Back in the 80s I played Elite and enjoyed it a great deal. In the meantime I played some similar games but nothing came ever close. Then I heard of "Elite Dangerous". I didn't want to be a guinea pig, so I didn't enlist to be a beta player, but waited instead until the game was more or less finished. That was in december 2014. At this point I thought only bug fixes and add-ons will be made, but instead it seems like the whole game concept is changed with every update.
At first I noticed that ED was made very beautifully. At the same time I was shocked of the slow pace of the game (I usually play fast paced shooters on the internet). Everything you do takes a long time (getting out of a starport, entering super cruise, docking, even the fights). But nonetheless I enjoyed playing the game. In those 6 months I spent a ridiculously large amount of time with ED. Now I have a maxed out Python and assets of half a billion credits.
The first big shock was the Python nerf. I worked hard to get the Python, I enjoyed finally having it and two days later it got nerfed to a sitting duck. Fights became boring with this bad maneuverability. I bit the bullet and kept going. But with every update the game got worse for my taste. The upgrade 1.3 is terrible.
1. Today a ship I didn't even had a lock on bumped into my ship, got destroyed and I have now a bounty on my head of 5000 credits for "murdering" said ship. I'm not even allowed to clean my status by paying a fine, but have to wait 4 days and avoid this system for this time to avoid being shot at by security vessels. Unfortunately it's one of my favourite systems.
2. Shields don't get filled up with repairs on a dock. Even if I log out, wait an hour and log in again, the shields are still depleted. So I have to actually sit and wait and watch the shield bars growing.
3. Now I have to make a front scan to see the names of the ships close to me. When I'm surrounded by several ships and one "Tony Povey" asks me what my cargo is, I could just select him in the list up until 1.3. Now I have to check every ship by bringing it to my front to find him. This takes a lot of time and is simply boring.
4. With the new AI the NPCs play hide and seek with me. It takes forever to keep them in line with my guns and the whole fight got boring. This reminds me of the ballet fights of Elite II.
5. When 1.3 came out, I had over 14000 bounties claimed (pirates and combat zones). My combat rank is "deadly" and the progress bar showed 54%. After that I killed over 1000 ships and the bar hasn't moved one bit. In conflict zones I only encountered "Mostly Harmless" and "Novice", at nav points of anarchy systems the occasional "Competent", so please don't give me the usual "you have to kill elite ranked ships to advance in your combat rank".
6. Since 1.3 the pirates in anarchy systems seem to have gone. In the past I encountered big fishes with more than 300,000 credits bounty. Nowadays I can be lucky if a pirate has a bounty of 20,000 credits.
7. One of the most important points: I work hard to buy an expensive ship, max it out for a fortune, but it doesn't feel better nowadays. It's like a module is 1000 times more expensive than the original one but only 1% better.
8. It feels like the Python shields have been nerfed again.
I guess Elite Dangerous tries to attract new players who like MMORG and who don't like to be owned by a player who has worked for months to steer a better ship. But the original Elite was a development game. This contradiction is solved by giving players the impression they can buy better equipment but in the end everything is about the same. If a player like myself can buy a viper (142,931 credits), don't change anything about the modules and go out and kill a Python (56,978,179 credits) easily, then something's wrong.
It would be very nice to receive some constructive replies, instead of the usual "it's your fault, you seem to be inexperienced" put downs. Maybe someone agrees with one or two points I made. Or maybe I'm just the wrong type of player for this game.
At first I noticed that ED was made very beautifully. At the same time I was shocked of the slow pace of the game (I usually play fast paced shooters on the internet). Everything you do takes a long time (getting out of a starport, entering super cruise, docking, even the fights). But nonetheless I enjoyed playing the game. In those 6 months I spent a ridiculously large amount of time with ED. Now I have a maxed out Python and assets of half a billion credits.
The first big shock was the Python nerf. I worked hard to get the Python, I enjoyed finally having it and two days later it got nerfed to a sitting duck. Fights became boring with this bad maneuverability. I bit the bullet and kept going. But with every update the game got worse for my taste. The upgrade 1.3 is terrible.
1. Today a ship I didn't even had a lock on bumped into my ship, got destroyed and I have now a bounty on my head of 5000 credits for "murdering" said ship. I'm not even allowed to clean my status by paying a fine, but have to wait 4 days and avoid this system for this time to avoid being shot at by security vessels. Unfortunately it's one of my favourite systems.
2. Shields don't get filled up with repairs on a dock. Even if I log out, wait an hour and log in again, the shields are still depleted. So I have to actually sit and wait and watch the shield bars growing.
3. Now I have to make a front scan to see the names of the ships close to me. When I'm surrounded by several ships and one "Tony Povey" asks me what my cargo is, I could just select him in the list up until 1.3. Now I have to check every ship by bringing it to my front to find him. This takes a lot of time and is simply boring.
4. With the new AI the NPCs play hide and seek with me. It takes forever to keep them in line with my guns and the whole fight got boring. This reminds me of the ballet fights of Elite II.
5. When 1.3 came out, I had over 14000 bounties claimed (pirates and combat zones). My combat rank is "deadly" and the progress bar showed 54%. After that I killed over 1000 ships and the bar hasn't moved one bit. In conflict zones I only encountered "Mostly Harmless" and "Novice", at nav points of anarchy systems the occasional "Competent", so please don't give me the usual "you have to kill elite ranked ships to advance in your combat rank".
6. Since 1.3 the pirates in anarchy systems seem to have gone. In the past I encountered big fishes with more than 300,000 credits bounty. Nowadays I can be lucky if a pirate has a bounty of 20,000 credits.
7. One of the most important points: I work hard to buy an expensive ship, max it out for a fortune, but it doesn't feel better nowadays. It's like a module is 1000 times more expensive than the original one but only 1% better.
8. It feels like the Python shields have been nerfed again.
I guess Elite Dangerous tries to attract new players who like MMORG and who don't like to be owned by a player who has worked for months to steer a better ship. But the original Elite was a development game. This contradiction is solved by giving players the impression they can buy better equipment but in the end everything is about the same. If a player like myself can buy a viper (142,931 credits), don't change anything about the modules and go out and kill a Python (56,978,179 credits) easily, then something's wrong.
It would be very nice to receive some constructive replies, instead of the usual "it's your fault, you seem to be inexperienced" put downs. Maybe someone agrees with one or two points I made. Or maybe I'm just the wrong type of player for this game.
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