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

Cromulent is a made up word from the Simpsons, which was later legitimised. My saying it's not really cromulent, it's akin to saying it's just not cricket but with an extra smiley face. My apologies for a failed attempt at levity.

Asking me to do hrs of research re-watching dev blogs and reading the backer forum
before I can talk about my own subjective experience of a game we both played is essentialy an attempt to gate keep. If I did would it change anything ? I still wouldn't be looking at it from your perspective.
 
ToOo said:
Cromulent is a made up word from the Simpsons, which was later legitimised. My saying it's not really cromulent, it's akin to saying it's just not cricket but with an extra smiley face. My apologies for a failed attempt at levity.

Asking me to do hrs of research re-watching dev blogs and reading the backer forum
before I can talk about my own subjective experience of a game we both played is essentialy an attempt to gate keep. If I did would it change anything ? I still wouldn't be looking at it from your perspective.
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Annnd I'm out...
 
Michael Brookes passed away this week, I always had a vain hope that he would come back to Elite and wrest control back onto a better path, RIP Michael :(
 
It's too late. For 8+years ED has been a litany of all too often poor design choices underpinned by poor management. There's been little attempt (ability?) to create deeper more joined up mechanics, and all too often designs have even been ineffective and/or down scaled leaving additions vapid or almost dead in the water. eg:-
  • CQC - Why all the effort for a stand alone fighter game which soon did little more than collect dust? Why wasn't it built into the core game to be utilised for missions/tasks? Both for PvE and even PvP (eg: Community goals and Powerplay)? Right now people could be jumping into PvE fighter missions to affect community goals or fight Thargoid Scouts? Orchestrated PvP fighter based gameplay to affect Powerplay outcomes? Or jumping into fighter based missions with a few friends to attack/defend platforms or escort ships though asteroid fields?
  • Multicrew - A half baked design resulting in an interesting role for one player being broken down into basically a number of dull rolls for more. Worse still, it created a code deficit which would then be a hindrance going forwards forever more. ie: Every change going forwards had to take into consideration multicrew's code.
  • Engineering - Colour me surprised that a designer with a draught excluder around his neck would create such a mess of an addition to the game. Grindy and unbalancing this is what initially got me concerned about the direction of ED. Indeed, I knew a number of early backers that even left the game around this time so obvious was the direction the game was NOT going in.
  • Thargoid Invasion - With years to prepare for this alien invasion, FD could have invested development effort in mechanics which could have then be leveraged into make the Thargoid Invasion involved and meaningful. eg: Display the Thargoid position as a type of Powerplay view and allow players to undertake tasks to affect that Thargoid position. Transport tasks. Recon tasks. Fighter (CQC) tasks. But instead they didn't introduce any mechanics that could be leveraged leading up to the Thargoid invasion which then meant we basically had invisible fleets attacking stations during server downtime. Worse still - to allow yet more grind - they split combat so dedicated weapons were basically required against Thargoid creating little more than needless faff. Encounter a Thargoid while in your regular Python? Bad luck, you need to fly away and change ship and come back... if you can be bothered.
  • Crime and Punishment - Even after multiple attempts, ED has landed with a bloated and contrived C&P system. There were/are far simpler and more effective alternatives.
  • Piracy - Multiple alterations never left PvP piracy in a sensible place, especially with the poorly considered associated C&P mechanics. Furthermore, multiple years never brought a dedicated piracy career/reputation path to offer engaging meaningful nefarious gameplay.
  • Mining 2.0 - Another demonstration of FD's poor design ability. New mining mechanics that could have easily have blended and built upon the original, but instead due to the poor design it resulted in half of the new mechanics being pointless and ineffective. And due to this, motherlode mining became the goto option and was completely overpaid as if in an attempt to hide the design mess under the carpet.
  • Fleet Carriers and Squadrons - More examples of FD struggling with design. What was released were late, cut back designs which instead of offering interesting new gameplay, instead offered limited clunky new features. Squadrons alone could have been a strong way to grow the community, but the cut down released version was nigh on pointless. ie: Squadrons could have been dedicated to specific roles (Mining, Powerplay, Anti-Xeno, Exploration) with players being able to join as many as they wanted instead of just one, (but only 1 powerplay Squadron etc). Tasks could have been offered to the Squadrons based on their role for rewards.
  • Odyssey - And here we come to the crowning glory of it all. The biggest single development effort during ED's nine or so years. And the culmination of all this development time? A mediocre FPS bolt on and a few more hard coded plants for exploration simply to justify a shallow lock pick game mechanic which was so vapid it was quickly removed.
..and the list goes on of half baked, poorly designed and delayed features.

Just imagine if some of Odyssey's huge development time had instead bolted in a solid procedural engine for plant life. Creating a diverse set of hand-wavium procedurally generated outcomes based on numerous values from Stellar Forge and terrain maps. This alone could have revitalised exploration with the possibility of unusual system/terrain conditions resulting in unusual and truly unique plant life.

However (IMHO), it's been clear for many years, ED is a tour de force in missed opportunities and "what could have beens"... If only those supposed 100 developers had simply been given better designs to deliver... :rolleyes:
 
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i remember all the Star Citizen/Elite bickering and the smugness when Elite arrived and SC didn't [hasn't]. E:D could have been everything we all wished for the original 80s version and they seem to have just squandered it. What a shame, if they'd kept to the original feel it could have been epic, but it seems to have gone down the road of needless grind and unecessary redesigns [flowers?! Thargoids will always be octagonal to me.]
 
wolfie138 said:
i remember all the Star Citizen/Elite bickering and the smugness when Elite arrived and SC didn't [hasn't]. E:D could have been everything we all wished for the original 80s version and they seem to have just squandered it. What a shame, if they'd kept to the original feel it could have been epic, but it seems to have gone down the road of needless grind and unecessary redesigns [flowers?! Thargoids will always be octagonal to me.]
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You're not wrong there! From initial high hopes at the pre-release and release of ED it was a few years until I cottoned on to how those hopes were not going to be met :(

I remember during the beta stage there was the first demonstration of cold/silent running of ships in ED. I remember all the community excited how the depth this could open up in the game. Sneaking through asteroid fields undetected to deliver illicit goods as part of some piracy contract (eg: dock to a ship deep in the field to deliver a passenger/goods/data). But it soon became clear little/none of this depth would come to be. So where is that big game hunting you discussed Braben? Let alone just some clouds like you demo'd or some actual varied procedural fauna to make exploration worth while?
 
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Its all the grind that's done it for me, i don't want to get in to Star Citizen vs ED arguments, Star Citizen certainly has plenty problems of it own.

I just prefer the simplicity of Star Citizen, you want to go mining you buy a mining ship, cargo hauling you buy a cargo hauler, want some pew pew you buy a fighter, you buy the type of FPS gun that you like, want to upgrade it? sure... here's some different types of sights, a suppressor perhaps? How about some better shields for your ship? Buy a better shield generator.
To do any of that you go to a shop, and buy it with money you earned in game, no gallivanting around all over the place, jumping through 37 hoops to get some blue prints before you can do anything, none of that tedious annoying crap.

The ships in Star Citizen are also beautifully modelled, very highly detailed and they look like purposeful believable ships, FPS guns, again beautifully modelled, very highly detailed. They don't look like something you would buy your 6 year old nephew for his birthday, along with a little plastic space suit.

Oh and fully physicalized, full fully working interiors. How boring....

ng0zJNF.jpg
 
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A side from that ^^ what i mean about purposeful ships, think of a space cargo hauler, what you might well be thinking of is a huge industrial looking thing that can split its self and stretch with arms folding out for where the containers attach to.

Even if you're not thinking that when you see it it immediately has a familiarity about it because its just absolutely right.

And this is the baby one of the Hull Series.

youtu.be

The MISC Hull-C in Star Citizen 3.20: All ship highlights & details in the preview ship guide

Deutsches Video https://youtu.be/thJEHzcK29g Don't forget to use our code to become a bonus Star Citizen: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/enli...
youtu.be youtu.be
 
ED gameplay is not fun, when they introduced engineers you knew full well the future was never going to be fun. I have been very very outspoken on this game and how badly its been supported by Frontier (I will never ever buy any of their products again tbh) for the first 150-200hrs is brilliant as you work your way up gaining credits and new ships then when hit that top tier ship the reaslision hits that you have seen it all and their is nothing left to apart from spend countless hrs obtaining hundreds of various materials, signals etc only to get a small gain X or the option of buying Y then having to get even more X to make Y 1% better.

They made killing Thargoids an exercise is re-spawns due to the stupid swarm mechanic, the maelstrom again is yet more grindplay and don't even get me started on the FPS.... Who the hell at frontier actually said go in the project meeting to do this has powers greater than Rasputin.

I pop in now and then take some missions to shoot pirates and that is it.

The only way to save this game is taking it offline and handing it over to the DEV community and turning into a solo experience, Which is what it should have been from the start but no they wanted in Online so they could maintain the powerplay and have some pointless off-line events happening that is meant to alter the universe...

Quite frankly its one of the worst games in the past 10 years and that's simply down to most amazing potential wasted by a crap management at Frontier.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr the internal rage grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
 
Is that the problem? there isn't actually much to do so the dev's think well if we make them jump through a tonne of progression hoops it will bloat the hours they have to spend playing it, that's a win, right? right??
 
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