Elite: Dangerous "the best damn spaceship game I’ve ever played"

[AcetyleneLamp]

http://boingboing.net/2015/04/06/elite-dangerous-the-best-da.html

Not quite sure that this is for me, but I'm very interested in trying it out.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I have it and it's pretty cool, but it's almost more beta than actual game right now, there aren't really any kind of goals to shoot for beyond grinding credits for bigger ships. They're adding stuff pretty regularly though.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

It's very immersive, but sadly lacks content. As it is, the game is just a (well working) framework that needs to be filled with more gameplay. It feels a bit like the very early version of Minecraft, when the Terrain generation was working and the result looked cool, but apart from digging out blocks you had nothing to do. Elite is - more or less - Euro Truck Simulator in space.

Elite is deceptively fun for the first dozen hours or so, but once you reach the mid-tier ships, the game devolves into a giant repetetive grind. All the activities available aren't really providing lasting engagement for the player. When you are flying your trade route for the 10th time to make 2.5% progress towards the next ship or when you go on your 5th exploration tour knowing that it will make much less money per hour than trade, you start to notice the game's problems.

I'd certainly recommend to get it if you ever find it on discount. In my case I shared the cost with my brother, since we both play rather irregularly anyway.
So... Yeah... It's not a bad game, but a bit overprized for what it has to offer.

 

[sherbz]

Yes i second the comments here. It is a very well designed space simulator, but the world is so enormous i think the devs will struggle to ever find a way of filling it up with interesting things to do. There is no narrative either really. Main problem i see for the future is that there is no modding support (at least not yet). So the only updates will have to come from the development team.

Having said that, it does have the ability to spawn some truly epic moments. Its just that it takes so long to get to the stage when you can pull them off, and they happen so infrequently, it seems like a bit of a grind. But watch the first 5 mins or so of this video and be amazed. I wish i was that good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw0_fOXgDWA

 

[Rub'Rum]

This is the way every game promising fulfilling exploration has disappointed me. I haven't played Elite because I'm at the point where I expect to be disappointed, and especially past the point where I want to be a tester for an inferior version of a game that might be awesome some years down the line. So I'll probably play this only when it seems more fulfilling and is much cheaper.

It's literally always the same story and it's getting tiresome. I'm worried about No Man's Sky for the same reasons.

 

[Arakhor]

Elite is deceptively fun for the first dozen hours or so, but once you reach the mid-tier ships, the game devolves into a giant repetetive grind. All the activities available aren't really providing lasting engagement for the player. When you are flying your trade route for the 10th time to make 2.5% progress towards the next ship or when you go on your 5th exploration tour knowing that it will make much less money per hour than trade, you start to notice the game's problems.

That sounds just like how Freelancer was if you weren't playing the single-player campaign.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I recommend X3 instead.
its five dollars on steam and if you havent played an Elite style space simulation game before will provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment. Be aware that the learning requirements are very steep, Dwarf fortress steep.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

That sounds just like how Freelancer was if you weren't playing the single-player campaign.

Well, sorta. Except that Elite has a much more immersive feeling while in-flight, so I gotta give it that. And a few billion more systems you can explore.

 

[sherbz]

Well, sorta. Except that Elite has a much more immersive feeling while in-flight, so I gotta give it that. And a few billion more systems you can explore.

In some ways i think the size of elite is its own worst enemy. I freely admit that that was supposed to be its USP. But because there is so much you can go and see, you end up seeing nothing. Its almost like they built one half of the game very well, but totally ignored the other half. So there is next to no story and next to no narrative.

I think they should have cut the galaxy size down to a local cluster size (still hundreds or thousands of systems, but not billions). then fill it up with interesting stuff to do.