In praise of Elite and the 'casual' player

[Hooplah]

...The other thing, for me, at least which I find so cool is that it's a game I can play with my son (7 ). He loves playing navigator and we have planned trips across the galaxy to visit astronomical sites. Tracking down the voyager probe was a blast and spun off a trip to the Science Museum in London. How many games can do that?...

Greetings,

I'm totally with Capt. Hook on this one. What is the point of a game? To be entertained, maybe improve our lives and at times might educate us a little. Each player has their perception of what they expect in a game based on the generation that they grew up in, real life, gaming experiences and what they expect out of the next game they play. Given the Elite series of games starting in 1984 I figure we're up to 3 generations with totally different ideologies that don't agree with each other in real life much less playing a game. They all are represented on the Forum.

But in this 2019 world when a father and son (or mother and daughter, friend and friend, maybe Thargoid and human later...whatever) bond together playing a game that is pretty darn special. ED provided that opportunity. Of course when Capt. Hook's son is 12 or sooner he is going to blow away his father playing ED, think his father is an idiot and might even post on the Forum! Welcome to the early teenage years

But Capt. Hook didn't quite nail the reason so many of us connect with the game. It is 2019. We went to the moon 50 years ago. You know that, "One small step for man...One giant leap for mankind" transmission sent from the moon 20 of July of 1969 although conspirator fans say that it never happened. Note that I was sitting on a big rock near a stream in a park listening to a radio with a gal I would marry three years later. NASA combined with other nations might put a human on Mars in 15 years with the funding. Given politics in the USA both with funding and relationships with other nations they are not going to get it.

With ED we can sit down in front of a computer exploring the Milky Way galaxy including a lot of very accurate astronomy (It was a big deal with Frontier to get this right) to see the systems around us and their relationship to the Sol system. Thus when I drive an SRV for hundreds of hours knowing exactly what to expect it is not about the game mechanics. It is more of the fact that I was born too early to actually do this for real many years later. Given our human issues it may take a lot longer than ED 3305 time to pull it off.

"To be ELITE...A dizzying prospect. And a nerve-racking one, with all that it implies of not just fighting off free-booters, but of spending time as a bounty hunter, delibrately hyperspacing into dangerous planetary systems and waiting for the pirates to come to you; LOOKING for trouble, in other words, boosting your combat status to the maximum by advertising yourself to killers, and out gunning them."

...from The Dark Wheel novella by Robert Holdstock

"Today I enter the dimly lit cabin. The palm print ID activates the controls and the CRT glows warmly once again. The Pentuim II processors activate, and the hum of the engines, similar to a hard disk drive in ancient times, provides the security of knowing the power is there and ready to use. I check the GalCop for current credit ratings, then check the personal messages on the A.F.E. board. Alas, another new spacer ready for adventure, without the patience to survive it. Then the comments from those Elite, with the same twinkle in their eye...It's a good day to fly..."

I wrote it in 1996

Fly Safe

 

[Ezren]

I like to fly the ship and sometimes I see another ship and there's bright lasers and loud noises and then I'm left alone with the darkness of the infinite void and that ever-present hunger deep inside that can never truly be silenced and yawns on forever, clawing at the edges of your sanity, dragging you toward oblivion.

Also I enjoy mining.

 

[[VR] DDM_Reaper20]

I've played the original Elite in 1984 on the C64 for I don't know how many hours, heh I still have the whole box, cassette, novel and poster somewhere in the attic.
ED was my dream come true, a new iteration of the game I loved so much.
After four of five years of ED there are enough things that I would like to see different and yes I do complain sometimes and have taken breaks, some lasting a couple months, but hey here I am getting close to 3000 hours and still playing.

ED is the only current game that has gotten so many hours of my life, that says something imho.
And once they fix the long geological poi scan times in the fss I plan to add a lot more hours.

Despite all the complaining and whining Fdev must've done something right, no?

Agreed. It's the one game that keeps sucking me back in. Sometimes, I leave it, up to months, but I always come back . . . because this is a game where you can set your own goals, there is no story you HAVE to complete.

I do wish for some changes, but, hey, it's a youth's dream come true. I never played Elite 1984, but when I was sixteen, seventeen, I dreamed of a game with lasers that were actually instant-hit weapons, not sluggish projectiles... The first time I was in a Sidewinder and fired those pulse lasers, I couldn't stop grinning. My wife probably thought I'd lost my marbles...

 

[Dutchman141]

Agreed. It's the one game that keeps sucking me back in. Sometimes, I leave it, up to months, but I always come back . . . because this is a game where you can set your own goals, there is no story you HAVE to complete.

I do wish for some changes, but, hey, it's a youth's dream come true. I never played Elite 1984, but when I was sixteen, seventeen, I dreamed of a game with lasers that were actually instant-hit weapons, not sluggish projectiles... The first time I was in a Sidewinder and fired those pulse lasers, I couldn't stop grinning. My wife probably thought I'd lost my marbles...

I've played a lot of Elite "kind of" games like the X series, Privateer 1 and 2, etc. but none of them gave me that feeling what the original Elite did even though it's graphics were minimal.
ED does give me that feeling and then some, I too take breaks but everytime I come back and leave that station for the first time again I ask myself why I stopped playing.
No other game has that effect on me.
True, fatigue is bound to hit me again some day but I'm also bound to come back again.

 

[Bug80]

Good topic. Another Casual Commander here

I'm casual myself and can only say that playing this casually got me nowhere. It's even made a regression when they decided to nerf vanilla and goalpost the progression with additional engineer grind.

I hear you, I feel the same from time to time. I may never unlock more than a few engineers, let alone reach Elite status in anything.

However I'm afraid power creep is inevitable to some extent. FDEV is obviously trying to keep seasoned, hard core players something to do too. And that "something to do" should also result in rewards (credits --> bigger ships, engineers --> more powerful ships). I don't think there is any way around that.

 

[Hooplah]

As for game play every challenge in this game is absurdly simple once a player figures it out. Unlocking engineers, fighting Thargoids, mining whatever. That is why some on the Forum are restless looking for more. Frontier's design was to challenge players with difficult issues to figure them out using a combination of experiences playing the game putting them all together to advance to the next level. It is a great design. Didn't you get the memo?

 

[DNA-Decay]

I feel sorry for FD as well, but it's more because they made a decision to:

1) have a tiny amount of top-down tightly controlled and excessively sparse narrative content (rather than creating a robust set of highly malleable mechanics & user generated content)
2) implement an extremely limited set of proc-gen generic discoverables & hand placed objects that amount to little more than mining grinds & audio files, and when we're extremely lucky: dead-ender audio-visual puzzles, all of which have little to no actual gameplay value nor interconnected significance
3) create a "sandbox" with no actual sand in it, by which I mean players have little to no actual ownership or ability to shape the universe except by changing flavor text in the BGS.
4) leave their best IP dangling in maintenance mode for years while they focused on forgettable cash cow titles.

^this^

 

[Hank]

I started playing in early access days, late 2014. I am a semi casual player who played by a RP doctrine of helping the systems I live in with hauling and passenger services, exploring and some mining (before limpets when you scooped everything). After all these years, two weeks ago I only had 10 ships w/ modest engineering and a little over 300mill in credits. The grind of doing my normal things, really put me behind in acquiring wealth and engineering my ships. I mostly played it safe until ~a year ago when I started doing more combat (but not much, yet). I can identify with the OPs point of view.

But, two weeks ago I started mining asteroids and after a few failed excursions, I found a spot where I could make more than I ever had. Mining has rejuventated my play because of the credits and mining is soothing once you know how to use the tools. I have no intention of buying more ships (I've owned and sold almost every one); I just want to do more upgrades on what I have (and do the engineering grind again for mats - :-( ). FC's are what got me thinking about money so I came up with mining and all is good now.

GL HF