Before I write anything else I just want to say that even if this game isn't my cup of tea as I said before I will most certainly buy it when it comes out this November!
Game play wise these games are to much focused on resource management, owning fleets and general empire building for my taste. Also the feeling of walking through doors to different rooms have always been a no-go for me.
This will certainly give me the "space fix" I need until I get my hands on ED though! :smilie:
What's with all the hate towards X Rebirth? Graphically this looks far better than what we have currently, the cockpit looks amazing and the interface elements and animation within it are also stunning.
Control wise the fact they've gone all out on trying to streamline the whole thing is admirable and the control scheme they're using is actually very good and very similar to what we have at the moment.
Without a question there is a lot of skill that has gone into creating this game. From a purely technical standpoint the graphics are great (although maybe a bit dated compared to current titles, especially in regards to the characters). It's just the general art style (that seems to be rather common in eastern europa) that I personally always found to "busy" and "cluttered".
In many of the vistas you can see in another new video they just put up
here there is just to much stuff filling up the screen. Especially the first vista they show ten seconds into the video.
It's like if you take a pizza, add hamburgers on top, sprinkle it with candy and finally top it of a ton of ice cream and strawberries! Each element in itself is great, but when they mash it all together like that it becomes just a mess IMO.
As Associat0r said above it's more "fantasy space" rather than "sci fi". In many ways these environments could just as easily been different dimensions and you could have been riding a dragon or a flying boat.
I have always like a more minimalistic and "monolithic" style with more sedated color schemes and clean lines. I guess my "IKEA-genes" as a Swede shows.
So far you guys have pretty much nailed my personal preferences in regards to this when it comes to ship designs. I also hope and think that your space stations will be more "solitary jewels in space" rather than the extremely busy "space cities" we see in this game. As a lot of of have written in this forum, we want space to feel vast, grand and seamless and if you fill it up with to much stuff that feeling gets lost. Sure, there will probably still be some areas that will have a lot of activity (spaceports), but I hope you are not going for the (IMO) insane levels of activity we see in X-Rebirth. Basically, I still want to be able to see some stars in the background!
And while we are on the subject of the background. "Spacefog/mist" (whatever that suppose to be?), nebulas everywhere that pretty much drowns out all stars and huge planets placed so close to each other the almost touch one another is big NO! These are another of those things that so many space games seems to do that always feels more "fantasy" rather than "sci fi".
In regards to control scheme I don't really have any big objections. The way the ship handles and always seem to align to the "horizion" is a bit annoying though. I don't expect this to be the case with ED though. Especially since we are going to breath down your neck about it during the alpha/beta if we don't like it.
Elite will have cockpits just like this one and you're not going to be able to toggle them off either. X Rebirth and Elite share a very similar vision when it comes to how you experience the game.
We're both saying that you play the game through the eyes of the pilot which means you do see the inside of your ship and you do look around and have camera motion that matches that of a head lolling about within the cockpit as you fly around.
When you want to walk around your ship you just stand up and then your walking around in first person, seamlessly. This creates an incredible level of immersion and will make even more sense if and when we get Oculus Rift or TrackIR support. Hell even just using the mouse to look around within your cockpit would be incredibly useful when flying your ship.
If X Rebirth is a no-go because of the choice of cockpit then why isn't Elite?
I myself want 3D cockpits, so no problems there.
The cockpit in X-Rebirth is to detailed though (same argument regarding art style as above). That detail can somewhat take away focus from what is happening outside the window. I would much more prefer a more clean, minimalistic and dark cockpit. Basically, what I would expect to see sitting in the chair of the ship in
Newsletter 8 (the top banner). BTW, two thing about that piece of concept art:
1. It's absolutly gorgeous and I love that the chair is hanging down from the ceiling!!!
Really sets it apart from pretty much any other game out there,. More of the same please!
2. That's the inside of a Asp, is it not?
(Dreams of exploring)
Anyway, making the design of the cockpit a lot "cleaner" and darker coupled with the holographic projections you already have shown us will make all the difference. After all, we want the player to focus on what's happening outside, not being stuck looking at some piece of wire sticking out of a screen on your console. A bonus is of course that this type of art style takes less time to model!
Generally speaking, I think that you should keep pushing the holographic approach even later down the line in future expansions. Think of the ships interior more like a "blank slate" that can be filled with content with the help of projections and augmented reality. This seems to be the direction we are heading in the real world anyway.
Secondly on the single ship only issue. I think some of you are missing the benefits such a premise can provide. The attention to detail they can apply to that ship is incredible let alone the amount of bespoke customisation options. You will get attached to it and you will be able to make it your own. Having multiple ships basically means you cut back on those aspects above. The single ship also means a good narrative can be more easily created around it which being a single player game makes a lot of sense.
I am of the opinion that if Elite Dangerous just gave you a Cobra MkIII to play with it would actually make for a compelling experience. The amount of customisation and polish we could add to it would be incredible.
Sure, that is certainly true and is indeed something that works well in a single player game. The main danger of course is that if a player don't like that particular cockpit he/she is still stuck with it with no ability to change. I don't agree that it would be a good idea in ED though since it's also multiplayer. Everyone flying around in exactly the same ship? Nope, doesn't compute in my head. Why play together if you can't have truly specialized roles. Even if there would be a lot of customization options it would never be the same thing as a group of small fighters defending a large transporter or any of the new passenger ships. It would also be pretty hard to justify why only players are locked into one type of ship while there is tons of other types out there piloted by NPCs, unless of course there was only one single type of ship in the entire universe...Hmmmm... the iShip maybe?
