Is Elite Dangerous a Dad's Game Played mainly by "non-gamers"?

[Duane Dibbley]

One dimensional thinking from this OP! Your age doesn't determine your style of play or attitude towards gaming..I'm 33 and I'm technically old enough to be a grandad..am I the demographic you are talking about? The whole premise put forward is not a problem anyway when you see the enthusiasm and devoted player base on this forum, not to mention the higher purchasing power of older professionals. I spent £850 on my rig purely for ED (there is nothing else on my system)and was amazed at my own restraint by not getting an uber-rig, 'cos that's what I do with everything eg £1800 spent on Yonex irons and £600 on Callaway woods and on Saturday I bought a £330 Great Big Bertha (hope this makes many of your minds boggle )..I don't think that is a disadvantage for ED.

I come from a non-gaming background as an adult, apart from FM and FIFA. I stopped gaming as a kid seriously at about 13-14, due to my heavy sporting background and basically not having enough time..although I did have the Mega Drive then N64, but hardly used the N64, I ended up giving it to my little brother!

I stopped playing football last year and ED was basically a way of filling that void - my love for this type of PC game came from SQ1 in the C27th..always did the odd search for similar games when browsing! When I came across the new Elite, I couldn't believe my luck..perfect timing!

As far as the direction of the gameplay?..well I think DB is set on his own course here..ED isn't the way it is because of the players..it is a very personal vision, occasionally influenced in a small way by our demands as a community!

DISCLAIMER: CV1 spec has already convinced me that my 970 isn't powerful enough and obviously, now I'm going to need better rig - D'oh!
Arghh it's 9am!

 

[Patrick_68000]

The experience is passed on from father to son, I think

 

[AnthonyRV]

I'll let you know when I become a dad by around June time. I don't think I'll be up to much gameplay for the first few months of the little one's life but I'm hoping that will change over time. Just to be sure though, I'm on the return leg of a trip to Sagittarius A to say I've done it

 

[Patrick_68000]

ED is a patrimony and cultural heritage which crosses the generations

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Ripped up and thrown in the bin where it belongs.

Who the heck do you think you are 'dad game'... May I suggest you learn to play better. Many of us have been gamers since before you were even born. We have seen the dumbing down of what you're generation calls 'games' with there quciktime events which require such skill.

I read you're post and all I got was click bait for trolls from a condescending little <Insert word to get me banned here>.

You have the dubious pleasure of being the first person I have blocked on a forum for many, many years.


Everyone else, sorry for the rant but agism is not very nice - maybe the OP needs to learn the age of the people developing this game and all the others he plays...

Mod's sorry for the rant but come on... you going to let him insult anyone over 30 means he's going to get a lot of flack and rightly so too.

 

[Gran Solo]

I agree that there is a generational divide, but that's just coincidental with how many of that generation are time-poor and how many have the luxury to play games all day.
I'm 35 and I don't have time for a game that feels like a second job. Maybe "dad" factors like job, wife, and kids all take up a lot of your game time and consequently you don't have the time for clan shenanigans and "training" and grinding ranks and resources?

I wouldn't know if that's what a gamer's gamer's game is, but if it is, I don't want that anyway, so call me a dad gamer if you must. I really appreciate that I don't have to do that in order to play this particular game.

 

[Salami]

I agree with OP.
This in other words I addressed as well, and I'm a 45 year old gamer.
This is basically a "dead game" for some of us.
Go here, scan, move on, scan, move on... GOD the thrill of it, I can't bear it.
That was sarcastic.
Trading or 'cabbying' is just as thrilling: it's watching a tree grow.

It's been days again since i found a doable mission, I spend my time in RES'ses, basically boring my brain out.

Then there are a few here on the board being uber-douches about these posts, sitting in their comfy zone doing exploring, trading, whatnot, telling me I haven't got a clue, and that I am entirely incorrect about everything I post.

But see, I am not the only one posting about these things, so there must be some valid point behind it, right?

Well done, OP.

ADDENDUM:
Changing a few things in ED does not mean those in their comfy corners doing their thing can't go on doing their thing.
There are solutions in which everyone can be pleased.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

Indeed, the devs may come under pressure from gamers to make it make it more gamery, or rather "less of a game, more 'real', action packed etc", which may put the "dadfolk" off it!

Confused about this bit. I think most of the older players prefer more realism which means less of the gamer type gloss such as overt action, shiny things and other such shallowness.

There's a poll somewhere which shows most CMDR's are in the 30-50 age bracket. I'm in my 40's now and an original Elite veteran from the 80's. I was what you would call a gamer but, as you will discover, that nasty Mistress life gives you responsibilities and takes your spare time away.

Now I am depressed and am off to stand in a corner to rust whilst mourning my long lost misspent youth. humpf!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Oh no, this is going to explode, and I know it...

Save me moderators save me ;-;

Is no mod going to save Gluts?

Moderation these days, in my day we had to mod for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to the forums to mod for fourteen hours a day week in-week out.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Confused about this bit. I think most of the older players prefer more realism which means less of the gamer type gloss such as overt action, shiny things and other such shallowness.

There's a poll somewhere which shows most CMDR's are in the 30-50 age bracket. I'm in my 40's now and an original Elite veteran from the 80's. I was what you would call a gamer but, as you will discover, that nasty Mistress life gives you responsibilities and takes your spare time away.

Now I am depressed and am off to stand in a corner to rust whilst mourning my long lost misspent youth. humpf!

The typical profile of the ED player

 

[zynaps]

Having been around for 40 years, and having grown up with computers and gaming, I can safely say that what the OP is seeing is due to ED having a large population from the UK. The UK gaming habits has to me always appeared to be a bit different from mainland Europe (and also the USA).

 

[Hurricane Moon]

Is no mod going to save Gluts?

Moderation these days, in my day we had to mod for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to the forums to mod for fourteen hours a day week in-week out.

I just spat my coffee all over my works pc ziggy lol.....

don't forget it was 8 days a week back then aswell,and the days were 48 hours long.

 

[Shadowdancer]

It's 2016. Today's dads are people who learned to cope without self-regenerating health or chest-high walls everywhere. Those self-declared "gamers" can take their easymode kiddie gameplay and sod right off

 

[CariadocThorne]

I am 31, with kids and a wife.

My wife is a dedicated Elder Scrolls Online player.

I played mainly play games like Fifa, Dark Souls, Fallout, Archeage, Elder Scrolls series, the Witcher series and Destiny, so I would definately class myself as a gamer rather than a dadgamer.

 

[Laste]

I'd like to play more games, but I can't remember where I've put my slippers.

They are next to your tablet thingy, remember? You were playing world of tanks.

 

[Riedquat]

'Dad Gamer' here.

According to your definition of a Dad gamer OP, I am quite different from most because I prefer my games to be a real challenge, I dont like repetition, I prefer games that are different every time you play.

I loved the previous Elite games because they were tough, you could work and work and work and then boom, lose it all in one encounter, I absolutely loved that, it created a little fear which kept you on your toes and forced you to make decisions based on risk vs reward.

What I really hate about todays games is the lack of challenge and the constant dumbing down, it quite obvious why the Dev's do it, because they dont want to lose players (now the fear is with them )

These days with steam and games being so easy to obtain, players can move between games at the drop of of a hat, it's not like when I was younger, when you read about a game in Zzap64, then went to the shop and paid for a complete finished copy.

Since ED released I have probably played no more than 8-9 hours, I find it incredibly stale, lifeless and there is no challenge at all - I dont see that changing because the Dev's wouldnt want to lose players by making it too tough or too cerebral.

I like the forums though

 

[ZeeWolf]

Perhaps during the earlier days of gaming it felt like everything was experimental and didn't follow a series of heavily evolved expected tropes. ED feels quite a bit like a traditional experimental title and it makes people angry because it doesn't contain 10 hours of cut scene story with voice acting as required by games which take place in space.

[video=youtube;W1ZtBCpo0eU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU[/video]

 

[JeffVimes]

The problem is not the age. The problem is people saying "look it was fun in the original Elite so why would you want something else?" You can be all touchy about how hardcore we were (yes I am not that young anymore as well), but you can't ignore that the whole game design theory has made tremendous progress in terms of identifying what is fun, engaging and how to achieve it. Citing "auto health regen", Call Of Duty and stuff like that is just an idiotic strawman. Old games were not hardcore for the sake of being hardcore. There was just no alternative due to technical limitation / lack of understanding. There are tons of modern games that are hard, yet fun. Saying that all modern gaming is super easy gameplay is idiotic and wrong.

The problem with Elite is not that it has a increadibly steep learning curve. It's that it's failing as a game once you past it.

Take another game based on grind: Diablo. Diablo is totally succeeding as a game where Elite is failing for a simple reason: you are doing the same thing over and over, but you have a clear goal and hope for a reward (loot). That's just game design 101, yet Elite: dangerous is failing at that. I really hope the loot and craft update (2.1, 2.2, whatever) really take the opportunity to work on that. Hell, just make killing a ship drop one of their weapon/module, make the DPS of weapon variable, make Pirate Lords having a high chance of good loot, and yeah, at least you are now farming RES for something else than Credit and killing something give a bit of excitement whilst you are looking at the thing it drop. I am reinventing the wheel here (frak, loot dropping has been here forever to ease grinding game mechanism).

Yes, it feel like a vocal part of the community haven't played any game since the 80s and just want their Elite with a nicer graphic engine. They play half an hour per week, have a Cobra and feel like everyone should be happy in that ship. If that's the target Frontier is targeting that's fine, that's just not me.

I have 500h on the game, and nothing else to do. I am a great time there and I would love to play more but when I log in I just don't know what to do. Missions are pointless, trading is stupid and I have to rely on third party tools, exploring was fun for a time but you realise shortly that the time / awe ratio is pretty poor ...I will remember my first 100h on this game fondly, it's one of the best experience I had in years. but the one after were pretty frustrating and never had the excitement of the beginning, because once you know what you are doing, you are just grinding.

 

[CMDR Crustatious Cornelius Pig]

So I'm a PC gamer\Dad gamer, started in the 80s with my Atari 800. I play all manner of titles on the PC but Elite is now what I play most. I really do not get involved with console gaming although my kids do so we have a XB1 and they occasionally play ED and !!!GASP!!! CQC

I even worked for Westwood Studios in the early 90's in the QA department on Command and Conquer, Dune II, Lands of Lore among others.

 

[Zelos1983]

The problem is not the age. The problem is people saying "look it was fun in the original Elite so why would you want something else?" You can be all touchy about how hardcore we were (yes I am not that young anymore as well), but you can't ignore that the whole game design theory has made tremendous progress in terms of identifying what is fun, engaging and how to achieve it.

As I said earlier, that didn't happen. Modern games tend to be boring, often just a collection of FMV sequences interrupted by instructed button mashing. Or Moorhuhn-Shooting. Just compare Crysis 1 (which was rather good) with Crysis 3 (which I haven't played for half an hour). You see the degeneration of gameplay.

The problem with Elite is not that it's hard. It's that it's failing as a game.

It's actually not. Despite having hundreds of games (and a full steam library, including modern AAA titles), I end up playing E most of the time, because it's the most fun and interesting. Plenty of people enjoy E quite exclusively, despite the lack of modern technology employed (just think how great the game it could be if it made use of modern computers, multiple output devices etc.).

Take another game based on grind: Diablo. Diablo is totally succeeding as a game where Elite is failing for a simple reason: you are doing the same thing over and over, but you have a clear goal and hope for a reward (loot). That's just game design 101, yet Elite: dangerous is failing at that. I really hope the loot and craft update (2.1, 2.2, whatever) really take the opportunity to work on that. Hell, just make killing a ship drop one of their weapon/module, make the DPS of weapon variable, make Pirate Lords having a high chance of good loot, and yeah, at least you are now farming RES for something else than Credit and killing something give a bit of excitement whilst you are looking at the thing it drop. I am reinventing the wheel here (frak, loot dropping has been here forever to ease grinding game mechanism).

That's actually not what a lot of players want. Why do we need "loot"? Or rare/epic outfittings? Usually you can buy vehicles and weapons in a store, that's how it is today and how it should be in a future. I don't grind every day just to make my car use 0.5% less fuel or accelerate a bit faster. That just adds tedium, forcing people to master an arbitrary crafting/looting system in order to advance on other parts of the game. Horizon's crafting system has already become my greatest criticism of the expansion.

I have 500h on the game, and nothing else to do. I am a great time there and I would love to play more but when I log in I just don't know what to do. Missions are pointless, trading is stupid and I have to rely on third party tools, exploring was fun for a time but you realise shortly that the time / awe ratio is pretty poor ...

Maybe you just lack imagination? Ich have over a month of ingame time, yet there is still much to do and to explore for me.