In their defense, differences of scale are a lot easier to do than differences of kind.
Is Elite: Dangerous too difficult?
- Thread starter Clarion-Z
- Start date
A wise teacher says that forgiveness is as much for the person doing the forgiving as it is for the one being forgiven. If you choose to hold onto your righteous anger, that's your choice, but ultimately you are the one who will suffer the most. I choose to play the game in a way that is fun for me, even if it requires thinking "outside the box" to achieve what I am looking for. This brings me happiness. That's my choice.
I do admit that the "bubble of happiness" in this game has been shrinking for me over time. When that bubble collapses completely, I'll move on to something else that brings me joy. And since I know somebody will ask, "But Duck, if you are happy, why do you post grumpy stuff?" The answer is simple - grumping makes me happy, LOL
That's great. .. but choosing to pretend the game is fun in ways that you enjoy, is different from saying that the game offers xyz feature that doesn't really exist anywhere outside of your imagination.
Saying for instance, "I pretend like i'm escorting npcs" is accurate and totally different from "I escort npcs". Saying " I make the game more difficult by purposely picking weak ship configuration and picking fights with much better ones" is totally different from saying "elite allows you to pick your difficulty setting in the game" or to the same effect.
You can choose to fill in everything that's missing in your head and have a great time while at the same time, calling out all of those missing things publicly as they deserve to be.
I'm still a rank newb, but I'm struggling with this question. I really want to get into this game. So much about it that I love. The sense of immersion, especially in VR, is amazing, often awe inspiring. I also appreciate how the complexity and attention to detail contributes to that immersion. That's how simulation oriented games work. That's how they achieve their goal.
But I'm running into another kind of complexity that, for me, does the opposite. It detracts from immersion. It makes things less realistic. It leaves me doubting the idea that future tech would be so obscure and confusing to use.
Last night, for example, I spent two hours trying to figure out how to scan a nav beacon. In the end, I had to Google it and watch a couple of you tube videos to figure it out. It was in no way an "immersive" experience.
I'm hoping that this was just a hiccup. A rare example of bad mission design, or an oversight. But I'm worried it will become a pattern, that it's endemic to the game overall. I won't last if that's the case.
But I'm running into another kind of complexity that, for me, does the opposite. It detracts from immersion. It makes things less realistic. It leaves me doubting the idea that future tech would be so obscure and confusing to use.
Last night, for example, I spent two hours trying to figure out how to scan a nav beacon. In the end, I had to Google it and watch a couple of you tube videos to figure it out. It was in no way an "immersive" experience.
I'm hoping that this was just a hiccup. A rare example of bad mission design, or an oversight. But I'm worried it will become a pattern, that it's endemic to the game overall. I won't last if that's the case.
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As kids, my brother and I and our best friend would bash at it and other games like brute forcing an encryption. I'm not sure if we ever beat it though. Probably not, but we got pretty far. I remember I was the first to be able to consistently get through the speeder bike tunnel areas where you had to dodge roadblocks or whatever they were. I remember getting to a space level and a platforming snake level. Our friend surpassed me and my brother though. I think he kept at it more, or maybe was just more mentally dedicated instead of waffling.
...
Anyway, yeah, for this game I like the sim-lightweight and immersive aspects of it, and the galaxy sim and spaceships and space and lore and all that. It loses some steam though regarding having a consistent and engaging experience with things that seem there for the sake of being there, cobbled together to stay somewhat relevant if not overlooked, and padded for the longevity of arbitrary game-play and meta progression.
For me at least, I have to pick my battles with how I care to play and/or am willing to play the game. It's like 50, 50 for me, but the good 50 is pretty good and occasionally great. The other 50 kind of taints it a bit and occasionally gives me the salty, sour puckers.
Good luck.
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That's a rather Elitist
attitude you have...ED is way too hard!
I've tried for years to fly my ship into a black hole but I can't figure out for the life of me how to do it! It just keeps bouncing off in SC and even in standard space it seems to go nowhere...
Surely, problems like this should be much easier to figure out! IRL a black hole sucks you in like a proverbial lawn mower... But in ED it seems impossible to get in so that I can dock at the bloody thing!
Even regular main sequence stars are impossible to dock at... What's with that!?
The only thing I've managed to succeed at is with planets and even then you have to sneek up on them from behind and then drive full throttle...
Please help! Any Masters of ED have a solution to this intractable problem!?
I've tried for years to fly my ship into a black hole but I can't figure out for the life of me how to do it! It just keeps bouncing off in SC and even in standard space it seems to go nowhere...
Surely, problems like this should be much easier to figure out! IRL a black hole sucks you in like a proverbial lawn mower... But in ED it seems impossible to get in so that I can dock at the bloody thing!
Even regular main sequence stars are impossible to dock at... What's with that!?
The only thing I've managed to succeed at is with planets and even then you have to sneek up on them from behind and then drive full throttle...
Please help! Any Masters of ED have a solution to this intractable problem!?
I think the majority of my friends who play have found the game hard but accept its a learning curve and the game is in fact fair and balanced for the most part.
Personally I come from the early 90s Elite and I've played plenty of flight sims and space shooters so I got the game quite naturally. Before tutorials and videos it was very hard.
For the average gamer who plays shooters 5-10 hours is enough in my opinion to understand the mechanics but I do have one friend who's played all genre of games from turn based strategy, MMO RPG to shooters and puzzle games she just doesn't get the game at all and has tried twice and given up.
Personally I come from the early 90s Elite and I've played plenty of flight sims and space shooters so I got the game quite naturally. Before tutorials and videos it was very hard.
For the average gamer who plays shooters 5-10 hours is enough in my opinion to understand the mechanics but I do have one friend who's played all genre of games from turn based strategy, MMO RPG to shooters and puzzle games she just doesn't get the game at all and has tried twice and given up.
Have you tried the tradesman's entrance?
It is too easy.So many threads needing to reduce the costs of something or make credits more easier to obtain.. or (seen couple) that materials/engineering stuff should be more easy.
Is the game really that hard?
And for those who are going to say "no, but it's just too much grinding": Stop that! Don't grind! You can play without grinding.. unless you actually enjoy it and enjoy complaining about it... then go ahead
I can't even die in a black hole if I fall asleep.
And exploring is totaly safe.
No hostile whatsoever.
No gear fails.
And mining is safe, beside of pirates. No rogue asteroids or ricochets.
Safe is boring. Make it dangerous.
Are you the Bloody Nutter?
Man, you are a legend.
Ah 2020, how I have missed you...
Fun fact, when this thread was created I was stuck on a group of islands 8000 miles away from home...
Little did I know I'd be stuck there for another 4 months before I could finally fly home...
Fun fact, when this thread was created I was stuck on a group of islands 8000 miles away from home...
Little did I know I'd be stuck there for another 4 months before I could finally fly home...
It's not hard, just boring.
Difficulty and grind are often conflated.
Elite is not difficult, but the sense of progression is grindy. Unbearably so. Thus, the game can often be perceived as difficult when in fact it just takes a tremendous amount of patience (as in mind-numbingly wasting hours) to accomplish major progress. It's a tough balance to strike, but more and more developers lean towards grind because it artificially inflates play time, which is still considered a good measure of quality.
Many have hundreds of hours in a game like Elite. That's good.
80% of that was spent grinding what was, once, about five hours of 'new' content for the player. That's bad.
Is it possible to make hundreds of hours of 'new content'? Yes, but it's hardly easy or profitable.
Ask Chris Roberts. Or David Braben, now...lol
The trouble with Elite is there has been no effort to deepen the grind in terms of complexity and replayability. If you've spawned on Dav's Hope once, you've done it a thousand times anywhere else. The environments aren't truly interactable, all NPCs are predictable, there is one type of major space station landing scenario, three outpost variants, and three planetary variants. None of which are really all that different accept in aesthetics.
This is just one example of how a rather novel aspect of Elite - takeoff and landing - has been woefully underdeveloped. There is legitimate skill involved, and the potential for scaling the skill demand: burning stations being an example that could easily be expanded further.
Outposts that are rotating due to orbital thruster failure.
Planetary Ports where the security systems have been compromised, firing on you as you manually land.
Variants of entering station interiors besides the mail slots: corridors to the landing bay, navigating industrial struts, weaving between docked capitals...
Again, that's just one aspect of Elite that could be expanded and, thus, reduce the sense of grind while also amping up the sense of difficulty. Both of which improve retention and enjoyment. Yet, that isn't how Elite is developed. The focus has been, and will likely remain, racing to the next "big idea", launching its foundational concept, and moving on to the next "big idea" without ever actually expanding on that feature to its fullest potential. It is terribly wasteful.
Much like how supercruise wastes your time. It's hard to remember that, when playing Elite, the typical player spends more time doing nothing than actually playing the game because of how supercruise and hyperspace are designed. It's quite astounding. But, hey! Look at how many hours you spent in the game! Must be a really difficult title for those kind of numbers.
Elite is not difficult, but the sense of progression is grindy. Unbearably so. Thus, the game can often be perceived as difficult when in fact it just takes a tremendous amount of patience (as in mind-numbingly wasting hours) to accomplish major progress. It's a tough balance to strike, but more and more developers lean towards grind because it artificially inflates play time, which is still considered a good measure of quality.
Many have hundreds of hours in a game like Elite. That's good.
80% of that was spent grinding what was, once, about five hours of 'new' content for the player. That's bad.
Is it possible to make hundreds of hours of 'new content'? Yes, but it's hardly easy or profitable.
Ask Chris Roberts. Or David Braben, now...lol
The trouble with Elite is there has been no effort to deepen the grind in terms of complexity and replayability. If you've spawned on Dav's Hope once, you've done it a thousand times anywhere else. The environments aren't truly interactable, all NPCs are predictable, there is one type of major space station landing scenario, three outpost variants, and three planetary variants. None of which are really all that different accept in aesthetics.
This is just one example of how a rather novel aspect of Elite - takeoff and landing - has been woefully underdeveloped. There is legitimate skill involved, and the potential for scaling the skill demand: burning stations being an example that could easily be expanded further.
Outposts that are rotating due to orbital thruster failure.
Planetary Ports where the security systems have been compromised, firing on you as you manually land.
Variants of entering station interiors besides the mail slots: corridors to the landing bay, navigating industrial struts, weaving between docked capitals...
Again, that's just one aspect of Elite that could be expanded and, thus, reduce the sense of grind while also amping up the sense of difficulty. Both of which improve retention and enjoyment. Yet, that isn't how Elite is developed. The focus has been, and will likely remain, racing to the next "big idea", launching its foundational concept, and moving on to the next "big idea" without ever actually expanding on that feature to its fullest potential. It is terribly wasteful.
Much like how supercruise wastes your time. It's hard to remember that, when playing Elite, the typical player spends more time doing nothing than actually playing the game because of how supercruise and hyperspace are designed. It's quite astounding. But, hey! Look at how many hours you spent in the game! Must be a really difficult title for those kind of numbers.
No.
Oh wait, you confused "hard" with how much time things take.
They are different things.
It's not too hard, the skill levels are pretty low to just do stuff, then there are some harder things if you want to get even better.
The amount of time it takes to do certain things is debatable, for me, I'd prefer you gained things in varied and interesting, preferably unique ways.
Special hand crafted missions for each engineer, finding a special type of suit after reaching the end of a cool puzzle.
But, no, it isn't too hard.
Oh wait, you confused "hard" with how much time things take.
They are different things.
It's not too hard, the skill levels are pretty low to just do stuff, then there are some harder things if you want to get even better.
The amount of time it takes to do certain things is debatable, for me, I'd prefer you gained things in varied and interesting, preferably unique ways.
Special hand crafted missions for each engineer, finding a special type of suit after reaching the end of a cool puzzle.
But, no, it isn't too hard.
ED is a perfect game for drinking beer and smoking!I would just like to say my next step on the AX ladder is soloing a Medusa. I'm getting there, but I would say it is not easy.
Maybe I am just old(ish) rubbish and drink too much...
o7
I mean inbetween of the challenges of combat.
There is a substantial learning curve at the beginning of the game.
A large number of keybinds, accessory hardware requirements, learning the flight mechanics (managing those keybinds), learning the protocols for navigating the different menus (it is not point and click) for the different functionalities, accessing 3rd party resources for optimization. These are all required to play the game.
Once these learning gates have been passed, there are learning curves related to PVE combat, Raid boss combat (Thargoids), and PVP combat. I would say, depending on your visual/spatial/motor skills this can be easy to very challenging.
Game progression as measured by ship, destination access, or module access, is in the form of fetch quests or kill counts to obtain unlocks, so that element of the game is not hard. Just grindy.
The game progression elements facilitate access to "end game" content, that being PVP, High Intensity Conflict/Pirate Activity/Wing assassination missions, and raid boss combat. It is not possible to effectively participate in the "end game content" without engaging the game progression.
So I would say the game requires more time than skill level to progress.
A large number of keybinds, accessory hardware requirements, learning the flight mechanics (managing those keybinds), learning the protocols for navigating the different menus (it is not point and click) for the different functionalities, accessing 3rd party resources for optimization. These are all required to play the game.
Once these learning gates have been passed, there are learning curves related to PVE combat, Raid boss combat (Thargoids), and PVP combat. I would say, depending on your visual/spatial/motor skills this can be easy to very challenging.
Game progression as measured by ship, destination access, or module access, is in the form of fetch quests or kill counts to obtain unlocks, so that element of the game is not hard. Just grindy.
The game progression elements facilitate access to "end game" content, that being PVP, High Intensity Conflict/Pirate Activity/Wing assassination missions, and raid boss combat. It is not possible to effectively participate in the "end game content" without engaging the game progression.
So I would say the game requires more time than skill level to progress.
Just ridiculously over complicated!! I'm so glad I didnt buy the game and only tried it through gamepass, as I deleted it after 30 minutes. Was hoping for something with a little more action to replace the boredom of No mans sky and hoped this would fill the void, instead unfortunately it was a complete let down because of how complicated it is. Thats not my idea of enjoyment which is the whole idea of playing a video game. Frontier seem to have forgotten that by adding far far to much stuff to the screen!
