Hi!
I went guns blazing into Elite, never played any of earlier games and I was a bit disappointed in it until a very generous soul named Cmdr Papa helped me to get started. Because I have played through my years of PC gaming a lot of games including competitive titles on a high ranks, I have the ability to judge game mechanics and their impact from a bit wider perspective so i will start with few suggestions that came into mind when i was playing.
1. HUD Color - As unimportant as it may seem, it would be nice to have an option to change the colors of the HUD. I know that there is a way of doing it through a config file but the results are funky and not well balanced (ghosting appears on brighter colors and to a perfectionist like me, its unbearable)
2. Purchasable Hyperdrive/Supercruise computer - In the time that Elites events are taking place i think its safe to say that humanity would come up with a possibility to make supercruise/hyperdrive automated since the task of doing it right is so trivial. It gets very repetitive and thinking ahead of time when the game develops more, this can really get annoying. Jump out of hyperdrive, wait few secs until ship cools down, press J again and wait. Rinse and repeat 5 minutes later you are at your designated star system. Its fun the first 100 times... but then..
3. Mining complete overhaul - there is enough said on these forums about mining. I think of it as pre-alpha mining compared to what i would imagine a game of this scale and humanity of this stage in development would provide. Picking up chunks of rocks that get slingshotted from a bigger rock? Cmon.. Let me build a mining site and notify me about a cargo thats waiting to be picked up. I come to the site with my ship pickup 180T cargo container, get it to a station to be refined, then i move it to market to sell. Pirates attack my mines -> i equip my refineries and mines with biggest pew pew's imaginable as a countermeasure. Allow me to make it grow, show some progress -> thats what keeps players playing.
4. Groups/Parties - Please make a party/group system.. i team up with somebody and near nav beacons once i lose sight of him its a pain in the ass trying to find them.
5. Bigger cargo containers - 1T Containers are a joke. If i want to give 200T of gold to my friend you can only imagine how long it would take to pick up 200 one tonne containers. Its ridiculous and for all other purposes its also much better to have bigger containers.
6. 3rd person - I know hardcore fans will shoot me in my face with a shotgun filled with salt, but please. Its an open space sim, 3rd person would of course be mostly useless towards landing docking and stuff, but i want to look around see the space, planets, ships around me.
7. Mounted gun cameras - bigger ships could have cameras on bigger hardpoints so you can switch to them and fire only with them without the need to aim your ship in general direction (lets say a pirate is trolling you from above and your hardpoints are mounted on top of your ship. You just stop move to the Superblaster 9000 and line up a perfect shot, then you move back to your ships smaller guns and finish him off) - Why? realism. In that point of development in humanity it would be more then stupid to not have a option to do this - huge ships have turrets on the back too and they cant fire forward so why are they there? 1. automated 2. controlled units. Both of those functions are valid options imho.
So far thats it
I went guns blazing into Elite, never played any of earlier games and I was a bit disappointed in it until a very generous soul named Cmdr Papa helped me to get started. Because I have played through my years of PC gaming a lot of games including competitive titles on a high ranks, I have the ability to judge game mechanics and their impact from a bit wider perspective so i will start with few suggestions that came into mind when i was playing.
1. HUD Color - As unimportant as it may seem, it would be nice to have an option to change the colors of the HUD. I know that there is a way of doing it through a config file but the results are funky and not well balanced (ghosting appears on brighter colors and to a perfectionist like me, its unbearable)
2. Purchasable Hyperdrive/Supercruise computer - In the time that Elites events are taking place i think its safe to say that humanity would come up with a possibility to make supercruise/hyperdrive automated since the task of doing it right is so trivial. It gets very repetitive and thinking ahead of time when the game develops more, this can really get annoying. Jump out of hyperdrive, wait few secs until ship cools down, press J again and wait. Rinse and repeat 5 minutes later you are at your designated star system. Its fun the first 100 times... but then..
3. Mining complete overhaul - there is enough said on these forums about mining. I think of it as pre-alpha mining compared to what i would imagine a game of this scale and humanity of this stage in development would provide. Picking up chunks of rocks that get slingshotted from a bigger rock? Cmon.. Let me build a mining site and notify me about a cargo thats waiting to be picked up. I come to the site with my ship pickup 180T cargo container, get it to a station to be refined, then i move it to market to sell. Pirates attack my mines -> i equip my refineries and mines with biggest pew pew's imaginable as a countermeasure. Allow me to make it grow, show some progress -> thats what keeps players playing.
4. Groups/Parties - Please make a party/group system.. i team up with somebody and near nav beacons once i lose sight of him its a pain in the ass trying to find them.
5. Bigger cargo containers - 1T Containers are a joke. If i want to give 200T of gold to my friend you can only imagine how long it would take to pick up 200 one tonne containers. Its ridiculous and for all other purposes its also much better to have bigger containers.
6. 3rd person - I know hardcore fans will shoot me in my face with a shotgun filled with salt, but please. Its an open space sim, 3rd person would of course be mostly useless towards landing docking and stuff, but i want to look around see the space, planets, ships around me.
7. Mounted gun cameras - bigger ships could have cameras on bigger hardpoints so you can switch to them and fire only with them without the need to aim your ship in general direction (lets say a pirate is trolling you from above and your hardpoints are mounted on top of your ship. You just stop move to the Superblaster 9000 and line up a perfect shot, then you move back to your ships smaller guns and finish him off) - Why? realism. In that point of development in humanity it would be more then stupid to not have a option to do this - huge ships have turrets on the back too and they cant fire forward so why are they there? 1. automated 2. controlled units. Both of those functions are valid options imho.
So far thats it