Elite & Dangerous what's your opinion?

[backster]

I have been playing Elite & Dangerous for a bit and was wondering what other folks have experienced and think as I went to it after dealing with the Bull waste of Eve Online. I feel it has a better player base from what I can see and was wondering if others agreed?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I've been meaning to get back to it, but my joystick doesn't work anymore so I gotta fix that first. I think I enjoyed it? I could never tell if I was any good at it but I remember making some money delivering goods and getting a laser machine gun, which was cool

 

[meiam]

Played like 10 hour of it at release, had a bit of fun but space trucking isn't something I enjoy for very long and back then there wasn't much else beside that. I might get back into it at some point, but I'd need to find my code, that was before it was on steam so I'm not even sure how I could play it now...

 

[Baffle]

I loved the idea, but it seemed to take a long time to do not very much so I ended up just playing X2, which meant I didn't have to mess about within logging in or downtime. I did love docking though.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I played it for a month or so a year or two ago, was very unimpressed by the game. It's a cool idea, but it's a really hollow game with unfulfilling game play loops and everything is a nonstop grind, with practically zero change over time other than the amount of time it takes to complete a single game play loop. Basically any strategy that allows for improvement over time at an appreciable rate is quickly labeled an exploit and removed from the game, and any sort of improvement or game play path that deviates from the very narrow set of parameters deemed suitable by the devs receives the same treatment if not strong nerfing after the fact.

Pretty much the moment that broke me, was the point I was in a famine system scanning high wakes. The whole set piece was really cool; a queue of NPC heavy cargo ships constantly jumping in, delivering supplies to a rally point, and jumping out, while light cargo ships jumped in from in-system planets and stations, queuing to receive foodstuffs for distribution elsewhere. Constant stream of realspace automated chat messages about maintaining order, staying in the queue, rationing is necessary to make sure everyone gets enough to survive, etc.

Caught myself wondering, "why am I not participating in this better, more interesting event? Oh, it's because the monetary rewards for shipping and delivering foodstuffs is barely worth the fuel and time cost, considering the nearest system with supply at a decent profit margin is a dozen jumps away, and my cargo ship is nearly a thousand LY away. I'm only in this particular system because I need to grind engineering upgrades, which requires farming rare high wake signatures." Logged out, never came back.

Found out from a friend a few months back they nerfed the utter dogshit out of default jump ranges, basically mandating players who do exploration in all but the most perfunctory ways to grind Guardian bullshit. Mostly because he was bragging about finally getting a fully engineered, fully upgraded, AspX which...still had a 10LY-shorter jump range than my own AspX, which was fully upgraded and engineered but had no FSD boosters.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

If you mean Elite: Dangerous, then my experience was that the only enjoyable part of the game is the combat, and even that gets old after a while. Trading is utterly boring (hope you like long trips to stations; there's one station that literally takes ten minutes to get to from the system's jump-in point) and exploration is dull (except when you get interdicted by NPC pirates demanding your cargo when their scans should tell them you don't even cargo bays).

 

[Ravinoff]

As evidenced by the 734 hours I've got in it on Steam, I'm generally a fan. Haven't been playing recently though, and from what I hear (and the couple hours I have played), the devs are slowly fucking things up in a variety of ways. It's grindy as all hell and has been since engineers launched, and most parts of it are more a gigantic open-world sandbox with no real guidance or depth. But what you get out of it really depends on what you want in a space sim.

Personally? I was an explorer, and while that can be a bit dry you can find some incredible things if you know where to look. Made my early profits running passengers in an AspX and saved up for an Anaconda that was immediately stripped and fitted out for long-haul expeditions and pulling down income from cartographics data. Not the most profitable, but you've got minimal upkeep costs and it's a great semi-passive thing to do while chilling out and listening to podcasts or whatever.

And of course, for vanity purposes, some of my better screenshots from ECS Infinity's End:

Spoiler: Binary moons in the deep core

Spoiler: 800 light-years below the galactic plane, beyond the Formidine Rift

Spoiler: The approach to Gorgon Research Center in the NGC 7822 Nebula

Spoiler: And my personal holy grail, an undiscovered ringed earthlike world

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

It's a fun game, with fantastic space combat (once you get used to it).

Unfortunately, it suffer from 3 big problems.

1) Progression is marred by the fact that it pushes you into certain playstyles, some of which aren't fun.

Mining is (finally) profitable, but isn't all that exciting and requires a lot of investment in order to pull off.

Exploring outside the "bubble" (Ie, where all the colonized worlds and stations are) is pretty profitable, but it gets a little dull as all you're doing is just warp-jumping, honking, consulting a chart to see what planet types are worth enough money to be worth scanning, repeat. And if you feel like doing something else, well, now you have to travel all the way back to civilization. (I did this once, made a crapton of money, decided I didn't wanna do it again.)

Trading is somewhat lucrative, but slow at first (Need a good cargo bay to make any kind of good money), and very boring at first, since if a pirate attacks you, your only real options are to dump cargo to get them to leave you alone, or "Submit-Boost-Jump-pray he doesn't have one-hit-kill-missiles" because trying to fight interdiction is a pain in the ass. I only started having fun trading when I could FINALLY afford a Keelback and a fighter bay, so I could actually fight back against most pirates that attacked me. And even then, It's kinda dull spreadsheet work (sometimes with long in-system flight times) unless you're doing the Lave Cluster Rare Goods Run.

Combat? ...Pfft. Bounty hunting is slow and unreliable money. Plenty of fun, but slow. Combat missions? Good luck finding some that pay well and are doable. Warzones? Unless you're playing with a wing of other players, you're going to get shot down pretty quick. I finally have a decent combat ship (A Vulture with a bigass multicannon and beam laser), and I have basically nothing to use it for.

Not to mention the grind that The Engineers needs, or the work that you have to do to even stand a chance against a Thargoid.

2) Everywhere is the same.

If you've bounty hunted in one asteroid belt, you've done it everywhere. Nothing changes depending on where you go. So once you've found a star cluster with all the stuff you need and at least one station with good gear, there's no reason to go anywhere else unless you get Wanted and need to leave for a few days.

3) Player interaction is largely pointless.

I've never felt a need to fly in open, aside from ONE time when I teamed up with some people to go fight in a warzone.

Most of the player interactions are either "Nothing" or "Piracy" (which easily devolves into griefing people who can't fight back), or teaming up for PowerPlay.

...But Powerplay is often boring work and can usually be done alone in Offline mode. Unless you're trying to tilt a Civil War so that a star system gets a government type that's easier for you to influence, there's little reason to team up. That and PowerPlay itself is horribly designed. Unless you're putting in hours a week to maintain your point rating, you lose all the benefits of it.

-
So like I said, it's a fun space game with good controls and feels fun to play. But it's marred by some serious design issues that make things feel pretty pointless, and pushes you into playstyles you may not enjoy if you want to make any kind of progress at a decent pace. :s

If they did a serious overhaul of PowerPlay so that it was more engaging and player-action-driven, maybe I'd go back for more than the occasional "I wanna fly in space" twinge I get once every few months.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...the devs are slowly fucking things up in a variety of ways.

Indeed, the fuckery has been outstanding. Right before I quit was when the the "ground combat mission exploit" of airstriking outposts instead of landing was "fixed". Yeah, millions of credits per hour was a little stupid, but on the other hand credits really don't do anything in the game any more other than act as the first, earliest, progression gating mechanic that in the long run doesn't even matter. You can solo 'goids -- not just the little guys, but the endgame "raid boss" 'goids -- in a min-maxed Sidey, for Chrissake. The worst parts were, air striking outposts actually made torpedo and missile builds worthwhile, and it made the missions enjoyable.

Then, they (indirectly) nerfed Sothis/Ngalinn runs for Fed/Imp rank into the ground. Other than system access permits the only material reward to grinding faction rank was access to the Imperial and Federation ships, which are completely hit-and-miss and nowadays inferior to ships that can be purchased absent rank grinding.

The game isn't "Korean MMO" yet, but that's despite FDev's very best efforts.

3) Player interaction is largely pointless.

This is what hacked me off beyond the point of reason. Player interaction and teamwork should be rewarded, to incentivize emergent game play. The most fun I had playing the game was when I wing'ed up with two RL friends, and we all built ships that complemented each other and terrorized a haz-res extraction zone for a few days.

I was in a hybrid-outfit Keelback: cargo, prospector and repair limpets, healing-modded medium beams and mining lasers, shields, SLF. First buddy was in a Type-6 with all hardpoints built for cargo, except for a small refining bay and collector limpets. Second buddy was in a combat-outfitted Viper.

I'd prospect 3P and mine for my buddy in the cargo ship, who'd collect and run to sell minerals and bring back limpets. My other buddy and I stayed in-system while he cargo ran; I prospected for the next series of 3P rocks, and both of us bounty hunted together in the meantime. By the time my buddy in the cargo ship got back, I'd already scouted out the next set of 3P rocks and we could start mining immediately.

Because I had heal beams and repair limpets, I could support both buddies by restoring shields and hull as needed. And because we were mining, we could synthesize ammunition indefinitely -- I could zap low-value rocks for secondary resources my Viper buddy could manually eat up.

Amazing money and great fun, but the problem should be obvious. Only my friend in the cargo hauler could profit from mineral sales, and he couldn't profit from bounties. We were only indirectly profiting from having a proper division of labor, and considering the time and cost of outfitting ships to properly divide labor and get ourselves in the same system, increased profits were marginal at best and the opportunity cost of doing so not in our favor. We'd make more money individually all bounty hunting in a high res, or all mining separately in high res.

 

[Baffle]

Goddamnit, now I want to play it even though I know I won't enjoy it!

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I tried it at maybe a year after release, putting in a couple of dozen hours. At the time, I thought it was hollow, had frustrating mechanics and game systems were poorly thought out. My biggest gripes were how cumbersome (what I now know is called) Supercruise was, and the BBS (bulletin board system). My steam review was unfavourable.

I tried it again last year, and got a month or so of play out of it. I still have it installed. I had the "objectives" of maxing my rank with the two main factions, and later in getting a top-tier ship. I upgraded thru a few ships, did mostly courier and exploration missions. The combat is awful, there's no other way to put it. I consider myself a decent gamer with the ability to grasp controls and mechanics, but nothing in combat in that game makes any sense. In X series games, I can have plenty of fun dogfighting, but there's something wrong with the mechanics in ED.

I avoid as many interactions with planet surfaces as I can. The added complexities of landing on a surface base make the exercise unpleasant and time consuming.

I think I know where the issues are. ED is a great engine, a cool galaxy with great ships and mechanics. However, combat is terrible and unsatisfying, there is NO player economy or trading really so, as far as I can tell, I don't actually know what the point of playing with other players actually is...it seems that the only thing you get that you don't have otherwise is more people to blow up your shit.

The main downside is that there are no objectives in ED, there is no "game". It is a spaceship sim, it does that well. When I had objectives to work towards (rank, ships), I could "game" it. But without those, it's just an empty galaxy. I don't really know why ED ended up the way it did. If all one wants to do is control a spaceship and do spaceship things with it, it's the right "game". If someone wants a spaceship game, get X2-4.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I consider myself a decent gamer with the ability to grasp controls and mechanics, but nothing in combat in that game makes any sense. In X series games, I can have plenty of fun dogfighting, but there's something wrong with the mechanics in ED.

Out of the box, combat mechanics kinda suck, but they get pretty interesting once you start doing FA-off combat with fixed-mount weapons, subsystems targeting, power management, engineering upgrades (hooray, grinding...), and the fancier ships. But, even then it's a fairly shallow experience, with the "drop shields, kill hull" experience with no real play-counterplay mechanics or alternative ways of disabling targets.

There was a glimmer of hope with the whole "heat meta" thing, but SDC managed put an end to that with their ill-conceived griefing campaign. God forbid FDev add counter-play options to heat meta as opposed to nerf thermal into the ground. Crap like that almost makes me hope they never add anything like electronic warfare, because god knows how badly they'd fuck it up.

They couldn't even get ship support right, and thanks to the SDC idiots (again) heal beams got nerfed into the ground too, blocking off yet another way the game's meta could have been diversified leading to a deeper and more fun game play experience.

Anything to protect shield-jousting meta, I guess. Last I heard, players were crying great big crocodile tears over shield penetration, too.

 

[Dalisclock]

Played it for about 2 hours a couple years back. Found it kinda ok but once I learned how to dock and did some basic early game stuff I stopped playing and just never got back to it. I honestly don't even remember much about it other then not finding it terribly interesting.

Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance but from what people in this thread are saying it sounds like I'm not missing a whole lot.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

It's a great simulator but theres not much story, just barebones randomly generated missions. It can be good mindless fun.

 

[skywolfblue]

It has it's ups and downs. I have been playing it on and off for the past year.

- I do like that you can actually fly your spaceship. I stopped playing EVE by the time my monthly trial was over because I want to ~fly~ my ship, not "set to orbit at 500m".
- I love the 1-1 scale milky way galaxy. Exploration is fantastic and beautiful.
- I actually like asteroid mining, it is very relaxing, an hour of mining in my Anaconda before bed is perfect.
- Frontier has made some really significant improvements to mining and exploration since I started playing it.

On the downside
- No story. That is a pretty significant detractor to me.
- Events and Rewards are all out of whack. There are "Community Goals" that everyone is suppose to rally to, but they are often bugged, and the rewards are paltry.