The thing is, it’s never felt very multi-centric to me either. You couldn’t even group up with someone until the did the big Wings update and even then it was cumbersome. There also really wasn’t much in the way of multiplayer content. It is (or was, I haven’t played in a long time) a weird pseudo-online experience that made sacrifices to the SP experience while not offering even a bare minimum of multiplayer features as well we a ton of weird issues due to the fact that very little runs on the server, most everything is instanced to player hardware.
Right, it’s run peer-to-peer (but managed centrally), but for some reason they felt the need to keep the multiplayer-ish balance where only the most dedicated players in the game get the best ships. Which makes no sense, or is just bad design. Multiplayer-oriented games give enough rewards to keep you grinding even if you’re never going to be the best, whereas single player games just let you get to the top ships and live out your fantasy of being a hero without grinding forever.
@Bluddy Good point. The whole thing would have been better as a single player game. Throw in multiplayer later or simply allow peer to peer. Allow complete cheating and modding.Fun times would be ahoy.
I absolutely agree, and was annoyed when they first started banging on about multiplayer, but it definitely doesn’t seem to have been what the audience wanted. Now, if they knew then what they know now about what it would do to the game design, I suspect some of them would have changed their minds.
And yet there’s at least one thing in Odyssey that would work in the existing VR implementation - atmospheric planet landing. A shame that part is unlikely to be merged to Horizons.
No vr? Dropped all interest.
I can’t say I have much interest, VR or no VR, based on that trailer.
Based on your writings about your ED play, it’s probably for the best. Elite with VR is wickedly engrossing. :)
Darn all of you. Horizons is only $9 this weekend and I was just about to grab it and reinstall and now I’m conflicted!
Oh go on, it’s definitely worth nine bucks. I sunk well over a hundred into this game, and feel I got my monies’ worth.
Spent the whopping $9, and slapped a piece of cardboard on my head to play around with poor-man head tracking (which works quite well, actually). Full-on dork mode!
Despite how much of the game is ‘make your own fun’, and despite all my remarks above, I have been enjoying this lately.
I did random missions of ‘whatever looked interesting’ with my Cobra Mk3, focusing on Imperial factions. Eventually I picked up an Imperial Courier as an alternative for combat missions, and I’ve been been enjoying tinkering with its load out and hunting down assassination mission targets. It might not be the most effective, but two side burst lasers and a central rail gun makes for a fun fixed mount package that lets me handle a lot more than most small ships can. And the shields are pretty mighty for its size, especially boosted with two shield boosters and a shield cell bank.
The rail gun and the cell bank tends to cook the ship if I’m not careful. For the first time I’ve added heatsinks (two!), to help handle the heat problems.
Flying, customizing, tinkering with the spaceships really is great fun, and full of tiny immersive details. I’ve yet to try the Engineers business with the Horizon expansion - it looks suspiciously like grind to me, but further ship customisation probably plays to the game’s strengths.
Yes it does.
Ironically I’d need to kit out a ship with a good jump range to travel all the way that entails!
I’m debating stripping down my do-anything Cobra Mk3, or just getting an Asp Explorer (which I’m planning on getting at some point to try out a long range exploration voyage).
It’s been a long time since I’ve played but I remember loving my Diamondback (the smaller of the two, I think it was?) for running around for engineers.
I’d love one, but my moneymaking is nowhere near up to the point I can afford even the stock model, let alone the bells and whistles.
Spent a day or two futzing around with getting a Steam Controller profile set up. Found a real nice one with everything mapped out logically.
And I can’t fly worth a darn. The steam controller is… kinda big (oh noes, small hands) so to utilize it properly I have to hold it with index finger on the back buttons and middle finger on the back triggers — for me this is absolutely foreign, and it absolutely destroys my ability to maintain a solid grip and adjust to the fact there is no right-stick for yaw/vertical thrust, just the pad.
Swapped over to an xbox 360 controller, and life improved immediately. I can go back to using just my index finger for both back buttons, so my grip is restored and my brain reacts better to the stick vs. the pad. Such a shame, because the steam controller is such a cool idea.
(I realize the right answer is a HOTAS, but yeah, no - not for a single game).
I played Elite for years with an xbox controller + mouse+kb as back up it worked great. Elite’s control customization are very good so I do suggest after you have flown around a bit go in and see what options you want to tweak.
Yep - I went with Dahkron’s xbox360 binds which has most everything laid out very logically. And will just tweak as I find the need. Right now it is mostly just building up muscle memory.
The Engineers stuff and its attendant grind turned me off to this game. I’m not a fan of crafting in games generally, and this has the added thing where you have to land on a whole mess of airless rocks to find the right minerals for the upgrades, then fly a gazillion LY to get to the right engineer, at which point you can still be screwed by an RNG (at least this was the case when I messed with it).
Let me just buy the doodads and upgrades with in-game money earned during community goal drives and be done with it. If ED were the only game I wanted to play I might be OK with it as it was but if it’s only one of many, it’s too time consuming. I’m probably just not cut out for MMOs.