Elite: Dangerous

[Blaine]

By "game" do you mean a storyline, dialog and mission structure?

 

[Volrath]

x3 is fundamentally broken.

No it isn't.

 

[Raapys]

x3 is fundamentally broken. mods can expand the game, and they do, but can't and won't fix it.

Is this mainly because all the mods are doing the wrong things, or more because it's completely impossible to fix the worst things about the game with mods? My main complaint was the usual "ok, so we made an engine, basic features are in, now let's release the game" design philosophy where the game is missing the actual game part, which in theory could be at least somewhat "fixed" by content-related mods. But I haven't really played it enough to analyze properly. Still on the fence on whether to reinstall or not.

Well, first one would have to identify what's actually wrong with the game. Many will claim that it's kinda 'dead' or 'soulless', which is true'ish. Then again, such can be said for pretty much all the sandbox-type games.

I think people are maybe expecting too much though; the world is just a place where you can go have some fun, do random missions, buy production facilities or trade for profit, while the actual scripted missions are the 'living' parts of the world. Same with IW2 really, though it offers far less non-mission-specific content.

However, people( including myself) automatically assume the non-main-plot parts to be the actual game, and as such become disappointed when it turns out there aren't really all that many things happening in the universe. This is the part many mods try to 'fix', by adding not just ships/weapons/wares, but actual features like wars between the different nations, more civilian traffic, etc. Unfortunately, creating a living, breathing universe/world is probably the most difficult concept in gaming. And they, both the developers and, for the most part, modders, have been going at it the wrong way.

To my mind only one game really stands out in this department, and that's Dwarf Fortress( well, there's also Space Rangers, though that's more 'lite'). And it does it by simulating stuff as realistically as possible; not necessarily with all the details, but with all the 'steps'. In the X games you don't have any true consumption of resources, for instance. Ships are spawned out of nowhere, same with weapons and everything else. I'm generalizing there, but it's true in most cases. The game economy is really just designed around the player, you. The point is, this means the underlying concept is also flawed. As MadMax says, the entire game, at least the open-world part of it, is fundamentally broken.

Thus, to my mind, the only way to fix the X games would be to scrap everything, all the sectors, and start over. It's possible to do with modding, though I'm not sure anyone's tried anything that big. You'd then need to do some really serious scripting, making every race/nation and corporation into its own 'player', with limited resources and income( based on bases and planets/population) and an 'agenda' of their own, etc. You could then go on to add wars and other dynamic behavior based on complex scripts. And then find some good way for the player to interact with and be part of these events.

Then again, at that point you will start struggling with the game's lack of multi-threading, probably making the game run at a snail pace. And just adding these features wouldn't be enough by itself, you'd also need to add many of them and execute them almost perfectly.

Anyway, by no means an impossible task, but definitely a large one. And personally I'd hold off on any such project until X:Rebirth is complete( assuming they kept all the modding possibilities open and didn't break anything that can't be fixed), as it should be far better at taking advantage of more powerful hardware. At that point you just need someone willing to dedicate a significant portion of their lives to the project.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

x3 is fundamentally broken. mods can expand the game, and they do, but can't and won't fix it.

Is this mainly because all the mods are doing the wrong things, or more because it's completely impossible to fix the worst things about the game with mods? My main complaint was the usual "ok, so we made an engine, basic features are in, now let's release the game" design philosophy where the game is missing the actual game part, which in theory could be at least somewhat "fixed" by content-related mods. But I haven't really played it enough to analyze properly. Still on the fence on whether to reinstall or not.

mods can add ships, weapons, systems, can try to balance the already existings, but the shortcomings of this game are so many...
ai: there's no challenge involved in any fight, all you have to do is strafe and remember to invert lmb and left control or you'll never be able to hit anything. also don't rely on turrets, they're not going to hit even chasing missiles.
invisible fog: many systems have colored fog. i'm fine with that, nebulas are an established player into sci-fi even if they actually have lower density than void created on earth. but some of those systems have invisible fog. you can see all the stars in background but you can't see stations further than three meters away. but maybe in the next system you'll be. it lacks consistence.
no exploration: all the "systems" are just small or needlessly huge boxes filled with nothing. the terran systems especially are a pain in this regard, you can spend endless minutes just staring at a x10 compressed time which feels like being still. and don't use the autopilot there, most of the time it's unable to find its way and you'll be stuck into an endless loop.
because of this, bigger ships are not really meant to be used, you'll fall asleep while waiting for them to move anywhere, but if you don't check them every second you're in danger of watching them suiciding onto something, thus ruining your status, calling police and so on.
unbalance: vanilla ships are screwed. even if mods can balance loadouts and stuff they still have blind spots, place where you can park your m3 and shoot all the missiles you have in total safety.
interface: terrible. i shouldn't have to explain more.
most of the best equipment is unavailable: a lot of factories are not refilled with raw materials, most of them are those producing the heaviest (and most useful) equipment. you could wait forever for a factory to build that shield generator your ship needs. refilling the station by yourself could not always be possible, sometimes the factory just bugs out and stops producing, but anyway do you think it's fair you're needed to pay for materials AND what you need? paradoxically, you'd do better to build the same factory by yourself.
trading is a pain: some mods help you, gathering the prices all over the galaxy, but still while you buy, jump and approach somebody else restocked the station already. not worth it, even less considered how little money you would have done by trading and how much you'd do with missions.
broken missions: the random generator is totally off. "10 minutes to find this ship into the void of space and bring her back to this station". it wouldn't be bad if only it took 20 minutes only to drive her back.
"300k to buy a station and place it where i tell you". sure, not a problem, let me check: price of the station: 500k. price of the ship: 300m. yeah, sure.
repairs borked: repairing 100% of a ship costs almost as a brand new one. if your capital ship gets damaged you're in big troubles because maybe you just can't afford to repair it, the personal repairing laser is barely noticeable on the smallest ship, just forget fixing capitals with that, but if you don't that ship isn't going to go anywhere because capitals are already excruciatingly slow and a damaged hull slows them even more. you'll end putting a weight on the left control, activating time compression and have a vacation for a week or two.

 

[Trash]

I'll admit it. I caved. Pledged again. Why? Nostalgia. Those wallpapers reminded me way too much about what I digged so much in Elite. That universe, all those possibilities, all that discovery. Enough for me to plonk down 20 and hope for the best. We'll see. At least they got the old feel right with this and that counts with oldfags like me.

Plus it reminded me of the dozens of times I crashed doing just that when I didn't have that fucking autopilot installed.

 

[Blaine]

Autopilot in Elite is for Scrub McPlebeians.

Just look at that beautiful scene... it reminds me of the old OMNI Magazine covers.

 

[Trash]

If they turn this into an updated Elite with graphics that capture the look and feel of these concept arts I'll be a happy camper.

 

[potatojohn]

Arcade physics lol

 

[Trash]

They're going for an Elite remake, no?

 

[Blaine]

The engine trails in that picture do indicate a less-than-realistic physics model. No vessel in deep space could turn on a dime like that unless it were moving very slowly (or at a standstill) and had just begun firing its maneuvering thrusters.

However, it's concept art. One cannot expect artists to be physicists.

 

[Raapys]

One also cannot expect pilots to be insane and go fast inside an asteroid field, just to be picky.

I do fear we're losing the physics though. Hopefully just in the sense that the navigation system compensates( as it does in both Elite and independence war) but with the ability of turning that function off.

 

[Trash]

At first I hoped for a true sequel to Frontier. That seems out of the question. Now I just hope for a real follow-up to Elite. In fact I'd be very happy with that. Arcade flight dynamics and all. With Braben's track record however? I tossed a 20 at them for nostalgia's sake. If I didn't consider it chump change I wouldn't do it though.

 

[bonescraper]

Arcade physics lol

And there's probably going to be sound.

In space.

Phail.

Lawl.

 

[DraQ]

One also cannot expect pilots to be insane and go fast inside an asteroid field, just to be picky.

I once flew through one at about 4000km/s in FFE.



Of course, it wasn't very dense.

 

[DraQ]

At first I hoped for a true sequel to Frontier. That seems out of the question. Now I just hope for a real follow-up to Elite. In fact I'd be very happy with that. Arcade flight dynamics and all. With Braben's track record however? I tossed a 20 at them for nostalgia's sake. If I didn't consider it chump change I wouldn't do it though.

I would cum for the former, but don't care about the latter.

Elite's big echievement wasn't that it was very best. It was that it was very first. Which means that while it deserves all the credit for singlehandedly spawning an entire fucking genre, it just won't cut it today as it's been built upon, modified and surpassed again and again.

Now, Frontier was a bestseller but it paved the way barely anyone has followed. Modernized Frontier clone would totally have cut it.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, I'd cough up a pretty penny for a Frontier clone.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

frontier with more missions, more weapons, more ships, maybe some minor faction and better sound and graphics.
am i asking too much?
instead they're going to the multiplayer route.

 

[octavius]

frontier with more missions, more weapons, more ships, maybe some minor faction and better sound and graphics.
am i asking too much?

No, you are asking too little.

Personally I want Frontier with fun combat and a 3D map so you can actually plan the route for a timed mission. I remember how infuriated I was with the 2D map. Often two stars would be very close to each other on the Y and X axis, but then it turned out they were far apart on the hidden Z axis, something I often would discover only after several hours of boring space combat that felt more like a jet fighter simulation where you spend 99% of the time trying to align your ship to get the enemy in your sights and then have an opening of a few seconds to shoot or launch a missile as the planes/ships whizz past each other in glorious newtonian speed.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

if you think there was even a single 2d thing in the whole frontier, you're baaaaaadly mistaken.

well, now i read the whole post of yours: fail troll is fail.

 

[octavius]

if you think there was even a single 2d thing in the whole frontier, you're baaaaaadly mistaken.

well, now i read the whole post of yours: fail troll is fail.

OK, checking at Mobygames it wasn't as bad as I remembered; there was a 3D map of sorts. Still, I fund it impossible to plan a route from star A to star H, having to refuel at stars B to G, since the map wasn't true 3D. It only showed the positions on the Z axis compared to your current star system.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

neither. it shows the distance from z=0.

please, stop embarassing yourself.

 

[made]

if you think there was even a single 2d thing in the whole frontier, you're baaaaaadly mistaken.

NPC portraits were 2D. :trollface:

 

[octavius]

neither. it shows the distance from z=0.

please, stop embarassing yourself.

The result is still the same, fanboi: you can't know the distance between stars E and F from your position at star A.

 

[Modron]

neither. it shows the distance from z=0.

please, stop embarassing yourself.

The result is still the same, fanboi: you can't know the distance between stars E and F from your position at star A.

If you have distance between planets and distance from z then it would be simple math to give you direct distance (I do agree this should be handled automatically though).

 

[octavius]

neither. it shows the distance from z=0.

please, stop embarassing yourself.

The result is still the same, fanboi: you can't know the distance between stars E and F from your position at star A.

If you have distance between planets and distance from z then it would be simple math to give you direct distance (I do agree this should be handled automatically though).

Hmm...then I must have failed in my mathematics skills back then.
Do you have a simple formula for calculating the distance? Frontier is on my chronological list of games to (re)play. Having reached mid 1993, I will probably give Frontier (October 1993) another shot next year.