Coming from the discussion from Yamiks' video "we" came to the point where it was speculated where this partly weird game design came from. Today I came across an article from the German PC magazine Gamestar, which has a monthly article series on bad, old PC games and the circumstances at the time, called: "Legendary bad". In January it featured "Frontier - Elite 2" (online article here (subscription only!). It shows, even back then journalists and players strongly disagreed on a verdict on this game. While some liked the complexity and diversity, some criticized flight model, controls and lack of story. Mostly the technical achievement of the galaxy simulation was acclaimed, while the game mechanics are said to be lacking. On that, even Ian Bell was agreeing: "It is one thing to write a simulator, but games are about fun, not realism".
Further the article states it was possible to land on planets and see cities, but with nothing to do besides "generic and boring missions". "First encounter", the successor of "Frontier - Elite 2", is being described as having a lot of bugs and having fundamental problems.
tl;dr: While FDev has solved the performance problems of earlier titles, it seems they are doing the same mistakes, they did 25 years ago:
- generic, boring missions
- lacking story
- overly complex gui and handling
- in general "user-hostile"
- a whole galaxy empty of content
Edit: As some readers misunderstood, the statements above are from the author Heinrich Lenhardt (and partially from other game reviews). This thread is not about my opinion on the game.
I haven't played the old titles, but it really shocked me to see the same flaws in Elite: Dangerous 25 years later.
Further the article states it was possible to land on planets and see cities, but with nothing to do besides "generic and boring missions". "First encounter", the successor of "Frontier - Elite 2", is being described as having a lot of bugs and having fundamental problems.
tl;dr: While FDev has solved the performance problems of earlier titles, it seems they are doing the same mistakes, they did 25 years ago:
- generic, boring missions
- lacking story
- overly complex gui and handling
- in general "user-hostile"
- a whole galaxy empty of content
Edit: As some readers misunderstood, the statements above are from the author Heinrich Lenhardt (and partially from other game reviews). This thread is not about my opinion on the game.
I haven't played the old titles, but it really shocked me to see the same flaws in Elite: Dangerous 25 years later.
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