How many of you don't play anymore?

[pocnoc]

Have been skulking on the forum for along time and decided to reg an acct. to express the reason why I've put the game aside for the foreseeable future.

Was spending four evenings with the game and it was fun in the beginning before you had explored all the mechanics. Once you got to grips with the game however, you had already seen and done it all seems like. The main reason I'm not playing anymore is that in order to get some variety I have to progress to new ships, which is the only avenue I haven't explored extensively. Getting new ships and outfitting them takes a whole lot of CR and getting the CR is ... time consuming to say the least. A constant A to B trade grind in the current version of the game is as fun as watching paint dry (and I actually do have paint drying in my kitchen that's getting a facelift).

Won't be leaving permanently yet since I've already payed for the game, and may just as well keep an eye on the forum how and if it evolves into a proper and engaging experience. For now however, it's just a time sink that feels more mundane and tedious than coating layers of base color on wall after wall.. And for those posting "i still play", please get into the habit of reading the thread titles and first posts before you post. If you're not on topic, find a thread *with* your topic or create a new one. For the i-play-crowd you really should be heading over to the thread "Everyone that is BASICALLY happy with the game post here please" and post your remarks there instead.

 

[Klyd]

Me, I started playing just a few days ago and I am sad to admit that I already lost most of my motivation to progress in the game any more.
First I thought, that it was a "personal problem" I have with this game but after reading some posts here it seems, that my opinion isn't that crazy.

I don't want to repeat everything written in some good posts in this thread, so just in short my reasons:

1. Grindy and extremely boring gameplay
2. No real feel of doing "important" things in the universe, which have an actual impact
3. Only motivation would be to get bigger ships
4. Universe elements often look cut & paste (stations, systems, ...)

So I will not stop playing "forever", but for now I will just put Elite aside and wait if it will get better in time. Overall I don't yet regret buying it, but I think I should perhaps waited a little longer.

 

[mapesdhs]

I haven't played for a while. My fault really, I just can't get the hang of the darn Thrustmaster joystick gameplay. Keyboard mouse player here and after some 40+ odd years, it's just darn difficult to change. Still stuck on the docking and fighting tutorials. I seem difficult to develop that muscle memory thing for doing all those cunning maneuvers with the joystick *sigh*.

That's surprises me somewhat TBH. I've been a kybd/mouse nut for grud knows how long, and for many years I'd often
set game keys to be the same as Elite keys (Electron version).

However, with ED, I found a joystick/throttle setup to just feel so amazingly natural, and it's a blast to be able to come into land somewhere
with whatever kind of twist/yaw/etc. action required for a nice landing. I really like the way thrust controls work in the game too, kinda neat
to be able to maneuvre around station entrances or the more open stations that have landing pads on the outside somewhere. I'm using a
CH Pro Throttle and T-16000M. I also have a Logitech G13 for misc functions & menus.

Ian.

PS. That said, I was a mess during my first attempts with the training tutorials. Something just clicked at some point though, but it did
help to have sensible mappings for the buttons/joystick/etc.

 

[Nyken]

If they were to add in comms chatter between NPCs then it would bring it to life. As an example look for a game called Freelancer from Microsoft now that is a living galaxy.

When you say... FROM Microsoft, do you mean as the publisher, which they were, or the developer, which they were not? As it stands, Digital Anvil was eventually bought OUT by Microsoft, but, during the time of Freelancer and Starlancer it was independent.

I agree that it's closer to a living universe than what we've got with Elite: Dangerous. It's definitely a contributing factor to one of the reasons why I stopped playing.

 

[mapesdhs]

The tricky part with NPC 'chatter' is trying to make it so that it's not annoying, repetitive or obviously artificial. Otherwise people
will start demanding the ability to just turn it off, especially if such chatter has no effect on what's actually happening in the game.

This is why I reckon it would be better to make NPCs properly persistent AIs with their own motivations, etc. That way, there's no
need to 'fake' what they do and how they interact, such things would just come naturally from whatever their own current goals
& intentions happen to be, including the ability to ask real players for help if an NPC gets into trouble, or just wants to lead a wing,
or whatever. Anything should be possible. Code it right and a lot of what might sound difficult would emerge naturally.

One might think that having persistent AIs would be hard to code, but then I would hope those working on gaming AI would relish
the challenge.

Ian.

 

[DarkWalker]

When you say... FROM Microsoft, do you mean as the publisher, which they were, or the developer, which they were not? As it stands, Digital Anvil was eventually bought OUT by Microsoft, but, during the time of Freelancer and Starlancer it was independent.

I agree that it's closer to a living universe than what we've got with Elite: Dangerous. It's definitely a contributing factor to one of the reasons why I stopped playing.

Actually, StarLancer was released March 31, 2000; Digital Anvil was purchased December 5, 2000; and FreeLancer was released March 4, 2003. So, most of FreeLancer's development happened already inside Microsoft. I remember it fairly well because Chris Roberts left the company just after Microsoft purchased it, which is why FreeLancer isn't one of his games, despite the fact it was him that created the game's concept and started its development.

 

[mapesdhs]

... Getting new ships and outfitting them takes a whole lot of CR and getting the CR is ... time consuming to say the least. ...

Note that in the early stages with the Sidewinder you can get waaay more CR by exploring unmapped systems. This is what I'm doing atm,
just made it to a point near Sol, at one station selling the carto data netted 37K.

I've noticed since 1.2 that single ships in anarchy systems when one first comes out of FS are less frequent, which is good because it was
dumb that they always attack even though I'm clean & carrying no cargo.

Btw, to expect people who are happy with the game not to comment is just silly. Surely the point of anything here is discussion & debate. If someone
has tired of the game, nothing wrong with others asking why, and giving suggestions (as above) to how they can improve their gaming experience.

Ian.

 

[Dummytarget]

I have pretty much stopped playing, I just can't find a goal to aim for.
I have tried bounty hunting, but flying after unidentified signal sources gets old soon. And no, I don't have warthog, trackir and most importantly the skill to go after player pirates.

Trading is just not that interesting to do, and figuring out where can I get the most profit is very difficult.

Mining.. Scooping up every single rock piece individually.. No thanks. Plus getting blown up for no reason in the middle of it, not fun.

Missions? "Here, take this cargo 4 jumps away and we will pay you 4500cr!". Not worth it. Or "Shoot 4 pirates in system X" and after finding the first one the missions turns on its head, "Shoot the people who have you the mission". There, I think I covered all the available missions, I don't remember seeing any other types.

Pirating? No skill and no interest. I would rather help people than ruin their day. But then again, there are no people around to help, and I don't know how I could help them anyway. If you happen to bump into someone, you have to assume (s)he is here to kill you. Interacting with others is pretty much non-existent. All the interactions so far have been me being interdicted and shot down, or just shot down while mining etc..

Exploration? This might be something, but a good scanner costs in the millions (which I do not have), and I'm guessing this gets old soon as well and judging by the comments I have been reading that the places start to look copy-pasted sooner or later.

As I see this, the only reason to do any of these is to get a more expensive ship. I have not figured out any other goals.
Seems that I'll be playing ED once a week or two in solo mode. I'll be interacting with as many friendly people as in live mode, but with 100% less pirates / just trigger happy people.

I'm sure some of you will disagree, and that's fine. I'm also sure there are huge gaps in my knowledge of the game and probably don't know of all the things I could be doing, but this is just how I see the game at this moment.

 

[V3teran]

I do not play much myself anymore, got myself a Python and a Vulture. Ive now stopped playing, gonna wait for some updates.

 

[peteuplink]

I hadn't been playing the game, because I'd gotten a little bored with it, but on Friday I reset my save and started over trying to play the game the way I would the original Elite or FE2 by trading and taking bulletin board missions.

I'm enjoying it, so far, but I do think the game needs a couple of fixes to add more tension and keep things a bit more interesting. First of all I'd like to see less random signal sources. Most of the are pretty useless, like the funeral processions, and there's too many of them. Space is big and random signals of this kind should be a rare event. There certainly shouldn't be 10 between the sun and your destination in a sparsely populated system. Also, instead of having names like "strong signal source" and "unidentified signal source", they should be identified as "distress signal" for a ship that's being attacked, "disaster beacon" for a wrecked ship (these could be genuine or traps set by pirates), "direct communication", with some sort of audible hail, for one of those ships that offers you an alternative offer for one of your current bulletin board missions (and I think these should be rarer than they are now), "trading beacon" for a ship that buys items from you.

Another thing I'd like to see is more attempted interdictions from AI ships. The original Elite was quite a tense experience when you jumped into a new system and didn't know if the ship that was flying towards you was going to attack. In ED I don't get that sense of trepidation when another ship approaches. I'm not saying every trip should result in multiple interdiction attempts, but there should be more danger to keep the long haul trading and travelling from getting dull. If I wanted to fly from place to place with nothing happening in between, I'd be playing Flight Simulator.

There needs to be a wider variety of BBS missions, like we had in FE2. I'd particularly like a return of passenger transfer missions, and I'd like them to not always be just simple a to b missions, but also occasionally result in some sort of danger. Like, perhaps the person you're carrying is an escaped fugitive or spy that's wanted by another faction.

Going back to those bulletin board missions where you get an alternative offer from another ship. I think there should be more consequences for turning down the offer. Afterall, the commander of the ship has tracked you down, sent you a signal to meet him in space (maybe these should be interdictions as well), and then makes you a counter proposal. After all that effort it seems very odd that he'd just let you leave without agreeing to his terms. Also if you do decide to accept his offer, then the faction you got the mission from should be more angry with you.

 

[dreamer1986]

I'm also waiting for an update that will bring some more fun to the game, like better missions.

 

[medwyn]

I got another friend today asking about ED and whether it's worthy to buy it or not. I directed him to the forums to get some insight. He's hesitating because he can not try a demo before comitting to a purchase.
Let's see how he goes. It may be representative with regrards to ED overall.

 

[Snakebite]

I'm also waiting for an update that will bring some more fun to the game, like better missions.

Not given up on the game, I still think FD can make this good, But from the perspective of someone who wants to play as a bounty hunter i'm not really able to get into it, Hopefully the recent talk of updating the criminal system will improve things and i'll be able to spend less time on the forums and more time in the game.

 

[Phier]

Haven't played in a month. Odds are I'll wait for 1.3 to see if that interests me gameplay wise. I have a full dk2 set up too, so my experience was "maximum" in terms of game feel. Its probably why I stuck around a full month longer than all my friends who quit.

I got another friend today asking about ED and whether it's worthy to buy it or not. I directed him to the forums to get some insight. He's hesitating because he can not try a demo before comitting to a purchase.
Let's see how he goes. It may be representative with regrards to ED overall.

A demo would do nothing to show the games problem. The game is basically a tech demo.

 

[Bacon Sarnie]

I had a forced week off, bad EVGA SC GTX 980 which has been replaced with an ASUS Strix OC GTX 980.
Before the week off I was getting a little bored, as many have said game seems a mile wide but an inch deep at times.
I got back into my Cobra and straight away liked a lot of the 1.2 improvements, but at the same time noticed I still felt a bit "well what now".
Then I accidently sold my Cobra when getting a Vulture, instead of purchase I accidentally traded it in. Wow Im so glad I did. Having to relearn to fly a different way, having to juggle heat and power issues and no longer relying on trading to make cash.
Im loving it, I fly a lot differently, in combat Im straffing, circling, flying backwards etc. Before in the Cobra I was pretty much turn, fire, zoom, turn fire zoom.
Its made the game a lot more fun for me.

 

[nickson]

Be carefull when straffing the vulture. I lost my first by straffing in an asteroid not even that fast with full shields. Hull integrity compromised, ok, Eject! What the f!! It was a good instance for Bountiy hunting with lots of Python and Anacondas. Just took down 2 condas at 160k each. I might have lost 3 millions in bounties (EXTREMELY stupid we loose this). having no ammo weapons helps lasting longer. I couldn't wait to buy better Lasers but I only manage to do 400k the rest of the evening I lost that. now I'm not going to play for a while.
They could also fix the amount of credits for missions. They give less than killing an eagle.

 

[Bacon Sarnie]

I have an easy way to avoid straffing into asteroids, I usually bounty hunt at Nav beacons, I not a fan of RES hunts, made that error a few times in my Cobra, turn boost turn ASTEROID! Insurance screen!

 

[GHDW]

Tried out SC and currently playing CS:GO during the away time.

 

[Zueuk]

Just played it like 2nd time since the v1.2 release.
Liked the GUI improvements, still don't like the weird reverb on the music.
Missions are still , I hoped that they'll add more variety at least for the coop players.
Wanted to go somewhere far away to explore, but exploring is still so boring that I dunno... maybe better just play something else :|

 

[Steve50]

I stopped playing 4-5 days ago, am now waiting to beta test 1.3 and go mining Painite.

So for the next few weeks I'll play something else but my X52 needed a rest anyway