Someone asked me on FB "Is Elite Dangerous worth a try? I did not longer pay attention after the no offline mode announcement."
I had to think a bit about my answer, and maybe it might help others who are asking themselve the same question, so here it goes ...
It depends a lot upon the player.
It is a wonderful game : the galaxy is quite literally all there, the flight mechanics, whilst not 100% physically accurate for gameplay sake, are the most enjoyable I have encountered yet in a space sim, combat is fantastic, and visually it is more often than not stunning (with a VR headset doubly so). Ultimately though, it is the same Elite as 30 years ago, albeit with multiplayer (kind of ... coming to that in a couple of sentences) : there isn't a lot to do if you don't spin your own story around your actions. The mission system is bland and generic, there is no real narrative, even with the faction based expansion game introduced with the latest patch (1.3 Powerplay). in short there is no actual goal. In that sense, it is a real sandbox : it just gives you the tool to "write your own story", but does no hand-holding and doesn't really try to push you in a certain direction. It might appeal to you (it works very well for me), or it might not.
As for multiplayer, it is, again, "different". I have been playing regularly since Beta (around september 2014) and have yet to fight against another player. Not that I am actively avoiding it, it just never happened. There are complaints about ganking on the (honestly awfully trollish) official forums, but I've yet to see that in person.
Pacific Interaction with other players has also been sparse. It is *very* nice to see player ships flying around, but there is no incentive to interact with them much. Personally, I like that, but again, YMMV.
so the TL;DR of all that is : worth a try definitely, no guarantee you will like it though.
I had to think a bit about my answer, and maybe it might help others who are asking themselve the same question, so here it goes ...
It depends a lot upon the player.
It is a wonderful game : the galaxy is quite literally all there, the flight mechanics, whilst not 100% physically accurate for gameplay sake, are the most enjoyable I have encountered yet in a space sim, combat is fantastic, and visually it is more often than not stunning (with a VR headset doubly so). Ultimately though, it is the same Elite as 30 years ago, albeit with multiplayer (kind of ... coming to that in a couple of sentences) : there isn't a lot to do if you don't spin your own story around your actions. The mission system is bland and generic, there is no real narrative, even with the faction based expansion game introduced with the latest patch (1.3 Powerplay). in short there is no actual goal. In that sense, it is a real sandbox : it just gives you the tool to "write your own story", but does no hand-holding and doesn't really try to push you in a certain direction. It might appeal to you (it works very well for me), or it might not.
As for multiplayer, it is, again, "different". I have been playing regularly since Beta (around september 2014) and have yet to fight against another player. Not that I am actively avoiding it, it just never happened. There are complaints about ganking on the (honestly awfully trollish) official forums, but I've yet to see that in person.
Pacific Interaction with other players has also been sparse. It is *very* nice to see player ships flying around, but there is no incentive to interact with them much. Personally, I like that, but again, YMMV.
so the TL;DR of all that is : worth a try definitely, no guarantee you will like it though.
