Hello every one.
I have been playing the game only a few days now and, well I have some mixed feelings about this game.
The TLDR version is: New players are lost in an inconsistent user interface and they have to look very hard before they can find out which button does what. Also there is no story to hint at what cool stuff might be ahead and more importantly how to get there.
Here is the "I have some time on my hands and I'm interested is what you have to say." version.
As I see Elite Dangerous at the moment it is a fancy toy for people who have played Elite or Frontier, loved it and think it's really great to see it updated to today's graphics. The game-play is also better if you have a set of flight controls and if you are really lucky an Oculus Rift headset.(I am not one of those.)
The old guard "get it" and are willing to slog through a week or two of figuring it out.(I am one of these.) But true new players need to be lead into this game and some help along the way. There is none of that right now.
First of all, give me back Misters Sue, Cripple & Sneer, attorneys at law, informing me of the death of my grandfather. Congratulations! Now you don't have to gut sturgeon for the rest of your life. You can meet your, probably untimely, demise in a new and interesting way, IN SPAAACE! Also don't ask us for help because we would bankrupt you within half an hour.
Next, new players can't fly spaceships. Teach them how to fly and how to use various ships systems and station facilities. Which is nothing like whats happening now.
Queue Adam Savage:
OK. Here is your motivation. You are stuck in a spaceship and have no idea
where you are or how to fly this thing. There are some leaky canisters floating
in front of you. They are radioactive or something and suddenly it comes to
you. You have to push the controls until all the canisters are blown to bits.
This is a little unfair because you have to click "Target Practice" to get there. But the "I have no idea how to pilot this thing" stands. I went to find out how on the internets. And I have found a help screen I don't remember how, it doesn't matter because it was about as helpful as a Unix man page for a program you don't know yet.
<snip>
I'm not alowed to post a link so just google this. --> "man page mplayer"
And have a look.
</snip>
Useful as a reference not so much as a teaching aid. Tell me, did you scroll all the way down?
As for training video's on the internets. When I am learning statistical data analysis and probability calculus they are a good teaching aid. A game has a series of well constructed scenario’s a story line and a sympathetic sidekick as a teacher. Having to quit the game to look it up on YouTube does a lot of damage to being immersed in the game.
Now for the training video's content. It looks OK but they have been made by a veteran player with an Oculus Rift. This is bad because without realizing it he forgets to tell key facts which new players need to know.
For instance, in the docking scenario I get a cue to press <<left-shift>> to open the communications menu. I did so. I got to see more of the dashboard for a little while but nothing else happened. So I go to the internets and play the launching and docking training video. At the crucial moment *this* was said...
"Press the button you have bound to UI-Panel Focus and switch to the left hand panel. Navigate to the contacts tab" And so on...
I'll admit it explains the procedure perfectly. However what is UI-Panel focus? Is it edible? And what button do I push to request docking permission? I think it is better to do these things in the game like this.
Start new players in the flight-school docking bay and have them launch and dock around the station. It's a tricky maneuver and once you master it you can misbehave in class by zipping around the station.
On longer flights show how to orient yourself and how to use the scanner. Find canisters and do your first stellar package delivery to earn enough money to buy a gun. You can go on from there by being interdicted and having a first fight.
This lack of training and teaching material and storyline to keep players paying attention to them also points out some errors in the design of the interface. Some of it can be explained by trying to keep Oculus Rift users happy. And some by the announcements of being able to walk around space-stations in a later release.
There are, so far as I can tell, four types of menu in ED. All of them are handled differently both in presentation and in how to use them. And I don't like it. Please can I have just one type of menu?
1. The KITT-style cockpit menu when requesting launch. This you navigate with the gas and break pedals, or keys. The arrow keys you expected to navigate with do something completely different. (more on that later.)
2. A launch checklist thing. I know not technically a menu. But annoying enough to be included. You get a mouse pointer but you are not supposed to use it. Just try to click on the check-box. Once you start trying key presses to get out of what appears to be a dead end in the game, you find out that there is no immediate obvious response in the UI to what you are doing. But, with difficulty, you have figured it out. Congratulations, you are intelligent enough to go and smash your ship on that airlock over there.
3. I have dubbed these the Oculus Rift menu's. They are shown as floating in the cockpit. Navigation in them is hampered because most of the key bingings are still used for flight-controls. Looking right or left while flying and having screens pop up is really easy when you can do so. However I don't have an Oculus Rift so this type of menu is really annoying. If I touch my mouse weird stuff starts happening in the top right section of my screen when requesting to dock.
Dear developers, now is not the time to tell me "Don't text and drive.". I sitting behind my computer. Touching my mouse while writing an e-mail doesn't land me in my neighbors garden shed.
Apparently I'm not the only one who has found this out for even the training video tells you to stop moving so you only look weird twirling pirouettes instead of smashing into things.
Just have the woman on the PA tell everyone that texting while piloting a spaceship is a violation!
4. Station dock menu's. These I like. I haven't had much to do with them since I'm only flying around the station. But they are clearly a menu with options and tabs. You get to use your mouse in a way you expect in a menu. High marks all round.
Except... My graphics card starts a shouting match with my vacuum cleaner every time I open it up. I know why this is. It's the background image. It's presented on smoked glass that tastefully blurs my spaceship in the background or
something. Blurring is expensive to calculate and my GPU heats up. More then when I'm having an exciting space battle. So shopping on the station net is a bit disconcerting with such a loud box sitting next to me. Please can I have a
solid dark gray background? It is more relaxing than what we have now.
This just leaves the "more on this later" thread to tidy up: Default Keys. Mind you this is a pet peeve of mine. Throughout all computer interface design every one tries to be original and mess things up. This game is no exception. In fact It is aproaching prime examplehood at speed.
The default keys are, especially in the menus, weird and incomprehensible and consistently so. Even in the manual I dug up in this forum there are special key-codes for <<next tab>> and <<previous tab>>. There are key codes for this and everyone already knows these, but this game has to have something else.
This is really painful when I am gleefully told that I have to balance the cooling systems of the ship using the <<arrow keys>>. Thus they can not do what I expect them to do: Navigate though menus and screens. It is completely ridiculous. Like turning off the AC in my car is going to noticeably increase the toque of the engine.
More over, I'm expected to do this balancing while I'm being shot at by other players. Engines, Guns and Shields are things you decide on when you buy them. I am not taking my hands of the flight controls to fiddle with power
distribution to various cooling systems on the other side of the keyboard. If this has a big impact it will definitely dampen playability for us poor sods stuck with a mouse and keyboard. It is a stupid concept which should be taken
out of the game.
Arrow keys are arrow keys. It that so hard to understand?
ED should pay more attention to new players and on playing on regular hardware. You can't keep new players if you make them take notes on YouTube video's or download pdf's from the forum hoping to find the button they need to do
something. The keys that have expected behaviors should be used for them. Others should be explained in-game. And always with copious amounts of consistency.
The user interface has to look pretty. No doubt about that. But I'd rather have an interface that's not pretty than an interface that's not functional. What ED has now is mostly just pretty.
For those of you who are wondering why I haven't talked out the frame-shift drive or hyperspace. I haven't gotten to them yet. So far I've been happy driving around the block shooting cans.
The game looks good and once you've figured it out the gameply is really good. With all the difficulties I've had looking for the right button I can imagen other people who would quit a half an hour or so in. Which I think is a shame.
Even after this rant it is still a great game. It's just... I'll be back playing after dinner.
Just have a care for the clueless n00bs.
N00b...
I have been playing the game only a few days now and, well I have some mixed feelings about this game.
The TLDR version is: New players are lost in an inconsistent user interface and they have to look very hard before they can find out which button does what. Also there is no story to hint at what cool stuff might be ahead and more importantly how to get there.
Here is the "I have some time on my hands and I'm interested is what you have to say." version.
As I see Elite Dangerous at the moment it is a fancy toy for people who have played Elite or Frontier, loved it and think it's really great to see it updated to today's graphics. The game-play is also better if you have a set of flight controls and if you are really lucky an Oculus Rift headset.(I am not one of those.)
The old guard "get it" and are willing to slog through a week or two of figuring it out.(I am one of these.) But true new players need to be lead into this game and some help along the way. There is none of that right now.
First of all, give me back Misters Sue, Cripple & Sneer, attorneys at law, informing me of the death of my grandfather. Congratulations! Now you don't have to gut sturgeon for the rest of your life. You can meet your, probably untimely, demise in a new and interesting way, IN SPAAACE! Also don't ask us for help because we would bankrupt you within half an hour.
Next, new players can't fly spaceships. Teach them how to fly and how to use various ships systems and station facilities. Which is nothing like whats happening now.
Queue Adam Savage:
OK. Here is your motivation. You are stuck in a spaceship and have no idea
where you are or how to fly this thing. There are some leaky canisters floating
in front of you. They are radioactive or something and suddenly it comes to
you. You have to push the controls until all the canisters are blown to bits.
This is a little unfair because you have to click "Target Practice" to get there. But the "I have no idea how to pilot this thing" stands. I went to find out how on the internets. And I have found a help screen I don't remember how, it doesn't matter because it was about as helpful as a Unix man page for a program you don't know yet.
<snip>
I'm not alowed to post a link so just google this. --> "man page mplayer"
And have a look.
</snip>
Useful as a reference not so much as a teaching aid. Tell me, did you scroll all the way down?
As for training video's on the internets. When I am learning statistical data analysis and probability calculus they are a good teaching aid. A game has a series of well constructed scenario’s a story line and a sympathetic sidekick as a teacher. Having to quit the game to look it up on YouTube does a lot of damage to being immersed in the game.
Now for the training video's content. It looks OK but they have been made by a veteran player with an Oculus Rift. This is bad because without realizing it he forgets to tell key facts which new players need to know.
For instance, in the docking scenario I get a cue to press <<left-shift>> to open the communications menu. I did so. I got to see more of the dashboard for a little while but nothing else happened. So I go to the internets and play the launching and docking training video. At the crucial moment *this* was said...
"Press the button you have bound to UI-Panel Focus and switch to the left hand panel. Navigate to the contacts tab" And so on...
I'll admit it explains the procedure perfectly. However what is UI-Panel focus? Is it edible? And what button do I push to request docking permission? I think it is better to do these things in the game like this.
Start new players in the flight-school docking bay and have them launch and dock around the station. It's a tricky maneuver and once you master it you can misbehave in class by zipping around the station.
On longer flights show how to orient yourself and how to use the scanner. Find canisters and do your first stellar package delivery to earn enough money to buy a gun. You can go on from there by being interdicted and having a first fight.
This lack of training and teaching material and storyline to keep players paying attention to them also points out some errors in the design of the interface. Some of it can be explained by trying to keep Oculus Rift users happy. And some by the announcements of being able to walk around space-stations in a later release.
There are, so far as I can tell, four types of menu in ED. All of them are handled differently both in presentation and in how to use them. And I don't like it. Please can I have just one type of menu?
1. The KITT-style cockpit menu when requesting launch. This you navigate with the gas and break pedals, or keys. The arrow keys you expected to navigate with do something completely different. (more on that later.)
2. A launch checklist thing. I know not technically a menu. But annoying enough to be included. You get a mouse pointer but you are not supposed to use it. Just try to click on the check-box. Once you start trying key presses to get out of what appears to be a dead end in the game, you find out that there is no immediate obvious response in the UI to what you are doing. But, with difficulty, you have figured it out. Congratulations, you are intelligent enough to go and smash your ship on that airlock over there.
3. I have dubbed these the Oculus Rift menu's. They are shown as floating in the cockpit. Navigation in them is hampered because most of the key bingings are still used for flight-controls. Looking right or left while flying and having screens pop up is really easy when you can do so. However I don't have an Oculus Rift so this type of menu is really annoying. If I touch my mouse weird stuff starts happening in the top right section of my screen when requesting to dock.
Dear developers, now is not the time to tell me "Don't text and drive.". I sitting behind my computer. Touching my mouse while writing an e-mail doesn't land me in my neighbors garden shed.
Apparently I'm not the only one who has found this out for even the training video tells you to stop moving so you only look weird twirling pirouettes instead of smashing into things.
Just have the woman on the PA tell everyone that texting while piloting a spaceship is a violation!
4. Station dock menu's. These I like. I haven't had much to do with them since I'm only flying around the station. But they are clearly a menu with options and tabs. You get to use your mouse in a way you expect in a menu. High marks all round.
Except... My graphics card starts a shouting match with my vacuum cleaner every time I open it up. I know why this is. It's the background image. It's presented on smoked glass that tastefully blurs my spaceship in the background or
something. Blurring is expensive to calculate and my GPU heats up. More then when I'm having an exciting space battle. So shopping on the station net is a bit disconcerting with such a loud box sitting next to me. Please can I have a
solid dark gray background? It is more relaxing than what we have now.
This just leaves the "more on this later" thread to tidy up: Default Keys. Mind you this is a pet peeve of mine. Throughout all computer interface design every one tries to be original and mess things up. This game is no exception. In fact It is aproaching prime examplehood at speed.
The default keys are, especially in the menus, weird and incomprehensible and consistently so. Even in the manual I dug up in this forum there are special key-codes for <<next tab>> and <<previous tab>>. There are key codes for this and everyone already knows these, but this game has to have something else.
This is really painful when I am gleefully told that I have to balance the cooling systems of the ship using the <<arrow keys>>. Thus they can not do what I expect them to do: Navigate though menus and screens. It is completely ridiculous. Like turning off the AC in my car is going to noticeably increase the toque of the engine.
More over, I'm expected to do this balancing while I'm being shot at by other players. Engines, Guns and Shields are things you decide on when you buy them. I am not taking my hands of the flight controls to fiddle with power
distribution to various cooling systems on the other side of the keyboard. If this has a big impact it will definitely dampen playability for us poor sods stuck with a mouse and keyboard. It is a stupid concept which should be taken
out of the game.
Arrow keys are arrow keys. It that so hard to understand?
ED should pay more attention to new players and on playing on regular hardware. You can't keep new players if you make them take notes on YouTube video's or download pdf's from the forum hoping to find the button they need to do
something. The keys that have expected behaviors should be used for them. Others should be explained in-game. And always with copious amounts of consistency.
The user interface has to look pretty. No doubt about that. But I'd rather have an interface that's not pretty than an interface that's not functional. What ED has now is mostly just pretty.
For those of you who are wondering why I haven't talked out the frame-shift drive or hyperspace. I haven't gotten to them yet. So far I've been happy driving around the block shooting cans.
The game looks good and once you've figured it out the gameply is really good. With all the difficulties I've had looking for the right button I can imagen other people who would quit a half an hour or so in. Which I think is a shame.
Even after this rant it is still a great game. It's just... I'll be back playing after dinner.
Just have a care for the clueless n00bs.
N00b...