So I checked out Elite after ditching it for Star Citizen

[Fizzatron]

I became leery of ED's longevity when FDev decided not to charge something monthly for MMO, whilst at the same time ditching plans to enable offline-only.

So you must be even more leery of Star Citizen's longevity then, it hasn't even released as an actual product yet.

 

[Far Beyond Driven]

The reason I count it as a game these days is because I figured out how to fly an actual spaceship in it using my PS4 controller, so it "feels" like a game rather than a point-and-click tool. This is how I do my exploring in SE, though I admit that sometimes I implement the point-n-click "fast travel" mode to get where I want to be.

What's lacking is any sort of reward system, danger (ships don't crash), or progression system. I use it more for sightseeing and a primitive flight simulator.

Remember first playing ED and zooming and zooming and realizing the scale of the galaxy? A moment that stayed with me till this day. Never thought it could be topped, till Space Engine did it, until the zoom out and all the little dots were galaxies not stars...

Good for teaching people scale and that moment was worth the price of admission alone. Fun to partake of with kids and elderly parents or grandparents.

I also play Space Engine like I'm exploring in ED, I would love to get a Phantom cockpit mod.

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

The problem is that there are no role gaps. This game's ships already overlap (especially in the medium multirole category) heavily. Exploration, PvP, PvE, stealth (cold running/silent running), planetary ops, mining, trading - this game's ships already cover every base multiple times. So many hulls are adaptable to AX, any PvP or PvE combat scenario, and so on, because modularity. And the content is stagnant, so new ships don't have much purpose.

This is why the game doesn't get new ships. Any new ships will be purely cosmetic without completely new gameplay elements and accompanying functionality. On top of that, Frontier probably don't want to spend time developing ships when they have all this content planned and are saddled with stamping out existing bugs. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see new ships and old ships from 1984, but there just isn't anything that a new ship could reasonably be expected to do better (or worse) than anything we have.

Cannibalizing the roles of popular hulls won't win points with players anyway, especially if they spent development time on that instead of giving us new things to do, or at least fixing some of the current problems with the game.

The role gaps in the large ships is pretty vast, though. We have a military ship that's the best trader, miner, and a decent combat ship. An incredible combat ship, an incredible exploration ship, a middling whale, a terrible passenger liner, and a middling cargo ship. A lot of the roles are covered by the Cutter and Vette because the others are just not that good.

 

[Frankymole]

The role gaps in the large ships is pretty vast, though. We have a military ship that's the best trader, miner, and a decent combat ship. An incredible combat ship, an incredible exploration ship, a middling whale, a terrible passenger liner, and a middling cargo ship. A lot of the roles are covered by the Cutter and Vette because the others are just not that good.

Since modules make ships infinitely customisable, nearly any ship can do any role really, just some are better than others.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

The role gaps in the large ships is pretty vast, though. We have a military ship that's the best trader, miner, and a decent combat ship. An incredible combat ship, an incredible exploration ship, a middling whale, a terrible passenger liner, and a middling cargo ship. A lot of the roles are covered by the Cutter and Vette because the others are just not that good.

Well Cutter is kind of nice all around ship. Not a great combat ship, but as armoured trader can do its job, can handle PVE combat, and for PVP can have enough defences to make high jump in most situations. Not a great explorer though.

 

[metatheurgist]

Since modules make ships infinitely customisable, nearly any ship can do any role really, just some are better than others.

Imagine if engineering let you bend a ship towards a role instead of being a mandatory 5 step upgrade.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Since modules make ships infinitely customisable, nearly any ship can do any role really, just some are better than others.

Book 2, morphed with Book 6?

 

[El Guido]

As many people probably know, the current drama in Star Citizen enticed me to check out elite again(2800 hours in Elite, about 1000 in Star citizen), i found mysefl playing it 3 hours a day daily even though I dont think it will last me very long.


Things I learned to appreciate in this game that I did not before:

There is relatively good amount of things to do in elite.
The space combat is very good.
The pvp is good, but could be better if engineers were removed from the game.
The galaxy is huge, you can find stuff.
While its not hard core spaceship simulator like Star Citizen with interiors, long travelling on foot etc, it often skips the boring parts for the sake of fun (i still want interiors).
The UI is clean, easy to understand.
Ships handle well, its not overcomplicated and you know what to expect from your ship.
The optimization is space is good.
Aliens.
Even though barebones, there are actual politics, BGS, and game tries to be alive.
Outfitting has a lot of depth.
Weapons have learning curve.
Ship builds have learning curve.
In my opinion, exploration suite is pretty good.
Relatively bug free, networking is not.
I prefer Elite supercruise over quantom beacon rubbish from star citizen.
Star map and system map are goods.
You can freely express your opinion on these forums, even though there are whiteknights here too. On star citizen spectrum by expressing your negative opinion you get banned for "indirectly attacking CIG staff". The cultism is very heavy over there.
You keep your progress indefinitely.


Now the bad things...

What happend to developing this game ? Where are all the new things that were promised, where is the feature rework that they talked about ?
They said they are not letting elite die, words are cool but where are actions ?
Why was i greeted with Cutscene when i launch the game with moving PNG's like this is some sort of highschool indie project game ?
Why keep reusing old assets and content ? Where is the new stuff.
What happened to fixing optimization for ground combat ?
New ships ? Hello ? There are so many role gaps, price gaps on the market ?
What happened to implementing CQC into main game ?
Powerplay open only .. What happened to it ? Powerplay was meant to be pvp addition to the game.
The guild system is barebones and abandoned.
Crew system needed major changes since its released, its still borked and useless. Still can use only 1 npc crew member at once.
Salvaging ?

I would add that the holographic instruments in ED cockpits are more impressive. Especially in VR. And the cockpit of the Gutamaya Imperial Cutter is the place to be.
But was it the pilot's federation that persuaded Falcon De Lacy, Lakon Spaceways, Core Dynamics, Saud Kruger, Zorgon Peterson and Gutamaya all to adopt identical UI systems in their ships?

Also planets. ED planet and moons more believable. And walking around in VR really brings home the barren ness and lonliness. Whilst still providing the cosmic beauty of the skies above you.

 

[El Guido]

I guess we should all be thankful that you're not able to use a third view camera to take screenshots in that position.

I have to assume it's a Toto toilet because I'll bet there's no toilet paper around and those things have that little spray device that cleans your bottom.

All that automated machinery buzzing around your vitals has got to be risky