One of the most disappointing games ever. Ruined by a studio that failed to grow a pair of nadgers and do what was right for the game.
Yes the game is massive. Yes, the game is beautiful. Yes, the game has some wonderful flight mechanics. But that is it, that is all you are paying for. You are not paying for an in depth of game, it's as a basic and monotonous as it comes.
Trading - Basic
Mining - Basic
Combat - Basic
Exploring - Basic
Crime - Basic
Career paths - Basic
Engineering - A boring monotonous grind and basic
Bounty hunting - Basic
Pirating - Basic
To highlight this, let's have a look at exploring. Currently, exploring is nothing more than jump, scope and honk, rinse and repeat. Yeah, you can fire off explorer limpets to do some basic scanning, but it needs more than that.
For a start, you might as well not take out explorer class ships, as well, there is nothing special about them at all. They provide no benefit to exploring, there is no specialist upgrades for explorer class craft that only they can use, they don't have the furthest jump range, best fuel economy, best ship integrity or the best of anything. They literally are a waste of a class and possibilities.
And this is just the ships, the mechanics of exploring are even worse.
What you really need was something akin to this.
1) Having proper integrity mechanics. Such as, having a mechanic in place that when ship integrity reaches zero, your ship literally falls apart and explodes. This is due to constant stresses and jumping and everything else, that causes wear and tear. This integrity count down should not be stopped, as explorer ships whilst built to last, are still very complex machines, requiring a certain degree of maintenance that you just can't do without being in a specialist facility. However, integrity degradation can be slowed down by upgrading your parts, engineering in specific ways to increase their useable life span. Also, when engineering ships and their components, you can choose to strengthen their integrity at the cost of other stats or if you wanted, lower integrity in favour of the other stats, like increasing jump range. This means that much better planning and preparation is required before heading off.
2) Explorer ships should have specialist equipment that they can install, that no other class of ship can and if they can, basic at best. Just like the liner class of ships should only be able to carry passengers in cabins in half decent to luxury quality cabins, as that is what they are designed to do. Same for explorer class ships, they should have equipment, scanners, limpets, drones, engineers that only explorer class ships have access to.
3) Better use of drones for exploring. Really as explorer class ship, they should have a certain number of explorer drones, the bigger the explorer class ship, the more drones they can carry. These drones fly over the surface of planets, scanning them for minerals, objects, life etc. These should be unmanned, still piloted by the player, so as they fly over the planet surface and mapping it is they go, using instruments to guide them and actually seek out mineral deposits, areas of interest etc etc, the player is the one actually doing it. Of course, this data can then be sold later at the market or saved in your personal files for later, for when you return in a mining rig and makes lots of money from them for yourselves etc etc.
Okay, this may not be perfect, but its more involving than jump, scope and honk all the time. At least you get to actually explore and makes probing every object in a system worthwhile as even something innocuous may reveal something special with a good enough search.
4) Put mechanics in place that only big team efforts can go far into deep space. As a ships integrity should on be repaired at appropriate stations. In order to stay out further, you need to develop supply chains, escort ships to protect from pirates. Requiring a plethora of pilots with chosen career paths all working together to reach further into deep space. Mechanics in game creating the need of groups of people to work together adding depth, the feeling of the universe feeling more alive, lived in. Feeling the consequences of your choices and you actions.
But nope, FDev went with the basic of basic in every player activity, focusing more on PVP rather than depth of mechanics in game, being too scared of adding real consequences to players actions and thus ruined the chance of Elite Dangerous becoming one of the most iconic and greatest games ever made.
And that is the saddest thing of all, the complete and utter failure to reach it's full potential. Elite dangerous is no different from Star Citizen, they both utterly failed in their own way.
Yes the game is massive. Yes, the game is beautiful. Yes, the game has some wonderful flight mechanics. But that is it, that is all you are paying for. You are not paying for an in depth of game, it's as a basic and monotonous as it comes.
Trading - Basic
Mining - Basic
Combat - Basic
Exploring - Basic
Crime - Basic
Career paths - Basic
Engineering - A boring monotonous grind and basic
Bounty hunting - Basic
Pirating - Basic
To highlight this, let's have a look at exploring. Currently, exploring is nothing more than jump, scope and honk, rinse and repeat. Yeah, you can fire off explorer limpets to do some basic scanning, but it needs more than that.
For a start, you might as well not take out explorer class ships, as well, there is nothing special about them at all. They provide no benefit to exploring, there is no specialist upgrades for explorer class craft that only they can use, they don't have the furthest jump range, best fuel economy, best ship integrity or the best of anything. They literally are a waste of a class and possibilities.
And this is just the ships, the mechanics of exploring are even worse.
What you really need was something akin to this.
1) Having proper integrity mechanics. Such as, having a mechanic in place that when ship integrity reaches zero, your ship literally falls apart and explodes. This is due to constant stresses and jumping and everything else, that causes wear and tear. This integrity count down should not be stopped, as explorer ships whilst built to last, are still very complex machines, requiring a certain degree of maintenance that you just can't do without being in a specialist facility. However, integrity degradation can be slowed down by upgrading your parts, engineering in specific ways to increase their useable life span. Also, when engineering ships and their components, you can choose to strengthen their integrity at the cost of other stats or if you wanted, lower integrity in favour of the other stats, like increasing jump range. This means that much better planning and preparation is required before heading off.
2) Explorer ships should have specialist equipment that they can install, that no other class of ship can and if they can, basic at best. Just like the liner class of ships should only be able to carry passengers in cabins in half decent to luxury quality cabins, as that is what they are designed to do. Same for explorer class ships, they should have equipment, scanners, limpets, drones, engineers that only explorer class ships have access to.
3) Better use of drones for exploring. Really as explorer class ship, they should have a certain number of explorer drones, the bigger the explorer class ship, the more drones they can carry. These drones fly over the surface of planets, scanning them for minerals, objects, life etc. These should be unmanned, still piloted by the player, so as they fly over the planet surface and mapping it is they go, using instruments to guide them and actually seek out mineral deposits, areas of interest etc etc, the player is the one actually doing it. Of course, this data can then be sold later at the market or saved in your personal files for later, for when you return in a mining rig and makes lots of money from them for yourselves etc etc.
Okay, this may not be perfect, but its more involving than jump, scope and honk all the time. At least you get to actually explore and makes probing every object in a system worthwhile as even something innocuous may reveal something special with a good enough search.
4) Put mechanics in place that only big team efforts can go far into deep space. As a ships integrity should on be repaired at appropriate stations. In order to stay out further, you need to develop supply chains, escort ships to protect from pirates. Requiring a plethora of pilots with chosen career paths all working together to reach further into deep space. Mechanics in game creating the need of groups of people to work together adding depth, the feeling of the universe feeling more alive, lived in. Feeling the consequences of your choices and you actions.
But nope, FDev went with the basic of basic in every player activity, focusing more on PVP rather than depth of mechanics in game, being too scared of adding real consequences to players actions and thus ruined the chance of Elite Dangerous becoming one of the most iconic and greatest games ever made.
And that is the saddest thing of all, the complete and utter failure to reach it's full potential. Elite dangerous is no different from Star Citizen, they both utterly failed in their own way.
