Yeah but if it's a fangander...
Giggle. Rep'd
Yeah but if it's a fangander...
You have a point in there at all? No?? Then go away.
Before the original Elite, in '84, players expected a computer game to have multiple "levels" of play and "three lives". The two programmers had a very hard time selling a game that didn't work that way because "everybody expected" something like all the others. ED has broken the mold of "MMO's" in exactly the same way - it doesn't work the same way all the others do and many of the "features of MMO's" that "everyone expects" either don't work or simply aren't there.
The original Elite did something nobody had ever done before. It was ground breaking. ED isn't. It's an MMO lite where players can see each other in the game but their interaction within the game is limited to shooting each other or not. They can't trade. The communication tools are barebones and difficult to use. Grouping (winging up) is very much a hit and miss affair due to the networking implementation. If you do actually manage to form a group and not have it auto-disband, there's little for you to engage with as a group outside of shooting at stuff.
The real issue I have with ED is the number of missed opportunities that were missed by design in order to give us something that's neither one thing nor the other. It's an MMO with no group content, player trading, guilds etc... It has solo mode if you're a single player game type of person, but you're still at the mercy of the servers and everything is still instanced, as if you were playing an MMO. The game is a paradox. It has no idea what it wants to be and it suffers for it.
nobody mention SC so far:O
This is absolutely true.
Add to this: The lead developers and their underlying philosophy are one of free to play grind. When the PS4 sales tank - when, not if, most console gamers like something to DO in their games - I foresee the game moving into the Free to Play model firmly. I just dont think it survives without a future of resource boosters and credit boosters in a cash shop. Not unless it adds some serious polish and coherence to the disparate, disconnected mechanics lurking herein.
Our interaction with the galaxy needs to matter. Crime and punishment. Reputations based on who we deal with and whose missions we fail. Whose stuff we steal. We need persistence and some level of consequence. Without that, we arent living in the Elite universe, we're just visiting it - and everyone who watched Westworld or played a bethesda game knows what type of burnout that fosters after a while.
....Elite Dangerous, should be a hardcore game...
Can't rep you again so virtual +1 but yeah, there's a long way to go yet. I think FD need to get a move on. The sudden upsurge in popularity of space games hasn't gone unnoticed, I guarantee it and I'm sure some big studio somewhere is probably hard at work on something similar to ED/SC, probably making a note of all the mistakes both games have made in their ongoing development. If FD aren't careful, they might find themselves supplanted by other, more focused offerings from elsewhere.
Star Citizen is, in my opinion of course, an absolute mess. Yes, I own it. No I don't play it. It's in a terrible state at the moment and I'm not seeing much light at the end of that particular tunnel if I'm honest. I'm also hearing worrying things about the internal conflicts with Chris Roberts. The kind of conflicts I've heard all about before from his Freelancer days and so on. Not a good sign.
.
Says you. No it shouldn't says I.
imho the more hardcore it becomes the more people either just won't buy it, or will leave frustrated like your friends, as it becomes ever harder to make any meaningful progress. Accessibility and fun is the way to go.
And it's a further nope from me on most of the rest of your proposals.
Sorry.
The original Elite did something nobody had ever done before. It was ground breaking. ED isn't. It's an MMO lite where players can see each other in the game but their interaction within the game is limited to shooting each other or not. They can't trade. The communication tools are barebones and difficult to use. Grouping (winging up) is very much a hit and miss affair due to the networking implementation. If you do actually manage to form a group and not have it auto-disband, there's little for you to engage with as a group outside of shooting at stuff.
The real issue I have with ED is the number of missed opportunities that were missed by design in order to give us something that's neither one thing nor the other. It's an MMO with no group content, player trading, guilds etc... It has solo mode if you're a single player game type of person, but you're still at the mercy of the servers and everything is still instanced, as if you were playing an MMO. The game is a paradox. It has no idea what it wants to be and it suffers for it.
This is absolutely true.
Add to this: The lead developers and their underlying philosophy are one of free to play grind. When the PS4 sales tank - when, not if, most console gamers like something to DO in their games - I foresee the game moving into the Free to Play model firmly. I just dont think it survives without a future of resource boosters and credit boosters in a cash shop. Not unless it adds some serious polish and coherence to the disparate, disconnected mechanics lurking herein.
Our interaction with the galaxy needs to matter. Crime and punishment. Reputations based on who we deal with and whose missions we fail. Whose stuff we steal. We need persistence and some level of consequence. Without that, we arent living in the Elite universe, we're just visiting it - and everyone who watched Westworld or played a bethesda game knows what type of burnout that fosters after a while.
Fair enough. You're welcome to your opinion. You may be missing a lot of what's going on though. What we do DOES matter. I blow up a load of wanted NPCs and my rep with their faction goes down the toilet. I run missions for a faction and they like me. At the same time everything I do to their benefit boosts their BGS standing, what I do to harm them does the opposite. Just because I'm not the dragonborn or flash gordon or han solo or some other kind of chosen one in the universe doesn't mean I can't do stuff. I've fought in wars for factions I approved of. I've smuggled gear past the cops to support my "friends" and undermine my "enemies", I've hauled high-value cargo to where it was needed and evaded or outfought pirates along the way, I've looked on star systems nobody has visited before and made a handsome profit on selling their details. Along the way I've shot it out with other players, or dodged them or shown them a clean pair of heels when they found me, I've worked with others to make what we both wanted happen...
So don't you DARE tell me that what we do doesn't count. I've done it and I've seen it.
Now, maybe doing all this doesn't float your boat. Maybe you can't see that this is how this game is designed to be played. Maybe you want it to be different so that you can play it the same way you play all the others. Fair enough.
You may be a boss in those other games. In this one, if you can't get how to play it you're a scrub.
And why should players give the furry crack of a rats behind for those factions? Nothing changes, except the owner of a station changing. One of many. Too many to care.
The factions are faceless NPC corporations that have no meaning to the individual. If I can't get a module on X, I jump to Y and get it there.
Nothing of this is meaningful or has any sort of noticeable impact. On top of that, the lack of actual content.
Of course it has meaning to the individual. If you're allied with a faction that you're able to promote to control a star system then that becomes a much more profitable place for you to be. If you do PP and your power expands into profitable places it's better for you and for everyone else aligned to that power.
You're thinking like a figurehead, like a leader.. You need to get it through your head that in this game YOU ARE NOT THAT THING. And you won't be. Ever.
Start thinking like a little guy and make your way in the universe. You'll see what you can do.
I am especially not content with the "get punished when you defend yourself after being interdicted" nonsense.
Releasing something less than once a month for a few day's play is not 'releasing content', dear god why do you people have to try and rain on every comment post and topic that in any way attempts to drag the game out from the utter grindfest it's become? Like I said before, it's because you don't WANT the game to change, in case it upsets your small little band of 'hardcore' players.
How do you get punished by defending yourself? if you defend yourself well, you don't punished .. defend badly, you do, no?
Because these interdictions happen so frequently and without challenge, they become strictly an annoyance. To me, these are equivalent to random battles in Final Fantasy, but instead of giving a reward (such as experience), you will sometimes receive a bounty against you for defending yourself (attacking without scanning, attacking someone who interdicted you and is still clean), or no reward!
If there's nothing connecting you personally to the game, why make a song and dance about it, go play something else?
The reason it's so insipidly boring is that we're not allowed to pilot our own ships. It's a children's flight model, with space speed limits, ridiculously slooow ones at that. This is why everything else in the game sucks - combat, travel, exploration etc. - all of it hinges around being free to fly our ships, how, where and when we please. Take that away and it's just wallpaper.
Not allowed to accelerate. Not allowed to yaw. Not even allowed to look out of a window, let alone pan around with proper decent external views. Not even an autopilot to take the inane drudgery out of the dire "supercruise" sessions. Just pottering around at slow taxiing speeds, pitching and rolling pathetically, oops careful gotta keep it in the "blue zone".. an utter travesty that such an amazing game has been reduced to the likes of ED. Why anyone would care about all the supposed political guff is beyond me, nothing to do with the Elite i know and love. Even the skydome - the one supposedly-realistic aspect of the game - looks like a child daubed it... background stars are too big and few and blurry, foreground stars all dim like they're all dying out, everything makes weird noises, the ships just make groaning sounds instead of responding to inputs, there's a countdown timer and lockup transition on everything, even transitions for the transitions (cough cough "orbital cruise" and "glide mode" etc.), it's a complete joke of a title, and no pretender to the FE2/FFE throne.
I blame the enablers here as much as DB...