Here's the amazing thing, though. For players with the right mindset, arguably all of the iterations of Elite from the Acorn original via ArcElite through Frontier (and even FFE if you can forgive the buggy rushed release) could lay claim -- for their eras and platforms -- to the title of Best Game Ever. Every one of them pushed the limits of the available hardware and expanded the scale of what a space-based computer game could offer.
ED comes in for a lot of flak for a whole bunch of reasons. It has a very broad and therefore somewhat unfocused appeal, often leading to cries of "This game could be perfect if only they'd concentrate on the stuff I like and ignore the stuff I don't." The rate of development has varied from blisteringly fast to glacially slow, causing frustration and uncertainty. The design Proposals laid out during KS/DDF were wildly optimistic, which was always going to result in some disappointment no matter how good or unique the game was at launch, or how well it has evolved since.
But if you can put all that aside (and I will confess it took me a long time with that last point) and treat it as only the latest iteration of a line that began with the 8-bit version in 1984, it really is an astonishing achievement. Once again it's pushed the limits of the available technology and expanded the scale, this time into a fully rendered and shared galaxy. David Braben and his various associates over the years have captured lightning in a bottle so many times it's unreal. Sometimes it's easy to forget that.
And yes, the video of the April Update was very impressive. I remain a bit sceptical about the curated events, but they're not my bread and butter gameplay so perhaps I'm being unduly dismissive. But all of the little interface tweaks and QOL improvements look great, and are IMO exactly what the game needs as it moves towards the big 2020 update, whatever form that may take. If FD can continue to polish things to this standard, maybe the delay to the release of 4.xx will turn out to be one of the best things that could have happened to ED.
ED comes in for a lot of flak for a whole bunch of reasons. It has a very broad and therefore somewhat unfocused appeal, often leading to cries of "This game could be perfect if only they'd concentrate on the stuff I like and ignore the stuff I don't." The rate of development has varied from blisteringly fast to glacially slow, causing frustration and uncertainty. The design Proposals laid out during KS/DDF were wildly optimistic, which was always going to result in some disappointment no matter how good or unique the game was at launch, or how well it has evolved since.
But if you can put all that aside (and I will confess it took me a long time with that last point) and treat it as only the latest iteration of a line that began with the 8-bit version in 1984, it really is an astonishing achievement. Once again it's pushed the limits of the available technology and expanded the scale, this time into a fully rendered and shared galaxy. David Braben and his various associates over the years have captured lightning in a bottle so many times it's unreal. Sometimes it's easy to forget that.
And yes, the video of the April Update was very impressive. I remain a bit sceptical about the curated events, but they're not my bread and butter gameplay so perhaps I'm being unduly dismissive. But all of the little interface tweaks and QOL improvements look great, and are IMO exactly what the game needs as it moves towards the big 2020 update, whatever form that may take. If FD can continue to polish things to this standard, maybe the delay to the release of 4.xx will turn out to be one of the best things that could have happened to ED.
