[video] 2000 hours of Elite Dangerous
Deleted member 38366
D
Here's my {alot} of hours report 
Warning : simple, concise and honest, White Knights better scroll past it
V1 Base Game (V1.x) was a series of placeholder features, although one could argue they've built a basic fundament for later additions. Still, some of these haven't materialized in years, so for the longest time it looked like things were here to stay.
V2 Horizons possibly the biggest disappointment; a playable tech demo but with nearly no gameplay value (lack of time? lack of resources? total failure of imagination? Ultra-lazy development? You be the judge)
V3 Beyond promised to revisit the broken, leaking or corroded fundament of placeholders (house of cards and smoke started coming up)
- V3.0 Engineers? Just a quickfix for the issues created by their "Unholy Cambridge Church of RNGesus", incl. Material Traders aka Material Black Holes and their intentionally sadistic Trade Ratios
- V3.0 C&P? Total fail. Interestingly, the concept was presented early enough and (professionally for the most part) torn apart for being overly complicated, non-functional and missing the point. Yet, it got implemented unchanged. Exactly how not to do it.
V3.1 mostly was and likely V3.2 might be sheer focus on optimizing to milk the cow. Monetization. New Ships are nice but don't address core game problems.
So here's everyone still waiting for Beyond to deliver what it was intended to do.
We haven't started yet.
And that's extremely bad news... unless David has some 1000 people hired to work exclusively on the Q4 Update and plans to deliver a Telephone book sized Patchnotes.
Thus, all in all, it seems Beyond might miss the mark and won't begin touching upon core Game mechanics until Q4 hits and Exploration & Mining will see an Extension. Those Extensions will have to prove themselves.
I'd say most of the delays and shortcomings were due to ELITE sitting in maintenance mode with 100 people supposedly working on it.
I'd bet they did - but only during lunch breaks and after-hours.
All real work went into other IP in order to meet deadlines (where they produced a title criticized for : lacking complexity with heavy focus on monetization
).
So what fundamentally changed?
David is still as good and snug of a salesman as ever, who does care alot. About shares, that is. He could sell plastic cups and be super excited about an upcoming new color of plastic cups
The team is still super excited about 3 months worth of work that produced Patchnotes smaller than what most Indie Productions get done in 1/4 of the time with less than a handful of coders.
Core Game is still riddled with as many (or sometimes even more) bugs and/or shortcomings as years ago.
Balancing to FDev is still like calculating the Energy requirements and polydimensional dependencies to create a Schwarzschild Wormhole in theoretical physics. Often looks like Trial & Error based on pure Spreadsheet design with zero in-game experience.
Game still relies on 3rd Party Tools like no other Game in known existence (I'm honestly not aware of anything even remotely close to the massive dependence on external/crowdsourced Information).
Game isn't dead - but instead has proven to be a V16 that still survives running on 6 cylinders. Lots of smoke & friction and alot of potential lost - but it keeps going.
Especially if you manage to find a place and friends to stick around - Game still delivers very well, if only for the social interaction (outside of the game, but hey, in ELITE nearly everything happens outside of the Game ).
I could argue against alot of things but not "bang for the buck". Somewhat helped by the time sinks, but one can easily spend thousands of hours. One has to keep that in perspective, not many Games permit that.
So far so good.
But... other titles are scheduled for release or are already live & receiving extensions. ELITE will eventually have to kick into high gear again and get things just right. At least that would be highly beneficial.
Some Common Sense (Balancing, Features, Mission System etc.) and Attention/Love to/for Detail are in order to make that happen.
Plus, we can't stay in maintenance mode forever without consequences, easy as that.
Warning : simple, concise and honest, White Knights better scroll past it
V1 Base Game (V1.x) was a series of placeholder features, although one could argue they've built a basic fundament for later additions. Still, some of these haven't materialized in years, so for the longest time it looked like things were here to stay.
V2 Horizons possibly the biggest disappointment; a playable tech demo but with nearly no gameplay value (lack of time? lack of resources? total failure of imagination? Ultra-lazy development? You be the judge)
V3 Beyond promised to revisit the broken, leaking or corroded fundament of placeholders (house of cards and smoke started coming up)
- V3.0 Engineers? Just a quickfix for the issues created by their "Unholy Cambridge Church of RNGesus", incl. Material Traders aka Material Black Holes and their intentionally sadistic Trade Ratios
- V3.0 C&P? Total fail. Interestingly, the concept was presented early enough and (professionally for the most part) torn apart for being overly complicated, non-functional and missing the point. Yet, it got implemented unchanged. Exactly how not to do it.
V3.1 mostly was and likely V3.2 might be sheer focus on optimizing to milk the cow. Monetization. New Ships are nice but don't address core game problems.
So here's everyone still waiting for Beyond to deliver what it was intended to do.
We haven't started yet.
And that's extremely bad news... unless David has some 1000 people hired to work exclusively on the Q4 Update and plans to deliver a Telephone book sized Patchnotes.
Thus, all in all, it seems Beyond might miss the mark and won't begin touching upon core Game mechanics until Q4 hits and Exploration & Mining will see an Extension. Those Extensions will have to prove themselves.
I'd say most of the delays and shortcomings were due to ELITE sitting in maintenance mode with 100 people supposedly working on it.
I'd bet they did - but only during lunch breaks and after-hours.
All real work went into other IP in order to meet deadlines (where they produced a title criticized for : lacking complexity with heavy focus on monetization
So what fundamentally changed?
David is still as good and snug of a salesman as ever, who does care alot. About shares, that is. He could sell plastic cups and be super excited about an upcoming new color of plastic cups
The team is still super excited about 3 months worth of work that produced Patchnotes smaller than what most Indie Productions get done in 1/4 of the time with less than a handful of coders.
Core Game is still riddled with as many (or sometimes even more) bugs and/or shortcomings as years ago.
Balancing to FDev is still like calculating the Energy requirements and polydimensional dependencies to create a Schwarzschild Wormhole in theoretical physics. Often looks like Trial & Error based on pure Spreadsheet design with zero in-game experience.
Game still relies on 3rd Party Tools like no other Game in known existence (I'm honestly not aware of anything even remotely close to the massive dependence on external/crowdsourced Information).
Game isn't dead - but instead has proven to be a V16 that still survives running on 6 cylinders. Lots of smoke & friction and alot of potential lost - but it keeps going.
Especially if you manage to find a place and friends to stick around - Game still delivers very well, if only for the social interaction (outside of the game, but hey, in ELITE nearly everything happens outside of the Game
).I could argue against alot of things but not "bang for the buck". Somewhat helped by the time sinks, but one can easily spend thousands of hours. One has to keep that in perspective, not many Games permit that.
So far so good.
But... other titles are scheduled for release or are already live & receiving extensions. ELITE will eventually have to kick into high gear again and get things just right. At least that would be highly beneficial.
Some Common Sense (Balancing, Features, Mission System etc.) and Attention/Love to/for Detail are in order to make that happen.
Plus, we can't stay in maintenance mode forever without consequences, easy as that.
Last edited by a moderator:
I appreciate your cynical humor. And agree with the assessment.Here's my {alot} of hours report
Warning : simple, concise and honest, White Knights better scroll past it
V1 Base Game (V1.x) was a series of placeholder features, although one could argue they've build a basic fundament for later additions. Still, some of these haven't materialized in years, so for the longest time it looked like things were here to stay.
V2 Horizons possibly the biggest disappointment; a playable tech demo but with nearly no gameplay value (lack of time? lack of resources? total failure of imagination? Ultra-lazy development? You be the judge)
V3 Beyond promised to revisit the broken, leaking or corroded fundament of placeholders (house of cards and smoke started coming up)
- V3.0 Engineers? Just a quickfix for the issues created by their "Unholy Cambridge Church of RNGesus", incl. Material Traders aka Material Black Holes and their intentionally sadistic Trade Ratios
- V3.0 C&P? Total fail. Interestingly, the concept was presented early enough and (professionally for the most part) torn apart for being overly complicated, non-functional and missing the point. Yet, it got implemented unchanged. Exactly how not to do it.
V3.1 mostly was and likely V3.2 might be sheer focus on optimizing to milk the cow. Monetization. New Ships are nice but don't address core game problems.
So here's everyone still waiting for Beyond to deliver what it was intended to do.
We haven't started yet.
And that's extremely bad news... unless David has some 1000 people hired to work exclusively on the Q4 Update and plans to deliver a Telephone book sized Patchnotes.
Thus, all in all, it seems Beyond might miss the mark and won't begin touching upon core Game mechanics until Q4 hits and Exploration & Mining will see an Extension. Those Extensions will have to prove themselves.
I'd say most of the delays and shortcomings were due to ELITE sitting in maintenance mode with 100 people supposedly working on it.
I'd bet they did - but only during lunch breaks and after-hours.
All real work went into other IP in order to meet deadlines (where they produced a title criticized for : lacking complexity with heavy focus on monetization ).
So what fundamentally changed?
David is still as good and snug of a salesman as ever, who does care alot. About shares, that is. He could sell plastic cups and be super excited about an upcoming new color of plastic cups
The team is still super excited about 3 months worth of work that produced Patchnotes smaller than what most Indie Productions get done in 1/4 of the time with less than a handful of coders.
Core Game is still riddled with as many (or sometimes even more) bugs and/or shortcomings as years ago.
Balancing to FDev is still like calculating the Energy requirements and polydimensional dependencies to create a Schwarzschild Wormhole in theoretical physics. Often looks like Trial & Error based on pure Spreadsheet design with zero in-game experience.
Game still relies on 3rd Party Tools like no other Game in known existence (I'm honestly not aware of anything even remotely close to the massive dependence on external/crowdsourced Information).
Game isn't dead - but instead has proven to be a V16 that still survives running on 6 cylinders. Lots of smoke & friction and alot of potential lost - but it keeps going.
Especially if you manage to find a place and friends to stick around - Game still delivers very well, if only for the social interaction (outside of the game, but they, in ELITE nearly everything happens outside of the Game
I could argue against alot of things but not "bang for the buck". Somewhat helped by the time sinks, but one can easily spend thousands of hours. One has to keep that in perspective, not many Games permit that.
So far so good.
But... other titles are scheduled for release or are already live & receiving extensions. ELITE will eventually have to kick into high gear again and get things just right. At least that would be highly beneficial.
Some Common Sense (Balancing, Features, Mission System etc.) and Attention/Love to/for Detail are in order to make that happen.
Plus, we can't stay in maintenance mode forever without consequences, easy as that.
OK, I _might_ try to gather my thoughts on my first 2000hrs, we'll see ... but, in the meantime ... I have to just say I'm really quite bewildered on your reaction to the holo-ad competition. Reward? REWARD?!?! As one of the winners, having my advert actually appear in this game that I love sooooo much ... OH MY GOD ... that is EASILY reward enough. I mean, that's why I did it ... surely it's why we all did it? (and I'd be really interested to hear the views of the other dozen or so winners but I'm willing to bet at least 90% of them would say the same). I don't want to be paid ... MY HOLO-AD IS GOING TO BE IN THE GAME! If I remember then I'll see if I can capture a picture of the grin on my face the first time I fly past that chequered flag bearing the logo "There's fast ... and then there's Buckyball". It will be big enough to fly a T10 into! [yesnod]
If I remember then I'll see if I can capture a picture of the grin on my face the first time I fly past that chequered flag bearing the logo "There's fast ... and then there's Buckyball". It will be big enough to fly a T10 into! [yesnod]
Enjoyed the production as always. I'm at the 3,700hr mark. Still have goals to accomplish. My most memorable experiences were PvP or cooperative wing events that played out like scenes from a star wars movie. Of course, to get the most out of this game you have to enjoy the mundane tasks that prepare you for the big events, which I do, hence the 3,700 hrs. There is no end in sight for me.
OK, I _might_ try to gather my thoughts on my first 2000hrs, we'll see ... but, in the meantime ... I have to just say I'm really quite bewildered on your reaction to the holo-ad competition. Reward? REWARD?!?! As one of the winners, having my advert actually appear in this game that I love sooooo much ... OH MY GOD ... that is EASILY reward enough. I mean, that's why I did it ... surely it's why we all did it? (and I'd be really interested to hear the views of the other dozen or so winners but I'm willing to bet at least 90% of them would say the same). I don't want to be paid ... MY HOLO-AD IS GOING TO BE IN THE GAME!
I hope FD does a "paint a ship skin" competition as well. And give the creators nothing but their unending gratitude. This way FD can let others do their jobs for them, for free, and we can get some actually good non-finger-painted skins for a change and people like you can enjoy paying for them in gratitude for them being simply in the game.
OK, I _might_ try to gather my thoughts on my first 2000hrs, we'll see ... but, in the meantime ... I have to just say I'm really quite bewildered on your reaction to the holo-ad competition. Reward? REWARD?!?! As one of the winners, having my advert actually appear in this game that I love sooooo much ... OH MY GOD ... that is EASILY reward enough. I mean, that's why I did it ... surely it's why we all did it? (and I'd be really interested to hear the views of the other dozen or so winners but I'm willing to bet at least 90% of them would say the same). I don't want to be paid ... MY HOLO-AD IS GOING TO BE IN THE GAME!
To quickly explain the situation on the holo ad thing. (It's not hard)
So Imagine it's ME who makes a contest, I ask for people to send in danart and for my next video I would include it, IF it passes my strict standarts.
I make money AND keep your copyrights so in the future I could use this art to make money ETC, you, on the other hand, get to be the creator, that I DONT EVEN BOTHER COMPENSATING.
Even thou you know, that I could at the very least give winners 5$ or so as the prize OR better yet : send you my authograph(think in-game cosmetics ETC for the real competition there) with absolutely no material loss for me, BUT I choose NOT to!
Do you get the problem there?
As said : YES, work for whoever you want, for however much you want - your choice, your incentive!
Issue arrises when you start to think that having your work being featured is the prize you won! (to remind you : that is the GOAL of the competition, NOT the reward)
Especially if we consider that FRONTIER, a software company that can just give you ALL the cosmetics and game digital version with a simple flip of couple of BYTES in FEW SECONDS, with absolutely no loss in sales, STILL could not be bothered to do so. Be that stupidity or malice, you decide, but I for one find this in a very poor taste.
I do congratulate all the people who got chosen, and I wish I could just aplaud alongside everyone but I cannot, so make my opinions known!
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Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Not everything in life can be reduced down to money.
Here's my {alot} of hours report
Warning : simple, concise and honest, White Knights better scroll past it
Ok, I scrolled past... I take it not a favourable wall of text?
As someone who entered the competition and won all I have to say is ...
You do not speak for me.
Never assumed, presumed or attempted to do so on ANYONE'S behalf!
Congratulations to those that 'won'...just remember, working as a scab is taking food out of other artists mouths.
Art done for free devalues the work of all artists!
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Only 1 curse word the entire video?! Shameful. [haha]
I'm not sure how to articulate my multiple weeks played of the game. A lot of it ends up with me leaving because of frustrations over the mission system, which really hasn't changed since 1.0. The frustrations that is, the missions have changed for the better, but there's still the same things there that just make me not want to deal with them. I imagine most of the frustrations I've had come from RNG overall and with everything just feeling like a slog, especially travel. Yea, I get it, scale and everything, but when I feel like I need multiple hours to play the game and feel like I did anything, it's an issue that makes me just not want to even bother a lot of days. When I just load it up to mess around and not really do anything specific, it's a great bit of fun and it was back when all I did was raid RES or during the 1.0 days trying to kill Elite Anacondas in a Viper.
Ultimately the game just ends up feeling too incomplete with it's super iterative development (no atmospheres, shallow exploration, janky and boring planetary driving, etc.) and I'm always let down by the RNG. It has always been a game I want to love but always need to leave due to it not fulfilling various needs. Obviously with the amount of time I've put into it there was plenty of enjoyment but with so much potential and not knowing if it's ever going to be realized, it does get frustrating.
I'm not sure how to articulate my multiple weeks played of the game. A lot of it ends up with me leaving because of frustrations over the mission system, which really hasn't changed since 1.0. The frustrations that is, the missions have changed for the better, but there's still the same things there that just make me not want to deal with them. I imagine most of the frustrations I've had come from RNG overall and with everything just feeling like a slog, especially travel. Yea, I get it, scale and everything, but when I feel like I need multiple hours to play the game and feel like I did anything, it's an issue that makes me just not want to even bother a lot of days. When I just load it up to mess around and not really do anything specific, it's a great bit of fun and it was back when all I did was raid RES or during the 1.0 days trying to kill Elite Anacondas in a Viper.
Ultimately the game just ends up feeling too incomplete with it's super iterative development (no atmospheres, shallow exploration, janky and boring planetary driving, etc.) and I'm always let down by the RNG. It has always been a game I want to love but always need to leave due to it not fulfilling various needs. Obviously with the amount of time I've put into it there was plenty of enjoyment but with so much potential and not knowing if it's ever going to be realized, it does get frustrating.
OK, I _might_ try to gather my thoughts on my first 2000hrs, we'll see ... but, in the meantime ... I have to just say I'm really quite bewildered on your reaction to the holo-ad competition. Reward? REWARD?!?! As one of the winners, having my advert actually appear in this game that I love sooooo much ... OH MY GOD ... that is EASILY reward enough. I mean, that's why I did it ... surely it's why we all did it? (and I'd be really interested to hear the views of the other dozen or so winners but I'm willing to bet at least 90% of them would say the same). I don't want to be paid ... MY HOLO-AD IS GOING TO BE IN THE GAME!
It's really not all that uncommon for a content creator to be bothered by someone asking for free art. It's his opinion as one content creator and you're fully entitled to be completely satisfied with your art being in a game with no further compensation. As someone who has worked for free in the past, I'm more on his side than yours. Unfortunately the satisfaction of having my art in a video game doesn't pay the bills. I really don't think it has to be one way or the other, it completely up to the artist if the compensation was worth the work.
Deleted member 38366
D
Tell that to a company in the Entertainment Sector that often prioritizes Shareholder value over entertaining their customers (quite a few of which have financed the birth of this project, making it a bit of a special case)...
To them, almost everything boils down to money.
What have we seen very often in the last years? Minimum effort, maximum "please visit our Store", we'll address these issues soon(tm), no promises, no ETA, no guarantees.
This in a nutshell is Frontier Developments :
I don't say that's wrong by definition - and there's far worse examples out there - but they should know one thing : there's no such thing as a free lunch.
After all, they received more than enough freebies over the last years by the Community.
They want direct support to make their money-making machine a little better or work more efficiently? Outsource work that'd otherwise require their effort and manpower? Then they'll have to pay up. Simple as that.
Yea, I've picked up a few whiffs of that stench. Can't say it has made hanging on any easier, but I try to give them the benefit of the doubt since there is a gem here to be polished.
Fortunately pointing out something is financially trivial doesn't reduce it to money. It just says money isn't an excuse. Which directly implies something else is involved.
Here's my {alot} of hours report
Warning : simple, concise and honest, White Knights better scroll past it
V1 Base Game (V1.x) was a series of placeholder features, although one could argue they've built a basic fundament for later additions. Still, some of these haven't materialized in years, so for the longest time it looked like things were here to stay.
V2 Horizons possibly the biggest disappointment; a playable tech demo but with nearly no gameplay value (lack of time? lack of resources? total failure of imagination? Ultra-lazy development? You be the judge)
V3 Beyond promised to revisit the broken, leaking or corroded fundament of placeholders (house of cards and smoke started coming up)
- V3.0 Engineers? Just a quickfix for the issues created by their "Unholy Cambridge Church of RNGesus", incl. Material Traders aka Material Black Holes and their intentionally sadistic Trade Ratios
- V3.0 C&P? Total fail. Interestingly, the concept was presented early enough and (professionally for the most part) torn apart for being overly complicated, non-functional and missing the point. Yet, it got implemented unchanged. Exactly how not to do it.
V3.1 mostly was and likely V3.2 might be sheer focus on optimizing to milk the cow. Monetization. New Ships are nice but don't address core game problems.
So here's everyone still waiting for Beyond to deliver what it was intended to do.
We haven't started yet.
And that's extremely bad news... unless David has some 1000 people hired to work exclusively on the Q4 Update and plans to deliver a Telephone book sized Patchnotes.
Thus, all in all, it seems Beyond might miss the mark and won't begin touching upon core Game mechanics until Q4 hits and Exploration & Mining will see an Extension. Those Extensions will have to prove themselves.
I'd say most of the delays and shortcomings were due to ELITE sitting in maintenance mode with 100 people supposedly working on it.
I'd bet they did - but only during lunch breaks and after-hours.
All real work went into other IP in order to meet deadlines (where they produced a title criticized for : lacking complexity with heavy focus on monetization ).
So what fundamentally changed?
David is still as good and snug of a salesman as ever, who does care alot. About shares, that is. He could sell plastic cups and be super excited about an upcoming new color of plastic cups
The team is still super excited about 3 months worth of work that produced Patchnotes smaller than what most Indie Productions get done in 1/4 of the time with less than a handful of coders.
Core Game is still riddled with as many (or sometimes even more) bugs and/or shortcomings as years ago.
Balancing to FDev is still like calculating the Energy requirements and polydimensional dependencies to create a Schwarzschild Wormhole in theoretical physics. Often looks like Trial & Error based on pure Spreadsheet design with zero in-game experience.
Game still relies on 3rd Party Tools like no other Game in known existence (I'm honestly not aware of anything even remotely close to the massive dependence on external/crowdsourced Information).
Game isn't dead - but instead has proven to be a V16 that still survives running on 6 cylinders. Lots of smoke & friction and alot of potential lost - but it keeps going.
Especially if you manage to find a place and friends to stick around - Game still delivers very well, if only for the social interaction (outside of the game, but hey, in ELITE nearly everything happens outside of the Game
I could argue against alot of things but not "bang for the buck". Somewhat helped by the time sinks, but one can easily spend thousands of hours. One has to keep that in perspective, not many Games permit that.
So far so good.
But... other titles are scheduled for release or are already live & receiving extensions. ELITE will eventually have to kick into high gear again and get things just right. At least that would be highly beneficial.
Some Common Sense (Balancing, Features, Mission System etc.) and Attention/Love to/for Detail are in order to make that happen.
Plus, we can't stay in maintenance mode forever without consequences, easy as that.
Nailed it. 100% agreed.
What can I say, I was meddling about somewhat content until 2.1 hit. Over night I basically lost half of the gameplay I could do before. Well, not really lost it - I t just became so annoying and time-consuming that it simply wasn't worth the effort unless I enter into a hamsterwheel. The rest is history and crushed hopes about getting a playable game again without AI engineer cancer.