You're correct, modern computers are more powerful. And it's because of this that it's much harder to develop games, these days. Elite was written by two lads. Elite dangerous has needed dozens of people.
100% of Elite was written. Sounds, graphics and content. It was all coded. And it all fit into a few kilobytes.
ED has needed teams to focus on the sound. Teams to focus on special effects. Teams to focus on models. Teams to focus on coding. Specialists like Sarah have one job (write ai). And you need leads to direct everything.
Just to get the game into the state it is now has taken dozens of people years to achieve. And not with the huge budget most games these days demand. Yet it does more than Elite did. Despite the assertion that it hasn't evolved enough.
It's no surprise it's a work in progress. Technology these days demands enormous levels of work to create something as visually, aurally and technically advanced as ED. And it will keep evolving.
Humans are only capable of so much. Humans haven't particularly changed since 1984. We haven't increased our ability to work by the same magnitudes as computers have. The developers can only churn out so much over time.
They could have focused the last two years on making ED evolutionary, compared to Elite, by only developing the story, the ai, the galaxy, missions, emergent game play and whatever else it is that you think should have been better. But they'd have needed to do it at a cost. Wireframe graphics anyone?
I'll repeat what I said in that thread about ED compared to Elite.
ED is unlike any game I've played. No other game allows you to explore a 1:1 scale representation of our galaxy. No other game makes me feel I'm actually in a space ship, actually flying it. All other games I've played make me the hero, the most important character, the protagonist in a drama that all comes down to me. ED doesn't do that. It makes me feel tiny. As it should. Yet I can make a difference. I can impact events. And I can do it in the way I want to.
This is the space game I've wanted to play since I first saw Elite. I wanted to play this game when Eve came out and I was disappointed to discover it was just a point and click strategy game in space. This is the game I wanted to play when I saw No Man's Sky for the first time, yet found out it wasn't going to let me play with friends, wasn't going to be released as a pc game initially and wouldn't let me finally play Elite online.
It's the space game I've always wanted. And the best thing is, it's going to keep getting better. Even Frontier bored me after a short time because the whole thing was static. And it never got better.
Combat in ED is far and beyond the best space combat I've experienced in any game. The audio is the best I've heard. The graphics are excellent and the lore is superb, rich and interesting.
I couldn't disagree more with the idea that ED has only evolved in visuals and audio, over Elite. It's gigantic, compared. It's online. And it's way more fun.
I can't disagree that it needs more development. It does. But that's no surprise. FD's ambitions are huge. It's going to take time to fulfil them.
But for those who enjoy ED, that's only a positive. Not a negative.
So if I agree that ED hasn't evolved enough over Elite, then the undeniable truth is that Elite cannot ever evolve any further. ED will. So it's only a matter of time until what you want comes true.
For me, it already did. I can't imagine how anyone who loved Elite can look at ED and not feel this is what they've always wanted. It has its flaws. But it's like no other game out there. And that's because no one else would dare attempt it.
And that's it, isn't it? No one else has dared attempt it. Which is why we've waited 30 years for it. And that's why we are going to have to wait for it to reach its full potential.
Thankfully, while we wait, those of us who enjoy it get to play the game we've wanted for 30 years.
