"You really want to fly in a straight line in space for 5 to 10 mins without having to touch the controls?"
Elite would never include gameplay like that!
They didn't... originally.
But the original alpha tester cohort decided that the "right" way to fly in Supercruise was fly
slowly in a
straight line. This is despite the fact that the
fastest way to fly was (and still is) to avoid getting caught by gravity wells until you approached your destination, at which point you needed to skillfully thread the needle, a small corridor of space between being captured (or colliding with) the planet your destination orbits, and overshooting. It was fun, it was fast, and Frontier all but killed it because the "fly slowly in a straight line" cohort complained that Supercruise was too slow!
Now, the
best we can do is a controlled overshoot maneuver (except near gas giants) which isn't as
fast as the original iteration of Supercruise was for most destinations in the Bubble, it doesn't require as much skill, nor do I consider it to be as much fun.
This has been Frontier's pattern from day 1:
- Frontier introduces something with depth, which requires skill, knowledge, and/or an decent understanding of the underlying game mechanics to get the best results.
- The Members of the Community reduces it to something that is easily understood, requires little skill... but can be done through grinding for guaranteed results while watching Netflix, even if said results aren't as good as those who develop the necessary skills, knowledge, and understanding are able achieve. They then post a youTube video about it.
- This simplistic and grindy approach then gets adopted by the Community at Large, despite a small cohort of players trying to educate others about a better, and more fun, way of achieving those results.
- The Community at Large complains about the how slow and grindy their approach to the game is.
- Frontier increases the rewards of the grindy approach, at the expense of what can be achieved via skill, knowledge, and understanding.
- ???
- Profit!
Do I want ship interiors? Yes, I do. But what I want more than anything else is skillful gameplay outside the sphere of combat. Ship interiors
without attached gameplay is window dressing. Nice to have, but not at the expense of additional gameplay, as well as new settings for existing gameplay to take place in.
