Hi,
I've invested a reasonable amount of money in Elite Dangerous Beta and then Elite Dangerous horizons. But I won't be purchasing the 3rd season of this game. Why?
The biggest reason, is that the game is just one big annoying grind, with hardly anything explained. Everything I know about Elite Dangerous comes from 3rd party websites, individuals outside the game have created.
For example. I wanted to upgrade my FSD using engineers. Great, fantastic. But the information presented on screen doesn't tell you how to get the materials required.
Combat is too "balanced" this means it's very hard to get an upper hand in the game. I don't want to be stressing about how much insurance money I have to pay every time my ship dies. There's largely no advantage to having a bigger ship, because that just means you get targeted a lot more. This is great if you play in wings, but I don't have time to go around making friends, organizing wing parties and logging into the game. I'm a solo player, who works for a living. I can't spend my entire like grinding to get ahead. This makes the game fundamentally not fun.
Anyway back to the main problem. I feel like an investigative journalist every time I want to do something new, find a resource, or engage in a new aspect of the game. I'm trying to find modular terminals right now, it says you get them as a mission reward. So I spent 3 hours flying around stations looking for mission rewards. With Elite the devil is in the fine detail. You must be in BOOM economic systems, you must be in Industry economic systems, and even then it's completely pot luck. Then you have NO CONTROL over which missions pop up. I just took a "go steal cargo" mission. I turned up in the system, between the times indicated, and my target never turned up. That was a waste of an hour. I visited signal sources, I scanned ships around me. No target. This keeps happening to me with these kinds of missions. So clearly there is something I'm not getting. Because IT HAS NOT BEEN DESCRIBED IN THE GAME. When you have a game this complex, you NEED INSTRUCTIONS so players aren't wasting their time ing around. I want a clear simple goal to acheive. I don't want to be searching forums and other websites trying to decode why the hell what I expect to be happening isn't happening.
Lets see what you can do in Elite as a solo player.
Mining... gets really boring. All the profit is in hazard area's as a solo player you'll pay more insurance than you gain profit. Either that or you spent hours and hours in low profit area's. It works out the same in terms of profit, the difference is I don't have hours and hours.
Exploring. OMG, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump, fly, scan, scoop, jump... kill me now.
Piracy... great if you operate as part of a wing, not good for solo players.
Buying new ships... why there's not a lot of advantage. you're going to get ganked by a bunch of NCP's anyway. Bigger ships just means more credit loss when they blow up.
Trading... I can do this for a while, but it's the same sort of thing. The profit to death ratio is just too low.
Community goals... ok these can be fun, taking part of the unfolding story of Elite. At least these give you a clear, and engaging reward.
Combat zones... bigger the ship, the more you get targeted. Again, this works well for wings of players. I'm a solo player. Getting ganged up on is not a lot of fun.
Planets... ok driving around was cool. Now all the planets look the same. Dead, dusty rocks with crap to blast. People complain about no man's sky. But, you know what? At least the planets were more interesting too look at. Honestly from space they look more interesting than the ground.
Power Play... is just cargo running and blowing stuff up. While getting interdicted more, plus it limits your movements between systems because of how much you get attacked.
Elite Dangerous is an impressive game. But, it lacks fun, it lacks focus, and it lacks creativity. Everything you do in it, is a grind. Crafting, is a grind. You can't build anything that is yours, you can't own systems, or plant flags, you can't build bases. These are things games like the X-series, and Eve online do pretty well. They allow clear precise goals. When I play games I want some kind of success. That's where games like minecraft, space engineers, rust, etc, excel.
What good is a big empty universe full of grind?
You may all how begin flamming me for being "a bad player who doesn't get the game.
Either way, I'm not dumping any more cash into this thing, when there are more enjoyable experiences elsewhere that won't suck days of my life only to end up in failure. I game for the carrot, not so I can be hit with a stick all the time cause I'm not doing it right.
