[O.A. VIDEO] Does Elite Dangerous Have a Content Problem?

It is all subjective and depends on what types of games you like, ultimately those that do not favour true open world games will not like ED.

Stories which directly involve the player are highly overrated and IMO ED's default approach of the player being in an open world with the world story evolving in the background (at least in part in response to collective player activities - as opposed to any individual having a direct influence) is the right approach for ED.

ED has plenty of content and while the game mechanics may seem basic they are at least on par with the norm for these types of games and with the 3.x series of updates are slated to be improved in a lot of areas.

ED does not lack mechanics IMO, the mechanics and UI could do with further refinements perhaps but FD seem to be on the case if the initial 3.0 updates are anything to go by.

The only thing I do concede where the repetition aspect is concerned is with FD's approach to the Ram Tah mission. The sites themselves are fine, the principle of unlocking the Blueprints is reasonable (on balance), but the Obelisk unlock mechanics are pretty bad given that landing a ship close enough to some of the sites can be nigh on impossible.

Too much directed content in a game kills the longevity and enjoyment more than any feeling of repetition IMO. ED is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination BUT no game ever is.

Try to focus too much on one type of gameplay and the rest typically suffers, ED seems to take a balanced approach across the board and on the most part is successful at doing so despite any perceived flaws.
 
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verminstar

Banned
lip
I haven't noticed that at all. I played exclusively in open for ages without an engineered ship apart from FSD boost. No issues here.

Everyone has a different experience in open though...Im in open now 100% of my playtime, dont even mode flip anymore cos wing missions I can only do one or two at a time anyway. Point is, all I see is toxicity in open and if my ship wasnt engineered, Id be in solo and wouldnt even consider playing in open without at least some engineering.

Some the salt exchanges Ive seen in open since I started playing in open have been...well lets just say its not a very pleasant place to play in ^
 
People typically stop playing Grand Theft Auto 5 / Far Cry 4 / Fallout 4, etc. after they finish the story missions. Whats the time spent? 50 - 65 hours on average? Steam says I've spent 220 hours in Skyrim.

I have well over 4,700 hours in Elite. No matter how good any story mode is that is put in the game, no matter how deep and immersive, there are players out there who will finish it and go "Meh, is that all?" then move onto the next fad game.

Neither Elite, nor Elite: Dangerous, were written for that type of player. E: D is the Flappy Bird of space sims. Well, at least it used to be before the monstrous amount of buffs. E: D is flawed and has multiple issues with even stranger solutions (that I strongly diasagree with on a game design level), but by all that's holy it's still a damned good game. E: D was written for players like me and I love that.

I have 535 hours in FO4 and not finished it yet, but then I do have a lot of mods, and there have been a few restarts and its still anywhere close to the amount of time I have in ED. :p
 
lip

Everyone has a different experience in open though...Im in open now 100% of my playtime, dont even mode flip anymore cos wing missions I can only do one or two at a time anyway. Point is, all I see is toxicity in open and if my ship wasnt engineered, Id be in solo and wouldnt even consider playing in open without at least some engineering.

Some the salt exchanges Ive seen in open since I started playing in open have been...well lets just say its not a very pleasant place to play in ^

I hardly see any commanders anyway. And if I do I treat them like the homicidal NPCs. Safer that way.
 

verminstar

Banned
I hardly see any commanders anyway. And if I do I treat them like the homicidal NPCs. Safer that way.

Im probably just unlucky cos the other 99% of the times its a ghost town...literally nobody fer days at a time...then when ye do meet someone, ye get an hour of concentrated salt cos ye wont stand and fight and they cant catch ye cos they in a meta build tank. I love interdicting them, then running away to see how long it takes fer them to lose the rag with me...

I know its not gonna make me popular anytime soon...but Im usually laughing so hard when they lose the plot that such details are trivial at best ^
 
I have 535 hours in FO4 and not finished it yet, but then I do have a lot of mods, and there have been a few restarts and its still anywhere close to the amount of time I have in ED. :p
I have over 600 hours in FO4 according to Steam, and that is vanilla plus expansions. Probably most of that was spent on settlement development - both initial builds and reworking what I already had after an expansion. Compare that with 275 hrs in FO:NV and 85 hrs in FO3. With Skyrim I have over 1400hrs on record according to Steam (but that was with a number of replays due to bugs halting gameplay). With the X games most lasted around 1000 hrs without mods (much longer with). According to Steam, in ESO I have 2400 hrs but a large portion of that is time sinking rather than what I consider enjoyable gameplay per se.

With ED I have over 2000 hrs universe time (>4000hrs according to Steam) in-game and do not see any possibility of me abandoning the game any time soon (and probably doubling my game time at least). Some call the content repetitive, but I do not see it that way. I can see things I would perhaps like to see improved (current mechanics wise) but none of those things would be game changers - just minor enhancements in the main.

Where ED is concerned the areas I am really waiting for (other than known pending 3.x additions/improvements) are:-
  1. New SRV variants and SRV related activities
  2. Atmospheric planetary landings/flight
  3. Space legs - tentatively

There are possibly other things but that is probably the top three on my personal wish list.
 
I hardly see any commanders anyway. And if I do I treat them like the homicidal NPCs. Safer that way.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you. ;)

I think you have probably just reinforced verminster's point about the toxicity of Open - you choose to ignore and avoid, verminstar chooses to stand and fight (from the sounds of things). How much toxicity any given player is likely to encounter will vary based on a wide variety of factors. However, this distinction also reinforces my point about engineers only being required for PvP (along with the associated metas I might add), for PvE engineers are a useful tool allowing for a greater diversity in build choices.
 

verminstar

Banned
Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you. ;)

I think you have probably just reinforced verminster's point about the toxicity of Open - you choose to ignore and avoid, verminstar chooses to stand and fight (from the sounds of things). How much toxicity any given player is likely to encounter will vary based on a wide variety of factors. However, this distinction also reinforces my point about engineers only being required for PvP (along with the associated metas I might add), for PvE it is a useful tool allowing for a greater diversity in build choices.

No I dont stand and fight...I run and troll. If they toxic, then I make it worse and then stand back and laugh at how pathetic they are. But I wont fight...thats exactly what they want and exactly what I wont give them. If they do catch me, Ill take the rebuy and start again...small price to pay fer the belly laughs I get in return.

Point being however that without engineering, I wouldnt be in open at all ^
 
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No I dont stand and fight...I run and troll. If they toxic, then I make it worse and then stand back and laugh at how pathetic they are. But I wont fight...thats exactly what they want and exactly what I wont give them. If they do catch me, Ill take the rebuy and start again...small price to pay fer the belly laughs I get in return.

Point being however that without engineering, I wouldnt be in open at all ^

Sounds like fun, like aggravating a phonescammer. :D

IDT I'm in still in Open purely because of Engineering because I started playing there since 2014, and just don't modeswitch except for technical reasons like hires screenies or outpost dockblock; but I don't have a clean frame of reference so to speak, because I can't NOT do Engineering. Not because I feel I can't survive, but because of the Gran Turismo mechanic effect.

If you let me mess with modifying something I am totally there because I can. I find it very enjoyable in most games to tweak a ride into just how I want, or as close as possible. It was a bit sad that my Vulture now has so little power considerations that I fly it all-energy, but overall I like the vast array of modifications available. Dragging up an E-rated stock vehicle into something truly your own is fun.

As far as having more stuff to do with those ships, yeah, that could stand some beefing up. >__>
 
Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you. ;)

I think you have probably just reinforced verminster's point about the toxicity of Open - you choose to ignore and avoid, verminstar chooses to stand and fight (from the sounds of things). How much toxicity any given player is likely to encounter will vary based on a wide variety of factors. However, this distinction also reinforces my point about engineers only being required for PvP (along with the associated metas I might add), for PvE engineers are a useful tool allowing for a greater diversity in build choices.

Nothing to do with paranoia. What a great RPG that was. It is about preferring to be safe then sorry.

Basically I watch them like a hawk.
 
Nothing to do with paranoia. What a great RPG that was. It is about preferring to be safe then sorry.

Basically I watch them like a hawk.
It was coining a popular turn of phrase in jest - hence the wink smiley, but I do know where you are coming from.
 
I agree. The game weight seems to have been funneled into engineers instead of say polishing the Power Play and BGS as natural, large scope role-playing centres of players investment.
Hardly - besides which, FD are not finished with 3.x and we do not know EVERYTHING they have on the change list. Power Play related changes are not beyond the pale - as for the BGS there is nothing wrong with it IMO.
 
They absolutely have a content problem but what is even worse: They have a priority problem. It doesn't make any sense to me why they devote so much time and 2 expantions on planetary stuff in this SPACE SIMULATION. Me and a lot of other people do not care in the least about planets. I didn't buy horizons for that reason and i will not buy any planet related content. I want more options in space, more activities, more ships that are suited for different roles and new modules that go along with that. I don't get anything out of landing on a planet and driving arround. Other games do that much better because they are specifically made to do that. They need to rethink their priorities and focus on the core game wich is a SPACE SIMULATION SANDBOX. EvE is a prime example for that. Just because Star Citizen might have planetary landing along with other feature creep doesn't mean Elite has to have it.
 
To people, who want atmospheric landings and space legs. And I mean not in general, I want it too, but right now, before making Elite an actual game, not a screenshot simulator. WHY ?
Except for Thargoid fights there are literally zero end game content, zero ingame story content, that player could participate not in a way of a fking text RPG. And even in that way, story in Elite is such a weak part, it’s ridiculous. Whole Thargoid invasion is an unbelievable fail and it’s just keep getting worse and worse.
And you want space legs and atmospheric landings ? WHY ? To do what ? Make screenshots ? Buy a screenshot simulator then. You already received Horizons with planetary landings, which is considerate by most players a failed season overall. What you can do on those planets, except for material grinding and making screenshot ? Eyeballing for geysers ?

Before even thinking talking about those things, Elite needs:
Complete exploration overhaul
Fixing all major bugs, fixing instancing issues completely
Removing relog-based gameplay completely
Reducing grind by A LOT
Make some serious work on story and logic
Add challenging, interesting and fun non-alien scenarios and NPC’s for end game players (and more alien also)
Add story missions, with some voice acting, serious scripting, multiple stages and etc. Basically some kind of Squadron 42 but simpler of course. So player could actually participate in something interesting and not see just consequences.
Making multicrew and wings viable.

And many more.
Only after that you can talk about adding more features, like atmospheric landings.
 
They absolutely have a content problem but what is even worse: They have a priority problem. It doesn't make any sense to me why they devote so much time and 2 expantions on planetary stuff in this SPACE SIMULATION. Me and a lot of other people do not care in the least about planets. I didn't buy horizons for that reason and i will not buy any planet related content. I want more options in space, more activities, more ships that are suited for different roles and new modules that go along with that. I don't get anything out of landing on a planet and driving arround. Other games do that much better because they are specifically made to do that. They need to rethink their priorities and focus on the core game wich is a SPACE SIMULATION SANDBOX. EvE is a prime example for that. Just because Star Citizen might have planetary landing along with other feature creep doesn't mean Elite has to have it.
The Elite series of games had planetary flight and landing LONG before Star Citizen - if you think EvE is so great then go play that, but if you play ED you have to accept that the planetary aspect is part of the road map and will almost certainly play a key part in the future of ED. Sure you can stick with the base game of ED, but don't be surprised if a lot of ED's future content passes you by.

You want an exclusively space based sim? I can point at various games that accommodate for that crowd specifically.

ED was never marketed as an RPG, you want story based RPG gameplay then there are plenty of other games out there for that.
 
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