If I feel that what I’m doing is a bit “grindy”, I switch to something else.
Job done.
Job done.
An Ambitious Tech Demo...
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Not really. There is no endgame so no need for endgame content, grind is only there if you choose to. Not really noticed any UI flaws, and the one in the OP is him not knowing where to look. He could have of just asked.
Craith
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Elite entertained me for 4 years, Eve for 2 days ... They are completely different games that happen to have spaceships.
I miss many things from your list of things done, e.g. found a generation ship (without following YouTube? Or even with it is something great).
Many people take shortcuts and wonder why they missed the journey ... solving the thargoid installation on your own can be fun. Finding your own traderoutes without outside help. The whole BGS. PVP. Finding geysers. ...
I completely agree - I tried at first but I lacked the discipline to not “look up the answers”. Elite would be a better game if the Internet did not exist
I played EVE for a year until I realized I don't even pay that much attention to my real monies.
The earliest realization in EVE that I couldn't actually Han Solo the ships around was depressing. The combat being a glorified MMO power-activation scenario was also not to my liking. The ridiculous amounts of preplanning years into the future to level up my avatar skillset in preparation for gaming that'd be occurring right about now, mostly when I wasn't even playing, was just really weird and restrictive. There's a player-run university to lurntoEVE, which is awesome and sad at the same time. It's exactly the kind of depth I'm not looking for.
Elite gives me Pretend Spaceman Experience wherein I move the ships around as the pilot and not the bridge commander, which is just what I'm looking for. Could it be better, well duh, that's everything; let me get my 2.4Gb shortlist file of suggestions to Bethesda for example. But Elite is providing me everything EVE can't and won't.
The earliest realization in EVE that I couldn't actually Han Solo the ships around was depressing. The combat being a glorified MMO power-activation scenario was also not to my liking. The ridiculous amounts of preplanning years into the future to level up my avatar skillset in preparation for gaming that'd be occurring right about now, mostly when I wasn't even playing, was just really weird and restrictive. There's a player-run university to lurntoEVE, which is awesome and sad at the same time. It's exactly the kind of depth I'm not looking for.
Elite gives me Pretend Spaceman Experience wherein I move the ships around as the pilot and not the bridge commander, which is just what I'm looking for. Could it be better, well duh, that's everything; let me get my 2.4Gb shortlist file of suggestions to Bethesda for example. But Elite is providing me everything EVE can't and won't.
They have to learn it's a journey not a destination. I've been playing sense day one and I take weeks off at a time. What's the hurry?
Massacre missions aren't bugged. You aren't as good at Elite as you think you are, Sir Grindlord Supreme.
-a real Elite Commander
I might suck at Elite but I’m pretty sure I can count... and there is a related “known issue”. But thank you for the title I accept it gladly.
Ah c'mon, let me tell you just this about the UI, from almost 5 years playing: It really takes some getting used to. Minimalist, uncommon and at times just clumsy. But when you finally get comfortable to it, it slowly reveals a certain 'reward in itself'. As in: nice finger food, my fingers like it!
I'm a bit surprised the UI would be on any list of top criticisms in the first place; I navigate through the menus quickly using just my hand on the flightstick and while piloting a ship simultaneously. I'm not particularly skilled either.
So it seems like quite an impressive UI, and on top of all that it's all very legible in VR despite high information density. That's really good.
I'm guessing that people are unconsciously comparing the UI to interfaces that get to expect a mouse/gamepad rather than having to also adapt to a flightstick, and/or don't need to be navigable simultaneously with your character in-game and/or get to expect a monitor.
By making those kinds of sacrifices you could certainly build a slicker outfitting system etc, but that would be losing much more than you gain.
There's always room for improvement and QoL, but the UI is already pretty impressive at a fundamental level.
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It sounds to me like you got a pretty good all-around experience, and for the most part, enjoyed it. That's really the most any game can offer, though there are some who seem to think that Elite should be capable of providing an endless dopamine drip in every Skittles flavor. On Demand.
It sounds like you have reached the point of *what do I do now,* and I have understanding for that, since I am also in that place. There are things that I could do/see/experience yet, and I would like to, but they are not an important enough driving force to prioritize them at this time. I am somewhat in a holding pattern, waiting for Q4, and I am sure that I am hardly alone in that.
One of my favorite things about Elite is that there isn't anything that I feel like I must do at any given time. No dailies that need to get done before I do anything else, gear and reputation grinds that are minimal compared to other (very popular) games, group content can be done solo, and more. It's a game where I can just exist within it, and that has great appeal to someone like me.
Also - I can't sit above the galactic disk and take in that incredible view in those other popular games.
With some notable exceptions, that was some pretty solid feedback - the kind most game developers like to read, I would imagine.
Edit: Saved Outfitting configurations for ships might be a nice QoL feature, but to be perfectly honest, that can be done by just purpose-building ships over time. Unless you are building multiples of the Big 4, it's not even that expensive of a proposition.
Riôt
It sounds like you have reached the point of *what do I do now,* and I have understanding for that, since I am also in that place. There are things that I could do/see/experience yet, and I would like to, but they are not an important enough driving force to prioritize them at this time. I am somewhat in a holding pattern, waiting for Q4, and I am sure that I am hardly alone in that.
One of my favorite things about Elite is that there isn't anything that I feel like I must do at any given time. No dailies that need to get done before I do anything else, gear and reputation grinds that are minimal compared to other (very popular) games, group content can be done solo, and more. It's a game where I can just exist within it, and that has great appeal to someone like me.
Also - I can't sit above the galactic disk and take in that incredible view in those other popular games.
With some notable exceptions, that was some pretty solid feedback - the kind most game developers like to read, I would imagine.
Edit: Saved Outfitting configurations for ships might be a nice QoL feature, but to be perfectly honest, that can be done by just purpose-building ships over time. Unless you are building multiples of the Big 4, it's not even that expensive of a proposition.
Riôt
What I take from this:
- OP, Didn't look into the game hard enough / took a whole month to realize it's not his type of game / found that this game has no "end game" and lost interest.
- OP, got his money's worth playing for a month.
- Elite Dangerous has become too easy and the OP wanted it to be harder. If so, these days I agree.
- Elite Dangerous THE GAME, doesn't do a good job of introducing players to the real game.
- Elite Dangerous THE FORUM, doesn't do a good job of introducing players to the real game.
Anyway, we'll welcome his next rant when he come back again.
I'm hoping the new play-ability features and the codex in 3.3 will help with some of this.
OP references EVE Online which has had many more years and is a different type of game. Other than EVE, Elite Dangerous really does not have much competition except from the No Man's Sky arcade style game (I like it too). I hope this will change with the release of X4 Foundations at the end of this month.
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It takes some time for the Transactions tab to update.
Reading through the OP one of my first reactions, not unique I see, was to wonder whether the game offers up its dubious treasures too quickly these days. One month to have hit so many box ticks, even at 5 or 6 hours per day, seems insanely fast to those who were around from the start.
But then to be fair to the OP his analysis is well written, not too aggressive or angry, and on second read I'm actually wondering whether in his case a more protracted reveal of the game's content or lack thereof may have simply made things worse. He's not wrong in what he says (it's largely subjective, how can he be?) and if he's the type of player to become frustrated with ED's structure perhaps it's better that it happened after a month than after a year.
I'm almost kinda sorry for players who feel the need to write posts like the OP, because while each is trying to justify their reaction in a unique way (some more successfully and less nastily than others), for those who've been on the forums for a while it's difficult not to see them as part of a homogeneous chain. "I've seen one planet / mission / CG and I've seen them all" read the posts, and "I've seen one 'I quit' post and I've seen them all" is the often jaded response.
I've said this before, and hinted at it in the recent posts on exploration and visual quality, but IMO ED's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, and it's the galaxy simulation itself. It's so huge compared with any other content the game has to offer that if it bites you, if you somehow "get" the simulation and can achieve the almost Zen-like frame of mind required to enjoy it, it becomes the ultimate curative for all the game's other ills. Whatever's annoying you, just point a suitable ship into the black and go until it annoys you no longer or you're ready to endure it again. But of course if you don't "get" it, if the galaxy itself is as devoid of new stimulation as the list of other things you've already and permanently burned out on, it's just more of the same. 400 billion more of the sames. That must be like some sort of existential torture. "Not only is this game awful, it's awful on a scale that dwarfs the human mind's ability to comprehend." It's the equivalent of dropping someone into the Total Perspective Vortex.
If the DDF Proposals were to be believed and FD weren't just blowing smoke, ED was well on its way to being the version of Elite with the most balance and nuance in its gameplay. But then, despite David's horrendous prior experience with Gametek, FD effectively committed hara-Konami by cementing a December 2014 launch date for ED when much of the game was still very shallow and disconnected. "Placeholder" was a common refrain among the users at the time (I can't recall if FD ever used the term themselves in an official capacity). Things have improved, but sometimes painfully slowly. I've said it before, but I don't think the game ever truly recovered from the rush to that launch date.
If it feels like it's 90% demo with 10% game, it's not because it was designed that way but because that's more or less where it was when the trigger was pulled and it's been struggling with that hamstrung design ever since. But hey, just my opinion, man.
But then to be fair to the OP his analysis is well written, not too aggressive or angry, and on second read I'm actually wondering whether in his case a more protracted reveal of the game's content or lack thereof may have simply made things worse. He's not wrong in what he says (it's largely subjective, how can he be?) and if he's the type of player to become frustrated with ED's structure perhaps it's better that it happened after a month than after a year.
I'm almost kinda sorry for players who feel the need to write posts like the OP, because while each is trying to justify their reaction in a unique way (some more successfully and less nastily than others), for those who've been on the forums for a while it's difficult not to see them as part of a homogeneous chain. "I've seen one planet / mission / CG and I've seen them all" read the posts, and "I've seen one 'I quit' post and I've seen them all" is the often jaded response.
I've said this before, and hinted at it in the recent posts on exploration and visual quality, but IMO ED's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, and it's the galaxy simulation itself. It's so huge compared with any other content the game has to offer that if it bites you, if you somehow "get" the simulation and can achieve the almost Zen-like frame of mind required to enjoy it, it becomes the ultimate curative for all the game's other ills. Whatever's annoying you, just point a suitable ship into the black and go until it annoys you no longer or you're ready to endure it again. But of course if you don't "get" it, if the galaxy itself is as devoid of new stimulation as the list of other things you've already and permanently burned out on, it's just more of the same. 400 billion more of the sames. That must be like some sort of existential torture. "Not only is this game awful, it's awful on a scale that dwarfs the human mind's ability to comprehend." It's the equivalent of dropping someone into the Total Perspective Vortex.
Yeah, I'm not buying that. In many ways it feels like that (I've used the very words "tech demo" in my own discussions on a few occasions) but David Braben has been "working" (in an intellectual sense) on a sequel to Frontier since the mid 1990s, and the underlying concepts go right back to the earliest 8-bit versions of Elite. In many ways the gameplay of each iteration has always played second fiddle to the scale of the world building, but for the 8-bit versions that was down to hardware (once the procgen was done it was easier to create infinite 256-planet galaxies than to create much varied action between systems) and for the 16-bit versions especially FFE it was also limited by a rush to publish.
If the DDF Proposals were to be believed and FD weren't just blowing smoke, ED was well on its way to being the version of Elite with the most balance and nuance in its gameplay. But then, despite David's horrendous prior experience with Gametek, FD effectively committed hara-Konami by cementing a December 2014 launch date for ED when much of the game was still very shallow and disconnected. "Placeholder" was a common refrain among the users at the time (I can't recall if FD ever used the term themselves in an official capacity). Things have improved, but sometimes painfully slowly. I've said it before, but I don't think the game ever truly recovered from the rush to that launch date.
If it feels like it's 90% demo with 10% game, it's not because it was designed that way but because that's more or less where it was when the trigger was pulled and it's been struggling with that hamstrung design ever since. But hey, just my opinion, man.
I personally fail to see how ED is tech demo, because I play it as a game and enjoy as a game, and seems lot of people do that do.
Also it feels people's expectations and lack of reality check regarding how much work is required to make such game like this screws up perception big time. Yes, we have one example what happens when such game is developed indefinitely and that's Star Citizen. Continuous development and improvement is only way how to roll such game at such scale. And no, neither NMS or X4 can take on that. They are single player games with very specific segments of space game.
For me FD release strategy with ED is net positive. Yes, there have been place holders for long time, and I haven't played game for swaths of time for that, and things got improved...to the point it really works for me. For different people it will be different. So they will join later.
Also it feels people's expectations and lack of reality check regarding how much work is required to make such game like this screws up perception big time. Yes, we have one example what happens when such game is developed indefinitely and that's Star Citizen. Continuous development and improvement is only way how to roll such game at such scale. And no, neither NMS or X4 can take on that. They are single player games with very specific segments of space game.
For me FD release strategy with ED is net positive. Yes, there have been place holders for long time, and I haven't played game for swaths of time for that, and things got improved...to the point it really works for me. For different people it will be different. So they will join later.
And the wealth of ED
^Just about everything Jack Schitt said there. Especially the fourth paragraph.
Also:
Also:
[big grin]