1701

"Elite: Dangerous
A Review By Jose Liz

Pros:
Visually stunning
A vast playground of emergent play, as in the entire Milky Way galaxy
Old-school Elite with no frills or “walking around the space station” bullshit.

Cons:
No group play at release

Final score:
1/10 (Eviscerated)"

1702

Now write a review as a 20 year old who’s never played Elite but has been given a review copy of Elite: Dangerous, a space MMO being released in 2014.

My point isn’t that Elite is a bad game. My point is that it’s been pushed and marketed by Frontier as a MMO, and that perception was only more reinforced by the removal of offline mode. It’s likely that it will be reviewed as such, as the vast majority of 20-year old reviewers know fuck-all about Elite but are intimately familiar with how MMOs and online games work in 2014.

1703

Elite: Dangerous
A Review by Doritos McDew 420XXX
Pros:
Chat system allows you to call other ppl fagets for playing this gay game for fagets

Cons:
Hella complex, brah
DLC does not include AWP
Clicking on enemy spaceships does nothing
Tradable cargo does not include Dew and Loco Tacos, which is gay
NO GROUP PLAY AT RELEASE, YO
Hard to pirate. The game, I mean.

Final score:
1/10 (Gay RTS)"

1704

I give that review 9 straw men out of 10!

1705

Hey Slainte, get one of these: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=HOTAS+X (the top result) Works with the PC. Or wait a while and I might be selling mine, since I’m getting an X-52 Pro.

1706

Meant as a typical review from a 20-year-old and not from any of our esteemed Qt3 denizens, who are all learned greybeards with vast, encyclopedic knowledge of gaming

1707

Case in point, Ten Ton Hammer preview piece on Elite: Dangerous. Ten Ton Hammer describes themselves as:

Ten Ton Hammer was founded in the spring of 2004 as part of the Master Games Intl. network of gaming websites. Massively-multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) are our passion, and we aim to provide the best and most relevant information possible to our readers daily.

Why are they previewing Elite? Because it’s being marketed and described as a MMO, and that’s what they cover.

Here’s the preview, titled “Elite Dangerous is in Desperate Need of Social Tools”

For all the years that I’ve been playing massively multiplayer games I’ve never played one where something so obvious as local “chatting” is entirely missing. Making friends, chewing the fat, asking for advice or seeking players for a group is all part of the massively multiplayer infrastructure. The fact it’s missing in Elite: Dangerous leaves me scratching my head every time I log in and more often than not, entirely frustrated.

…

A large part of what makes massively multiplayer games so attractive to people and so compelling is the social interaction between you and others. Being able to login, chat to people, make new friends and share game together is something incredibly important. In all the years I’ve played this genre the social aspect of it and the camaraderie you develop with others is unrivalled. To have that missing from Elite: Dangerous not only makes its multiplayer world feel empty and largely pointless but it also makes it feel like a single player game.

This is the perception problem I’m worried about, come release day.

1708

I like the game a whole lot, but it still feels more like the foundations or framework of the game I wanted (Elite 4) than a fleshed out product. I do have concerns about how it will review, but it has other problems than the lack of co-op, like missing half the ships promised for release, fewer and more boring missions than even the X games, no way to make money through combat etc. Compared to the original design discussion posted throughout 2013 there’s a lot that’s still missing or been abandoned, leaving mechanics that sort of function but are missing much of their meat.

1709

I am not real sure how I feel about these developments, but I must admit it would be nice to not have to see pages of spam from random folks in an MMO-like fashion. However, some way to communicate and group with friends or others would be very important or it will start to feel really lonely. I like the idea of no global chat channels and only small local ones perhaps like Eve Online has, or some other small area form of communication to other pilots. Something revolutionary in this area would be cool perhaps something related to ship equipment or sensors that allow the communication. I realize now that I guess I don’t really know how chat works in game yet, but I still feel this way :).

I agree, though, that this is likely to hurt perception and reviews among certain crowds. I plan to go into the game as a lone wolf pilot trying to make a way in the world, but being able to share the experience with others at times would certainly add to the experience.

1710

There’s only one proper way to communicate with others in Elite

1711

It is beyond fucked right now. I think the game might get slaughtered in reviews. It is getting a big pass right now because it’s not officially released but once it is people will not go easy. It’s an MMO without any MMO! The $50 price (plus expansions!) and in game shop(!) is why I haven’t jumped in on this one yet. I’m getting minimally viable product vibes like I get from PGI of MWO fame. Will Frontier be able to resist fucking this game up with the cash shop if sales aren’t strong?

Last night I was watching Twitch ED and the biggest streamer at the time had issues. The servers kept dying on him. So he was like “OK, I’ll just go play solo and it’ll all be fixed”. Next came the epiphany on why removing offline sucked so much because, hey guess what, both multiplayer/solo are still connected to the same servers. Unless their next patch is very good it seems like a big mistake for them to launch now.

I want this game to be excellent and I’m hoping the background simulation like their design docs describe is amazing. It might go live on launch, Dec. 16th. If that doesn’t happen I’m not sure how well it’ll do. Having the background simulation going justifies the online requirement and adds stuff few MMOs have. I enjoy EU4 a lot just because the simulation is fun to watch, even if I’m playing in India it is interesting to see what happens in Europe. ED with an engaging simulation of the universe would be magical.

1712

What developments? Frontier has been very up-front that the launch of the game is just the first step in a very long development cycle for this game. We have a playable game with half the meat coming in the following months. Part of what is missing right now is because they can’t start galaxy events until the game goes live. Outside of off-line mode, there is some content they wanted available for release that isn’t done yet, but it will be coming. It really frustrates me that gamer’s seem to think developers are magicians instead of programmers for example the # of ships on launch is a little ridiculous thing to rant about. We can either have beautiful, highly refined ships, or they could rush a bunch of lower quality, generic ships that look like something out of BC3000.

No way to make money via combat? I’ve made a ton of money off combat - what game are you playing?

That’s your opinion. This game is not about ramming content down your throat. It’s not a Diablo 3 game for constant action. It’s an immersion sim and there’s not a lot out there like that. So yes, some reviewers will be bored and give it poor reviews and others will be excited about it.

My guess is the good reviewers who take into consideration the big picture will give it good reviews. Those that play for 2 hours will give it a bad review. We live in a world where everyone has a voice and think their an expert on everything because of the Internet.

1713

Hey thanks, that one just might fit my budget AND look awesome. WIN! Of course my wife is going to tease me endlessly about the hours I spend closed up in the office with my “Thrustmaster”, but no more than she will for talking to my spaceship through my headset…

As for the news about not launching with group play, that bothers me. I’m one of those “old guys” that played the original Elite and all the games that came after, and as amazing as this game looks I’m not sure I want to play it as a solo game with a bunch of other real people floating silently by every once in awhile. I mean, I can play sci-fi FPS games all day long by myself, but when I play Planetside 2 I am on a whole new level of awesome because I’m playing grouped with real people fighting against real people. That’s kind of what I’d hoped Elite Dangerous was going to be, me and some buddies flying around the universe together, answering distress calls from capital ships, rooting out a small band of pirates from a shipping lane to collect the bounties, mining for a valuable resource while covering each other in case of pirate attack, or just hyper-driving off into the great unknown in hopes of co-discovering some amazing planetary system with a trove of resources to claim for our own.

Space is lonely. I want to play in it with my friends.

1714

You can group right now. It’s just not real elegant and needs planning with your friends.

1715

You can’t in any meaningful way. You can’t travel linked to the same instance, you can’t share missions and rewards, can’t trade cargo, super cruise isn’t synced, etc. What I mean by the latter is that your friend can be getting interdicted by a NPC yet that same NPC will not show up on your screen. Instead you have to wait for it to complete then track the signal and super cruise over to it, hoping your friend isn’t blown up by then. Same problem if you’re on the offensive.

What you can do is limit players inhabiting your “world” to your friends, which is nice, but it is the former that were supposed to be in and what people are going to expect in a “MMO”.

Just to reiterate, I know what’s coming down the pipe and I’ll just wait until the features I want are implemented. I don’t regret my purchase, and I feel that this game is amazing. I’m just worried that, given Frontier’s PR and marketing on this game, there’s going to be poor first impressions and reviews. Reviewers judge based on 1.0, not 1.2 or 1.3. Frontier has so much planned for this game, I really want to see it realized.

1716

So Kevin, where did you read about no drive-linking for the release version on the 16th? Some official source?

1717

That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t change the fact that the game is releasing without a lot of the meat that was documented early in development and some of us were looking forward to - which is disappointing. My concern was mainly in regards to reviews however, that will be reviewing the game as it is on release and not on what might or might not be coming in the future. And if the game gets bad reviews and doesn’t make any money, how long will they continue developing it?

I’m ok with thinking of the game as being Early Access even after release, but I wonder how many others will be.

It really frustrates me that gamer’s seem to think developers are magicians instead of programmers for example the # of ships on launch is a little ridiculous thing to rant about. We can either have beautiful, highly refined ships, or they could rush a bunch of lower quality, generic ships that look like something out of BC3000.

I wasn’t ranting and I don’t expect the developers to produce work faster than they can, but as the game currently stands it is missing ships. I don’t just mean it’s missing those ships because the developers said they would be there, I mean it’s actually missing them in terms of gameplay, balance and progression. Because for whatever reason they decided to start with ships on the highest end and the lowest end, while waiting to fill in the gaps in between. Now the game is releasing and those ships are still missing, so it’s releasing with a broken progression.

The last ship they finished was a 50 million credit passenger liner that’s effectively useless because they haven’t actually implemented any of the passenger mechanics yet.

No way to make money via combat? I’ve made a ton of money off combat - what game are you playing?

Sorry, but you are not making a ton of money off combat. Combat hardly pays anything and on top of that it doesn’t scale at all. Maybe it looks like decent money when you are saving up for a 400,000c Cobra, but it wont when you’re saving for a 6,000,000c stock Asp, then a 60,000,000c stock Python while not earning money any faster than you were with a 200,000c Viper.

1718

As someone who hasn’t been following every bit of news on this game, I honestly don’t know what to make of this game anymore.

1719

Thats easy - Its an incredibly detailed and gorgeous looking Space sim game where you can fly, trade and make combat to your hearts content in a vast open galaxy.

Its just not at all what it was marketed as, unfortunately.

1720

take a look at this