I am sure these posts are common but regardless, I wanted to share my thoughts on this ambitious but, in my opinion, very shallow game. I’ve been playing for a little over a month – I bought the game on 31 August and I uninstalled last night, on 8 October. I played a lot – sometimes up to 5 or 6 hours a day – so I was able to accrue a few hundred hours in the game. Here are my thoughts.
Initially the learning curve was steep, primarily due to what I consider to be a terrible UX design. Switching between keyboard only and keyboard + mouse was confusing initially, but throughout the entire Elite experience I was continuously annoyed by an inability to modify the cockpit (i.e. menu) layout and the horrible fitting screen. I can’t save ship templates? Seriously? I need to manually scroll through over a hundred modules again and again just to turn my ship from a fighter to a miner?
I steadily progressed through the different game “modes” (trading, combat, mining), and for the most part I enjoyed the experience. But there were exceptions. Initially I traded, but then I took my first Federal mission to “kill X number of pirates”. So I went and killed lots of “Mission Target” pirates. I didn’t know for sure how many because there is no kill counter (another stupid UX decision). Anyway, I began counting manually, and I kept killing pirates, until I was certain I had killed enough. But the mission still didn’t complete! Eventually after looking on the Internet, it turns out there is a bug that is preventing these mission types from completing. So hours were wasted, I had to abandon the mission, and I just felt… defeated.
Then I went and completed the engineer grind, and this was most of my playtime. Flying around to collect the different requirements was a fun experience, and the noticeable improvements to my Krait added to the enjoyment. Every now and then I’d head to a combat zone and revel in how much more powerful my ship had become. But before long I’d done it – and there were no more engineers left (in the bubble) to unlock, except for the few that had combat experience requirements because I was only at competent, even at the end.
I headed off for Guardian equipment. For hours I grinded in my SRV running around and around collecting blueprints and Guardian mats. Then I unlocked the Guardian shield and FSD boosters. My Krait was basically maxed out at this point, a PVE killing machine.
Finally – exploration. I bought an Anaconda, fitted it, engineered it, and I flew to Maia to collect occupied escape pods from Thargoid interceptor sites. This took… a long time. I think I did maybe 75 sites, to collect the 25 pods. I would just fly in, scoop up the pod, and fly out. I had originally wanted to kill some Thargoids but it clearly needed a new ship (or ages in outfitting for my Krait) and I couldn’t see the point, once I learned on the Internet that the rewards for killing Thargoids were not exciting. Also – why is everyone in the Maia system so chill with all these Thargoids killing people? You can’t fly 10 LS in Maia without running into multiple Thargoid sites, and yet in the station no one seemed to care. This really broke the immersion (for me). There is a full-on alien invasion happening and these dudes are worried about some civil war? Makes no sense.
Eventually I headed out to explore the galaxy, full of anticipation. I bounced from neutron to neutron to reach Colonia. At Colonia, I thought, “is this it?”, and then after unlocking a few of the Colonia engineers I flew to The Center. I loved how the stars got denser as I neared Sagittarius A*, but then, a few jumps out… they all disappeared! I guess this is something to do with the simulation, but at the time I just thought it was a bug. This was a huge let-down for me. There I was in the center of the Galaxy and not a star in sight. Only the uninteresting background texture and the weird blob that was the black hole.
I flew in a random direction for some planet exploration and I found it boring work. I landed on an ice planet and, sadly, I realized that I had reached the end of the game. There was nothing more to do. I boarded my ship, flew the 25k LY back to Eravate and docked. And uninstalled.
Overall, Elite is an ambitious tech demo. It reminds me of Worlds Adrift. The journey is fun, but the destination (the end game) is ultimately disappointing. This is ok for Worlds Adrift – the journey is the point. Elite should be the other way around. The good stuff should be hard to reach. The Thargoids should be on the other side of the galaxy, with massive rewards. The procedural generation of interesting sites on planets should get better the further you are away from the bubble. This would give a sense of difficulty, and ultimately a greater sense of achievement.
For comparison, I played Elite for a little over a month, and I feel I experienced the majority of what this game has to offer. I played Eve Online for three years and I still didn’t get to do it all (e.g. I never built nor flew a Titan).
Here is me, at the end: https://www.edsm.net/en/user/profile/id/64113/cmdr/x0nkers
Thanks all, I am glad Elite exists but I won’t be back unless something major happens. o7
Initially the learning curve was steep, primarily due to what I consider to be a terrible UX design. Switching between keyboard only and keyboard + mouse was confusing initially, but throughout the entire Elite experience I was continuously annoyed by an inability to modify the cockpit (i.e. menu) layout and the horrible fitting screen. I can’t save ship templates? Seriously? I need to manually scroll through over a hundred modules again and again just to turn my ship from a fighter to a miner?
I steadily progressed through the different game “modes” (trading, combat, mining), and for the most part I enjoyed the experience. But there were exceptions. Initially I traded, but then I took my first Federal mission to “kill X number of pirates”. So I went and killed lots of “Mission Target” pirates. I didn’t know for sure how many because there is no kill counter (another stupid UX decision). Anyway, I began counting manually, and I kept killing pirates, until I was certain I had killed enough. But the mission still didn’t complete! Eventually after looking on the Internet, it turns out there is a bug that is preventing these mission types from completing. So hours were wasted, I had to abandon the mission, and I just felt… defeated.
Then I went and completed the engineer grind, and this was most of my playtime. Flying around to collect the different requirements was a fun experience, and the noticeable improvements to my Krait added to the enjoyment. Every now and then I’d head to a combat zone and revel in how much more powerful my ship had become. But before long I’d done it – and there were no more engineers left (in the bubble) to unlock, except for the few that had combat experience requirements because I was only at competent, even at the end.
I headed off for Guardian equipment. For hours I grinded in my SRV running around and around collecting blueprints and Guardian mats. Then I unlocked the Guardian shield and FSD boosters. My Krait was basically maxed out at this point, a PVE killing machine.
Finally – exploration. I bought an Anaconda, fitted it, engineered it, and I flew to Maia to collect occupied escape pods from Thargoid interceptor sites. This took… a long time. I think I did maybe 75 sites, to collect the 25 pods. I would just fly in, scoop up the pod, and fly out. I had originally wanted to kill some Thargoids but it clearly needed a new ship (or ages in outfitting for my Krait) and I couldn’t see the point, once I learned on the Internet that the rewards for killing Thargoids were not exciting. Also – why is everyone in the Maia system so chill with all these Thargoids killing people? You can’t fly 10 LS in Maia without running into multiple Thargoid sites, and yet in the station no one seemed to care. This really broke the immersion (for me). There is a full-on alien invasion happening and these dudes are worried about some civil war? Makes no sense.
Eventually I headed out to explore the galaxy, full of anticipation. I bounced from neutron to neutron to reach Colonia. At Colonia, I thought, “is this it?”, and then after unlocking a few of the Colonia engineers I flew to The Center. I loved how the stars got denser as I neared Sagittarius A*, but then, a few jumps out… they all disappeared! I guess this is something to do with the simulation, but at the time I just thought it was a bug. This was a huge let-down for me. There I was in the center of the Galaxy and not a star in sight. Only the uninteresting background texture and the weird blob that was the black hole.
I flew in a random direction for some planet exploration and I found it boring work. I landed on an ice planet and, sadly, I realized that I had reached the end of the game. There was nothing more to do. I boarded my ship, flew the 25k LY back to Eravate and docked. And uninstalled.
Overall, Elite is an ambitious tech demo. It reminds me of Worlds Adrift. The journey is fun, but the destination (the end game) is ultimately disappointing. This is ok for Worlds Adrift – the journey is the point. Elite should be the other way around. The good stuff should be hard to reach. The Thargoids should be on the other side of the galaxy, with massive rewards. The procedural generation of interesting sites on planets should get better the further you are away from the bubble. This would give a sense of difficulty, and ultimately a greater sense of achievement.
For comparison, I played Elite for a little over a month, and I feel I experienced the majority of what this game has to offer. I played Eve Online for three years and I still didn’t get to do it all (e.g. I never built nor flew a Titan).
Here is me, at the end: https://www.edsm.net/en/user/profile/id/64113/cmdr/x0nkers
Thanks all, I am glad Elite exists but I won’t be back unless something major happens. o7
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