If you want New Players... A rant from a frustrated player.

Hello,

Ive started and stopped playing this game several times in frustration... I even bought a 200$ HOTAS kit ...and stopped again out of frustration... it would seem i need more buttons to do anything in this game. 300+ hours in this game and its been a ton of frustration.
Im not the only one to have said this, but given the latest set of updates, and the devs seeming desire to gain more players, i think it bares repeating it all.


Between the masses of buttons and micromanaging this game is not fun.
There is no fun, no pay off. Nothing.

It takes such a long time to even just bind keys, and sort out menus... It's maddening!
the game seems like its not so much a space simulator, but rather a Button Binding, micro managing simulator.
My car has less to learn to use it, and i had to get a licence for that thing. I have yet to receive my Elite Licence in the mail.
Luckily for us, nearly every update just adds more modes and buttons to bind and more fiddly things to micromanage!


The game has a really high learning curve. With very poor tutorials, this can only mean you don't want new players. And yet the last update seemed to be all about new player quality of life things. You must want people to buy the game and demand their money back and/or leave a hateful review somewhere on the internet.


Its not that its just hard to learn to play it... it's just difficult to do very basic things.
As a new player, you can't do a thing until you sort out what "joy 5 button 2" is and why you should care. A new player seems to need to spend an hour or five just binding buttons for things they have no idea what are for, yet. ...Just bind a button to a thing and hope to figure it out later.

Also, apparently the computerized ships of the future are dumber than the cell phone in my pocket, and seem capable of less.
So are the station interactive menus.
My ship can't even figure out how to filter missions based on what i've already accepted, something i have cell phone apps that can do for other things. You need a scratch pad to remember what is what, and a bevy of 3rd party apps to keep you organised with your missions. Most of which now are no longer functional because of some update to how they interact with the frontier servers on the backend.
Im guessing the devs have never used a modern day database or play their own game. must be too much work to play this game, and really, once you play it, i understand.

Much of the micro managing makes little sense. Math or computer tech seems to not be a strong suit in the distant future.
I mean, really... a limpet is 1 ton of cargo... for each limpet. Because counting limpets is someones idea of fun. More so if its hidden somewhere in the bowels of sub-menus. 1 ton. I can only guess what they must be made of. Given their depth of thought, its certainly not PCB boards or computer chips.

It also takes 1+ ton of ship space to house and control it's systems on the ship... so now the system is at least a couple of tons in weight, and im guessing that none of it can sort out the basic AI brains that the computer that is running this game can... that is much less than a ton in weight.
Less brains than a raspberry pit, in fact.
And for all the tonnages of parts, they last for seconds!
Oh the wonders of future science!
Id say it must be for rocket fuel, but that would only lead to more questions about other game mechanics.


Every thing you want to do requires a different special mode, that you can only get into in a special way, with more buttons to bind.
Nothing is just easy to do. nothing.
If my car was a Elite Ship, id have to change to a certain gear, reduce my speed, open the glove compartment and toggle my blinkers to turn on my headlights for "night mode" driving.


The last update made simple scanning honks into a nightmare for me. Not only do i have to figure how to do it again, but i also have to sort out what buttons to bind and how. There is a special mode that i can only get into if the stars line up a certain way with my local baristas horoscope and even then i need to bind a dozen more buttons to do it. im not even told which barista i need to line the stars up with.

The tutorials telling me "use joy 2 + button 4" doesn't help me sort out what the hell they are talking about. ...and that is assuming there is a tutorial to be found. I have a 200$+tax HOTAS... do you know how many joys and buttons i have? do you know how many of those are numbered? (pssst... its labeled none of them on the unit, but i bet i don't have enough of them)

The latest update gave me hope, but alas more of the same.

I can't even get a Hutton Orbital mug for the dash... you have to buy it by the tonnage and paw at the cargo inventory screen to remember the good ole days when you remembered what buttons allowed you to fly there in the first place... for almost an hour... for so much reward that your pilot might even afford a coffee after handing in the mission... but not in said mug... or in the tonnage of them, you'd have to buy the coffee by the tonnage after all...

please make the game more "game" like and less fiddly. I don't want to spend hours rebinding all of my buttons and sorting out all of the flight modes WOW wasn't successful because it was fiddly button-binding fun. If you want players, make it more accessible to those of us that do not want to spend our prescious weekends learning to do simple things in a "game", with or without the help of a poorly thought out tutorial.
 
Lotta words...

Regarding joystick button numbers, the manual for it surely has a diagram that shows them all, numbered, in picture format. Usually you can download a manual from the mfg. website if you threw out the one that came with it.
That and the windows controllor configuration app that comes with all windows operations lets you open the joystick properties and the interface shows the button numbers and they light up when you press them. Another good way to actually learn them.

No comments on the rest of what you wrote, I'm not here to argue with you despite not agreeing with most of it. You have the right to like or not like whatever you wish, and I respect that. I just saw an opportunity to help you learn your flight stick buttons.

Take care! 07
 
Every thing you want to do requires a different special mode, that you can only get into in a special way, with more buttons to bind.
Nothing is just easy to do. nothing.
If my car was a Elite Ship, id have to change to a certain gear, reduce my speed, open the glove compartment and toggle my blinkers to turn on my headlights for "night mode" driving.

The last update made simple scanning honks into a nightmare for me. Not only do i have to figure how to do it again, but i also have to sort out what buttons to bind and how. There is a special mode that i can only get into if the stars line up a certain way with my local baristas horoscope and even then i need to bind a dozen more buttons to do it. im not even told which barista i need to line the stars up with.
From the sounds of things, your objections are predominantly pertaining to much of what was done in the 3.3 update. Specifically, the main gripes seem to be about the fallout of the introduction of the Combat/Analysis modes, FSS, and possibly Space-Golf.

Prior to 3.3 my HOTAS Warthog + VR combo was pretty much maxed out in control mappings and reorganising the controls to take into account the changes caused by update 3.3 was not a particularly pleasant experience - especially since I personally detest the FSS and Space-Golf mini-game mechanics and find the Combat/Analysis mode split at least a little unnecessary.

Further more, the repetitive and annoying in-game warnings due to the Combat/Analysis mode split combined with mixed mode firing groups are totally unnecessary. The HUD itself should (and already does) provide sufficient obvious visual indicators regarding what kit is active given the combination of firing group and equipment mode.

I disagree with your apparent suggestion to make things more gamey - presumably, reduce the available control mapping options; However, I do agree that FD could do more wrt making the mapping of controls more user friendly and should move away from the mini-game approaches to system scans and surface scans.

Assuming you are a PC based player, in the immediate term the following site might help with more visually tallying your control mappings to your physical control system(s): https://edrefcard.info/.
 
Lotta words...

Regarding joystick button numbers, the manual for it surely has a diagram that shows them all, numbered, in picture format. Usually you can download a manual from the mfg. website if you threw out the one that came with it.
That and the windows controllor configuration app that comes with all windows operations lets you open the joystick properties and the interface shows the button numbers and they light up when you press them. Another good way to actually learn them.

No comments on the rest of what you wrote, I'm not here to argue with you despite not agreeing with most of it. You have the right to like or not like whatever you wish, and I respect that. I just saw an opportunity to help you learn your flight stick buttons.

Take care! 07

Yeah...
none of them sort out as "joy2" let alone "joy 2 + joy 3" which is what elite wants me to do on several default bindings.

Yamiks has famously has said all of what i have said and more, so i know that im not alone. ObsidantAnt has also said a few things about how "fun" it is to start this game as a new player.
Even friends that i know enjoy the game, have said similar things.

If you don't agree with me that's fine. I just thought that after spending over an hour trying to get through the mining tutorial for an hour ...and failing(!), as a player with over 300+ hrs in the game already, that maybe i should say something. So i did.

Apparently the tutorial could not tell that i disabled the shields ("joy 2 + joy 3"). because i really wanted to argue with the power management system mechanic (and failing) while there, specifically, to learn the mining system.

None of my joysticks are numbered. literally none of them. Not even in the windows config for sorting them out and testing the buttons.
Thrustmaster T16000M that i bought and had shipped to me, specifically for this game, because i needed more buttons.
 
Hello,

Ive started and stopped playing this game several times in frustration... I even bought a 200$ HOTAS kit ...and stopped again out of frustration... it would seem i need more buttons to do anything in this game. 300+ hours in this game and its been a ton of frustration.
Im not the only one to have said this, but given the latest set of updates, and the devs seeming desire to gain more players, i think it bares repeating it all.


Between the masses of buttons and micromanaging this game is not fun.
There is no fun, no pay off. Nothing.

It takes such a long time to even just bind keys, and sort out menus... It's maddening!
the game seems like its not so much a space simulator, but rather a Button Binding, micro managing simulator.
My car has less to learn to use it, and i had to get a licence for that thing. I have yet to receive my Elite Licence in the mail.
Luckily for us, nearly every update just adds more modes and buttons to bind and more fiddly things to micromanage!


The game has a really high learning curve. With very poor tutorials, this can only mean you don't want new players. And yet the last update seemed to be all about new player quality of life things. You must want people to buy the game and demand their money back and/or leave a hateful review somewhere on the internet.


Its not that its just hard to learn to play it... it's just difficult to do very basic things.
As a new player, you can't do a thing until you sort out what "joy 5 button 2" is and why you should care. A new player seems to need to spend an hour or five just binding buttons for things they have no idea what are for, yet. ...Just bind a button to a thing and hope to figure it out later.

Did you read this?

 
My daily driver was an A classed python.
And yes i have read that.
And no, apparently i cannot pass the tutorial missions.

I'll go out on a limb and say that If i cant sort my way through a tutorial in this game, then someone brand new to the game likely will not make it through it either.


I managed it without the manual so perhaps personal experience is a poor metric?

It sounds like you are doing the binding backwards, for example.
Who cares what a button is called, ie Joy 1, 2 etc.
Just press the one you want to bind for the respective control, as you find a need for it.
 
My daily driver was an A classed python.
And yes i have read that.
And no, apparently i cannot pass the tutorial missions.

I'll go out on a limb and say that If i cant sort my way through a tutorial in this game, then someone brand new to the game likely will not make it through it either.

Problem with that point of view is, thousands of people new to the game did do the tutorials without a problem....
 
Problem with that point of view is, thousands of people new to the game did do the tutorials without a problem....
Still does not necessarily mean the tutorials are particularly well designed and could not do with improvement though.

In a gaming environment, a good tutorial should be able to be completable by pretty much anyone - if it can't, then there is something fundamentally wrong with either the tutorial or the mechanics it is trying to teach.
 
Just some random data.. when the last patch dropped i made a free account on console to see what the experience was like.. really trying to be a new player.

I thought it was a great experience... up until i got to the point where i realised that the key bindings were also fresh and immediately gave up. Not a chance. Apart from the sheer number of them, when you go in with good faith trying to get it done, you don't know at all what each of the things does, and when you would use them. You are unable to make the decision on which key to bind because of this...

Instead of removing supercruise, creating a windows 95 like "wizard" to get the keybindings done would have helped more? The last time i read though steam reviews it wasnt a mile wide inch deep, every few people were raging about the keybindings.

Or more better, why exactly is docking difficult? Because it needs to be removed? Or because first time players don't know which keys are mapped to thrusters?

I failed the first time i docked. At that time i didn't know that roll was mapped to the x axis... because of the fast spinning effect roll has, i didn't even visually register this was going on.... I just started spinning and visually was looking at the dock rocking under me.. yep only came back 6 months later too. Every other space game has yaw on the xaxis........ and that was the first time i went into keybindings.
 
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Wow, OP wrote down more than just a bit of what's in mind :sneaky:

There's no need to bind all keys to a HOTAS or gaming mouse OR complete the Advanced tutorials. I use KBM hence can't help you with HOTAS profile bindings but I believe there are some good profiles on the Net if you Google it.

The keys I bound to my gaming mouse are cycle thru target, sub target & fire group, deploy scoop, HPs & landing gears, full speed and free camera inside cockpit.
 

Lestat

Banned
You know take time on setting up your controls. Maybe telling everyone what HOTAS you have people who have that setup can help you config it. For my self, I use Dual Flight sticks.

Saitek St290 and x52 Pro Each have their own functions.
 
Yea yea, the FDev knights goin strong! geez this forum.. OP is right. This game is bad designed an thats not for debatte. U either are the type that dont mind to bind keys for half a weekend or ure the type that will stop playin. Everyone here talkin big now start crying when they keybind get reseted again an they have to bind them anew! "dOnT AttAck mY fAVoRitE GamE duh" mentallity is sickening in this forum.
If u eat from baby age u wont complain eatin as adult
 
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Yea yea, the FDev knights goin strong! geez this forum.. OP is right. This game is bad designed an thats not for debatte. U either are the type that dont mind to bind keys for half a weekend or ure the type that will stop playin. Everyone here talkin big now start crying when they keybind get reseted again an they have to bind them anew! "dOnT AttAck mY fAVoRitE GamE duh" mentallity is sickening in this forum.
If u eat poopoo from baby age u wont complain eatin poopoo as adult
lol - at least the OP can spell...
 
Heh, Elite isn't even that complex as simulators go, though it's kind of impressive that it isn't further streamlined (or dumbed down, take your pick) because it's also on consoles. I'm with you about the crappiness of station menus, though. Overall I have to agree with Cknarf, though. Complex controls are a genre convention. It'd be an arcade game without them.
 
Heh, Elite isn't even that complex as simulators go, though it's kind of impressive that it isn't further streamlined (or dumbed down, take your pick) because it's also on consoles. I'm with you about the crappiness of station menus, though. Overall I have to agree with Cknarf, though. Complex controls are a genre convention. It'd be an arcade game without them.
So the flight design is okay to be arcade, but the keybinds have to be sim?
 
What a load of cobblers. I just started a fresh account and guess what... all the keys are already bound, and I can take off, fly, land, change modes, fight, etc. all with the default bindings on a pitiful PS4 controller. Sure, I had some gloriously funny moments in combat because I use a custom setup on my main account and my brain is still trained for that setup, but I've sorted that now.

Oh, and my 12 year old son had no problems learning the new mining...
 
Number of control binds and certain inconsistencies with them have certainly become an annoyance and the game could do with some streamlining in this regard. However, with a modifier key (or button) or two, everything should fit comfortably on all but the most spartan of controls.

Setup is largely a one-time affair; once you can comfortably do everything in the tutorials, you'll only need minor refinements from then on out (well, at least until they overhaul the controls) and it doesn't take that long.
 
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