Lower your Expectations for ED
- Thread starter Cosmo
- Start date
If the de facto requirement for a "good" space sim game is "you could send a probe mission to the actual Jupiter cheaper and quicker than that" then that certainly explains why most of the big-scope space games of the last decade have been somewhere between "famous disappointment" and "sink without a trace" on release day.
"Lower your expectations" indeed.
But then it wouldn't have been sufficiently click baity!
I fully understand and accept this. I just find it interesting that one title gets singled out, and others don't. There is plenty of mention of alternative space sims here, but only one gets people redirected to another thread. I find that to be a bit... what's the word the kids use now? "Sus". Anyway, I won't mention it again.
Or lower your expectations for thread
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
No worries, I know from experience that SC discussions in particular risk more often than not going overboard. SC is indeed different and special from other games we usually compare Elite with in that regard
.By the way, this is all just my personal opinion, and not coming from actual mod advice. Once a mod in this forum enters the fray of a discussion we can not moderate it anymore, which I think is fair.
Not completely true. A lot of people compare it to No Man's Sky as well. That's where a lot of the grumbling comes from I think. NMS did feature X, why hasn't ED got it. It must be easy if NMS has got it in.
To be honest, when you compare it on steam charts to some of the other 'Big Players' in the space genre, Elite is doing quite well.
1. NMS is at the top. Firstly, because there's a new update which always makes the numbers shoot up for a month or two as everyone checks out the new content and, secondly, Steam is the only platform where you have access to multiplayer functionality on PC, so there are a lot more Steam owners. It normally settles down to about an average of 1000 players higher than elite.
2. SWTOR :- That remains consistently about 1000 players higher.
3. Elite Dangerous :- Still remaining about the 4000 players per day average.
4. EVE :- That appears to run between 500-1000 average players lower than Elite Dangerous
5. X4 :- That's normally 2000 player less than Elite Dangerous but it has had a major update last month so the numbers will spike over the next month or so.
The way some on this forum act ED numbers are close to zero, or maybe they wish they were.
Is this, like, the millionth or so thread with people whining about how "ED is dead"?
If I were to dig the archives I would honestly not be surprised if these threads went back all the way to at least 2016 or earlier.
But sure, keep making these threads. Perhaps the millionth-and-one thread about this same stale subject will change things to your liking. Just one more thread, and surely it will help.
Sheesh, give it a break already. This "ED is dead" topic is utterly boring.
If I were to dig the archives I would honestly not be surprised if these threads went back all the way to at least 2016 or earlier.
But sure, keep making these threads. Perhaps the millionth-and-one thread about this same stale subject will change things to your liking. Just one more thread, and surely it will help.
Sheesh, give it a break already. This "ED is dead" topic is utterly boring.
It goes back to before the game was initially released!
Taking all the changes since EDO dropped into account, it's hard to argue that the game is dead, still some persist.
I'd tend to think that what the original poster was trying to say is to play the game as it exists today instead of dreaming of what might be.
Taking all the changes since EDO dropped into account, it's hard to argue that the game is dead, still some persist.
I'd tend to think that what the original poster was trying to say is to play the game as it exists today instead of dreaming of what might be.
There's a difference between a game competing for your attention, and a game being a competitor in its genre.
Elite Dangerous is a Massively Multiplayer Space Sim. It features cockpit-based combat, trading, and exploration, all in a massively multiplayer online environment. The only game that come close to this is Star Citizen. To the best of my knowledge, the only other developing games aiming for this type of gameplay were Starbase and Dual Universe... both of which seem to have died in the past year or two.
EVE Online comes close, having three out of four features ED does, but its combat is abstract. X4 also comes close, but its a single player game.
Of my games in my library that are competing for my attention with ED, none of them are competitors with ED. Space Engineers and Empyrion Galactic Survival are survival games, though SE barely qualifies as that. They have combat and exploration, but don't feature the trading Elite has, and are primarily single-player games, though hosting a small server is an option. They're competing with No Man's Sky, another survival game.
I've also got a sci-fi city builder game that fills my "idle" game niche, and a "survival management" sci-fi game that competes with the former for that niche.
If memory serves, the first doom threads started right after the Kickstarter campaign was finished.
Of course, that's not counting "the funding isn't going to reach the goal" threads, which to be fair was a likely scenario. Take a look at the time chart here. It only got funded with a few days left to go.
If one were to count those as doom threads too, then that means they started at the very moment that Elite: Dangerous was revealed, with its surprisingly high goal for crowdfunding.
EVE is also a deeply social game.
Combat ranges from 1v1s to massive battles that evolve under the strict guidance of fleet commanders who move hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of people divided into different categories - scouts, logistics, capital ships - around the battlefield simultaneously. Everything is player-driven, and although you can technically play the game solo, corporations and alliance affiliations define most EVE players.
Like, when I meet another EVE player, we tell each other who we were and are based on who we flew (and fly) with. If anyone who plays EVE asks me about myself, and I say "I was a Goon before joining Veto and then I moved to Signal Cartel when they folded", they'd know everything about me: big meme fleets, pirate, data merchant. That sort of culture doesn't exist here... or in most online games come to think of it.
I play a MMO every day, called Elder Scrolls Online, and while Elite may be an MMO in name and maybe even in numbers, it does not feel like an MMO at all. If anything, it feels just as much a single player game to me as X4, except with Disney animatronics NPCs. At least X4 feels "full" thanks to very realistic and persistent NPCs.
* the obvious exceptions being popular CGs and sometimes Deciat.
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If there were a Venn diagram of MMOs and single player games, ED would be in the overlap.
I dont think most of us old timers could lower our expectations any more seeing as we remember when every platform was catered for, slowly along the way they have been dropped.
Maybe fdev should raise the calibre of the dev team to meet our low expectations of running on mac, xbox and ps4 as these were targets at some point before they were dropped for being to difficult a platform.
Maybe fdev should raise the calibre of the dev team to meet our low expectations of running on mac, xbox and ps4 as these were targets at some point before they were dropped for being to difficult a platform.
For me ED is more like a interactive forum, uou move around looking for somewhere pf interest, sometimes your on your own in a thread and sometimes you see other people. Like most forum software theres a limit on the number of contributors at ay one time so you cant see everyone
To call it a MMO we need to look at other MMO games out there and tbh ED falls massively short of even UOs MMO capabilities.
There are no other "mmos" that allow players to be online and to affect the online world without ever having to encounter another player. None. For most mmo players, that would make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
ED is a peer-to-peer multiplayer game with a solo play mode. To pretend that it's an mmo is pointless. It isn't one, because no other game within the category has the option to completely opt out of multiplayer encounters while still affecting a gameworld we all share.
ED's solo mode goes against the spirit and purpose of online gaming. I don't hate it, but it's very, very strange.
I dunno. ED is so mechanically dry it barely constitutes a single player game. For me, you need a good single player game before you can make a good MP game. A lot of people with little to do is just as unsatisfying as a single person with little to do. Relying on having "guild" trappings in the game (like PMFs, squads and carriers) before you even have much of a game and hoping people will then find their own entertainment by larping is tenuous at best.
Can't sell cash shop skins effectively in a fully offline game. I think when someone at Frontier realized that, ED's offline mode was RIP. Rebranding always-online DRM as a MMO was a neat marketing spin, though.
It goes back to before the game was initially released!
Taking all the changes since EDO dropped into account, it's hard to argue that the game is dead, still some persist.
I'd tend to think that what the original poster was trying to say is to play the game as it exists today instead of dreaming of what might be.
Yeah i agree. Be mindful this realisation can come to everyone at different times, so unless someone stickies the point on the forum, people are going to swoon at their realisation (and let everyone know) as long as there are new players arriving to elite.
Sure it is kind of a "doom until frontier does something" thread, which is effectively actual doom, but if we noticed that we wouldn't be here.
Also don't worry about frontier. I'm sure they're just rolling their eyes or some equivalent at us here. The only thing they seem to move at is steam reviews and if the entire reddit implodes so we're boxed away enough to be completely harmless.