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Elite Dangerous - Yay or Nay?

Joined
Mar 3, 2010
Messages
8,818
Location
Italy
that's what (((they))) want you to believe.
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,158
how? it's a single player game.

There's a big multiplayer component too, no?
The only player interaction is meaningless pvp and burning ships and insurance money, really no reasons, no consequences. Nothing you will do will ever affect the universe ever, add a million players and nothing will change still.Maybe with a bit of luck some system npc ownership swap and trade good price change. I highly advise you to not go online if its your first try, you are just going to be ganked at start.
 

Hellion

Arcane
Joined
Feb 5, 2013
Messages
1,582
It's free on Epic now, but people can't run it yet because apparently Frontier (or Epic, or both) forgot to update the game's launcher in order to allow linking your Epic account to a Frontier account.

Frontier seems to have uploaded a patch that fixes this, but it hasn't been uploaded to Epic's servers yet.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,275
Location
Massachusettes
I got it off Epic for free about 3 days ago and didn't seem to have any issues linking my Epic account with one I created on Frontier. Perhaps I got in just after the patch? Seems worth it for free, especially with the Horizons expansion now part of the base game, though I haven't really played any of it yet. It will probably sit in my launchbox unlaunched until the day i die but I just can't turn down a freebie. I have only a few minutes experience with any of the elite games, first trying it on my c64 many years ago but not really getting into it. I played Space Rogue for C64 around the same time and it was at least much more colorful and elaborate than the C64 version of Elite so I played it longer. I spent a few minutes with the sequels in various emulators and still it never grabbed me. Maybe I have a fear of getting hooked ever since i saw some guy on youtube playing an Elite game looking like the late Tiny Tim's shrunken, emaciated little brother actually crying while playing the game because he was so moved by the graphics and the vastness and beauty of space. Maybe there's a mental block there and I'm afraid of turning into that so I can't enjoy the games.
 

Kao

Novice
Joined
Nov 9, 2020
Messages
11
I highly advise you to not go online if its your first try, you are just going to be ganked at start.
New players start off in their own little cordoned off playpen region of the galaxy now. Anyone above starting rank can’t enter. So yeah you might still be ganked, but it’s a lot less likely than before, and it’s gonna be by other new accounts if it happens at all.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Or just don't play in the Open Play mode, because then you share the universe with other players. Play just Solo mode. There you are alone, but the universe still updates according the user actions.
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
27,819
The chances of getting ganked in open - or even just meeting other players - are virtually zero unless you fart around a system that's hosting a community goal.
 

Fishy

Savant
Joined
Jan 24, 2019
Messages
398
Location
Ireland
The chances of getting ganked in open - or even just meeting other players - are virtually zero unless you fart around a system that's hosting a community goal.

Or you're heading to a popular engineer location. Deciat is a ganking hotspot.
 

dbx

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 14, 2009
Messages
3,877
Are Engineers still super grindy?
I stopped playing a year ago because of the retardedly uber grinding they required...
 

Fishy

Savant
Joined
Jan 24, 2019
Messages
398
Location
Ireland
They're better than they used to. Some still have the stupid unlocking requirements, no escaping that, but otherwise they changed the systems so that you gradually engineer stuff through the tiers, each roll being a strict upgrade. So there's a random component to how fast you get the biggest stat increase, but you are guaranteed to get there.

I'm not playing it these days though, so can't say anything about how common/rare the drops are for the parts they require, I used some of my old stock when I went back to try out the new mining stuff.
 

Kao

Novice
Joined
Nov 9, 2020
Messages
11
Are Engineers still super grindy?
I stopped playing a year ago because of the retardedly uber grinding they required...
It's still the same basic system, but it's more straightforward now. If you're trying to go from zero to tier 5 upgrades on everything in your ship all at once, you're likely to run out of materials before you get there, and reliably acquiring some of the materials can be pretty hard/tedious to do. It's usually less infuriating to focus on something other than engineering as your primary goal, and then opportunistically upgrade your ship bit by bit as you stumble across more materials. One major change is (after unlocking them) you can do basic engineering in any station without having to go to the engineer bases, which helps a lot.

Initially unlocking all the engineers and their upgrades in the first place is still as grindy and obtuse as it ever was, unfortunately.
 

Inconceivable

Learned
Joined
Aug 31, 2020
Messages
251
Location
Germany
Elite is mostly of historical interest, but do check out FE2 and FFE (in this order).
And then FE2 was at least just as much of a step forward.
Imagine, it's 1993, the typical gaming machine is Atari, Amiga or 286.
Then suddenly, you get a space game where:
  • You have (pretty much) the entire galaxy to explore.
  • Star systems are realistically scaled, with no downscaling whatsoever - 1:1 planets and all that.
  • You can fly and land pretty much anywhere you please. No skyboxes or other fakery - anything in the same solar system is fair game and likely visible, unless so distant that it won't even be a point of light.
  • Everything rotates and orbits. If you land somewhere you will see a real time day/night cycle.
  • Physics is pretty much bullshit free Newtonian - including gravity.
  • The graphics is fucking sweet (for its time) - everything is super-detailed and many objects (like fully 3D clouds or the planets themselves) are made of curvy polygons. No clipping plane or distance fog either - you can have working clocktower under a geodesic dome on a colonized moon in your view at the same time as it's parent gas giant at the same time as the star it orbited.
  • You could do whatever you wanted - trading, bounty hunting, piracy, mining, passenger ferrying, smuggling, assassinations, military career.
  • It all fits on a single floppy.

FE2 ruined every other Elite game for me, including Dangerous and the open source versions. The combat sucked, and I was really annoyed by space being blue, but those seamless planetary landings with cities, clouds, trees! All those orbiting planets and moons and the scale of it all. It's still unmatched. No Man's Sky has the planets, but not the realistic solar systems or the cities and feeling of real civilization existing on those planets. Just those weird samey outposts, pointlessly scattered across the landscape.
They should have just ported the FE2 engine to nicer graphics, better usability, better procedural generation, better everything, and that would have been the Elite game I would have wanted to play. With Elite: Dangerous, I've played the tutorial three times and bounced of it every time. FE2 is the only Elite that still beckons me.

This tbh, I bought Starsector a few days ago and it is actually scratching the itch that I wanted Elite: Dangerous to scratch. God bless the slavs.

Starsector does have some of the same issues as Elite: Dangerous (and most space sims), like how you get money, get better fleet, so you can make more money, and get better fleet, etc. But at least stuff like travelling around the game world is fun rather than tedious, the NPC portraits look good instead of being godawful procedurally generated crash, the setting, factions, and so on are more interesting and flavourful, exploring outside of civilized space is actually fun, etc. The economy is also better implemented. It's funny how one descriptive paragraph and a small piece of thumbnail art makes every default inhabited world in Starsector have so much more character than any place in Elite: Dangerous, even capital worlds.

"Star Traders: Frontiers" is a completely different game from E:D. Not even a simulator, but a turn-based strategy game, yet there is some overlap with the promise of Elite, as it also satisfies that itch of being a space captain. But the biggest difference with E:D. is that it is an excellent game.
There is trading that makes sense, tactical combat between ships and ground combat of your crew vs. adversaries, factions, diplomacy, rising through the ranks, special events and characters, extensive ship customization, there's a Dune vibe (which is always a good think in my book)...
the most lacking aspect is probably exploration, since the universe is finite and pretty much developed. But other than that it's the best game of being a Sci-Fi Space Captain that I've come across recently.
 

Data4

Arcane
Joined
Sep 11, 2005
Messages
5,529
Location
Over there.
Star Citizen Killer perhaps? :D

To be honest, I don't give a shit about the minutia they're building into SC with all the box carrying and walking back and forth everywhere, but I do like the freedom to walk around vs. current Elite. If this plays out as good as that trailer looks, I might just have to shelve SC. I've got Elite, but haven't played in awhile and the last time I did, I parked my ship on some planet half way between civilized space and Sag A. May have to make my way back home in time for the expansion release.
 

ADL

Prophet
Joined
Oct 23, 2017
Messages
3,680
Location
Nantucket
It's going to be interesting to compare the fundamental differences of Star Citizen's 15+ year development cycle versus Elite's post-launch approach. My prediction is that this will be more of a standard first person experience while Star Citizen is going balls deep into immersive sim territory. Either way, this is only $40 so fuck it. I'll buy it.
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
27,819
After years, we can walk on planets and get ~*first footfall*~ credit. Wow, truly the kind of update the game needed.
I fucking hate FDev.
 

DDZ

Red blood, white skin, blue collar
Patron
Joined
Dec 17, 2012
Messages
1,829
Location
Under the Gods
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Blame the retarded whining fans that want to walk around their ship and have their own bedroom with curtains of their choosing. They steered this game into aids.
 

Fishy

Savant
Joined
Jan 24, 2019
Messages
398
Location
Ireland
Blame the retarded whining fans that want to walk around their ship and have their own bedroom with curtains of their choosing. They steered this game into aids.

Well no, in this case it's the fans who think exploration should be about writing "PWNZ0R WUZ HERE" on every rock they can. If other players can't see your name all over the place, what's the point of even playing?
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
I really miss playing Hellion. That game had the mechanics I want.
 

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