You know it's true what they say, this game is SERIOUSLY unfriendly....

[Aashenfox]

We who have been playing for years and accept the peculiarities of this game as 'normal' (example, supercruise approach mechanic), often forget just how crazy and ultimately unfriendly this game is to newbies.

I'm training my brother at the moment, he is going into his third day with Elite and while admittedly, he's never been a flight sim player, he is struggling with the basics, such as not overshooting supercruise destinations, landing accurately on pads (a lot of other issues related to fine throttle control, which is hard as nails without a decent hotas).

He's not incompetent in any way shape or form, he flies drones, he plays games and is a smart guy. He did the tutorials, successfully, just about, and then started taking missions. After realising that data missions pay literally NOTHING (yes, NO CREDITS when you start the game, just those crap commodities), he decided to try a more lucrative mission, a black box recovery. Now, we who play this game, all know that these black box missoins are either; collect the stuff in space at your leisure, nuopposed, then fly home, or...fight an encounter that would challenge the most hardcore of PvE pilots against 3 to 4 NPCs, then pick up the stuff and go home. Of course, by bad luck, his first black box recovery was the latter. Less than 30 seconds after dropping in, while I was still explaining how the cargo scoop works, he paid his first visit to the rebuy screen. His question naturally, "what did I do wrong?", my answer, "nothing, this type of mission is for a group or a heavily armed and upgraded ship flown by a competent combat pilot", and he said "how was I supposed to know that?" and I said... "yeh, you couldn't have known, the first time I did this I assumed I was doing something wrong as well, other times when you do this mission there may not be any enemies at all". He was like "srsly??" and I was like "yeh, that is really crap isn't it, what can I tell you, in this game you have to take the rough with the smooth."

After I helped him remap his joystick (Sidewinder 3d pro, on permanent loan from me) he turned around to me and said "If I didn't have you to explain this stuff for me, I'd be on Steam right now ranting along with all the others how this game is not a game but punishment for liking spaceships, no wonder I never heard of it".

I don't really have a point for this thread, I guess really it should just serve as a reminder to all of how complex this game is and how much actual knowledge of the mechanics of the game, we old schoolers take for completely granted.

I have a newfound respect for newbies who make it out of the first 20 hours of the game, especially without a mentor, kudos! I'm not even going to consider saying "Fdev, this is ridiculous, you need to overhaul the basics to make them more logical and newbie friendly" because its already far too late for that, so it will have to suffice that we recognise the effort put in by newbs who 'can'.

 

[Vardaugas]

I remember cursing a lot when I started with Elite. Couldn't finish basic combat, couldn't hit any ship above mostly harmless, couldn't find the landing pad. Cursed a lot. Then I started to change keybindings around, got more practice with flying, succeeded in the basic combat tutorial and discovered the clues for finding the right way to the landing pad. Still kept cursing a lot. Things didn't go smooth for a while. Takes perseverance to get into ED. Steep learning curve, indeed.

 

[Conch]

I remember cursing a lot when I started with Elite. Couldn't finish basic combat, couldn't hit any ship above mostly harmless, couldn't find the landing pad. Cursed a lot. Then I started to change keybindings around, got more practice with flying, succeeded in the basic combat tutorial and discovered the clues for finding the right way to the landing pad. Still kept cursing a lot. Things didn't go smooth for a while. Takes perseverance to get into ED. Steep learning curve, indeed.

steep learning curve? its more of a brickwall

 

[Vardaugas]

steep learning curve? its more of a brickwall

Loose bricks. It gives in when you bash your head against it often enough.

 

[o2thaZ]

I have a similar story.
Good to read he made it past 3 days.
On my attempt to sell this to a friend he quit after 1.5 day.
Nowadays I tell people don't even bother trying IF you're not a complete spacenerd.
The funny thing bout telling people they are incompetent, somehow activates (some of) them to prove otherwise.

 

[John Tenzer]

Yes, but this was par for the course of this franchise. (Which is something you might not know if you are not a veteran of the predecessors alright)!

Also, he didn't have to fight the NPCs as long as he hadn't any cargo or attacked them first.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

It took me three attempts (failed starts) before I got it, in the end I didn't play until v2.1 dropped despite being a backer [yesnod] so yes I can relate to this.

I also think its true to say Horizons is essential and imho Frontier should stop selling the base game outside the Mac platform.

 

[Tadeus72]

(a lot of other issues related to fine throttle control, which is hard as nails without a decent hotas).

Well, there are some goods points about the rest, but this? It's perfectly playable with keyboard and mouse. You don't need any special gear for this game. It's even more difficult to learn it with additional hardware if you weren't a sim fan before.

I also think the training should tell you about the 7 second 75% throttle rule.

It seems Frontier promised already a personal mission chain for players in Beyond, maybe it will future more tutorial like missions.

To bring it into perspective. It still has a much friendlier learning curve than Eve Online

 

[Aashenfox]

Yes, but this was par for the course of this franchise. (Which is something you might not know if you are not a veteran of the predecessors alright)!

Also, he didn't have to fight the NPCs as long as he hadn't any cargo or attacked them first.

Yeh, that's what I thought, but unless he forgot to sell his previous mission reward, he shouldn't have had any cargo. I don't know if he did or not, but he was definitely attacked without ANY warning. Anyway, it doesn't change the fact that it makes no sense that you woulld be put into a near impossible to win encounter in your first hour of the actual game, for 50k credits.

 

[Aashenfox]

Well, there are some goods points about the rest, but this? It's perfectly playable with keyboard and mouse. You don't need any special gear for this game. It's even more difficult to learn it with additional hardware if you weren't a sim fan before.

I also think the training should tell you about the 7 second 75% throttle rule.

It seems Frontier promised already a personal mission chain for players in Beyond, maybe it will future more tutorial like missions.

To bring it into perspective. It still has a much friendlier learning curve than Eve Online

EH??? You find me a newbie who has mastered throttle control in 6 hours in the game using only the plus and minus keys on the keyboard, doesn't overshoot SC destinations and lands 'decently'. I'll buy you a gold paintjob if you can. This thread is aimed at you mate, you have forgotten what it's like to be new.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I also think the training should tell you about the 7 second 75% throttle rule.

The problem with that is that if the game tells you to do it that way, it's explicitly telling you to approach destinations in a way that's slower, less safe, and really boring. It's great for not running into the thing you're scanning while exploring, but just plain bad the rest of the time.

An advanced training module that covers proper spiral and gravity-brake fast supercruise approaches, and teaches the straight-line deceleration curve in its proper context for both space and planetary approaches ... sure, that'd be great. But just telling people the straight-line deceleration curve is a recipe for a bunch of "supercruise is boring" posts a week later.
(The existing supercruise training module and a video would be a quick way to provide most of this without needing further in-game work)

 

[Brrokk]

I found ED a really hard game to get started in, even with help. Basic things, like the difference between supercruise and witch space, are not explained. My confusion stemmed from the fact that, by default, they're both invoked by the same key and they have the same "frame shift charging" countdown. Piece of advice for a starter: bind them to different keys!

Planetary landings were a nightmare until I found out about "glide" by accident. My first base approach was done by dropping from orbital cruise vertically above the base, then putting the ship into a power dive and working out from the counting-down numbers how many minutes later I should return from AFK (it was nearly an hour). I might have missed something, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing about how to do a planetary approach anywhere in the training or pdf documentation; I read it all.

A quick win for FD would be to trawl through the game and improve the mission text throughout, making it much more informative. The same with the pdf.

 

[viper666]

I can relate, and it got worse when they removed the ranking required for a mission. If the required mission rank was above your current rank, you couldn't take the mission, now you can.
The game could do with a difficulty level indication on a scale from easy to impossible based on the players current rank. Sort of like Borderlands 2 had. Still, any decent simulation tends to have a steep learning curve.
I played Falcon 4 Allied Force for 5 years and had to revisit training if I had a month off.

 

[d8veh]

The thing you need more than anything to play this game is knowledge. You get the knowledge by trying things out or you get it from other players via the forum, Youtube or tutors. Unless you're really good at solving puzzles, I'd say that you would have very little chance of success on your own. I can remember my first start. After a week in the Sidewinder, I'd made a profit of about 10k, but I had fines of considerably more than that, so I did a restart, checked out some Youtube vids on how to get going, and am now about 4000 hours in the game. Sidewinder to Anaconda in 24 hrs was the one that got me going, though it's a bit dated now. Vids like these are more or less walkthroughs, so you learn a lot of the basics by copying.

I've made a couple of new-starter vids myself, which continuously get comments like, "this vid was a lifesaver. I was ready to chuck the game". New starters just want to see some progress from their session of play. It's very demoralising to get all your efforts blown to pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H55MWwGjuM

 

[lokvette]

I had the same thing when I was trying to help my brother out, it was more of no you cant do that, no you cant do that, for that you need to do this, or this, or that, no the game wont let you.

The funny thing is we played all of the flight/space sims you can think off from Elite Frontiers, the X wng games. He has over 3000 player kills in his Eve play time, but when I explained what was needed for pvp in this game, he sort of went nah ...he did get in around 100 hrs before moving on though, not seen him play it since.

I love this game and having playing its orignals and playing the gene for a long time the basic of what to do for me came easy, but I do wonder how many people look at the controls menu and go what the fudge...I still have stuff unmapped after 1500+ hrs...

So yeah I can understand new players feeling like they have just been dropped in the middle of the ocean and told to swim to shore.

 

[[VR] yandoo]

I have fond memories of back in the day when I was scaling the galaxy in my Sidewinder. Life was dangerous in those days!
The learning curve certainly is steep but you soon get the hang of it.

 

[Ian Skippy]

We who have been playing for years and accept the peculiarities of this game as 'normal' (example, supercruise approach mechanic), often forget just how crazy and ultimately unfriendly this game is to newbies.

I'm training my brother at the moment, he is going into his third day with Elite and while admittedly, he's never been a flight sim player, he is struggling with the basics, such as not overshooting supercruise destinations, landing accurately on pads (a lot of other issues related to fine throttle control, which is hard as nails without a decent hotas).

He's not incompetent in any way shape or form, he flies drones, he plays games and is a smart guy. He did the tutorials, successfully, just about, and then started taking missions. After realising that data missions pay literally NOTHING (yes, NO CREDITS when you start the game, just those crap commodities), he decided to try a more lucrative mission, a black box recovery. Now, we who play this game, all know that these black box missoins are either; collect the stuff in space at your leisure, nuopposed, then fly home, or...fight an encounter that would challenge the most hardcore of PvE pilots against 3 to 4 NPCs, then pick up the stuff and go home. Of course, by bad luck, his first black box recovery was the latter. Less than 30 seconds after dropping in, while I was still explaining how the cargo scoop works, he paid his first visit to the rebuy screen. His question naturally, "what did I do wrong?", my answer, "nothing, this type of mission is for a group or a heavily armed and upgraded ship flown by a competent combat pilot", and he said "how was I supposed to know that?" and I said... "yeh, you couldn't have known, the first time I did this I assumed I was doing something wrong as well, other times when you do this mission there may not be any enemies at all". He was like "srsly??" and I was like "yeh, that is really crap isn't it, what can I tell you, in this game you have to take the rough with the smooth."

After I helped him remap his joystick (Sidewinder 3d pro, on permanent loan from me) he turned around to me and said "If I didn't have you to explain this stuff for me, I'd be on Steam right now ranting along with all the others how this game is not a game but punishment for liking spaceships, no wonder I never heard of it".

I don't really have a point for this thread, I guess really it should just serve as a reminder to all of how complex this game is and how much actual knowledge of the mechanics of the game, we old schoolers take for completely granted.

I have a newfound respect for newbies who make it out of the first 20 hours of the game, especially without a mentor, kudos! I'm not even going to consider saying "Fdev, this is ridiculous, you need to overhaul the basics to make them more logical and newbie friendly" because its already far too late for that, so it will have to suffice that we recognise the effort put in by newbs who 'can'.

I agree with the general notion, but strangely enough disagree with the actual example. Your brother did do something wrong, and it was not the lack of 'high-end gear'. You can escape that scenario in any ship. The mistake he made was assuming he would be safe, and realizing that was an error too late. The lesson is to be always prepared to flee and be more mindful of the surrounding. IMHO there really has been a change in gaming culture. Dying in a computer game, learning what you did wrong and improving used to be pretty much the essence of gaming. Now its called 'punishment' and 'hardcore', and we claim its 'unfair' and 'disrespectful of our time'. I am not saying the new perspective is 'wrong', people should want whatever they want, but its interesting to see. To me, a big part of ED is learning to get better and do more and more with less and less tools. 'Single player git gud', so to speak. To others that is a terrible design flaw in ED. I've experience with a few people learning this game, and one of the interesting contrast was a mate vs an elderly (+-70 years old). This mate would not handle things well, the old guy just shrugged and tried again.

 

[Tadeus72]

EH??? You find me a newbie who has mastered throttle control in 6 hours in the game using only the plus and minus keys on the keyboard, doesn't overshoot SC destinations and lands 'decently'. I'll buy you a gold paintjob if you can. This thread is aimed at you mate, you have forgotten what it's like to be new.

Well, it wasn't plus and minus for me. The throttle control on the keyboard is very similar to a lot of PC racing games. One hand on the mouse, the other on WSAD and the neighboring keys. Well, it's actually pretty standard for most PC games, even 3D RPGs have a similar control scheme. And I remember how it was. I'm not talking about mastering anything. I'm talking about being able to land with keyboard without killing yourself or wasting tonnes of time. There is absolutely no HOTAS needed for this game. Even a lot of the top PVPers just use mouse and keyboard.

And it wasn't about overshooting your target - there I agreed with you, it should be teached.

The problem with that is that if the game tells you to do it that way, it's explicitly telling you to approach destinations in a way that's slower, less safe, and really boring. It's great for not running into the thing you're scanning while exploring, but just plain bad the rest of the time.

An advanced training module that covers proper spiral and gravity-brake fast supercruise approaches, and teaches the straight-line deceleration curve in its proper context for both space and planetary approaches ... sure, that'd be great. But just telling people the straight-line deceleration curve is a recipe for a bunch of "supercruise is boring" posts a week later.
(The existing supercruise training module and a video would be a quick way to provide most of this without needing further in-game work)

I don't see any problem there. The game is supposed to teach you basic, easy to do, safe mechanics. If you want to optimize it you can always get the info from other sources/players. It's not supposed to be a Top-Gun school.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Speaking only for myself I found Elite so easy to jump right into. No tutorials, just straight into the game which upon first take off prompted me to check the various control inputs and I was off. Never had any trouble figuring anything out after a moment or two of thought, logic prevailed. This I attribute to many years of being a gamer and having worked on many projects which required streamlined inputs for the user allowing for easy pick up and play controls.

Now however I find with my second account which is still in the bubble that the UI has become less intuitive. For instance the last batch of updates for the main UI shows the same information in three places, top right corner, bottom left corner and also slap bang in the middle of the screen I get to see the name of the system I am jumping to. The middle section is an obvious bolt on which to me looks like a trainee designed the output or no-one at Frontier knows how to alter the original UI interface which I hope is not the case.

Next up the redesign of the outfitting screens seems to of been done by some one without much experience of how to create an efficient system which becomes intuitive. I don't currently have access to my screen shots so I can't post any examples. What we have is a display of the various types of modules available at that station. If an item is not stocked at that location the icon for that type of equipment is not shown, seems logical... Except to me it is not. Rather than have the overly large 'icons' for whats on offer I would of shown all the icons in a fixed layout with the available product ranges highlighted and those which are not dimmed down. This way at a glance you could see via muscle memory if the items you want are for sale. Instead I find myself having to read in detail the icon titles. Once you are past this screen then buying the items is easy. You can say this is just differences in design choices but I feel it is a lack of thought coupled with some icon designs which just take up to much space on the screen.

I could go on with other changes that I find odd but to get back around to the topic at hand I actually find the game less friendly to play now than when it was first released.

 

[Ashnak]

EH??? You find me a newbie who has mastered throttle control in 6 hours in the game using only the plus and minus keys on the keyboard, doesn't overshoot SC destinations and lands 'decently'. I'll buy you a gold paintjob if you can. This thread is aimed at you mate, you have forgotten what it's like to be new.

Errmm... shirley, if you use the default m&k layout, there are KB settings for 0/25/50/75/100% throttle? If not, since you're training him, why haven't you set them up ?

That recovery mission - was it marked for his level, or did it have that warning "mission rank (...) exceeds your current rank (...)"?

Your brother - did he do the ingame tutorial/mentor missions? I only read about them (when I started my second CMDR, I had a look - paid IIRC ~10k while I had a cargo mission two lines down paying 100k, so I skipped that one...), but these should have gotten him out of the starter system and provided enough funds for a Eagle/Hauler/Adder, maybe even a basic Cobra. I did do a full reset on my primary account (currently bumbling along the western rim) and bought a second in-bubble CMDR on the last (or second to last) sale, and I was amazed on how many well paying (~100k) low level missions I could get at that time.
I have to admit, though, that I never did any of those recovery missions since then, and I made quite a lot of money with the bodged planetary scan jobs in Wu Guinagi. But still, if all you are offered on that specific station/system are a few cheap data transfers and recovery missions, maybe it's time to switch to a different home system and work on your local reputation. Factions aren't handing out large payments to every bum who just walked in through the door .
Get your (brother's) local rep up to cordial at the very least, and you should start to see well paying missions become available.

As for that problem with the pirates attacking because you forgot some mission rewards in your hold - happens to everyone. These guys still kind of owe me the rebuy on a mining T-7. Would have been no problem if I could have run in free space, but didn't realize that they would actually attack me until I was actually attacked well inside the ring - and then had a look into my inventory. "Kind of" - I went back after that in a combat ship and taught them some manners , these guys are stupid as.....