Ever since I bought E
I've had a love hate relationship with it, and I find it nearly bloody impossible to play for more than thirty minutes without wanting to tear out my hair. And yet, I continue to be drawn back. I love anything to do with outer space/alien life, but for some reason, Elite fails to capture that wonder. Why? It's not as if I lack the entire bloody galaxy to explore. I've gone to the center and back in an ASP, but when I was 3/4 of the way from the core, I wanted to blow myself up from sheer boredom. So I put the game down for a few days/weeks/months, and finally, feeling excited about it again, played for 30 minutes, and then wanted to blow my brains out. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I believe I've finally come up with a few answers as to why this happens.
(Please note, I REALLY want to like this game! However, these issues are just to glaring for me to have a consistently good time playing.)
#1. The galaxy feels DEAD.
Elite feels about as dead as a person who has been comatose their entire life, and finally dies without anybody realizing it. The most alive thing in the game are the RECORDINGS that play inside the stations! THE RECORDINGS! Why is that?! I can only read the same piece of recycled text coming from an NPC so many times before it starts to get dull. I've been asked, "What do you carry...?" and told to, "Celebrate our happy day!" about as many times as I've taken a breath in the past week. I mean, it's a galaxy right? So there should be a lot of people, and therefore, life! So why is it that in the two years I've been playing the game, I've NEVER heard anyone actually SAY anything outside of the recordings inside the stations? Also, I've seen maybe 70-80 players over the entire time I've been playing. Isn't this game an MMO? I mean JEEZ!
#2. The grind.
I could put my face on a grindstone made of dry wood and sandpaper that's spinning at five-thousand rpm, and feel less pain than I do grinding in Elite. Slightly harsh you say? I disagree. I've been playing for just over two years, yes? Okay, so why is it that I only have 20 million credits to my name? Because the grind is SO BLOODY BORING! Up until six months ago I was still in the freaking sidewinder because I hated trading so much. And it's the only way to make a decent amount of cash! Why is it so painful? A few reasons. The first one is that finding a decent trade route in thousands of possible starting locations is nigh on impossible to do without taking a pick-axe to your monitor. One day, I got home from work, sat down to play elite, and spent the evening calculating trade routes only to find that it was 10 pm, and I needed to go to sleep! Come ON! The second thing about trading is that its SLOOOOW. Playing this game as a trader is like watching a glacier made of molasses and super glue moving 0.000000000001/KPH over the course of a million years. Once you finally do find that magical trade route that yields you more than 5 credits round trip, you have to go back and fourth between those stations for HOURS! When I finally decided to save up, buy a type six, and then save more to get an ASP for exploration, it literally took me the ENTIRE weekend to save enough. That's starting at 9:00 AM and trading until 11:00 PM with food/bathroom breaks mixed in. It was TORTURE! What kept me going? Watching the entire extended lord of the rings trilogy as I went! I wasn't even looking at the game 99% of the time!! And I've timed it. Making one jump, ONE JUMP takes 33.65 second on average. HALF A BLOODY MINUTE TO JUMP! And that's not including the time it takes to get to a station, dock, sell your junk, buy more, and then leave! I'd make more money by selling my actual junk on the black market! And what does this boredom cause you to do? Get reckless in an effort to entertain yourself! AND THEN YOU CRASH, AND LOOSE ALL YOUR FREAKING PROGRESS!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!
#3. The grind 2.0
"Well why were you trading then??" I hear you scream, spittle flying from your mouth as you smash your keyboard in frustration. Because I was in a freaking sidewinder, and I wanted an ASP so I could explore! "YOU CAN EXPLORE IN A SIDEWINDER!!" I hear you scream even louder as you draw your katana, and prepare to deal out some E style justice upon my behind. Well, take a deep breath and I'll tell you. Why did I want an ASP? Because it has a big window. THAT'S LITERALLY THE ONLY REASON!! As soon as I started playing I wanted to explore. So I tried trading, but immediately stopped because it's so dull. So I tried bounty hunting, piracy, mining, missions, and every other way of making moolah. And guess what? I had more fun than I did while trading! But you know what? I MADE ALMOST NOTHING!! Literally the only way you can do what you want in elite is if you trade for 3 months first. Its like a flipping right of passage just to play the game!! And because you make so little doing anything other than trading, the things that are actually FUN become a grind, and then they loose THEIR appeal!
#4. The people (or lack there of)
WHERE ARE THEY!? The only people I've seen in this game are the profile pictures in the power play section, and those are still images! WHAT THE HECK! I realize that character customization is coming soon, but a load of good that will do when you have a helmet on your head the entire time! And apparently they are also adding some nice pictures to accompany missions, which is great, but I don't do missions because they pay diddily-squat! I'll say again; ITS A GALAXY!!! WHERES THE FREAKING PEOPLE?!
#5. The planets (Oh boy.)
So I shelled out well over sixty dollars to get horizons because the Canadian dollar is absolute garbage atm, and what do I get? The ability to land on planets! HOW COOL IS THAT??? Its amazing! So, I log on after waiting for AGES, slobber running from my jowls in anticipation. I land on a planet, and deploy the srv. I then drive around for ten minutes, get bored, and check out a outpost. I drive around the outpost for ten minutes, get bored, and then leave. I then leave the planet, and realize that I just shelled out over sixty dollars Canadian for twenty minutes of entertainment! WHAAAT?? Okay, fine. Whats the issue here? Well, first of all, the planets look like...potatoes. I mean, if you put a potato under a microscope, you'd see the surface of every single planet currently in elite. I mean, come on! Would some variety hurt? I get that they will be adding lava flows in the future and things like that, but why is it that every single planet is smooth as a baby's rear end!? No hate here, but if you look at the video that Star citizen did showcasing their planetary surfaces, they were cool! Pointy rocks jutted out here and there, mountains soaring way up into the sky, all that cool jazz! And that was on a barren planet too! In elite however, there are no sharp edges. Is it more realistic? Sure! But I've come to realize that realism doesn't equate to fun. Also, there is ZERO purpose in landing on the planets. Why? Because it takes forever! If I'm doing a trade run, (which takes ages in the first place), why would I add flight time by landing on a planet?! Synthesizing stuff for my ship? Great reason! However, it takes FOREVER, and is therefore BORING! I mean, if I had something to look at besides the close up of a petrified potato, I might be enjoying myself a bit more! Missions? Yet another great reason!...oh wait, they pay in bottle caps. Never mind.
#6. The missions
As I've mentioned numerous times, the missions pay nothing whatsoever, so the only incentive to doing them is for a little bit of story. Unfortunately, they also fail in this regard! It's the same old recycled tripe you've read over and over a million times before. "Deliver this thing", "Protect this person", "Kill that other person". I mean, come on! Why couldn't we have a progressive mission system? It's not like it hasn't been done before in other games. For example, you get a mission to go on a rescue trip to a far off star because you hear that someone's sent out a distress signal. You go there, and get ambushed! Zounds! After easily polishing off the pirate scum that dared attack your vessel, you find a data chip floating among the wreckage. On the chip is a location, along with some information stating that the person who you went to save has been taken hostage! So you go to this planet, land on it, and get into your srv to look for the person. Suddenly, you're being chased by a hostile ship that's trying to blow you up, and you must rush back to your own ship to have a match of fisticuffs with the evil whatsit that decided to rain on your glorious parade... You get the idea. Sounds more fun than plain old "Take this valuable couch to my grandmother would you? Ill make it worth your while with these 500 credits!" doesn't it?
#7. Powerplay (Ai yi yi)
Whats the point?? Power play just adds more fetch and delivery quests, except this time everyone outside your power's systems hates your guts and will kill you on sight! Honestly.
#8. The story (Where is it? WHERE IS IT???)
Okay, so I know elite has this super deep lore and story going on with detailed characters and whatnot, but unfortunately for me it's all text based! I want to play a game, not read text for forty minutes! Surely they could implement the story a little bit better? It's just such a pain in the butt to get engaged when I'm looking at a text block TELLING me whats going on rather than actually EXPERIENCING it. It'd be like playing Planetside 2, but instead of being part of the action, your a space trucker on the other side of the galaxy who likes to keep up with the daily news over a cup of tea!
#9. The exploration (You done did it now)
This is by far the biggest sin committed by this game. As I stated before, I love space exploration and alien life. A lot. Because I love it so much, I was absolutely chuffed to finally get an outfitted ASP explorer and go journeying out among the stars. Too bad the traveling sucks! As I stated earlier, it takes half a minute to complete a jump. So it takes forever to get anywhere! And while the places I visited were beautiful, and it was exciting whenever I stumbled upon a water world or a gas giant with life on it, I kept having the nagging thought in the back of my head that I was looking at a textured ball half the time. I spent a good two months out in the black, and much of the time was spent watching breaking bad as I went because I didn't find anything interesting! Now, I get that it's "realistic", and that's great. But would it hurt to have a few alien spaceships here and there? Or how about some wrecks? Or mysterious signal sources? Anything to break up the "Jump to system, scan, fuel scoop, jump to next system" routine! I can honestly say I had the most fun in elite while exploring, but it was constantly marred by the repetitive nature of the task. But that wasn't the worst. On my two month journey into the black, I found one earth like world, and when I did, I was literally brought to tears. It was so cool to just float above a planet with oceans and life, gazing down at it from thousands of kilometers above the surface. Too bad I cant land on the bloody thing!! I'm still holding out hope that they will someday implement landing on life bearing alien planets, but as of right now, its just another texture. *sigh*. If I could land on those alien planets, and document and observe alien ecosystems, elite would be the best game ever. But until then, its just a massive headache.
So those are the reasons that elite dangerous makes me want to take a grand piano to the head. I'm still sticking around for the ability to walk around your ship, and hopefully land on alien planets and document alien life at some point. Being able to see other players will also definitely help the game. That is if they change the instancing around so that you actually meet people once in, oh I don't know, ever. And I know some of you are thinking, "Well, you obviously don't like slow paced games." I beg to differ! I've played Euro truck simulator for hours on end without getting bored. Why? I would assume because there is a clear GOAL, (another thing elite lacks), and I get to look at some pretty scenery. I don't like being thrown into a world without anything to do besides some dry missions. I even found Minecraft more entertaining because I could actually set goals for myself. In elite, the number one goal is to make enough money to upgrade your ship, and that involves MORE FREAKING TRADING!!! In the end, I'm too big a space fan to not support elite, and I will keep purchasing the DLC in the hope that it will at some point become consistently entertaining. Until then, I'm about as disappointed with elite as I would be if I found my child doing lines down a back alley.
Id like to end by saying that I don't hate this game at all. For the thirty minutes it's fun, its lots of fun. Its just after those thirty minutes I get a serious migraine. Seriously, the game gives me headaches after 30 minutes. That's a problem. Here's to a better E in the future! Good luck out there Commanders.
~DB
EDIT: Heres a quick comparision between the planets that E has and what star citizen is offering. Just pretend the atmosphere isn't there.
SC: http://www.mikebarclay.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/maxresdefault-1.jpg
E: http://cdn.pcgamesn.com/sites/default/files/elite landings_0_0.jpg
I've had a love hate relationship with it, and I find it nearly bloody impossible to play for more than thirty minutes without wanting to tear out my hair. And yet, I continue to be drawn back. I love anything to do with outer space/alien life, but for some reason, Elite fails to capture that wonder. Why? It's not as if I lack the entire bloody galaxy to explore. I've gone to the center and back in an ASP, but when I was 3/4 of the way from the core, I wanted to blow myself up from sheer boredom. So I put the game down for a few days/weeks/months, and finally, feeling excited about it again, played for 30 minutes, and then wanted to blow my brains out. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I believe I've finally come up with a few answers as to why this happens. (Please note, I REALLY want to like this game! However, these issues are just to glaring for me to have a consistently good time playing.)
#1. The galaxy feels DEAD.
Elite feels about as dead as a person who has been comatose their entire life, and finally dies without anybody realizing it. The most alive thing in the game are the RECORDINGS that play inside the stations! THE RECORDINGS! Why is that?! I can only read the same piece of recycled text coming from an NPC so many times before it starts to get dull. I've been asked, "What do you carry...?" and told to, "Celebrate our happy day!" about as many times as I've taken a breath in the past week. I mean, it's a galaxy right? So there should be a lot of people, and therefore, life! So why is it that in the two years I've been playing the game, I've NEVER heard anyone actually SAY anything outside of the recordings inside the stations? Also, I've seen maybe 70-80 players over the entire time I've been playing. Isn't this game an MMO? I mean JEEZ!
#2. The grind.
I could put my face on a grindstone made of dry wood and sandpaper that's spinning at five-thousand rpm, and feel less pain than I do grinding in Elite. Slightly harsh you say? I disagree. I've been playing for just over two years, yes? Okay, so why is it that I only have 20 million credits to my name? Because the grind is SO BLOODY BORING! Up until six months ago I was still in the freaking sidewinder because I hated trading so much. And it's the only way to make a decent amount of cash! Why is it so painful? A few reasons. The first one is that finding a decent trade route in thousands of possible starting locations is nigh on impossible to do without taking a pick-axe to your monitor. One day, I got home from work, sat down to play elite, and spent the evening calculating trade routes only to find that it was 10 pm, and I needed to go to sleep! Come ON! The second thing about trading is that its SLOOOOW. Playing this game as a trader is like watching a glacier made of molasses and super glue moving 0.000000000001/KPH over the course of a million years. Once you finally do find that magical trade route that yields you more than 5 credits round trip, you have to go back and fourth between those stations for HOURS! When I finally decided to save up, buy a type six, and then save more to get an ASP for exploration, it literally took me the ENTIRE weekend to save enough. That's starting at 9:00 AM and trading until 11:00 PM with food/bathroom breaks mixed in. It was TORTURE! What kept me going? Watching the entire extended lord of the rings trilogy as I went! I wasn't even looking at the game 99% of the time!! And I've timed it. Making one jump, ONE JUMP takes 33.65 second on average. HALF A BLOODY MINUTE TO JUMP! And that's not including the time it takes to get to a station, dock, sell your junk, buy more, and then leave! I'd make more money by selling my actual junk on the black market! And what does this boredom cause you to do? Get reckless in an effort to entertain yourself! AND THEN YOU CRASH, AND LOOSE ALL YOUR FREAKING PROGRESS!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!
#3. The grind 2.0
"Well why were you trading then??" I hear you scream, spittle flying from your mouth as you smash your keyboard in frustration. Because I was in a freaking sidewinder, and I wanted an ASP so I could explore! "YOU CAN EXPLORE IN A SIDEWINDER!!" I hear you scream even louder as you draw your katana, and prepare to deal out some E
style justice upon my behind. Well, take a deep breath and I'll tell you. Why did I want an ASP? Because it has a big window. THAT'S LITERALLY THE ONLY REASON!! As soon as I started playing I wanted to explore. So I tried trading, but immediately stopped because it's so dull. So I tried bounty hunting, piracy, mining, missions, and every other way of making moolah. And guess what? I had more fun than I did while trading! But you know what? I MADE ALMOST NOTHING!! Literally the only way you can do what you want in elite is if you trade for 3 months first. Its like a flipping right of passage just to play the game!! And because you make so little doing anything other than trading, the things that are actually FUN become a grind, and then they loose THEIR appeal!#4. The people (or lack there of)
WHERE ARE THEY!? The only people I've seen in this game are the profile pictures in the power play section, and those are still images! WHAT THE HECK! I realize that character customization is coming soon, but a load of good that will do when you have a helmet on your head the entire time! And apparently they are also adding some nice pictures to accompany missions, which is great, but I don't do missions because they pay diddily-squat! I'll say again; ITS A GALAXY!!! WHERES THE FREAKING PEOPLE?!
#5. The planets (Oh boy.)
So I shelled out well over sixty dollars to get horizons because the Canadian dollar is absolute garbage atm, and what do I get? The ability to land on planets! HOW COOL IS THAT??? Its amazing! So, I log on after waiting for AGES, slobber running from my jowls in anticipation. I land on a planet, and deploy the srv. I then drive around for ten minutes, get bored, and check out a outpost. I drive around the outpost for ten minutes, get bored, and then leave. I then leave the planet, and realize that I just shelled out over sixty dollars Canadian for twenty minutes of entertainment! WHAAAT?? Okay, fine. Whats the issue here? Well, first of all, the planets look like...potatoes. I mean, if you put a potato under a microscope, you'd see the surface of every single planet currently in elite. I mean, come on! Would some variety hurt? I get that they will be adding lava flows in the future and things like that, but why is it that every single planet is smooth as a baby's rear end!? No hate here, but if you look at the video that Star citizen did showcasing their planetary surfaces, they were cool! Pointy rocks jutted out here and there, mountains soaring way up into the sky, all that cool jazz! And that was on a barren planet too! In elite however, there are no sharp edges. Is it more realistic? Sure! But I've come to realize that realism doesn't equate to fun. Also, there is ZERO purpose in landing on the planets. Why? Because it takes forever! If I'm doing a trade run, (which takes ages in the first place), why would I add flight time by landing on a planet?! Synthesizing stuff for my ship? Great reason! However, it takes FOREVER, and is therefore BORING! I mean, if I had something to look at besides the close up of a petrified potato, I might be enjoying myself a bit more! Missions? Yet another great reason!...oh wait, they pay in bottle caps. Never mind.
#6. The missions
As I've mentioned numerous times, the missions pay nothing whatsoever, so the only incentive to doing them is for a little bit of story. Unfortunately, they also fail in this regard! It's the same old recycled tripe you've read over and over a million times before. "Deliver this thing", "Protect this person", "Kill that other person". I mean, come on! Why couldn't we have a progressive mission system? It's not like it hasn't been done before in other games. For example, you get a mission to go on a rescue trip to a far off star because you hear that someone's sent out a distress signal. You go there, and get ambushed! Zounds! After easily polishing off the pirate scum that dared attack your vessel, you find a data chip floating among the wreckage. On the chip is a location, along with some information stating that the person who you went to save has been taken hostage! So you go to this planet, land on it, and get into your srv to look for the person. Suddenly, you're being chased by a hostile ship that's trying to blow you up, and you must rush back to your own ship to have a match of fisticuffs with the evil whatsit that decided to rain on your glorious parade... You get the idea. Sounds more fun than plain old "Take this valuable couch to my grandmother would you? Ill make it worth your while with these 500 credits!" doesn't it?
#7. Powerplay (Ai yi yi)
Whats the point?? Power play just adds more fetch and delivery quests, except this time everyone outside your power's systems hates your guts and will kill you on sight! Honestly.
#8. The story (Where is it? WHERE IS IT???)
Okay, so I know elite has this super deep lore and story going on with detailed characters and whatnot, but unfortunately for me it's all text based! I want to play a game, not read text for forty minutes! Surely they could implement the story a little bit better? It's just such a pain in the butt to get engaged when I'm looking at a text block TELLING me whats going on rather than actually EXPERIENCING it. It'd be like playing Planetside 2, but instead of being part of the action, your a space trucker on the other side of the galaxy who likes to keep up with the daily news over a cup of tea!
#9. The exploration (You done did it now)
This is by far the biggest sin committed by this game. As I stated before, I love space exploration and alien life. A lot. Because I love it so much, I was absolutely chuffed to finally get an outfitted ASP explorer and go journeying out among the stars. Too bad the traveling sucks! As I stated earlier, it takes half a minute to complete a jump. So it takes forever to get anywhere! And while the places I visited were beautiful, and it was exciting whenever I stumbled upon a water world or a gas giant with life on it, I kept having the nagging thought in the back of my head that I was looking at a textured ball half the time. I spent a good two months out in the black, and much of the time was spent watching breaking bad as I went because I didn't find anything interesting! Now, I get that it's "realistic", and that's great. But would it hurt to have a few alien spaceships here and there? Or how about some wrecks? Or mysterious signal sources? Anything to break up the "Jump to system, scan, fuel scoop, jump to next system" routine! I can honestly say I had the most fun in elite while exploring, but it was constantly marred by the repetitive nature of the task. But that wasn't the worst. On my two month journey into the black, I found one earth like world, and when I did, I was literally brought to tears. It was so cool to just float above a planet with oceans and life, gazing down at it from thousands of kilometers above the surface. Too bad I cant land on the bloody thing!! I'm still holding out hope that they will someday implement landing on life bearing alien planets, but as of right now, its just another texture. *sigh*. If I could land on those alien planets, and document and observe alien ecosystems, elite would be the best game ever. But until then, its just a massive headache.
So those are the reasons that elite dangerous makes me want to take a grand piano to the head. I'm still sticking around for the ability to walk around your ship, and hopefully land on alien planets and document alien life at some point. Being able to see other players will also definitely help the game. That is if they change the instancing around so that you actually meet people once in, oh I don't know, ever. And I know some of you are thinking, "Well, you obviously don't like slow paced games." I beg to differ! I've played Euro truck simulator for hours on end without getting bored. Why? I would assume because there is a clear GOAL, (another thing elite lacks), and I get to look at some pretty scenery. I don't like being thrown into a world without anything to do besides some dry missions. I even found Minecraft more entertaining because I could actually set goals for myself. In elite, the number one goal is to make enough money to upgrade your ship, and that involves MORE FREAKING TRADING!!! In the end, I'm too big a space fan to not support elite, and I will keep purchasing the DLC in the hope that it will at some point become consistently entertaining. Until then, I'm about as disappointed with elite as I would be if I found my child doing lines down a back alley.
Id like to end by saying that I don't hate this game at all. For the thirty minutes it's fun, its lots of fun. Its just after those thirty minutes I get a serious migraine. Seriously, the game gives me headaches after 30 minutes. That's a problem. Here's to a better E
in the future! Good luck out there Commanders.~DB
EDIT: Heres a quick comparision between the planets that E
has and what star citizen is offering. Just pretend the atmosphere isn't there. SC: http://www.mikebarclay.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/maxresdefault-1.jpg
E
: http://cdn.pcgamesn.com/sites/default/files/elite landings_0_0.jpg
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