Doing the same mistakes for 25 years?

[Ian Doncaster]

There are common rules for games in general, so there is a huge objective part in that.

About the only common rule or principle I can think of between - say - Tetris, Chess, Civilisation, Doom, Poker, Cricket and World of Warcraft - is that the player's actions have some effect (if not always a decisive or critical one) on the outcome.

What rules are you thinking of?

 

[Xenia_K]

......
Ask yourself the question, what this full scale galaxy adds to ED?

I guess it adds a full scale galaxy to the game
And I really like it that way !
Stupid linear pre-defined storylines / tasks to be gone through by the player annoy me - e.g. like
Star Wars, Tie Fighter, Silent Hunter 3, Lazy Leisuresuit Larry....
I really appreciate the Sandbox-Concept - its is realistic as life should be - 90% bore routine plus 10% excitement.
Yes, it may take You hours/days to patrol a newly found Planet with volcanic acitivity until You find a spot -
how long does it take You in real life ?
Yes we haven´t found Tubeworms yet - looking forward to the exciting moment (if I am lucky I´ll be first discoverer ?)
Who knows which types of alien civilisations/monuments/sites already life in game are still waiting to be discovered ?

If You are looking for a straight gaming adventure (including optimized strategy to solve it) play one - but don´t look for it in
this nice simulation of life

 

[Vasea Azure]

delete pls

 

[RymdLazer]

"Common game rules"?!
Oh you are so disqualified.

 

[Xenith]

Elite need to be a battle royale xD

Oh hell no, if you think this game is lazily designed, Battle Royale is even lazier!

 

[B1rdy]

It's an interesting thought.
Try to imagine a game like WoW or ESO.
Take out the storylines, overarching quests and long term narrative, explicit MP content like raids and group dungeons and factional conflict and replace it with fetch, delivery, kill quests plus some resource gathering.
Now add a few hundred million square miles of empty landscape, rivers, mountains, woods, plains and lakes around the populated game world.
Throw in 35 or so customizable mounts, and voila, you'd have planet based ED.

Right, and you would have the same critique ED is being thrown at since release.

I guess it adds a full scale galaxy to the game
And I really like it that way !
Stupid linear pre-defined storylines / tasks to be gone through by the player annoy me - e.g. like
Star Wars, Tie Fighter, Silent Hunter 3, Lazy Leisuresuit Larry....
I really appreciate the Sandbox-Concept - its is realistic as life should be - 90% bore routine plus 10% excitement.
Yes, it may take You hours/days to patrol a newly found Planet with volcanic acitivity until You find a spot -
how long does it take You in real life ?

Is ED supposed to be a tech demo or a game?

Yes we haven´t found Tubeworms yet - looking forward to the exciting moment (if I am lucky I´ll be first discoverer ?)
Who knows which types of alien civilisations/monuments/sites already life in game are still waiting to be discovered ?

If You are looking for a straight gaming adventure (including optimized strategy to solve it) play one - but don´t look for it in
this nice simulation of life

I'd argue ED is still too sterile to be anything like that.

About the only common rule or principle I can think of between - say - Tetris, Chess, Civilisation, Doom, Poker, Cricket and World of Warcraft - is that the player's actions have some effect (if not always a decisive or critical one) on the outcome.

What rules are you thinking of?

Yes, I was onto basic things like that, or the player must need to know the cause for his/ her failure. The game should help the player comprehend his/ her mistakes. The general lack of information in-game adds to this. There are very informative videos on this topics on youtube like gamemakers toolkit or downward thrust.

 

[Jex =TE=]

If they were complaining about the exact same thing then perhaps the company could try a different approach maybe?

If the complaints are the same as before then that’s the very definition of making the same mistakes over and over. That’s not really the players fault, that’s the fault of those making the same mistakes ^

Over and over for every time they made the next version of the game.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Except they get good reviews and sell tons of games. People forget that FD isn't their personal dev studio that solely exists to cater to their very whims. They are a company, and they make games to earn money to pay salaries to make more games. Alternatively, maybe the people who keep complaining should just accept that Elite series simply isnt what they are looking for?

I can guarantee you that many people would likewise complain if ED would be a small-universe with handcrafted-mission...

Candy Crush sold tons too.

 

[Jex =TE=]

My expectations may be vastly different to your expectations. So who gets the right of way? Every single individual may have their own unique set of expectations. Who gets to say what's to be done?

Do you want stuff to interact with and find out there in the galaxy? Is there anyone here who doesn't want this - hands up please!

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

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.

vonHeinrich Lenhardt,
18.04.2018 08:00 Uhr

No surprise if someone in 2018 writes about a game from 1993. Measured on the modern standards, there are just a handfull of games which could still competed today in terms of gameplay.
At that time, it was a great game. Nothing more to say.

Elite Dangerous today is still progressing and in further development process. I'm very sure, there will be more in the future to do.
But beside of that, i don't think that it's empty. There were games which were full of content, yet i'm playing Elite Dangerous for whole 3 years and still have fun. There is NO other game, where i have spent so many hours. And even if i would have played only until i've done everything at maximum one time, i wpuld have still spent more gaming hours in Elite without repeating anything than i've spent on Elder Scrolls.

 

[Soon(TM)]

Gosh gawd dang it. If only there was a place for us to post our suggestions.

Maybe they could call it 'Suggestions & Feature Requests', or something like that.

In that way we could go there to post and comment on ideas designed to make the game better.

If only such a place existed!

Is that the same place where people make suggestions, comments and raise ideas which are completely ignored and often the opposite is actually implemented into the game?

Sounds like a modern version of the DDF!

 

[ToCoSo]

Game design hasn't changed at all since the 80's, the graphics get more realistic but the games are all the same, Elite somehow has something that is amazingly addictive yet flawed, guess I am happy flying my spaceship

 

[Enderby]

Game design hasn't changed at all since the 80's, the graphics get more realistic but the games are all the same, Elite somehow has something that is amazingly addictive yet flawed, guess I am happy flying my spaceship

I’m not sure that’s true (the first bit).

 

[Jex =TE=]

Who knows which types of alien civilisations/monuments/sites already life in game are still waiting to be discovered ?

Zero?

I'm assuming we would know there is stuff out there to be found if it's actually in the universe.

 

[Jex =TE=]

25 years ago people were less jaded

It was more or less the beginnings of consumer computing

FE2 was enough for the delight

25 years ago most people didn't play computer games - only those people who had computers and had the will to fix them when they went wrong and with no internet.

 

[Jex =TE=]

So.. "Mainstream gamers" of the time said all the same things about the earlier Elite games that supposedly "mainstream gamers" are saying about ED today.

Given how the earlier games in the franchise became the classics that they are - ported to every available platform, STILL being played on emulations of the original hardware and in native ports - I think it's fair to say that they were just as wrong then as they are now.

25 years ago though you could get away with those simple mechanics as they were new at the time. 25 years later and you're still using them?

 

[Jex =TE=]

Like Steam reviews are the most reliable metric? Either you have the "after 600 hours I'm fed up" or those who have the attention span of a gnat and give up at having more than 6 buttons to push.

ED is niche. Its never going to cater to what everyone wants- you play it and have fun or you don't. Elite was the same, nearly all Elite style games suffer from similar problems.

Same players are across the consoles and from the original sales too - there's no difference.

 

[Genus]

I haven't played the old titles, but it really shocked me to see the same flaws in Elite: Dangerous 25 years later.

To be honest.

Elite has never been the same since Ian Bell, fell off the Galactic Map.

He evidently brought to the party, that which has been missing ever since.

 

[Blackcompany]

25 years ago though you could get away with those simple mechanics as they were new at the time. 25 years later and you're still using them?

Thats the real problem: this game is nothing more than 1984 in HD.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

25 years ago most people didn't play computer games - only those people who had computers and had the will to fix them when they went wrong and with no internet.

That would be my friends and I, and I would be the only one doing the repairs.