What went wrong with Elite Dangerous

[Kristov]

You do realize that a lot of seal clubbing is due to the fact that pirates have a VERY small time period in which to send a message and retrieve cargo before either A) Combat Logging or B) High Waking. The game mechanics that FD refuses to acknowledge or fix is the cause of seal clubbing.

If you want to talk about your gaming experience, then I gurantee I can trump your pirating and PvP experience within E with my own. When we pirated we taught everyone how use macros to send a request to throttle to 0 within a second of entering low space. In my groups' experience most of the CMDRs who ended up dead was due to the fact that they had no reading comprehension or were just buying time for a combat log or high wake. We let the CMDR decide whether they die or relinquish cargo and feel no remorse to those who have died. In fact we were more than patient. As for PvP, don't talk to me about real PvP. I've danced with opponents with equal and more skill then myself as well as commanded large scale battles with 25+ CMDRs present.

At the end of the day you have little experience within E on these subjects compared to me. I'm not trying to argue here to shape the game how I want it, but rather trying to use my veteran experiences to help the games overall health.

People like you who tell people to like it or leave it do not help the 10 year plan of FD at all.

Funny, I found it very easy to disable a ship when I was pirating, but that doesn't stop someone who's logging...you had to destroy them did you, and that did what to stop them from logging exactly? Definitely doesn't get you any cargo...just clubbing seals. 'We'...so which of the groups were you with? And how much pirating have you done in the 5 months since you started? Your epeen waving...you lost and know it and that's your response.

Toodles.

 

[Lobstris]

You do realize that a lot of seal clubbing is due to the fact that pirates have a VERY small time period in which to send a message and retrieve cargo before either A) Combat Logging or B) High Waking. The game mechanics that FD refuses to acknowledge or fix is the cause of seal clubbing.

I'm always amused that people think 'high waking' is an exploit or bug. If you just allowed people to follow and interdict again, how would traders ever escape? (assuming no instancing glitches). There needs to be some other mechanism in place (e.g. stealth running whilst in supercruise, vs. probes and scanners, to allow the same 'radar vs. stealth' gameplay every modern mil. flight sim contains) so we can play cat and mouse properly, without the game being biased too much to the feline (or rodent).

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

You...you are a funny man, got me choking up trying not to laugh out loud here at work!

Thank you good sir, I had to do it!

As a side note the author of the paper is Prof. Steven LaValle who is somewhat of a leading light in VR who I would think has played or at least tried Elite.

 

[Kewpa Eurus]

There are no objectives in a sandbox game, yes this is true. But there are tools in a sandbox game that allow you to create your own objectives...This is why ED is starting to be considered a sandbox without sand...

 

[Red Anders]

Despite earlier comments suggesting otherwise, a great deal of this thread and even more of the reddit posts are very much based in comparisons to Eve Online.

Even leaving aside the fact that anybody who thinks Elite Dangerous was ever intended to be a complete and fully functioning game with all of its major content included within around 16 months of it leaving beta must be capable of selective reading and listening on a scale previously unseen in the known galaxy, there are only really two facts that anybody wanting to compare this game to Eve should keep at the forefront of their mind.

1. Eve is a subscription-based game. If you pay for 12 months up-front that subscription will cost you £89.99 (£120 for 12 months if you pay a month at a time) and that's before you even think about spending more money so you can then buy Isk in-game, not that's it's a blatant pay to win model or anything.

2. Eve has been running for thirteen years.

So yeah, I paid £17.99 for the original Elite Dangerous in a sale and I paid £29.99 for Horizons (£10 pre-order discount). Slightly less I think.

Do I expect to obtain a game that is a direct competitor for one which has benefited from thirteen years of iterative development, all whilst raking in subs from tens of thousands of players at the rates mentioned above during that time plus the utterly absurd amounts of money that I know some players have spent over and above that to speed up their progress? No, not really.

Do I expect a game that has a framework for future content delivery in place and provides a diverting experience whilst I look forward to some of that content arriving? Yep. That's what I have, so it's all good.

Seriously, some of you need to think long and hard about that thirteen year lifespan of Eve and give yourselves a reality check. Perhaps compare it to the numerous 'sky is falling' posts we saw on here when a two month delay to 2.1 was announced. The level of impatience is remarkable.

The short answer to the 'where did it all go wrong' question is this: It hasn't 'all gone wrong' at all, it simply hasn't 'all been delivered' yet and considering that we're under 18 months into the release version of a game which was always described as having a planned 10 year development cycle, the only problem there is why the hell people have convinced themselves that they should be expecting something else.

Feel free to call me a 'fanboy' or whatever else you wish. I'm not, I'm just a realist.

 

[Kewpa Eurus]

Never had I had a problem with disabling drives. Just saying you had a small time window to do so. Did they need to be destroyed? Yes, they did. "Throttle to 0 or be destroyed" I'm not here to make it easier for the trader, I'm making it easier for myself. I have the guns so if you allow me to pull you into low you play by my rules. Simple as that.

Who did I pirate with? The Code. You may have heard of us around here . I was also the FC for them in multiple battles, with a history of PvPing since 1.1 up until the giant battles of Kaushpoos a few months ago. You can find my work and my involvement in large scale battles which the PvP community knows about on multiple YT channels. Oddly for being a PvPer yourself, no one knows or has ever seen you at any of the more famous battles in ED history in which the PvP community knows about. Even Kaushpoos had lots of people who are not avid PvPers participate. Where were you, for being such a grand PvPer? I would love to see any footage of any PvP experiences you've been involved in. Unless you are still subscribing to the it's true because I said so ideology.

If you truly were an Open PvPer, I would know you and have intel on you, I do my research as an FC. I have no info on you, nor have seen you in any skirmishes or large battles at any of the CG's or contested areas by the PvP community. You sure you want to continue down this road?

Epeen waving? No, just putting you in your place as any veteran would do to a rookie when they think they can use their limited experiences to try to trump an argument. I'm not the one who brought their "20 years of experience" to the argument in the first place...lol...

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

There IS no objective in a sandbox game except to play, what your personal goals are, that's up to you, be it the biggest ship, all the ships, seeing all the stars, all the inhabited systems, whatever, doesn't matter, it's a sandbox game, there are NO objectives and goals provided by the game. And you don't see that, you think there needs to be some objective, some goal, some final destination...there's no end game in a sandbox, there's no end.....you did pick up the wrong game.

Imo there is plenty of wiggle room here . imo a good solid mission generator combi e with persistent npcs we can build relationships with if done well can certainly my give some of the narrative being asked for. Hell even the "fleet mechanics" could work so long as controlled by npcs and we just choose to align with them ..... Or not.

Combine that with the large over arching story which FD are spinning in the background and we could have the best of all worlds.

Even 1st encounters had a story.

 

[MottiKhan]

...Feel free to call me a 'fanboy' or whatever else you wish...

Fanboy.

Then again, I'd pay a subscription to play ED. But I wouldn't if it also had PTW effects like Mafia Wars or Evony did. Using ingame credits to buy anything worthwhile is fair, since everyone has access to the same stuff. The Cobra IV notwithstanding, you can get everything playable that anyone else can get within the game. Of course, if anyone wants my Cobra IV, you can pick it up in the trash bin where I left it.

 

[Kewpa Eurus]

No matter what you will have people comparing Eve to ED, as they are competing games in the same genre. Wrong or right it's going to happen, but the fact that FD has had every chance to evaluate Eve and why it has been able to run for 13 years should not be overlooked. Certainly there are some elements they could have pulled and evolved from Eve to create a deeper game. A player run economy being the most basic lesson they could have pulled from Eve.

 

[twelvebore]

2. Eve has been running for thirteen years.

Precisely. Well said.

The comparison should be between ED now and what EVE was in 2005. I've said this in another thread, but I'm going to repeat it anyway:

Roughly two years into EVEs lifetime the CCP forums were full of "EVE is gonna die", "everyone is leaving", etc. threads. At that time player numbers at peak time, Sat/Sun evening Europe time, were in the (very) low few thousands. EVE is a single instance, so that was a reasonable reflection of the active player base at that time, at least to within an order of magnitude.

Moreover, when EVE launched a lot of what is now player-driven was NPC-controlled, most significantly the economy. Prices for basic commodities were more or less fixed. There was basically player corporations/guilds, but very little else, no player-owned structures, no player-driven Galactic politics. There wasn't a great deal of difference between what one could do in EVE then and what one can do in ED today (the primary difference that I recall being manufacturing).

Lastly, at that time the EVE servers were incredibly unstable. At some points the game was borderline unplayable.

So where did EVE go wrong??!

 

[Leper Messiah]

IMO the acronym MMO is what went wrong with the game, sod all this multiplayer malarky and just make it a solid enjoyable single player experience with a good narrative and interesting well written sub plots and mission. Vast majority of gamers couldn't give a furry crack of a rats behind to multiplayer.

 

[Dave1235]

As expected, a lot of it is eve players whining that it's broken coz it's not eve and isn't trying to be. No argument that the game has issues and needs "more game" in it, but not being "eve with cockpits" isn't one of them.

Lol the bits about ed not copying things from eve. I know elite was 84 when was spreadsheet gankfest launched again. Glad I cant use my pc right now, I would be tempted to start a reddit account and there aint enough disinfectant on sol to get me through that experience.

 

[Kewpa Eurus]

Can we at least agree that the economy is pretty shallow. I mean there are only 4-5 items to make real credits on and the rest being fillers for the screen. I created a 4 stop trade route in 1.1 and was able to constantly run that route with no change to supply and demand. To me it felt to constant and predictable.

 

[Fendalton]

My favourite post was the one saying the game is filled with the casual dads who can afford the HOTAS set up with 3 monitors / oculous rift who play the game for the Nostolgia purposes, which works as Elite is just a reskinned 1984 copy. As such they complain when things don't go their way like in the 1984 version and Frontier cater towards this crowd instead of catering towards the newer players. As such the game will not be sustainable.

P2P infrastructure ruined the game. So many trainers out there to use, can't even have any server based events or see people from the other side of the world. I read the entire reddit thread, which in reality if it was posted to /EliteDangeorus it would have been downvoted to oblivion as that's the subreddit for you. If it's not an Asp on a moon or some RP bull    , it gets downvoted.

 

[DaveB]

...A player run economy...

Bump that 1.5M sales up by a couple of orders of magnitude, keep everyone who ever bought it actively playing and maybe there'd be enough of us to "power" a player-run economy across the 200,000 or so systems in inhabited space - If we were all miners. Even the microeconomic factors in a "market" the size of the populated bubble is too big to be player-run. Even if you had it try to be indirectly "player driven" with the trading activities of players scaled up and used to demonstrate how the BGS shifted the economy, it would collapse in a few cycles because there's some goods out there you just don't haul unless you can't afford to fill your hold with anything else

 

[serialsid]

Haven't read all the pages so hope I'm not repeating anything. Will start by saying I love this game, have put more hours into this than any game I can remember. And for what I paid I have definitely had value for money. But I do think they made a big mistake releasing the game in its current form, a great simulator of flying in space and pretty to look at, but has no soul. I don't feel as I'm in a living and breathing universe. Yes I know its a 10 year plan, but most casual players don't have the patience to wait that long for a fleshed out game, and without them how is it going to survive long term??

I think its quite telling that we seem to be seeing more and more of these threads. And as we have all paid our money and this is a FORUM, everyone is entitled to voice their opinion good or bad. And people moaning about them crack me up, as the titles are usually a good indication of the content. If you don't like them don't read them.

Hopefully 2.1 will sort some of the issues out.

1. They were very naïve in how people were going to play the PVP part of the game. You were always going to get people that just like going around killing other people just because they can, especially if there is no consequence. Crime and punishment should have been set in stone from the outset. In start systems the security should have been rapid and nasty. And bounties should have stacked up for killing people for fun in these systems. Chased across many systems,. But on the other hand, as you go further out it gets less and in anarchy systems anything goes. I wonder how many noobies went into open having played lots of multiplayer games and got crushed by someone in a Python and thought "sod this" and never came back.

2. The game needs more life. NPC's should have been available to hire and fly with from the outset. Trading would be a lot more interesting being able to hire 3 Vultures to cover your 3 million investment. And this would help solve some of the the PVP problems. Would certainly make certain players think twice. More life at stations and bases, just the appearance of things happening would add something.

3. Missions far to linear and for the most part too easy. Once you have done them a few times they become boring. In this day and age when you have games giving you dynamic and varied missions that make you think and give you options, I think launching with these was a mistake. People expect more these days, not 1980's missions. I'm hopeful 2.1 will sort this out. Getting missions right will give the game a brighter future, again keeping the casual gamer happy.

4. Horizons should have launched with more content from the off. The planets are pretty and for a while fun, but they offer so little. And once you have seen a few and the different coloured rocks to me it loses its appeal. I don't have the imagination of some of you guys, I don't see how blasting off to look at different planets is exploring. Its really just a fancy Galaxy sight seeing simulator!! You do nothing and interact with nothing. When they add life and species to find and discover Ill be the first blasting off, but until then it holds no appeal to me.

The passion seen on this forum shows how much people care about this game and want it to succeed. The reason I mention the casual gamer so much is I wonder if there is enough hard core gamers out there to keep the game going. I wonder if they had delayed a year or two and fleshed out the game more would we be seeing this sort of thread?? In the end its all going to boil down to money. If 3.0 and 4.0 doesn't sell enough, ill be surprised if we ever see 5.0 and beyond. And after reading this forum (never mind steam and others), selling 3.0 is not going to be easy. Lets all hope Frontier pulls something out of the hat that keeps everyone happy and draws more players in.

 

[Asp Explorer]

My favourite post was the one saying the game is filled with the casual dads who can afford the HOTAS set up with 3 monitors / oculous rift who play the game for the Nostolgia purposes, which works as Elite is just a reskinned 1984 copy. As such they complain when things don't go their way like in the 1984 version and Frontier cater towards this crowd instead of catering towards the newer players. As such the game will not be sustainable.

P2P infrastructure ruined the game. So many trainers out there to use, can't even have any server based events or see people from the other side of the world. I read the entire reddit thread, which in reality if it was posted to /EliteDangeorus it would have been downvoted to oblivion as that's the subreddit for you. If it's not an Asp on a moon or some RP bull    , it gets downvoted.

It's not our fault that someone cannot afford a triplescreen/VR rig with HOTAS. They simply have to get a job that pays money For that they will to either a: possess skills, or b: acquire skills. Only they can do that for themselves, and sitting on an internet site frothing at the mouth isn't going to achieve either

P2P infrastructure is what made the game available to the vast majority of players, and enables realtime 3d space combat. If you think that client-server architecture would be a cure-all for networking issues, you have to scale down realtime 3d space combat. There literally is no way around it.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Hardcore gamers never kept games running.
They might have blocked the greater success of 2nd generation MMOs with their annoying sense of entitlement. 3rd gen just destroyed everything subscription and retention wise and that was done with millions of casual gamers.

And hmm.. please stop trying to "improve" the core game. It's one of the best I've seen in decades.

 

[Kristov]

Never had I had a problem with disabling drives. Just saying you had a small time window to do so. Did they need to be destroyed? Yes, they did. "Throttle to 0 or be destroyed" I'm not here to make it easier for the trader, I'm making it easier for myself. I have the guns so if you allow me to pull you into low you play by my rules. Simple as that.

Who did I pirate with? The Code. You may have heard of us around here . I was also the FC for them in multiple battles, with a history of PvPing since 1.1 up until the giant battles of Kaushpoos a few months ago. You can find my work and my involvement in large scale battles which the PvP community knows about on multiple YT channels. Oddly for being a PvPer yourself, no one knows or has ever seen you at any of the more famous battles in ED history in which the PvP community knows about. Even Kaushpoos had lots of people who are not avid PvPers participate. Where were you, for being such a grand PvPer? I would love to see any footage of any PvP experiences you've been involved in. Unless you are still subscribing to the it's true because I said so ideology.

If you truly were an Open PvPer, I would know you and have intel on you, I do my research as an FC. I have no info on you, nor have seen you in any skirmishes or large battles at any of the CG's or contested areas by the PvP community. You sure you want to continue down this road?

Epeen waving? No, just putting you in your place as any veteran would do to a rookie when they think they can use their limited experiences to try to trump an argument. I'm not the one who brought their "20 years of experience" to the argument in the first place...lol...

Your PvP experience doesn't matter, you don't get that however, since you think this IS a PvP game despite it not being one. So put your epeen away, it doesn't impress me one bit, and has no bearing on anything. You pick the one thing that E: D does a truly craptacular job on, PvP, and make it out to be your foundation for knowing what this game needs? I don't mind doing PvP in this game, I don't seek it out very often however because it's SO damn badly done, as anyone who's actually into PvP gaming is fully aware of. I want good PvP, I'll go play an actual PvP game, BF or CoD or MWO or H&G, hell, Angry Birds Friends does PvP better than E: D! And you think you got some special claim to jack because you can do PvP in this game and actually think it's good? Wow....

One more time, you got the wrong game, gods above do you have the wrong game.

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

Never had I had a problem with disabling drives. Just saying you had a small time window to do so. Did they need to be destroyed? Yes, they did. "Throttle to 0 or be destroyed" I'm not here to make it easier for the trader, I'm making it easier for myself. I have the guns so if you allow me to pull you into low you play by my rules. Simple as that.

Who did I pirate with? The Code. You may have heard of us around here . I was also the FC for them in multiple battles, with a history of PvPing since 1.1 up until the giant battles of Kaushpoos a few months ago. You can find my work and my involvement in large scale battles which the PvP community knows about on multiple YT channels. Oddly for being a PvPer yourself, no one knows or has ever seen you at any of the more famous battles in ED history in which the PvP community knows about. Even Kaushpoos had lots of people who are not avid PvPers participate. Where were you, for being such a grand PvPer? I would love to see any footage of any PvP experiences you've been involved in. Unless you are still subscribing to the it's true because I said so ideology.

If you truly were an Open PvPer, I would know you and have intel on you, I do my research as an FC. I have no info on you, nor have seen you in any skirmishes or large battles at any of the CG's or contested areas by the PvP community. You sure you want to continue down this road?

Epeen waving? No, just putting you in your place as any veteran would do to a rookie when they think they can use their limited experiences to try to trump an argument. I'm not the one who brought their "20 years of experience" to the argument in the first place...lol...

Possibly the best argument against what the OP wants that I have seen in the entire thread or, in fact, anywhere.