I wasn't into the hype train for ED and didn't care for it or Star Citizen(Which I think is going to flop to be honest). I pretty much decided to get ED on impulse after seeing a stream of it and thinking "Damn, that looks good." Bought it, jumped in after doing the tutorials(Which lack to say the least! You absolutely have to spend the 30-40minutes watching the youtube tutorial videos and google a few other things such as what it's like to die -- basic stuff that's never explained).
I'm enjoying it. Been playing since the 16th(Didn't get the discount) and I think it's good value. A lot more could be added, true... and they have said they plan to but I doubt most of what they promised will come any time soon as it was more a means to be on par with Star Citizen in offered features(Station walking, planet exploration out of your ship, boarding other ships, etc.). There's a lot of barebones in the game right now. One of the main issues I have is how few ships there are. There's around 15 or so currently in the game and that's it. Not very much for a game that's so big. You will hit a wall in upgrading from ship to ship, definitely. There's that and the fact that there's absolutely zero choice in what ship you should get. They're pretty much all rounders early on in the game and the most expensive ships are big, slow and mostly transport ships. There's maybe one ship that's a combat ship and that's very expensive. They really should have dedicated much more time to giving you a choice in what ship you could purchase in the same price point. For example if you wanted to haul ships should have been specific to that. If you wanted to explore ships should be available specific to that. If you wanted to combat ships should have been specific for that. Right now you can do anything with the early ships bar the Eagle which seems lacking in general and the only downside to the Viper is it's terrible jump distance(6.99ly).
Price points are huge stretches and jumps. Sidewinder(Free if you have nothing, don't ever buy one) -> Eagle 44k -> Hauler 53k -> Adder -> 87k -> Viper 143k -> Cobra 379 -> Type 6 transporter 1million -> ASP 6million. Yeah, as you can see the price jumps considerably. After the ASP I believe the price jumps to 17million for the next ship or something ridiculous like that. There definitely should have been more role specific ships early on with clear upgrades. The more positive thing is that you can resell your ship and upgrade to another ship. I think you get the same amount of cash for what you paid for the ship when you upgrade which is neat, I guess. Saves a lot of time and cash for a simple upgrade. The only other issue that I really want changed is local chat to be implimented. It's ridiculous they don't have this in what's supposed to be an MMO. It makes the game seem more solo play than it should.
Besides that i'm enjoying it. Against, it's fairly bare bones but for someone not expecting Frontier to move the sun, earth and the moon for me i'm happy with my purchase. Some things will definitely come(More ships) while others are clearly just a dream at this point(Station walks, planet exploration, ship to ship boarding)... That is unless most of it is already designed and in the game but simply not implimented yet(I have seen screenshots of interiors of cockpits but they could just be renders, who knows).
It's worth it just make sure you research what it is you have to do before you jump into the game. It's not exactly "hardcore" it's more "We just won't tell you what you need to do and what X means for no apparent reason." Docking in stations and all of that was probably the highlight of my first day in Elite: Dangerous, that was a treat.
