*** The Official Elite: Dangerous Thread ***

[SPG]

I have not even bothered doing the Thargoid content, the entire idea of running around just to get the upgrades to engage in the battle was a beyond stupid design decision, especially after the utterly disappointing way the engineers were handled and the materials. The countless hr required to jump for point A to B and then only to get randomisation of the things you need killed the entire idea of Thargoids for me. (That and they look crap)

I can afford a carrier off the bat but looking at the videos going around i really cant see the point in having one apart from the jump power. Which leads me onto the biggest gripe, the jump range even with the upgrades is far to small for the size of the game. Its boring and tedious at least to me.

 

[NeilF]

I have not even bothered doing the Thargoid content, the entire idea of running around just to get the upgrades to engage in the battle was a beyond stupid design decision, especially after the utterly disappointing way the engineers were handled and the materials. The countless hr required to jump for point A to B and then only to get randomisation of the things you need killed the entire idea of Thargoids for me. (That and they look crap)

I can afford a carrier off the bat but looking at the videos going around i really cant see the point in having one apart from the jump power. Which leads me onto the biggest gripe, the jump range even with the upgrades is far to small for the size of the game. Its boring and tedious at least to me.

Yep, Engineering tried to give value to shallow grind loops, and in itself created a needless new upper teir of combat, unbalancing PvE and PvP.

As for the Thargoid Invasion? Frontier had years to get some gameplay and mechanics in place to then leverage with the Thargoids to make them more engaging/interesting. Instead, the Thargoid Invasion had no mechanics to leverage and even had bizarre invisible Thargoid fleets knocking out stations during Thursday morning server down time. Consider if we could instead enter into a Powerplay type view showing the Thargoid position, offering tasks in different areas to affect their position in different ways. Consider if those tasks utilised and offered more engaging gameplay and mechanics, such as stealth (cold/silent running) for recon. Or being able to escort convoys from A to B, or defend locations from Thargoid Scout attacks...

 

[PinkFloyd]

Game has been shallow for years, I'm not expecting much with this New Era thing. The devs seem entirely inept at making good balancing decisions, I feel that the game could be drastically improved just by someone applying a few brain cells to just tweaks some numbers across the board. I still remember getting excited for the Mamba, only for it to come out and be worse than the FDL in every respect? No idea whether they've changed it since but can't find any evidence to suggest it's worth trying.

That all said, I still enjoy it in small goes. Just flying about is relaxing, the visual and sound design of the ships is nice and the immersion with VR when I bother to set it up is lovely. I've spent a few hours this past week mining diamonds to make the most of the vast amount of money that can be made doing so right now whilst chilling out chatting with mates.

 

[SirJinks]

As for the Thargoid Invasion? Frontier had years to get some gameplay and mechanics in place to then leverage with the Thargoids to make them more engaging/interesting. Instead, the Thargoid Invasion had no mechanics to leverage and even had bizarre invisible Thargoid fleets knocking out stations during Thursday morning server down time. Consider if we could instead enter into a Powerplay type view showing the Thargoid position, offering tasks in different areas to affect their position in different ways. Consider if those tasks utilised and offered more engaging gameplay and mechanics, such as stealth (cold/silent running) for recon. Or being able to escort convoys from A to B, or defend locations from Thargoid Scout attacks...

Now that would have been fantastic addition. I frequently think about re-loading the game for another stint...but then remember the awful grind and get on with my life

 

[SPG]

Its a gaming Travisty of biblical propertions such is the **** of of elite dangerous, hell i wouldnt mind it being sub based and paid expansions to develop the game.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Agreed. Such a shame as it's core was really good.
As you say:
- Thargoids that nobody cared about and never really did anything. Wouldn't it have been substantially more interesting if they really HAD expanded into human space and was gradually taking over systems
- Engineering. Yep, I did it, but frankly, all it did was to make the game even less balanced as it basically railroaded players into having an "optimised" ship. Fine if you like combat, but pretty poor for those being ganked
- Space legs. Again, really who cares? There's plenty of 1st person shooters around
- Mining. Yeah, how about we make it more complex and thus "interesting". If I wanted to better simulate something, I'd play a real combat simulator like DCS (oh actually, I do, shshhhhhh)
- Fleet carriers, that require a shed load of money to run, and then (GRIND) find of more materials to use it. Could have been an interesting way to allow a group to venture out into deep space on an excursion together, but no, let's add GRIND!

Hard to believe that ED have spent so much time/money on the above.
Oh, and yes, I made triple elite before getting bored to tears and flying something that requires some challenge.

 

[Dano]

One day, I hope somebody will spill the beans on what has been going on at FD and just who is responsible for all this wasted opportunity.

 

[NeilF]

One day, I hope somebody will spill the beans on what has been going on at FD and just who is responsible for all this wasted opportunity.

All those missed release dates, staff "changing rolls", features getting released untested, features getting completely down scaled. Hopefully we'll find out why...

 

[LOAM]

It's been a rudderless ship since they moved Michael Brookes into another project. I kickstarted this and sank a lot of hours into it but haven't really touched it for a couple of years but since day one FD have been experts at clutching defeat from the jaws of victory. Almost without exception content has been implemented in a haphazard way, ideas touted and discussed with the community spectacularly watered down into meaningless mechanics (power play, community goals, thargoids, the void mysteries, faction and home systems etc) at the last minute and then abandoned when no one gets involved with them. It's a real shame because when it was fresh and it first released there was nothing like it, the rush or rare runs with pirates like skafsgard waiting for returning pilots was unbelievable.

I remember spending weeks hunting a guy down who killed a buddy only to quit when it became plainly obvious that there's no mechanism in place to actually do anything like that beyond hoping they were streaming and stream sniping them (which we did often).

Even the economy was a simulation of a simulation which they broke often.

 

[NeilF]

Yep, years of missed opportunities and what could have been. Can but hope New Era is impressive bar raising stuff at long long last!

 

[rubberduck]

Did this turn out better than Elite and Elite frontier from.a gameplay perspective?

 

[NeilF]

Did this turn out better than Elite and Elite frontier from.a gameplay perspective?

Completely different game. Multiplayer instead if single. Etc...

 

[HummuH1]

I've been dipping back into this but also been playing a bit of X4.

I love Elite Dangerous, the VR and ability to properly use a HOTAS makes it a stunning game. But, like many, after a while the grind just gets to you and it feels like there's no real "purpose" to what you're doing.

If only they could incorporate the station building, fleet management, trading/economy management type stuff like the X series it really would be, for me anyway, by far the best game ever made. I can only hope this is what they're working on for the next generation of the game.

 

[Darujhistan]

Whta collective disapointment the great trio of space games that were announced so many years ago, the Holy Trinity in fact, ED (easily the msot succesful), NMS (launch disaster, still nothing like what was promised), and Scam Citizen (still nowhere near a release and little more than a demo nearly a decade later, blighted by feature creep, and lacking any direction, they announce finishing a planet as if its some sort of amazing milestone when they promised endless galaxies).

Moral of this story is don't kickstart games.

 

[bigmike20vt]

Did this turn out better than Elite and Elite frontier from.a gameplay perspective?

I think the absolute core gameplay is great. I love the flight model it is a compromised hybrid of classic elite mixed with neutonian model of frontier. I love it some don't.
The visuals were excellent but 5 years on i would say are just good now but still has the potential to surprise on occasion. The audio is phenomenal and is the one area where FD never dissapoints.

The problem is this was the case in 2014. The game is progressing glacially slowly and some parts have gone backwards. The economy never really made sense with more holes than a teabag but as time has gone on it has regressed terribly which has removed any sense of progression in the game.
If you prefer a sandbox where you get most of the toys very quickly it is ok. If you are a roleplay driven player this is horrible. 2 of the 3 elite rankings are also broken. You can go from new account to elite with a cutter ,(most expensive ship in the game,) now in 24 hrs if you follow the meta or use one of the many exploits and worse than that FD are balancing their most recent content assuming all players do that.

I challenge any player to afford a new fleet carrier who hasn't either mined VO or LTD or took advantage of where the economy has failed and paid silly amounts

And now they have added offline credit sinks. You can literally lose a 5billion credit ship if you dare to stop playing for 6 months!... But at the same time they don't allow offline credit earnings. IF FD want to have offline expenses using the excuse that these ships need running maintanence then equally they need to allow us to use NPC's to create passive trade routes etc imo as it is it is classic F2P type nonsense..

There is still a very good game in there and you can have a lot of fun in coop with a few mates. Even the arcade shooter bolt on CQC can be a bag of fun if you like PvP arena shooters.
VR is where the game shines it's still one of the must own VR experiences.
I have over 2000 hrs in so despite all its issues it must do some stuff right.

TLDR if you like elite there is fun to be had in ED along with optional play with mates and vr... But it could have been so souch more. I want the game in the Design Discussion Forum from 2013

 

[Dano]

There is still a very good game in there and you can have a lot of fun in coop with a few mates. Even the arcade shooter bolt on CQC can be a bag of fun if you like PvP arena shooters.
VR is where the game shines it's still one of the must own VR experiences.
I have over 2000 hrs in so despite all its issues it must do some stuff right.

That's the biggest issue with Elite right there, it is a good game but could have been so much more if only the dev's would stop messing around.

 

[NeilF]

I think the absolute core gameplay is great. I love the flight model it is a compromised hybrid of classic elite mixed with neutonian model of frontier. I love it some don't.
The visuals were excellent but 5 years on i would say are just good now but still has the potential to surprise on occasion. The audio is phenomenal and is the one area where FD never dissapoints.

The problem is this was the case in 2014. The game is progressing glacially slowly and some parts have gone backwards. The economy never really made sense with more holes than a teabag but as time has gone on it has regressed terribly which has removed any sense of progression in the game.3

Totally agree... The game when first released - with the acceptance of some "placeholder gameplay" - was great. But then as you suggest, it has not only slowly progressed at best, too much of what was added has either negatively effected the game, or was just a total development waste.

The last significant addition that I think was impressive was planetary landings over four years ago. More recently Mining 2.0 has some positive points, but too much of it was poorly balanced, poorly designed and just unnecessarily half baked And we seem ore these problems with Fleet Carriers now to! Why should "New Era" at the end of this year be different as regards the clear management and design issues FD have!

 

[bigmike20vt]

Indeed and I think the last few posts sum up why there is so much bickering on the official forums.

IF you come into it now for £20 in a sale the game has heaps going for it .
But many on the forums had been begging for a new elite since the 1990s and we followed closely enough to know exactly what was planned for the game. All games have bits and bobs chopped in development and a lot of it we don't get to see.... But personally I think ED has had more cut than most, and on top of that the game going forward is trying to cater to a whole different demographic without ever delivering what the initial demographic were shown.

IF it ever comes out I think the Star citizen / S42 idea of making 2 essentially different games that tie in at the end may make more sense (albeit in a much more conservative scale would be safer)
Sure the majority are hyped for starcitizen. I kicked in for S42 however. The open MP world is just the icing on the cake

 

[Bubo]

I've said this before but to me it all boils down to the fact that no one is being charged a monthly fee for the game. You paid for whatever expansion level you bought in at and I think it's safe to say you must have had your moneys worth in terms of play time, and if you want to can dip in whenever you want for evermore entirely at your leisure. I think the Horizon's effective season pass has delivered value for money overall. Everyone will have different levels at which they just stop playing because they've done everything there is to do at that point, but surely this will have been after multiple 100's of hours, hence the value for money thing. Myself I haven't played seriously for a good 4-5 months, but I am fine with that, I have had enough fun for now and since I am not being charged a monthly sub, I will just wait for the next expansion to see if it worth punting on again, it is up to the developers to get that right. In the meantime I have just been playing other games.

 

[SPG]

The core is fantastic, the economics is pointless and should be left as simplistic buy/sell. It's clear the infastructure cant handle player input and they have zero understanding of the subject.

The player effecting the universe is a mess and should be dropped it has not worked from day one. They do not have the tools or the knowledge to do correctly.

I also need to read up on this charging of ships if i do not play. This in itself is a shocking decision and does nothing to male anyone want to revisit the game.