Nice to see that some of the path-of-least-resistance PP stuff is being shut down.
Actually, no it’s not. Now I guess PP is grind all the way down rather than the old grind-or-interdict.
I’m thinking of logging in to see if the planet textures have really improved, but I honestly can’t be arsed.
schurem
4922
Yo scharmers what’s up with you going all bluerg over elite lately? thought you liked it? take a break hombre, a longer one!
To go back over my Steam review: it was CQB that just did it for me with Elite. I was hitting the grind wall with Elite right around the time that Frontier decided that the best way to advance Elite was to add fucking deathmatch. Not expanding its universe, making it a more interesting and diverse place to explore, fight, and trade in, but simply going LCD and (I assume) pandering to the XBone crowd with deathmatch. Between PP’s “lines on the map move from side to side” and CQB, I could see that Frontier wasn’t really interested in the tough design challenges that would add a few more inches of water into its kiddie pool. And I’m just not interested in the RES Zone - dock - RES Zone - repeat gameplay any more. There’s nothing more there.
Play less? I find if I don’t play a game as much it keeps fresher. I could imagine getting into a RES Zone once in a while and just having a space blast, but I can see why just doing it day-in-day-out would get tiresome, really really fast.
I shudder to think how many hours i sunk into the original Elite, i put in a crazy number of hours at a friends (as i did not own a computer that had Elite at the time) on the weekends, and much later got the Amiga and then PC version (Elite Plus), and also got into Oolite and adding mods to it. But yeah easily hundreds of hours in that original version.
The real hours were in Frontier though, on the Amiga. Over 5 years or so it was one of my most played games. Planet Landings, free form third person for all the amazing space views, huge range of ships all with very different handling characteristics (you did not dog-fight in a Python for example!). A proper seamless galaxy. Fantastic game.
Now FFE (D3D+Andymod) is where all my Elite time is spent, not as much as when i was a kid/student off course, but pretty respectable.
The concept of ‘playing less’ just does not come into it when the game is such a deep and compelling design. I’ve yet to properly start Elite: Dangerous, but i’m an ‘all expansions’ holder, so am just happy waiting from the sidelines while it gets up to scratch as it definitely is still in it’s ‘early access’ clothes. It will get better, and people will just not be able to ‘play less’, one day :)
I popped online last night to see about blowing some things up in my Freagle and pushing onward to new, space-tradey frontiers, but I’d forgotten I was 50 light-years away in the trading Cobra I was playing with. I’ll have to make a run back one of these days.
mok
4928
Does EVE allow automatic - multi system jumping - where you just turn it on and wait? It would seem to me an auto pilot for ED could be pretty easy to do - as long as it doesn’t run into a sun. You could run until you reach the target system, run out of fuel, or get interdicted.
KevinC
4929
Frontier doesn’t seem to be a big fan of autopilot (docking computer notwithstanding).
Yeah, the fact that you’re dumped out of hyperspace seconds away from crashing into a star leans against it.
I’d argue that the effectiveness of the docking computer actually supports your point.
Hey, David Braben just posted a video showing a debug camera zoom-out from a planetary surface into space. Pretty cool.
I look forward to driving around the circumference of one of those potato-shaped planets.
Just fyi for folks out there exploring. The data issue did not get resolved. Frontier is now advising folks stop exploring.
That’s a nice video but I still don’t see any actual gameplay here. There’s even less gameplay than in No Man’s Sky, that game at least has interesting colorful planets with all sorts of living things to look at, even if there’s nothing to actually do but walk around. We’re 2 months away from Horizons and the best they can show off is a giant brown rock with a few wrecks on it? No one really finds mining interesting in this game because you pretty much stare at rocks all day, so now you’re going to be able to land on a much bigger brown rock and stare at it? Even if there are wrecks to find and metals to mine I think this holds peoples attention for all of 15 minutes. I hate to sound so down on this but I really want Elite to be a living galaxy full of interesting things to do and it’s just not. I know Horizon’s will only get better and maybe sometime in the future we’ll be landing on Earth-like planets with varied and interesting terrain but for now this just isn’t doing anything for me.
It’s going to be like a good wine, that’s my best analogy and i’m sticking to it :)
KevinC
4936
Damn, dude… it was a short video clip demonstrating the scale and seamlessly zooming out, it wasn’t labeled as or intended to be a gameplay video. It’s not even a listed video on youtube. I get you want to see gameplay (I do too) but that’s not what this video was trying to do.
Maybe I’m a space-geek. I think brown rocks are cool. I think the idea of 1:1 scale, “realistic” space environements are cool. I think the idea of landing my ship on some low-gravity planetoid and seeing what happens when I bounce my SRV off the highest cliff is pretty cool. Or seeing how long it takes me to drive around the entire thing, and whether I can navigate back to my landing site. Or just sitting and looking at the orbiting gas giant, or a trinary sunrise, or whatever.
Plus, this:
I get that people think Elite doesn’t have any gameplay. I find it completely engrossing. It pushes all of my buttons. It gives me plenty of things to do, or go check out, or aspire to, or whatever. It’s about 10x more appealing to me than shooting some pillars in No Man’s Sky to gather resources (and I am looking forward to NMS). I like the sense of verisimilitude it offers. The coldness of it. The loneliness of it. The occasional little surprise. If I had to pick one game to be my last game ever, I’d pick Elite – even in its current form.
And, I am completely a fan of Frontier’s plan to evolve this game from a solid foundation.
But, different strokes. Not for everyone. Your mileage may vary. etc.
Fozzle
4938
Maybe you guys can help me with a question? When I see a com come up from an NPC, saying something along the lines of “I’ve been looking for you. Follow me.” or some such. How the heck do I know which lil blip is that guy? Do I want to follow him? What ship parts do I need to be able to track him and pop out of super duper speed where he is located?
Yes, but it’s an Internet-God-given right to step into any thread on any game and shat all over it. I guess. I didn’t like Elite when it came out, retried it a week or so ago and am quite enjoying it.
Don’t get me wrong I actually like Elite a lot (I just want it to be better, for me I guess which is probably selfish). Totally understand that others love it the way it is and that’s awesome! That doesn’t change the fact that I’m (initially) disappointed in what they’ve shown off of Horizons. And yes KevinC i know it’s just a tech demo, and maybe there’s better videos out there showing off more interesting content that I’m missing, if so i’d love to see more of that.
Trust me I’m not trying to shit on anyone’s favorite game, like I said I really do like Elite, glad I bought it but I haven’t seen anything from Horizons yet that’s making me want to preorder. Purely my opinion is all (don’t get mad at me, still like Elite!)
