From what I've seen so far, E
is true to its 80's roots in all aspects save for the presentation.
Picture Sci-Fi in the eighties - Star Wars, Dune, Alien1/2, Airwolf)), Knight Rider.
Monochrome displays, with red or amber tint. Monochrome holograms with 3d rotating objects. Sharp angles, bulky design.
Elite has it all, if you take a moment to think about it, it's a very 80's presentation. The ships are bulky, some - like the adder - are even reminescent of a 60's design. The cockpit or canopy are not modern, you don't have the feeling of "Holy Crap, this is the future!". Nope. You feel at home, the interior looks like a modern day car (I'm looking at you - Mystery mobile Adder), the ships themselves are not much bigger than jets. There are even speakers and airflow ducts in the cockpit. It all adds to the 80s immersion.
And that's all good, makes it pretty unique.
Then we have the map, which also follows these lines. When I want to plot a jump further than 30 Ly it really brings me back to the Amiga days. My i5 apparently can only plot a jump after some 3 minutes of going at it, giving me subtle hints that something is happening. Progress bars? Spinning indicators? "Processing.."? Nope, these are not here.
I'm also pretty sure that one of the most common use cases is to search for a system, and then wait for the route to be computed. Given that - there are many spatial optimizations in computer science that make tree search easier if you know where your destination point is. You don't need to recompute a 100Ly sphere, you already know where you WON'T be going, so you can cut these halves/quarters/octs out of the equation. Or you could precompute a tree of the 'habited' space of alliance/feds/empire/etc. There aren't that many of these out there. Having a precomputed tree could help, maybe?
Then we have the system map. It's also very retro, stylized after something resembling a pop-sci book about space. Neat planets, stations, stars. Again, adds to the mood. However, since "UX" (User eXperience) did not exist in 1985 as a science, we won't find it here either. The system map is nearly useless, it's a big tool that provides almost no information. The first thing that struck me in the first hour of play, is that all stations seemed to have pretty much the same imports and exports, with an odd variance here and there. And it lists only three items.
The best way for trading is going through space with pen&paper in your glove compartment and note everything down, 80s style. I even remember doing this for Elite II, back when i was like 15 in the 90s. And it was cool.
However, the year is 3300 and there is only w.. / wait, that's not it. The year is 3300 and we have not moved past the information paradigms from 1985, not even mentioning 2014.
But people are lazy, which means they'll be resourceful. What the game is not giving (to move away from spreadsheets) the community creates. There are already tools out there to help you with trading. And, of course, these were bound to pop up, just because. However, with the amount of information that is accessible to players, these are very valuable right now.
As I've mentioned, the system map doesn't give much information, the NPC trade routes give you an idea, but you still have no idea. You can meticiously plan your trade route, and arrive at a loss.
The year is 3300 and despite faster-than-light travel, we're unable to download a station's inventory list and demands. If the original idea was for the players to go from station to station (hello 6-20k Ls stations) and note down on paper what the prices are (with dynamic, player-affected economy!), then I need to say it was a very wrong move. People already know that there should be better ways to do that, and they'll seek these ways.
I'm surprised that there are no 'long range trade terminals' or something. Just look at that game from Egosoft. They have figured this out a decade ago - you still need to fly to a system, and have an (non-slotted) upgrade to be able to read the prices, but you need to do that only once, and use it freely after.
Look how Eve has done this. They even give you full, sortable information up front. At least for your region, and you can make the decisions from there.
With E we're still in mid-eighties where you had to drive to every shop in town to see if they're carrying what you need. And no, not everyone had landline access in 1980.
We live in an age where Big Data is king, and spreadsheets are being used not only in the office. I don't want to tab-out to third party tools. I want to play the game, in the game. Without forcing me to run around the galaxy noting down stuff, only to find that it has changed 20 minutes before I arrived with 100 tons of palladium.
Did I mention the supercruise/warp and UI? Locked. Want to check something quick, while you're charging for a jump. Nope. Want to see system status while you're going in for ship upgrades. Nope.
Scanned someone for bounty? Let's not display that as pretty much the most important information in the main UI. Let's keep it stashed in a tab, in a subsection, that totally messes up your flow (the guy is already deploying hardpoints). This could use a tweak as well.
But I do like E, it's fun, and there's stuff to do. Too bad it's often more tedious than fun. But it's still ok. Some things, like trading rares, are not balanced. Why do missions and hunt 7 pirates in a system for a measly 13k cr reward, when in the same time I can do 150Ly back and forward in an adder and bring home 600k ? We live in the internet age, metagaming is here to stay. If you look at the rare-commodities carrying stations, their factions are already at 90-99% influence in the system. Wonder how did that happen..
I love the 80s aesthetics with the modern-retro feeling, and I'm looking forward to seeing more polish in the game and some sound UX decisions. Yes, it will take some rethinking, and none of the stuff I've mentioned will be easy to re-engineer, but it will add value, believe me.
Carry on commanders!
is true to its 80's roots in all aspects save for the presentation.Picture Sci-Fi in the eighties - Star Wars, Dune, Alien1/2, Airwolf
)), Knight Rider.Monochrome displays, with red or amber tint. Monochrome holograms with 3d rotating objects. Sharp angles, bulky design.
Elite has it all, if you take a moment to think about it, it's a very 80's presentation. The ships are bulky, some - like the adder - are even reminescent of a 60's design. The cockpit or canopy are not modern, you don't have the feeling of "Holy Crap, this is the future!". Nope. You feel at home, the interior looks like a modern day car (I'm looking at you - Mystery mobile Adder), the ships themselves are not much bigger than jets. There are even speakers and airflow ducts in the cockpit. It all adds to the 80s immersion.
And that's all good, makes it pretty unique.
Then we have the map, which also follows these lines. When I want to plot a jump further than 30 Ly it really brings me back to the Amiga days. My i5 apparently can only plot a jump after some 3 minutes of going at it, giving me subtle hints that something is happening. Progress bars? Spinning indicators? "Processing.."? Nope, these are not here.
I'm also pretty sure that one of the most common use cases is to search for a system, and then wait for the route to be computed. Given that - there are many spatial optimizations in computer science that make tree search easier if you know where your destination point is. You don't need to recompute a 100Ly sphere, you already know where you WON'T be going, so you can cut these halves/quarters/octs out of the equation. Or you could precompute a tree of the 'habited' space of alliance/feds/empire/etc. There aren't that many of these out there. Having a precomputed tree could help, maybe?
Then we have the system map. It's also very retro, stylized after something resembling a pop-sci book about space. Neat planets, stations, stars. Again, adds to the mood. However, since "UX" (User eXperience) did not exist in 1985 as a science, we won't find it here either. The system map is nearly useless, it's a big tool that provides almost no information. The first thing that struck me in the first hour of play, is that all stations seemed to have pretty much the same imports and exports, with an odd variance here and there. And it lists only three items.
The best way for trading is going through space with pen&paper in your glove compartment and note everything down, 80s style. I even remember doing this for Elite II, back when i was like 15 in the 90s. And it was cool.
However, the year is 3300 and there is only w.. / wait, that's not it. The year is 3300 and we have not moved past the information paradigms from 1985, not even mentioning 2014.
But people are lazy, which means they'll be resourceful. What the game is not giving (to move away from spreadsheets) the community creates. There are already tools out there to help you with trading. And, of course, these were bound to pop up, just because. However, with the amount of information that is accessible to players, these are very valuable right now.
As I've mentioned, the system map doesn't give much information, the NPC trade routes give you an idea, but you still have no idea. You can meticiously plan your trade route, and arrive at a loss.
The year is 3300 and despite faster-than-light travel, we're unable to download a station's inventory list and demands. If the original idea was for the players to go from station to station (hello 6-20k Ls stations) and note down on paper what the prices are (with dynamic, player-affected economy!), then I need to say it was a very wrong move. People already know that there should be better ways to do that, and they'll seek these ways.
I'm surprised that there are no 'long range trade terminals' or something. Just look at that game from Egosoft. They have figured this out a decade ago - you still need to fly to a system, and have an (non-slotted) upgrade to be able to read the prices, but you need to do that only once, and use it freely after.
Look how Eve has done this. They even give you full, sortable information up front. At least for your region, and you can make the decisions from there.
With E
we're still in mid-eighties where you had to drive to every shop in town to see if they're carrying what you need. And no, not everyone had landline access in 1980.We live in an age where Big Data is king, and spreadsheets are being used not only in the office. I don't want to tab-out to third party tools. I want to play the game, in the game. Without forcing me to run around the galaxy noting down stuff, only to find that it has changed 20 minutes before I arrived with 100 tons of palladium.
Did I mention the supercruise/warp and UI? Locked. Want to check something quick, while you're charging for a jump. Nope. Want to see system status while you're going in for ship upgrades. Nope.
Scanned someone for bounty? Let's not display that as pretty much the most important information in the main UI. Let's keep it stashed in a tab, in a subsection, that totally messes up your flow (the guy is already deploying hardpoints). This could use a tweak as well.
But I do like E
, it's fun, and there's stuff to do. Too bad it's often more tedious than fun. But it's still ok. Some things, like trading rares, are not balanced. Why do missions and hunt 7 pirates in a system for a measly 13k cr reward, when in the same time I can do 150Ly back and forward in an adder and bring home 600k ? We live in the internet age, metagaming is here to stay. If you look at the rare-commodities carrying stations, their factions are already at 90-99% influence in the system. Wonder how did that happen..I love the 80s aesthetics with the modern-retro feeling, and I'm looking forward to seeing more polish in the game and some sound UX decisions. Yes, it will take some rethinking, and none of the stuff I've mentioned will be easy to re-engineer, but it will add value, believe me.
Carry on commanders!
