Ship Handling - (potentially) the death of the game
No doubt I will see hate in response to this post. I am an Beta backer so recently got access to the combat scenarios in the game.
Combat was never the strong point of FE:2 or FFE. I am well aware that this is certanly not the only aspect of the game to come. But, it is already obvious that it is much more important to ED than it ever was to FE2... Put simply, it has to be HAS to be playable and accessible to appeal to a mass audience.
I am a veteran of flight simulators from way back in the 80's, and am more than capable of flying the beast that is DCS World, as well as newtonian space combat games like I-War. ED should not be a struggle for anyone with that background in games.
Having established my "abilities" and background before anyone yells "NOOB", my first impression of ED's flight is, simply, that the handling is beyond awful. The lack of Yaw unnecessarily prohibits precision aiming of fixed mount weapons. How long does it take to make a 180 degree turn with yaw alone? In excess of a minute? Roll-and-pitch of course handles better, but is atrocious for fine-tuning a shot. This was always a problem in the original Elite, it detracted from that game, and detracts from ED. Fighting against the controls is NOT fun, no matter the nostalgia value.
The other major issue I am having at the moment is that fixed mount weapons appear to have no degree of convergence. E.g. in X-wing alliance you could set guns to auto-converge at target range, or fix the convergence to various marks. Even in the first combat scenario shooting turkeys, the lack of convergence becomes apparent.
Some other (popular) space games have gotten away with no convergence function (Freespace2 comes to mind), and it's usually through mounting all the weapons close together. The few ships in FS2 that had off-centre guns (the Ursa bomber for example) - those off centre guns were dead weight other than for hitting skyscraper-sized targets! So, please sort this out!
Gimballed weapons are, between the poor handling and lack of gun convergence, by default, a thousand times more effective. I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be better and more user-friendly, but they seem overly dominant in what I've done so far.
If basic handling of the ship and weapons doesn't improve, I fear I won't be playing ED very much. You might shift boxes on shelves with hype in the short term, but a game has to be FUN to bring people back!
Finally, on a less important, but nonetheless relevant design note : who chose the (awful) HUD colours? Deus Ex Human Revolution was justly criticised for it's yellow hud, and indeed, yellow tinge to all of the graphics. The awful colour scheme was widely criticised as a "Pish Filter" - please don't follow suit with this in ED. At least give us some options to change it!
No doubt I will see hate in response to this post. I am an Beta backer so recently got access to the combat scenarios in the game.
Combat was never the strong point of FE:2 or FFE. I am well aware that this is certanly not the only aspect of the game to come. But, it is already obvious that it is much more important to ED than it ever was to FE2... Put simply, it has to be HAS to be playable and accessible to appeal to a mass audience.
I am a veteran of flight simulators from way back in the 80's, and am more than capable of flying the beast that is DCS World, as well as newtonian space combat games like I-War. ED should not be a struggle for anyone with that background in games.
Having established my "abilities" and background before anyone yells "NOOB", my first impression of ED's flight is, simply, that the handling is beyond awful. The lack of Yaw unnecessarily prohibits precision aiming of fixed mount weapons. How long does it take to make a 180 degree turn with yaw alone? In excess of a minute? Roll-and-pitch of course handles better, but is atrocious for fine-tuning a shot. This was always a problem in the original Elite, it detracted from that game, and detracts from ED. Fighting against the controls is NOT fun, no matter the nostalgia value.
The other major issue I am having at the moment is that fixed mount weapons appear to have no degree of convergence. E.g. in X-wing alliance you could set guns to auto-converge at target range, or fix the convergence to various marks. Even in the first combat scenario shooting turkeys, the lack of convergence becomes apparent.
Some other (popular) space games have gotten away with no convergence function (Freespace2 comes to mind), and it's usually through mounting all the weapons close together. The few ships in FS2 that had off-centre guns (the Ursa bomber for example) - those off centre guns were dead weight other than for hitting skyscraper-sized targets! So, please sort this out!
Gimballed weapons are, between the poor handling and lack of gun convergence, by default, a thousand times more effective. I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be better and more user-friendly, but they seem overly dominant in what I've done so far.
If basic handling of the ship and weapons doesn't improve, I fear I won't be playing ED very much. You might shift boxes on shelves with hype in the short term, but a game has to be FUN to bring people back!
Finally, on a less important, but nonetheless relevant design note : who chose the (awful) HUD colours? Deus Ex Human Revolution was justly criticised for it's yellow hud, and indeed, yellow tinge to all of the graphics. The awful colour scheme was widely criticised as a "Pish Filter" - please don't follow suit with this in ED. At least give us some options to change it!
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