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Ideas Man

Banned
This game is like an anti sandbox anyway, there are like four or five mini games that you have to do in a very exact way, there is no room for any individuality or creativity in anything you do here, none, not one bit.
Doesn't bother me, it's cool and I like it that way. It's just *clears throat* Not a sandbox.
 
Claiming Elite Dangerous is in the same league as Minecraft or Lego...wow. The only way I could see your post as anything but either duplicity or just dellusion is if Minecraft or Lego only gave you two blocks to chose from and limited you a 3x3x3 area and forced you to build in a diagonal.

At least with Legos you could build whatever you wanted. Elite doesn't have half the content as legos. In elite you have more than a 3x3x3 space but nothing to do in it
 
Ultima I (1981) - You could freely chose to go anywhere, even to space; you could rob towns, explore dungeons etc. So by your definition Ultima was the genesis of sandboxes.

True, this was the first open world game, however the first *sandbox* is credited to Elite because it was the first game to use the term in reference to its open world platform.
 
Are you guys that are feeling lost and at the end of your road just playing elite and nothing else?

Buying a game isn't a marriage contract. There is no enforced monogamy. I fool around and play the field quite a bit, I have 4 or 5 games on the go at any one time. i start one or two new games a year so my top four are always changing. Its even easier with games with no monthly subs to worry about. Playing the game only occasionally after your first binge doesn't diminish the value of what you have and ED will always be waiting for you.

I don't think ED is intended to be a second life or job.

Nah, same as you. Plenty games on the go. I'm still playing Driveclub, Minecraft and LBP3 with the kids, recently started Grim Fandango. ED was my go to game for a while, easily played on my laptop whenever I had a bit of time left over. Actually right now I would be logged into ED on a super cruise to an undiscovered planet or waiting for the route planner to finish building its tree on the way to the next Nebula. However the magic has gone. ED is one of those games that to me you have to put more and more time in to get the same enjoyment out of. Playing it for half and hour to an hour just gets you no where. In an hour I can scan 2 systems, travel 500 ly, or sell 300 systems worth of data. None of that feels like fun anymore. It has all become too predictable, random and repetitive at the same time.
 
Lots of pages - feel like i'm coming 'late' to this thread (less than 24 hours since the OP!) but still have to chime in with all the others who have pointed at the OP and said "This is how I feel too".

I said in another similar thread in mid-Jan that I was going to give it until the end of Feb to see if the things that should have been in the retail release have been added (or at least admitted to) - but unfortunately looking at the paucity of how 1.1 currently stands this isn't looking good...

And as for the 'Sandbox' debate - it doesn't feel like a sandbox to me. With all the bodged up content ('collect' missions that aren't offered if you already have the required items in cargo, the market 'dynamically' changing to screw you over if you dock with a full hold, deus ex machina immersion breaking content like USS's really obviously basing themselves on the missions in your transactions tab, the same 4-5 meaningless shallow and simplistic activities to bat our pudgy fingers at over and over and over... No it doesn't feel like a sandbox. It feels like a playpen.

And that's the problem IMHO. In 1984 we were all toddlers with regard to gaming (and with regard to what was possible for the gaming industry in so far as it was to deliver to us) and were happy with our playpens - think of the repetitive 'content' that we had back then in games we'd play for months on end, like Jet Pac etc. But we (and the industry) have grown up since then. So much more is possible from a game now, and so we naturally expect at least some of it when we hand over money for one. Elite has had a graphical makeover however none of the things that could make it a good absorbing game are (currently) in it. Will they ever be? We'll see but I can't help but feel that releasing it in little more than a Graphics/Tech Demo state might not have been a good move.
 

Ideas Man

Banned
Agreed Prestiditator

In 1984 Dig Dug was still the height of sophisticated gaming so can we please all stop banging on about the original Elite?

It was remarkable at the time compared to what was out at the time, now, not so much.

Edit: I'm not knocking the original Elite
 
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I feel the exact same way op. I put in a hundred hours or so all throughout the betas and release. A couple weeks ago i was finishing up a trade route for what seemed the millionth time and i just had to step away. Haven't had the urge to play since.
 
To be honest, I would say that the 1984 version was a better game than ED is right now. Sure, it had much less gameplay elements, but they were in a very good balance and would let the players choose what risk he was willing to take. Jumping into an anarchy system and making it to the station was always a challenge, as was forcing a misjump and fighting it out with the Thargoids.

Where are the situations in ED that require you to fight with tooth and nails just to come out alive?

All true, and if I could just add one more thing: Elite made sense! The rules of the game worked and you could draw a conclusion from the information at hand that would be logical and born out in the game.
I'm heading to a corporate state with an industrial economy? Oh, best not take Computers there!
I want to buy narcotics? Maybe an Agricultural Anarchy would be a good bet?


ED just doesn't make sense too much of the time. The rules are broken and it's too random. If you loiter outside a station you can get fined, if you scoop the stolen cargo of a known pirate - YOU get a fine. Who saw that coming? I won't even bother with the galactic map, trade routes and import/export data.
 
I just got onto Beta forums. I seriously dont like the direction this is going period.

Frontier Working for EA now or something. did i miss a company merger?

Wife gonna be mad a hornet .. Bought her a PS4 look like i'll be playing it more now.
 
Since you seem to enjoy nitpicking ...
It's not my defintion,. It's wiki- and technopedia's
It most definitely is a definition so the "s are uncalled for.
You posted them so they are yours. If you didn't agree with them - don't post them. Otherwise it's just a cheap Argumentum ab Auctoritate - "Oh, look, Wikipedia says it so it must be true!"

And if you looked into the forum then you'd already have discovered that changing a faction's influence is not something you can actually achieve. It still needs manual intervention by FD, so, "at will"? Not so much.

I wouldn't consider GTA and its like as sandbox either. Open World, yes. Sandbox, no. That's the realm of Minecraft or, indeed, Eve.
 
IMO the term "sandbox" has become diluted when it comes to games. I have a sandbox in my garden. The only reason the kids play in it is because they can mold things from the sand. The rest of the garden they can roam about and play in, but they're not allowed to change anything (they'd only ruin it...). That's their "open world". Which is a much more fitting term for ED. For GTA too, for that matter.
 
Reading through these, I have to admit I agree with the original post to some degree. I am probably in the same generation as some the folks developing this game. Back in the 80's I played the original Elite game on the Amiga for months and it started my obsession with space trading sims. I played them all from the Wing Commander series to Privateer to the X- series and enjoyed them all to varying degrees. I longed to play a game where I could set my own goals, feel like a real member of a galaxy-wide community, flying spaceships around and wanted the ability to walk around my ship, tinker with the systems and actually FEEL like I was right there instead of just a cut-scene to landing on a planet or space port etc. I got VERY excited when I found out about Star Citizen as that seemed like the game I'd always wanted to play. However, realistically, it will be months, if not years before SC is the game it aspires to be so this brings me to ED. I both love and hate the game. While it fulfills the nostalgia of the 80's in the sense of being another space trading sim to feed my love of this genre, it leaves me feeling a bit like when movie directors decide to re-make a classic movie by adding new actors and replacing the old special effects with the latest CGI. Yes, it looks stunning and might be a great movie as a whole but, somewhere along the line, it has lost some of the magic of the original. I can't quite explain it. ED just feels.... pointless. I loved the analogy of stepping on kitchen floor tiles. Sure, we can set goals, do our own thing but there's something missing and I can't quite decide what. Maybe it's just that it's not complete and maybe after many updates, fixes and additions it will be the game I've been waiting 30 years to play. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed it so far, it's just,.... well,... like when you order a cold beer and it turns up to the table a few degrees shy of cold. Drinkable but just not what you really wanted.
 
Since you mention old films and CGI...I thought of this comparison this afternoon: ED is the Phantom Menace equivalent of the originals. It's David Braben's "George Lucas" edit of what he considers a vision to be. All flash, little substance. He nailed it previously but now has completely lost touch with how gaming has changed. This to me is simply his pet astrophysics project funded by game-based backers. I'm half expecting Thargoids to turn up shouting "messir gonna keel you" over the comms channel. But returning to the more serious point made a couple of pages ago, this thread has remained pretty true to the OP and yet there is no sign of Frontier anywhere. This isn't the typical troll post moaning or baiting for replies, it's been a constructive appraisal of how many of us feel right now and again, it's being ignored in favour of "look who discovered a new system" or "come see the pretty lights at Sol" PR. Sadly Frontier are their own worst enemies treating this with silence in the hope it'll be buried soon
 
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