This is a rant I posted as a comment in a thread but I thought I wanted to share it with the community. Feel free to not participate and bury in the forum graves if you don't agree.
Some people are just biased about this game, mostly due to the constant undeserved bad press this game is suffering from. The state of the forums and the lack of obvious and accessible documentation within the game (which is imho the only part really deserving of criticism) which perpetuate the, imho, wrongful image of difficulty and grindiness, confirm their beliefs about the game.
This is textbook confirmation bias.
This game is the best game ever and the worst thing in history depending on how you look at it and what you are expecting from it. It rewards researching and playing smartly. It rewards knowing what you are doing. The problem is, to know what you are doing, you have to research, experiment and ask people, which is the exact definition of counter-intuitive. This game has a lot of counter-intuitive mechanics WHICH NEED TO BE DOCUMENTED IN AN EASY TO ACCESS AND UNDERSTAND FORMAT OFFICIALLY IN THE GAME!
I'm tired of trying to do FD's work for them, trying to explain the subtleties of simple game mechanics which are essential to proper and consistent gameplay. This information is not exactly hard to come by but not obvious too, which affect the quality of life of players who are not perceptive enough to observe for themselves. A little hand holding here and there, especially for newer players wouldn't go amiss.
Detailed tool tips or tips and tricks notes deliveren in the comms panel, which can be turned off of course, would go a long way in explaining how things are done in this game. Most of the problems people are suffering from these days stem from not inherent problems in game design, as people like to claim, but from a lack of understanding of basic game mechanics on the player's part. This is not the player's fault, mind you. The simplest example is, the game should one way or the other, document how to cruise in supercruise and how to approach stations. But, no. You have to go on the internet to learn about the 75% and 7 seconds rule.
There are several basic concepts, understanding of each is needed BEFORE you can 'blaze your own trail'. This notion of 'I should be able to play however I want' is so ingrained and misunderstood, it leads to legitimate help offerings to be labelled as 'git gud' comments.
Learning how to move, how to survive and how to find things in this game is essential to playing your own way. No matter what you do, the game world is the same, it behaves the same and needs to be interacted with the same way. No matter you are a combat player, explorer or miner or trader, the rules of moving, finding things and surviving are the same. One just has to learn them.
No, you can't do 'whatever' and survive in this game. That's not what 'play your own way' means. 'play your own way' or 'blaze your own trail' means there will be no ultimate goals thrust upon you. You'll be able to choose what you do with your time in this game. It doesn't mean, however, that you'll be free to fly wherever you want, take whatever mission you want, fly however you want in whatever ship you have with whatever equipment installed and you'll be OK. This is the most ridiculous idea one can have about any game.
Any game needs to be learned before you can start to play with it. You don't play chess without learning the basics first. You don't go to GTA and ace your way through the game if you can't drive, you can only do meh. Well, doing meh in ED requires a little more time and effort than other games, so what? That's totally OK, AS LONG AS THE GAME PROVIDES YOU WITH THE RELEVANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE SIMPLEST OF THINGS.
Rant over.
Thanks
Edit: Disclaimer: I think ED is one of the easiest games to learn and be good at. I am in no way confused about actual things in the game. I'm sad and frustrated mostly about the apparent lack of fundamental knowledge about basic game mechanics based on the forum posts declaring the game unplayable, despite apparent player errors. I just thought 'could this be through a fault of the game?' and in my frustration, came to this conclusion. I know there are tutorials and generally enough knowledge, pretty easy to access, on the internet and through the game menus. How do you explain the state of the forums though? Where do all that misinformation and confusion come from?
Some people are just biased about this game, mostly due to the constant undeserved bad press this game is suffering from. The state of the forums and the lack of obvious and accessible documentation within the game (which is imho the only part really deserving of criticism) which perpetuate the, imho, wrongful image of difficulty and grindiness, confirm their beliefs about the game.
This is textbook confirmation bias.
This game is the best game ever and the worst thing in history depending on how you look at it and what you are expecting from it. It rewards researching and playing smartly. It rewards knowing what you are doing. The problem is, to know what you are doing, you have to research, experiment and ask people, which is the exact definition of counter-intuitive. This game has a lot of counter-intuitive mechanics WHICH NEED TO BE DOCUMENTED IN AN EASY TO ACCESS AND UNDERSTAND FORMAT OFFICIALLY IN THE GAME!
I'm tired of trying to do FD's work for them, trying to explain the subtleties of simple game mechanics which are essential to proper and consistent gameplay. This information is not exactly hard to come by but not obvious too, which affect the quality of life of players who are not perceptive enough to observe for themselves. A little hand holding here and there, especially for newer players wouldn't go amiss.
Detailed tool tips or tips and tricks notes deliveren in the comms panel, which can be turned off of course, would go a long way in explaining how things are done in this game. Most of the problems people are suffering from these days stem from not inherent problems in game design, as people like to claim, but from a lack of understanding of basic game mechanics on the player's part. This is not the player's fault, mind you. The simplest example is, the game should one way or the other, document how to cruise in supercruise and how to approach stations. But, no. You have to go on the internet to learn about the 75% and 7 seconds rule.
There are several basic concepts, understanding of each is needed BEFORE you can 'blaze your own trail'. This notion of 'I should be able to play however I want' is so ingrained and misunderstood, it leads to legitimate help offerings to be labelled as 'git gud' comments.
Learning how to move, how to survive and how to find things in this game is essential to playing your own way. No matter what you do, the game world is the same, it behaves the same and needs to be interacted with the same way. No matter you are a combat player, explorer or miner or trader, the rules of moving, finding things and surviving are the same. One just has to learn them.
No, you can't do 'whatever' and survive in this game. That's not what 'play your own way' means. 'play your own way' or 'blaze your own trail' means there will be no ultimate goals thrust upon you. You'll be able to choose what you do with your time in this game. It doesn't mean, however, that you'll be free to fly wherever you want, take whatever mission you want, fly however you want in whatever ship you have with whatever equipment installed and you'll be OK. This is the most ridiculous idea one can have about any game.
Any game needs to be learned before you can start to play with it. You don't play chess without learning the basics first. You don't go to GTA and ace your way through the game if you can't drive, you can only do meh. Well, doing meh in ED requires a little more time and effort than other games, so what? That's totally OK, AS LONG AS THE GAME PROVIDES YOU WITH THE RELEVANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE SIMPLEST OF THINGS.
Rant over.
Thanks
Edit: Disclaimer: I think ED is one of the easiest games to learn and be good at. I am in no way confused about actual things in the game. I'm sad and frustrated mostly about the apparent lack of fundamental knowledge about basic game mechanics based on the forum posts declaring the game unplayable, despite apparent player errors. I just thought 'could this be through a fault of the game?' and in my frustration, came to this conclusion. I know there are tutorials and generally enough knowledge, pretty easy to access, on the internet and through the game menus. How do you explain the state of the forums though? Where do all that misinformation and confusion come from?
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