I've been playing ED for a bit over a year now and have owned several different ships, and tried several different lines of gameplay. I recently purchased myself a top spec combat Conda with enough left over for a good few insurance claims, and this was my personal goal from the start. So now that I've played through the game quite a lot, and sunk more time into it than probably any other game I own, I thought I should probably give my 2 cents on what I think of ED in its current state.
I spent almost my entire time trading and smuggling to get credits: it has honestly been one of the most painstaking grinds of any game I've ever played. I see that as both a bad thing and a good thing: it's bad because it seems to be the only way of making money if you want to get into those big ships like the Conda, Corvette or Cutter, and it's just so boring flying around these systems you've already been to, to stations that all look the same over and over and over again. This is why even though I started playing just over a year ago, I took a huge break of about 6 months because I just couldn't be bothered with the grinding anymore, and I don't think it's a good thing for a game to become so tedious that it almost seems like a job as opposed to fun. I did try mining and exploring too, however they just weren't netting me enough money for them to be worthwhile (more on that later...). However the good side for me is that when you do finally have enough money to buy that top spec Conda, you really do feel like you've made it. You get that sense of fulfilment that I rarely get from other games, and I treat my Conda like it's my baby. I have done with all my ships to be honest, because that's one thing I think is great about this game: the combination of money being so hard to make and ships being perishable, so you have to pay a decent amount if they blow up, makes the gains from ED almost feel material, as if your new ship that you've been saving for for weeks actually means something, and it's the only game I've played where what you buy feels comparable to things you buy in the real world.
So now that I finally have my top spec Conda, I'm using it for Powerplay combat, but I find even that loses its charm after a while. I'd love to do mining but it just doesn't seem profitable or fun enough yet without anything comparable to a mining barge that can sit in a roid field and mine multiple asteroids at the same time without having to chase mineral chunks around and scooping them up. Exploration is tempting, but tbh most things in this game currently look the same, no matter how far you fly. The community goal with the alien barnacle things on planets was the sort of thing that makes something like exploration fun, but at the moment I just don't think there's enough to see in ED. Already done all the trading and smuggling I can stomach for a life-time...
Now, I know there are going to be a lot of you who will say "but it's not just about the money Commander, it's about having fun and enjoying yourself", and let me just say that I whole-heartedly agree with you: a game, just like life, shouldn't merely be about getting money. However sometimes you need money to have fun, and in life it's much easier to be able to get by happily without grinding constantly for more and more money because life has so many different paths to go down with people and places that don't require money, so it can easily still be fun even if you're not a millionaire. You don't need so much money to have fun because there are so many things to do which either don't require money, or that purchased items can present you with so long as they have enough scope (think a computer with the internet - it's like a gift that keeps on giving). As a psychologist in the real world (ironically at the University of Cambridge, right next to Frontier Developments), this is a phenomenon that I've studied a fair amount: people who end up spending the most money are often those who can't find true fulfilment or depth in what they already have, and therefore they buy more things to see if it will give them fulfilment but ultimately these people end up unhappy and even depressed that they can't find fulfilment in anything despite their spending (since life itself can't just be turned off when we get bored of it like a game can). This is where ED falls short for me. I'm not saying that it would ever be possible to create a game that has as many possibilities or depth in it as life itself, but at the moment the game is so shallow that the only meaningful goal I can set myself is buying the next ship up. And then the next one. And then finally when we get to where we want, what can we do? The exact same as we've done before. I think the reason so many people obsess about money in ED is because nothing feels fulfilling other than owning the next ship up: ranks are pretty much useless, and take forever to get to a point where you're getting rewards from them. If the processes of making money in the game were fun and deep enough for them to provide any real level of enjoyment then the outcome (i.e. making money) would no longer be the only thing of interest to players, and this "grind" which ED has become famous for, and which David Braben has openly claimed is a "failure" of Frontier in this game, would become much less prominent. And David was right when he said that it's not the fault of the players for prioritising the grind, but the developers, since at present there's just nothing else to do. But it doesn't have to be like this: for example, if I could fly around beautiful planets and see awesome (and most importantly DIFFERENT) things, walk around stations or bases and interact with other players and NPCs in person, or customise the inside of my ship to make it truly feel like it's "mine", then it wouldn't matter so much which ship I'm in and how much money I have.
I'm really hoping Frontier add some more depth to all the different career paths in this game, because at the moment I have to admit I find it all very boring after a while. If you want to fight, you shoot stuff and get money. If you want to trade, you just fly from station to station with cargo and click some buttons. If you want to explore, you fly to a system and scan it then move on to the next. And if you want to mine, you shoot rocks and then chase smaller rocks around space, but none of this feels like it contributes to anything bigger. Powerplay helped a little I guess, but hardly. Multicrew and personalised commanders will improve it more, but at the moment ED is just so shallow that it's hard to really stay captivated long enough to do much. The only reason I hung on with the trading and smuggling to make money was so I could own a Conda and look around its huge cockpit, and feel like I'm the captain of some big space corvette/frigate. But now that I have it, there's nothing to do. If I want to mine, I have to endure the pain in the ass of sitting in a RES and manually shooting asteroids, and then manually catching the chunks that come out of them (even with those horribly programmed limpets that are intent on killing themselves) which I personally find ruins the immersion: I personally find automated systems far more satisfying when I can just stand back and watch everything work after I've set it all up (I'm obviously a fan of Factorio). I can't start a mining company or business, or buy a station and have to manage it. I can't walk around my ship to manage automated mining systems. When it comes to exploration, all I can do is scan rocks. I can't find wildlife and flora, and I can't walk on the surfaces of planets. I can't help colonise far-out planets or set up planetary bases. In combat, I can't fight for player-controlled factions to take control of stations or planetary bases set up by other factions. I just find it so hard to feel a part of this game at the moment when it feels like I'm so detached from everything that's going on, as a player. I really hope this will change, since the basics of this game are absolutely top, but Star Citizen, while being in a much earlier state of development than ED, is seeming to poise itself to offer far more opportunities for depth and immersion than ED does currently. I think this could be the best space game out there, but I don't think that it currently makes for as fulfilling an experience as it could do.
At the end of the day, this is just my opinion after playing this game for a pretty long time. I wouldn't bother typing this all out if I didn't think this game was capable of being the iconic space game that it wants to be, but I really feel something needs to be done to give this game a sense of depth and fulfilment.
I spent almost my entire time trading and smuggling to get credits: it has honestly been one of the most painstaking grinds of any game I've ever played. I see that as both a bad thing and a good thing: it's bad because it seems to be the only way of making money if you want to get into those big ships like the Conda, Corvette or Cutter, and it's just so boring flying around these systems you've already been to, to stations that all look the same over and over and over again. This is why even though I started playing just over a year ago, I took a huge break of about 6 months because I just couldn't be bothered with the grinding anymore, and I don't think it's a good thing for a game to become so tedious that it almost seems like a job as opposed to fun. I did try mining and exploring too, however they just weren't netting me enough money for them to be worthwhile (more on that later...). However the good side for me is that when you do finally have enough money to buy that top spec Conda, you really do feel like you've made it. You get that sense of fulfilment that I rarely get from other games, and I treat my Conda like it's my baby. I have done with all my ships to be honest, because that's one thing I think is great about this game: the combination of money being so hard to make and ships being perishable, so you have to pay a decent amount if they blow up, makes the gains from ED almost feel material, as if your new ship that you've been saving for for weeks actually means something, and it's the only game I've played where what you buy feels comparable to things you buy in the real world.
So now that I finally have my top spec Conda, I'm using it for Powerplay combat, but I find even that loses its charm after a while. I'd love to do mining but it just doesn't seem profitable or fun enough yet without anything comparable to a mining barge that can sit in a roid field and mine multiple asteroids at the same time without having to chase mineral chunks around and scooping them up. Exploration is tempting, but tbh most things in this game currently look the same, no matter how far you fly. The community goal with the alien barnacle things on planets was the sort of thing that makes something like exploration fun, but at the moment I just don't think there's enough to see in ED. Already done all the trading and smuggling I can stomach for a life-time...
Now, I know there are going to be a lot of you who will say "but it's not just about the money Commander, it's about having fun and enjoying yourself", and let me just say that I whole-heartedly agree with you: a game, just like life, shouldn't merely be about getting money. However sometimes you need money to have fun, and in life it's much easier to be able to get by happily without grinding constantly for more and more money because life has so many different paths to go down with people and places that don't require money, so it can easily still be fun even if you're not a millionaire. You don't need so much money to have fun because there are so many things to do which either don't require money, or that purchased items can present you with so long as they have enough scope (think a computer with the internet - it's like a gift that keeps on giving). As a psychologist in the real world (ironically at the University of Cambridge, right next to Frontier Developments), this is a phenomenon that I've studied a fair amount: people who end up spending the most money are often those who can't find true fulfilment or depth in what they already have, and therefore they buy more things to see if it will give them fulfilment but ultimately these people end up unhappy and even depressed that they can't find fulfilment in anything despite their spending (since life itself can't just be turned off when we get bored of it like a game can). This is where ED falls short for me. I'm not saying that it would ever be possible to create a game that has as many possibilities or depth in it as life itself, but at the moment the game is so shallow that the only meaningful goal I can set myself is buying the next ship up. And then the next one. And then finally when we get to where we want, what can we do? The exact same as we've done before. I think the reason so many people obsess about money in ED is because nothing feels fulfilling other than owning the next ship up: ranks are pretty much useless, and take forever to get to a point where you're getting rewards from them. If the processes of making money in the game were fun and deep enough for them to provide any real level of enjoyment then the outcome (i.e. making money) would no longer be the only thing of interest to players, and this "grind" which ED has become famous for, and which David Braben has openly claimed is a "failure" of Frontier in this game, would become much less prominent. And David was right when he said that it's not the fault of the players for prioritising the grind, but the developers, since at present there's just nothing else to do. But it doesn't have to be like this: for example, if I could fly around beautiful planets and see awesome (and most importantly DIFFERENT) things, walk around stations or bases and interact with other players and NPCs in person, or customise the inside of my ship to make it truly feel like it's "mine", then it wouldn't matter so much which ship I'm in and how much money I have.
I'm really hoping Frontier add some more depth to all the different career paths in this game, because at the moment I have to admit I find it all very boring after a while. If you want to fight, you shoot stuff and get money. If you want to trade, you just fly from station to station with cargo and click some buttons. If you want to explore, you fly to a system and scan it then move on to the next. And if you want to mine, you shoot rocks and then chase smaller rocks around space, but none of this feels like it contributes to anything bigger. Powerplay helped a little I guess, but hardly. Multicrew and personalised commanders will improve it more, but at the moment ED is just so shallow that it's hard to really stay captivated long enough to do much. The only reason I hung on with the trading and smuggling to make money was so I could own a Conda and look around its huge cockpit, and feel like I'm the captain of some big space corvette/frigate. But now that I have it, there's nothing to do. If I want to mine, I have to endure the pain in the ass of sitting in a RES and manually shooting asteroids, and then manually catching the chunks that come out of them (even with those horribly programmed limpets that are intent on killing themselves) which I personally find ruins the immersion: I personally find automated systems far more satisfying when I can just stand back and watch everything work after I've set it all up (I'm obviously a fan of Factorio). I can't start a mining company or business, or buy a station and have to manage it. I can't walk around my ship to manage automated mining systems. When it comes to exploration, all I can do is scan rocks. I can't find wildlife and flora, and I can't walk on the surfaces of planets. I can't help colonise far-out planets or set up planetary bases. In combat, I can't fight for player-controlled factions to take control of stations or planetary bases set up by other factions. I just find it so hard to feel a part of this game at the moment when it feels like I'm so detached from everything that's going on, as a player. I really hope this will change, since the basics of this game are absolutely top, but Star Citizen, while being in a much earlier state of development than ED, is seeming to poise itself to offer far more opportunities for depth and immersion than ED does currently. I think this could be the best space game out there, but I don't think that it currently makes for as fulfilling an experience as it could do.
At the end of the day, this is just my opinion after playing this game for a pretty long time. I wouldn't bother typing this all out if I didn't think this game was capable of being the iconic space game that it wants to be, but I really feel something needs to be done to give this game a sense of depth and fulfilment.