Realistic Expectations

[Soon(TM)]

I’m a regular forum user as many may know, and will also know that I say what I feel.

I have followed the development of Elite Dangerous since 2014, I am a Premium Beta backer with around 400 hours in the game (that includes play during the premium beta and gamma phases), 600,000,000+ credits and a large number of ships.

I have watched all the dev diaries (multiple times), those combined with such a promising start, really made me believe that ED was going to be an amazing and immersive space game - Possibly the best space game ever!

But over the years, I've seen the game develop, with some new questionable "features" being added:
(Not all of these were poor additions)

Power Play
Wings
Mining
Planetary Landing
SRV's
Ship Launched Fighters
CQC
Multicrew
Engineers
Thargoids
Mega Ships
etc.

For me, most of the features just felt like they were tacked on and didn’t really improve the core mechanics or immersion of the game. I won’t go into detail, I have many posts that explain my feelings about the“Features” of ED.
I will also refrain from going into detail about my thoughts on RNG mechanics and the repetitiveness that procedural generation creates, if I did, this post would be three times as long!

It's been well over a year now that I (and many others) have been constantly asking for core mechanics to be updated. Exploration has been the same point and click monotony since launch, trading hasn't had any love other than being reskinned into Passenger missions and the BGS is still as stale as it's always been.

I think it's got to the point where we need to start to manage our expectations of Elite Dangerous. The game has been out for over 4 years and hasn't really developed the way the dev diaries (or DDF) made out it would – If anything, it’s mostly combat pew-pew focused (Even though pretty much every ED poll ever done has shown that the majority of players are traders or explorers!)
Elite Dangerous is an indie title at heart, and doesn’t have the financial backing it needs to turn it into what most of us want it to be. ED was once 200 dev's strong, now I don’t believe it is even 1 quarter of that.

You can’t blame FDev for taking resources away from a 4 year old title that isn’t making large profits anymore and moving them to new IP's (Planet Coaster, Jurassic Park World).
Business is business, and it’s all about the profit margins at the end of the day.

For me, I think ED has already hit its peak, there may be some nice tweaks in Q4 this year to fill a few old cracks, but I think the game will plateau at the end of this year.
I don't think Space legs can ever happen now, as Sandro said, "dovetailing another game into the game" is no easy task, and I think it would cost too much money and take too much time to implement vs the returns.

So the TL; DR is basically, ED is an Indie game with limited resources, our opinions and desires for its future development should reflect on that fact.
If Roberts Space industries can’t make Star Citizen in 6 years with 187 million dollars, don’t expect FDev to make a fully immersive Milky-Way galaxy in 4 years with a fraction of that money.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I have no idea what any of those paragraphs add to your tl;dr? As to your point: CIG cant do anything with anything, how is that relevant to anything else?

 

[zimms]

I’m a regular forum user as many may know, and will also know that I say what I feel.
Which is why I am on many of the "White Knight's" ignore lists - For me, that’s mission accomplished, because it means my posts will only be read by the normal forum users that will respond with neutral and sensible replies.

Too edgy for me.

 

[Valorin]

I’m a regular forum user as many may know, and will also know that I say what I feel.
Which is why I am on many of the "White Knight's" ignore lists - For me, that’s mission accomplished, because it means my posts will only be read by the normal forum users that will respond with neutral and sensible replies.

I have followed the development of Elite Dangerous since 2014, I am a Premium Beta backer with around 400 hours in the game (that includes play during the premium beta and gamma phases), 600,000,000+ credits and a large number of ships.

I have watched all the dev diaries (multiple times), those combined with such a promising start, really made me believe that ED was going to be an amazing and immersive space game - Possibly the best space game ever!

But over the years, I've seen the game develop, with many new questionable "features" being added:
(In no particular order)
Power Play
Wings
Mining
Planetary Landing
SRV's
Ship Launched Fighters
CQC
Multicrew
Engineers
Thargoids
Mega Ships
etc.

For me, most of the features just felt like they were tacked on and didn’t really improve the core mechanics or immersion of the game. I won’t go into detail, I have many posts that explain my feelings about the“Features” of ED.
I will also refrain from going into detail about my thoughts on RNG mechanics and the repetitiveness that procedural generation creates, if I did, this post would be three times as long!

It's been well over a year now that I (and many others) have been constantly asking for core mechanics to be updated. Exploration has been the same point and click monotony since launch, trading hasn't had any love other than being reskinned into Passenger missions and the BGS is still as stale as it's always been.

I think it's got to the point where we need to start to manage our expectations of Elite Dangerous. The game has been out for over 4 years and hasn't really developed the way the dev diaries (or DDF) made out it would – If anything, it’s mostly combat pew-pew focused (Even though pretty much every ED poll ever done has shown that the majority of players are traders or explorers!)
Elite Dangerous is an indie title at heart, and doesn’t have the financial backing it needs to turn it into what most of us want it to be. ED was once 200 dev's strong, now I don’t believe it is even 1 quarter of that.

You can’t blame FDev for taking resources away from a 4 year old title that isn’t making large profits anymore and moving them to new IP's (Planet Coaster, Jurassic Park World).
Business is business, and it’s all about the profit margins at the end of the day.

For me, I think ED has already hit its peak, there may be some nice tweaks in Q4 this year to fill a few old cracks, but I think the game will plateau at the end of this year.
I don't think Space legs can ever happen now, as Sandro said, "dovetailing another game into the game" is no easy task, and I think it would cost too much money and take too much time to implement vs the returns.

So the TL; DR is basically, ED is an Indie game with limited resources, our opinions and desires for its future development should reflect on that fact.
If Roberts Space industries can’t make Star Citizen in 6 years with 187 million dollars, don’t expect FDev to make a fully immersive Milky-Way galaxy in 4 years with a fraction of that money.

That was refreshingly neutral and on spot. We don't really know how many people are working on the game and how it is being handled within the company, and thus many things you base your opinion on are assumptions of course. But well, we've seen the same development as you did and I for one have to agree that it's been too much pew pew and too less interaction with that awesome galaxy simulation.

Also, concerning the assumptions and us not knowing about anything about what happens behind the curtains: why is that so? Elite has a lot enthusiastic players who would love to have more information about how the game is being developed, what the devs are working on and so on. Where are the Discovery Scanner streams, and devs posting on the forum?

An audience waiting in front of closed doors won't wait forever. A few well placed windows could change that tremendously though.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I’m a regular forum user as many may know, and will also know that I say what I feel.
Which is why I am on many of the "White Knight's" ignore lists - For me, that’s mission accomplished, because it means my posts will only be read by the normal forum users that will respond with neutral and sensible replies.

I have followed the development of Elite Dangerous since 2014, I am a Premium Beta backer with around 400 hours in the game (that includes play during the premium beta and gamma phases), 600,000,000+ credits and a large number of ships.

I have watched all the dev diaries (multiple times), those combined with such a promising start, really made me believe that ED was going to be an amazing and immersive space game - Possibly the best space game ever!

But over the years, I've seen the game develop, with many new questionable "features" being added:
(In no particular order)
Power Play
Wings
Mining
Planetary Landing
SRV's
Ship Launched Fighters
CQC
Multicrew
Engineers
Thargoids
Mega Ships
etc.

For me, most of the features just felt like they were tacked on and didn’t really improve the core mechanics or immersion of the game. I won’t go into detail, I have many posts that explain my feelings about the“Features” of ED.
I will also refrain from going into detail about my thoughts on RNG mechanics and the repetitiveness that procedural generation creates, if I did, this post would be three times as long!

It's been well over a year now that I (and many others) have been constantly asking for core mechanics to be updated. Exploration has been the same point and click monotony since launch, trading hasn't had any love other than being reskinned into Passenger missions and the BGS is still as stale as it's always been.

I think it's got to the point where we need to start to manage our expectations of Elite Dangerous. The game has been out for over 4 years and hasn't really developed the way the dev diaries (or DDF) made out it would – If anything, it’s mostly combat pew-pew focused (Even though pretty much every ED poll ever done has shown that the majority of players are traders or explorers!)
Elite Dangerous is an indie title at heart, and doesn’t have the financial backing it needs to turn it into what most of us want it to be. ED was once 200 dev's strong, now I don’t believe it is even 1 quarter of that.

You can’t blame FDev for taking resources away from a 4 year old title that isn’t making large profits anymore and moving them to new IP's (Planet Coaster, Jurassic Park World).
Business is business, and it’s all about the profit margins at the end of the day.

For me, I think ED has already hit its peak, there may be some nice tweaks in Q4 this year to fill a few old cracks, but I think the game will plateau at the end of this year.
I don't think Space legs can ever happen now, as Sandro said, "dovetailing another game into the game" is no easy task, and I think it would cost too much money and take too much time to implement vs the returns.

So the TL; DR is basically, ED is an Indie game with limited resources, our opinions and desires for its future development should reflect on that fact.
If Roberts Space industries can’t make Star Citizen in 6 years with 187 million dollars, don’t expect FDev to make a fully immersive Milky-Way galaxy in 4 years with a fraction of that money.

I agree with some of what you say, but one thing I would like to add is that I love my SLF and Planetary Landings, even though I recognise the limitations in them I still really enjoying going planet side and have a blast flying my SLF.

But yeah, there are a lot of tacked on features that are not connected in any meaningful way which is frustrating. And the depth that is there (in the BGS) is completely let down by lack of any visual depth. Its great that the system is in outbreak, but it looks and acts like a system that is in a boom state.

As to whether we get elite feet, earthlike planets etc, I don't think money is the issue, it is more of a time issue. From my understanding the game has been designed to some degree to be able to add these feature into the game at a later stage. They may have small teams working on them at the moment (DB has already said this) which could also be a reason why the updates that do come are not big, because there are team members working on other parts of the game.

I am pretty sure there will be an NPC comms system and full NPC crew/wings system coming too as that has been talked about by Sandro too.

Maybe I am being just too optimistic, but I can only see the game slowly getting better as time goes by. I will wait and see what the new paid for DLC will be and if it is what I think it is, added with the new exploration update it could be a very nice addition.

 

[Rakaposhi]

So the TL; DR is basically, ED is an Indie game with limited resources, our opinions and desires for its future development should reflect on that fact.
If Roberts Space industries can’t make Star Citizen in 6 years with 187 million dollars, don’t expect FDev to make a fully immersive Milky-Way galaxy in 4 years with a fraction of that money.

This I agree with. The rest of the post is rather aimless. People gloss over hour many hours they played before they decided that Elite is dull, or shallow, or featureless, or repetitive or a massive grind, etc. etc. Then, after they played for 400 hours, or 1000, or more, they decided to post about all the bad facets of the game.

Suggesting possible improvements to the game is always a good thing, but they are almost always framed in "FDev are so lazy", "Wasted potential" or other negative viewpoints.

 

[Soon(TM)]

I agree with some of what you say, but one thing I would like to add is that I love my SLF and Planetary Landings, even though I recognise the limitations in them I still really enjoying going planet side and have a blast flying my SLF.

But yeah, there are a lot of tacked on features that are not connected in any meaningful way which is frustrating. And the depth that is there (in the BGS) is completely let down by lack of any visual depth. Its great that the system is in outbreak, but it looks and acts like a system that is in a boom state.

As to whether we get elite feet, earthlike planets etc, I don't think money is the issue, it is more of a time issue. From my understanding the game has been designed to some degree to be able to add these feature into the game at a later stage. They may have small teams working on them at the moment (DB has already said this) which could also be a reason why the updates that do come are not big, because there are team members working on other parts of the game.

I am pretty sure there will be an NPC comms system and full NPC crew/wings system coming too as that has been talked about by Sandro too.

Maybe I am being just too optimistic, but I can only see the game slowly getting better as time goes by. I will wait and see what the new paid for DLC will be and if it is what I think it is, added with the new exploration update it could be a very nice addition.

I Agree, some assumptions were made in my post, but assumptions is all we have to be fair - FD keep pretty much everything behind closed doors.

 

[c00ky1970]

I think the challenge is that those that went through the kickstarter have a different expectation to those that haven't.

I have played since launch, about 900 hours under my belt and that says it all, I have 900 hours played and its still increasing.

Alot of the angst and "anger" appears to be people comparing what was written in the DDF, or said in the kickstarter and comparing it with what the game is and seeing glaring discrepancies. Or even comparing it to previous iterations of the game.

4 years on and unless you are a complete romantic the game will not suddenly change to what was argued over in the DDF, alluded to in kickstarter discussions etc. It will be like what it is now, with things being amended but not fundamentally changed - although what constitutes amendment to change is subject to many frothy threads over in focussed feedback.

Kickstarting is a risk, and it also does not guarantee what a backer thinks should happen will happen, you are giving up cash to kickstart an idea and as a reward get something in return and most of the time what you get is not 100% of what your expectations were.

I personally feel that not having all that baggage has allowed me to play the game I want to play within the confines of how FDev present Elite and not have a set of pre-defined expectations that I feel are missing and detracting from my gameplay.

What will the game be like in 20 months time, who knows?

And in order to be able to enjoy the game for the next 20 months , although i have contributed suggestions, what-ifs and posted on expectations threads, these are just words, I have no capability to direct teh game, and if it doesnt do what I want it to do I will stop playing it, but I wont be posting any goodbye threads or haz my stuffz threads cos that's my choice and like most humans I can change my mind!

 

[Vedmo]

Thanks for thread, made me think of No Expectations, so Beggars Banquet is now getting a long overdue play through.

 

[rhiz]

I have followed the development of Elite Dangerous since 2014, I am a Premium Beta backer with around 400 hours in the game (that includes play during the premium beta and gamma phases), 600,000,000+ credits and a large number of ships.

I think it's got to the point where we need to start to manage our expectations of Elite Dangerous. The game has been out for over 4 years and hasn't really developed the way the dev diaries (or DDF) made out it would – If anything, it’s mostly combat pew-pew focused (Even though pretty much every ED poll ever done has shown that the majority of players are traders or explorers!)
Elite Dangerous is an indie title at heart, and doesn’t have the financial backing it needs to turn it into what most of us want it to be. ED was once 200 dev's strong, now I don’t believe it is even 1 quarter of that.

Christ, I’ve been playing for less than a year and I have over 1000 hours clocked! I should probably get out more.

Regarding the essence of your post, I think that it would be a mistake for FDev to consider Elite a peripheral title at this point. No doubt there are financial pressures pushing them towards other projects, but Elite is a seminal series with a pivotal place in gaming history, so it should always be considered a flagship game in my view. I think it's fair to say that the greater part of the interest in Frontier as a developer is a result of Elite (both the historical games, and Elite Dangerous). The amount of press and industry interest generated by their other games is probably dwarfed by the coverage of Elite Dangerous since its kickstarter. There's still a great deal of potential that's yet to be realised, so I hope you're wrong.

I wonder whether opening things up to third party developers could work? Stellar Forge is a huge achievement, but it’s a mammoth undertaking for a small developer to craft the kind of game that many of us hope for.

 

[ZeroAi]

+Rep

First let me say as someone who starting playing on XBOX 2 years ago, I enjoy playing in Wings, Planetary Landing's in SRVs (which stop working on XBOX with v3.0.x and more than 2 people - ugh), and flying Ship Launched Fighters.

That said, I really really wish we had more roles for MC, and crew sizes of 4 not 3.

I think ED has already hit its peak, there may be some nice tweaks in Q4 this year to fill a few old cracks, but I think the game will plateau at the
end of this year.

You could be right.

Q4 could be the "last hurrah" for Elite.

Time will tell.

I don't think Space legs can ever happen now, as Sandro said, "dovetailing another game into the game" is no easy task, and I think it would cost too much money and take too much time to implement vs the returns.

I honestly think it's 50/50.

Sadly, from the limited info we have it seems similar games are on track to surpass Elite in 2019...

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]

I Agree, some assumptions were made in my post, but assumptions is all we have to be fair - FD keep pretty much everything behind closed doors.

[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]True! So we really can't know if 2018 is the end of ED, or just the end of ED's second act?[/FONT]

 

[Andovar]

I was about to say "the Q4 update will make or break the game"

What I really mean though is, the Q4 update will make or break the game for me.
The exploration update needs to be good... damn good.

 

[c00ky1970]

So we really can't know if 2018 is the end of ED, or just the end of ED's second act?

I thought all 3rd albums were hard to make and sometimes it split the band....

 

[Mengy]

ED is an Indie game with limited resources, our opinions and desires for its future development should reflect on that fact.

I've been coming to terms lately that Elite Dangerous will never be the game I expected it to become four years ago. I don't think Frontier is interested in making that game anymore, it's just become far too combat focused both in content and development. I was looking forward to Beyond as the season to change that, now I'm left looking to Q4 as the only moment left of Beyond where Frontier can change that, and yet 3.1 is again more combat focused than it isn't. Will 3.2 be mostly combat stuff too? If Q4 fails to bring considerable non combat content and improvements I'll be left with nothing further to look forward to and a game I'm terribly bored with.

Hope can hold out for a long time, but at some point even hope can die, and Frontier is not very good at sustaining hope in their product. If only they were more open about development, if only they gave us more things to look forward to, more information.

Maybe the reality is that there just isn't a lot to actually look forward to?

 

[kilvenny]

In making a comparison to CIG I think you offer an interesting reality check which I think gets lost sometimes. I think there is no doubt that FD have had significant focus on PC and JWE over the last few years, which is understandable as they need to maintain their revenue stream. ED is out there long enough that many are now mature players in terms of time in ED. I believe that games have a shelf life, most games die within weeks, 4 years is a long time for a game, so I am not surprised thinks are starting to creek a little.

I believe that FD know they cannot bring out content quick enough to keep the player base interested. Their solution to that is to create content that relies on the players. I believe this is why we are seeing lots of multi player additions in the hope that eventually there are enough pieces that sustainable multiplayer is functional enough.

My concern is that the traditional base of Elite is in single player or PvE and if FD are not very careful that group will lose interest or worse be alienated.

I brought LEP so I didn't have to worry about what came out and I could accept what ever was released for what it was. However, since landing on planets my perception is every release has largely been about content I don't experience.

What I see is a game where the difference between player capability, ship capability and credit resources are hugely divergent. In a single player or PvE this is not an issue. However PvP works well if you either don't care about the loss or have a way of mitigating the risk. Only a small percentage of players are in a position to afford lost and mitigating the risk can only be done in open by avoiding content.

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that FD have decided the future of ED lies in open, but that group and solo will continue in some limited form. Since my circumstances make it nigh on impossible to play open obviously it will be a limited experience. I love the flight experience and I have VR so I will carry on playing for now, but I have zero expectations now going forward.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The clustershard that is SC has no bearing on any other game ever made, ever - in the history of video gaming. Indeed it will probably seen an object lesson in how not to make one. Despite ED's issues it's a technical marvel and a fine piece of software engineering.

The lesson to learn from ED imo is that all game development is hard and ED is a very big complicated game with lots and lots of dependencies. Everything added has to work in its own right and not break anything else. The more you try to implement at once, the more things can and will break. Certain features being added are probably dependent on other features being done first, yet players want depth and content in spades with it all arriving on time, preferably sooner.

As for more planets I suspect Sandro's comment earlier this year about 'work being done under the hood for the long term benefit of the game' specifically refers to changes to the Cobra Engine to make sure it can handle the graphical requirements of atmospheric planets/gas planets. Rendering those big planets with extra detail across various platforms is no easy task.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I've been coming to terms lately that Elite Dangerous will never be the game I expected it to become four years ago. I don't think Frontier is interested in making that game anymore, it's just become far too combat focused both in content and development. I was looking forward to Beyond as the season to change that, now I'm left looking to Q4 as the only moment left of Beyond where Frontier can change that, and yet 3.1 is again more combat focused than it isn't. Will 3.2 be mostly combat stuff too? If Q4 fails to bring considerable non combat content and improvements I'll be left with nothing further to look forward to and a game I'm terribly bored with.

Hope can hold out for a long time, but at some point even hope can die, and Frontier is not very good at sustaining hope in their product. If only they were more open about development, if only they gave us more things to look forward to, more information.

Maybe the reality is that there just isn't a lot to actually look forward to?

"If only FD gave us some hints if there is ever going to come anything for us explorers!"
FD:"We'll give exploration an overhaul in Q4, plus improve the visuals of the stuff you are exploring."
"If only FD gave us some hints if there is ever going to come anything for us explorers!"



Neither 3.1 or 3.2 will give you anything that will massively change your perspective. Or even a little bit. You pretty much knew that almost a year ago. 3.1 and 3.2 are tiny updates that wont be a revolution for anyone.

 

[Sylveria]

This I agree with. The rest of the post is rather aimless. People gloss over hour many hours they played before they decided that Elite is dull, or shallow, or featureless, or repetitive or a massive grind, etc. etc. Then, after they played for 400 hours, or 1000, or more, they decided to post about all the bad facets of the game.

Suggesting possible improvements to the game is always a good thing, but they are almost always framed in "FDev are so lazy", "Wasted potential" or other negative viewpoints.

I was about to say "the Q4 update will make or break the game"

What I really mean though is, the Q4 update will make or break the game for me.
The exploration update needs to be good... damn good.

I've been coming to terms lately that Elite Dangerous will never be the game I expected it to become four years ago. I don't think Frontier is interested in making that game anymore, it's just become far too combat focused both in content and development. I was looking forward to Beyond as the season to change that, now I'm left looking to Q4 as the only moment left of Beyond where Frontier can change that, and yet 3.1 is again more combat focused than it isn't. Will 3.2 be mostly combat stuff too? If Q4 fails to bring considerable non combat content and improvements I'll be left with nothing further to look forward to and a game I'm terribly bored with.

Hope can hold out for a long time, but at some point even hope can die, and Frontier is not very good at sustaining hope in their product. If only they were more open about development, if only they gave us more things to look forward to, more information.

Maybe the reality is that there just isn't a lot to actually look forward to?

All of this.

PS Apparently since I can see your posts, my White Knight status must have been revoked!

 

[Mengy]

"If only FD gave us some hints if there is ever going to come anything for us explorers!"
FD:"We'll give exploration an overhaul in Q4, plus improve the visuals of the stuff you are exploring."
"If only FD gave us some hints if there is ever going to come anything for us explorers!"

Neither 3.1 or 3.2 will give you anything that will massively change your perspective. Or even a little bit. You pretty much knew that almost a year ago. 3.1 and 3.2 are tiny updates that wont be a revolution for anyone.

Hints aren’t very effective at maintaining hope, players need more information than vague generalities. The mining info is a week late and Frontier haven’t even told us why, or when, we can expect it. There is a good chance the exploration reveal will also be late now. A bit more communication from Frontier would do absolute wonders to improve the morale of the community.

Many people got excited when they announced Beyond as being a full season of core development, but the assumption was that 2018 would be devoted to building the core, especially non combat core, to bring it up to the level of combat. The reality so far has instead been a little bit of core development with a lot of new content, much of which has been combat related. 3.1 is more of this, and chances are that 3.2 will be too. Will 3.3 also end up as a little bit of mining and exploration improvements coupled with a heavier emphasis on new multiplayer and combat content yet again? Squadrons and fleet carriers, an already confirmed multiplayer only feature, is already a large part of Q4. Without details we can’t know, and it’s this lack of information which has resulted in poor morale among the players.

This behavior by Frontier is what has worn people’s “realistic expectations” down to an all time low. The only people who can improve the situation are Frontier themselves, but it would take action, not inaction, to do so. Some communication though could really help out right now too.

 

[Blackcompany]

Hints aren’t very effective at maintaining hope, players need more information than vague generalities. The mining info is a week late and Frontier haven’t even told us why, or when, we can expect it. There is a good chance the exploration reveal will also be late now. A bit more communication from Frontier would do absolute wonders to improve the morale of the community.

Many people got excited when they announced Beyond as being a full season of core development, but the assumption was that 2018 would be devoted to building the core, especially non combat core, to bring it up to the level of combat. The reality so far has instead been a little bit of core development with a lot of new content, much of which has been combat related. 3.1 is more of this, and chances are that 3.2 will be too. Will 3.3 also end up as a little bit of mining and exploration improvements coupled with a heavier emphasis on new multiplayer and combat content yet again? Squadrons and fleet carriers, an already confirmed multiplayer only feature, is already a large part of Q4. Without details we can’t know, and it’s this lack of information which has resulted in poor morale among the players.

This behavior by Frontier is what has worn people’s “realistic expectations” down to an all time low. The only people who can improve the situation are Frontier themselves, but it would take action, not inaction, to do so. Some communication though could really help out right now too.

Frontier are counting on MVP development to minimize cost, while a multiplayer focus will see players "creting their own content.*

But it isn't going to work. Because sandboxes need interactable sand, shovels, buckets, etc, for people to make content in the box. And Elite is woefully lacking there.