The weekend will be key.
Important Information From Operation IDA
- Thread starter Ralph Vargr
- Start date
Frontier is a classic study in Loss Aversion Theory.
I've been in from Beta (and I am a Leper...)
If you were just starting out in ED in the last 6 months or so you would be blown away with all that's in this game.
The Thargs, the crashed ships, the Tharg structures, the guardians.... you could spend many many hours doing it all and also engaging in the occasional bit of engineering along the way.
The problem is, if you have been in for a few years you have seen all that content drip feed in SLOWLY, you have seen the Oops moments and the glaring errors and crazy bugs (skimmer rain was a classic ! Formidine Spelling error was another !).
We are just the longest serving Beta testers in history.
If you were just starting out in ED in the last 6 months or so you would be blown away with all that's in this game.
The Thargs, the crashed ships, the Tharg structures, the guardians.... you could spend many many hours doing it all and also engaging in the occasional bit of engineering along the way.
The problem is, if you have been in for a few years you have seen all that content drip feed in SLOWLY, you have seen the Oops moments and the glaring errors and crazy bugs (skimmer rain was a classic ! Formidine Spelling error was another !).
We are just the longest serving Beta testers in history.
At least we're not alpha testing like that other space game. 
Hey, if I enjoyed having my progress reset on a weekly basis, I'd be playing that instead.At least we're not alpha testing like that other space game.
Looks like we had a 4848 to one kill ratio over the thargoids in the first week in hip 23716. The station should have never been compromised. So, I Gues the thargoids have limitless resources that we will never be able to over take. The War is already lost by those standards.
I can only speak for myself...
But I can recall the Commodore 64 version of Elite.... When Thargoids turned up I ran like Sir Robin !!
So, not much different from now ! (The relief when I got a docking computer.... , unrelated to Thargs of course...)
Like I said earlier, if you were just starting Elite now... how good would that be ! It's Awesome !!
It's a fantastic game, just not so much if you are a long term Beta Tester.... (BUT, I still come back)
Name me a better game in the same genre...
AND... I have had more than my money's worth... Not many games have kept me coming back this long (Rome Total War I is close...)
pointless ps.... If you had never played Elite Dangerous and had no history... what would you make of it ?
I think it would be pretty amazing ! (yes, I know it would have been better if this was initial release.... but STILL !! it's pretty good if your a newbie...)
But I can recall the Commodore 64 version of Elite.... When Thargoids turned up I ran like Sir Robin !!
So, not much different from now ! (The relief when I got a docking computer....
, unrelated to Thargs of course...)Like I said earlier, if you were just starting Elite now... how good would that be ! It's Awesome !!
It's a fantastic game, just not so much if you are a long term Beta Tester.... (BUT, I still come back)
Name me a better game in the same genre...
AND... I have had more than my money's worth... Not many games have kept me coming back this long (Rome Total War I is close...)
pointless ps.... If you had never played Elite Dangerous and had no history... what would you make of it ?
I think it would be pretty amazing ! (yes, I know it would have been better if this was initial release.... but STILL !! it's pretty good if your a newbie...)
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No it's not.
Sure, and bounty hunting CGs have resulted in the deaths of millions of pirates - more than the entire system population in some cases - without the RES sites ever running dry. Trade CGs have required for a basic level of success things like "10 tonnes of medical supplies per casualty". Frontier could have set realistic parameters on those, they'd have been completed in two hours by whoever happened to be online and near the system, and that would have been that.
Calculating things in those terms is always good for a laugh but doesn't really have much to do with what happens in-game.
The Thargoids - like every single minor human faction - do not have their resources tracked on a "you killed this ship therefore they have one less ship" level of detail. That doesn't mean that they have unlimited resources.
There's an alternative take to that - these days everything demands your attention and common things are easy to ignore. Such as winning so many times in a row becomes mundane. If a game is rude and confrontational that has to get your attention -- a game can do that either by being absurdly difficult, extremely punishing for any mistake or just setting up traps and gotchas for the player to fail, maybe even insulting and mocking the player in the narrative for it for that extra bit of salt in the wound.
Elite does most of this and the slowly filling progress bars that reset definitely count as rude game design that succeeded in getting our attention.
The reason these things work in other games is that there's a reward, even if it's just the bragging rights of beating a difficult game. The reward of (perhaps temporarily) driving the thargoids back from a single system out of hundreds of invaded system isn't enough here and we don't have enough data to brag about the work we did do - this won't go down in history as "Hey, remember when we got 50% completion on a system against a Level 10 maelstrom on week 1 of the war", the progress bar is too abstract for that, esp if the difficulty gets balanced later on.
So your argument is 'I did the Guardian grind so you should too'. That is a lame, cringe worthy, predictable reply and it's deliberately taken out of context.
When we did that grind (I did it too, despite your incorrect assumption) the context was different; humanity's very existence was not at stake, Thargoid combat was optional. Now, according to FDev, the Bubble will be wiped out if we don't fight (among other things). Combat/rescue/etc. is no longer optional (except technically). So yes, we should be able to buy Guardian weapons without having to grind for unlocks.
It's pathetic I even have to explain this to you, Mr Ubisoft.
(And who does that anyway, puts their resume in their forum signature? Do you think that entitles your opinions to more credibility? What if I told you I worked at Blizzard before their acquisition?)
What a hyperbolic load of nonsense.
Human weapons are being sold and upgraded for everyone. And as you note but minimize, lots of things can be done to affect the war with no need for guardian anything.
However the biggest flaw is the narative one. For us to win this war we need to get into the maelstrom systems and beat the caustic guts out of whatever is hiding in the cloud.
That's going to take human tech because those are no guardian zones.
Maybe it's over when the white chevron is gone too and it's a fully purple line.
Or it might not register until the weekly tick.
No, it should have been like that, see here:
We are winning, the tide has turned HIP 23716
"Mission Accomplished" - GWB, 2004 Say what you will, the man could dodge a shoe like no other. Nice work on the system, all who helped. Guess I’ll mine till Thursday now!
Looking at what the system has done now? Yes, that's a bar which needed one more tick.
This is what it looks like now, which is not ambiguous.
According to Galnet, we've won the system back but they'll still be around until the server update on Thargsday.
Newsfeeds have published their reactions as the Thargoid Maelstroms launch fleets to overpower multiple inhabited systems.
Sol Today: “Be in no doubt: we are in a war for survival! Dark days are upon us. No more ridiculous ideas of peace with the aliens. No more time for politics or debate. The Thargoids have come to wipe us out unless we stand up and fight.”
Old Worlds Gazette: “This is the most severe Thargoid attack ever recorded. Hundreds of thousands slaughtered. Millions more fleeing their homes. Stations and planetary ports bombarded, entire star systems conquered… all in a few days. Many fear that nowhere will be safe if these savage onslaughts cannot be halted.”
Citizens' Chronicle: “The speed with which our navy responded to defend Imperial citizens against the Thargoids must be applauded. However, it is becoming harder to ignore the screams from less fortunate systems. Might their cries melt our Emperor’s heart enough for her to consider extending the Empire’s protective wings?”
The Empirical: “The hazardous nature of the Maelstroms has challenged all efforts at scientific examination. In terms of scale and composition they resemble small nebulae yet are surely artificial. Their highly corrosive clouds share chemical signatures with known Thargoid technology, but prevent all scans from identifying what generates them.”
The Sovereign: “The Kingfisher tragedy has been eclipsed by the current conflicts, but one detail we felt worthy of note was the discovery of Thargoid Sensors among the megaship’s wreckage. The leading theory is that one of the volunteer crewmembers smuggled these aboard, in the hope of attracting the Thargoids’ attention to the megaship’s peaceful communications. This misguided individual was likely unaware that Thargoid vessels can become hostile upon detecting their technology on human ships. One hopes that nothing more sinister was in play.”
There are many other systems under danger signals. Don't stop what you're doing.