Is Elite Dangerous a reboot of EVE Online?

[Capt. Hook]

Don't get me wrong. I loved playing Elite back on the school BBCMicro and later on my Amiga. What worries me a little though is that alot of what Elite Dangerous seems to be offering is already catered for by the game EVE Online:

http://www.eveonline.com


Other than a possible single player option for E, what other ways can the new game differentiate itself from EVE?

p.s I have pledged my money via kickstarter this morning!

 

[synchromesh]

Its Elite....You get a IV on the box...and a Cobra MKIII

I can only guess take eve and make it better....It does raise the question as this game is being created via the kickstarter will we get free online gameplay or will there be a signup fee ?

But the single player total freedom like the original...For me that would make it worthwhile using todays technology..gfx etc

 

[Steve O B Have]

Having played EVE online and wasted a fair amount of time and money in the process I can conclusively say that Elite is an entirely different, far more immersive and massively more involving experience. EVE in my opinion suffers from the whole point and click gameplay mechanic and combat has no real immediacy. I think EVEs strength is in it's social medium, corporations and their members create the dynamic that makes EVE really successful. Elite is probably closer to playing an RPG where you define your campaign objectives, where you decide on your success levels and ultimately where you become the central character in your story. Unlike EVE it does not take being part of a corp nor does it take days upon days of upskilling, grinding away mining and attempting to decipher the vast spreadsheets of the trading/manufaturing/supply/demand systems.

Elite has an immediacy that EVE can't touch IMO. EVE is damn pretty, has some great imagination put into its environments but ultimately in my eyes and my experience doesn't allow for my individual experience to be overly special.

 

[Rroff]

Eve ultimately has you one step further removed from the action than Elite (the original game) and hopefully what any future Elite game becomes. For all that you can get some pretty tense fights in Eve they don't have the immediacy that trying to keep track of a hostile ship as it bounces around your viewpoint has. Hopefully Elite keeps things relatively small as well so individual pilot skill more often counts for something - all too often in Eve fights turn into who has the most pilots pressing F1.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

What worries me a little though is that alot of what Elite Dangerous seems to be offering is already catered for by the game EVE Online

You are partially correct in that they are both Space Simulators.

However the premise of EVE is built solely around PVP - it's a closed "sandbox" style game with no rules / laws and everything is governed by the players. Whilst this sounds great in theory you end up with a cess-pit of rotten players who think griefing is fun "because you're allowed to" ... I have played it, managed to get reasonably far, but ultimately found it lacking. (And therefore my opinion of it is biased)

Elite however is not being built around PVP but PVE (either solo / co-operative) and to some degree PVP might be built in but we don't know the full details yet.

 

[Styggron]

Having played EVE online and wasted a fair amount of time and money in the process I can conclusively say that Elite is an entirely different, far more immersive and massively more involving experience. EVE in my opinion suffers from the whole point and click gameplay mechanic and combat has no real immediacy. I think EVEs strength is in it's social medium, corporations and their members create the dynamic that makes EVE really successful. Elite is probably closer to playing an RPG where you define your campaign objectives, where you decide on your success levels and ultimately where you become the central character in your story. Unlike EVE it does not take being part of a corp nor does it take days upon days of upskilling, grinding away mining and attempting to decipher the vast spreadsheets of the trading/manufaturing/supply/demand systems.

Elite has an immediacy that EVE can't touch IMO. EVE is damn pretty, has some great imagination put into its environments but ultimately in my eyes and my experience doesn't allow for my individual experience to be overly special.

Interesting points. I never played EVE. People did tell me it was like ELITE and I looked into it but wasn't drawn in to be honest. I read about it and what I read pretty much matches Steve OB's comments.

How come it is so popular ? Because as you say Steve it is the social dynamic ? How do the members create the dynamic ? All I know is what I've read but I value the opinions of an ELITE fan plus one that has tried EVE over any review I could ever read.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

How come it is so popular ?

Like I said, Space sim built solely around PvP and player-driven rules.

That is why it's popular ... young kids have huge Ego's and think flexing their epeen in a video game makes them a man, when we all know that should be proven in a Cobra Mk III

 

[Steve O B Have]

You are partially correct in that they are both Space Simulators.

However the premise of EVE is built solely around PVP - it's a closed "sandbox" style game with no rules / laws and everything is governed by the players. Whilst this sounds great in theory you end up with a cess-pit of rotten players who think griefing is fun "because you're allowed to" ... I have played it, managed to get reasonably far, but ultimately found it lacking. (And therefore my opinion of it is biased)

Elite however is not being built around PVP but PVE (either solo / co-operative) and to some degree PVP might be built in but we don't know the full details yet.

One of the things that really did my head in was how quickly you started to have to rely on other people turning up to complete the missions which are all instanced. Between that and the way that jump gates make a game feel infinitely smaller, horrid lag in overpopulated hub systems and some little grot sitting on the cusp of lowsec waiting to gank you and deprive of your newly purchased and over-equipped Megathron. There's few things more heartbreaking than having spent all your hard earned cash and seeing it evaporate... perhaps seeing your IteronV evaporating with a stupidly expensive cargo on board... either way, the lack of a save button and being at the mercy of a PVP game structure knocks it on the head for me. That and the mindless grind...

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

and being at the mercy of a PVP game structure knocks it on the head for me. That and the mindless grind...

All games to some degree involve some form of grinding - even the original Elite - so I am hoping this time round the economics are more matured and dynamic meaning "go here trade that" scenario doesn't come up so often. Plus, if FG expands things to do within the game that will help stave off the grinding.

I keep flip-flopping about PvP in Elite though .. one the one hand I do want some kind of player combat as on the whole AI can be figured out and beaten. I just don't want to have to deal with people griefing me. Co-op seems to be my favourite style of play (versus AI or players - don't mind).

 

[Steve O B Have]

All games to some degree involve some form of grinding - even the original Elite - so I am hoping this time round the economics are more matured and dynamic meaning "go here trade that" scenario doesn't come up so often. Plus, if FG expands things to do within the game that will help stave off the grinding.

I keep flip-flopping about PvP in Elite though .. one the one hand I do want some kind of player combat as on the whole AI can be figured out and beaten. I just don't want to have to deal with people griefing me. Co-op seems to be my favourite style of play (versus AI or players - don't mind).

Yeah, I think it was just the process of heading out to mine, sit there whilst it did it's thing and then back and forward, rinse repeat. The grind in Elite certainly had potential to end up the same way especially if you do the same trade route over and over. Perhaps with a more dynamic economic model we'll be forced to be a little more analytical with our trade routes like you say. Having said that I hope it doesn't end up like the X series where your opportunity to turn a profit evaporates rapidly as you sate a demand.

 

[bullfrog]

Elite is primarily single player sandbox with a consistent and challenging (procedural) universe several times bigger than Eve.

Elite : Dangerous promises peer to peer sharing of gameplay with friends but if I understand this correctly it is not anything like an MMO. The rest of the player base will not have access you your game, it will be completely seperate as with the X series. Only people you invite to join will be able to share the game environment. So you can do what you want and need not fear one sided attacks from people who have more game time than you or gangs of people.

Its your game, your computer, your universe, with only the AI to deal with if you so choose. For many of us this is the preferred order for space sim gaming. It means we can take it at our own pace and have only ourselves to blame if we take on a challenge we cannot meet. In addition of course there is the added convenience of the game save! Something you dont get with an MMO.

It is a different kind of experience to the competition inherent in MMOs. Also there is no monthly fee with single player games like Elite and once you buy the game you can play it when you want. So it is better for recreation and relaxation IMHO.

 

[Rroff]

One of the things that really did my head in was how quickly you started to have to rely on other people turning up to complete the missions which are all instanced. Between that and the way that jump gates make a game feel infinitely smaller, horrid lag in overpopulated hub systems and some little grot sitting on the cusp of lowsec waiting to gank you and deprive of your newly purchased and over-equipped Megathron. There's few things more heartbreaking than having spent all your hard earned cash and seeing it evaporate... perhaps seeing your IteronV evaporating with a stupidly expensive cargo on board... either way, the lack of a save button and being at the mercy of a PVP game structure knocks it on the head for me. That and the mindless grind...

The game has changed a lot from this - the server backend has been refined and beefed up so that theres rarely any lag any more and they use time dilation when specific systems get extremely busy where the game time in those systems slows down dynamically in response to load usually its so slight its not even noticeable tho quite funny when you hit 10% tidi and everything in that solar system goes into matrix style slow motion.

The highsec/lowsec transition is still horridly broken making lawless space and semi-lawless space a bit of a joke but the introduction of wormhole space goes somewhat towards balancing that.

A lot of the things people complain about tho is avoidable... i.e. if your hauling expensive stuff in an itty V your doing it wrong - there are ships like blockade runners and capital industrials/freighters for hauling/jumping expensive stuff and being very hard to catch/suicide gank. Same with a lot of the other complaints of non-consensual PVP, etc. people will fly untanked mining ships then complain when they get killed when its perfectly possible to tank them up to avoid all but the most determined ganker.

At the end of the day tho its a very different game to what I hope Elite becomes

 

[Styggron]

You think you would give EVE another go Steve OB from what Rroff has said ?

 

[Steve O B Have]

You think you would give EVE another go Steve OB from what Rroff has said ?

No, in the end it was the lack of a single player path that made me walk away, no exploration, and beyond a corp player interaction depth the game, at the time, was ultimately a very pretty scifi calculator. I personally found more depth in 5mins of firing up Frontier Elite 2 than 6 months in EVE simply because I didn't want my gaming to be hindered by needing other players to progress.

 

[Styggron]

No, in the end it was the lack of a single player path that made me walk away, no exploration, and beyond a corp player interaction depth the game, at the time, was ultimately a very pretty scifi calculator. I personally found more depth in 5mins of firing up Frontier Elite 2 than 6 months in EVE simply because I didn't want my gaming to be hindered by needing other players to progress.

Makes sense. Amazing though that Frontier Elite II can still hold its own with depth against something like EVE isn't it ? Just more of David's creative genius.

As I mentioned preivously I looked into EVE never played it but read a lot about it and was very skeptical due to so many things. It sounded like you had a very frustrating time on it Steve.

 

[Capt. Hook]

Thanks for all the thoughtful responses guys! My 2 cents is that Elite offers a great deal of potential, particular for the more mature players out there vs. EVE.

 

[bullfrog]

Eve is exorbitantly expensive per game time. I beta tested it and was not happy with content so I only paid to play much later, about two years ago and was disappointed at how little improvement there had been, especially to ships available and upgrade options. After some time reacquainting myself with the training system I felt exploited and left after about four months.

I dont like space games with gates anyway. I also never liked the characterisation of the factions in Eve which I find simplistic and unrelentingly dystopian nor the avatar or ship artwork. I did like the space vistas. They were very well done for their day and IMHO made a big difference to immersion. Not enough to justify that kind of money though.

 

[Rroff]

Yeah thats one of the big problems with Eve - theres no immersive singleplayer content, much of the lore is very watered down and not well presented even through exploration which itself is very hit and miss and once you've scanned down one system you've pretty much scanned them all down (very little diversity in the content in that regard, different wallpaper same room).

There is a strong player driven element to it with emergent gameplay but even that wears thin after awhile. Getting to the point that I'm probably going to quit Eve as the developers keep making drastic changes to the established gameplay mechanics often based it seems just on making changes for changes sake which means that in a game based around playing for the long term you can't actually make long term plans without a high chance things will change due to the developer dabbling rather than the emergent gameplay aspect making all your effort for nothing. (So having something like Elite to take up my spare gameplay time wouldn't go amiss ).

I hope its something Frontier keep in mind - major changes to established gameplay mechanics are bad (regardless of the reason they've become established), tweak with as light a hand as possible - its far more friendly to the players to buff something mildly elsewhere (being careful to avoid power creep where possible). Only make drastic changes to something like that when its absolutely necessary.

 

[Kipper]

I played EVE for a couple of months on and off and I would like to get into it again, I tried it years and years ago and didn't get along - but more recently tried again and found myself enjoying it.

I don't subscribe because I just don't have the time to throw at it at the moment.

The way I see it is that Elite could not go far wrong if it offered the sandbox meta game with the immediacy of direct control over your ship.

That, of course - and 'real' stuff. Solar systems based on our own milky way and with planets and moons that orbit, trade goods that you recognize and can spur your imagination, and understand logically what you might take where for a profit, and of course - the ships and space stations that we know and love (as well as some new additions I'm sure).

Real modular damage for combat would be amazing too, where you might actually be able to target weapons or certain systems to allow you to fight stronger enemies by being clever.

 

[V3teran]

Elite is the Grandfather to all these Space sim clones, Eve included, dont matter how polished they all are, Nothing beats flying out of a Star System with a Piracy and Murder charge in a Cobra Mk III while also trying to make the Rank of Elite!