Elite Dangerous - Yay or Nay?

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Okay so I'm really trying to like this (not very successfully so far) because just for flying around and doing mindless NPC quests is all I am looking for right now. ED is janky and doesn't always look that impressive, but at least I can figure out how to get around without having a PHD in rocket science.
I didn't play this before Odyssey so I'm kinda liking the space legs since I simply don't know better times before this patch apparently broke things.
Also, it's still a rock solid game by comparison to my Star Citizen experience.. Make of this what you will.

And finally, I'm not sure what's currently a better option? I didn't try a lot, yet. There's NMS that I got for a dolla some time, but I didn't like that one at all. It seems too casual, like babby spaec game, like the space exploration spinoff game of Spore, but more bland somehow.
So what'd be better just for "space trucking", this or SC? Or hidden third option?

 

[Junmarko]

Okay so I'm really trying to like this (not very successfully so far) because just for flying around and doing mindless NPC quests is all I am looking for right now. ED is janky and doesn't always look that impressive, but at least I can figure out how to get around without having a PHD in rocket science.
I didn't play this before Odyssey so I'm kinda liking the space legs since I simply don't know better times before this patch apparently broke things.
Also, it's still a rock solid game by comparison to my Star Citizen experience.. Make of this what you will.

And finally, I'm not sure what's currently a better option? I didn't try a lot, yet. There's NMS that I got for a dolla some time, but I didn't like that one at all. It seems too casual, like babby spaec game, like the space exploration spinoff game of Spore, but more bland somehow.
So what'd be better just for "space trucking", this or SC? Or hidden third option?

I bought Elite on a Steam sale for $20 two years ago, this included the Horizons expansion and the game was already 5 years old at the time. So, I went in with zero expectations and was pleasantly surprised. But, I always did enjoy space sims growing up (Frontier, Privateer, Escape Velocity etc). You'll prbably get 25-50 hours of enjoyment out of it, depends how much you love those sorts of games.

Elite Dangerous does everything your favourite space sim did back in the day, problem is, that's all it does. It's just a 90s space sim with physics and a new coat of paint. All the mechanics that look new on the surface, like factional warfare, planetary exploration etc - is cut and paste at best and at worst smoke and mirrors. It starts to feel like there are really solid placeholders everywhere, for an epic game that they just haven't got around to finishing. It's a shame, becuase at the moment it is second to none in the space sim genre. Everything else I've tried is complete kack in comparison. Star Citizen is a skeleton, Everspace 2 is like a mobile game you could play with one hand tied behind your back and No Man's Sky is just Minecraft in space, garbage.

What has killed it for me in the end is the Always Online bs. I put in about 60 hours and I must have been in Open Play for 90% of that. Think I ran into other people maybe twice, no joke. It was a complete mis-fire on their part to make it this way, there was no need and just puts an early expiry date on the game without a doubt. Noticed it a lot when I moved house recently, didn't get the internet up and running well for a few months, so you notice lag spikes in what is essentially a game you're playing by yourself 99.999% of the time.

Anyway, the simulation stuff in Elite Dangerous is awesome, and where it's at. Play with some good headphones and make sure you have "DTS:HEADPHONE X" Enabled in Audio settings. The audio in Elite Dangerous is incredible

So, set yourself some goals:

• Fly to I Sola Prospect, Brestla, bookmark it and use it as your home base for a while. Has every ship + module in one place, 20% mark up, however the time you will save makes up for this.
• Try out mining, get a cobra mkIII or python and kit it out with limpets and mining lasers.
• Do a ridiculously long cargo run where you'll encounter hostiles and earn a stupid amount of credits.
• Buy a decent fighter ship and try out some combat (or kit out your Sidewinder with the most expensive modules and use it - this is good fun!)
• Try and buy all the ships you want, see how they all fly.
• Visit some of the cool locations (asteroid bases, guardian ruins, thargoid barnicle hive, generation ships)
• Drew Wagar's Elite Tour videos on YouTube are a cool watch, he highlights some nice easter egg locations.
• Try and get the Permit into Sol, go fly passed earth, mars, voyager satellite etc.
• Try and get Elite rank in one area and get the Permit for Jameson Memorial
• Go hunt some Thargoids.

Don't pollute your brain with factions and sub-faction nonsense, it goes nowhere and is nothing more than flavour text. And fuck off Odyssey all together, just play using Horizons. The content in Odyssey isn't even worth a free download, it's sub-par trash that feels stapled on to the core game. They also altered the UI when you're docked in Odyssey, for no good reason and it is actually WORSE than it was before.

 

[spectre]

So what'd be better just for "space trucking", this or SC? Or hidden third option?

If I were to reduce the two games to a one-line zinger, it would be this:

Elite Dangulugu - all the flaws of a MMO, none of the advantages.

Star Citizen - no other game out there will PROMISE you more.

Elaboration: I never gotten Odyssey for ED, not sure if I'll ever will because I feel done with this game, and I've also been looking for that hidden, magical third option to no avail.
I got quite a few hours of solid space trucking out of it, but I would say that all the best parts were padded with loads and loads of bullshit. Yeah, there's quite a few nice mechanics,
but it's all buried under MMO bullshit grinding. I'm looking specifically at you, engineering. Junmarko gives you a bunch of great suggestions. Also watch some videos
to get some idea about what can be done in the game and how to optimize your path of getting there. There's no point in discovering shit on your own, you'll quickly burn out on the game
doing pointless shit, hopping around samey locations with very little things to do.

When it comes to Star Citizen, wait for a fly-for-free event and see for yourself. The game is a horrible mess, but some folks enjoy that messy state and are kept around by sunken costs
and that lingering promise that it's going to be good, any month now. In some ways it feels more fleshed out compared to ED (the planets and the ships),
in many other ways, its still struggling getting the basic functions implemented (elevators still sometimes glitch out and throw people into space, I think it's a meme at this point).
Yes. Even after all these years and despite all the money people keep throwing at it.
So, whatever you do, don't buy it on impulse, especially not based on the promo videos (especially those made by shills claiming it's finally passed some milestone and it's a good time to play it)
and if you do, don't throw more than absolutely necessary (still, forking out 45 dorra with tax is a bit much). If you do, keep your expectations low.
While the game does a decent first impression, you will quickly notice how much of this crap is for decoration.

All in all, calling this game unoptimized is an understatement, so you may also ponder the potential expenses on gear upgrades.
The worse your PC, the more glitches you'll get and not sure if I want to know what sort of a monster PC it needs to run it on max details
(whereas ED would run mostly flawlessly on a GTX970 and can also look pretty darned good at times).
It also loves having you waste your time doing "immersive" shit, like taking a train to the spaceport after you die, clicking each end every button along the way,
waiting for the next train to arrive if you happen to miss it this time...cool for the first few times, but not when you keep dying to glitches.
And you'll be dying quite a bit as you're figuring things out.

If there's one thing I can commend Star Citizen for is that it sorta forces other developers to keep up with its pipe dream.
Not sure if ED would ever get the whole space legs and fps gameplay business if it hadn't been for SC.

So yeah, as far as those hidden third options are concerned, I don't have an answer myself. Maybe you can get some mileage out of X4, Empyreon or No Man's Sky, or wait for that Starfield thing from Bethesda.
Personally, ED still does a decent impression of being a space sim, and you should be able to get a solid 100hrs out of it before you ultimately concede,
that you'd like something more fleshed out, something that respects your time more. Depends if you can get it on a discount.

 

[spectre]

A small update, because I was genuinely interested if the space trucking in Star Citizen is actually any good.
I saw some promos showing off a spiffy spaceport terminal with container handling and shit, made me wonder if any of it is in there.

So I asked around and here's some "war stories" I heard from a guy:

He picked up a contract to deploy a scanning drone for some institute or whatnot. Basically an entry-level fedex mission.
All started rather well, landed on a space station and picked the thing up. Had to carry it to the hangar by hand and drop it off at the ship's cargo bay.
Next was the trip to the deployment area, and here's where things got slightly fug'd, cause the drop off and drone activation was supposed to be in space,
but the game didn't let him leave the ship for a spacewalk. Not sure if it was a bug, or he was missing some equipment, or it's just a thing with his starter ship.

Next mission was supposed to be a cargo pickup from a downed craft. Nav marker has lead him to an ice-covered moon. Took a few minutes of flying
and the crash site was soon in sight. No hostiles around, time to go to work. After landing, the area turned out to be blasted by
a ball-freezing wind. Didn't have the gear rated for -100 degrees, so it was a race against time until hypothermia would incapacitate him.
The landing spot was some 100 m away and the wind made it rather challenging to approach the site, had to move slowly and wipe the ice and snow away from the visor to see anything.
He located the first crate of the cargo and went back to the craft, the return trip was much faster until he noticed his spacecraft... moving, blown away by the wind.
It whacked him on the head and hilariously cartwheeled towards the horizon.

I'm not making this shit up, you can google people reporting the same bugs for several months now.
Some argue if these are actually bugs, or features.
Others say, yeah, just don't do these missions. Go mining instead, it's more or less fleshed out.
But hey, I found a vid of a SC dev all proud of himself cause he's developed an algorithm that can realistically trace rivers along the planet's geography
and some yootube soy guy rubbing one off to the possibility of buying valuable real estate along such rivers.
Priorities, people.

So yeah, we are talking starter cargo missions being basically unplayable, but I guess that's not terribly surprising to everyone paying any sort of attention to the game's... uh... journey
(development seems to be too big a word to use). Also, this settles the case of SC as a space trucking game as far as I am concerned.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

If it's more tedious and frustrating than actual work, it more or less misses the mark, I'd say.
Hence why I can't understand why in SC they want the worst aspects of "life" so bad, like a boring train commute to the spaceport every day, or actually getting the character locked up in prison for extended amounts of time (but apparently you can smash rocks to get out quicker like an old timey chain gang, what is up with that?). I guess actually carrying the cargo crates to and from the ship counts too, let that be automated why dontyou, it's the future or whatever.
It's like I might be better off just playing EVE doing 217 jumps without autopilot or similar things.

 

[spectre]

Hence why I can't understand why in SC they want the worst aspects of "life" so bad, like a boring train commute to the spaceport every day, or actually getting the character locked up in prison for extended amounts of time (but apparently you can smash rocks to get out quicker like an old timey chain gang, what is up with that?). I guess actually carrying the cargo crates to and from the ship counts too, let that be automated why dontyou, it's the future or whatever.

Well, it sorta was SC's selling point since back when the whole scam began. It's also a super handy excuse to dismiss naysayers:
Perhaps residing in the stars is too much for you? Nudge, nudge. Seems like you don't have what it takes to be a Star Citizen(tm)

I imagine players are already developing a bunch of tricks over time to avoid the tedium. Setting your respawn point to literally anything else than that fucking train asap must be the number 1 beginner tip floating around.
The hilarious thing is after all these years, the train still goes tits up at least once or twice per session. Sometimes the stop doesn't spawn and you need to make another loop or risk getting sucked into space.
I once seen the door open on the wrong side, so noone could get out.

Anyways, there's a dedicated thread to give SC all the shit it deserves, I spammed enough about it here already.

Now, when it comes to carrying shit by hand, I could see it viable when handling sensitive cargo, smuggling shit, or when you're picking something off a wrecked ship.
That's when the personal touch feels justified. I'm sure there's a middle ground to be found here. Too much automation makes it uninvolved, which can also kill the experience.

Not sure how the space stations currently are in Erecto Dysfunctionalis, they promised to make them walkable and more interactive with Odyssey, but before it was mostly
clicking through the menus in an app-like interface. The fun was in plotting the journey, planning the buys so that the cargo bay doesn't fly empty and the most fun was in the docking procedure,
either leave it for the computer to kick back and listen to some Strauss, or do it on your own if you think you can save a few seconds without getting a fine for ramming into things.

They did try to spice it up a bit by making it seem like e.g. you're making some sort of a difference by delivering humanitarian aid,
or topple governments, one delivered explosive at a time. But that was larp, smoke and mirrors. In the end, that's still clicking arrows to load and unload.

 

[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.