Hi, I'm new. I love and hate this game already.
I love the potential of it.
I hate the community.
Sorry, I said it. But if no-one says it, nothing will ever change - and the potential of this game will die, along with the game itself.
My friend helped me overcome the utterly abysmal new player experience, and then posted a thread about it. To read the replies shows the arrogance and ignorance of this community. "we had to do it, so she should have to as well" type answers about - well guess what, when you have players in 100 million ships blowing up players in day 1 ships and their first hauler, within 20 LY of the starting system, you are lying to yourselves to make that argument. When you started when the game was new, everyone sucked, everyone had the same learning curve.
And to those who say "you need to watch those 9 hours of video tutorials, they'll show you all you need to know!" ... no. This is meant to be a game; it is not a second job. If you need to take a day long course just to undock because the default key bindings are manic, that's not a good thing. Just like those lovely space stations that turn you around for no particular reason - and point you directly at the wall of the space station. That's not immersive, or cool, or fun. It's just dumb. Space is a big place; I get that flight control is easier if you have a traffic pattern, but making someone take off into a wall? Really?
"But the challenge is the fun!" ... no, actually, it's not fun at all. The gameplay is simplistic and shallow compared to other space games past and current. I hear there is a patch soon that will add depth; that's nice, this game is not worthy of being called anything but a beta for now.
The simplest test of the game is to see how the community treats new players. Does it embrace and welcome them? Or does it instantly pounce on them, blasting them apart in their desperate state of lacking content and meaningful pvp, with the only thing left to do being to grief new players out of the game? And make no mistake - that is what is going to happen.
"It's ok, Elite just isn't for you!" ... well funny thing is EVE Online was a fun game for me for a decade or so. I am fine with sharp learning curves, earning things, and waiting to achieve things. But when I look at this game ... all I see is a grindfest treadmill where the quickest way to grind up the treadmill is to slaughter other players, preferably new and defenseless ones. And it seems that the consequences of being "bad" is utterly nonsensical - get paid 100,000 to blow up a surface installation, be fined 4000 at most ... what? Who designed that? Without any disincentive, the only people playing this game in 3 months time will be the hard core fanatics, and the PvPers who are really bored while waiting for Star Marine.
And that learning curve? Actually, having no missions you can take when you are new, and no-where you can play and have fun because no matter which way you go you simply get blown apart, that isn't a learning curve. That is simply bad design.
So yes: my honest early impression of this game: it is a solid NOT RECOMMENDED. For the price, there is simply not enough you can do as a new player that is fun - because no matter what you do, some nice veteran will certainly be there to blow you apart and ensure you can't actually have any fun at all, and worse they will tell you it's all part of the "learning curve" - even if they happen to have more money than they can ever spend in game, and ships and weapons that leave a new player with precisely no chance whatsoever of doing anything other than blowing up. Sorry, if I wanted to play a Lemmings respawn suicide game, Planetside 2 has much better gameplay.
I hope this game improves. But as it stands, I can't see it surviving the launch of No Mans Sky and Star Citizen. Mainly because the community here is behaving precisely like very bored players in other open world PvP games - when the game isn't fun any more, the only thing left to do is kill new players repeatedly. And that destroys the player base as new players simply cease to join or stay, and because old players have all the things they ever wanted microtransactions dry up as well ... and then the servers go offline one day and everyone wonders why.
Pick your targets people, "welcoming" players to the game by stopping them doing anything is simply a recipe to hasten the failure of this ambitious title.
