Elite Dangerous - Yay or Nay?

[MadMaxHellfire]

frontier was considered "too harsh realism", back when games were for nerds and just for nerds. now try to picture "dean takahashi plays [the latest elite]" and watch his head explode, with millions more following.

 

[Burning Bridges]

When everything else fails there is always European Trucking Simulator 2. The absolute top game in this genre.

 

[Burning Bridges]

frontier was considered "too harsh realism", back when games were for nerds and just for nerds. now try to picture "dean takahashi plays [the latest elite]" and watch his head explode, with millions more following.

The problems is that these games require you to get into them without a proper teaching course. It's not even that Newtonian motion is hard, but people have not been taught in school, and the games have no "post-school" course. (we were taught practically everything about electromagnetism but my physics teacher never talked 1 minunte about proper motion in space, docking of spacecraft or orbital mechanics - although it was easy and fun it was not considered part of the normal human experience.

Second, psychology. I sometimes try to explain people the very basics of orbital motion and orbital transfer and I noticed everyone just rolls their eyes. It is isn't hard at all but people have become so convinced it is, that they don't even want listen. It's exactly like putting integral or factorial signs in front of someone who hasn't been to university, they will just shut off their brain.

Well whatever it is what it is. People have been lamenting the lack of intelligent challenging games for 30 years now, but handholding games are hugely popular. It's that in the end the laziness of people beats their curiosity I guess.

 

[DDZ]

Second, psychology. I sometimes try to explain people the very basics of orbital motion and orbital transfer and I noticed everyone just rolls their eyes.

I would roll my eyes too you goddamn nerd.

 

[DraQ]

What about the first three Elite games? It seems as if those were rather obscure here in the states, and nowadays there are several ways to play all three through sourceports or DOS or what have you

Elite is mostly of historical interest, but do check out FE2 and FFE (in this order).

You really need to have played Elite in the mid/late 1980s to understand how good it was. 8-bit Elite gameplay was as much ahead of its time as IV is behind.

It was like stepping into a time machine that took you at least 10 years forward. You had probably played nothing in your life but 2d jump&runs in which you steer crude animals over the road so they dont get squashed by much too fast cars. And suddenly you were in a PC-like scifi simulator with 3d graphics and real economics. neither the 3d graphics nor the economics look like much today but oh boy were they a step into the future in 1986. The fact that the game was hard as fuck (considering you probably pirated it and had no manual) made it even more rewarding when you finally started making money. It felt like you EARNED it like a businessman and not just by jumping left and right.

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.

 

[DraQ]

frontier was considered "too harsh realism", back when games were for nerds and just for nerds. now try to picture "dean takahashi plays [the latest elite]" and watch his head explode, with millions more following.

The main problem with Frontier was that for all it's eerily good UI (seriously, it was the time where most UIs made you want to stab your eyes out with the broken ruins of your fingers after attempted use, meanwhile FE2's is more usable than most shit that passes for UI even today) it labelled it's cruise control mode as "manual" and it's actual manual mode as "engines off".

It's hard to blame anyone for not finding the fact that you needed to switch to engines off mode when about to enter pitched combat sufficiently intuitive.

What was

• Autopilot
• Manual Control
• Engines Off

Should have been

• Autopilot
• Set Velocity
• Manual Control

instead.

 

[Fedora Master]

The biggest hurdle to controls in ED is the fact that the default KB/M setup is fucking atrocious or not set up at all to begin with (Looking at the new exploration tools).

 

[DraQ]

default KB/M setup

What the fuck are you doing on my on my forum?

 

[Fedora Master]

default KB/M setup

What the fuck are you doing on my on my forum?

Knowing FDev, the default HOTAS setup is probably just as fucking retarded.

 

[Burning Bridges]

For flying it's pretty ok, but completely fucked up in the menus which are controlled with the HOTAS, in what is apparently supposed to be some fake bullshit VR.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

My one experience with Elite was the C64 version back in the late 80s, but I couldn't make heads nor tails of that radar-map screen that was actually perfectly useful but my brain at the time had trouble understanding it's design and purpose. Plus, I made the mistake of attempting to play it after Space Rogue, which built on the concepts of Elite but was more colorful and had stuff you could do in the space stations (my interest in RPGs was just burgeoning).

 

[J_C]

The biggest hurdle to controls in ED is the fact that the default KB/M setup is fucking atrocious or not set up at all to begin with (Looking at the new exploration tools).

Thankfully the PC master race is tech savvy enough to create their own key bindings.

 

[Fishy]

Also unless things have changed, there are no default bindings for tons of stuff. No default bindings to drive the SRV for example.

The biggest hurdle to controls in ED is the fact that the default KB/M setup is fucking atrocious or not set up at all to begin with (Looking at the new exploration tools).

Thankfully the PC master race is tech savvy enough to create their own key bindings.

There still are no excuses in this day and age *not* to provide sensible default bindings for a few standard control modes. But then, I guess they'd rather use that time to throw a couple more shoddy paid cobra palette swaps for their cash shop.

 

[DraQ]

Knowing FDev, the default HOTAS setup is probably just as fucking retarded.

No, why the fuck are trying to play anything without configuring controls first? What the fuck is wrong with you?

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yeah this is getting kind of retarded. I spent next to zero time configuring the controls compared to real fliight sims, the only thing that was necessary for me to solve was the up-down left-right which I put on some turn knobs, but pitch/yaw/roll and the few necessary buttons was a piece of cake.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

frontier was considered "too harsh realism", back when games were for nerds and just for nerds. now try to picture "dean takahashi plays [the latest elite]" and watch his head explode, with millions more following.

The main problem with Frontier was that for all it's eerily good UI (seriously, it was the time where most UIs made you want to stab your eyes out with the broken ruins of your fingers after attempted use, meanwhile FE2's is more usable than most shit that passes for UI even today) it labelled it's cruise control mode as "manual" and it's actual manual mode as "engines off".

It's hard to blame anyone for not finding the fact that you needed to switch to engines off mode when about to enter pitched combat sufficiently intuitive.

What was

• Autopilot
• Manual Control
• Engines Off

Should have been

• Autopilot
• Set Velocity
• Manual Control

instead.

nope, even you don't get it.
they're not the labels, they're the names of what would have followed if you clicked the button under those circumstances. the whole interface is made like this, it's consistend and it's retarded, and the game was insulted aplenty for this.

 

[DraQ]

frontier was considered "too harsh realism", back when games were for nerds and just for nerds. now try to picture "dean takahashi plays [the latest elite]" and watch his head explode, with millions more following.

The main problem with Frontier was that for all it's eerily good UI (seriously, it was the time where most UIs made you want to stab your eyes out with the broken ruins of your fingers after attempted use, meanwhile FE2's is more usable than most shit that passes for UI even today) it labelled it's cruise control mode as "manual" and it's actual manual mode as "engines off".

It's hard to blame anyone for not finding the fact that you needed to switch to engines off mode when about to enter pitched combat sufficiently intuitive.

What was

• Autopilot
• Manual Control
• Engines Off

Should have been

• Autopilot
• Set Velocity
• Manual Control

instead.

nope, even you don't get it.
they're not the labels, they're the names of what would have followed if you clicked the button under those circumstances. the whole interface is made like this, it's consistend and it's retarded, and the game was insulted aplenty for this.

I am speaking of text, not button icon.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it's the same.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Incredible, I am feelng an urge to play this again, what the fuck.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I'd only play something like this if it were on sale with ALL DLCs and ALL expansion packs for around $15, because that's my way.

 

[Fedora Master]

Incredible, I am feelng an urge to play this again, what the fuck.

And you'll reinstall it only to find out that literally nothing has changed.

 

[Fishy]

I'd only play something like this if it were on sale with ALL DLCs and ALL expansion packs for around $15, because that's my way.

Tbh there's only one expansion pack (mandatory imho, landing on planets is too big a feature to be considered an option), and the rest is just a constant stream of shitty and massively overpriced Pimp My Hyperdrive toys that you need to get out of your way to see since you spend 99% of your time in the cockpit and therefore pretty much never your ship's paint, engine colour, or hilarious-but-zealotously-censored ship name.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Incredible, I am feelng an urge to play this again, what the fuck.

And you'll reinstall it only to find out that literally nothing has changed.

Actually I have resisted so far because I already know what will happen, kinda like when you resist the urge to get drunk.

 

[DraQ]

it's the same.

It's not. Text (orange, on the right) indicates present control mode and view. Icons indicate next control mode, view or whatever (what will happen if clicked).
I would post screenies but TinyPic happens to be shutting down and I CBA to find alternative hassle free image hosting service, so just imagine I just did.

Please, be considerate and don't waste my time by being wrong.

 

[J_C]

Frontier financial report:
https://otp.tools.investis.com/clie...regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1326478

- Elite sold 3 million units so far (not counting the Horizon expansion)
- Company revenue in 2019: 89.7 million pounds, up from 34.2 million in 2018

David Braben, Chief Executive, said:

"I am delighted to report a record level of financial performance, which reflects the skill and hard work of our talented team and the support of our players around the world.

The company is skyrocketing. Job well done.