Elite Dangerous - Yay or Nay?

[MadMaxHellfire]

it might be, but you can't shoot at police cars with lasers and missiles in ets.

 

[Razor]

Didn't they say only about 3% of in-game space was visited by players?
If you have a whole galaxy to fuck around with that was to be expected and they need to somehow funnel people so that you'll actually have a chance to meet other players.

I am approaching my finish stretch in my big galactic tour I started about two years ago. Bubble->Formidine Rift-> Colonia-> Sag A-> Beagle point-> Erikson's Star-> Colonia-> Bubble. Currently approaching back to Colonia and after which its only left the final treck back towards the bubble. No I am not a BDSM fanboy I just like to fiddle around with something when I am watching youtube.

Trust me when I say that the "only 0.03 galaxy discovered!" is just a empty marketing slogan. This is the entire unmarked galaxy put into a single image:

Spoiler

The most interesting things to see are when you luck out from time to time and get things like ringed water worlds orbiting ringed gas giants which is a nice view to do some casual mining (yes I am carrying around mining equipment in deep space).

I mean FFS was it really that much of a deal to make some random Thargoid structure and contact spawns in deep space pockets? They already did it with the blue alien structures- there are pockets of them in nebula here and there between the colonia-bubble axis. Spent quite a bit of time mapping the entire nebula and all the systems surrounding the alien worlds.

Put this shit offline, give some basic modding tools and support to users and let the players populate the game world with more interesting takes. Not spread resources even more thin with babbys first FPS which does not even give you the main thing the foot fetishist wanted- ship interiors. Instead its literally SRV deployment without the SRV.

 

[Curratum]

Elite Dangerous is about as much a game as Star Citizen.

It's a massive disservice to the truck sims to compare this convoluted, empty, pointless junk to a game that has tons of handmade maps and assets.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Well, I finally got that Federal Corvette I've been wanting since the beginning. It has level-5 engineered everything, plus a Guardian jump booster. And now that I have everything I wanted, it just kind of feels like I've beaten the game.

I had jumped into the game expecting to play as a bounty hunter and mercenary through most of my career. Then I discovered that if you don't have the best everything, you might be able to handle random pirates, but you'll get torn apart in combat zones. So I did my time grinding everything--mining, exploring, trading, rescuing survivors--to get access to the engineers and Federation ships, and now that I have the ultimate combat ship, it just feels like there's nothing else I need to do. I can go crush the enemy in a combat zone if I want, but to what end? I don't need the credits. I don't really see any of the factions or powerplay leaders as any better than the others for establishing peace and prosperity throughout the galaxy. So maybe I'll just log in once a month to earn 750 powerplay points, get a new module, and then defect.

 

[Razor]

It's a massive disservice to the truck sims to compare this convoluted, empty, pointless junk to a game that has tons of handmade maps and assets.

Thats the rather big stinky elephant in the room. If they went the sane route and not this World-Of-Braben always online bullshit with mod tools then comparisons to the truck sims would be probably justified, because by this time it would also have lots of user maps (systems) with god knows what else gameplay and user quest/level/lore etc mods could have come up with. Certainly miles above what the incompetent gameplay FDevs could muster. For revenue they could have sold new expansion ship packs (no the .jpeg but actual 3d kind) plus whatever the retail sales numbers of new copies.

Well, I finally got that Federal Corvette I've been wanting since the beginning. It has level-5 engineered everything, plus a Guardian jump booster. And now that I have everything I wanted, it just kind of feels like I've beaten the game.

If wombats your thing have you given the Thargoids solo a chance? Its been a while but the last time I was in their nebula they just released the red medusa thingamajigs which were reported to be mini raid bosses as in incredibly difficult for solo players.

 

[Higher Game]

They need to get a grand strategy gaming studio in charge of the more strategic and economic aspects of the game.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the game is a good infrastructure, but we've grown as players, a sequel to elite is not enough in current year, we need at least a proper sequel to elite 2. what really kills the game is the absolute lack of interaction with the world. it was acceptable, actually unthinkable otherwise, 40 years ago, but now it's just a glaring missing piece. being "prince" 30 years ago was a title and access to a couple of harder missions and a piece of equipment or two, today it *must* mean systems changing ownership. at least. instead we have a billion stars. a billion of immobile, immutable stars. what for?
it's not like it'd be something hard to code.

 

[Fedora Master]

All they'd have to do is take a look at the economy in Eve. But their players despise EvE and actually WANT as little agency as possible.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

the game is a good infrastructure, but we've grown as players, a sequel to elite is not enough in current year, we need at least a proper sequel to elite 2. what really kills the game is the absolute lack of interaction with the world. it was acceptable, actually unthinkable otherwise, 40 years ago, but now it's just a glaring missing piece. being "prince" 30 years ago was a title and access to a couple of harder missions and a piece of equipment or two, today it *must* mean systems changing ownership. at least. instead we have a billion stars. a billion of immobile, immutable stars. what for?
it's not like it'd be something hard to code.

All they'd have to do is take a look at the economy in Eve. But their players despise EvE and actually WANT as little agency as possible.

Couldn't put it better myself. ED Dads are pathetic little cucks. I say, capitulate to them and make Elite 5 a single player game with optional multiplayer. Maybe dedicated servers similar to NwN so you can make what kind of MMO experience you want with mods. That or go completely the opposite and make "Eve but good" I'd play that too. ED's current system is somehow more barebones and bland than Eve's mission system. At least a real person looked over and wrote some of the Eve Agent missions. I believe ED is ALL proc gen, right?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

eve economy would be unnecessary. the game needs scope. the only way to spend money is ships, so as demonstrated in this very page, once you get the ship you want and equip it, you're done. scope doesn't necessarily mean powercreep, far from it. community goals for global results would work and are the easiest solution, both as idea itself and implementation, but they have to be automated, i don't want to be forced by that single event put together by a lone forgotten intern, which is going to funnel asshole, trolls and server lag.
"pick a planet, bring/mine materials, build a base, spawn some fake trade caravan here and there to make it look alive". how hard can it be if even the starsector guy in his spare time could make it?

 

[Fedora Master]

I hold up Eve as an example of good player agency, even if the individual systems aren't necessarily perfect. As it stands nothing the individual or indeed a group of people does has any impact on the wider universe. Hell, people have to beg Fdev just to have minor factions in a system renamed so they can pretend to be part of it. That's insanely backwards.

In a well designed game the individual activities would interact and support each other. Explorers go out into the black to find valuable asteroid belts, miners buy the exploration data to get there and mine, pirates are attracted to defenseless mining operations, bounty hunters are hired to keep the RGO safe. Easy and logical and wouldn't require too much effort to implement.

 

[spectre]

Easy and logical and wouldn't require too much effort to implement.

how hard can it be if even the starsector guy in his spare time could make it?

You guys seem to be forgetting we're talking about Frontier Developments here.

Another station walk video is up. I don't like the candy colors compared to the previous one, other than this the layout seems unchanged.

You can still do most of the shit you would do at a station from the ship's computer.
However, there's actually an incentive to leave the ship because you can negotiate mission terms face to face with npcs.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I was actually thinking of buying this because I'm bored until I read they banned the slavers. First interesting thing I've read about this game and people got banned for it.

 

[spectre]

They actually banned them? Talk about no fun allowed. They could have exploited the situation for the game's benefit, setup some kind of event and let other players intervene, mount a rescue operation, fight the slaver fleet, etc. etc.
Plenty of opportunities to larp. But that would require putting some actual thought into it.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

if it was actually exploiting a loophole which in real life usually leads to prison once you're found out, but banning from a game? that's pretty unfair, it's not like they were abusing a bug but only some badly thought features.

 

[Razor]

Lmao. They actually bothered to make a smaller general hall for stations... but not ship interiors? Ehh, they probably could get away since they can copy paste a few rooms across all stations in the universe.

Nevertheless the foot fetishists are going to be mad as hell.

Also wtf Fdev?! Why do the NPC-s look like something resembling humans. What happened to the meth-addicts-on-rehab-with-fentanyl ones that the menus have?

Also my concern is that their poor imagination will shine again and they are going to waste at least the positive potential tacked on FPS has. Things like crashed generation ships on moons that you can go deep dive in on a salvage hunt. If they even bother to model something like that its going to be a couple of rooms barely piercing the hull.

 

[J_C]

Nice job with the release Frontier. Funny how ED slowly overtakes Star Citizen, which might have a better tech, but ED at least comes out as a functional game, not just a tech demo for different mechanics.

 

[Fedora Master]

They are going to abandon the FPS feature just like they abandoned PP and Arena.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I really wasn't impressed by the Odyssey demo mission they had in that video. But I still think it has a lot of potential.

Imagine different options for SRVs and not just Scarabs. And you could customize those just as much as your ship. And guards and other players could all have relatively easy access to anti-armor weapons, so you would be forced to work in combined forces. Infantry take out threats to the tank and the tank takes out threats to the infantry.

Imagine a close air support role for your ship. Now there will be a reason to equip dumbfire rockets. And base anti-air defenses would get a huge upgrade so you can't just hover in midair and rain missiles all over the place. And when the system defense forces arrive, your air support and getaway ship would be in real danger. And there would be a shield around the base that goes up either by default or when the base is under attack, and the infantry have to go inside a building to disable the shield so your ship can drop bombs or extract the team.

Imagine actually using turret weapons on your ship so you can lay down cover fire during the extraction.

Imagine planetary combat zones or battles inside and around a station or megaship where infantry, armor, and aerospace are all fighting and they all have a role and they are all balanced and they all have counters to each other.

Those all sound pretty exciting to me. But I'm still pretty sure that the gameplay will be the exact same thing we already have, just on a smaller scale: Grind to upgrade your suit and your weapon. Get a mission; fly to location; get out on foot; shoot, scan, or retrieve the objective; return for reward.

 

[moleman]

Seems that the "Taxi Service" involves being glued to the passenger seat in mult-crew for x minutes without being able to do anything.
And no ship interiors...

But it looks impressive, I'll give them that.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i'll take "fun" over "impressive" any day of the week.

 

[Fedora Master]

i'll take "fun" over "impressive" any day of the week.

With FDev you'll get neither.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Easy and logical and wouldn't require too much effort to implement.

how hard can it be if even the starsector guy in his spare time could make it?

You guys seem to be forgetting we're talking about Frontier Developments here.

Another station walk video is up. I don't like the candy colors compared to the previous one, other than this the layout seems unchanged.

You can still do most of the shit you would do at a station from the ship's computer.
However, there's actually an incentive to leave the ship because you can negotiate mission terms face to face with npcs.

The lifeless stares of the NPCs, their slow, robotic movements and how they don't even look at you properly, even when you walk in front of them.

Definitely baby's first FPS. My mid-tier hopes have been dashed to almost nothing.

 

[Burning Bridges]

However, there's actually an incentive to leave the ship because you can negotiate mission terms face to face with npcs.

pointless

 

[Fedora Master]

However, there's actually an incentive to leave the ship because you can negotiate mission terms face to face with npcs.

pointless

Worse: More busywork to stretch out gameplay.