Dear reader, I am curious about how you perceive the general difficulty of the Elite experience. Is it a very easy or "chill" kind of thing? Is it nerve-wracking and tense? Is it challenging but surmountable?
AND
Since the game is obviously pretty broad, what particular activities come to mind when you think about this? Maybe mining is chill, but combat is way too hard. Maybe combat is easy, but SRV driving seems impossible. In other words, beyond a general measure, where are the peaks and valleys of difficulty as you see them?
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Notes and Caveats
-I thought about asking this as a poll, but decided more nuanced answers might be more interesting. So thank you in advance for taking the time to write something out!
-This obviously won't be a representative subset of all ED players, especially since those who find it very difficult may have stopped playing entirely. Us veterans are further divided into those who frequent the forums and those who don't. This is alright, as I'm just interested in getting some of your thoughts, not running a rigorous study.
-Difficulty can be parsed in a number of ways. For instance, it may refer to the level of skill required to accomplish something, or it may refer to the level of patience required to accomplish something, or it may refer to the level of knowledge required to accomplish something, etc. For the purposes of this query, it would be awesome if you could indicate in which sense you find something difficult. Thus, someone may find it exceptionally difficult to do trading runs because they don't have the patience (for instance), while someone else may find combat very challenging because they haven't developed enough dexterity/flight skills/aiming skills, etc.
-I really don't want this to be a place for complaining/venting about things in the game people dislike. There is a difference between finding something disagreeable and finding it challenging, even though sometimes the two may coincide. Again, taking the trading case, someone might find trading to be challenging (for reasons of limited patience) and therefore avoid it, whereas someone else might find that same challenge to their patience rewarding to overcome and seek it out. I am interested in the basic assessments of difficulty here, not strong personal preferences.
-Honesty is appreciated, and I hope that we can all avoid bragging or dishing out the "git guds" in favor of frank assessments. If you find something trivial, great. If someone else finds that same thing impossible, great. We all have different strengths and interests. No judgment necessary.
-Finally, my own view, for anyone interested.
AND
Since the game is obviously pretty broad, what particular activities come to mind when you think about this? Maybe mining is chill, but combat is way too hard. Maybe combat is easy, but SRV driving seems impossible. In other words, beyond a general measure, where are the peaks and valleys of difficulty as you see them?
_________________
Notes and Caveats
-I thought about asking this as a poll, but decided more nuanced answers might be more interesting. So thank you in advance for taking the time to write something out!
-This obviously won't be a representative subset of all ED players, especially since those who find it very difficult may have stopped playing entirely. Us veterans are further divided into those who frequent the forums and those who don't. This is alright, as I'm just interested in getting some of your thoughts, not running a rigorous study.
-Difficulty can be parsed in a number of ways. For instance, it may refer to the level of skill required to accomplish something, or it may refer to the level of patience required to accomplish something, or it may refer to the level of knowledge required to accomplish something, etc. For the purposes of this query, it would be awesome if you could indicate in which sense you find something difficult. Thus, someone may find it exceptionally difficult to do trading runs because they don't have the patience (for instance), while someone else may find combat very challenging because they haven't developed enough dexterity/flight skills/aiming skills, etc.
-I really don't want this to be a place for complaining/venting about things in the game people dislike. There is a difference between finding something disagreeable and finding it challenging, even though sometimes the two may coincide. Again, taking the trading case, someone might find trading to be challenging (for reasons of limited patience) and therefore avoid it, whereas someone else might find that same challenge to their patience rewarding to overcome and seek it out. I am interested in the basic assessments of difficulty here, not strong personal preferences.
-Honesty is appreciated, and I hope that we can all avoid bragging or dishing out the "git guds" in favor of frank assessments. If you find something trivial, great. If someone else finds that same thing impossible, great. We all have different strengths and interests. No judgment necessary.
-Finally, my own view, for anyone interested.
I find the challenge landscape in the game to be distributed quite differently across activities. Combat for instance (especially PVP and piracy) seems to be a pretty even mix between skill challenge and knowledge challenge. One must both know the proper meta and how to put together a viable build, and be able to execute flight maneuvers with that build. In general this seems to be the highest challenge area in the game. Trading seems to be primarily based in knowledge/patience challenge, as it is mainly about knowing where to move items and being willing to fly sometimes long distances repeatedly, while the skill portion of the activity is limited to avoiding pirates/interdiction which seems pretty easy mostly, or docking, which is also quite simple IMO. In this case, the difficulty can be further mitigated with tools like EDDB that effectively offload the knowledge requirement onto the database. Mining seems similar here, in that mostly it requires some knowledge about how to set up/use limpets and the patience to move through asteroids collecting things, with some limited piracy avoidance involved at times. Exploration, to me, seems to be easiest, basically requiring only patience to accomplish. Since all NPC interaction stops being a possibility outside the bubble, and you basically only need to know how to "honk" a star, and point in a jump direction, there is very little skill challenge involved. Since making discoveries (earth-likes or new black holes) is essentially random (as opposed to doing calculations or something based on observations) the knowledge challenge also seems pretty trivial. So from my own perspective, a general classification based upon the above would look like:
Combat (hard) > mainly knowledge/skill challenge
Trading (med) > mainly knowledge/patience challenge *(though can be easy if using external tools to find routes)
Mining (easy) > mainly patience/knowledge challenge
Exploration (easy) > mainly patience challenge
In summary then, to me, the game seems mostly pretty easy, especially after the initial learning curve of acquiring the knowledge required to accomplish most things. This of course is because, personally, I tend to weight skill challenge as above knowledge and in turn above patience. In other words, I don't personally find it especially difficult to learn the things required, or to have the patience to execute them, but developing the skills for execution does seem like a steeper challenge to me. In that sense, it would probably be fair to say that combat is really the only (or main) thing I find challenging in the game, and seems markedly more difficult than most other activities.
Combat (hard) > mainly knowledge/skill challenge
Trading (med) > mainly knowledge/patience challenge *(though can be easy if using external tools to find routes)
Mining (easy) > mainly patience/knowledge challenge
Exploration (easy) > mainly patience challenge
In summary then, to me, the game seems mostly pretty easy, especially after the initial learning curve of acquiring the knowledge required to accomplish most things. This of course is because, personally, I tend to weight skill challenge as above knowledge and in turn above patience. In other words, I don't personally find it especially difficult to learn the things required, or to have the patience to execute them, but developing the skills for execution does seem like a steeper challenge to me. In that sense, it would probably be fair to say that combat is really the only (or main) thing I find challenging in the game, and seems markedly more difficult than most other activities.
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