The Old vs the New and player age

[Riktar]

As someone who has been here since beta (forum member since July 2014) and as someone who has come and gone in the game more times than I can count I find myself wondering if newcomers to the game appreciate/acknowledge all the changes (good and bad) that have occurred over the years.

Engineers? What's an engineered component?

No automated docking or launching. I remember laughing until the tears started forming while I watched some HILARIOUS Youtube videos of newcomers trying to master the basics of landing and launching.

No automated "Cruise control". I remember playing a game with myself seeing how low I could get the ETA to my destination without having to make the "loop of shame". Or seeing how fast I could over throttle the ship while fighting to keep my destination in line with the station while the big red SLOW DOWN was displayed on my screen and SUCCESSFULLY exit into normal space outside the station.

Or flying to my destinations through fierce cosmic storms. Uphill. Both ways...

There is more to be sure but those are some of the notable things.

Have any of you "seasoned" commanders taken a fledgling pilot under your wing? Have you discussed your individual perspective(s)? Have you waxed on how "Flight Assist Off" isn't like it was "When I started..." or some other similar topic.

Just for grins I am going to brush away several layers of dust from the cockpit/controls and launch out of a station, navigate to a station/planet and land on manual. I may be forgetting how relaxing and therapeutic it is to have FULL control doing something without worrying/thinking about anything else.

Thoughts?

 

[aRJay]

I remember when the advice on how to have a relaxed docking experience was to remove the docking computer as that was just waiting for you to relax your guard and then would try to kill you.

 

[Riktar]

Oh my word! I forgot about the early versions of that flying your ship into the toaster rack on more than 1 occasion!!

 

[Ryder7]

Late player POV here:
I find it very interesting to read from "older" players, and the fact that a live game had run long enough to have time to build its own History is truly fascinating. I enjoy digging the archives of early explorations and so on.

One thing that makes me mad though is when people of my "era", aka pretty new, just jump onto it, watch/read exploit guides* while not giving a damn about the context, buy and build a meta within days, and then you'd find them trashing the game and Fdev about not having content/nothing to do/no depth, complaining this is repelling newer players whereas the irony is that their reviews are the repellent IMHO.
People running the game for thousand hours for ten years highlighting issues is a thing i can understand, people thinking they understood everything in 3 months I don't get it.

*Of course the game being old, thousands of guides and calculations have been made, but maybe just learn by trying and failling, whenever trapped in a dead-end, you can rely on experienced people to help you out, and that's a thing early players couldn't do, but at the very least don't spoil to yourself the game's mysteries all at first I believe.

 

[Riktar]

And when you consider that (on average) players that were going through puberty at the beginning of the game are now old enough to drink, well that's just remarkable...

And back in the day, this very forum was the only "guide" available. While I never kept track, it seemed like I was on this forum as much, if not more sometimes than the game!

Also, there have been (and still are) some remarkable "characters" that fly in these forums as well as in the Milky Way.

 

[Lhorndra]

Late player POV here:
I find it very interesting to read from "older" players, and the fact that a live game had run long enough to have time to build its own History is truly fascinating. I enjoy digging the archives of early explorations and so on.

One thing that makes me mad though is when people of my "era", aka pretty new, just jump onto it, watch/read exploit guides* while not giving a damn about the context, buy and build a meta within days, and then you'd find them trashing the game and Fdev about not having content/nothing to do/no depth, complaining this is repelling newer players whereas the irony is that their reviews are the repellent IMHO.
People running the game for thousand hours for ten years highlighting issues is a thing i can understand, people thinking they understood everything in 3 months I don't get it.

*Of course the game being old, thousands of guides and calculations have been made, but maybe just learn by trying and failling, whenever trapped in a dead-end, you can rely on experienced people to help you out, and that's a thing early players couldn't do, but at the very least don't spoil to yourself the game's mysteries all at first I believe.

THIS!

 

[Planewalker]

Ahh, yes.

Mining manually without limpets and moving small amounts of rare cargo in my matchbox T6 "Bumblebee" is how i made my first million in the game.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

At what point do you transition from new to old? Is it hours? Years? How many versions you have seen?

I am in my fifth year now, so I started pretty much at the halfway point. I've played just shy of 3000 hours, but I've missed all the major changes (goids, engineers, engineers again, you name it) apart from Odyssey, the split and now the Thargoid war.

I've read up on the history of the game, but I've not lived it. Being somewhere in the middle, I'm a bit annoyed by both the veterans that can't stop going "way back when", "remember Salami" or "roll back engineers" (after what, seven years?), unable to accept that the game is and always will be changing, as well as the newer players that, as mentioned above, know nothing about the game, grind out some best start make credits grind guide from Youtube for a few ten hours at best and then declare the game a failed boring grindfest with nothing in it.

 

[St0rmFury]

I started my career a few months before the start of the Azimuth saga and followed some guides on how to shortcut the engineer unlock and material farming. I mainly only follow the crashed conda & HGE guide, still haven't visited Dav's Hope (and don't plan to).

Somehow I had enough encoded mats to G5 my first FSD without visiting Jameson's gravesite, I did a bit of wake scanning too before deciding it's too tedious.

For raw mats, I got it from mining and scanning for planets with high % of the mats I'm looking for and hopping from one geological site to another. It's only many months later that I know about the crystalline forest, which has since become my preferred method of stocking up on raw mats.

I was floundering aimlessly for a while before discovering my current squadron (there aren't many players in my region) and the vets took me under their wing and taught me the finer points of ED. They helped me with massacre stacking and I was able to afford a fleet carrier within my first year of playing.

I can't change the past, but I do wonder if I would have still continued playing if I didn't follow those guides or joined my squadron. Younger me would have power through the game without depending on too many guides and make many mistakes along the way. Current me prefers a safer career without too much setback if I died.

I'm probably the only one in my squad still playing, and while I'm not as active as I used to be I still log in at least once a week to farm ARX and take part in CGs if the rewards are enticing enough. Hopefully U18 will change this.

 

[Vernier]

At what point do you transition from new to old? Is it hours? Years? How many versions you have seen?

First started in 1989, (or was it '90?). Played everyday after school. Had an "Elite" notebook of locations, commodity prices, and trade route. Moved on to Unix in college, and never played the old game again. Returned to Elite when I saw a Youtube video about Horizons.

I remember the version I played had a very expensive docking computer. Spent many, many hours leaning how to dock at Lave--fly out of the spaceport and try to dock back in. It was fun. I think I have now put in more hours into the game as a grumpy adult than I did as a pimply teenager!

O7

V

 

[Ryder7]

First started in 1989, (or was it '90?). Played everyday after school. Had an "Elite" notebook of locations, commodity prices, and trade route. Moved on to Unix in college, and never played the old game again. Returned to Elite when I saw a Youtube video about Horizons.

I remember the version I played had a very expensive docking computer. Spent many, many hours leaning how to dock at Lave--fly out of the spaceport and try to dock back in. It was fun. I think I have now put in more hours into the game as a grumpy adult than I did as a pimply teenager!

O7

V

From nowadays, you discover Elite and think:
"Damn! They 've been playing for ten years!"

Then ,as you dig deeper and deeper onto the lore, you correct this by:
"Damn! They've been playing since 1984, that's three years prior to my birth!"

I kinda like the 70s-80s scifi era, most likely because my dad was a fan, so I 've watched movies and read books he had from that period when I was younger. So those polygon stations, gigantic random shaped motherships, retro-future laser pistols, orange hud, and freelancer trading while harrased by pirates, kinda look familiar for me. I wish i could make him play Elite, but the grumpy old man is the generation that considers watching TV a perfectly fine activity whereas video games a brainless kid hobby. But now that I'm spamming him with ED screenshots and so on, I can feel he is changing his mind a little bit each time his jaw drops about how that media evolved since.

 

[aRJay]

From nowadays, you discover Elite and think:
"Damn! They 've been playing for ten years!"

Then ,as you dig deeper and deeper onto the lore, you correct this by:
"Damn! They've been playing since 1984, that's three years prior to my birth!"

It is even worse than that as some of us were in our late twenties when we started in1984/5.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

See, this is one of the things that bugs me a bit about "veterans" - please know that this is not meant rude or condescending. You were NOT playing this game since 1984 or whatever. You played another game in the franchise. This game isn't Elite 1984, nor is it FE2 or FFE.

As someone who came late to the franchise - I had glossed over the Elite games until I found ED when looking for space VR games - I always feel slightly condescended on, even if unintended. Whenever we discuss current events and I hear "well I started in 1984 and back in those days..." I feel like transported into the four Yorkshiremen sketch. ED is a game in its own right. It does have a rich heritage, but it hold its own very well.

Sorry for the mini rant

 

[Ryder7]

See, this is one of the things that bugs me a bit about "veterans" - please know that this is not meant rude or condescending. You were NOT playing this game since 1984 or whatever. You played another game in the franchise. This game isn't Elite 1984, nor is it FE2 or FFE.

As someone who came late to the franchise - I had glossed over the Elite games until I found ED when looking for space VR games - I always feel slightly condescended on, even if unintended. Whenever we discuss current events and I hear "well I started in 1984 and back in those days..." I feel like transported into the four Yorkshiremen sketch. ED is a game in its own right. It does have a rich heritage, but it hold its own very well.

Sorry for the mini rant

I see your point, I can say my first Super Mario game was on the SNES, that was a long time ago, but still, those who had the NES, and before them, G&W players, and so on,
I guess it's a human thing that, just like at work, those having more experience about one matter may behave condescending, intended or not, or tend to remind the old days.

So I think it is nice to still have people interested on it who discovered that particular lore at start you could talk with 40 years laters (and each in between), and for the part of them embittered, I'd take it with a grain of salt, since this is all about scifi gaming, and forum intercations about that does not give much clue on who's more experienced on what IRL otherwise.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

See, this is one of the things that bugs me a bit about "veterans" - please know that this is not meant rude or condescending. You were NOT playing this game since 1984 or whatever. You played another game in the franchise. This game isn't Elite 1984, nor is it FE2 or FFE.

As someone who came late to the franchise - I had glossed over the Elite games until I found ED when looking for space VR games - I always feel slightly condescended on, even if unintended. Whenever we discuss current events and I hear "well I started in 1984 and back in those days..." I feel like transported into the four Yorkshiremen sketch. ED is a game in its own right. It does have a rich heritage, but it hold its own very well.

Sorry for the mini rant

It may be a new edition, but underlying the gloss is still the same gameplay with various expansions added on.
Windows 11 may have more gloss and extras, but ultimately the same basic functions as 3.1.

 

[William J Smith]

Or flying to my destinations through fierce cosmic storms. Uphill. Both ways...

You were lucky.
We had to navigate to Sgr A* using 30 ly jumps in the core because the route plotter threw a hissy fit with that many stars(also had a max 1000 ly range)
But that was back in the day when men were real men and women were real women and invisible pink space unicorns were real invisible pink space unicorns(they turn up more than 4 days out exploring)
And when we got back , no one would believe you..... especially the pysch nurses at the hutton orbital home for loony space pilots.

Bill (escaped)

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

It may be a new edition, but underlying the gloss is still the same gameplay with various expansions added on.
Windows 11 may have more gloss and extras, but ultimately the same basic functions as 3.1.

Yeah I think that's a bit of a stretch. I get it that with the class of '84 there is a lot of nostalgia involved, but the gameplay is clearly not the same beyond the lowest common denominators. That's like saying the gameplay of Doom Eternal is the same as Commander Keen, because you run through a dungeon and shoot aliens. Elite 84 had its innovations and set some standards, some of which persist up to the current game (the scanner), but people need to stop putting it on this pedestal at every opportunity.

(And no, I am not a youngster who doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm an old geezer too... Just didn't play E84)

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

You were lucky.
We had to navigate to Sgr A* using 30 ly jumps in the core because the route plotter threw a hissy fit with that many stars(also had a max 1000 ly range)
But that was back in the day when men were real men and women were real women and invisible pink space unicorns were real invisible pink space unicorns(they turn up more than 4 days out exploring)
And when we got back , no one would believe you..... especially the pysch nurses at the hutton orbital home for loony space pilots.

Bill (escaped)

See? Four Yorkshiremen right there! .

 

[aRJay]

See? Four Yorkshiremen right there! .

Marty Feldman was great in that.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Yeah I think that's a bit of a stretch. I get it that with the class of '84 there is a lot of nostalgia involved, but the gameplay is clearly not the same beyond the lowest common denominators. That's like saying the gameplay of Doom Eternal is the same as Commander Keen, because you run through a dungeon and shoot aliens. Elite 84 had its innovations and set some standards, some of which persist up to the current game (the scanner), but people need to stop putting it on this pedestal at every opportunity.

(And no, I am not a youngster who doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm an old geezer too... Just didn't play E84)

Rather a lot more than merely the scanner.
The armed trader gameplay was core from day 1.