General / Off-Topic [Veterans] Share your experience!

[LuxAeterna]

Many of us that just came into the game in the past few years have little-to-no clue as to how Elite used to be. Would you share some of the things that you thought made the game great from the beginning that changed over the life of the game?

Note: This isn't a debate whether or not the feature/mechanic was great or not. These are all personal opinions, please be respectful. Thanks for sharing in advance!

 

[Eriseley]

I wasn't in beta or anything but bought the game when it was released. People were more excited about powerplay when it first came out and it's sad that fell flat. That's probably the biggest thing. There was a lot of potential there (insofar as player enthusiasm) and instead it petered out into gankers at CGs.

 

[Chris Simon]

Back in the beta, the usual amount of money I was able to earn per day was at best in hundreds of thousands. (The bounty on wanted ships was usually in low thousands, when you found a wanted Anaconda with a bounty of 7500Cr it was Christmas.)
It made ships... worth something. When you finally were able to afford a Cobra after several days of hard work, you really took care of her. And Anaconda? Was a distant dream you know you won't reach for months.

The total and utter devaluation of credit and therefore the ships themselves is the biggest tragedy of this game, in my opinion. The ships were... a real goal and ultimate prize. Now they are just a tool for grinding.

 

[Eriseley]

Back in the beta, the usual amount of money I was able to earn per day was at best in hundreds of thousands. (The bounty on wanted ships was usually in low thousands, when you found a wanted Anaconda with a bounty of 7500Cr it was Christmas.)
It made ships... worth something. When you finally were able to afford a Cobra after several days of hard work, you really took care of her. And Anaconda? Was a distant dream you know you won't reach for months.

The total and utter devaluation of credit and therefore the ships themselves is the biggest tragedy of this game, in my opinion. The ships were... a real goal and ultimate prize. Now they are just a tool for grinding.

Funnily enough I own all the ships now but fly my T6 and Cobra the most, hehe. Hell even the Asp Scout has far more flight time for me than the big three (I like its supercruise profile). I kinda *don't* mind the credit thing because I just fly what I want. Easier credits let me get rid of that itch (I hit a filter here, weird) to try out every ship and actually fly what I like. I realize everybody is different though.

 

[lysan]

Oh boy oh boy, the can has been opened

Well to be honest I must say that I was very excited about Elite Dangerous.
All the Dev video blogs, the DDF and of course this.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/230681554/Elite-Dangerous-the-Beginning-Early-Game-Designs-2014

and this...
https://www.scribd.com/document/231802796/Elite-Dangerous-David-Braben-Answers-Questions

Now I'm not going to dive deep into that black hole, but I still haven't seen my NPC crew, nor have I seen some of the mentioned other awesome stuff described.

Lysan over and out.

 

[Winterwalker]

Horizons was a game changer (since launch) with Powerplay under developed but good in principle. How Powerplay is now perhaps is how ED was at launch .. good framework but lots of space to fill in. However (imo) ED is way better now than when it launched.

I think a balance to strike between how easy it is to earn credits and how much access to ships is over restricted. Personal feeling is that yes, credits are quite easy to come by "for me" (especially as there's no permadeath support) but I can also see why people can be put off by perceived grinding so I think Frontier have got it about right in all honesty. It's still possible to have a disaster in your bank balance but equally you can progress.

I can't wait for the mining / space probes (Beyond Q4) update but two things not yet anounced I'd like to see, are more definition to military careers and (my number one) more in the way of blackmarket play. We need more sinister characters and undercover cops imo.

 

[Chris Simon]

Funnily enough I own all the ships now but fly my T6 and Cobra the most, hehe. Hell even the Asp Scout has far more flight time for me than the big three (I like its supercruise profile). I kinda *don't* mind the credit thing because I just fly what I want. Easier credits let me get rid of that itch (I hit a filter here, weird) to try out every ship and actually fly what I like. I realize everybody is different though.

Well, personally, I prefer small and medium ships myself. My two most flown ships this year are Courier and Keelback. The game is what you make it to be. And I get that the credit devaluation caters to the casual players who just want to try everything and be done with the game in two weeks.

But it is a shame, nonetheless. Ships were basically the only thing that gave you a sense of achievement in the game.

 

[Eriseley]

But it is a shame, nonetheless. Ships were basically the only thing that gave you a sense of achievement in the game.

I dunno, from my perspective the coolest stuff in the game has been people going on expeditions and stuff like that. And I remember participating in some of the earliest CGs, which were fun. I wish the game did more to facilitate people meeting each other and organizing that kind of thing.

I actually remember burning out when I hit the wall from getting a T9 to trying to get to an Anaconda, back in the day. While ship progression was...something...seemed like it was mostly an accomplishment of grind. I get the idea of an Anaconda being a rare sight, though. So that's a shame. But I think people have carved achievement in the game in other ways, too.

Oh and though I'm debating with you just want to say I value your perspective all the same. These topics so often degrade into bickering. I don't like that. I have my perspective and everyone else has theirs, and the sharing is fun.

 

[Winterwalker]

I dunno, from my perspective the coolest stuff in the game has been people going on expeditions and stuff like that. And I remember participating in some of the earliest CGs, which were fun. I wish the game did more to facilitate people meeting each other and organizing that kind of thing.

Agree with you there. My view on it that this is what makes ED a good game .. facilitated things (like Buckyball, the Fighter Club, Fuel Rats, Speedbowl, SRV Base). I'm more more in favour of more 'facility' than I am for more 'content' (that you can play through once, once only and then that's that).

Even though people already play ED hard I'm not sure the possible combinations of game mechanics have been explored out even now, though it does maybe take groups like those to point them out. Should Frontier point them out for us, I suppose but is it best use of their time? I'm much less sure about that.

 

[Chris Simon]

I dunno, from my perspective the coolest stuff in the game has been people going on expeditions and stuff like that. And I remember participating in some of the earliest CGs, which were fun. I wish the game did more to facilitate people meeting each other and organizing that kind of thing.

I actually remember burning out when I hit the wall from getting a T9 to trying to get to an Anaconda, back in the day. While ship progression was...something...seemed like it was mostly an accomplishment of grind. I get the idea of an Anaconda being a rare sight, though. So that's a shame. But I think people have carved achievement in the game in other ways, too.

Oh and though I'm debating with you just want to say I value your perspective all the same. These topics so often degrade into bickering. I don't like that. I have my perspective and everyone else has theirs, and the sharing is fun.

Yeah, I'm not actually trying to argue. I'm just describing my ideal gameplay.
I fully understand that many people would simply give up if the moneymaking was too slow. But I wish there was a compromise, because I feel kind of sad that someone who just started will be able to skip all the awesome mid-range ships without even realizing that they missed out on something.

 

[Eriseley]

Yeah, I'm not actually trying to argue. I'm just describing my ideal gameplay.
I fully understand that many people would simply give up if the moneymaking was too slow. But I wish there was a compromise, because I feel kind of sad that someone who just started will be able to skip all the awesome mid-range ships without even realizing that they missed out on something.

Oh yeah, you weren't being. Just preemptively trying to sway the topic towards people discussing casually, haha. I dunno what the game flow is like for new players today. Definitely a shame if they don't fart around with small and medium ships. Tooling up the smalls and mediums has probably been my primary preoccupation after I got the Anaconda grind done, and they are way more fun to fly. Have barely driven the silly 'conda.

Agree with you there. My view on it that this is what makes ED a good game .. facilitated things (like Buckyball, the Fighter Club, Fuel Rats, Speedbowl, SRV Base). I'm more more in favour of more 'facility' than I am for more 'content' (that you can play through once, once only and then that's that).

Even though people already play ED hard I'm not sure the possible combinations of game mechanics have been explored out even now, though it does maybe take groups like those to point them out. Should Frontier point them out for us, I suppose but is it best use of their time? I'm much less sure about that.

I think they should just focus on giving people more tools to work together. Then add new mechanics but let us figure it out. Powerplay is the biggest old thing to revamp...somehow they need to revive the sense of community that initially existed but died.

 

[znôrt]

Many of us that just came into the game in the past few years have little-to-no clue as to how Elite used to be. Would you share some of the things that you thought made the game great from the beginning that changed over the life of the game?

Note: This isn't a debate whether or not the feature/mechanic was great or not. These are all personal opinions, please be respectful. Thanks for sharing in advance!

simple:

imagine elite now without engineers, powerplay, wings, multicrew, holome, ship kits, landables, srv, planetary bases, alien stuff, cqc, slf and a few ships, about 5-10% of current cr rates, 30% of current shields and hull and a (little less) varied mission interface. yeah, pretty barebone, but with cool interaction with the developers and plenty of hope and promise.

from the above i would rollback everything except wings, probably cqc and slf ... and landables, srv and planetary bases (hoping at some point there would be actually something to do other than collecting rocks or shooting at pylons wait, couldn't be bothered to do even that, but anyhow driving around planets is nice).

 

[Eriseley]

simple:

imagine elite now without engineers, powerplay, wings, multicrew, holome, ship kits, landables, srv, planetary bases, alien stuff, cqc, slf and a few ships, about 5-10% of current cr rates, 30% of current shields and hull and a (little less) varied mission interface. yeah, pretty barebone, but with cool interaction with the developers and plenty of hope and promise.

from the above i would rollback everything except wings, probably cqc and slf ... and landables, srv and planetary bases (hoping at some point there would be actually something to do other than collecting rocks or shooting at pylons wait, couldn't be bothered to do even that, but anyhow driving around planets is nice).

I think Powerplay without the module carrot, but with better community would be good. It's a good pvp instigator if only it worked better.

 

[znôrt]

I think Powerplay without the module carrot, but with better community would be good. It's a good pvp instigator if only it worked better.

nail. for that however you need a playing ground. i think 'pp open only' was a very good idea towards achieving that, although it would have absolutely needed a revamp of network functionality. this is exactly what (imo!) fails in elite: it's turned a solo game where you can occasionally meet others. that's not good enough to promote collective gameplay (expeditions, buckyball etc are actually exceptions). it's the same reason why we have gorgeous planetary bases and srv, but nothing happens on them. believe it or not, the trailler showed a thrilling base assault by land and, erm, space. most in elite is geared for a player to do single handedly: go fetch this, go kill that. big evolution was, hey! you can do that now in wings of 4! ok! now what? ... erm ... multicrew! yawn. it's just not how multiplayer worlds work.

don't get me wrong, there are communities: bgs, powerplay ... but most of the action is actually politics and happens outside of the game. in-game it's just grind, to a great extent solo.

 

[Alec Turner]

If I understand correctly - things I thought were great to start with and which have evolved over time (for better or worse)?

Hmmm ... well I guess I always thought being able to actually fly throught the mail slot and see INSIDE a station was stunning (coming from original '84 Elite) so stations interiors are one thing which improved quite dramatically when they introduced the Tourism/Industrial/Agriculture/Hi-Tech variations as well as the Asteroid bases. Along similar lines I think (but can't verify) that there are more variations of outpost configuration than we had at the start.

Along similar lines, the types of space structures that are now available to see have improved massively with all the new installations, asteroid bases and megaships (see here: Ship-docks-CQC-structures-and-other-new-in-game-assets).

Err, what else? Well the outfitting screens have changed a fair bit. Not 100% for the better (it feels like an awful lot of clicks are needed these days to actually buy a module) but it's definitely a fancier looking interface. And there's a lot more in the Stations Services menu too as more and more station facilities have been added to the game (I imagine this must be quite bewildering to the newcomer now).

Graphics generally - well the appearance of planets have gone through several several iterations. We had the "beige plague" for quite a long time where I think most would agree there was a marked reduction in overall quality, but that's been resolved and I think what we have now definitely looks better overall. I think perhaps fog effects in asteroid belts might have dropped a tad (I know Obsidian Ant has reflected nostagically on this in the past) but that may just be circumstantial. Oh, and one other thing - it used to be the case that when you dropped into a new system the star immediately looked stunning. This got changed (some time ago now) for performance reasons such that we now see an initially fairly low res star which then quickly resolves itself into the glorious boiling balls of plasma we've come to know and love. Personally I feel a slight loss here (although it's a lot better than it was immediately after this change) but I daresay a lot of people who used to have serious lag when dropping into a system are now delighted by the compromise.

One last thing which FD absolutely nailed right from the outset and which has thankfully remained pretty much unchanged is the flight model.

 

[Eriseley]

nail. for that however you need a playing ground. i think 'pp open only' was a very good idea towards achieving that, although it would have absolutely needed a revamp of network functionality. this is exactly what (imo!) fails in elite: it's turned a solo game where you can occasionally meet others. that's not good enough to promote collective gameplay (expeditions, buckyball etc are actually exceptions). it's the same reason why we have gorgeous planetary bases and srv, but nothing happens on them. believe it or not, the trailler showed a thrilling base assault by land and, erm, space. most in elite is geared for a player to do single handedly: go fetch this, go kill that. big evolution was, hey! you can do that now in wings of 4! ok! now what? ... erm ... multicrew! yawn. it's just not how multiplayer worlds work.

don't get me wrong, there are communities: bgs, powerplay ... but most of the action is actually politics and happens outside of the game. in-game it's just grind, to a great extent solo.

It's interesting because my previous MMO-ish xp was WoW (and before that DAoC), which was a very extremely flawed "massively" multiplayer aspect but directed people towards 4-ish sized groups, too. They did more work trying to track faction progress but it still kinda failed. I dunno, I haven't met a game that has managed to do fluid gameplay beyond 4 allies and 4 enemies beyond an FPS (never played EVE so dunno the deal there).

I'd be okay with E : D sticking to 4s too if they could manage to get PP to handle larger numbers better in the long term or big picture. I think that ship (never) sailed, though. Ah well.

In any case, even making WoW-ish instance objectives where say...you got a DBX being Apache missile support and player 2 lands and SRVs into the base would be much more interesting. Thargoids are at least a step in that direction kinda? I guess healing ships are a thing.

 

[znôrt]

yeah, sorry if i've been a bit ranty not sure if that was actually your question, but it's actually difficult to answer. i was completely baffled and hooked when i started in elite (on release), but i think that's the same any new player (most, anyway) will experience now. it is a superb experience, and that very much remains. the difference is that then i saw a lot of potential, and i was totally hyped about what would come next, and i'm less inclined to see that potential now and beyond that experience ... dunno.

one particular thing i miss is the combat model, back when only stock modules existed and before shields got buffed to ridiculous levels. it was much more straightforward and simple and yet much more engaging and fun, all you needed was a few credits, and every ship had distinctive advantages and disadvantages. w.g. if you saw a vulture you knew for sure it would fight to the death because it just had no other option ... but then again it was an exceptional brawler. that sort of thing, it gave the ships a character.

 

[Jenner]

I've been playing since the alpha and I think some of the things I was really impressed with that later evolved would be:

1) Heat management used as a stealth mechanic. I remember this was a big deal way back when. It was really cool to go all 'silent running' and see your cockpit ice up. Of course it's still a mechanic, but it really isn't used like I thought it would be. Missions like that one in the tutorial where you had to use it to sneak past some NPCs suggested gameplay that really isn't there. Which brings me to...

2) The tutorials. These are still, to this day, FD's best storytelling in Elite Dangerous. There was a small arc, but it was there. You felt the stakes. Nothing since has matched that....not all the GalNet news or Community Goals. Before the game launched we had these tutorials to play, and I really thought this was just a taste of some really epic storytelling. I was wrong on that one.

3) The economy. As Chris pointed out, the economy was a lot different back in the day. Payouts were small and ships were expensive. I'm not saying it evolved in a negative direction, but things are certainly different now that earning millions right out of the gate is common. It does change the feel of the game.

4) The community. There used to be a lot more optimism and positivism. I think offline-gate was the death knell for that. It really splintered the community. Of course after we all got the game in our hands and we actually had something concrete to debate on the forum a lot of that wide-eyed optimism evaporated. Whereas before the biggest arguments were about how we envisioned the game to be when it came out, now it was whether or not it was actually any good, or whether and how it should change. Those arguments have a tendency to create a lot more drama than just blind theorycrafting.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Many of us that just came into the game in the past few years have little-to-no clue as to how Elite used to be. Would you share some of the things that you thought made the game great from the beginning that changed over the life of the game?

Note: This isn't a debate whether or not the feature/mechanic was great or not. These are all personal opinions, please be respectful. Thanks for sharing in advance!

1) in a very early beta iirc if a system exported product Y it needed a constant supply of product X....
npcs simulated a certain level of supply but if the demand was great for an export (which it was when we were all playing in 5 systems!!!) we had to bolster that supply or things ground to a hold.... this was removed after complaints.

2) after launch fuel and ship wear and tear was brutal on some ships. I admit some went to far - the python - but it meant that for some missions it really made no fiscal sense to use a big ship, and there was a real risk reward vibe for picking a cheapo ship to do some stuff.. it needed work but instead pretty much got canned.

3) landing was harder.... if you came in too hard and hit the station you would be faced with a big bill or just blow up. I liked this.

4) the pay made more sense to me... it took proper time to fix up a ship..... it fell apart abit once looking at ships beyond the asp level tho but i would not swap my 1st 6 months in the game for anything...... the excitement of saving up for a gimballed laser as opposed to fixed, or burst instead of pulse, or going from C rated to B rated FSD in my adder or what ever was fab.
side effect was if a ship dropped cargo, it was worth potentially losing a kill to stop and pick up. imo piracy was at its most relevant at launch

 

[Alec Turner]

I've been playing since the alpha and I think some of the things I was really impressed with that later evolved would be:

1) Heat management used as a stealth mechanic. I remember this was a big deal way back when. It was really cool to go all 'silent running' and see your cockpit ice up. Of course it's still a mechanic, but it really isn't used like I thought it would be. Missions like that one in the tutorial where you had to use it to sneak past some NPCs suggested gameplay that really isn't there. Which brings me to...

Oooh, good one - which also reminds me about subsystem targetting. I seem to recall that, when the game first came out, the idea of targetting subsystems to (for example) knock out a ship's weapons or thrusters prior to taking down its hull, was a big thing but that we/I don't tend to do it much these days. Is this because the game has changed or is it simply that we've learned that it's not as useful as we once thought?