Elite II and FFE are better games than ED?

[dannysquid]

A difference would be that then they were "sketching in" the details of a planet with a few polygons whereas now people want everything nearly photorealistic with every grain of sand being individually textured and actual space pelicans flying around and maybe laying eggs with persistent pelican chicks that can evolve and contribute "deep gameplay".

I'd say the main difference, beyond the detail of the geometry, is multiplayer. Having persistent spaceships and NPCs you can follow around is easy in single-player. Doing it in a multiplayer environment is extraordinarily complicated.

Personally I think they could have made a much more engrossing game if they'd stuck to single player, but I'm not sure things like this forum would exist if they'd done that. There wouldn't have been a community.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

I disagree, because you compare a final product to one that is in the middle of development.

Atmospheric planets
The atmospheric planets in the old games were incredibly limited. They were basically just like the planets without atmospheres we have now, but with a primitive atmospheric entry animation. Don't get me wrong. It was fine, or even incredible for those days, but it wouldn't wash now. Nobody would accept it.

Just being able to leave our ships in a well designed SRV in ED is an enormous step forward compared to the old games. It adds an awesome new dimension to the game that turns planets into actual planets. In the old games you couldn't really go down to interact with the planetary surface, drive around pick up stuff etc.
Of course it needs more work, but it is already much better than the old games had to offer.

Ships.
And the ships in ED are so much more detailed and modifiable that it isn't even funny. It is much much better than the old games.
Of course I want more ships, but in the old days FD did not have to design interiors too. It is much more difficult to design the ED ships than it was to design the ships of the older games. And in ED the ships look so awesome and solid. I still spend a lot of time looking at the beautiful sexy thrusters on my FDL or Cutter .
And having 40 instead of 30 ships does not in any way make the game better. It has nothing to do with the point you try to make.

Crew.
I agree with that. I want NPC crew very very very much. But I do expect we might get that further down the line.
This game is going to be developed for a few more years, remember?

Storyline.
I would love a campaign further down the line. But to make that meaningful FD will first have to completely finish the basic mechanics.
FD could release a separate story campaign then and make use of everything the complete game has to offer. We might start out as farmer on tatooine and then work our way up to owning a ship, leave the planet and fight the evil emperor .
They could release this as a separate product and throw in a few new ships and some other cool stuff to seduce us and I would be willing to pay full retail price for something like that.
My point is: It is too early for a storyline.

Better military missions.
I agree that definitely needs a second look.



Yes it's nostalgia.
Nostalgia is a liar.

They arent talking about the ACTUAL mechanics, ofc things are different because the machines they ran on were less powerful than your average phone now. You've obviously missed the bit about the SPIRIT of those games and the FEELING they evoked.

The graphics argument has been proven impotent ever since the inception and growing popularity of Minecraft. Why are so many people playing a game that looks like something coded 30 years ago? FREEDOM, CHOICES AND NO BARRIERS to your imagination.

Yes the feeling of presence is higher in ED because there's a full on cockpit where you can move your head, and all the VR stuffs etc etc.

but all of that, ALL OF IT, is just polish.

"Too early for a storyline"???? 3 YEARS on? In every other game ever made the "story" is the basis, where's the game going, how will it progress, does it make sense etc etc. Saying such a thing makes me think you've either never played any decent games or you've just been blindly following the quest markers (as so many do nowadays) without actually paying any attention to what's going on.

There's a reason why games like the Elder Scrolls, Fallout or Mass Effect were so popular, because the STORY was the basis from which everything else came.

Whenever this sort of thread pops up, the same argument is always made in it's defence "the game is only half finished", and you're right it is, but show me the proof that it will GET FINISHED, and them naybe you might have a valid argument. Until all the content is in place, to the same level of graphical niceness you have now, the OP's comments are still very valid.

As far as your point of less ships makes no difference I disagree, because they way the ships are now, you can effectively play the game with just a few, in FEII ship choice very much controlled your gameplay and what you could and couldn't do.

 

[CMDR Crumpeteer]

ED is miles ahead for me. FE2 blew me away back in the 90s, but I found the flight mechanics and combat insanely dull. I always saw it as more of a really impressive tech demo than an actual game. Never got around to trying FFE.

edit: I see Bounder is still trying to push his opinions as facts. I can't bring myself to put him on ignore as his posts are so entertaining, if a little predictable.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

ED is miles ahead for me. FE2 blew me away back in the 90s, but I found the flight mechanics and combat insanely dull. I always saw it as more of a really impressive tech demo than an actual game. Never got around to trying FFE.

edit: I see Bounder is still trying to push his opinions as facts. I can't bring myself to put him on ignore as his posts are so entertaining, if a little predictable.

There are a few like that. Good to keep them of ignore just for comedy value.

 

[VR jefranklin18]

I played all 3 of the previous, wasting my teenage years when I should have been studying playing FE2, and playing the DirectX mod of FFE until ED private beta came out. There are some things that the other games do better (I loved using Star Dreamer to sit on a surface port to watch the sky move around me rapidly - not possible with multiplayer now), however there was a lot in those games that could be considered placeholder as well - e.g. the crew did nothing other than prevent you taking off if there is not enough of them.

Nostalgia for the old games is understandable, especially if you played them in your formative years, but removing the rose-tinted glasses puts ED heads and shoulders above the previous games.

 

[Archvillain]

All you have to do to see that ED is more than its predecessors is launch the originals and try to stick with them long-term the way we do with ED. You won't be able to do it. (At least I sure can't!)
We could do that back in the day when they were the state of the art and we had never tasted more (though even then I tired of Frontier faster than ED), but those games just don't hold me any more now that I'm acclimatized to a more evolved state of the art; they are simpler and more shallow than ED, even though that was plenty back in the day.

The depth and range and subtlety of our ship-building in ED, for example, is like no other I've ever seen. I'm not going to back to the days where ship-building didn't get much deeper than buying a more expensive laser for the side port - a no-brainer decision, compared to today where tinkering on Coriolis (and agonizing over choices) is basically a game in its own right

A few days ago I was flying (VR headset) and was just struck by how incomprehensibly wide the gulf seemed between ED and its predecessors. Looking around my ship in VR, I can barely believe both games exist in the same reality, separated by only a few decades. Sure, a lot of the really visceral difference is graphics, but a lot of it isn't. Before I got VR I used to assume that ED was a game that supported VR, but now I feel that ED is VR that also has some backwards-compatibility support for traditional old monitors. I think the old games on their screens have to be compared to ED playing in VR to get a truer sense of just how far ED has moved beyond them. I never got much sense that a ship was mine, my space, my home, when it was stats on a screen. But today, I have my own ship! I can fly it! In space!

 

[Marc_Hicks]

As much as I enjoyed E: D's precursors back in the day......and even as recently as 2013-2014.....the fact is that E: D already has much more to it than any of the previous titles but, more importantly, has a far, far greater potential than any of the other 3 titles in this series. As Cosmic said, this is equally true of the X-Com franchise.

 

[Captain Willard]

While ED has 10 times the grafix value and ships and everything else. You are trying to compare game content against a single player content oriented game with the best grafix they had to offer at the time. Here's hoping that the 3.0 update will include plenty of that if a bunch hasn't already been added by bringing alien races into the game. CHEERS

 

[Erasmus Boone]

I do find it baffling that they did not start with the features of Elite 2 as the minimum for ED how can a game designed by the same company decades earlier be richer in terms of content?

Because making that level of content to modern standards of graphics etc would be a much, much bigger job than making E2 was at the time.

 

[Non Grata]

For me the seamlessness of FE2/FFE give an immersion that ED simply doesn't have. And the imagination makes up for any graphics/sound deficiencies.

 

[Valorin]

I really, really loved Frontier and First Encounters. Played those up and down first in the 90s on my Amiga, later on PC after X and all the other games which where supposed to be similar to those games disappointed me. FFE also had that fanmade 3D mode with lots of new models, textures and stuff. Looked amazing...
I totally get why ED is being developed the way it is, and also why it's seemingly slowly progressing, and I don't really mind. Though I would prefer if they instead would do everything to turn ED into a proper FFE with modern graphics. I'd scratch all the other stuff for that, including the idea of space legs and stuff. Star Citizen can keep their space legs and adventure mode once it's done. Will be awesome as well, but ED should turn into that awesome space sim its prequels were. Not saying it's not awesome.

I love ED very much, but here's the "but": I want all the space sim features of back then much more than any fluff stuff like Thargoids, space legs and engineers. And before this turns into the same stupid discussion about content: I am fine with engineers, Thargoids and commanders.

 

[Muzz UK]

I think the whole crime and punishment system is better in FEII.

 

[Patrick_68000]

When we are 25 years younger, we are more amazed

 

[Sergio Smegolia]

Yeah nice one - those old games have nothing to do with ED...

And who said ED was bad?

Not being as good as the best games ever made does not make ED bad.

Perhaps lay off the passive aggression - if you have nothing else to add, please feel free to take your own advice...

Those games have nothing to do with ED though. This is a reboot of the original.

Personal note, I thought FE2 was carp. Played it about 3 nights before deleting. A scripted mess with a pants flight model. Personal opinion of course but it winds me up when people bring these games along as arguments as to why ED isn't great.

So in answer to the OP, no.

 

[Han_Zen]

I think the whole crime and punishment system is better in FEII.

Was there a punishment system?

As far as I remember, you always avoided scanning if you used Stardreamer/autopilot to land. On top of that, all cops accepted the max bribe.

 

[EISENHORN01]

Crew.
I agree with that. I want NPC crew very very very much. But I do expect we might get that further down the line.
This game is going to be developed for a few more years, remember?


Oh yes I fully agree NPC crew is a must for the game (it's in joint first for me with better galaxy economy) and would bring a hell of a lot to the game.

Storyline.

FD could release a separate story campaign then and make use of everything the complete game has to offer. We might start out as farmer on tatooine and then work our way up to owning a ship, leave the planet and fight the evil emperor .

Storylines are are ok but in most cases you often choose the 'ignore till later' option if it's available especially once your training wheels are off.

on a side note now you've mentioned a farmer in a galaxy far far away. I find it inconceivable that no games developer has brought out an open sandbox game set within that galaxy. ELITE DANGEROUS has proven the market exists for a space sim/game. That other franchise is the reason SPACE GAMES exist (aged 7 in 1977 it totally changed my childhood kicked my imagination into over drive and made the worst decade ever bearable). Sorry but though ELITE has a huge place in my heart if they did E.D in a galaxy far far away I'd be off in a flash.

 

[Sir.Tj]

I have great fondness for the original 3 games and for me my personal favourite is First Encounters (yeah I know I know) however it's why I registered here on the forum way back in the mists of time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Mike Brookes only had bumfluff on his chin.

As mentioned ED is the follow on in style to Elite rather than the others but it doesn't exclude them in the history.

I loved the story lines in FFE and have done them countless times over the years.

Having stroylines like them would make me a happy bunny.

 

[tafkabb]

Ha, no. Not in a million years.

 

[BurnyBurns]

Have you not got your own forums for your fave games? Not really sure why you're here since this game is so bad.

Might be because OP likes critical discourse? Of course, white-knight-ish zealousness tends to make people reject any such thing.

It doesn't make OPs points less valid however.

 

[peteuplink]

I think all the previous Elite games are better than ED, because those games had tension.

Take the original as an example. Sure, it was basic by todays standards. But when you were in deep space, and you suddenly became mass locked by another ship, there was always that moment of uncertainty. Is it a pirate, some space rocks, a trader or Thargoids? You never knew until you were attacked and were engaged in a fight for your life. Just getting to the station at the end of a journey felt like an accomplishment in the older games. There was often that "Uh oh!" moment, followed by some intense action and a "Phew! Made it!" moment if you reached the station.

On the flip side of this, we have Elite Dangerous. Now, I'm not saying it's a bad game. Technically it's way above what the original Elite was. But it also can be damned boring at times. It's a very relaxing game, almost to the point of making the player comatose. If you try to play in a similar style to the original Elite, the game just ends up being a never ending cycle of get job/cargo > set course > fly > dock > hand in job/cargo. Very little actually happens between taking off and reaching your destination. Where the original game would often treat you to a few butt clenching moments when a ship suddenly appears on your scanner, and many of the ones you encountered out in space were hostile, in Elite Dangerous everyone seems to be far too friendly. Even in anarchy systems you very rarely get interdicted by the AI. The only time the game becomes properly tense is if you wander into a CG zone and there's a lot of players around and you don't know what their intentions are. I don't even think the addition of Thargoids will add more tension, as it's already been announced that if you don't bother looking for them, they won't come and find you.

You see, I think that's the biggest issue with Elite Dangerous. All the action and tension of the earlier games is there, but you have to go out of your way to find it. In the original game, you didn't have to look, the action and tension found you, and this made it a much better gameplay experience.

It's a nice, relaxing game. A game where you can sit back and let the universe pass you buy, looking at the stars and planets, a bit like playing a truck driving sim in space. But like Jeremy Clarkson once said when he was discussing the Nissan GTR in the Japan race on Top Gear, "I just wish that it would occasionally put its hand down the front of my trousers and have a little rummage..."