Trouble Getting Friends into Elite Dangerous?

[Windscreen Smudge]

This is something as a newb to Elite Dangerous I just can't fathom, when I am done with a game I just move on and find something else. I've noticed ED has lots of people who just loiter on the forums saying how bad everything is. I have never seen a community like it, even Eve wasn't that bad.

I stopped playing Eve, I stopped going on the forums.....

We're still playing, because we're prisoners.

FDev promised a 10 year development plan. That's a decade of enslavement of our personal attention hoping that the next patch is going to be the one that finally starts to turn the game around.

Someday.... Someday they'll make it great again....

 

[ozrix84]

This is something as a newb to Elite Dangerous I just can't fathom, when I am done with a game I just move on and find something else. I've noticed ED has lots of people who just loiter on the forums saying how bad everything is. I have never seen a community like it, even Eve wasn't that bad.

I don't know either, this game seems to attract some strange sorts of people

 

[Jenner]

This is something as a newb to Elite Dangerous I just can't fathom, when I am done with a game I just move on and find something else. I've noticed ED has lots of people who just loiter on the forums saying how bad everything is. I have never seen a community like it, even Eve wasn't that bad.

I stopped playing Eve, I stopped going on the forums..... Seems like a torture to me. If something upsets you so much why would you keep it around?

It's a mystery.

 

[frostypaw]

Same story here with a mix of all these points. Had 9+ folks that I knew playing at one point but they've all moved on and most long ago. The reason is simply due to the game becoming an arcade / FPS-like shooter (except from a ship). Don't get me wrong as many of them enjoy the fast paced shooters but Elite can't compare to the likes of Titanfall's or Battlefields, Halo, etc. But those that left expected more of a sim experience which FDev hasn't delivered but other developers will likely deliver.

Fans certainly won't agree with this comparison but Elite is closer to a CoD type game than it is to any type of sim or realism based game. It didn't start this way but step back and look at what Elite is today which is 95% combat focused and this includes frequent respawning. Look back at the past 2 years of updates and where is the focus? Consoles and pew-pew. And what is coming up next? Console (PS4) and more pew-pew focus. Watch the dev livestreams; FDev seems okay with this gameplay from their reactions. And it's likely foolish to think the game will steer away from this course they have plotted - not now.

This is the problem I've found. They come wanting a galaxy of content and life - what they find is a massive grind fest to compete with the pewpew kiddies that the designers seem to focus all the content and expansions on, then they end up in PG/Solo and get bored as NPCs present no challenge they were looking forwards to playing with others.

Universally they comment on the behaviour of a few cmdrs ruining the open experience, universally they complain about the gulf in money/experience/grind that gets rubbed in their face as G5 modded corvettes and FDLs chase them around, universally they complain about it being empty out in the galaxy once you get away from them.

Stop ganking being acceptable gameplay, stop focusing on more combat options increasing the gulf even further and start filling the skies with beautiful planets and challenging fights and they could all come back - they all want it. The vast sales of the likes of NMS scream there's still market to be tapped - why FDev seem uninterested is utterly bewildering to me.

 

[stormyuk]

We're still playing, because we're prisoners.

FDev promised a 10 year development plan. That's a decade of enslavement of our personal attention hoping that the next patch is going to be the one that finally starts to turn the game around.

Someday.... Someday they'll make it great again....

I guess there is always hope, but man, its like self harm or something. I'd have given up, so maybe fair play if you feel that its worth sticking it out. I know when I have paid my £40 and played as much as I have until I lose interest I will probably just be gone. o7

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

I've invited 8 people to play the game. All of them got bored and left because the NPC's weren't a challenge, the economy was broken, and a lack of functional social tools.

It really has nothing to offer anyone who is used to playing modern multiplayer games.

I am the last of about 6 players in a group of friends myself :/

 

[Ian Phillips]

I guess there is always hope, but man, its like self harm or something. I'd have given up, so maybe fair play if you feel that its worth sticking it out. I know when I have paid my £40 and played as much as I have until I lose interest I will probably just be gone. o7

Lots of people bought a dream, fueled by their remembrance of a long lost youth. There is nothing worse than the bitterness of broken hearts left when the light of reality shines on fragile dreams.

 

[Coik]

One of my friends recently got into the game and is having a good time with it, and my roommate is more than likely going to pick it up once it goes on sale, based on watching over my shoulder as I played and some discussions we've had about the game. And I have another friend who finds the concept interesting, but probably won't play for the time being because he doesn't have the dosh to invest in a proper rig (he currently plays on a stock laptop).

 

[Jenner]

Lots of people bought a dream, fueled by their remembrance of a long lost youth. There is nothing worse than the bitterness of broken hearts left when the light of reality shines on fragile dreams.

You're a poet, Ian.

 

[shadragon]

The problem is because there is no story (and Galnet does not count) and very basic quests (missions) people usually think what is the point so I also have a hard time to convince people it is fun.

People who want a story, bought this game in error. It has none, it needs none.

 

[Darth Ender]

It's hilarious how everyone thinks the game is focusing on the other xyz player group. It's focused on none.

Lets push all of that aside since all it ends up becoming is the same old argument about how the game is trying to be something to too many different kinds of gamers and so it does none of them good service.


With well over 12 weeks of game play time and playing since release now, I wouldn't recommend Elite to friends because I dont get on Elite and have fun anymore. The npcs are painfully easy. The npcs say and behave in ways that should have been fixed 2 years ago. The hundreds of millions of systems in the game are 99.9% empty of any content and there's no point in going to them. The BGS is woefully limited in scope and effect and almost all of it seems pointless to the player's gameplay. So that takes care of player vs npc - which comprises almost all of Elite's gameplay regardless of mode.

Now on to Multiplayer: Networking with even 4 people is frustrating at best since there is no obvious reason why your connections sometimes work with some people and not others and communication sometimes works if you're in a wing or only through direct message or vice versa. Once you do get winged up, you are faced with dividing your income, which defeats the purpose for winging up for many starting out. Then you have the utter lack of any kind of in-game system to wing up with people you dont already know or happen to meet in-instance in the game. The lack of effort on the website to embed the forum and galnet and such so that the website feels like it's just another extension of the game rather than a stock forum module on a website.

It's like recommending an early access game. You can do it, but you should only do it to people who understand they're going to have to create their own excitement in this game. I wouldn't ever recommend this game to someone new to space combat games. I'd recommend this to someone who had plenty of money and wouldn't mind investing 60 or so bucks in a game that might be pretty awesome in a couple more years.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

@OP if he's more keen on action packed games you should already accept defeat. ED had very little action and the action it does have is very repetitive unless you manage to find a good PvP wing. I would stop trying to convince him to get the game because he's probably not going to play for long.

My experience is of the 3 friends I recommended the game to, one of which is my brother, none of them play anymore. Main reason being it's a huge time investment for little reward. So again, if your friend is the type who wants action he's probably in the same boat as my friends and won't want to invest time in it when he could, say, log into some fps and get his joy. Stop trying to pressure someone to spend their money for selfish reasons (or you could buy it for him if you really want him to try it and see how "good" it is).

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

I guess there is always hope, but man, its like self harm or something. I'd have given up, so maybe fair play if you feel that its worth sticking it out. I know when I have paid my £40 and played as much as I have until I lose interest I will probably just be gone. o7

Give up and go where? Star Citizen?

It's like being a homeless hobo and hearing the bartender call out "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here folks!"

 

[JosiahD]

I have sevral friends who have the game as early backers but have barely evrn logged in. My Dad has the game, but also barely plays. My friends have been too distracted by other games, my Dad is just older and less able to get into complex games any more. If CQC offered the ability to set up private matches and fill empty spots with AI I reckon I could have gotten a few in by now. I've offered to take them as crew once multicrew goes live, but I doubt they'll take me up on it. It's a shame. I think the only thing now that might get them to take an interest would be if winging up was 'instant' like multicrew will be, but I dislike that idea myself so I don't think I want Wings going down that path. Maybe once we have the ability to walk around I can get them interested......

 

[Saool]

Sounds like the normal theme park vs sandbox thing to me. Most people need the game spoon feeding to them. That just how most games are, so people get used to it. They then struggle with a game where you have to define your own goals.

It's the same with people saying the game is boring or shallow. There is so much to do I simply cannot get through my things to do list. I often have to block book weeks out to do X or Y.

 

[JosiahD]

People who want a story, bought this game in error. It has none, it needs none.

Well, apart from the story you play out for your own CMDR of course, the life he/she lives in this galaxy of ours....

 

[IndigoWyrd]

My friends largely come in 3 varieties:

1. Cheap - They look at the price and say "I'll wait for it to go on sale."
2. Busy - Jobs, families, lives - they've looked, they've liked, but they haven't sat down to game anything in months.
3. Incompatible - a couple are die-hard EVE fanatics and won't even look at anything that isn't EVE, others are running hardware that makes me wonder how it even starts up, and the most complex thing they run is just as old.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

Sounds like the normal theme park vs sandbox thing to me. Most people need the game spoon feeding to them. That just how most games are, so people get used to it. They then struggle with a game where you have to define your own goals.

It's the same with people saying the game is boring or shallow. There is so much to do I simply cannot get through my things to do list. I often have to block book weeks out to do X or Y.

It's not a matter of it being spoon fed it's a matter of time vs reward. People spend hours running around skyrim cuz it's pretty but if you got bored after awhile you can fast travel, quickly get a quest kill some people and get some fat loot. In elite you have to go dozen or so jumps to pick up the mission, wait an hour till your assassination target appears, and the loot is rngineer materials so may be worth nothing to you.

Like you said you have to block out time from RL to get things done in game and some people simply don't have the time.

 

[Darth Ender]

Well, apart from the story you play out for your own CMDR of course, the life he/she lives in this galaxy of ours....

��

This is a stupid excuse given to explain away poor implementation. What story? I can't have my character join a local faction where I imagine he grew up in. I can't gain a reputation in my chosen field. I have no exclusive missions/behavior/content based on the narrative i've created for my character through in-game actions. The NPCS and bgs reacts to me as if i was a nobody-npc. Even worse, because at least they can belong to factions and even have job monikers that give them certain privileges and other npcs react a certain way to them.

So no, it's less of a story you play out and more of a delusion you have with yourself to explain why there's so many missing structural pieces to the fundamental parts of the game.

edit: In essence, the lack of persistence of actions and the code needed to react to that history when appropriate is why pretending that you should play your own story and all that sunshine and rainbow jazz makes no sense. I can kill thousands of people and it means nothing to my character's reputation in the game. I can be a great miner, means nothing. I can be an awesome bounty hunter. Means nothing. I can join both armies, means nothing. I can rank way up in both armies and it again, means nothing to the bgs to the local factions or to any of the npcs who randomly are tasked to come after me or encounter me. Asking people to create their own character is great and all, if any of that matters in the game. The best we have right now is that if you frequent a given station and are allied, it will sometimes say that they have a port for you already.... yet FD still makes you request docking afterwards.. which lets that one positive fall on its face. O

Without persistence of actions, what's the point of creating a story? There's none. Your character has less functionality in the game than an npc when it comes to character building.

 

[ozrix84]

if you got bored after awhile you can fast travel, quickly get a quest kill some people and get some fat loot.

This game isn't instant gratification fodder, it's old school