1881

You’re probably going to want to do some of the FedEx missions.

-Tom

1882

Geez, don’t ask for much, do you?

1883

All joking aside, Tom, I agree that all of these areas that can and should be improved. I hope my tongue in cheek post didn’t come across as overly snarky, I was just having a bit of fun. :)

I’m especially with you on the social front. The lack of player wings is my main bugaboo and impacts how I want to play this game. I know they are slated for “soon” after release, but is that a matter of weeks? Months?

1884

Is that really asking for a lot? Granted I’ve only played the combat tutorial so I really have no idea what the full game is like but I don’t think asking for, or even expecting a way to ease new players into this universe is too much to ask. I think there can and should be a balance between what Tom is asking for and the Ubi-bloat KevinC sarcastically referenced. This type of space sim hasn’t been a part of gaming’ “vocabulary” for quite some time so some way of easing players back into this might not be a bad idea. Again that might not be the game Frontier is our wants to make but i think it’s a valid point.

1885

Ok, I’ve been sucked in, I’ve ordered an account and am remotely installing it on my PC so it’s ready when I get home ;).
Right now, I don’t think I can justify a full blown Saitek X52, much less the Thrustmaster HOTAS. Would the Thrustmaster T-Flight give me a reasonable approximation or am I better off using my X-Box 360 controller and waiting until I can afford the X-52 or X-55?

1886

Scratch that, I did a quick search on Kijiji and found an X-52 new in box for $100, that’s a no-brainer for me.

1887

Oh, I agree with Tom, I was being facetious! It is lacking in all of those things and I am not sure they will all be present on release - a few definitely won’t be. But, you know, wikis will pick up the slack, right?!

Don’t get me wrong, I have put maybe 10 hours or so into it and it is not that hard to get noodling around, but I have barely scratched the surface of progression. Also, despite protestations to the contrary, I see this being squarely in the ‘MMO’ category of modern games, in terms of deployment and future development, which means lack of social tools is going to hurt it badly on release for the masses that are tempted.

Also content. If I just start trucking 100 stars in any given direction, is there anything actually out there? If there isn’t, that is fine, but where is the development effort going to be? Where all the players are. The great unknown is going to be empty, aside from procedurally generated stations, trading algorithms and more pirates. Will it really be substantially different from a system closer to home? If I want to check out some of the stuff they inject into the experience, are they going to put it out in the sticks, waiting where it may not be discovered for years?

If they are going to keep it interesting by injecting new events and story elements, then this is plainly an MMO type experience and I wonder at their business model and sustainability. Selling skins and even expansions may not cut it. Where is this going to be in 3 years?

So many questions and unknowns and I should not have had that whiskey on a week-night

1888

Question : When a player purchases or is granted ships, like the Eagle that comes with the Mercenary edition, are they permanent. In other words, if I hop in my bonus content Eagle and am immediately destroyed by nefarious space pirates or something, is it gone forever? Is the Sidewinder the only respawnable ship? Do you need to buy insurance for ships you purchase with your hard earned cash to make sure you get them back when they go boom?

1889

If you reset your save then you will get the free Eagle back, otherwise you will have to pay an insurance cost of around 5 or 10% (depending on when you backed the game) of the ship’s total value upon dying. You can see the exact cost on your status panel. The exception is the starting Sidewinder (or Cobra, if you have a Cobra start) which you can get back in its unupgraded state for free - any upgrades you’ve made to it will have the insurance cost if you want them back.

1890

Now that I bought in to this, I’m looking at HOTAS. There’s Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X Flight Stick which was on sale recently but isn’t now. Should I wait on another sale for this or is there a decent cheaper alternative?

1891

Hey guys, our next podcast on Tuesday coincides with Elite’s launch day, so we’re gonna have an online launch party of sorts. I’ve created a private group under my name (Veloxi), and we’re likely gonna meet at Chango Dock in i Bootis to get into some trouble and what not on our Twitch stream while doing a roundtable as to why the game is so great. If y’all wanna join, PM so we can get hooked up on Skype. :)

1892

I agree. Fuck multiplayer really. To me elite is about me, my spaceship and the galaxy. Other people have very little to do with that or add to it. I would love to have me my spaceship pr0n. But I reckon Fdev are even harsher in their hardcoreness than me :P

1893

I didn’t realise you weren’t serious until the last paragraph :) My sarcasm sensors are obviously malfunctioning. Maybe it’s the wear and tear.

Ironically you will at some point be able to purchase credits for money. I am completely pro this on the grounds that if people with more money than sense want to give Frontier money that’s great.

1894

Apparently this is where kickstarter money goes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZeO-4F45WM

1895

Go back to your EVE Online thread, troll.

1896

The dude is right tho, that trailer was utter bullshit. cool looking bullshit but really nothing like the game itself at all. I think a better trailer would emphasize the huge impersonal beauty and majesty of space.

For me much of elite is silent, almost contemplative gameplay as I warp across an unknown star system trying to spot a dot parallaxing amongst its peers. When one is found, flying to it and scanning it down to discover what sort of planet it is.

1897

Which is what I was trying to say as well. The trailer is almost the exact opposite of what the game is.

1898

I thought that video pretty much teabagged the release trailer. I’m a stupid fanboy of ED myself, but that was some Halo d00d Call of Duty bullshit on the trailer.

1899

Pretty tame compared to general marketing nowadays. Just look at car commercials.

1900

Well not entirely, there can be some pretty frantic pewpew in this game as well. But still, not in the way that trailer depicts it. I have never been in a fight near a station. Hitting those is an instant death sentence. I have rarely ever seen a fight that had more than two ships in it. Most often even fighting is more like a mano-a-mano dance of death, much more like a slow graceful kickboxing match than a rugby game.