People have said that the learning curve for Elite Dangerous was huge, and this is true. I feel however, that this learning curve is largely a failure of the introduction and training modules. Simply put, there are not enough of them, and what is there, is useless beyond teaching you where your menus are and how to land.
So, without ado, annoying things and how they can be easily fixed.
1. In a game where it takes money to make money, the game is ruthless at depriving a starting player of it. Giving new players a 1 week debuff that makes all fines forgiven would be super helpful. Especially since the game does not always warn you that certain commodities you purchase in one system might be illegal in others. (btw, there should seriously be a more obvious warning for this).
2. There needs to be a training module for outfitting your ship. For instance, It took me a day to realize that you could put better cargo holds on your ship. My profits doubled after I learned this, but the fact that I was losing out on double potential profits for a day was infuriating. I also did not know that outfitting your ship "too much" would cause power issues. This was again, something learned through the school of hard knocks.
3. There needs to be a training module for all the ways to make money. "How can I make money in Elite Dangerous" is probably the most google searched thing about this game. For a reason. There is no explanation beyond "You can trade, fight, or mine". Wonderful. How? It again, took me awhile to realize you can search trade data on the galaxy map, but ONLY while docked at a starport. My silly self tried doing while flying around, and not seeing a feature for it, assumed you just had to visit various ports by trial and error to figure out where to offload your cargo.
4. Speaking of which, starting players often have to go into the hock to start making some decent returns and slowly gain better and more profitable ships. Which makes getting swatted by another player or NPC also annoying. Again, a debuff that makes it so you can't be interdicted for at least a couple of days would be super helpful. Newb protection is nothing new in MMO's. It exists for a reason, and that is largely because getting an entire days profits blown out of the sky by a PK incredibly rage inducing, since you are literally starting from nothing.
5. Make what ships are available in a specific system a thing please. It was annoying as all hell trying to find a hauler once I had scraped together enough cash for one.
Basically, Elite seems to have the "Minecraft Problem". Its an amazing game, once you figure it out. But to figure it out you need to read through reams of internet pages, youtube videos and so on. In the words of Yahtzee, "I am plopped down in the middle of a countryside, and have no idea what to do. So I punch some flowers. Take that flowers." Elite is a game that seriously needs more agency given to the "training station, where you get assigned certain "missions" that reward you with monies. Missions like "buy and equip a fuel scoop". "Upgrade your cargo hold". "Search the map for a high tech planet". "Fly to high tech planet, buy random crap in high supply, bring back to training station and sell". "Now go mine an asteroid". "Now smuggle something into the station". Etc. Each little progression thing giving some cash reward so that by the time you have completed all the training mission the new player has a nice bit of starting capital and actually knows what the hell to do in the game.
So, without ado, annoying things and how they can be easily fixed.
1. In a game where it takes money to make money, the game is ruthless at depriving a starting player of it. Giving new players a 1 week debuff that makes all fines forgiven would be super helpful. Especially since the game does not always warn you that certain commodities you purchase in one system might be illegal in others. (btw, there should seriously be a more obvious warning for this).
2. There needs to be a training module for outfitting your ship. For instance, It took me a day to realize that you could put better cargo holds on your ship. My profits doubled after I learned this, but the fact that I was losing out on double potential profits for a day was infuriating. I also did not know that outfitting your ship "too much" would cause power issues. This was again, something learned through the school of hard knocks.
3. There needs to be a training module for all the ways to make money. "How can I make money in Elite Dangerous" is probably the most google searched thing about this game. For a reason. There is no explanation beyond "You can trade, fight, or mine". Wonderful. How? It again, took me awhile to realize you can search trade data on the galaxy map, but ONLY while docked at a starport. My silly self tried doing while flying around, and not seeing a feature for it, assumed you just had to visit various ports by trial and error to figure out where to offload your cargo.
4. Speaking of which, starting players often have to go into the hock to start making some decent returns and slowly gain better and more profitable ships. Which makes getting swatted by another player or NPC also annoying. Again, a debuff that makes it so you can't be interdicted for at least a couple of days would be super helpful. Newb protection is nothing new in MMO's. It exists for a reason, and that is largely because getting an entire days profits blown out of the sky by a PK incredibly rage inducing, since you are literally starting from nothing.
5. Make what ships are available in a specific system a thing please. It was annoying as all hell trying to find a hauler once I had scraped together enough cash for one.
Basically, Elite seems to have the "Minecraft Problem". Its an amazing game, once you figure it out. But to figure it out you need to read through reams of internet pages, youtube videos and so on. In the words of Yahtzee, "I am plopped down in the middle of a countryside, and have no idea what to do. So I punch some flowers. Take that flowers." Elite is a game that seriously needs more agency given to the "training station, where you get assigned certain "missions" that reward you with monies. Missions like "buy and equip a fuel scoop". "Upgrade your cargo hold". "Search the map for a high tech planet". "Fly to high tech planet, buy random crap in high supply, bring back to training station and sell". "Now go mine an asteroid". "Now smuggle something into the station". Etc. Each little progression thing giving some cash reward so that by the time you have completed all the training mission the new player has a nice bit of starting capital and actually knows what the hell to do in the game.
