rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
This is kind of a follow up thread to this one. (Quick TL;DR of that post - It was June 2015, I played Elite for a year then and didn't like the direction the game was heading, then I went to Lavecon, met The Hutton Truckers and was inspired to start my own group, which turned out to be the best thing that happened to me in Elite so far 
)
Warning, wall of text with subjective opinion of the game incoming! Also warning, it is going to be a half-rant.
Now, I was planning to make a thread like that every year - kind of a review slash summary of how I feel about the game. But I've had SO MUCH FUN for the last 2 years with my group that frankly - I totally forgot to write up both "2 and 3 years in the cockpit".
It will be 4 years since I play Elite in July and while it is true I've had a blast for most of that time, I've been having mixed feelings about the game for quite a while now. I tried to answer the question "Why" for some time now and I think the answer is not that simple.
Now, everything I am going to say is just my opinion so please don't take what I am about to type as some sort of fact - these are my subjective feelings.
I am a role player and I play video games to escape reality. I've been through some stuff in my life and I'm going through more currently and games were always the way of escaping that. That's why I like to IMMERSE (yeah I said it!) myself in a game's world. I like to forget that I am just playing a game and feel like I'm really there. That's why I am a fan of realism in games. Elite was an amazing tool for that. The feeling of being there, of living a life of a space ship pilot it 34th century was amazing. First as a lone wolf, then as a leader of a faction called The Winged Hussars. I was totally a Commander, having all those great adventures.
We did a lot of things with the Hussars - trade convoys, SRV jump contest, canyon racing, asteroid field racing, Dangerous Games, we made the 2nd place in the first batch of Colonia colonisation, we did a Community Goal and completed it fully against all odds and a lot of people acting openly against us, we helped to save Dove Enigma, we didn't manage to save Salome (but made it into Drew's book), we used to control the 3rd biggest territory in game (but we recently let go of BGS, as it's just became boring), we did space bowling with Sidewinders as pins and FAOFF Cutters as bowling balls (that was fun).
I went to SagA*, I went to Soul and Heart nebulae, I was searching for bases in Formidine Rift and Hawking Gap, I also did a lot of other things, just blazing my own trail and making my Commander's story as the time went by.
After 4 years the magic is gone however. And part of it is due to the fact that I got simply burn out. I mean, 3000 hours is A LOT of time to spend in one game. And after all that time - 99% of it role played in Open - I have just above 1 billion Cr in assets and about 60 million Cr in cash. I have never used any exploits, gold rush, work-arounds, relogging to refresh mission board, I have never combat logged or exit to menu. I just took it all in, because this game is my PASSION and I absolutely love it. (The same goes for the previous games in the series, as my adventure with Elite started with FE2 on Amiga).
But there is something else apart from burning out. In fact, the burn out was partially caused by this.
I've been feeling that since about half-time of Season 2 the world that I loved to immerse myself so much started to become less and less believable. Things just stopped making sense, one after another. There was more and more holes that I had to fill with my imagination. And while I don't have a problem with that in general - I can't do it forever, especially when there are more holes to fill than substance around those holes.
At this point in time I just don't feel that I'm there. I feel that I'm just playing a game. And it's extremely disappointing - the magnitude is simply because what I said above - this game was always my passion and I love it.
What are the holes then? They are the little details that when put altogether completely kill any sort of credibility and integrity of the game world...
- Black market being an official station contact right next to the authority contact.
- You can have a career in both Federal and Imperial Navy at the same time and achieve a highest possible military rank in opposing military forces.
- Thargoids being completely optional content, lack of any sort of fear or terror when in fact an alien race is burning down human stations. The factions in those systems are happily in economic boom state or squabbling between them in civi wars, the local chat is full of "I still didn't write my vows yet, what can I say?" and "This liner is in 1% blah blah" type of chatter
- Engineers wanting set amount of the same cargo to unlock (I mean how many tonnes of Kamitra Cigars that woman has now stashed...?)
- Most of the in game activities paying peanuts... Here I am risking my life to rescue escape pods from being abducted by alien ships and I get louse 30k Credits for it?
- Fines issued in burning station for pad loitering when I'm collecting dead bodies and black boxes all over the place
- Generic messages from NPC's that get old very quickly
- Telepresence possible for millions of light years, but no can do for a simple module or ship availability check
- Telepresence in general. (What's next, tractor beams?)
- Story arcs started and seemingly abandoned (and if not abandoned, then taking absolute ages to develop and progress)
- Artificial barriers, like inability to have more than 1 crew active at the same time
There are more, but I won't bore you with them no more. Thank god we did not get instant ship transfer.
The biggest disappointment and the things that finally killed it for me was the release of 2.4. It was supposed to be "narrative driven patch". The patch that Frontier could not release any details about, because it was supposed to be a big surprise and winter was supposed to come. The big reveal - THE RETURN. Oh my God the hype was unreal! (The following quotes are from Frontier themselves). "The worst enemy in the history of video games is back", "The nightmares of the past awaken". I was extremely hyped for it. Finally, a narrative driven content! YAY! Food for blazing my own trail! The momentum that will drive my role play! Oh boy oh boy oh boy this will be AMAZING!
I was ecstatic.
And don't get me wrong. The first visit to the Thargoid base, the first hyperdiction, the first meeting with a Goid when it attacked me... Wow, just wow. There was not enough scale on my hype-o-meter at that point.
Then... we got a few Community Goals with some flavour text and 100% optional Thargoid NHSS with no real sense of danger, terror or anything like that. And couple of lore videos that instead of being put INTO the game are put on YouTube. I mean there wasn't even as much as emergency broadcast in game when Oracle was attacked by Thargoids! Galnet only recently started to be filled with related stories, I presume after a lot of the community complained about that, but up till recently it was just pretty much empty with some CG info, which you could get in the CG UI anyway on the mission board and useless BGS reports (listing 20 random systems that are in a civil war state without even giving me the distance from my location, where I can perfectly working filter that can do exactly same thing on the galaxy map... come on!).
Then we have things like Eagle Eye - I'm only aware of it because there was an article in Galnet about it. I was not playing the game at the time and I recently wanted to check it out, but I can't even find the article in game anymore. There isn't any search function in Galnet. We don't have any database that we can check and search for stuff like that.
So where the hell is this glorified "narrative"? Oh right, we have Canonn website. We have Galnet website. We have forums. We have YouTube. We have gazillion of other out-of-game sources. So that's where the narrative is! It's all over the place, but it's missing from one place where it really should be - THE GAME. People say this game is mile wide, but inch deep. When it comes to the story and lore - I disagree with them. The game has an AMAZING lore and story. But it's nowhere to be found in the game.
(As a side note - why release a narrative driven content when you clearly don't have the tools to present said narrative properly in game? Did someone read the features priority list upside down? And now we have a Bonus Weekend which was just slapped on like a magic wand - here, you will get double money for all your trades, now go and play! For the love of all that's holy WHY did you not present this in game as a NARRATIVE, the narrative that this game is supposed to focus on, apparently? This is really beyond me. Pun fully intended.)
Anyway... I was extremely hyped for the Thargoid story line, so the disappointment was equally colossal. I know, it's my own fault for falling for FDEV's hype, but it is them that created the hype in the first place, so as a very passionate player it was only natural for me to fall for it). Retrospectively, I think I just wanted something really great and exciting to happen in the game. And instead I was met with lousy and boring content, scripted events and random NHSS's.
And that was the final straw that killed it for me.
So I've had over 6 months break thinking that it's just burn out and I just need some time off the game. I have logged in a few times for a while during that time to help out with some events for my community, but didn't really play the game properly.
I have recently came back to the game and... somehow I just can't get back into it. I really want to, but I log in and all I see are those big holes that just rip apart any credibility and integrity of the game world. I just can't fill them with my imagination anymore, because there are too many of them.
I have the impression that the developers somehow lost the passion that was running in the game. It's probably just the impression, as I'm sure the passion for this game runs deep in Frontier's offices, but I just don't feel it. And haven't for a while now. I'm talking about Frontier's passion, not mine.
So come one FDEV, where is all the attention to details? Where are all the little things that made me go "WOW!"? I remember how mind blown I was when I closed up to a random outpost in my Cobra and looked at those little windows on the outpost wall and saw silhouettes of plants and furniture inside those living quarters. That has completely blew my mind. That's what I'm talking about. We need that, but not with graphics - with narrative related content instead.
It's all the little things like that make me feel like I'm actually living my virtual life as a space ship pilot. Those little details are there for the visuals. They're there for the audio. But they are severely lacking for the content / merits / realism / general feeling and atmosphere of the game. It's just not there.
The magic... it's gone.
P.S. I have read all what I typed and I'm, not even sure if I managed to put my point across... I am not a native speaker, so perhaps I was not able to express my thoughts and feelings in the best way. If you've read all that and you're now thinking "What the hell his point is?" - I failed miserably with this thread, but at least I feel better now for venting out
P.P.S. I am not saying "teh game is ded" by any means. I am also aware that we're about to get new content this year, but somehow I am not hyped for it at all. I am just kinda hanging there to see what's gonna happen. I would love for Elite to be a true passion for me again, but I fear that it won't be possible anymore, until the holes are filled with some content and merit. Until then I'm afraid "it's just a game" for me. I still believe in it though.
::EDIT::
Just to reiterate - this is not about burn out from playing too much. It's part of it, but it's not the main point. The main point is lack of glue that would hold together the world. It's about lack of believable universe. It's not that I don't want to play, because I'm burnt out - I do want to play, because there is a ton of things on my to-do list for this game, but I can't see through all the lacking details that would make me believe this is not just a game.
For the record, some of my major items from ED bucket list:
- Power Play. Didn't try that yet, just didn't really have time to full get into it and my character's role play didn't fit. I do want to try it at some point.
- Engage in Thargoids story. But I can't get myself to do it when I know it's just 100% optional and there is no atmosphere of danger or terror. I need more substance to Goids related content.
- Guardian Weapons. Waiting for FDEV to improve the grind on this. I have never consciously grinded anything in this game and I don't intend to
- Visit Beagle Point - awaiting Q4 exploration update before I do that.
- Unlock the rest of the Engineers - that's 4 or 5 of them. I can't be bothered at this point (this one is actually due to burn out, besides the ones I have unlocked have 99% of the upgrades I need for my ships at this point)
- Finally start a career as a smuggler - something that I always wanted to do since I started playing ED. This was the original plan for my character. Sadly lack of any focus on this part of the game does't make it worth my while. Being a smuggler is just not immersive enough for me.
- Pirate's life! - lack of any interaction with NPC's whatsoever makes me go meh about that. I want to be able to ask them to stop their ship and surrender the cargo. Just ripping their cargo holds open is not interesting enough for me. Again, lack of immersion.
- Circumnavigate a planet in SRV. Can't be bothered, partially to burn our, partially due to the lack of interesting things to come across on planets.
Bear in mids that's just some things I have on my to-do list for Elite. There are more on it
::EDIT2::
OK, just to be little more constructive, here's my idea on improving the personal narrative in game: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-the-personal-narrative?p=6727595#post6727595
)Warning, wall of text with subjective opinion of the game incoming! Also warning, it is going to be a half-rant.
Now, I was planning to make a thread like that every year - kind of a review slash summary of how I feel about the game. But I've had SO MUCH FUN for the last 2 years with my group that frankly - I totally forgot to write up both "2 and 3 years in the cockpit".
It will be 4 years since I play Elite in July and while it is true I've had a blast for most of that time, I've been having mixed feelings about the game for quite a while now. I tried to answer the question "Why" for some time now and I think the answer is not that simple.
Now, everything I am going to say is just my opinion so please don't take what I am about to type as some sort of fact - these are my subjective feelings.
I am a role player and I play video games to escape reality. I've been through some stuff in my life and I'm going through more currently and games were always the way of escaping that. That's why I like to IMMERSE (yeah I said it!) myself in a game's world. I like to forget that I am just playing a game and feel like I'm really there. That's why I am a fan of realism in games. Elite was an amazing tool for that. The feeling of being there, of living a life of a space ship pilot it 34th century was amazing. First as a lone wolf, then as a leader of a faction called The Winged Hussars. I was totally a Commander, having all those great adventures.
We did a lot of things with the Hussars - trade convoys, SRV jump contest, canyon racing, asteroid field racing, Dangerous Games, we made the 2nd place in the first batch of Colonia colonisation, we did a Community Goal and completed it fully against all odds and a lot of people acting openly against us, we helped to save Dove Enigma, we didn't manage to save Salome (but made it into Drew's book), we used to control the 3rd biggest territory in game (but we recently let go of BGS, as it's just became boring), we did space bowling with Sidewinders as pins and FAOFF Cutters as bowling balls (that was fun).
I went to SagA*, I went to Soul and Heart nebulae, I was searching for bases in Formidine Rift and Hawking Gap, I also did a lot of other things, just blazing my own trail and making my Commander's story as the time went by.
After 4 years the magic is gone however. And part of it is due to the fact that I got simply burn out. I mean, 3000 hours is A LOT of time to spend in one game. And after all that time - 99% of it role played in Open - I have just above 1 billion Cr in assets and about 60 million Cr in cash. I have never used any exploits, gold rush, work-arounds, relogging to refresh mission board, I have never combat logged or exit to menu. I just took it all in, because this game is my PASSION and I absolutely love it. (The same goes for the previous games in the series, as my adventure with Elite started with FE2 on Amiga).
But there is something else apart from burning out. In fact, the burn out was partially caused by this.
I've been feeling that since about half-time of Season 2 the world that I loved to immerse myself so much started to become less and less believable. Things just stopped making sense, one after another. There was more and more holes that I had to fill with my imagination. And while I don't have a problem with that in general - I can't do it forever, especially when there are more holes to fill than substance around those holes.
At this point in time I just don't feel that I'm there. I feel that I'm just playing a game. And it's extremely disappointing - the magnitude is simply because what I said above - this game was always my passion and I love it.
What are the holes then? They are the little details that when put altogether completely kill any sort of credibility and integrity of the game world...
- Black market being an official station contact right next to the authority contact.
- You can have a career in both Federal and Imperial Navy at the same time and achieve a highest possible military rank in opposing military forces.
- Thargoids being completely optional content, lack of any sort of fear or terror when in fact an alien race is burning down human stations. The factions in those systems are happily in economic boom state or squabbling between them in civi wars, the local chat is full of "I still didn't write my vows yet, what can I say?" and "This liner is in 1% blah blah" type of chatter
- Engineers wanting set amount of the same cargo to unlock (I mean how many tonnes of Kamitra Cigars that woman has now stashed...?)
- Most of the in game activities paying peanuts... Here I am risking my life to rescue escape pods from being abducted by alien ships and I get louse 30k Credits for it?
- Fines issued in burning station for pad loitering when I'm collecting dead bodies and black boxes all over the place
- Generic messages from NPC's that get old very quickly
- Telepresence possible for millions of light years, but no can do for a simple module or ship availability check
- Telepresence in general. (What's next, tractor beams?)
- Story arcs started and seemingly abandoned (and if not abandoned, then taking absolute ages to develop and progress)
- Artificial barriers, like inability to have more than 1 crew active at the same time
There are more, but I won't bore you with them no more. Thank god we did not get instant ship transfer.
The biggest disappointment and the things that finally killed it for me was the release of 2.4. It was supposed to be "narrative driven patch". The patch that Frontier could not release any details about, because it was supposed to be a big surprise and winter was supposed to come. The big reveal - THE RETURN. Oh my God the hype was unreal! (The following quotes are from Frontier themselves). "The worst enemy in the history of video games is back", "The nightmares of the past awaken". I was extremely hyped for it. Finally, a narrative driven content! YAY! Food for blazing my own trail! The momentum that will drive my role play! Oh boy oh boy oh boy this will be AMAZING!
I was ecstatic.
And don't get me wrong. The first visit to the Thargoid base, the first hyperdiction, the first meeting with a Goid when it attacked me... Wow, just wow. There was not enough scale on my hype-o-meter at that point.
Then... we got a few Community Goals with some flavour text and 100% optional Thargoid NHSS with no real sense of danger, terror or anything like that. And couple of lore videos that instead of being put INTO the game are put on YouTube. I mean there wasn't even as much as emergency broadcast in game when Oracle was attacked by Thargoids! Galnet only recently started to be filled with related stories, I presume after a lot of the community complained about that, but up till recently it was just pretty much empty with some CG info, which you could get in the CG UI anyway on the mission board and useless BGS reports (listing 20 random systems that are in a civil war state without even giving me the distance from my location, where I can perfectly working filter that can do exactly same thing on the galaxy map... come on!).
Then we have things like Eagle Eye - I'm only aware of it because there was an article in Galnet about it. I was not playing the game at the time and I recently wanted to check it out, but I can't even find the article in game anymore. There isn't any search function in Galnet. We don't have any database that we can check and search for stuff like that.
So where the hell is this glorified "narrative"? Oh right, we have Canonn website. We have Galnet website. We have forums. We have YouTube. We have gazillion of other out-of-game sources. So that's where the narrative is! It's all over the place, but it's missing from one place where it really should be - THE GAME. People say this game is mile wide, but inch deep. When it comes to the story and lore - I disagree with them. The game has an AMAZING lore and story. But it's nowhere to be found in the game.
(As a side note - why release a narrative driven content when you clearly don't have the tools to present said narrative properly in game? Did someone read the features priority list upside down? And now we have a Bonus Weekend which was just slapped on like a magic wand - here, you will get double money for all your trades, now go and play! For the love of all that's holy WHY did you not present this in game as a NARRATIVE, the narrative that this game is supposed to focus on, apparently? This is really beyond me. Pun fully intended.)
Anyway... I was extremely hyped for the Thargoid story line, so the disappointment was equally colossal. I know, it's my own fault for falling for FDEV's hype, but it is them that created the hype in the first place, so as a very passionate player it was only natural for me to fall for it). Retrospectively, I think I just wanted something really great and exciting to happen in the game. And instead I was met with lousy and boring content, scripted events and random NHSS's.
And that was the final straw that killed it for me.
So I've had over 6 months break thinking that it's just burn out and I just need some time off the game. I have logged in a few times for a while during that time to help out with some events for my community, but didn't really play the game properly.
I have recently came back to the game and... somehow I just can't get back into it. I really want to, but I log in and all I see are those big holes that just rip apart any credibility and integrity of the game world. I just can't fill them with my imagination anymore, because there are too many of them.
I have the impression that the developers somehow lost the passion that was running in the game. It's probably just the impression, as I'm sure the passion for this game runs deep in Frontier's offices, but I just don't feel it. And haven't for a while now. I'm talking about Frontier's passion, not mine.
So come one FDEV, where is all the attention to details? Where are all the little things that made me go "WOW!"? I remember how mind blown I was when I closed up to a random outpost in my Cobra and looked at those little windows on the outpost wall and saw silhouettes of plants and furniture inside those living quarters. That has completely blew my mind. That's what I'm talking about. We need that, but not with graphics - with narrative related content instead.
It's all the little things like that make me feel like I'm actually living my virtual life as a space ship pilot. Those little details are there for the visuals. They're there for the audio. But they are severely lacking for the content / merits / realism / general feeling and atmosphere of the game. It's just not there.
The magic... it's gone.
P.S. I have read all what I typed and I'm, not even sure if I managed to put my point across... I am not a native speaker, so perhaps I was not able to express my thoughts and feelings in the best way. If you've read all that and you're now thinking "What the hell his point is?" - I failed miserably with this thread, but at least I feel better now for venting out
P.P.S. I am not saying "teh game is ded" by any means. I am also aware that we're about to get new content this year, but somehow I am not hyped for it at all. I am just kinda hanging there to see what's gonna happen. I would love for Elite to be a true passion for me again, but I fear that it won't be possible anymore, until the holes are filled with some content and merit. Until then I'm afraid "it's just a game" for me. I still believe in it though.
::EDIT::
Just to reiterate - this is not about burn out from playing too much. It's part of it, but it's not the main point. The main point is lack of glue that would hold together the world. It's about lack of believable universe. It's not that I don't want to play, because I'm burnt out - I do want to play, because there is a ton of things on my to-do list for this game, but I can't see through all the lacking details that would make me believe this is not just a game.
For the record, some of my major items from ED bucket list:
- Power Play. Didn't try that yet, just didn't really have time to full get into it and my character's role play didn't fit. I do want to try it at some point.
- Engage in Thargoids story. But I can't get myself to do it when I know it's just 100% optional and there is no atmosphere of danger or terror. I need more substance to Goids related content.
- Guardian Weapons. Waiting for FDEV to improve the grind on this. I have never consciously grinded anything in this game and I don't intend to
- Visit Beagle Point - awaiting Q4 exploration update before I do that.
- Unlock the rest of the Engineers - that's 4 or 5 of them. I can't be bothered at this point (this one is actually due to burn out, besides the ones I have unlocked have 99% of the upgrades I need for my ships at this point)
- Finally start a career as a smuggler - something that I always wanted to do since I started playing ED. This was the original plan for my character. Sadly lack of any focus on this part of the game does't make it worth my while. Being a smuggler is just not immersive enough for me.
- Pirate's life! - lack of any interaction with NPC's whatsoever makes me go meh about that. I want to be able to ask them to stop their ship and surrender the cargo. Just ripping their cargo holds open is not interesting enough for me. Again, lack of immersion.
- Circumnavigate a planet in SRV. Can't be bothered, partially to burn our, partially due to the lack of interesting things to come across on planets.
Bear in mids that's just some things I have on my to-do list for Elite. There are more on it
::EDIT2::
OK, just to be little more constructive, here's my idea on improving the personal narrative in game: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-the-personal-narrative?p=6727595#post6727595
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