The main thing I remember from my first day of playing ED was spending half a hour trying to figure out how to access the commodity market. As a veteran of the old Elite/FE2/FFE games (and from reading the game manual from beginning to end before playing), I knew "trading" was a major component of the game so there had to be a commodity market around here someplace. It never occurred to me that FD would make the starter location (Trevethick Dock, LHS 3447) someplace that didn't have a commodity market.
I want to revive this thread because I think there are some really great anecdotes here and it’s a nice corollary to FDev’s 25th anniversary thread.
My first attempt was, in a word, electric. I was equal parts nervous and excited to finally give elite dangerous a try. I had been reading about it for months and watched a number of videos. I remember watching a tutorial video wherein someone described their viper as “basically a cop car.” I can’t find the video anymore so if anyone knows the one I’m talking about and is able to supply a link, please do!
I ran through all of the tutorials and except the one for advanced combat. I got smoked a few times by the NPC training ships and decided that I would hold off on combat until I was able to afford a more powerful starship. I remember being really impressed by the hologram UI (the ship scanner, throttle and power distributed displays). It seemed really high tech and cool to me. When I finally got behind the controls in my sidewinder I ran through the default pre-flight tests. When I finally launched, I flew a few hundred meters into the system and marveled at the pristine beauty of the slowly rotating station against the backdrop of the nearby planet and star.
I thought, I’ll just be a humble miner. I’ll keep to myself and hopefully nobody will kill me. I didn’t even realize that I had to outfit a mining. Laser and refinery first. This is a good example of the low expectations I had coming into the game. Most other games do a lot of hand holding so it didn’t even occur to me that the mining tools would not be included as stock, default equipment. After some hesitation, I kicked my Sidey into high gear and initiated supercruise. I targeted an in-system asteroid field and started flying out there.
I was quickly overwhelmed by the massive scale of the game. Most of all, I felt really really
alone. I was actually scared playing the game. The thin metal of my tiny ship’s hull seemed like negligible protection against the endless vacuum of space. I made it about halfway to the asteroid field before I decided to turn back to the station. I was just too scared to keep going. I wanted to shelter in the safety of the station and figure out my next move. This is when I planned out the trip to Alpha Centauri that I detailednin an earlier post.
After becoming discouraged by the enormous distance between my starting system and Alpha centauri, I actually logged out of the game. It was too much for me! It’s funny to think back on it now. But I think this really illustrates the amazing job FDev have done in creating a gaming experience that lives up to its DANGEROUS name. The galaxy really felt dangerous, too dangerous to fly around in without a decent plan. I closed out of the game and spent a few minutes playing Far Cry: Primal. If you’re not familiar, Primal is a game set in 10,000 BC. Compared to elite, the game is complete trash. But I’m fascinated by early human history as well as futurism, space, sci-fi, etc.
It was pretty profound to switch from a game world set 1300 years in the future, to one set 12,000 years in the past. In the few minutes I spent running around Paleolithic Europe, I was inspired to give Elite another go. I started thinking about the miracle of the human condition. We could have so easily died out in our early days, but, somehow, we persisted. We adapted. We survived. Maybe someone in 3305 would feel the same way about their ancestors who lived in the early 21st century.
Feeling inspired, I loaded elite dangerous back up on my Xbox1. I decided to accept a boom data delivery mission. It seemed relatively straightforward, and would net me 10k credits (egad!). A few of those and I’d be able to zoom around in one of those fancy haulers (lol).
That was about 7 months ago. Since then, I’ve fallen in love with elite and the amazing community of people who play it all over the world. In those seven months, I was floored by the incredibly alien appearance of the thargoid interceptors. I discovered Obsodianant, and Down to Earth Astronomy’s YouTube channels. I started looking forward to my drive home from work, when I would check their channels and listen to their videos playing over my car’s Bluetooth audio system. I learned to love the introductory “hello guys and gals, I’m obsidianant and welcome back to elite
dangerous.”
Down to earth astronomy taught me how to make hundreds of millions running passengers between Robigo and Sothis. I had been running transport missions in my dolphin for several weeks, but this new method changed everything. Some time later, I purchased my first python. I had read about how this ship was the best balance between firepower, maneuverability, and protection! I tried to outfit it for combat but I quickly ran out of credits.
Several millions later, I outfitted my first dedicated combat ship, a vulture equipped with a single pulse laser and a single multicannnon. Everything seemed to be coming full circle. I had no idea how much more there was out there to discover.
Later, I outfitted a diamondback explorer, and started to unlock the engineers. I visited a thargoid surface site and was chilled to the bone by the haunting sound design. After many months spent unlocking Palin, I returned to the site with a thargoid sensor and probe secured in my corrosion resistant cargo racks. I got the chills when that mysterious door slid open to reveal a completely alien structure. I zoomed around in 3rd person camera mode when the thargoid device burst to life and projected a star map around the room.
Seven months later, I have hundreds of millions in credits. I have a beautiful cutter, a viscious battle python, a robigo runner (python) and a diamondback explorer that can send me 73 light years away in an instant.
I urge all of you to remember that first attempt (p.s. sorry for my misspelling in the thread title) but also remember the amazing, strange journey that has taken you from that first launch to wherever you are now.
Have fun, appreciate all the amazing things this game has to offer, and most importantly, FLY DANGEROUSLY!
See you out in the black, CMDRs!
o7,
Woland
