1984 Elite vs 2014 Elite

[Ydiss]

I stopped judging games on "Future potential" around the Star Trek Online.

Anyway, can you share the vision how you see it? For me, the vision of Elite seems to be shifting.
Earlier, it was the "you are small and insignificant in a HUGE universe". Trade or kill or explore until your eyes bleed, that would not make a dent on the galaxy as we know it.
Players: Why would I want to do trade, kill or explore anyway?
DB: For the Elite insignia and a metric ton of ebucks, of course, like in 1984.
Players: No stuff, no eyecandy, story. That is dumb even for 5 year olds. What is there to do?
DB: You can blaze your own trail and make your own stories
Players: Like, how?
DB: We have missions and you have your imagination.
Players: For 60 euros, I want more than my own imagination and broken missions.
DB: ... disappears ...
FD: 1.3 Powerplay, complete mission system rework. Now you are a power to behold your decisions influence the whole galaxy.

So what about the small and insignificant vision?

Players being able to influence the galactic situation has been planned from the start. The background simulation was only the frame work. Community goals only one element.

Power play isn't part of the dda but it goes without saying that development will evolve beyond the scope of the dda. Mainly because the thing is years old.

The plan was never for ED to only be about reaching Elite. The early developer diary videos made that clear.

 

[SilverbladeTE]

Elite II FRONTIER was what many of us played and was much better than the 1st game
alas the third game was horribly bugged again as so often because of greedy idiot publishers forcing games out before finalization

I WANT faces and voice in this game as they had in First Encounters (video faces anyway)
I don't need to get on a station to talk to someone to get a mission...I would love video as in movie simulation of many possible people to meet, and 3d animation is perfectly acceptable for that, with voice/lip sync software it shouldn't be too hard to pull off, and if you look at games like Privateer the darkening it's artwork for INTERIORS and UI made one hell of a difference
I'm quite happy to see a rendered video of the interior of a station, personally I don't need to LAND in one, I find that...a waste!
rather they spent time creating unique, beautiful, strange etc interiors for space stations rather than them being all the damn same
again se privateer the darkening, and scifi art/illustration/films etc for ideas

 

[dannysquid]

I WANT faces and voice in this game as they had in First Encounters (video faces anyway)
I don't need to get on a station to talk to someone to get a mission...I would love video as in movie simulation of many possible people to meet, and 3d animation is perfectly acceptable for that, with voice/lip sync software it shouldn't be too hard to pull off, and if you look at games like Privateer the darkening it's artwork for INTERIORS and UI made one hell of a difference
I'm quite happy to see a rendered video of the interior of a station, personally I don't need to LAND in one, I find that...a waste!
rather they spent time creating unique, beautiful, strange etc interiors for space stations rather than them being all the damn same
again se privateer the darkening, and scifi art/illustration/films etc for ideas

I think they'll do this alongside the First Person expansion. They'll have to do characters for that and you might as well do them properly to avoid repeating work.

 

[Tiamat]

I didn't expect me to be led by anyone or anything. But I did expect something to happen when I did something. Like If I killed off hundreds of pirates from the same faction, that faction would send assassins to claim some sort of black market bounty.

Actually that can happen It is more common in Anarchy systems than high-security ones though. I went from casual pirate slaughter to my very best Rincewind impression in about 3 seconds the first time it happened to me.

I do agree that the impact we currently have on the universe is very limited which does fit the "just you and your ship, one tiny grain of sand in the universe" ideal that is at the heart of Elite but Powerplay looks like it is going to improve that a lot. The problem is that v1.0 was very bare-bones and the events, missions and functionality were all restricted by the limited functionality it had leaving us with a fairly shallow sandbox. FD are adding new content at a fairly reasonable rate though and those that were around in the alphas/betas know that FD can really churn content out when they put their minds to it. I still consider ED a bit of a beta but I do enjoy watching it evolve which is one of the things that draws me to it.

I haven't played SC yet. Was going to but after I saw the latest updates causing huge freezes and stuff I decided to wait until beta comes out, hopefully next year.

I am a fairly late SC backer but it really is an example of a contentless game in its current state if I am honest. It looks nice but the performance is pretty horrible until you go manually hacking through the config and I got bored after about 2 hours in Arena Commander. Chris really is playing the long game there but I think it will shape up well given enough time.

 

[Twelvefield]

I feel alone in that I didn't like Frontier more than Elite 1984. I thought Frontier was a massive disappointment. It took many of the things that Elite did perfectly and added to them... how do you add to perfection? Well, of course, now I see 1984 Elite was far from perfect, but Frontier was a choppy, stuttery, cobalt-blue space mess for me.

 

[Armour]

I stopped judging games on "Future potential" around the Star Trek Online.

So what about the small and insignificant vision?

Your imagined conversation notwithstanding, you as a pilot are still pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You can have a small influence on a larger power, but those larger powers are still not likely to be giants spanning the entire galaxy, or even controlling the region comprising the populated systems - I would guess that our influence won't be on the level of "you are all the chosen one, each with your own magic sword" or "you are all space gods, each with your own planets". Just because this doesn't play to the standard MMO/Sandbox tropes, doesn't mean it isn't one. Genres get widened, subverted and otherwise changed all the time in art.

 

[Daeron]

We must remember that ED brought the full meaning of a "gaming universe" back to the table. Not unlike the 84 version, which also came at a much grander scale than contemporary titles. Not that you had anything much better than 2D scrolling at the time, granted!

 

[Brimstone]

I never even heard about this game until after I found out about Star Citizen. SC looked so exciting, the possibilities the game offered were unlike anything I'd seen before. Then I found Elite Dangerous and my initial impression was,"Meh, looks like a Star Citizen rip off."

After I'd watched all of the special community TV shows about the development of Star Citizen I began having a feeling like SC was a bit too good to be true. I started watching videos of people playing Elite Dangerous, and the more I watched the more fascinated I became. Seeing these people dog-fighting and thinking to myself," Aw man I totally could do better, they should have done this, maneuvered like that..." Then I found the videos of the guys who'd traveled to Sagittarius A and I was completely blown away. At that point I needed this game, and I bought it.

I honestly don't understand how people can try to claim that this game has no substance, that it sucks, that there is just nothing to do. I realized after doing research about the game that it isn't going to hold my hand at all via campaigns or story arcs. In fact, it will try to cut it off at times. It's really up to the player to find what they want to do, what they enjoy, and create their own story.

This game is brand spanking new! It's still being developed, and will continue to be developed, and it's out now for people to play and participate in the development and in the background simulator. The game isn't finished. Because of this, I really find it silly when people try to compare it to other games like EVE that have been out for years now, that have had time to grow and develop into what they are now. I think we all need patience, and I hope that you guys who are upset over the state of the game give it some time grow into it's own. It will grow, and it will not be the same game it is now, in a year or two. By then, Star Citizen's full release is anticipated to be out, so if ED isn't up to your standards by then, well take care and have fun in that game, or others.

 

[Darkstar_IE]

-=ELITE=- Then and Now

I read through a good thread today comparing both elite 84 and Elite Dangerous. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=143037

Instead of just rattling off another response, I felt I needed to comment here separately.

Any of you who know me, know that I am an old timer, who played elite way "back in the day" on the speccy & C64. I feel that some people are missing a fundamental point of the comparison. Just to recap for some "younglings" (no disrespect intended) At the time we had a bunch of 8 bit computers, some may remember the Atari 400/800, the Sinclair Spectrum, the Commodore VIC20, and Commodore 64. The Dragon 32, the Texas Instruments TI99, the Oric Atmos (had to love those orange keys The Amstrad CPC464 and of course for those posh enough to afford it the BBC Model B Microcomputer (all hail the mighty Beeb!!)

The games we played consisted of a staple of get a sheet of aliens, shoot them, go get another sheet, rinse and repeat until dead. We had 3 lives, and an extra life at 10000 points. At the time I used to feed my 10 pence coins into a Space Invaders machine that our local Cafe (Garage - or Gas Station if you are American) had installed. There was invariably a bunch of kids gathered around it after school. So finding my love of video games, I eventually managed to get an Atari 2600, original Teac effect (which is still working today, with the space invaders cartridge) and get into gaming. From there, I managed to get a spectrum, and then a C64. Learning to program in basic, Pascal, and for anyone who remembers the C64 - peek and poke

Then came the explosion of games, we had Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Sabre Wulf, Entombed, Psi Warrior, Marble Madness, Ant Attack, Attack of the mutant camels ( Thank you Jeff ), and the amazing Mercenary, and Damocles to name but a few.

They were all great, but none really offered anything more than the usual formula for gameplay (with the exception or mercenary)

Then .... Suddenly .... -=ELITE=- was born. David and Ian released a masterpiece that changed the direction of gaming. This was not just a new idea, it was a complete paradigm shift in thinking about the way we play games.
Suddenly, we had a ship, 100 credits, and a universe to go and make your own story.

When I look at elite dangerous today, what I see is that same vibrant game that I played back in the 80's. With one major exception. Its not that the game is not giving us what we expect these days. Its not that with the current power of todays computers I expect better, its not that I expect more from the game because there has been 30 years to improve. Its not anything like that ....


When I play elite dangerous today, the difference is this. I see on screen what my mind imagined, playing Elite back in the 80's. When we had a limited 3D vector graphics display, running as fast and jerky as the machines of the time would allow, my mind visualised being in a Cobra, and exploring the galaxy.
In my humble opinion, Gamers today are used to virtual worlds created on a whim, where GTA can recreate an entire city similar to Los Angeles, and Assassins Creed can provide you with an exact replica of 17th Century Paris. What is left to imagine? Docking at a wireframe station was in my mind the same as flying into Aulin station, and docking on your assigned pad.


Today, I see elite as the game I always imagined it to be. The graphics and user interface are amazing, but the core gameplay is still back in its roots of the 80's and believe me, that's not a bad thing. I play today, what I imagined yesterday. Tomorrow I will play what I dreamed of today.

enjoy the game folks, and see you "out there"

 

[QBiG1970]

Have some rep. Nice read... I feel the same way Commander.
Fly Safe!

 

[CMDR Moortz]

Right on, Commander!

 

[Astronut57]

That's exactly how I feel about ED.
I first saw Elite on my mate's BBC Electron (poor man's BBC B) and was amazed.
Later I got my own copy when it was released on the Amstrad CPC464 - that particular version of Elite was in colour . Played it obsessively much like I play ED these days.

 

[Privata]

As a 22yrs old I loved reading this , elite for me was a game I played but much latter ; I was allways into space sims and before X2 came out I played some elite , I LOVED it and said to my self ''if only this could exist today'' then came X2 and well it was the best at the time as freelancer was just a linear game with open small maps... over time things changed X forgot that they needed to add stuff and went for a remake before they even worked once on some late game content to repeat working on the early game stuff for some months and months...
So feeling left down by X:R (a game I alpha tested) I , sadly started to see what the competition was like , I knew what elite : D was about but not that it was the game I had always been looking for... and well I got a copie for me and my best friend in BETA 2 and been played every day (when I am not at work) and playing Elite : D made me see how much X2 (the game that changed my perspective on space sims) was a elite inspired game, ship ideas , lore and other things (it was still original and not a clone)
(I allso played the first Xs , Xwing , tie fighter , TwA , Starlancer , etc...)
So elite is a bloody good game and I only ever played about 5-7 hrs of the first 3 games I can say I respect them and think they are the REAL father of space sims (open world ones) and the first elite is the farther of hardcore and immersive games.

 

[Archvillain]

I consider Frontier and First Encounters better in many aspects. They should have just fix the controls and mate with a present day GFX engine to have the game we all waited for.
Compared to those, Dangerous is a step backward.

How so? This is the opposite of my experience. I loved E84, tried very hard to love First Encounters but it just kind of... sucked, and it seems that Elite Dangerous is the awesomesauce Elite game I'd been wishing for.

Conceptually I loved that FFE had accurate scale and orbits, etc, but the scale trashed the gameplay; it felt like the game had been twisted around an awkward set of constraints, kicking and screaming. The fast-forwarding of time in FFE really bugged me. The space battles were awful. Eangerous fixed all this. The FTL supercruise is a much more elegant and gameplay-friendly solution (to the problem of scale) for me. The main drawback is that the logrithmic always-scaling speeds messes with your sense of scale (your speed is a number on the screen instead of a feeling in your body, so the way you slow down as you approach a planet creates the illusion that you're going a constant speed and it's the planet that is a much smaller object much closer to you). Combat in ED is interesting and lends itself better to more maneuvering and strategy, etc.

I also love that the graphics are genuinely beautiful now, rather than the symbolic geometric representations of E84, FFE, etc

I have proper controller hardware for E-Dangerous (HOTAS) which I didn't have for FFE or E84, so it's possible that E-Dangerous feels great in part because of that.

 

[Greyhawk]

Frontier and FFE were so filled with bugs it was very difficult to enjoy it. Also once you got to the final ship (cant remember name) there was no point playing any further.

They were very ambitious though for the time, just like the original Elite. I think ED will have a lot added to it over the years - its a solid framework to build on at any rate.

 

[Brieus]

That is actually a good idea. I don't like GTA much, but I would buy that if they had a good representation of a large city as it was in the 1920's or 30's

Sure, Prohibition, Bootleggers, Gangsters, Al Capone, The Untouchables, Speakeasies, all sorts of great GTA stuff there.

 

[Holven]

An excellent read.

I am a bit younger. My first contact with Elite, was the Amiga adaptation of Elite Plus. After feeling utterly defeated for a few days, try matching rotation speed with only digital input (only full turn or no turn, no incrementals), you youngsters, I finally got the hang of it and went crazy through the galaxies. My imagination feeding off everything; the descriptions of places and aliens.

Then... then I read about Elite: Frontier in the CU Amiga magazine. I was through the roof. I went through every length to exchange my old Amiga 500 with a new Amiga 1200, to be able to run the game at maximum. It was the most marvelous game ever. To date, including every MMO I have played, I have not spent as much time in any game. I played it until the day I finally pensioned off the A1200 for good, which had by then been severely upgraded, with expansion cards and a hard drive.

I had cursed loudly, when I learned that Frontier: First Encounters wouldn't come to the Amiga. And when I finally upgraded to a PC, the game was already out of circulation, at least here in Norway. Its reputation for bugs kept shops from stocking it. Time went on. I flew Freelancer, X2 and X3, but all of them lacked that feel. I missed the Milky Way and the feeling of a believable future. I had absolutely adored all the details that came with Frontier; the manual with all the ships, the map, the histories from life on the frontier. I read those a lot. (I actually read it again while waiting for this game.) Games kept falling short. A few promising leads on similar type games, became vapor ware.

I gave up... then the kickstarter. I didn't dare hope. Would they get enough money? My economy was very limited at that time; I could only help a little bit. I am so very happy things happened the way they did.

I absolutely loved watching Braben's developer updates, particularly the enthusiasm he showed. I understand the dream, for it is my dream also. I hope his hopes and dreams for what can be achieved, will come true. The game is fantastic as it is right now, but the dream of flying in gas giant atmospheres, landing on alien planets, possibly even go exploring or even hunting on their surfaces... it is such a dream, would be such an achievement. Even if the team doesn't manage to make everything they thought of, I will be satisfied, for no other game can offer me the same thing: To gallivant through the Milky Way, exploring not only space, but factions and politics, taking sides, making credits, friends and enemies.

Thank you, Braben and team.

 

[SeregDuin]

I read through a good thread today comparing both elite 84 and Elite Dangerous. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=143037

Instead of just rattling off another response, I felt I needed to comment here separately.

Any of you who know me, know that I am an old timer, who played elite way "back in the day" on the speccy & C64. I feel that some people are missing a fundamental point of the comparison. Just to recap for some "younglings" (no disrespect intended) At the time we had a bunch of 8 bit computers, some may remember the Atari 400/800, the Sinclair Spectrum, the Commodore VIC20, and Commodore 64. The Dragon 32, the Texas Instruments TI99, the Oric Atmos (had to love those orange keys The Amstrad CPC464 and of course for those posh enough to afford it the BBC Model B Microcomputer (all hail the mighty Beeb!!)

The games we played consisted of a staple of get a sheet of aliens, shoot them, go get another sheet, rinse and repeat until dead. We had 3 lives, and an extra life at 10000 points. At the time I used to feed my 10 pence coins into a Space Invaders machine that our local Cafe (Garage - or Gas Station if you are American) had installed. There was invariably a bunch of kids gathered around it after school. So finding my love of video games, I eventually managed to get an Atari 2600, original Teac effect (which is still working today, with the space invaders cartridge) and get into gaming. From there, I managed to get a spectrum, and then a C64. Learning to program in basic, Pascal, and for anyone who remembers the C64 - peek and poke

Then came the explosion of games, we had Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Sabre Wulf, Entombed, Psi Warrior, Marble Madness, Ant Attack, Attack of the mutant camels ( Thank you Jeff ), and the amazing Mercenary, and Damocles to name but a few.

They were all great, but none really offered anything more than the usual formula for gameplay (with the exception or mercenary)

Then .... Suddenly .... -=ELITE=- was born. David and Ian released a masterpiece that changed the direction of gaming. This was not just a new idea, it was a complete paradigm shift in thinking about the way we play games.
Suddenly, we had a ship, 100 credits, and a universe to go and make your own story.

When I look at elite dangerous today, what I see is that same vibrant game that I played back in the 80's. With one major exception. Its not that the game is not giving us what we expect these days. Its not that with the current power of todays computers I expect better, its not that I expect more from the game because there has been 30 years to improve. Its not anything like that ....


When I play elite dangerous today, the difference is this. I see on screen what my mind imagined, playing Elite back in the 80's. When we had a limited 3D vector graphics display, running as fast and jerky as the machines of the time would allow, my mind visualised being in a Cobra, and exploring the galaxy.
In my humble opinion, Gamers today are used to virtual worlds created on a whim, where GTA can recreate an entire city similar to Los Angeles, and Assassins Creed can provide you with an exact replica of 17th Century Paris. What is left to imagine? Docking at a wireframe station was in my mind the same as flying into Aulin station, and docking on your assigned pad.


Today, I see elite as the game I always imagined it to be. The graphics and user interface are amazing, but the core gameplay is still back in its roots of the 80's and believe me, that's not a bad thing. I play today, what I imagined yesterday. Tomorrow I will play what I dreamed of today.

enjoy the game folks, and see you "out there"

Ditto
Here is the first space sim that I played at uni. Featured a station very similar to the Coriolis and
played an almost monotone beep version of "The Blue Danube" when you successfully docked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBG4egqnByo

The video is a bit fancier than the one I played. We didn't have a colour card and only a greenscreen
monitor.
First played elite on a beeb and then many other machines since. Upgraded my Amiga 500 with AGA chipset
and 4mb ram card (which I still have though haven't started it up in a while) to play Frontier Elite II which I have continued to play on WinUAE amiga emulator up until Elite: Dangerous release.

 

[Grumpy181155]

Well said sir you have captured my feelings on ED very well.
I first played Elite when I was in the UK in '84 on my mates Commodore 64 and I have been looking for its successor ever since. How appropriate that the successor is made by the same guy. Now if I can only find a remake of Fighting Steel.

 

[XSTiBuzz]

Totally agree - C64 for me and my cousin had the BBC. Played Elite for hours and hours and hours. When the C64 eventually went I kept the box set of the Elite tape, manual and Dark Wheel for many years afterwards, something I've never done with anything else. No idea what I did with it though