Elite Dangerous - Yay or Nay?

[Mary Sue Leigh]

From my tests so far, it appears that docking procedure up until touching down is the exact same even with odyssey. What changes is that you then have the additional option to have your ship go down an elevator into some kind of hangar, where you can disembark and walk into the station.
While I appreciate having the option, I hate how poorly and tacked on this seems even to me who hasn't played pre odyssey.
Example, NPCs on the station sell ground based equipment only as far as I can tell and they only hand out ground based missions, which are all terrible and pay so much less than the space missions. Also almost all of them are illegal for some reason which doesn't interest me when I barely know how the legal system is implemented.
Space missions are picked up after landing before docking proper, which I imagine how it was with horizons, which probably made more sense that way. But now I went for a long time before even figuring this out.
But it means also you could play Odyssey and totally ignore the ground stuff because all the space relevant dealings are still made 100% without even leaving the ship. I still think it's nice to be able to land anywhere on a planet and walk around on the outside, but it's really not good enough a system to do literally anything else with it.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, from what you describe it's basically Horizons, but a click of a button takes you to Odyssey content all tucked in one place.
So they just stapled the DLC on like this? I mean it's Frontier Developments so I would expect exactly an absolute minimum of effort, but still. Wow.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Well I am told that having Odyssey enabled also makes everything else look worse, so there's that.
No comment from me because these are graphical nuances that I can neither appreciate nor notice.
I suppose you could always land anywhere on the planets to deploy an RoV or something? Well now you can also exit the ship yourself if there's any advantages to that. If you're not near a station with buildings to explore, probably not though. I wonder if you can walk inside the thargoid structures though.

 

[Data4]

I've got a love/hate relationship with SC. I was an original backer, thinking we were going to get a Wing Commander: Current Generation, and I didn't even mind the feature creep as planetary landings, etc. came on. The problem is that all that immersive bullshit is cool for exactly 1 time. There is a bit of "gee whiz" walking through realized space ports and landing areas, taking the train, calling up your ship, and traveling via elevator to it's hangar, and so on, but that immediately gets old. Like, immediately. As spectre said, your first goal is to find a space station to set as your home base to reduce the travel tedium from bed to cockpit.

And therein lies the main problem with the game as intended. Ultimately, no matter how much "IMMERSHUN!" CIG tries to implement, people are going to min/max everything because the time sink just to do a session of trading will be ridiculous. Escpecially now that people are used to the quick way it's handled now. As it is, you go to a trade terminal, buy whatever you want to haul and bam-- it's immediately loaded into the hold of the chosen ship. You fly it to your destination, go to that trade terminal to sell, and bam-- it's immediately offloaded and your money is deposited.

They're working on a refactor of the cargo system where you either have to offload the cargo yourself, box by box, or pay NPCs to do it with a time factor for completion. I'm not sure just how "realistic" CIG wants to make it. Will it take 20 real time minutes for a gang of bots to offload the shit? Fuck that. I don't have 20 minutes to stare at my screen and jack off. Maybe back in the old days when I was a Flight Sim autist who could stare at a cockpit graphic for hours during the cruise phase of flight, but I'm an adult with shit to do now. They only way I can see this refactor working is if there's an expedite function where you pay a premium for immediate loading and offloading. Otherwise, trading will be left only to those with absolutely no life. This is the kind of thing that turns me off from SC. Bugs eventually will get fixed, but dumbass features are another thing altogether.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I wonder if you can walk inside the thargoid structures though.

My guess would be yes, but the Thargoids will probably eat you alive. In an SRV, you have to explore the Thargoid structures methodically or you risk getting overwhelmed. On foot wouldn't you be even more vulnerable?

Same with Guardian structures. If you start poking around there, those robot things will mess you up.

 

[anvi]

I've got a love/hate relationship with SC. I was an original backer, thinking we were going to get a Wing Commander: Current Generation, and I didn't even mind the feature creep as planetary landings, etc. came on. The problem is that all that immersive bullshit is cool for exactly 1 time. There is a bit of "gee whiz" walking through realized space ports and landing areas, taking the train, calling up your ship, and traveling via elevator to it's hangar, and so on, but that immediately gets old. Like, immediately. As spectre said, your first goal is to find a space station to set as your home base to reduce the travel tedium from bed to cockpit.

And therein lies the main problem with the game as intended. Ultimately, no matter how much "IMMERSHUN!" CIG tries to implement, people are going to min/max everything because the time sink just to do a session of trading will be ridiculous. Escpecially now that people are used to the quick way it's handled now. As it is, you go to a trade terminal, buy whatever you want to haul and bam-- it's immediately loaded into the hold of the chosen ship. You fly it to your destination, go to that trade terminal to sell, and bam-- it's immediately offloaded and your money is deposited.

They're working on a refactor of the cargo system where you either have to offload the cargo yourself, box by box, or pay NPCs to do it with a time factor for completion. I'm not sure just how "realistic" CIG wants to make it. Will it take 20 real time minutes for a gang of bots to offload the shit? Fuck that. I don't have 20 minutes to stare at my screen and jack off. Maybe back in the old days when I was a Flight Sim autist who could stare at a cockpit graphic for hours during the cruise phase of flight, but I'm an adult with shit to do now. They only way I can see this refactor working is if there's an expedite function where you pay a premium for immediate loading and offloading. Otherwise, trading will be left only to those with absolutely no life. This is the kind of thing that turns me off from SC. Bugs eventually will get fixed, but dumbass features are another thing altogether.

This is why I don't want to get invested in the game yet. I wanna see how it turns out because all this is so important to me. But this all could go any direction, they could end up tweaking it so it becomes a much faster action game in the end. Or they might double down on the immershun shit and we'll be in for 40 minute journeys and stuff. It could be made amazing or terrible by design choices at the last minute. I've seen it happen many times!

A lot of what you said in your post reminds me so much of EverQuest. That amazing legendary game that I still play 23 years later. But it's batshit crazy a lot of the design, you had hour long journeys, sometimes you would die on the journey and have to start it all over again, now without all your gear! The gear people wanted came from enemies that you had to kill, but the enemies didn't always appear. They had a "placeholder" who would show up in his place randomly. So you travel for 2 hours then you have to wait DAYS for this creature to finally spawn. Then you kill it and it has a different item to the one you want... It could take you 40+ hours to get one item.

Other aspects of the game were so amazing it that it kinda made up for it. Kinda. Best game I ever played but a lot of this stuff infuriated me, and it's endless. Although some of the insanely harsh brutal stuff ended up being the best part, like when it came to fighting in a dungeon with a group of people. It was so intense, so complex, unlike today it didn't give you any info about your groupmates so people had to make up little phrases to communicate whether they were ready or not etc. But it bugs me that a sane person hasn't remade that game and keeps all the amazing stuff but tweaks all the crazy shit. Almost every similar game goes the opposite direction, just gives you everything, instant gratification, fast easy levels. EQ took a year to get anywhere... I've waited 23 years for a sane game that goes somewhere in between, but it has never happened!

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens with SC. With EQ they liked to make most of the game and then have long extended beta process with lots of player feedback. The devs would do most of the hard work at this point, refining and tweaking all the many systems that have been thrown into the game. But it worked for them because they really worked magic during this phase. My concern with SC is whether they have what it takes to do that. Such a huge game... it needs a lot of testers with a lot of reports of things that were boring, took too long, prices were out of whack, rewards too much too little, etc. And they need to address and double check all of this stuff. It's huge. To me it's a bigger job than all what they've done to date. Any army of code monkeys can throw a bunch of tech at a problem and create a big space universe with planets and no loading and stuff. Good job. But filling it with content that is good and balanced and tested is a whole other story.

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

It’s been announced that founder David Braben will be stepping down as CEO of Frontier Developments after 28-years in the role.

Braben founded Frontier in 1994 in order to “build a team to continue creating high quality, innovative games in the rapidly evolving games industry with an ambition that only teams of skilled professionals can deliver.”

Braben will transition into the newly created role of president and founder. This executive director position will see Braben “retain his leadership and vision for Frontier’s strategic direction, whilst maintaining and building key relationships within the games industry and the wider digital entertainment sector.”

In January, Frontier Developments reported a £1.7 million net loss for the six months period ended November 30, 2021.

Frontiers’ new CEO is current chief creative officer Jonny Watts. Watts has worked alongside Braben for the past 24 years and has worked at his current role for the past decade.

The announcement said that Watts has been key to recent successes at the company, including unaudited record revenue of £111 million in FY 2022.

I am looking forward to my new role at Frontier, and this change enables me to focus on our longer-term strategic opportunities,” said Braben in a statement.

Elite Dangerous is a game close to my heart.
-David Braben

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

so, is it going to get better or be dismantled altogether?

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

so, is it going to get better or be dismantled altogether?

The answer to both of your questions is "yes".

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

so, is it going to get better or be dismantled altogether?

Having seen similar corporate upheavels myself it could go either way. Braben could absolutely focus his efforts on ED. Or he's in a ceremonial role waiting for the right time to retire. He could put everything into reviving ED. Only to have the rug pulled out from under him now he's not making the big decisions. I don't have any insider knowledge here. But I know how much more likely ED is to be shuttered as opposed to renewed.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

dude, "i. don't. know.". three words. no, i can top that: "no idea". if you spoke italian "boh" would have worked too.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

dude, "i. don't. know.". three words. no, i can top that: "no idea". if you spoke italian "boh" would have worked too.

I told you what could happen based on my knowledge of working in high level positions in companies for longer than you've been born. "Here's what could happen." is a lot different from "I don't know."

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the thing that surprises me the most about this game is that people actually played it to begin with

had more fun laughing at how terrible star citizen is than playing ED

 

[Galdred]

Is ED reliant on servers even for SP, or can it be played really offline?

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I haven't played in a while, but when I played you had to log into the server even in single-player mode. I don't think anything has changed in that regard.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

that's the sad truth. the moment they don't want you to play anymore your single player game, you don't.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I haven't played in a while, but when I played you had to log into the server even in single-player mode. I don't think anything has changed in that regard.

I played the alpha or beta or whatever it was before release, but once the offline mode was removed I felt no incentive to ever play it again. I was looking forward to just leisurely floating around the galaxy, finding interesting planets and so on. But having to compete with other players in my own game made me lose all enthusiasm. Perhaps when they've wrung all profitability out of the game they'll finally shut down the servers and release the offline version.

 

[Fedora Master]

You don't compete with anyone out in the Black, because you won't run into other players, ever.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

but once the offline mode was removed

last time i played (years ago) you could play alone. it still forced an online check, but everything else was offline, you were alone.

 

[Perkel]

Yeah there is offline mode. Soft of. You still play with everyone else etc. but you can't see them.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

All the bitching and moaning I see from codexers about ED seems puzzling yet is expected. Isn't it pretty much exactly like the original Elite (ie no end game, no hand holding, etc) but bigger, with updated mechanics, modern graphics and online play? I have this (the base game only) in my Epic library when it was free 3 years ago and now I'm trying to get it transferred to Steam (BEHEAD EPIC STORE AND THEIR HEINOUS GAME LAUNCHER!). I heard if you give Frontier.uk an Epic CD-key as proof of purchase, they'll send you a Steam key free yet I have no idea how to find my fucking Epic store activation code since the game has already been activated. If I get the Steam key, then I can just buy the expansion from a key shop for about $6, and... PROFIT! Otherwise I have to get the Super Supreme Deluxe Commander's Edition for twice that to get both the base game and the expansions. I'll be getting a VR system next month and this is supposedly real sweet with that.

 

[ind33d]

I threw out my shitty flight stick assuming I could use Meta Quest 2 controllers for Elite in VR and they don't do anything. Literally how the fuck

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I threw out my shitty flight stick assuming I could use Meta Quest 2 controllers for Elite in VR and they don't do anything. Literally how the fuck

Well, that's disappointing. Can you control anything in ED using the Meta Quest controllers or is it one of those VR gaming experiences that's basically like playing a PC game through a 3D Viewmaster toy

Spoiler

from the 1960s strapped to your head ? Good thing I still have my Thrustmaster flight stick with the hall effect sensors in storage.

 

[mediocrepoet]

All the bitching and moaning I see from codexers about ED seems puzzling yet is expected. Isn't it pretty much exactly like the original Elite (ie no end game, no hand holding, etc) but bigger, with updated mechanics, modern graphics and online play? I have this (the base game only) in my Epic library when it was free 3 years ago and now I'm trying to get it transferred to Steam (BEHEAD EPIC STORE AND THEIR HEINOUS GAME LAUNCHER!). I heard if you give Frontier.uk an Epic CD-key as proof of purchase, they'll send you a Steam key free yet I have no idea how to find my fucking Epic store activation code since the game has already been activated. If I get the Steam key, then I can just buy the expansion from a key shop for about $6, and... PROFIT! Otherwise I have to get the Super Supreme Deluxe Commander's Edition for twice that to get both the base game and the expansions. I'll be getting a VR system next month and this is supposedly real sweet with that.

Maybe they'll take your Epic receipt, you can email yourself through a link receipts from your transactions on EGS. Granted if it shows that you took a free redemption, will they still give you a key? Seems unlikely, but worth a shot even if that's how you got it.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

All the bitching and moaning I see from codexers about ED seems puzzling yet is expected. Isn't it pretty much exactly like the original Elite (ie no end game, no hand holding, etc) but bigger, with updated mechanics, modern graphics and online play? I have this (the base game only) in my Epic library when it was free 3 years ago and now I'm trying to get it transferred to Steam (BEHEAD EPIC STORE AND THEIR HEINOUS GAME LAUNCHER!). I heard if you give Frontier.uk an Epic CD-key as proof of purchase, they'll send you a Steam key free yet I have no idea how to find my fucking Epic store activation code since the game has already been activated. If I get the Steam key, then I can just buy the expansion from a key shop for about $6, and... PROFIT! Otherwise I have to get the Super Supreme Deluxe Commander's Edition for twice that to get both the base game and the expansions. I'll be getting a VR system next month and this is supposedly real sweet with that.

Maybe they'll take your Epic receipt, you can email yourself through a link receipts from your transactions on EGS. Granted if it shows that you took a free redemption, will they still give you a key? Seems unlikely, but worth a shot even if that's how you got it.

Yeah, I contacted Epic and sent them the original receipt with a big fat

TOTAL:

$0.00 USD

on it, asking for a key after sending an earlier email with my Order/Invoice #. After an initially friendly reply to that first email, asking for a screenshot so they can understand what type of code I was asking for, I then sent the screenshot/original receipt, and I was rewarded with... The Silence of God. They still may respond but it's been over 24 hours.