The restrictions on basic movement are the main reason i can't play ED. Can't suspend disbelief that i'm in a 'space ship' with a 'space speed limit' in all planes and axes. Besides which, there's no point anyway because those restrictions preclude any chance of fun, excitement or skill. It's not "Elite", and it's not my kind of game.
Few here seem to have a sorry clue what Elite always was, before ED. The original Elite was as realistic as arcade space sims could get, given the restrictions of the 8-bit hardware. You traded your way towards ship upgrades whilst fighting through hordes of enemies. And i do mean swarms of them. Pirates, police, both at once, thargoids launching thargons, anacondas launching worms, bounty hunters in fer de lances, rock hermits defending their claims, etc. etc. When not under attack, you were likely attacking something else. Quiet runs were relatively rare. It was hard-slog arcade action almost every inch of the way.
Elite 2 and 3 were the same as before, now as real as you could get in 16-bits. Almost no restrictions at all, seamless without transitions, atmospheres and gravity and cities, road and river networks, bridges, sprawling suburbs with white picket fences and churches with cemeteries and working clock towers, domed habitats and agriculture, mountains, craters, clouds, air density, resistance and frictional heating, proper inverse-square of radius gravity, the ability to fly and mod all ships, all of which are animated to varying degrees (working undercarriages, external hardpoints etc.), and again, shed-loads of combat; "exploration build", you say? Pfft good luck with that...
2 & 3 were awesome in all the same ways as the original, only cranked up to 11. They retained the decent UI and function-key mappings for the various systems screens (was a bit messed up in FFE but still usable).
And you played them the same basic way - trading your way up while fighting off hordes of attackers. The better equipment was usually worth it. That was how you progressed.
In ED all that's thrown out the window. I tried to play it the traditional way, trading up to bigger ships, but was only ever attacked on three occasions, and simply 'boosted' away each time. Zero combat experienced. And you quickly realise there's zero point in any of the upgrades since all the ships have the stupid space speed limit. No matter how much money you make, you're never going to be free to experience the fun of basic unfettered spaceflight. ED is intrinsically incompatible with that. The equipment upgrades make absolutely zero sense, but again there's zero point in trying to work it out because there's almost zero chance of needing any of it anyway - if you do get attacked, just run away.
So my experience of ED was basically like playing Euro Truck Simulator; launching, dot-tracking through the supercruise minigame without autopilot or external views, then docking, trading, or more often, not, since i could rarely find any reliable margins on anything i'd stocked up on, there isn't even a basic BBS system at any of the stations and the "duh, missions!" board and "passenger lounge" are so toe-curlingly dumb and wooden i can only cringe at every offering, its neurotic conditions and spurious rewards.
I don't want "experience points" or "reputation points" or "engineering materials", i just want to be free to fly the damned ship without restrictions, find reasonable trade routes and fight other ships with mainly fixed beam weapons, shields and missiles / ECM's, in zero-G free space - just the basic minimum features we had in the previous games. Just flying a ship, in "real space", with full control, defending my precious cargo of whatever against relentless waves of pirate clans and police.
ED is nothing like that. In comparison, it's a slide-show, trying to tempt you into playing more by flashing an ankle of possibilities it can never actually fulfill. It's a drag queen. An imposter. The real Elite must be tied up in the janitor's closet in its underwear. It looks Elite-ish, but doesn't play anything like it... and the things it's missing are where all the fun was in the previous games. Full flight control, no nerfs, and merciless waves of assaults on almost every flight.
ED is not Elite. It's a completely different type of game, abandoning the freedom and scope that made its predecessors so compelling.
Its basically a space-trucking arcade game with Jumpgate-like instanced 'combat zones', space speed limits and transitions for the transitions... and as such, an anathema to this lifelong Elite fan..
Why would it invalidate my post? The market had a need for space games and there was no competitor (as it is now), hence people will buy it anyway, even if there are flaws in the game.
