5481

The fact that you have to rely on a forum thread to find out what CGs are active is just silly. There’s a GalNet news screen in-game, why not a tab which lists CGs and locations?

I swear to god, Frontier’s work is either amazing or it’s laughably amateur. There’s no middle ground with these guys. My latest journey through their control configuration page (after it ate my config yet again) really reminded me of that: 15 minutes of “Why the hell is this so bad? I can think of so many ways to make this less painful. They’d be trivial to implement!” to getting into the game, landing on a planet, and thinking “Oh, wow, this is so incredibly well done”.

Weirdos.

5482

So there haven’t been a lot of reports around here on the big feature of Horizons, does this add to the Elite experience in an appreciable way? Most of what i’ve seen in videos seems kind of “early access” if that makes sense (not very feature rich, if the idea of watching a virtual star rise over a virtual barren rock doesn’t really move you all that much it might not be for you). I know those of you who really love Elite (and are completely fine with the amount of downtime in the game and lack of any game-produced direction) probably really love the planet landing stuff but is it really that different from the core experience? For a casual player is it safe to hold off on Horizons until it’s fleshed out a bit?

5483

sure it is. as you said, if the kick of going to strange new worlds you seek out yourself is not enough, horizons aint for you.

5484

From what you said, I would say it’s safe for you to hold off. The thing about Elite is that it just nails the moment to moment sim stuff exceptionally well, where even a well executed docking maneuver can be a joy. Outside of that, they’re not very good at compelling game mechanics.

So with Horizons, landing on a planet and roaming around in a rover is phenomenal. It’s immersive, and it’s all very well done. But there’s no compelling gameplay reason to do that other than earn credits, which is easier done in space, IMO.

That may or may not hold true after the loot and crafting update. I’m reading between the lines a bit, but I think you might be better off holding off for a little while.

5485

I’m holding off myself until there are more features to it, probably when they add the fighters to the game.

5486

For a casual player is it safe to hold off on Horizons until it’s fleshed out a bit?

I’m in a similar boat to you. I am happy enough to have paid the small amount for the base game, but I’m in no hurry to land on planets. I’ll pick that up at some point in the future - hopefully by that point, the game will have a bit more content to make it more satisfying to do so. In the meantime, I’m enjoying (or at least, attempting to enjoy…) the base game, puttering around in my Cobra.

The latest missions revamp was actually pretty detrimental to my fun, though.

5487

There’s an endless stream of complaints about the missions on the official forums. Oddly, I haven’t seen devs acknowledging this or even trying to explain what they are trying to do.

Looking at what players say it’s about missions being way more rare now and paying negligible amounts of money. The ONLY reason why you’d go doing this type of change is because you want to discourage players to use that system.

But, really, isn’t that basically the only tiny amount of content there is? Making it punishing on a already thin on content game doesn’t sound like a bright idea.

5488

I’ll take HRose’s bait here (I know, I know) and throw my two cents into the whole mission revamp issue. I think Elite has a very unique challenge in that the entire game revolves around the ships (they are the true content), and while it can be nice to look at pretty stars and marvel at the vastness of space, in reality the entire point of this game is to earn money to buy that next best ship (which sometimes turns out to NOT be that next best ship and then it’s back to your old best ship, but anyway). So earning money is the key to making the whole thing work which means they can really only tweak the rate at which people earn money to affect the entire game economy.

Is it possible that the devs feel people are earning money, and therefore ships too fast?

If they did, the only way they can really control that is to control the flow of money. Now if they really feel that way I’m actually less inclined to play Elite since progression for a casual player like me is already very slow. I know I’ll never get in any of the more expensive ships, its just not happening with the time i have, so those $100+ million credit ships are content i’ll never see. I suppose that’s not too different from putting the best weapons at the very end of a 100+ hour RPG and if you don’t finish you never get to use them but for some reason here it hurts more since I can look at those pretty ships all i want knowing I’ll never get to try one out. It’s like walking by a Ferrari dealer every day on your way to work at McDonalds. I guess it’s a testament to how good Elite is at what it does that I play the game anyway knowing I’ll never see most of its “content”.

5489

Yes, but it’s not a good idea from any angle.

It was the typical idea on subscription-based mmorpgs, to lengthen the grind because players were leveling too fast. But in this game, ALREADY having a reputation for being an empty sandbox filled with grind, nerfing the mission system isn’t a good idea.

On top of the fact that those who are trying these missions find them often even impossible to complete because of bugs. But then, the effect is that lots of players who used to do missions now are completely avoiding them, same as with happened with the Powerplay update that requires an upkeep most players can’t deal with.

So they effectively replaced a system that was being used, with nothing. And that’s being done instead of actually improving it. They are simply driving players away from it.

It’s as if they decided to remove from a game 80% of the quests because the players were actually leveling up. You don’t make a grind meaningful by removing content and lengthening the process, you make it meaningful only by adding variations to it. More stuff, not less. If there were MORE missions, with more variety, and yet the rewards were slower, then it would make sense. But that’s not how it is. And in any case players say that you can earn money way faster through other means than you can by trying to to these missions, so we’re back in the age of mmorpgs when quests were irrelevant because only a waste of time, and it was far better to camp some spawn point for hours. That’s not smart, and it’s the kind of lesson you can’t unlearn in 2015.

5490

Admittedly I hadn’t played for quite a while, but I’m seeing a lot more mission variety than when I last played. Even if you exclude the surface missions, I’m seeing up to a dozen or so obtainable missions at each station, spread across 6 or 7 types. I agree the rewards are pretty pitiful compared to, say, the same amount of time spent bounty hunting.

5491

Ugh, so I had to reinstall windows due to a failing SSD. Thankfully I had my bindings file backed up. However, when I transfered them back to the bindings today, the game won’t see them. Any of y’all hear of this happening, or know of a fix? Thanks!

5492

Ugh, so I had to reinstall windows due to a failing SSD. Thankfully I had my bindings file backed up. However, when I transfered them back to the bindings folder today, the game won’t see them. Any of y’all hear of this happening, or know of a fix? Thanks!

5493

E:D appears to be at $15 for the base game, which finally puts it on my radar. But of course, that price is because Horizons is the new thing. Is jumping on Horizons akin to trying to play a WoW-type MMO without being on the latest expansion (ie., don’t do it), or is there enough to do/enough life in the base game to make it worthwhile? I wouldn’t be looking at jumping on Horizons probably until it went on sale ahead of season 3 or whatever :)

5494

Have you tried any? A lot simply don’t work (waiting for a contact that never shows…) or are (without always saying) chains that take four times as long as they used to. They’ve replaced a few decent options with a variety of rubbish.

5495

You copy it into \users\your user name\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Bindings and the game didn’t see it? Was your joystick plugged in when you launched ED after copying you bindings into the folder?

5496

E:D is still by and large the meat of the game. Horizons is still ‘early access’ because it’s not complete and the planetary landings although cool won’t be fleshed out until the other systems such as looting and crafting are developed further. If you are interested in the game E:D for $15 is a great place to start.

5497

On the one hand, Horizons includes everything in the base game with the exception of one ship (out of 30, and it is by no means a ship you must have) so purchasing both at this point is essentially redundant. On the other, Horizons is early in its life-cycle–there are features which are included but which are essentially stubs onto which to place gameplay at some point in the coming year. So unless you really like the idea of landing on a planet and tooling around there in a dune-buggy, I would say pick up the base game for cheap. That way at least, if you decide it’s just not for you, you haven’t paid full price for something you won’t play.

Now for everyone who owns the game, there is currently a community goal running which is very much in the spirit of the season. The mission has you delivering “Special Gifts” (a rare good) from Frost Dock in Njambalba to Clauss Port in Santa Muerta. For each tier achieved, new players to the game (those who have clocked in less than 10 hours or so) will be rewarded with a new and better starter ship in addition to their default sidewinder.

I’ve done a couple runs of this so far, and in an asp you can make a complete circuit of the 220 Ly trek in about a half hour. Frost Dock will let you pick up at most 20 tonnes of Special Gifts at a time, and delivering that number to Clauss Port will net you about 415k CR in profit, in addition to any rewards the community goal pays out upon completion. It’s a rare goods run, so small and fast ships with a good jump range are kind of ideal for this, and the rewards should be good for folks starting out.

5498

I have a noob sidewinder and 1600 credits.
Any suggestions on starting out? Mission listings tend to show me stuff that I can’t take.

I do have 2 tobacco that I cannot sell anywhere.

5499

Is the problem selling the tobacco because it’s stolen or because you’re somewhere that it’s illegal? (Check your cargo tab–>hit 4 and then move to the cargo page; if it’s stolen it’ll tell you.) If stolen, you should look around for a station nearby with a black market, which is a sub-area of the Contacts section on the station menu. If it’s illegal, you might try Thrudd’s trading tool to find a nearby system where you might be able to sell it.

For starting cash you can probably do two fairly easy things: 1) Jump through a string of nearby unscanned systems and ping your discovery scanner to get basic data, and then sell that data at a station. 2) Drop down into a Nav beacon and look for WANTED ships, bide your time and follow them around, and when a fight inevitably breaks out, help to take them down. They will get you some bounty vouchers which you can redeem at a station in-system in the Contacts section.

5500

I can take you under my wing (zzzing!) for some bounty hunting if you’d like to do any sort of multiplayer. That should net you some quick cash.

If you wanna do solo, I just started out doing a couple missions here and there, but that was way back win. The best route for money for me was bounty hunting. I just went to a nav beacon and plinked at pirates that were occupied with other ships and was able to upgrade pretty quickly to a Cobra.