Am I getting too old but is the new content too difficult to access?

[Rat Catcher]

I cannot wait for the predicted thargoid-guardian hybrid weapons, and the grind to get them wont be an issue for me most likely.

I'm not too bothered if they appear or not. But if they do, and the requirements to get them are as silly as the 'unlock' for a single 'specia' AX Multicannon, I won't bother at all - I'd rather just continue ignoring the "war" (the new Spire sites are amazing, but the ongoing "war" lacks flavour now) and enjoying playing, as usual, doing things I find interesting (which isn't exploring...) until the "war" fizzles out, or the game suddenly becomes interesting as full-blown, unavoidable, hostilities break out.

Not cynical, just that the current war, and the 'requirement' for effective equipment, doesn't inspire me at all - if this was truly Galactic War every bit of equipment that was effective would be virtually forced into our sticky paws, it is not...

 

[BeyondAeon]

I am constantly dying, i have over 1bn in rebuys almost exclusively from 2023.

Failure does not mean completely starting over at all

Failure means starting back at the carrier , having the get past 2 Glaves , again, then take what's left of your ship on in , then you get spotted and attacked and , start over again

That is Frustration , not fun
that is what I meant

 

[XenoZera]

I'm not too bothered if they appear or not. But if they do, and the requirements to get them are as silly as the 'unlock' for a single 'specia' AX Multicannon, I won't bother at all - I'd rather just continue ignoring the "war" (the new Spire sites are amazing, but the ongoing "war" lacks flavour now) and enjoying playing, as usual, doing things I find interesting (which isn't exploring...) until the "war" fizzles out, or the game suddenly becomes interesting as full-blown, unavoidable, hostilities break out.

Not cynical, just that the current war, and the 'requirement' for effective equipment, doesn't inspire me at all - if this was truly Galactic War every bit of equipment that was effective would be virtually forced into our sticky paws, it is not...

Azimuth pre-engineered AXMC's are not a requirement by a longshot. Not even Guardian Gauss are "required".

The war has been pretty interesting to me, certainly more interesting than mining, hauling or PvE combat. Sorry you don't feel the same way.

 

[XenoZera]

Failure means starting back at the carrier , having the get past 2 Glaves , again, then take what's left of your ship on in , then you get spotted and attacked and , start over again

That is Frustration , not fun
that is what I meant

For what specifically? Glaive hyperdictions are, honestly, really easy to avoid in a medium ship. I dont think i've had a single glaive hyperdiction turn aggro since i learned to use silent running when dropping out of hyperspace.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Azimuth pre-engineered AXMC's are not a requirement by a longshot. Not even Guardian Gauss are "required".

Azimuth Pre-Engineered MCs are much more efficient at taking care of Thargoids than Enhanced AX MC... "Requirement, maybe not, in some opinions, but the unlock is uninspiring. I have the full range of Guardian weapons - which are negated currently by Orthrus - possibly other Thargoids, so may as well be useless...

certainly more interesting than mining, hauling or PvE combat.

Probably is... Although Thargoids are PvE combat, are they not?

Maybe the "police action" will become a war later, we'll see.

 

[Hellrider]

Failure means starting back at the carrier , having the get past 2 Glaves , again, then take what's left of your ship on in , then you get spotted and attacked and , start over again

and?
I'm not around titan for having 0 threat. Finally I have some content where...you know, actually I can die, instead having success after first attempt, and 101% for mission complete after all next attempts.
There is plenty of other, harmless content around, if you don't like faills- stick with literally 90% of game.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Failure means starting back at the carrier , having the get past 2 Glaves , again, then take what's left of your ship on in , then you get spotted and attacked and , start over again

That is Frustration , not fun
that is what I meant

Case in point, exploring/looting the spire sites while our carriers weren't booted from the spire systems was more fun than having to fly there and back every time.

I'm not around titan for having 0 threat. Finally I have some content where...you know, actually I can die, instead having success after first attempt, and 101% for mission complete after all next attempts.

Being murdered by thargoids often isn't the thing people are complaining about - it's travelling 10min to be murdered by thargoids to learn part of the lesson that avoids death by trial and error if you're lucky enough to get to the trial part.

It pushes the difficulty from fun to punishing. The time wasting parts aren't usually even the challenging part unless it's glaives where it's either you just die, run away/retreat from the system or have an unfun jousting fight with minimal damage that lets you carry on to your destination.

There's part of games where the travel works to build pacing between tense and chill moments, but with the thargoid war stuff and constant non-evadeable interdictions/hyperdictions it's all over the place and ends up in a situation where you spend more time travelling than playing the fun bits when learning the content and maybe if you're lucky by the time you're good enough at it to hang around the more dangerous areas you can optimize it to lean more towards time spent doing the actual content but by that time you've maybe done it enough to find it boring which just spoils the entire thing.

 

[Flimley]

IF the guardian grind for 2 weapon blueprints and a FSD booster was too much, Elite may not be the game for you- unfortunately.
I cannot wait for the predicted thargoid-guardian hybrid weapons, and the grind to get them wont be an issue for me most likely.

Odyssey content still sucks yes i will concede that, but the game is still supremely fun for me. If you know of any other game with a near-newtonian flight model and a near 1:1 scale galaxy, let me know

elite may not be the game for me? think about what you're saying there for a while. In addition to playing frontier games since the nineties.
I been around long enough in this game (9000hrs play time) to have experienced repeated content in different forms. For me It's pure lack of motivation to keep doing essentially the same thing over and over. this is the way the game coding works, and it operates in no other way. If one is in an earlier game state, motivation will be high.

The flight model is excellent.

The 1:1 galaxy was really a coding science project. An astounding technical achievement initiated by DBOBE and largely realised by Dr Ross and team. But, once you have visited a good number of planets in and around the bubble, (11,000 for me) seen black holes and nebulae, you've pretty much experienced everything the whole galaxy has to offer. ... it's the same, everywhere.
And with the current halting of planet generation. And no sign of a big procedural dev push for planet content such as landable water EL/worlds, clouds, caves, rivers, weather. You get the idea. Sadly It leaves elite with a mostly redundant 1:1 asset.
And so I've moved on.

Flimley

 

[rootsrat]

elite may not be the game for me? think about what you're saying there for a while. In addition to playing frontier games since the nineties.
I been around long enough in this game (9000hrs play time) to have experienced repeated content in different forms. For me It's pure lack of motivation to keep doing essentially the same thing over and over. this is the way the game coding works, and it operates in no other way. If one is in an earlier game state, motivation will be high.

The flight model is excellent.

The 1:1 galaxy was really a coding science project. An astounding technical achievement initiated by DBOBE and largely realised by Dr Ross and team. But, once you have visited a good number of planets in and around the bubble, (11,000 for me) seen black holes and nebulae, you've pretty much experienced everything the whole galaxy has to offer. ... it's the same, everywhere.
And with the current halting of planet generation. And no sign of a big procedural dev push for planet content such as landable water EL/worlds, clouds, caves, rivers, weather. You get the idea. Sadly It leaves elite with a mostly redundant 1:1 asset.
And so I've moved on.

Flimley

I can definitely get behind a lot of what you've said. I honestly lost A LOT of motivation to play and tbh I pretty much only play Elite now when I live stream, because those 2 combined activities really give me lots of joy. Especially being able to show this amazing (yet definitely rather stale for me personally now!) game to people that are only just starting or that have never seen Elite before is a great feeling.

I have 4 accounts in total, 3 of which are pretty much untouched - and I rarely play on my alts, because I don't feel the satisfaction that I used to (also when I was planning for the different characters). The game didn't really developed the way I hoped, so I can't fullfill my plans for my alts (smuggler - no gameplay, pirate - absolutely terrible C&P system, and explorer - not much to discover really, lots of repetition, no thicks atmos).

Odyssey, while definitely fun, was/is terribly bugged and the development pace is way too slow for me to keep my interest outside of streaming.

In fact Update 17 is the first update in AGES that got me playing off-stream again, because the Spires are really cool content for me and I feel that spark that I used to.

A lot of this stems from 3 big downsides for me personally:
- Odyssey is very clearly a separate game that is not very well linked to the space game
- The main Ody activity, which seems to be progression throug gear upgrades and engineering is totally killed for me due to the most stupid decision ever made by FDEV - the inability to freely remove gun attachments = unbearable grind if you want a few different, specialised loadouts (I could honestly live with permanent suit upgrades, but guns? scope and bigger magazine super-glued to my gun? honestly...)
- The amount of bugs in the new content and lack of bug fixes for the stuff that annoys me (not saying they are not fixing bugs, but not the ones that kill my joy personally)

I still hope for the next big expansion to be either ship interiors with the whole gameplay related to that OR expanding the landable planets with thick atmos, so we can finally see the weather, the oceans and rivers and actual varied biomes with actual flora and fauna (the current exobiology was fun for a while, but the repetition means it got old VERY quickly).

Saying all that, as I said, I really like to live stream Elite and show how amazing it is to new players. In a way... I wish I have only discovered it now, instead of almost 10 years ago, but at the same time - no regrets, I've had the most amazing time with it and there are still moments, albeit rare, when I still can experience that feeling. Which actually says a lot about this game

 

[Flimley]

Hello @rootsrat yes, it's sad but true. People like us have largely outgrown the slow pace of development. I remember building my PC and simpit months before game release with such enthusiasm. Even met Sandro Mike and Ed back in the day.

Odyssey being a newly developed game really requires another three years to become interesting and integrated. But, i fear what will actually happen is a "grind" for blue/green guns at some point for some reason. And that for me will imitate the ship mechanic cycle over again. ... and kill it. The weird thing about odyssey suits and weapons is, you grind to upgrade them for no other reason. than, umm, having slightly better stuff ?!

On a different note, I made a concerted effort to PP some years ago. (A major update that was released out of the blue that ZERO people wanted) The good side was you got to chat and interact with many people. The bad side, extremely limited game mechanics of PP will make you want to jump in a river wearing concrete shoes. Jesus it was absolutely dire. And nothing has ever been done about it. apart from some voting guff.

Flimley

 

[XenoZera]

Azimuth Pre-Engineered MCs are much more efficient at taking care of Thargoids than Enhanced AX MC... "Requirement, maybe not, in some opinions, but the unlock is uninspiring. I have the full range of Guardian weapons - which are negated currently by Orthrus - possibly other Thargoids, so may as well be useless...


Probably is... Although Thargoids are PvE combat, are they not?

Maybe the "police action" will become a war later, we'll see.

So what i am about to say next may sound like an insult but i promise its not an insult.
If you think Orthrus mean guardian weapons are useless, you simply do not know anything about Anti-Xeno Combat.

Even glaives do not make guardian weapons useless. The only place guardian weapons are 100% useless are MAELSTROMS and HIP 22460

When I say "PvE" I mean braindead point-and-click vs human NPC's. Interceptors actually require more thought and effort to take down as opposed to "Build big engineered ship, target, left click until dead"

 

[XenoZera]

elite may not be the game for me? think about what you're saying there for a while. In addition to playing frontier games since the nineties.
I been around long enough in this game (9000hrs play time) to have experienced repeated content in different forms. For me It's pure lack of motivation to keep doing essentially the same thing over and over. this is the way the game coding works, and it operates in no other way. If one is in an earlier game state, motivation will be high.

The flight model is excellent.

The 1:1 galaxy was really a coding science project. An astounding technical achievement initiated by DBOBE and largely realised by Dr Ross and team. But, once you have visited a good number of planets in and around the bubble, (11,000 for me) seen black holes and nebulae, you've pretty much experienced everything the whole galaxy has to offer. ... it's the same, everywhere.
And with the current halting of planet generation. And no sign of a big procedural dev push for planet content such as landable water EL/worlds, clouds, caves, rivers, weather. You get the idea. Sadly It leaves elite with a mostly redundant 1:1 asset.
And so I've moved on.

Flimley

Well your complaints about the grind makes it sound like Elite is not the game for you.

Elite comes with a grind, its just built into the game.

Planet gen seems to have got a silent change with u17. There is a noticeable difference in the appearance of planetary surfaces and that appearance change may be due to them actually allowing canyons and such again.

once you have visited a good number of planets in and around the bubble, (11,000 for me) seen black holes and nebulae, you've pretty much experienced everything the whole galaxy has to offer. ... it's the same, everywhere.

welcome to space? It's big and empty. This just further fuels the "I dont think elite is for you" claim.

And so I've moved on.

So you agree with me and your response was largely just venting because you wish you could capture the wonder you had before visiting 11,000 systems

 

[XenoZera]

I can definitely get behind a lot of what you've said. I honestly lost A LOT of motivation to play and tbh I pretty much only play Elite now when I live stream, because those 2 combined activities really give me lots of joy. Especially being able to show this amazing (yet definitely rather stale for me personally now!) game to people that are only just starting or that have never seen Elite before is a great feeling.

I have 4 accounts in total, 3 of which are pretty much untouched - and I rarely play on my alts, because I don't feel the satisfaction that I used to (also when I was planning for the different characters). The game didn't really developed the way I hoped, so I can't fullfill my plans for my alts (smuggler - no gameplay, pirate - absolutely terrible C&P system, and explorer - not much to discover really, lots of repetition, no thicks atmos).

Odyssey, while definitely fun, was/is terribly bugged and the development pace is way too slow for me to keep my interest outside of streaming.

In fact Update 17 is the first update in AGES that got me playing off-stream again, because the Spires are really cool content for me and I feel that spark that I used to.

A lot of this stems from 3 big downsides for me personally:
- Odyssey is very clearly a separate game that is not very well linked to the space game
- The main Ody activity, which seems to be progression throug gear upgrades and engineering is totally killed for me due to the most stupid decision ever made by FDEV - the inability to freely remove gun attachments = unbearable grind if you want a few different, specialised loadouts (I could honestly live with permanent suit upgrades, but guns? scope and bigger magazine super-glued to my gun? honestly...)
- The amount of bugs in the new content and lack of bug fixes for the stuff that annoys me (not saying they are not fixing bugs, but not the ones that kill my joy personally)

I still hope for the next big expansion to be either ship interiors with the whole gameplay related to that OR expanding the landable planets with thick atmos, so we can finally see the weather, the oceans and rivers and actual varied biomes with actual flora and fauna (the current exobiology was fun for a while, but the repetition means it got old VERY quickly).

Saying all that, as I said, I really like to live stream Elite and show how amazing it is to new players. In a way... I wish I have only discovered it now, instead of almost 10 years ago, but at the same time - no regrets, I've had the most amazing time with it and there are still moments, albeit rare, when I still can experience that feeling. Which actually says a lot about this game

Odyssey is certainly a missed opportunity, they should have focused on the ship combat (like, maybe a new ship for the first time in 6 years?) instead of wasting time with a half baked sci-fi first person shooter.

Update 17 has been FANTASTIC and is a slap in the face of everyone saying Fdev can't/wont make new things for Elite.


Though i really hope we dont get ship interiors any time soon. I roleplay and I cannot understand the obsession with ship interiors. It'd add more tedium, not more fun gameplay- and thats assuming it's not a buggy mess on launch or longer. Atmospheric planets and the such you mentioned are FAR bigger gains for elite than ship interiors could ever be

 

[Flimley]

Well your complaints about the grind makes it sound like Elite is not the game for you.

Elite comes with a grind, its just built into the game.

Planet gen seems to have got a silent change with u17. There is a noticeable difference in the appearance of planetary surfaces and that appearance change may be due to them actually allowing canyons and such again.



welcome to space? It's big and empty. This just further fuels the "I dont think elite is for you" claim.


So you agree with me and your response was largely just venting because you wish you could capture the wonder you had before visiting 11,000 systems

Very good. Comment again in ten years time.

Flimley

 

[rootsrat]

It'd add more tedium, not more fun gameplay- and thats assuming it's not a buggy mess on launch or longer. Atmospheric planets and the such you mentioned are FAR bigger gains for elite than ship interiors could ever be

It really depeds what gameplay they can offer, but we're going well off topic here, so let's not. Plenty of other threads on the topic.

(also, "fun" is extremely subjective so you know, insert Big Lebowski quote here )

 

[Codger]

There is a noticeable difference in the appearance of planetary surfaces and that appearance change may be due to them actually allowing canyons and such again.

Only textures and surface features can be changed without re-running the Stellar Forge, which they did, once, for Odyssey. It's extremely complex and time consuming and they've said that they won't be doing it again, it was a one-time thing. The reason they did it then was so they could adjust the terrain to better accommodate the Odyssey surface settlements. It's the reason that we lost the extreme terrain that produced wild canyons in Legacy. Hearing the devs talk about it back then, I understood that it was a rather painful process.

If you're finding cool canyons, that's great, but they've been there since Odyssey launched. It's nothing to do with any update.

 

[Rat Catcher]

The only place guardian weapons are 100% useless are MAELSTROMS and HIP 22460

This may also sound insulting, but isn't... (no more than your comment might be construed as such)
I shall assume you have spent either minimal or no time fighting at the Spire sites.
A full loadout of Guardian weapons was zeroed with one pulse by an Orthrus on several occasions on my Cheiftain & Challenger - great fun... A shipload of AX multis was, as expected, unaffected. The single Azimuth multi (C3) I had the materials to unlock was certainly 'better' than the Enhanced version.

When I say "PvE" I mean braindead point-and-click vs human NPC's. Interceptors actually require more thought and effort to take down as opposed to "Build big engineered ship, target, left click until dead"

Indeed, I spent a month at the start of the "gang war" with 2 accounts playing around with Interceptors of various form... I even made a couple of videos on my youtube channel...
Learn the very predictable behaviour of Interceptors and, while not entirely 'brain dead', they are almost worthy challengers...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6HwNZzRszw&t=406s

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oed6jJTGkI&t=230s


As long as you are enjoying the content - that is all that matters, surely? The fact that others may hold a differing opinion to your own, does not imply that thay are lacking in knowledge or skill, as you implied, just not finding such content engaging for in excess of a year...

ETA: Sadly I cannot post a youtube link to my favourite activity (which around 97.2% of my trade rank was earned) but it is simple to find on my video list on youtube...

 

[Scoob]

Are there any new tools to combat the Thargoids that we can just buy? I did put in some effort a little while back (earlier this year) to gain access to certain new stuff. However, due to a game bug at the time, I couldn't unlock one of the prerequisites. I had so many other game issues at the time, it really put me off the whole thing. I've mentioned it before, but I tend to have a knack of returning to the game at times there are...issues. Last time was really dodgy network problems (NOT my side) that made things several times harder, ten times more frustrating and totally negated the fun. Glad that was fixed in an update, but I was already burnt out.

With the evenings getting darker once more, I may well be inclined to dip in again. However, it seems like it's passing me by as I've not kept up with "the curve" of progress. I like spooky encounters with the Thargoids (it's that time of the year), but the shear number of glitches I suffered last time was too much. I sometimes rise to the challenge of difficult and surprise myself, I cannot rise to the challenge of broken though.

Are things more stable now? Are encounters with Thargoids working properly? I had so much weirdness when I last engaged with the Thargoid content, it was a bit nuts. Weird teleporting, damage not being registered, being frozen in place while travelling at 300m/s. Things did improve (after an update) but I'm traumatised still lol.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Are things more stable now? Are encounters with Thargoids working properly?

I spent around 12 hours playing in / over the new Spire sites without any game issues. Including with the Buur group where there were 20+ players present making mayhem, so stability appears reasonable.

Are there any new tools to combat the Thargoids that we can just buy?

I am not sure - but I think the Enhanced AX multis are just a buy, but, seeing as I had them unlocked at release (along with most of the other tools) I cannot remember if any 'special' mats were required for some. I do remember that the pulse neutraliser and Caustic Sinks required spending time in the very space that the tools were designed to make less dangerous... The Caustic Sinks are very useful for playing in the Spire sites, too.

 

[zimms]

Hilarious. Where does a newcomer get the arrogance to tell people who have been here for ages that the game isn't for them or that they simply don't know anything about it?