Don't forget espionage missions in Frontier or First Encounters, where you had to take images of bases etc.travelling on the surface is certainly a thing that elite added. But that in of itself is not gameplay. It's a stage to create gameplay. What can you do while walking and driving? which brings us to ..
Yes, this is new. it's also only found on a infinitely small fraction of the planets in the game. And only on a tiny localized fraction on the surfaces of those planets where it can be found at all.
I think that goes along with the above. Your interactions with npcs are either killing them or not killing them. You're not making friends, you're not building a relationship with any. The interactions you have here are no different than the interactions you have with space ship npcs. Also, exists on almost 0% of systems in game.
This is not additional gameplay. This is driving around and shooting rocks or looking at non-interactive things at the behest of a mission giver instead of doing it yourself. The game doesn't care either way nor is there a distinction in the activity the player experiences when doing it via mission or not. Also, exists on nearly 0% of systems in game.
i addressed shooting rocks and running them over as one of the standout differences between frontier and elite dangerous a couple posts after the one you quoted here.
I noted this as well, however i wouldn't call staring at a non-interactive model gameplay any different than just randomly driving around and looking at a mountain or hill or canyon. The game doesn't care either way and it involves the same activity except one can be converted into credits.
You mean staring at the terrain ? To what end is this gameplay? Does it allow you to trigger a mining expedition from nearby corporations ? Does it lead to expansion into prime real estate for building bases ? Are you able to leverage this exploration for your own personal gain? no. this is imaginary ...not gameplay. And that's sad because there's certainly lots of potential where this could have actually been gameplay.
You covered that in settlement missions and walking around in settlements. The game doesn't really care about the distinction between what you're doing here vs any other settlement. However alien settlements do generally include puzzle gameplay which is unique to them. So we can count that. At least on the handful of planets out of the hundreds of billions the game gives us.
that existed in previous elite games. You dont necessarily get the little mini-game that occurs during it, but the mechanic existed if not in frontier than in elite 1984.
these are locations ...not new gameplay activies or loops. The caveat to that is CZ's where you join a side is probably new to elite.
the "bgs" in the old games may have been more primitive but i'd still say it existed much to the same effect that it does now except maybe without the faction shuffling around. There was still procedural system states and missions that related to those states and faction relations and basic economy modelling.
You could mine asteroids in the old elite games. Shooting a rock is shooting a rock, is it not? Just reading the description and it's hard to not be able to apply the same instructions to elite dangerous
Frontierverse > Mining
www.sharoma.com
Now granted, there are 3 additional options than just shooting the roid to mine it in elite dangerous. 2 involve shooting different speed projectiles at a given spot and 1 involves doing that + a mini game. So there is that. However these additional or alternative actions just result in acquiring a commodity that ultimately is just converted to credits with no distinction between it and any other commodity you would sell. Why? Why build something new on top of the old just to castrate it by immediately dumping it into the existing old process so that it immediately becomes the same game play as quickly as possible? weird.
in regards to extraction sites : same activities and game loops, just different locales. The locale changes dont really matter in elite dangerous because the game doesn't care where you do something. there's nothing about what you do in these locations that will make any difference compared to doing the same thing somewhere else. it's the same game loop and same activity.
bounty hunting ..not sure if that existed like it does in elite in previous games, but really this is just a concentration of npcs to kill instead of killing them only during interdictions or missions. The gameplay is the same regardless and differs very little from combat zones. The activity of combat between the old games and elite dangerous is basically the same. ED did not add things like communicating with the enemy to trigger behavioral changes or persistent history for vendettas or an adaptive npc difficulty response to scale the game to player's skill and actions. It doesn't do anything like that. it's shoot and forget, rinse and repeat the same way the old games were.
in the old game you could fuel scoop gas giants. Something you can't do in elite dangerous. Both could scoop stars. Elite dangerous actually downgrades this feature.
travelling around and looking at the planets existed in the old game too. You might not have needed to shoot them to read the stats, but i wouldn't call that much of an innovation worth mentioning
this is something unique for sure, but how is it any different than looking at a moon? is it leveraged in the game as a means of hiding things from some interested party ? Does it do anything for you gameplay wise other than act as eye candy? no. This includes the space hearts and crystalline spikes and other handful of things that are there but are effectively dont offer any kind of new gameplay and exist for aesthetic purposes only.
I would argue that would class as additional gameplay
