4 years in the cockpit - the magic is gone.

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Stealthie

Stealthie
I remember picking out a specific Thargoid base with a great view, parking my AspX on the top of a cliff overlooking the base and logging-off while the 2.4 update happened.
lokhaWR.png

I'm not sure what I was expecting.
Ideally, I was probably hoping to log back in and see the base rise up from the surface as a fully operational flower-ship but I would have settled for seeing Thargoid ships hovering around the base.
Honestly, I was expecting to log back in and have my ship destroyed by something soon afterwards.

But... nothing.
No change.
At all.

And then the reports of Thargoid USS's start to appear on the forums.
Thargoid USS's?
Seriously?
That's exactly what people were making cynical jokes about 2.4 being.
And it was spot on.


And we've still got that banner at the top of the forum which shows a flower ship hovering outside a station while another one lurks near an asteroid belt.
Are we ever going to see stuff like this in-game?
 
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Xious

Xious
picommander said:
Not so cynic, young Padawan ;)
I guess you have no clue what it means to *live* 4 years (or more!) in a game and then suddenly feel spit out by your very own "home". Or you come back only to see your own illusions behind the tapestry.

I think Roots is very much spot on when he points out what the game needs so urgently. Whilst a bonus Weekend certainly doesn't cut it...
Click to expand...

You wanna know what I think?

Hold on... let me get my W.o.T.... brb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBlFHuCzPgY
 

SystemShift

S
I hear you.
Will be 4 years for me in September, for me it looked like the game was starting to go in the wrong direction when they introduced multi crew telepresence and they never got back on track.
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
I stopped playing a good few months ago...after a previous hiatus of several months. The realisation hit me at one point that I was becoming so separated from the influx of player demographic in what I expected, wished and required from E-D and to where FDev were driving it through design just wasn't worth my expenditure of time and support.

It's not a bad thing per se...I'm sure FDev are happy to tag the game with the 'MMO' suffix and push features concurrent with that design philosophy to attract a fresh outlook from new players.

But not for me....I guess I'm still waiting for that game I thought I was emotionally buying into 3 years and 5,500 hours ago. :)
 

Aaron T

Aaron T
I understand. For me it is always just more of the same ole stuff.

I am going to try to suffer through to triple elite, then I may just retire from the game for a while.
 

TiberiusMaximus

T
I’ve been playing since beta. The games greatest asset is the stellar forge and the galaxy that it’s created. An Excellent platform for storytelling etc. I think fdev have really failed to do justice to this creation and never really will. I have found all content for elite to be average/acceptable to unimaginative/infuriating. I doubt I’ll ever fully quit, I still have bursts every few months to check out new content. I think most of my playtime in elite, has actually beeen watching the hyperspace animations, or doing some dull repetitive task - I’m sad to say. Not to say it’s been all bad, especially in vr the game is visually epic.

The magic wore off long ago for me, with the hope fdev could get enough resources, skills and funds to help this game realise its true potential.

What really irritates me is fdev aren’t a bad developer. They’ve grown so much over the past few years, in every way possible and it’s been nice seeing that, especially as they are UK based and the studio is not far from me. I just feel elite is too much for them to handle and they’ve been out of their depth for some time.
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Elite is being run as a "service" so don't feel bad about the time, there have been new things to keep the image fresh.

The direction of elite hasn't really bothered me, its just we're getting objective examples of bad craftsmanship being added to elite. This is one of the pillars that holds up elite, and i don't think there's much there without it.

- Now that the chieftain has been released, its so clear that the type-10 was a dodgy cheap rush job, and simply a glorified ship kit over the type-9. Just a poor effort.
- Crime and punishment was an elaborately designed bandaid. Too much of it only makes sense as a response to an existing issue, without the issue the same gameplay mechanics would be madness.
- Thinking about putting powerplay in open isn't considering the majority of players who don't play in open, but at least makes sense logically as its a pvp centric activity.

Yeah but im thinking that myself as well. When someone else is in control of your 'chosen one' there's a risk this will happen, so its probably a trigger that you're doing it wrong if its gotten to close for comfort. I probably need to back away a step as well.
 

Mengy

Mengy
Well spoken Roostrat. I've been in a similar place for the past year, but due to the lack of exploration development instead of your reasons. The planet murder of update 2.2 did a great job of killing my drive to explore, and it's slowly been dwindling ever since. 3.0 fixed the planets thankfully but it was far too late, I'd already lost the will to explore any more or even play the game much at all. I tried combat, some trading, passengers interested me for a bit, but I bought the game to explore and without it I'd just rather play other games.

I've been taking breaks from Elite off and on for over half a year now, playing other stuff like Civ 6, Cold Waters, Kerbal Space Program, and Minecraft, just waiting to learn anything at all about the Q4 exploration improvements coming at the end of this year. I'm still waiting, at least now I have the date of June 18th to look forward to. June 18th is the day I decide whether or not I'll be keeping Elite installed on my PC. I still have a glimmer of hope left that Frontier will finally take an interest in making exploration something worthy of a life size virtual Milky Way. Just a slim thread of hope remains in me, but it's fleeting fast.

For now, I'm still just waiting...
 

Lightspeed

Lightspeed
It would be easy for FD to dismiss this thread as a 'burnout' rant, but it is much deeper than this, regardlesss of whether Cmdr Rootsrat has played for 2, 3 or 4 years. He has kind of summarized what a great many commentators have been saying for (it seems like) forever in this forum, always hoping for the next big fix to solve everything, and always disappointed because it didn't appear.

We are going through this stage yet again, because this is the year of the Big Fix. We are almost halfway through the year and .... here we go again .... we are pinning our hopes on Q4 !

I'm still optimistic, but it increasingly feels like FD is in need of a Master Storyteller, with a big budget and executive control. Sadly, there may not be anyone like that available. Some of the other games are probably looking for him or her too !
 

Rustnsawdust

R
I have to wonder if we're not, all of us, expecting too much from a video game.

I took a break late last year that lasted for more than six months, not because i hated ED, or lost the love for it, but because I had other things to do. Came back to it last month and I've been having a great time since then.

But there are no rules... if you've been out for six months, give it nine or twelve or longer. If you find a reason to play again, great. If you don't, well.. don't.

It's a video game, not the answer to life, the universe and everything!
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Lightspeed said:
I'm still optimistic, but it increasingly feels like FD is in need of a Master Storyteller, with a big budget and executive control. Sadly, there may not be anyone like that available. Some of the other games are probably looking for him or her too !
Click to expand...

Yeah there's something missing isn't there. I get the impression that frontier have a culture of being too polite to challenge any individuals ideas just out of respect. Either that or hierarchy is poorly applied and senior people are making all the decisions.

Don't get me wrong, if it works then we have no comment, but the reverse applies and someone should be accountable.
 

Lightspeed

Lightspeed
Rustnsawdust said:
I have to wonder if we're not, all of us, expecting too much from a video game.

I took a break late last year that lasted for more than six months, not because i hated ED, or lost the love for it, but because I had other things to do. Came back to it last month and I've been having a great time since then.

But there are no rules... if you've been out for six months, give it nine or twelve or longer. If you find a reason to play again, great. If you don't, well.. don't.

It's a video game, not the answer to life, the universe and everything!
Click to expand...

This is true, and we all have to keep this in perspective and be reminded that this is not life. ;) The frustration comes from many commenters seeing potential unfulfilled, I think.
 

znôrt

znôrt
rootsrat said:
It's about lack of believable universe.
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it's just a simulation, no simulation is believable after enough hours, and you have had quite a share. give it some time, you know the drill ...

and yeah, development pace is slow and direction appalling at times, but that's just how it is and it isn't in player's hands.
 

MottiKhan

MottiKhan
+1 rep to the OP.

I get it. The game has lost a lot of its luster over time for me too.

I've ignored the aliens (Thargs and Guards both), multicrew, and Colonia. (Although I've been to Jaques before Colonia was a thing). Gave up on Power Play and CQC. Rarely wing up. etc. There have been several additions to the game that just don't fit well and don't seem to have been very well thought out.

I engineer because I pretty much have to.

But there are still interesting aspects to keep my interest. The core of the game is still good. The flight model, 1 to 1 galaxy and the BGS. These keep me in the game.

Hopefully, FD won't decide to "improve" them. But if they do, there's my founder's (LEP) Galactic Civilizations III just sitting there awaiting my return.
 

Ziljan

Ziljan
rootsrat said:
Thanks for all the comments guys :)

I don't think I got my point across very well (all that typing... :D ).

It's not the burn out - that's just part of it. Note I am just coming from over 6 month break.

It's the lack of believable world with details that make it integral. That what currently kills Elite for me. There are A LOT of things on my to-do list for this game and I very much want to do them, but the magic is gone, because all I see are the holes and not much substance between them to hold the universe together :)

And every time more substance is added, there are also more holes added. I wish instead they added some glue to hold it all together.
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This is a fair criticism of their design choice to make the universe where players are the characters and also somehow insignificant.

For such a model to work it almost requires multiplayer and player 2 player interactions, both positive and negative. However very little structure was built for this purpose and players themselves are given very little agency to shape the Galaxy. Really imo, the entire story is way too tightly held by Fdev as part of the IP and fed to players in a very Top-Down, here are your 2 "choices" way. Even the community sourced CGs are to be "selected" by Frontier and not generated by in game mechanics representing the far more complex will of the players.

If Frontier is going to continue to be this controlling, then they are putting the onus on themselves to be responsible for story content, and frankly their anemic and heavy handed approach to story telling, with little to no mechanical tie-in to the existing BGS, isn't cutting it.

I had to quit playing the Alien content because it had zero connection to the BGS, and was just tacked on to existing systems that seemed oblivious to the invasion. It made the whole effort unrewarding in every sense of the word.
 
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