Multi Elite - Dangerous by David Braben

Sure will; I've only got access to the single player combat module at the moment but even that is enjoyable and it certainly 'feels' like Elite.

 

Hmmm I'm not sure. Yeah he has a vision but a 'strong' one?...

IMHO he's a coder, not a story teller. He's great at creating systems that can handle millions of procedurally generated systems but is there going to be a narrative to the game? I don't mean is there going to be a linear story, but how will the game feel? What will it feel like to play over time? Will there be unique gameplay experiences, or will long time players just have better ships fighting other better ships?

My memory of the elite games is the only narrative is getting a stronger ship and allowing you to play the same game and do the same things only a bit better. Bigger guns. Stronger shields. Bigger hold. Docking computer. Escape pod...

Nothing wrong with that, but is it a game model fit for the 21st century? Maybe, but certainly not worth it at their current access to alpha pricing!!!!!

If they allow the players and their behaviour to control the game narrative then you'll end up with a lot of piracy / griefing and for many players it won't be fun... and if it's like that I'll avoid it, just like I avoid Eve.

 

The problem with open-ended games is, as you imply, that you cannot have a story, only a setting. Stories have conclusions. Open-ended games are supposed to carry on indefinitely.

The way that Eve and other MMORPGs work is that they provide the context: setting, cast, dynamics; and the players' interactions provide the narrative. It works rather well. Eve does get full of grief, but that's because it is heavily weighed towards conflict rather than exploration, and the levelling up is too hard and complicated to make it fun for the more casual player. If you're not at it for years, and don't team up with a big team, you get nowhere. There is no path for casual players or lone explorers, although they are now trying to address that.

Too late though --Eve's universe is full of young teenagers with no real life, who as such have had the time to acquire powerful ships and skills with which they grief others to sublimate their frustration of not getting laid.

 

I crumbled

1) Immediate massive disappointment. The Premium Beta is in fact Alpha 1.1, which doesn't support my Thrustmaster Warthog or Saitek Combat Flight Pro pedals...apparently later builds do however. So I'm left using an Xbox controller. Grrrr.
2) It looks pretty!
3) 4v1 is not fair

 

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/online_gaming

 

Beta hasn't started yet, they're doing an Alpha 4 first.

 

...I can read!

Premium Beta gets you access to single player until the end of May launch of the multiplayer Beta. My point is that this single player is actually the oldest version of the Alpha which hasn't been updated, and is hence missing controller/pedal support.

 

With the common practices in the games industry, it doesn't seem unusual to me

 

Oi!

 

I will definitely play this one. Spent hundreds of hours playing original years ago.
This one looks nice too - I like the "orange theme" HUD.

 

Gas giant wip (click for 1920x1080):

I quite like the look of that. Something I always tried to imagine is just how many stars and stuff, but it's always just outside of understanding. Maybe being able to roam through 400 billion systems might help make those astronomical numbers come to life for me.

I've also just discovered that there will be some story component to the game, picking up where the previous iteration left.

 

That combat vid was promising.

 

Not sure what to think of this, though I've only skimmed a few sentences. I haven't even played the first elites, and I have space games coming out the ass thanks to GoG. I love(d) the X series, though it concentrated far too much on monotonous trading to a ridiculous level (thank goodness for money cheats), but that series is dying. (X1 - OMG, X2 - OMG, X3 - Where'd all the pretty go?, X3 expansion cluster**** - soooo boooored, X4 - apparently terrible).

Look people, I just want to walk around my Starship Enterprise mingling with my crew, landing on planets and hitting bars and going around on in my hovercraft checking out the realistic space cities with places of interest and interiors, and watch holo-tv and sports. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?

Ok maybe it is TBF. Why did I have to be born in the wrong millenium? I'll just make do with Mass Effect 1 and keep waiting for the Snatcher remake mod for Crysis to finish. FOR NOW.

 

Errrrr. Star Citizen?

 

We'll see.

 

It is too much to ask for, but only because the games industry works in a bizarre and stupid way. These type of games were popular ages ago, if they managed to remain popular then by now we would already have had stuff like Star Citizen and we would be looking towards even bigger and better stuff.

The biggest thing to happen in gaming, ever, is the internet. But they are barely even scratching the surface of what it can do yet. I remember in the 1990's when they first started talking about "persistent worlds" that continued after you go to bed, and thousands of people playing together blah blah. All of those dreams turned to crap apparently, because since then, WoW came along and ruined the entire genre by showing how popular you can be if you go the big dumb plastic happy meal route. Just instance everything, turn the difficulty and graphics down to 0, and roll in the cash. Then everyone else abandons their grand ambitions and tries to replicate the WoW formula, with varying success, but those old dreams are now long dead and forgotten. It may be that crowd sourced funding will bring back those bigger scope ideas, but first we need Elite 4 and Star Citizen to be a success.

 

Problem was the First Person Shooter genre dominated the scene making Space Simulation seem like a risk to publishers. So the genre went downhill from there. Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen is all I need to satisfy my need ATM!

 

Prepare yourself:



/nerdgasm

What a spectacle.

 

Played it a bit last night. Rich friend of mine paid £100 for the whatever-it-is-thing that gets you access to landing in spaceports and stuff. The necessary background to this commentary is that Frontier was the backdrop to my mid teens - with breaks for XCOM - so I am predisposed to like it.

So do I like it?

Sort of. Floating past the holographic hoardings and through the cavernous interior of the spaceport with the announcements going on is wonderful. The star map is great, with the little chimes when you select a system. Lovely. Minor bug in that when I fill my display with a 1920x1200 star map, the control panel is slightly offscreen. Anyway. Disappointed that there is no landing on planets and no wandering around the starport - yet, at least. Here's hoping they'll do that soonest, with procedurally generated starport interiors for maximum interest and variety. Should be doable. Planetary landings are harder, one would have hoped for a No Man's Sky sort of approach, but I appreciate that they're not exactly funded like Star Citizen. Until they have at least planetary landings in, it isn't even giving us what Frontier gave us, but the first-person starport interior, with Star Citizen style walking around the hangar bay admiring your ship, is what I'm waiting for with keen anticipation.

Supercruise seems an inevitable requirement, fair enough, although it does make navigation a bit easy - in Frontier, without autopilot, one was required to head for where a planet was going to be, as opposed to where it is, but there isn't really another solution to this. The FTL drive is beautifully done, especially on half-decent speakers. Rrrrrumble.

Flight model and combat. Er, okay, this is where the problem is for me. Why does my ship handle sort of, kind of like an aircraft? A very bad aircraft? It's supposed to be a fighter. Yes, I understand that they've included an emulated aircraft-style flight mode for the console crowd, and yes, I understand that it can be switched off, but why, for instance, in either mode, is the roll rate reasonably fast, but the yaw rate is ludicrously slow and the pitch rate is just laughable. Why the difference? Combat right now is limited to sitting back with folded arms watching a starfield scroll by. Very very slowly. They've managed to come up with a flight model that's neither accurate nor fun. Frontier was at least accurate!

Also, why is my ship so slow? I mean, OK, it's actually impossible to tell how fast it is because it isn't telling us what it's measuring our speed relative to, but the point remains: I was approaching some sort of navigation beacon that was 2500km away, which is absolutely point-blank range in space terms, and was forced to engage my supercruise pseudoscience drive. Which is completely preposterous. I should be able to accelerate to any speed I want - eventually - using any reasonable conventional drive, and 2500km should not be a big ask for any reasonable spacecraft (especially one that I suspect we're going to discover is a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane as well).

So great, very nice looking, waiting eagerly for the updates, but right now the combat is just awful - it's neither realistic nor fun. It feels like flying an underwater brick that has been tied to a sturdy nearby object with bungee cords, so it can't accelerate beyond a certain speed.

What the hell, Braben?

P

 

I've been playing the premium beta as well, and to be honest I'm finding it frustrating.

1) On the positive side, I've got all my control inputs working. TrackIR works really well for using the UI in the cockpit, and I'm loving that aspect. HOTAS and pedals are supported well, and I can remap controls.

2) However, I agree with above that the actual flight system is terrible. Yaw is literally like watching paint dry, and pitch is just slow. I don't mind having "plane" like controls as they're easier to understand and map to the controllers we actually have today, but the way in which the system works is...crap.

3) I'm getting ludicrous bugs. Textures have big black bits all over them, which is worst on the space stations which means I can barely see them (apart from The Slot). Or, things just entirely disappear, and might reappear after 30 seconds but utterly broken.

4) Docking is awful. Getting in the space station is easy enough, and it allocates a landing pad. Problem is the station then usually re-allocates you to another pad when you're just about to touch down, or a bug removes my ability to see where the hell I'm going. I've made a single successful landing, and as soon as I selected the menu to take me to the trading screen the game crashed. Docking is supposed to be something you're doing on a regular basis in ED, and with the current system it's going to result in a lot of crashed ships, lost cargo and annoyed pilots.

Basically, I think it is a hot mess. Star Citizen is being delayed as the last minute due to bugs, yet Braben is releasing his to a beta stage whilst it is still packed with game-stopping problems. I know there are people out there who seem to be doing okay, but I think they're in the minority. I'm frustrated with ED right now, and that wasn't what I wanted to happen.