Elite: Dangerous

[J_C]

So, I bought the game. What are your names in the game? I would add you if you wouldn't mind. I added Ulminati already.

 

[Berekän]

Not much time to play lately, but I'm CMDR Beercän

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Unfinished upon unfinished. Unfinished raised by two.

 

[praetor]

cmdr Dreadd

 

[Morkar Left]

Cmdr Morkar

Only played around christmas/New Year holidays and took a long break after this. Started playing again in Octobre and fitting out my cobra a bit more. Seems like I prefer smuggling.

Smuggling, heat management, equipment and the big universe are the most interesting things for me so far. Finding traderoutes and exploration seems to be well developed, too.
What I'm unimpressed the most is Powerplay which doesn't seem to work as intended at all. And it seems to be completely disconnected from the minor factions as well which makes me wonder why the minor factions are even there.

 

[DraQ]

Looks awfully choppy.

Not in terms of performance but just how disjointed the flight gameplay simply is.
I guess being able to smoothly accelerate to-, decelerate from- orbital speeds and generally LARP a satellite has its merits after all.


Also, WTF is with the Jetsons engine noise?

 

[J_C]

Hey DraQ, long time no seen in the topic. The game still hasn't got newtonian physics, so what are you doing here exactly?

 

[DraQ]

Hey DraQ, long time no seen in the topic. The game still hasn't got newtonian physics, so what are you doing here exactly?

Gloating.

 

[Metro]

Game seems to be succumbing to feature-creep with the FPS/walking around, planetary landing, ship boarding, etc. What exists now is fairly shallow. Sure it's a huge universe and the systems are all well designed but it's fairly generic. I can see people enjoying it from a tool around space/trading/bounty perspective but the high price tag (yeah you can buy it for $15 now but you'll probably want to buy the expansion later)is derived from the simulation aspect as opposed to the depth of the content. Seems on par with Rebel Galaxy as far as factions and such go... I expect more with Frontier's budget.

They'd be better served making the universe more interesting before they start adding more features/realism. I'll wait to see how Horizons turns out and if they follow up it with yet another expansion in short order.

 

[Morkar Left]

To make the world more enjoyable/believable they would need some additional graphical assets like people walking around in the background, more different advertising panels, better system and planet descriptions (which are fitting to the products and minor factions available there), more audio speech (shouldn't be a problem to record the npcs talking with some employees right from the office and using some com distortion), usinf the commanders name in the mission description, multiple chice answers, let some npc buggies travelling around the planetary stations, some news about cqc (why isn't there a youtube channel dedicated to it in the art of an sports event - think american gladiators style) etc.

For real gameplay changers they need an fps-part/walking around in the stations/on planets with some stealth mechanic included. Only with that you can truly put some life into the game like smuggling deals in bars, security controlling / patrolling gateways if you are wanted / wearing some not allowed weapons, getting gossip from the bartender, hacking / breaking in in some building to steal some information, search for missing people, assasinate people, getting attacked from thugs or bounty hunters, enter a stranded / drifting spacehulk for loot, check out some abandoned planetary base, make a trip in space outside your ship to repair some components etc.

Plus rich populated worlds like Earth would only allow you to enter the planet in a specific corridor and land on a specific part / platform (if not they shoot you down in good old Elite fashion). Access for spacefaring folks would only be allowed for some tradehub, maybe with some instances for special missions you get teleported to.

Possible to do, but would basically require a second game. Awesome if they could make it. I hope it will be but I doubt they could pull this off. At least they have some experience with fps by developing such a game (unfortunately it never got released).

EDIT: the crafting in Horizons seems to be rubbish. It's basically magic potions and alchemy in space. And how much the buffs provide it will basically become mandatory. Seems to be as bad as I thought it will be

 

[Country_Gravy]

I bought it during the Steam sale. Played a bit. Named Country_Gravy in the game. That's the beauty of having a shitty internet name...can use it anywhere.

I haven't played much, but I got blown up while trying to deliver fish. Read some tutorials that might help to build up some early cash.

I am getting a new computer in about a week, so I will probably wait until that arrives to really dive into it. It seems like it could be interesting for a bit.

What are you veterans' advice to a newb on what my initial goals should be?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the new launcher removed my "play" button and replaced it with "purchase". google told me it's a problem as old as beta but didn't give me a working solution.

 

[Country_Gravy]

the new launcher removed my "play" button and replaced it with "purchase". google told me it's a problem as old as beta but didn't give me a working solution.

You didn't reply to my post, so you are not contributing.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Game seems to be succumbing to feature-creep with the FPS/walking around, planetary landing, ship boarding, etc. What exists now is fairly shallow. Sure it's a huge universe and the systems are all well designed but it's fairly generic. I can see people enjoying it from a tool around space/trading/bounty perspective but the high price tag (yeah you can buy it for $15 now but you'll probably want to buy the expansion later)is derived from the simulation aspect as opposed to the depth of the content. Seems on par with Rebel Galaxy as far as factions and such go... I expect more with Frontier's budget.

They'd be better served making the universe more interesting before they start adding more features/realism. I'll wait to see how Horizons turns out and if they follow up it with yet another expansion in short order.

All space sims teeter on the edge of being meaningless-timesucks. Fly from X to Y, carrying a cargo of Z. Attack [faction X] ship, blah blah. I forget who it was, but at one point, some indie talked about a space game that would feature crewmembers with procedurally generated storys, interactions and quests. This would have been awesome. Maybe even the occasional passenger unexpectedly being chased by pirates or the government or whatever. Devs really need to focus on making spacegames more like Firefly and less like "hey, here's a meaningless universe filled with lifeless worlds that all might as well be represented as an ASCII roguelike. Now go 'explore' it or grind for 100 hours to buy a better ship for no good reason, you filthy autists!".

 

[potatojohn]

All MMOs like E: D are meaningless-timesucks.

Fixed it for you.

 

[J_C]

All MMOs like E: D are meaningless-timesucks.

Fixed it for you.

All videogames are meaningless timesucks. Stop with it guys, videogames are teh devil!

 

[praetor]

the new launcher removed my "play" button and replaced it with "purchase". google told me it's a problem as old as beta but didn't give me a working solution.

try contacting support/open a ticket. the game may be garbage, but their support team is usually top notch (even though it used to be really bad near release)

What are you veterans' advice to a newb on what my initial goals should be?

1. do missions to get money for upgrades and/or new ship
2. trade to get money for upgrades and/or new ship
3. kill endless respawning garbage npcs to get money for upgrades and/or new ship

alternate between the 3 in the sidewinder, decide which one is the least boring to you so you can plan your upgrade/ship path accordingly. one more thing, read up on the powerplay factions and decide if there's a special module that you may like so that you join said power immediately as you have to wait 4 weeks to unlock it (personal recommendations: the burst rail gun, the fast firing plasma, the super shield, the rest are mostly garbage, although the drunken missiles could be cool some time in the future when they buff missiles from garbage-tier)

 

[Duellist_D]

So far, i have managed the incredible feat of launching my ship from the starting space station.

I have, however, been derping around a bit in CQC and that is actually quite fun and probably worth the 12 Euroshekels alone.

 

[Severian Silk]

This

looks a lot more organic than what I've seen from ED so far. Are there any plans on creating more spread-out, natural looking vistas like in FE2?

 

[Severian Silk]

Devs really need to focus on making spacegames more like Firefly and less like "hey, here's a meaningless universe filled with lifeless worlds that all might as well be represented as an ASCII roguelike. Now go 'explore' it or grind for 100 hours to buy a better ship for no good reason, you filthy autists!".

Independence War 2 is kind of like that. Except it's not a Space Western.

Anyway, a lot of early space sims were more narrative based, such as Wing Commander or TIE Fighter.

 

[J_C]

I had a pretty close call yesterday. I was relocating from one part of the universe to the other, and during my long travel, there were 2 instances, where several systems only had a white dwarf of a red giant as stars, without any space stations. And you can not refuel there with your fuel scoop. I was jumping from one system to another praying to finally arrive to a regular sun. I was down to my last drop of fuel after the last jump, but to my relief a glorious yellow sun appeared in front of me.

 

[Ulminati]

You could always have popped open your map and looked for a yellow star in a 1-2 jump detour. That's what you're supposed to to when your tank is around 15%

 

[J_C]

You could always have popped open your map and looked for a yellow star in a 1-2 jump detour. That's what you're supposed to to when your tank is around 15%

I did. But neither of the systems had any system data available.

 

[Azazel]

This

looks a lot more organic than what I've seen from ED so far. Are there any plans on creating more spread-out, natural looking vistas like in FE2?

Sure, but just like nearly all the features toted pre-release in the newsletters, this will almost certainly never materialize.

 

[praetor]

This

looks a lot more organic than what I've seen from ED so far. Are there any plans on creating more spread-out, natural looking vistas like in FE2?

correct me if i'm wrong (it's hard to tell from that enormous picture), but isn't this^ a planet with atmosphere? care to find a pic of a settlement/spaceport from FE2 on a lifeless rock?

plus, making those procedural patterns is the easy part. the "hard" (well, time consuming more like) part is having enough people creating assets so that it doesn't look like the same copypasted white square everywhere, but like an actual settlement made by humans (wouldn't hold my breath, as visual variety wasn't Elite's strong point ever since the first, and they don't have the kind of money to spend on this stuff). anyways but more variety will definitely come some time in the future (when? could be 2016, could be 2018 or 2022)

and even if it did eventually have those, so fucking what? pretty settlements can only get you so far if you can't do shit with them... you're trying to nitpick irrelevant stuff like that scaly autist, when the game suffers from far bigger problems (problems which even fucking reddit realizes)

You could always have popped open your map and looked for a yellow star in a 1-2 jump detour. That's what you're supposed to to when your tank is around 15%

I did. But neither of the systems had any system data available.

you can always tell the star type(s) even without system data (KGB FOAM is a nice shorthand phrase to keep in mind for what's scoopable)