This isn't my post, but I'm crossposting it because I bloody well feel like it should be done.
Original text here, and edited-for-language version follows below:
TL;DR: Every time I want to play a space game, I boot up this one instead of the others. And every time I do, I’m reminded of why I put it down in the first place. It looks amazing, sounds amazing, feels amazing, and its mechanics are stupid. Every new feature FD adds is an amazing and revolutionary idea with an implementation poorer than my college-debt-ridden self.
This is a wall of text about my experience. While I make criticisms of the game herein, this post is NOT a formal analysis of everything right and wrong with Elite: Dangerous. And I fully realize that the relevance of this post is directly proportional to its physical weight: zero. I also know that Frontier will not read it. I also know that hardly anyone here will read it either and even fewer of them will care. I know that what lies here is a waste of an hour in which I could have been doing something more productive. But I have to get this out of my brain or I’m going to go crazy.
Some backstory. I bought this game on release back in 2014 and have been following the game since that previous autumn. I was let down by Wings. I was let down by Power Play. I was let down by Planetary Landing. And I have been let down by the Thargoids. After each update, I had high hopes, and I came back to try. I tried to love the game. I have poured hours upon hours into it. Not as many as some, but a whole more than others. But this game doesn’t reciprocate. I’ve made this complaint in the past but after my year hiatus, I have come back to the game to try again. I had never tried multi-crew until today.
So I booted up the game with a friend, who also hasn’t been in game for a while. Neither of us had tried multi-crew, so we were a little hopeful that maybe this would make us want to play more often, because we both love how this game’s presentation strikes us. We made our first stop and he dropped off some cargo. I got a dividend. I thought, “Cool! I get paid too! This is really not bad actually!” We continued. After a couple jumps, my client stopped responding and I had to reboot (I actually had to do this several times in a row). I was impressed that it was able to keep my crew session, despite the fact that it kept crashing. Then my friend had to go, and I was dumped back in my ship. Then I realized something while looking at the crew session summary.
I looked left. My transactions screen was brimming with a bunch of vouchers for factions that were hundreds and hundreds of lightyears away in all sorts of different directions. My heart sank.
I was NOT getting paid while in multi-crew. I was being assigned chores.
It’s difficult to describe how thoroughly sad I was in that moment. How? Why? Why the hell? Why can’t I be paid on the spot? How come I can’t access station services while in crew to just pay the dividends as I go? Why does this game punish my fun with needless chores? Can the faction paying the Helm not reach the person sitting next to them for some reason? What the hell?!
I’m floored. I’m completely flabbergasted at what a completely awful implementation this is. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. Who came up with this? I just want to play. I don’t want to be assigned menial chores. I want to love this game. Why doesn't FD want it to love me too?
If you've read this far, I'm surprised, but I'm grateful. I am NOT asking for instant gratification. I just want to have fun without the game ting on my player agency while wearing a -eating troll-faced grin.
Original text here, and edited-for-language version follows below:
TL;DR: Every time I want to play a space game, I boot up this one instead of the others. And every time I do, I’m reminded of why I put it down in the first place. It looks amazing, sounds amazing, feels amazing, and its mechanics are stupid. Every new feature FD adds is an amazing and revolutionary idea with an implementation poorer than my college-debt-ridden self.
This is a wall of text about my experience. While I make criticisms of the game herein, this post is NOT a formal analysis of everything right and wrong with Elite: Dangerous. And I fully realize that the relevance of this post is directly proportional to its physical weight: zero. I also know that Frontier will not read it. I also know that hardly anyone here will read it either and even fewer of them will care. I know that what lies here is a waste of an hour in which I could have been doing something more productive. But I have to get this out of my brain or I’m going to go crazy.
Some backstory. I bought this game on release back in 2014 and have been following the game since that previous autumn. I was let down by Wings. I was let down by Power Play. I was let down by Planetary Landing. And I have been let down by the Thargoids. After each update, I had high hopes, and I came back to try. I tried to love the game. I have poured hours upon hours into it. Not as many as some, but a whole more than others. But this game doesn’t reciprocate. I’ve made this complaint in the past but after my year hiatus, I have come back to the game to try again. I had never tried multi-crew until today.
So I booted up the game with a friend, who also hasn’t been in game for a while. Neither of us had tried multi-crew, so we were a little hopeful that maybe this would make us want to play more often, because we both love how this game’s presentation strikes us. We made our first stop and he dropped off some cargo. I got a dividend. I thought, “Cool! I get paid too! This is really not bad actually!” We continued. After a couple jumps, my client stopped responding and I had to reboot (I actually had to do this several times in a row). I was impressed that it was able to keep my crew session, despite the fact that it kept crashing. Then my friend had to go, and I was dumped back in my ship. Then I realized something while looking at the crew session summary.
I looked left. My transactions screen was brimming with a bunch of vouchers for factions that were hundreds and hundreds of lightyears away in all sorts of different directions. My heart sank.
I was NOT getting paid while in multi-crew. I was being assigned chores.
It’s difficult to describe how thoroughly sad I was in that moment. How? Why? Why the hell? Why can’t I be paid on the spot? How come I can’t access station services while in crew to just pay the dividends as I go? Why does this game punish my fun with needless chores? Can the faction paying the Helm not reach the person sitting next to them for some reason? What the hell?!
I’m floored. I’m completely flabbergasted at what a completely awful implementation this is. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. Who came up with this? I just want to play. I don’t want to be assigned menial chores. I want to love this game. Why doesn't FD want it to love me too?
If you've read this far, I'm surprised, but I'm grateful. I am NOT asking for instant gratification. I just want to have fun without the game ting on my player agency while wearing a -eating troll-faced grin.