vyshka
5901
Were you playing online? With regards to docking isn’t there an option some where for automated docking?
@Guap
Different strokes and all that, but if you don’t mind my asking, what was the control scheme you were using? I know some people try using m+k, which I think is nuts.
A 360 controller with keyboard kinda works.
Guap
5903
Was playing solo on the XBox One. It was on sale for $33 so I’m not too mad at that. More irritated that yet another space game sucks. I haven’t played a good one since the 90s.
Andon
5905
@guap complaints mirror several people I’ve tried to get interested into the game.
The starting experience is terrible. Either you’re lucky and get a few missions to get you a leg up…or you flail around the starting systems trying to find something to do while dying to NPC pirates and just learning to fly with all the interface options.
I don’t really see how someone could get started in Elite without grabbing a guide online.
There needs to be an intro set of mission for the new player maybe. Something to take them through a few paths of progress and learn the basics. Along the way providing enough money to kit out their ship a few different ways.
schurem
5906
There fucking are dumbshits! Right in the fucking front menu! Lots of combat, take off and basic navigation and landing. A perfect place to learn how to dock and not die like a bish.
Yes the game is unlike other modern mainstream games that hold your hand thru your baby steps. You click start, you are in the big pool. Learn you swim or gtfo you big babies! Gah. It’s not like we haven’t been trying to point out the right ways.
Andon
5907
Wow, thank for the comments. You’re a fountain of insight. So welcoming to new players. Now I can clearly see why anyone wouldn’t have a problem…they’re just dumbshits.
As my comments said, these are the complaints of several other people who I have personally tried to get into the game but all hit a brick walll on the learning curve needed to get started. So there must be something to it, because nearly all of them got steam refunds and didn’t look back.
So apparently there is still a learning curve somewhere that might be something Frontier could consider helping to ease new players into the game for the first hour or so.
schurem
5908
Eh it’s not you but I’ve been reading massive amounts of shit about the game I love. Tired of it. Yes tihe game is Hard. It’s supposed to be. There’s plenty help, but being helpful gets tiring if it’s met with whines of its soooo haaaaard this suuujjjcks. Well I had to vent. Go play something easy and stop crying that this isn’t.
Did they do all the training missions and watch all the included tutorial videos before starting the proper game?
Guap
5910
Dude, I’ve logged THOUSANDS of hours in the X series. I’ve built my own space station manufacturing rings and docked with thousands of space stations across dozens of space games. Don’t tell me The game is hard and it’s my fault. I’ve earned the space game cred to call bullshit on that.
This game is poorly designed and poorly presented. Get outta here with your “handholding” invectives. I don’t think Egosoft has even heard the word tutorial, and they certainly didn’t have training videos. As unapproachable as that game was sometimes, it blows this game away from a design standpoint.
Guap, the issue there is that the X games aren’t about the space flight, they’re about the business, whereas in Elite, it’s the opposite, so it makes sense that you’re having an adjustment period.
Guap
5912
Thanks for the thoughts Brian. I bow to your superior space game knowledge, obviously.
However, I would disagree about the X series. It’s not a business sim, all that stuff is an optional layer on top of the space game. You can play it just like Elite: get missions, mine, buy ship upgrades, travel between star systems, fight pirates, etc. They may have different art styles but the core game is of very similar design. If Elite is a game about space flight, why do you get attacked ao much?
I don’t recall this being a problem from my own early first steps into the game many moons ago. You’re not playing in ‘Open’ mode are you? Maybe being ganked by newbie hunters? :)
I recall specifically not looking for fights in the starter ship, and definitely not taking on bounty missions at that stage - you’re not equipped for it. Hang around the periphery of the easier resource sites helping out law enforcement to earn a few creds, as others have mentioned.
Or maybe they have broken the early game since I was last in it, I don’t know!
Yeah, the game is really not hard. The Sidewinder is easy to fly, there’s not that many systems to worry about (power distribution, throttle in the ‘sweet spot’, heat), it’s easy to navigate around the galaxy, and docking is easy as well since the ship is so small. The game should really give more early direction, that’s the issue. None of the tutorials really tell you what you should be doing first, there’s a bit of a hump there.
Okay I’m weighing in here as well. I think @Guap and @schurem might be talking past each other as they both have a point. I totally see where Guap is coming from, although I’m also a little confused as to why he’s getting attacked so much. Elite might be the worst game I’ve ever played when it comes to, you know, letting you know it’s a game. There is zero guidance as to “what” you are supposed to be doing. Yes there are training videos that teach you the rudimentary skills, the “how” to do things but nothing that points you in a direction and shows you at least how to get started. And don’t tell me it’s a sim first and a game second, I grew up on Falcon and Apache and Flight Simulator and those games were obtuse as hell but they had a mission structure that gave you a sense of progression and purpose. Elites progression is entirely contained within the player him/herself. You get better and learn as you experiment, make mistakes, fiddle around, try new things just because. For some people that’s the perfect experience but for a lot it’s not. I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to gaming so when Elite forces me to experiment (and fail often) in order to figure things out or make progress it’s hard to stick with it. I love spending 30 mins blasting away at bounties in a RES but when some idiot Fed flies in front of my guns and suddenly I’m (and my half mil of hard earned creds) are up in smoke that’s not good game design that’s putting the “simulation” ahead of the player experience and fuck that.
That being said I think Elite is the best thing out there (especially in VR which is the only way I can play now) when it comes to giving you the sense of flying a damn spaceship…in space! The game has moments that cannot be experienced anywhere else right now it’s just a shame FD has zero interest in helping new players get there. There are plenty of “hard” games out there, but Elite isn’t one of them, everything you can do is functionally pretty simple, it just doesn’t give two shits about bringing in players outside its core group of fans.
All that to say I know exactly why this game is perfect to some people and and absolute disaster to others. I love it for what it is but I think the “game” is fundamentally broken.
One thing I try to keep in mind is that I had the luxury of participating in the alpha, and then the beta, and then the launch, and then horizons. In short, the game was spoon fed to me and it made it easy to get up to speed on game mechanics and play options as things were added. I can imagine it’s fairly overwhelming for someone coming in cold.
That said, it’s hard for me to say it’s much more of a learning curve than something like the X games. I played all of the X games except for the latest, and man those things were opaque to me. The UI was horrible. I’d put one away for a few months, and try to come back to it and just bash my head against the wall trying to remember how to do stuff. Maybe it was just me. In contrast, I can take a break from Elite for a couple of months and dive back in and it’s all muscle memory. Click. Click. Fly.
Similarly, there are plenty of popular games I’ve just bounced off because of the learning curve. I’d love to play Crusader Kings 2, for example, and I’ve tried maybe like 6 times, but I’ve no idea what I’m doing, the tutorials don’t help, and the only option seems to be to go watch let’s plays on YouTube, which is like watching paint dry. I am sure other people pick it up no problem and are soon crushing Europe.
Which is just to say that experiences aren’t universal. To me, Elite has a fairly gentle learning curve, some pretty decent tutorials, a solid UI, and some offline scenarios you can play until you get comfortable with the basics of flying and navigating.
Actually @BiggerBoat you’re right CK2 is a harder game to learn than Elite. I think I discounted that because the historical nature gave me a touch point I was familiar with? I would say those games are in a similar vein though, in that they expect the player to bring their own interest and passion to the game and let that be the driver for discovery and eventual familiarity.
Yeah, I figured out the first X game, since it had a tutorial where you start on Earth and end up god knows where. But X2 and X3 I couldn’t even figure out what I was supposed to do, where I was supposed to go, or how I was supposed to it. I just had no clue and the game seemed to have no interest in teaching me.
Compared to those games, Elite was a breeze. It had a tutorial for everything, the pre-flight check sequence let me know all the controls, and looking to my left panel or right panel on the ship usually let me figure out what was going on in any given situation. I thought it was a lot more user friendly than the X games.
It does make me think maybe they’ve changed how tough the game is since I played it though. Back when I played at launch, the new user experience was pretty easy. Maybe now that Guap is playing, with Horizons and all that, they changed things. A similar thing happened in Destiny, so it’s possible. At launch Destiny was balanced perfect to play on hard missions, but after the expansions came out, they changed things so that Hard was pretty much impossible, and Normal was still too easy. Maybe they rebalanced Elite after Horizons came out?
It’s been a while since I jumped into E:D, but that’s because I was waiting for more content to appear. But I played the hell out of it when it was first released. @Guap, I recognise what you’re going through, although in my case I was awed by the vast possibilities when I first started. I love games with great unknowns, because my imagination goes wild and helps to power my initial addiction. That said, piloting the ship early on is a challenge, but eventually it will click. You will discover things that you probably wished were better documented, but finding out yourself is part of the fun (well, maybe!). Once you start to enjoy the combat, which I’d say is the best space combat simulation I’ve played, you’ll be hooked. But you have to get to that stage. You need to know that when you enter a combat instance, you’ll at least have some chance of survival, and the thrill of your first kills makes it all worthwhile. I’d definitely recommend starting offline, or playing in the Veloxi group, so you don’t get ganked or something. If you do die, however, it’s not the end of the world, and you will definitely improve quickly. Then your credits will start to come more easily.
Still, one thing that’s clear to me is that I have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy a game. If I’m not, I’ll delete it pronto. I did that with Dark Souls ages ago, but I’m glad that I revisited it. Perhaps you’re not in an E:D frame of mind right now, but definitely give it another chance later.
rowe33
5919
Tried this out last night for a bit. Definitely not friendly to completely new players. I managed to take on a mission to find some lost cargo or something after heading to an interesting sounding system. I ran across a Wanted ship in battle with some Feds so I bravely joined in. Went great until he targeted me and my ship almost instantly disintegrated. Oh well, lesson learned.
I do wish there was a way to pause it as I chose solo party at the beginning. Makes it very unfriendly to gamer parents.
Because space is dangerous, m’kay? ;)
Seriously though, I’ve played every X game, and they feel more like business sims wherein your office just happens to be a cockpit in a spaceship, rather than a space-focused sim. Sure, it takes place in space, but it’s all about the mooooney, rather than the journey. At least that’s how I feel about it. If you like them, you might wanna look up Unending Galaxy, however, since they’re made from a big X modder who wanted to make their own 2D version. So awesome.
