Elite / Frontier The greatest game ever?

[fierfly]

The question is, all these companies making space trader/combat games having Frontier/FFE as a pretty good base to draw inspiration from, hasn't grasped the fact that stunning graphics don't make a game, playability and making the effort to get it believable does. Rant over!

i don't think may game developement companies think this way these days, every thing is graphics orentated and game play and plot run a poor second

 

[Steve O B Have]

i don't think may game developement companies think this way these days, every thing is graphics orentated and game play and plot run a poor second

...or they start out with all the great intentions of making the game play interesting but get sidelined by the graphics - and to be fair game players that don't get sold by pretty graphics and are all about the 'game play' are few and far between. Game houses spend enormous amounts of cash on making their games look pretty and like you say, game play and plot run a poor second.

There are a few games out there (and I mean few) that fulfill both requirements quite well but none recently that I have come across in the space opera genre.

 

[Sir.Tj]

It's a shame that it seems this is the way some of the gaming industry has gone.

But I agree steve there are some very good games out there where the work has been put into but as you say very few and far between.

Lets hope E4 will raise the bar again.

 

[DraQ]

Thats the point isn't it! There has been nothing produced that has come close to matching the pure gameplay and scale of E/FE/FFE

With FE2/FFE the situation looks like this:

Imagine long linear scale or spectrum, on one end there is playability, on the other there is realism. Space-sim developers have always struggled to find the sweet spot between those two extremes - arcadey, accessible shooter, and full-blown space simulator, where both "space" and "simulator" are more than just buzzwords. Now, D. Braben came along, glued the ends of the scale together and wrote "Frontier" in the spot where they met - as if the rest of the scale, the whole range of compromises, didn't even exist.

The question is, all these companies making space trader/combat games having Frontier/FFE as a pretty good base to draw inspiration from, hasn't grasped the fact that stunning graphics don't make a game, playability and making the effort to get it believable does. Rant over!

Because purty screenshots help with the hype. :/
*grumble*