Elite is a bit of a love hate for me, im loving the grounded in reality galaxy modelled on our own and the visuals are beautiful. I love how each ship has a distinct sound and feel. There are some elements that are perfectly immersive.
However there are two big let downs for me, the game is about as deep as the plot for a porno and there are places where immersion is shattered completely and often these two go
hand in hand.
There are examples of shattered immersion and lack of depth littered all over but here are a few:
Local factions have gone to war…ooh cool but confined to conflict sites which are just a shooting gallery as ships endlessly spawn for you to blow away…yawn.
Trading activity seems to have no effect on product levels.
Factions that meet at a nav point don’t seem to be aware they are at war.
When you enter a system it is empty until ships start to spawn.
When I preordered the launch there were a number of words floating around like sandbox, procedural generation and background simulation and the discussions David Braben had sounded interesting but there seems to be little to none of this. I was hoping for a living breathing galaxy something akin to an online version of the X series with a functioning economy but while larger the elite universe is more of a series of disconnected bubbles. The galaxy map will show trade routes of station X imports from station Y but there is no correlation of this in the game as ships don’t physically transport between X and Y and the commodity prices/stock does not fluctuate in response to our actions.
And this is where my main problem lies, there is no background simulation/sandbox and the universe does not exist or change beyond your small visual bubble, our actions do not ripple through the universe.
Now we all seem to acknowledge the launch was rushed and the game is in a sort of unfinished state, just look at the Orca which is supposed to be a sort of passenger transportation vehicle but this feature is not yet ingame and so the Orca serves as a sort of useless placeholder at the moment.
So is the living universe Braben discussed what they are working towards or are we going to be stuck with the same shallow universe? If so wouldn’t this be more important than features like Wings as well as harder to implement changes to the core foundations with more and more Wing like updates ontop? I have asked questions like this before without much success but I have recently seen a ray of hope in the latest newsletter
‘Lastly, Mike talked about another one of the small but significant details in the mission overhaul you'll experience as part of the Powerplay update. Right now, mission-related targets are always found at Unidentified Signal Sources, but after Powerplay you may find them roaming the galaxy and on the run.
Interstellar (very) high-speed chases are just one of the new things to do in Powerplay, and you haven't seen anything yet.’
But are my hopes too high or is this going to be just more instanced spawns that will only occur within your field of view and have no repercussions or effect on the universe. Should i give up and just reinstall X3?
I long for the immersion to destroy a transport knowing that its destruction has a ripple effect with a station suffering the loss of its ship and profits.
However there are two big let downs for me, the game is about as deep as the plot for a porno and there are places where immersion is shattered completely and often these two go
hand in hand.
There are examples of shattered immersion and lack of depth littered all over but here are a few:
Local factions have gone to war…ooh cool but confined to conflict sites which are just a shooting gallery as ships endlessly spawn for you to blow away…yawn.
Trading activity seems to have no effect on product levels.
Factions that meet at a nav point don’t seem to be aware they are at war.
When you enter a system it is empty until ships start to spawn.
When I preordered the launch there were a number of words floating around like sandbox, procedural generation and background simulation and the discussions David Braben had sounded interesting but there seems to be little to none of this. I was hoping for a living breathing galaxy something akin to an online version of the X series with a functioning economy but while larger the elite universe is more of a series of disconnected bubbles. The galaxy map will show trade routes of station X imports from station Y but there is no correlation of this in the game as ships don’t physically transport between X and Y and the commodity prices/stock does not fluctuate in response to our actions.
And this is where my main problem lies, there is no background simulation/sandbox and the universe does not exist or change beyond your small visual bubble, our actions do not ripple through the universe.
Now we all seem to acknowledge the launch was rushed and the game is in a sort of unfinished state, just look at the Orca which is supposed to be a sort of passenger transportation vehicle but this feature is not yet ingame and so the Orca serves as a sort of useless placeholder at the moment.
So is the living universe Braben discussed what they are working towards or are we going to be stuck with the same shallow universe? If so wouldn’t this be more important than features like Wings as well as harder to implement changes to the core foundations with more and more Wing like updates ontop? I have asked questions like this before without much success but I have recently seen a ray of hope in the latest newsletter
‘Lastly, Mike talked about another one of the small but significant details in the mission overhaul you'll experience as part of the Powerplay update. Right now, mission-related targets are always found at Unidentified Signal Sources, but after Powerplay you may find them roaming the galaxy and on the run.
Interstellar (very) high-speed chases are just one of the new things to do in Powerplay, and you haven't seen anything yet.’
But are my hopes too high or is this going to be just more instanced spawns that will only occur within your field of view and have no repercussions or effect on the universe. Should i give up and just reinstall X3?
I long for the immersion to destroy a transport knowing that its destruction has a ripple effect with a station suffering the loss of its ship and profits.
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