinder.
I'm also re-writing the obstacle avoidance for docking to try to sort out all the collision problems and to stop AIs from getting stuck in the entrance tunnel.
And yes, I do read the forums in my own time. I do actually want people to enjoy the game more.

Sarah.

Thanks for the info and the hard work.
 
The code I'm working on for 1.2 will make the AIs a bit harder to hit. Oh, and they will try to avoid player's line-of-fire too.
I'm toying with the combat avoidance to try to make large ships less likely to ram the player by adding a tiny bit of avoidance when they get close. At the moment bigger ships don't care about small ships and will assume you're gonna get out of their way. This is to stop an Anaconda being "frightened" out of the way of a player in a Sidewinder.
I'm also re-writing the obstacle avoidance for docking to try to sort out all the collision problems and to stop AIs from getting stuck in the entrance tunnel.
And yes, I do read the forums in my own time. I do actually want people to enjoy the game more.

Sarah.

AI docking at the moment is pretty poor - i'm pleased this is being worked on. Its clearly one area that i'm sure Frontier have recognised probably wasn't up to their usual high standards. I've seen a type 9 vertical trying to undock, eventually the system is going to take it out. You just fly past and kind of sigh. But at least moving forward it will improve.

I think a lot of people are being overly critical, I think the game looks fantastic, i think it has a great atmosphere, it keeps you entertained for hours on end - literally whole nights can vanish playing it - there is so much variety between:
Missions
Trading
Combat
Exploring USS's
Getting permits
Upgrading your ship
Going 100 ly in a direction to see whats happening
Other player interaction
Ship upgrading
Reputation boosting
Then in amongst all of the that trying to follow a story line narrative with the news feeds
oh and monitoring the top 5 bounty list and scanning every cmdr you see.

People who say its boring or a grind are just plain wrong. If you stick to any one activity anything would get boring, it isn't called Elite Combat or Elite the Trader its called Elite, do what you want, when you want, where you want.
 
I'm a kickstarter backer who backed ED in the hope that an old classic that had me spell bound in the 80's would be re-imagined to take advantage of today's technology.

Not only did I get that I get that, but I got so much more than I'd ever hoped for. IN SPADES.

And this is only the start.
 
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