Shoe wrote:
I'm thinking of getting Elite: Dangerous, a big sprawling space sim.
Thinking about it.
Those are good thoughts. Maybe.
Shoe wrote:
Exploring the cosmos and doing my own thing sounds like fun.
It is fun, if you're a nerd and can enjoy the subtleties ("tediousness?" of long-range exploration).
More on this later.
Shoe wrote:
However, the game apparently has a steep learning curve and lots and lots of grinding, so I'm hedging a bit. Not sure if it's for me or not.
I'd be getting it on Xbox, because I'm in front of a monitor all day, so when I unwind, I just want to be on the couch with a controller.
Do you have the
Xbox One?
If so, you can drastically cut down on the learning curve by buying a
HOTAS.
I use my HOTAS (for the PS4) on a breakfast tray from the couch and it is the most comfortable thing to play with that I have found.
I now have over 100 hours, easily, on the game.
The grind is real, but it's easier if you have a goal. Be sure to get
Horizons Expansion since that will make everything that the developers have added available to you and you will be able to land on planets and drive around.
There is a new expansion coming out that is going to drastically reduce a lot of the grind (they just finished the Beta today) and allow you to engineer ships in a far easier and far more productive manner. So, you will be coming in at an optimal time.
I personally,
love this game.
I get blown away by the size and scope, but even more so, I am taken by the idea of traveling out into space and seeing things that are part of our home galaxy.
But the negatives can be as follows:
1. Boring - How do you get around thousands of light years (abbreviated as
ly)?
Well you do a bunch "minor" jumps from one star system to the next.
Most ships that I've seen used for exploration have jump distances in the ~40ly range with some engineered upwards of a little over 50ly. The furthest distance managed for most from Sol (you start
near there and the area around it is called
The Bubble) is about 65K light years.
There is a "club" of CMDRs that have done this.
But, at 65K light years and say an average of 45ly jump range, that equates to over 1,400 jumps.
A bare minimum of 1 minute real time per jump equates to over a day of constant jumping with no pause to look around. That is the least "fun" type of jump since you may see stuff that you want to explore (that is the purpose for you buying the game, right?) and that takes even more time.
But at its core, a jump consists of looking at a star map and finding your destination. Having your ship plot the route. Push your throttle to full-speed ahead. Fuel scoop the star where you are located. Align yourself with the next star system. Hit the button for a hyper jump. Look at a screen of stars whizzing by for about 20-30 seconds. Boom! Drop out of hyperspace automatically. Fuel scoop as you navigate around the star you landed at and do a "honk" (scan the system for astronomical bodies), hit your throttle, push the button, star at stars whizzing by, land, start over.
Many people will speak of going space mad.
And getting around can be boring af for a lot of people.
I am not trying to talk you out of the purchase, but I cannot stress the travel aspect of the game can wear thin on many people. Most people, probably.
I want you to love this game, but a lot of the cool aspects are far less subtle than the blaring reality of getting around the galaxy is crazy repetition. Unless you don't allow it to be by looking around - which causes the travel to take up a shit ton of time, then.
2. Lifeless - You don't really see other people. You see other people in ships and in space buggies. But the game has no leg movement. Space stations consist of people being represented by pictures and some text.
There is a shit ton of text to read, if you want.
Think of an old text driven game like
Might & Magic where everything is static images and text you read and then your mind fills in all the rest. It is kind of like that in a lot of ways.
Coming from games like
Destiny,
Call of Duty,
Witcher,
Skyrim, etc., where you have people with moving mouths and actual animated body parts, a lot of people find the desolation of this game very dragging.
3. Interminable - You're in a ship and unless you purposefully use the game camera (I highly recommend that you do), that is all you ever see: The front view out of your ship with different graphics going by depending on your location.
Or, maybe some screens telling you stuff like commodity market pricing, star system mapping, or other things that are not really dramatic unless you get why they are dramatic.
You're sitting in real life. You're character is sitting in the game.
Everyone is sitting all the fucking time.
4. Synonyms for Boring - Look here for every word that is negative about this game:
LINKSo, what are the positives?
1. Scope - It is a galaxy worth of space. Our galaxy. Nearly 1-to-1 representation.
2. History - This game has a huge legacy going back to the Commodore 64, if I remember correctly. A lot of that game content is moved forward with this incarnation (a lot is not) and there are many in the community that have been playing since the 80s.
3. Subtleties - The developers hinted at aliens YEARS before they arrived in the game. Just leaving random shit that people may or may not have ever discovered. Who the fuck does that? Not anyone else that I have ever heard of in the gaming industry.
A good 6-8 months prior to the aliens showing up, a CMDR was out exploring when an alien ship flew by him. He had video of it and it is creepy as fuck.
The entire game community was going batshit crazy.
Years before that, there was ruins that people were finding on random planets.
This type of attitude I've never seen in any other game developer.
4. Science - These guys have consulted with NASA and JPL on many aspects. They've "corrected" star systems that we've found have planets to make sure the planets were correct with what we now know.
I very much doubt you will find Earth-like worlds outside the realm of science-fact possible.
Planets and moons occur as they would (and as they do in our limited current knowledge) in reality.
That shit is amazing.
5. Community - I've never been one for community stuff, but I would highly recommend spending some time on their forums (Frontier Dev, that is).
There are people that have authored books about this game - stuff that the game developers have used in the game story. I hope this piques your interest. There is one well-known game author, last year that used an in-game character in open play as a plot for his upcoming book. A book that dealt with a CMDR, after discovering some alien relics (or something) trying to travel back to a home base.
He announced this online and the community dynamics are worth reading
HERE.
If you do get the game, there are also benefits of being in the community as expeditions happen on a regular basis, there are resources for POIs (points of interest) scattered across the galaxy. One such expedition that is being organized has over 3,000 participants signing up and is the second iteration of the journey (called
Distant Worlds 2) and it does not even start for months.
6. Cross-Platform - Well, not really, but definitely close. Anything you discover on the Xbox, will show up on my map as your CMDR's name on my PS4. And both our discoveries are seen on the PC and vice-versa.
7. Not Boring - Yes, the criticisms of this game are essentially known by using a Thesaurus to find synonyms of the word
boring. But the reality is, for me, this game is anything but boring.
If you want combat, you can go that route and many people are very much into combat.
If you want story, there is a ton of background material including a Galactic Newsletter that can be read on your ship's control panel. Newsletters in every populated system.
If you want commerce and politics, there are machinations occurring wherever humans have established a presence. You can pirate people. You can help refugees from war torn systems. You can run illegal goods like Han Solo.
It really is a fucking awesome game. Unlike anything out there. Others may imitate (
Eve Online,
No Man's Sky, etc.), but really no one comes close to what is offered here. Not that I have seen, at least.
