Elite: An old persons view...

is the argument being made here that games were primitive or so simplistic 30 years ago that elite is comparatively awesome and so anyone who negatively reviews it or complains is just doing so from an inferior point of view or a point of view that is entirely unfair and so not really relevant?

so we're dismissing anything that's not a strict game error as a broken record. Also, it's weird that we're just glossing over statements (made by players who are dismissing those negative feedbacks) where they said 99% of the forum is making such negative feedback statements. If 99% is saying one thing ...and you're part of the 1 % who isn't, how is that not a red flag that perhaps your point of view is what is in error? The forum is not comprised of only players who view the game negatively. At least not a singular thing that they all feel is negative. That's a new phenomena that started with Odyssey's launch. Which I'd take as a sign that opinions on odyssey is not the same old subjective "i dont like that" reasoning behind why so many different posters agree on this one thing negatively.

Forgetting opinions about odyssey though... and just considering the comparison from older elite games to E:D, which i assume is the point of considering older reviewers opinions... It's obvious you can do so much more with tech today than what was available to do in those older games. But elite dangerous fails to take advantage of that in the same spirit as what was in those older games.

Thousands of redundant stations make it irrelevant to really care about what's available at any one for trading. So trading loses what made it more than just shifting a spreadsheet and trucking between points a and b. There's no personal accomplishment involved in E:D in this role. (this same situation exists for mining)

Exploration could expose much needed navigation routes or assets or progress the game forward, etc in the older games. But in elite dangerous, there are 400 billion systems and nothing is really unique in them except hand placed narrative items, of which there are exceedingly few and can't be replayed and dont progress the game forward until fdev sends off their next update usually. Exploration serves no in-game purpose that gives a good explorer any advantages and the game's npcs dont respond to that activity either.

Those three things, trade, mining and exploration are roles that have less meaning and impact in Elite dangerous than the older games despite them having so much more potential in elite dangerous. And that goes a long way towards the complaints players have against elite dangerous even without the background in the older games to compare to. Because the potential is something all players are aware of, and the lack of successfully exploiting that potential is something easily observed. There's a very real problem when 30 years of advancement still ends up giving you effectively the same gameplay that existed in the older games but so diluted by choice and options that the gameplay reward that was so effective back then has been cheapened by inflation to the point that it feels like a pointless grind now.

Just seems like either the nostalgia is coloring those past gameplay experiences super rosey or the shiny graphics and communal gameplay has overshadowed the missing sense of accomplishment in most roles that E:D suffers from.

edit: Basically the older elite games topped charts relating to their influence ...not gamer reviews of them. They were outsold by those games that they influenced. So what elite's original games are best at doing is driving developers to make better versions of elite that players actually enjoy playing. What's frustrating is that this didn't seem to have much effect in influencing elite dangerous to be a better elite game ...opting instead to recreate much of the gameplay in the roles with little to no innovation of them.
 
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I started playing Elite on the BBC Micro, when the ships and planets were all wire-frame. Even then the game was thrilling and exciting.

At that time, it never crossed my mind that I'd still be enjoying the game in my old age (now 64). Even more so that I'd be playing elite with a joystick and throttle, and immersed in full 360 degree gameplay in 3D Virtual Reality.

Sometimes I think that nowadays players are far too quick to be critical of the perceived shortcomings of the game.

If you compare the quality of Elite now to when I played it in my youth, you would see that the game today is one of the most wonderful of creations that has ever been coded for players to enjoy.

It is such a shame that many players have turned their backs on the game and no longer spend time to enjoy it.

I still get an enormouse amount of thrill every time I sit in the pilot seat and launch myself into space.

Today's graphics are breathtaking compared to how the game played in my youth. I guess, many youngsters do not realise how lucky they are to be able to venture to all four corners of the galaxy, equipped with beautiful ships, and to see such glorious sights... And all from the comfort of their armchair.

How anyone can say they have gotten bored of the game is beyond me. I have watched it grow, over the years, beyond anything I could imagine in my youth and now I just absolutely love it.

Elite is by far the best Space SIM ever created; and FDev really should be congratulated for all their efforts.

Share your thoughts... It would be nice to see a thread filled with positive vibes.
I started on the Spectrum version and then got a copy of the PC version. A couple of us played it on old 286 PCs in our lunch breaks in one of the labs at work in the 1980s. It was and still is my favorite game.
 
I am 62 and played the original elite game on my Acorn Electron. I played the slave trader and drug runner and eventually got Elite status. I was amazed at what it could do even though it was all wireframe graphics.

When I heard that Elite Dangerous was out, I had to have it, First on my Mac, yes Mac, until it got cancelled there. My son convinced me to get a PS4, and I discovered ED was coming to that platform, so I continued playing when it came out. Once they announced Odyssey, I started saving and got myself a PC to play the game on that; now, I await the profile transfers with anticipation.

Over all three systems, I have never had any serious problems, an occasional glitch. Still, I understand development and developers because I am one myself, not of ED but other projects. All a developer wants is to be informed constructively about what the problem was, what happened and when; they are all human, just like us and are not mind readers.

So please give them a break, modern ED is not some piddly little application, and there are bound to be bugs that will need fixing.

Now let the Kraken loose, I suppose!
 
I've only discovered this game two years ago.
Had I known about Elite in my C64 years, it could have easily become my all time favourite a few decades earlier.
Never mind, I think it still beats any other game I have played, in terms of hours.
When I first heard about it, the things that drew me to it were its astronomical accuracy, and the steep learning curve+reliance on community developed tools to make sense of this complexity.
It might sound absurd, but I really enjoy that aspect.
I came to ED with no expectations, and I was blown away.
I still think that FD have shown some poor professionalism and they have let down a portion of their player base due to mismanagement, but the product is still solid with its massive scope.
 
Not that it matters but 45 yo here and veteran from 1984s Speccy Elite, remlock and all. A LEP holder and Kickstarter backer.

There's no question that visually and aurally the game is amazing. No question that the accuracy and beauty of the stars adds a mesmerising backdrop to the game.

However, after 35+ years of gaming a lot has changed in terms of design, but not it seems for gameplay elements in ED. Fetch quests, kill quests and so on are going strong here. There's very little difference to flying in an Anarchy or a dictatorship; Alliance, Federation or Empire space are all "the same".

After leaving my sidewinder, NPCs have provided almost no challenge as a trader; piracy, smuggling and blockade running (the essential Han Solo experience) exists mainly in my head and isn't a challenge AT ALL in game except Vs other CMDRs. The game felt more alive in First Encounters and Elite 2.

This, to me, is the biggest disappointment. Elite 1984 led the way in innovation and maximising limited CPU resource. So did Frontier. ED squanders that opportunity in my opinion
 
I'm merely 43, for another couple of months at least...
I missed Elite on C64 (though I actually still have it in the back of a cupboard) First time I encountered it was on the NES in '91.
I then went through a patch where nothing hit the spot until XBTF about '98.
I watched ED go through Kickstarter from the sidelines due to not having a working PC at the time. It wasn't till I got a PS4 that I was able to get back into a CBR III and set off again.
Aside from having to rely on my somewhat dodgy internet I haven't had anything to complain about and jaw dropping moments are just a few jumps away.
 
Elite 1984 led the way in innovation and maximising limited CPU resource. So did Frontier. ED squanders that opportunity in my opinion
Yeah whilst i do agree that there are some things it could do better, i also have to give fdev some benefit of the doubt. For me the test of time was simply:
8bit machines had a single core cpu, limited resources and a custom built OS in rom that was there on turning the machine on. These days PCs are a billion times more complex than those machines, turning on the machine now it will go through POST to make sure all hardware checks out then boots the boot loader from track 0 of the harddrive. After that the OS of choice loads in and starts the driver loading process and then gets the GUI going for us to use it.

Complexity comes in the form of one misaligned driver or bug in that can cause massive performance hits to games or anything. Weve all seen this with GPU drivers, but with everything if it only happens in x game the game is faulty. This could just be a driver in a game that is cutting edge using something new, maybe were to quick to judge these days back in 84 it took ages to load a game so we were more patient 🙂
 
Hello, my name is Cmdr BL1P and I am 55.

I first played Elite in the 80s on a Zx81 and a small TV.
I now play Elite Dangerous on a Ryzen 7 (3700x) cpu, 2x1t m.2s and a 4t ssd for 6 terabyte storage, 32gig ram, 3060 12gig RTX gfx card, Dual monitors, Dual VKB NXTs and VKB pedals, 7.1 suround sound headset and Oculus Quest 2 Virtual Reality Headset.

Yes it could be better optimised (much better optimised), but I am actually doing what I dreamt of as a teenage boy, Flying space ships in virtual reality. :)
I stick to Horizons mainly because it plays much better than Odyssey does in VR.
 
Yeah whilst i do agree that there are some things it could do better, i also have to give fdev some benefit of the doubt. For me the test of time was simply:
8bit machines had a single core cpu, limited resources and a custom built OS in rom that was there on turning the machine on. These days PCs are a billion times more complex than those machines, turning on the machine now it will go through POST to make sure all hardware checks out then boots the boot loader from track 0 of the harddrive. After that the OS of choice loads in and starts the driver loading process and then gets the GUI going for us to use it.

Complexity comes in the form of one misaligned driver or bug in that can cause massive performance hits to games or anything. Weve all seen this with GPU drivers, but with everything if it only happens in x game the game is faulty. This could just be a driver in a game that is cutting edge using something new, maybe were to quick to judge these days back in 84 it took ages to load a game so we were more patient 🙂

the critique in question wasn't regarding elite dangerous having more bugs than the old games. Which is what your post seems to suggest as being due to the nature of computers getting more complicated. Which fine, writing game engines has gotten harder as we've asked them to do more across more hardware etc. Nobody is really faulting it for that in relation to the old games.

It was in regards to the lack of making use of the added potential provided by having more to work with in various areas of the game. To the lack of improvement on basic gameplay designs that are either not challenging in of itself or not innovating the same gameplay mechanisms that existed in the elite game 30 years ago. This has nothing to do with computers or OS's getting more complex over time. Nor does it lend itself to giving developers a pass. It's a miss even when viewed in a vacuum of just the game, and is felt throughout the game in nearly every role you can play in. And why that lack of innovating and change to effectively copied and pasted game mechanics hurts ED is because the game board is so much bigger and there are so many more options and locations. Game mechanics that were perfectly acceptable in a smaller game board are hopelessly repetitive and grindy in ED because the choices lose individual identity and meaning.

ED leverages the resources of modern computers and makes billions of systems and massive environments but gives you the exact same gameplay loops you had in elite 1984. They do nothing to innovate those game loops to leverage the resources at their disposal. This wouldn't conflict with the technical issues they have with odyssey and such and so be something they would not be able to do without pushing hardware specs out of range. Such innovations in gameplay for the various roles are in terms of depth and new interactions and different ways to implement the role that make it better for the player. more variety in responses and maybe more unique npc responses to player actions from having the ability with modern hardware resources to store player activity and play off your history in different ways (npcs might remember something you did long ago, etc). Npcs could adapt to your play style.

None of that would necessarily require any additional resources over what the game currently requires because what limits the game currently has little to do with what the game is simulating and seems very much about what the game is rendering...
 
I do agree that ED could use its resources much more efficiently take a look at the unreal 5 tech demos of what current gen is capable of. TBH for me the limiting factor is the Cobra engine basically to keep it in house fdev have confined their creativity by the capability of their engine which is a shame of what could have been tbh. We could have had VR in every facet instead of limitations making it a sidelined patch in Odyssey.
 
Elite is by far the best Space SIM ever created; and FDev really should be congratulated for all their efforts.

Share your thoughts... It would be nice to see a thread filled with positive vibes.

In the early 80s, well I was an Atari and later MS-DOS owner. So I think of Asteroids, Space Invaders.. and later during many UNIX years I was big into xgalaga and later Endless Sky.

- Elite: Dangerous was just what the doctor ordered for an Endless Sky buff to go 3d last year! -

And after some months of dabbling, I realized that I could choose Horizons in the launcher and what that even was/meant. Then I was like "Great! Now it is even better than Moon Patrol!" (1982)

Yeah I rarely load another game and Elite is usually at the main menu whether I'm playing or not.
 
I stick to Horizons mainly because it plays much better than Odyssey does in VR.
Atmospheric planets for me was an absolute game changer... the feeling of playing Elite in broad daylight was the piece of the puzzle I was missing. Think I actually was getting a little 'space-madness' always looking at black skies)
Your system is similar to what mine was a month ago... I had a 5700XT which is rated a little below your 3060. I had the same view about sticking to Horizons cause performance was horrible for me back in December or January when I tried Odyssey.... but a friend of mine kept telling me to give it another try, and he was right... the recent updates made a big improvement. I actually had my 3080 sitting in a box for a month while I was still playing on the 5700xt in EDO out of pure laziness... don't get me wrong, the 5700 was dropping enough frames to get me nauseous when doing lots of fast movements in the SRV but almost all flight stuff was pretty good, really dense asteroid belts dropped some frames too.

When I was getting really low on Raw mats I knew I would be going back to the Crystal Shard forest and I remember that place being a Vomit-fest in VR on the 5700, so I cracked open the 3080 and the forest were fine. But if fdev have any sales on Odyssey I would definitely recommend giving Odyssey another shot even if only during the times you are doing atmospheric worlds... Hop in your Krait and drop out in a fighter to zip around Canyons in the daytime.... so awesome. And at first my brain didn't like the new lighting, but after a while I did feel like it was closer to what I imagine space would actually be like. Oh also there was lots of glitches when going in an out of supercruise on the 5700... so I'm not trying to be fake and act like it was a smooth ride, but it was 'good enough' to make atmospherics awesome. Hopefully v13 will make it even better.
 
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