When will it become a game? Will it become a game?

Hanerib

Hanerib
I play original Elite, the one that came out 30 years ago, a little bit every now and then. It's charming how similar it feels, like it was the same game. So yes, it's a game.

How Elite Dangerous should be, as a game, is a topic that appears to have been extensively discussed throughout its existence.
 

robbyp

robbyp
I've no idea what I've been doing for the last 1500 odd hours in Elite if I'm not playing a game.

So it's a game.
 

Watcher

W
Enderby said:
It's been around for a while now (long enough I would say) do you think we will ever see the addition of properly developed, fun and engaging, gameplay mechanisms?
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Having looked at your replies I'd say perhaps you are a bit burnt out perhaps just need a break?
There are lots of things to do with varying levels of depth and difficulty and with greater or lesser need to define your own ends or reasons for doing them.
There are all kinds of things the devs can work on to help with general quality of life, better tools and so on. There are all sorts of things they can do to add further depth and more gameplay options. There are things they can do to try and pull things together in to more tightly integrated gameplay loops. Perhaps some improved system to add more of a personal narrative and more attachement to the lore or ongoing story.. But I'm not convinced that will help if the basic premise of flying your ship about doing stuff is losing its shine.
So perhaps take a break and see if you feel yourself drawn back in time. Or, if you've been doing pretty much the same thing forever try something completely different in game and see if you can find the fun in that... I've found both of those to help.
 

Anopheles

Anopheles
robbyp said:
I've no idea what I've been doing for the last 1500 odd hours in Elite if I'm not playing a game.

So it's a game.
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You've been in a simulation hampered by gamy elements and a game hampered by simulationy elements.

It's a bird with gills hesitant at the water's edge.
 
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rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
Enderby said:
670
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So during those 670 hours, when has Elite became an experience and stopped being a game?

Unless it was just "an experience" from the very beinning - and if that's the case, then my question is: why would you spend 670 hours in something that's just "an experience" for you? What is so engaging about that "experience" that keeps you coming back to it?

And if you answer that - you may realise that Elite is indeed a game, not an experience and the game is that, what keeps you coming back to it :)

Also, as a side comment, I think people like us (I have well over 1500 hrs) are either complaining or not happy with the game, as we played absolute shedloads out of it - and there is just not much left in it for us. Hence the feeling that there is no game or no story or no <insert what's missing in Elite for you here>.

Yes, guilty as charged, I have been criticising the game lately too (I'd like to think it was constructive criticism rather than pointless moaning and whining), but just recently I have realised that maybe it's not the game, maybe it's just me having so many hours under the hood that I have simply overdone it.

And the truth - as often is the case - is probably somewhere in the middle of all this :)
 
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Enderby

E
rootsrat said:
So during those 670 hours, when has Elite became an experience and stopped being a game?

Unless it was just "an experience" from the very beinning - and if that's the case, then my question is: why would you spend 670 hours in something that's just "an experience" for you? What is so engaging about that "experience" that keeps you coming back to it?

And if you answer that - you may realise that Elite is indeed a game, not an experience and the game is that, what keeps you coming back to it :)

Also, as a side comment, I think people like us (I have well over 1500 hrs) that are either complaining or not happy with the game, as we played absolute shedloads out of it - and there is just not much left in it for us. Hence the feeling that there is no game or no story or no <insert what's missing in Elite for you here>.

Yes, guilty as charged, I have been criticising the game lately too, but just recently I have realised that maybe it's not the game, maybe it's just me having so many hours under the hood that I have simply overdone it.

And the truth - as often is the case - is probably somewhere in the middle of all this :)
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I absolutely adore the graphics and the flying-about-ness. It's second to none. I love astronomy!!

But, that excellence, for me anyway, only throws the dearth of a good 'game' into stark relief.
 

Darth Ender

D
It'll become a game when they add gameplay to the activity that most people spend almost all their time doing when they're not afk using a third party website or watching tv, Jumping and Supercruise. When those two activities become something that benefits from skill and includes activities for the player to do in order to partake in them, then it'll be a game.

That's the minimal viable product. Bonus points for making credits a finite resource, include other means of acquiring goods other than credits, and adding persistence of your actions in the game such that they impact how NPCS interact with you so that your "role" in the game is something you build and create over time.


and yes, i have over a dozen weeks of in-game time in this game. The time spent in the game is less a measure of how good a game is, than it is a measure of how little i value my time or how optimistic I was about the game.

For 2 years i played the game excessively. But that's petered off to almost no time spent in the game. And I haven't replaced this game-time with another game, which i have available to play with (star citizen, vendetta-online, for instance). It's killed my will to be in space. Now i just binge watch sci-fi tv series i've already seen entirely before in the hope that i can re-kindle that optimism and wonder.
 
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DMaster

DMaster
Luniticisi said:
I know this because I am omnipotent, and I like blue cheese.

Also the game is not going to make a drastic change to please a few players.
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I am not really sure, if it will remain by only a few players. I have the subjective feeling, that more and more players are "awakening" and realize, that the game/sim is not that big thing, they initially hoped to be. And i guess this is going on with every release of new content, as it does not add that depth, they hope.

Besides that, i suggest to eat green cheese in the future ;-)
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
Enderby said:
I absolutely adore the graphics and the flying-about-ness. It's second to none. I love astronomy!!

But, that excellence, for me anyway, only throws the dearth of a good 'game' into stark relief.
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Fair enough.

So to answer your OP - for me Elite is already a game. There are tonnes of actual gameplay in it. For me - I tried most of it now, apart from Powerplay (somehow was never in a mood for that + running a 300-strong community/faction takes a lot of time :D ). I am a little bored with it now and I long for some engaging storyline to get involved in, but nevertheless, it still is a game for me.

A game that definitely needs improving, as some parts of it do need more gameplay - no question about that. But as a whole - it is a game.

Space Engine is an experience. Richie's Plank Experience is an experience. Star Citizen is definitely *cough* an experience. But Elite is a game.
 

Enderby

E
rootsrat said:
Fair enough.

So to answer your OP - for me Elite is already a game. There are tonnes of actual gameplay in it. For me - I tried most of it now, apart from Powerplay (somehow was never in a mood for that + running a 300-strong community/faction takes a lot of time :D ). I am a little bored with it now and I long for some engaging storyline to get involved in, but nevertheless, it still is a game for me.

A game that definitely needs improving, as some parts of it do need more gameplay - no question about that. But as a whole - it is a game.

Space Engine is an experience. Richie's Plank Experience is an experience. Star Citizen is definitely *cough* an experience. But Elite is a game.
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Nice response. Thank you.
 

CMDR Asuradice

CMDR Asuradice
rootsrat said:
So during those 670 hours, when has Elite became an experience and stopped being a game?

Unless it was just "an experience" from the very beinning - and if that's the case, then my question is: why would you spend 670 hours in something that's just "an experience" for you? What is so engaging about that "experience" that keeps you coming back to it?

And if you answer that - you may realise that Elite is indeed a game, not an experience and the game is that, what keeps you coming back to it :)

Also, as a side comment, I think people like us (I have well over 1500 hrs) are either complaining or not happy with the game, as we played absolute shedloads out of it - and there is just not much left in it for us. Hence the feeling that there is no game or no story or no <insert what's missing in Elite for you here>.

Yes, guilty as charged, I have been criticising the game lately too (I'd like to think it was constructive criticism rather than pointless moaning and whining), but just recently I have realised that maybe it's not the game, maybe it's just me having so many hours under the hood that I have simply overdone it.

And the truth - as often is the case - is probably somewhere in the middle of all this :)
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It's important to give construcrive criticism like you, myself and many others have. There are some who are very negative, some very positive, some try to be more middle of the road.

We're a valuable resource, we've collectively put in millions of hours worth of time into ED, not that it means that our individual ideas or opinions are the be all and end all of anything, but as a collective hivemind we, each of us (trolls and whichever shade of knight we feel like accusing each other of being included) have a lot of knowledge about the subjective experience of playing ED and I'm sure FD is listening, though I'm unsure about how much FD can do with it or even how they could distill that experience into the game itself.

Tell you one thing for sure, they wouldn't be starting feedback forums if they weren't going to try to harness that experience and knowledge in some way.
 

[Diplomacy] Carnegie

[Diplomacy] Carnegie
Darth Ender said:
It'll become a game when they add gameplay to the activity that most people spend almost all their time doing when they're not afk using a third party website or watching tv, Jumping and Supercruise. When those two activities become something that benefits from skill and includes activities for the player to do in order to partake in them, then it'll be a game.
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I could argue that skill isn't necessarily required for it to be a game (Snap! anyone?), but instead I'd like to ask what kind of thing you'd like to actually DO, in supercruise (I'm discounting jumping because that's a loading screen) which requires skill.

Bear in mind that ED already has a steep learning curve, so adding too much complexity to the basic acts of navigation is going to run the risk of making the game unplayable for a newbie.
Also, consider that a subset of the playerbase has little to no interest in what takes place between point A and B, where A is where they are and B is where the activity they want to do (trade, bounty hunt, PvP, griefing) and will not welcome anything that makes that A-B transition any more time-consuming.
 

BananaCat89

BananaCat89
Nope.

At this point what you see is what ya get. Good game that could have been great if the devs were not such stubburn space nerds. Their grande vision was always a game where the player sits on their butt and uses their imagination. Its pretty much D&D in space with some visuals to guide you along and a half stoned out paranoid secretive GM who seems to have better stuff to do then come up with any kinda cool story line or adventure. That is Elite in a nutshell. Most people here won't tell you that because that is exactly what they wanted. A slack non stressful space sim where they could escape their wives for a few hours a night and relive their childhood space camp fantasies..

Your not going to sway the main developers off their path. They are dead set in their ways like donkeys. This has been proven time and time again. The sooner you realize that this has nothing to do with our dreams and everything to do with theirs, You will be better off. They say to blaze your own trail but no matter how hard you try In Elite, It always seems like your playing through someone else's adventure. Unfortunately for the end user that persons sense of imagination is a lot blander then ours.

Basically its a old space nerd game. Not the cool Star wars or Star trek space nerds either. The boring real ones that will froth at the mouth and research for a month to prove all those goofy fun sci-fi movies wrong. Fun for them is astronomy, complex puzzles and math. Not knocking that as not being fun. Everyone enjoys their own thing. It just seems both sides are stuck in their ways and there really is no room for to much compromise. We want intergalactic wars. To go where no man has gone before and bang green alien girls. We want to be Captain Kirk. They want to study and analyze black holes and do complex calculations. They want to be Carl Edward Sagan! Hence the problem of Elite: Dangerous.

One could argue that there is a ton of other games out there that give players those options. The problem is there not as good as Elite in a lot of ways. There is a ton of stuff Frontier does right that makes those other games feel like their lacking. Frontier has the game engine down and almost perfected. They just can't seem to figure out how to implement engaging story to it. It is like a poorly written choose your own adventure book from my youth. you know the ones. With cool art work and a neat cover with a wicked sounding back page over lining the authors imagination. Then you start reading and your like " Mother of god, This is poorly written and unimaginative. It is literally going nowhere no matter what i choose!"

They won't change. If you don't like the current state of the game then sadly it is probably not for you. Sucks to say that but its the reality of the matter. Minor tweaks and stuff will happen in the near future but don't expect some grand overhaul that turns Elite into Halo: combat evolved. They may be able to steal Master chiefs Ship design and his Spartan suit, but they seem incapable of ever recreating the flow and greatness of the story or its engaging game play in the pve or pvp side of things.
 
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