Elite: An old persons view...

[Tiramu]

I think it's easy to read a reply to a thread and assume that it's aimed at you. I try to separate the doom vs legit criticism, which I'm aware is based on my own perspectives even if I try to be as objective as possible, but I agree that there is room for critique as nothing is perfect. But it's also ok for some to want to just wax on the good stuff, of which there is plenty in Elite, in a thread such as this, despite the fact that yours and others' criticisms may be valid to a greater or lesser degree.

I played Elite on my C64 and Frontier on my Amiga, and while I am still waiting for the full Frontier experience in Elite Dangerous, I think it's pretty plain to see that if you compare the representation of the ships in Frontier to that of Elite Dangerous, applying the same level of advancement to surroundings, such as cities and terrestrial planets, is inordinately a much greater task, especially considering the raised expectations of it these days. Frontier was pretty state of the art on the Amiga, but that was 1993, nearly 30 years ago. There are other aspects of Elite Dangerous that completely blow Frontier clean out of the water, and I would never trade the two. Elite Dangerous, including Odyssey, is where it is at.

Elite Dangerous for the most part is the game I imagined when I played Frontier, better even. It is still being developed, and hopefully that will continue to encapsulate the development of the big features still to come.

Well, yeah. If you compare ED to the old Elite games then it's leagues ahead of them. However, when you compare it to modern games it starts to struggle.


When I wrote my post I was thinking about things such as Engineering, Superpower Missions, Minor Faction Missions, Planetary Exploration and Power Play.

Take Engineering, which has been mentioned alongside unfair complaints in this thread. I don't understand how anyone can seriously suggest criticism of it is unfair. Engineering is a bog standard crafting system where you're given a material list that you have to go out and harvest. You then return to the engineer and dump those materials into the recipe to complete the synth and get the upgrade.

The process of crafting requires no skill at all, and the process of harvesting materials is based around simple grind loops that present no real challenge. Just a low RNG meaning the materials will take time to obtain, leading to monotonous gameplay. It's a test of your time and patience... padding built around cheap to implement game mechanics and a low win ratio lottery.

 

[Frankymole]

I didnt become bored, I became annoyed with the game. The grind and nickel-and-dime structure of the rewards. The powercreep, nerf to vaniillla n and overreliance on RNG did pretty much the rest, as well as annoyances when stuff stopped working or bugs ruined yet another couple hours of game session. It's one of he few games I regret spending 100s of hours in.

There's no need to grind. This isn't a game where you have to get OP and minmaxed out. There's no endgame. Just relax and play.

 

[Fizzatron]

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?

No.

 

[nemolomen]

There's no need to grind. This isn't a game where you have to get OP and minmaxed out. There's no endgame. Just relax and play.

This is how I try to play as well. Only upgrading what I need to, little bits at a time...but not everyone wants to play that way.

And, if one wants to PvP in powerful spaceships...that's a whole different game.

 

[St0rmFury]

I feel younger with every post I read

38 here for the record.

 

[Fizzatron]

Well, yeah. If you compare ED to the old Elite games then it's leagues ahead of them. However, when you compare it to modern games it starts to struggle.

It seems to me that you're shifting the goalposts a bit here to hammer a point you have already made. I don't recall saying that Elite is beyond criticism in my reply, in fact I believe I made a point to say it wasn't. Though also a good part of what I was saying was that it is perfectly fine to speak about the good parts of Elite without having to have the 'yeah but' responses that seem to inevitably flow when someone praises the game. That doesn't automatically make anyone a white-knight or any other variation of such suggestion, including being blind to its present faults, conversely it comes across on the other side as one who is blind to Elite's qualities.

Elite Dangerous is still being developed so talking about this or that being a waste also serves no constructive purpose in the grand scheme of things as many mechanics have been revisited already, and a major one is getting an overhaul in the new year, with nothing to say that any particular feature won't be revisited again in the future, so it's not something that anyone can make definitive statements about. Again, that doesn't imply there's nothing that needs revisiting and honestly I don't see why it seems to trigger a response as if it is implying that, like it is something that needs correcting. Has Frontier ever stated that x feature is complete and final?

 

[Fizzatron]

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.

Endless Sky is a fantastic little game. I love the customization options and have cited it in regards to some suggestions for expanding the outfitting in Elite. I have to say that I haven't played it for many years but it's like a pocket edition of Elite lol. I was reading some of the news the other day actually and it's great to see that it's still getting updates.

 

[Nikephorus Phocas]

If you want to see unkind, spend some time in the Star Citizen thread. Those people are BRUTAL!

So I’ve heard. This place is full of care-bears and kittens. Nary a harsh word in contrast to other games /s.

Of course with kind words such as this game is dead, it sucks, Developers are awful, etc., how could one not see the love flow. Certainly the wording might be tame, that is the moderators seem to run a tight ship, plus filters.
But there certainly a fair amount of people that eviscerate ED (to the best of their abilities) every chance presented.
Maybe I’m just a super fanboy who finds this game fun, enthralling and not really awful.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

There's no need to grind. This isn't a game where you have to get OP and minmaxed out. There's no endgame. Just relax and play.

With a peashooter vs bulletsponges?
I think CP2077 is too spongy, too, but at least I can pick difficulty or turn to hacking there.
ED just offers me to not play the parts I used before they became too spongy.

 

[Uvelius Sång]

Look at most successful MMO's. You align to one of the games nations/powers and embark on a narrative driven quest line that digs into that nations lore, conflicts, and world building from their perspective. As you rank up you get rewards.

EV Nova, as an example for a pretty easily staged, yet very effective and even gripping storyline-by-superpower playstyle, springs to mind.
(Not an MMO and as a very simple example, of course, just taken for the direction such things could go).

 

[BL1P]

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.

I still have odyssey no need to buy on sale.
I run on a 3060 RTX 12g card. But saddly its absolulty terrible to play VR on that card in Odyssey. Horizons is fantasticly smooth compared to odyssey.

Like you say though maybe one of the Year 2 since release updates will fix odysseys performance problems.
I play in 2d pancake mode when playing with firends on foot.

 

[robbyp]

This game has consumed 10's thousands of my hours now.

I've been playing since the BBC Micro, on PC with FFE, FFE2. I kept going back to FFE2 every few years when the long long wait for Elite Dangerous to come out, scanning alt.fan.elite for any news.

And now I'm spending so many hours doing EDD and working with EDCD, replying to Discord, and of course still playing the game.

Total outlay for all this entertainment is probably less than 200 quid in total.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

This.

You'd expect the superpower ranks and power play to be vehicles for narrative driven content.

Look at most successful MMO's. You align to one of the games nations/powers and embark on a narrative driven quest line that digs into that nations lore, conflicts, and world building from their perspective. As you rank up you get rewards.

In PvE MMO's (and some PvP) these nation storylines often converge into a "greater threat" storyline and branch out into sub narratives.

This trend isn't coincidental, its because they're the ideal places to thrust a narrative out there.


Now, its all fair and well going on about "personal narrative", but its a damp squib. MMO's like WoW and Final Fantasy XIV have vibrant role play communities within them of the likes ED could only ever dream of having. They also have a massive amount of narrative driven content far beyond the scope of a space game. Narrative content and personal narratives arent mutually exclusive. If anything they compliment, enrich and encourage each other.

Except for the fact that alignment with a superpower is the exception in Elite. Most of us are Independent Pilots which tends to limit that idea.

 

[ethelred]

Except for the fact that alignment with a superpower is the exception in Elite. Most of us are Independent Pilots which tends to limit that idea.

It's poorly implemented game design, regardless of how many use it.

Either have superpower affiliation and develop it properly, or don't have it.

To have it and not implement it properly is the worst outcome, right?

It's the same with "grind". As a design philosophy "grind" takes no skill, it's merely a function of time spent. Whether you engage or not with the process, grind as game design is poor.

I'm sorry so many CMDRs have trouble accepting that.

 

[HRDiagram]

If you want to see unkind, spend some time in the Star Citizen thread. Those people are BRUTAL!

I have never posted in that thread, because I have nothing to say, but I follow it occasionally, because it is possibly the cutest (for lack of a better term) discussion on these forums.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I'm pushing 50 (not quite there yet) and got into Elite: Dangerous because of VR. I was vaguely aware of the original Elite and its sequels, but I never played them. Also, I had a rather late start with computers and went straight to PC at the end of the 80s. I was always into space flying games, I massively enjoyed the X-Wing and Tie Figher series, and I played the Freespace games to death in the 90s. But the Elite franchise never really was on my radar.

I got really interested in VR tech three years ago when the Rift S significantly lowered the entry threshold, and looked into games I might enjoy if I bought a headset. Driving and flying were the obvious candidates for me, and I was told about Elite VR by a colleague at work. I think I would never have looked into ED if it wasn't for VR. I got the headset first and then bought my ED copy, and I was hooked from the first minute of the game when I sat in the cockpit of the sindwinder for the first time. I will never forget how awesome and, dare I say, breathtaking my first flights were. I started after Frontier had added the new player experience, so that helped immensely.

Today ED takes up almost all of my VR time; sometimes I take a drive in Project Cars 2, but it's ED 98% of the time. ED is the only game I have sunken over a thousand hours into (I think I'm around the 1500 hour mark now), and I consider it more of a hobby than a game.

 

[Alaska Sædelære]

57 here and not much to add to OP and the rest. Only one thought, I believe it takes the experience of time to appreciate or even imagine time. At any age, humans can't grok a period of time greater than what they themselves can look back upon. Therefore it's hard for younger ones to appreciate the history of projects like this, the effort it took and what it means to stand on the shoulders of giants. As a result, they can be a bit intolerable sometimes.

/snip

And +1 for knowing Night on Earth
Huomenta, Aki...

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

And +1 for knowing Night on Earth

IGuess the name of my carrier . Night on Earth is one of my all time favorites. EDIT: Which fits in the "old person" category, I guess... I just realized it's over 30 years old now...

 

[Frankymole]

It's the same with "grind". As a design philosophy "grind" takes no skill, it's merely a function of time spent.

That's the nature of RPGs though. The skills are the character's, not the players (unless the player is a genuine spell-casting wizard in real-life, or an actual interstellar pilot and trader, or an Orc). The player "skill" is having more determination to play the game instead of doing other real-life stuff. A truly skilled person would be able to play many hours per day by using their "real-life skills" to free up the time. And as Stalin said, "quantity has a quality all its own".

 

[ethelred]

That's the nature of RPGs though. The skills are the character's, not the players (unless the player is a genuine spell-casting wizard in real-life, or an actual interstellar pilot and trader, or an Orc). The player "skill" is having more determination to play the game instead of doing other real-life stuff. A truly skilled person would be able to play many hours per day by using their "real-life skills" to free up the time. And as Stalin said, "quantity has a quality all its own".

I understand every word individually but all together I don't understand your point.

Could you explain it again as if I were a 12 year old?