I love my Eagle. Might have to do some Imperial Grind for the Imperial Eagle.
Rock8man
4803
I was trying to figure out why I still consider Privateer to be the top space sim of all time in my personal pantheon, maybe tied with Independence War. Is it just nostalgia, since the flight model in Elite: Dangerous is way better, the core gameplay is way better. I think what I miss from Privateer is what the talking heads and little pieces of planet art added to the game.
In Privateer, you only got little limited budget look at each thing. A hand drawn bar that looks the same at each asteroid or mining planet. The same bar with a similar cartoon talking head bartender who usually didn’t have anything unique to say to you. But just having those things really added to how I felt about the universe and how I inhabited it while playing the game. Having that hand-drawn landing port screen, the main “planet” screen that let you go to the ship dealer, bar, or hanger, the bar screen, it all added up nicely to paint a portrait of that world that you built in your head. When you landed on the one planet where it was raining outside, and there were flying cars around the landing port, you could really picture you having landed in a city on a planet.
It was a low-budget way of flushing out the world that was way more effective than what Star Citizen is trying to do with it’s first person mode or what Elite is trying to do with it’s planetary landings on barren worlds. But we’ll see. Maybe the planetary landings will be more effective than I’m currently giving them credit for.
Privateer had the amazing Wing Commander universe to draw from, but for the first time let us loose in a part of that universe, which was amazingly compelling at the time (still is really). I think the combination of lore, openness, graphics and ship design really helped make Privateer excel.
SpaceMt
4805
The CQC beta is simply flat out FUN…
Like “One more match, then I’ll cook dinner” FUN.
Mario Kart in Space?
CQC REALLY is fun, like, a TON of it. And WOW am I bad at it. Like, Bahhaaaaaahaaaaaaad.
SpaceMt
4807
Yeah, I’m Bahhaaaaaahaaaaaaad at this also. Or is everyone else REALLY good at this? I keep wondering “Is everyone is using CHEATS to play this game? Is my connection that SLOW compared to the others, so that I’m a stationary duck to them? Does a Warthog make THAT much of a difference in combat?”
I just came back to the game after months away, and I came back to this thread. So: what is CQC?
SpaceMt
4809
CQC is “Close Quarter Combat” the latest update to E:D. One of the updates is an Arena type PvP match where up to 8 pilots shoot it out Deathmatch style. I’ve also been away for months and CQC has re-ignited my interest in Elite.
Brakara
4810
I haven’t looked through the answers yet, but there was a David Braben AMA on the Xbox One subreddit earlier today, which may be of interest to some of you:
schurem
4811
I ain’t bad at cqc, rocking a Logitech hotas set. I rarely yaw, but do use the down thrusters a lot. Also never ever close the throttle entirely.
It’s the beginning of the end. Of Elite: Dangerous as any kind of serious space sim. It’s all about the pew pew and not much else, which is of course fun and cool if you love space ship pew pew games.
Without a near-newtonian flight model (that was in the previous two Elite games) Elite: Dangerous started of on the ‘lite’ side of space-sim and with things like CQC and powerplay has sort of made it clear the direction Frontier want to move in, which is further away from the sim-like aspects of the previous games and more into pew pew and MMO tropes.
Having said all that, the potential for this game is still here, in spades, but well it still remains to be seen if it can even reach the levels of the previous two games in many, many aspects of finished gameplay. I’m in it for the long-haul (got the all expansions edition in the Kickstarter) and as of yet i prefer to play FFED3D (+ the AndyJ mod) for the deeper space sim aspects, even if less pew pew and less shiny graphics. YMMV.
eyeroll
massive eyeroll
Yes, because some of us LOVED the overtly-realistic newtonian jousting fights of the original games. SO FUN. eyes roll out of head
It’ll likely get there, it’ll just take a while, but yeah, go keep banging on that alarmist drumset of yours.
Seriously dude, what the hell? CQC is separate from the main game and totally optional. PowerPlay is also optional, so hoooooooooooooooooooow do they bring down the game, exactly? Would you prefer they focus more on making a less-accessible flight model in a less fleshed out universe?
I know Elite: Dangerous isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and I’m glad you’re digging FFED3D (hell, be happy you even HAVE these options son, ten years ago it wasn’t the case), but seriously dude. Your post is kinda ridiculous.
KevinC
4814
Damn, you need ease off the melodramamine.
I agree with your post, but just wanted to point out that jousting in FE2/FFE happens when your speed is too fast relative to the enemy (a mistake that I too always made back when I played those games because I didn’t know any better). If you slow down, turn off engines and use manual thrusters (which is what the AI does in combat) then combat is as demonstrated in the end of this tutorial: https://youtu.be/9UMIbdN0UFE?t=3m42s
Not going to comment on how fun it is or isn’t as I never tried it the seemingly correct way. Just thought you might be interested though.
HOW DARE YOU TRY TO DILUTE MY RAGE
Actually that makes a lot more sense really, I wonder how I completely missed that playing all three original Elite games.
Combat in FE2/FFE is just fucking tiresome. I fired up FFE3D recently to see if the combat was as bad as I remembered.
I spent twenty minutes pinging that pulse laser at some ambushing idiot, before deciding that yes, FE2/FFE’s combat was a clusterfuck of such proportions that it effectively killed the franchise for over decade. (Playing endless rope-a-dope with an Eagle who refused to get with combat range but wouldn’t just GO AWAY for endless minutes sure was fun…)
There is a way to fly newtonian (like Nuclearwinter mentioned, youtube vids ‘how to’ etc), but that is just part of the wider issues, big and small and still not really looking like getting ‘fixed’ as FD focus on maybe more ‘popular’(profitable?) type stuff etc.
As it stands currently i find FFED3D (+AndyJ mod: That is important! AndyJ recently fixed the infamous autopilot crash on landing bug etc) just a lot more playable, believable and ultimately satisfying to play (sorry Brian!), but as i mentioned, YMMV; that is just my (longtime Elite fans) opinion on the subject. One day that might change :)
Edit: Oh i was not being ‘melodramatic’ at all, btw It was a simple statement on how i feel about the game currently, that is all. I can happily say ED is NOT at the same levels of contempt say the Prequel Star Wars movies have in my world, but you know ED could/should be hitting a home run…and yet i play an older re-engineered version…that allows planet landings (on ALL types! awesome!), ships to have non artificial finite speeds due to MP network concerns (and thus more versatility without having to set them so ridged in their ‘roles’), more variety of mission types, more ships, The Alliance , no cheaters/griefers or shield cell spammers, a quick functional GUI (Galaxy Map that is smooth and quick!), more and correct info on ships and equipment you might want to buy etc etc (like…really, the 'etc’s could be a long, long list of stuff! Stuff people post about all the time in bug reports and on the forums, these were just a handful of mine own pet ‘sighs’ on the state of the game).
I’m also completely sure if ED had released with a proper SP version, many of the issues currently in the game would have been modded out by now, so there is that too, simple frustration at some levels. But also Hope, that one day…i may join all those saying how it is the most awesome space game ever (because the Elite series as a whole is pretty much that, imho) :)
New financials:
At the end of August 2015 it had sold 825,000 paid units (excluding free ‘demo’ units) and generated 84% of Group revenues via a self-publishing business model including associated merchandise.
Other stuff: Planet Coaster due 4Q16 - not sure if that was official before. A “third franchise” to be announced around that time. Other than that, nothing (non-financial) that exciting about Elite that wasn’t already public.
conVurt
4820
The CQC Beta has entered an open stress test for the next week or two. If you don’t typically have beta access but are still interested or just curious, you can download and try out the CQC beta from the game’s launcher.
