Oolite Bulletins

I'm starting to think the denizens of the Elite: Dangerous universe need to learn to fly better. I'm out in the middle of nowhere, about 2.5Kly out from civilization. I haven't done much driving out here - about 100Km according to the stats - but so far I've found three occupied escape pods within ship wreckage. When you think of the miniscule amount of surface area I've covered and scale that up to the total playable area, the number of people lying around in boxes scattered throughout the Galaxy must be absolutely staggering. Then you think that the range of velocities at which you can impact a planet and survive must be quite small, so the total number of people smacking into planets must be many times that.

Then there's all the salvageable wreckage I'm flying past. Honestly, it's carnage out there!

kanthoney wrote:

Honestly, it's carnage out there!

Heh, what else would you expect from a cut-throat galaxy (as in "Take control of your own starship in a cut-throat galaxy.") ?

Cody wrote:

It's dog eat dog, and cat eat mouse
You can rag Mama rag, all over my house!

Yeah, I had to google this one. (and no, it didn't take *that* long for for the results to come up )
Kudos to FD, though, for getting us the 64bit version of E:D, and for polishing some of the annoyances we had to deal with while we were only on 32bit (to name only the System Map as an example -- navigating with the mouse through those "planet flags" was a real pain).

I thought I'd look around and see how people are reviewing Elite Dangerous now it has been out for a while.

Er, wow. http://steamcommunity.com/app/359320/re ... =trendweek

Wonder if that community has an attention span <1 hour. Most of the review slate it for being 'difficult to learn' (sound familiar?), or slate it for the pricing policy.

Wow, lots of downvotes. Understandable, though when you consider how efficiently FDEV burnt through their goodwill developed during the kickstarter. The loyal fanbase has moved on after being disappointed with being ignored. I'm no longer waiting for the game that was originally designed as I've moved on as well.

(Only commenting on this because I still feel disappointed at an opportunity lost).

Bugbear wrote:

... when you consider how efficiently FDEV burnt through their goodwill developed during the kickstarter.

So efficiently indeed... almost as if they'd planned it that way! Once they'd secured corporate funding, the KS backers' goodwill was no longer needed.

NigelJK wrote:

Most of the review slate it for being 'difficult to learn'...

Reading the top ~25 on that list, I see no such such complaint.

NigelJK wrote:

Wonder if that community has an attention span <1 hour.

Plenty of the reviews including the #1 are tagged as from players of >~100 hours.

#1 is 90.2 hrs, complains bitterly about the 'grind' (wonder what he'd make of oolite?), refuses to buy into Horizons after saying there's been no development.
I'm not a big gamer is $40 a lot for a game?

#20 (ish)

This game goes out of its way to make learning the game just as difficult as possible.

, this guy has 1.0 hrs of play?

How are the reviews ranked, when I first looked there were very few reviewers with 20+ hrs, now there seem to be mainly those with around 100 hrs.

I can't believe that there's not been one positive review?

Obviously I'm a fan, as I am of Oolite, but for me both provide the same kind of gameplay (or should I call that 'Grind') that I enjoy? When Elite was released it was not well reviewed for the same reasons, none of the reviewers understood the 'open ended' part of the gameplay, they wanted their 'Boss' fix at the 'end' of the game, things haven't chnaged much in the games review world.

This game goes out of its way to make learning the game just as difficult as possible.

I didn't see that review... because it wasn't there. https://archive.is/RohYP .

Regardless, I think you'd accept that's one of very few, not "many".

this guy has 1.0 hrs of play?

He could have 1000's. As another says, "Please ignore my steam playtime count, i´ve played 100+hrs pre steam".

NigelJK wrote:

I'm not a big gamer is $40 a lot for a game?

I believe the comparison behind these reviews is not price v. game. It is expected game v. received game

Expected = the triple-A Elite Dangerous of Braben's original promises and Frontier's subsequent hyped advertising.

Received = an Elite Dangerous that over a year after so-called full release, is still by normal industry standards a beta, is crippled by game-breaking bugs, is often disrupted by outages and patches, is suffering actually deteriorating performance with successive updates on e.g. multi-player, graphics. And lacking promised features and expected expansions that can be got only by buying what FD is selling as a "stand-alone game" costing another $40 ("ED Horizons").

I can't believe that there's not been one positive review?

There has - scroll down down down e.g. https://archive.is/RohYP#selection-10477.0-10477.11

When Elite was released it was not well reviewed for the same reasons, none of the reviewers understood the 'open ended' part of the gameplay, they wanted their 'Boss' fix at the 'end' of the game

Can you provide an example ... from that alternate reality in 1984?? Because I recall no such reviews of Elite upon release. What I recall is positive reviews that totally understood the openendedness, like this one http://i.imgur.com/WA2QLqo.png .

The reason Elite Dangerous' reception by the games world has fallen far short of Elite's is simply that as a game, Elite Dangerous has fallen far short of Elite.

The original Elite:

"They first approached Thorn EMI; the company's rejection letter stated that the game was too complicated and needed to be finishable in 10 minutes with three lives."

I think one of the things FDEV has forgotten is that they need to produce a game. A 1:1 galaxy simulation sounds impressive until you actually have to fly your ship through it. Suddenly all those massive number distances are happily expressed in long, uneventful supercruise sessions. I've heard many reviewers say that they play E:D in one window, and do something else on another screen.

For some players, this accurate simulation of space is fun and enjoyable. They can happily pretend to be a real space pilot, jumping between the stars. For them, this is the game.

But the original Elite was designed, first and primarily, as a game. Simulation wasn't important -- it just needed to play well. So, the cycle of launch, jump, tense space battle/travel, dock, and trade were each given an appropriate amount of game time. Each part had to be fun. Stellar distances were shrunk down to a level that made the travel part fun to fly. Stations were given a narrow slot to make docking a challenge, even though it doesn't make much sense to use such a dangerous method of docking. The trading side of the game was simple enough to pick up quickly, but had enough depth to make it interesting.

All parts of Elite are fun to play, even if realism is left at the door. I don't think the same can be said about E:D.

phkb wrote:

Suddenly all those massive number distances are happily expressed in long, uneventful supercruise sessions.

I do sometimes wonder how intrasystem travel would've been had FD stuck to their original idea, rather than listening* to the DDF.




*Probably the only time the DDF accomplished anything major - though whether 'twas good or bad, I know not!

My concern is that if the maths ever stops working out and the accountants pull the plug everyone who ever invested or paid for this game or any expansion will be left with nothing. You can still (barely) put a disk in an old computer and boot an original copy of elite. Can't do that if dangerous tanks. I worry they have created yet another straw arena of a game. Pay to get in and fight each other and try not to notice that the cash box is missing, there are no guarantees and your world is highly flammable.

Burn this server to the ground and throw the leading lights of oolite into a pit. Everyone has still got the game. It can still be played.

But don't take my word for it, here's the great man himself missing the point so hard he's practically travelling in the other direction:

http://www.pcgamesn.com/elite-dangerous ... to-the-sun

"Any offline experience would be fundamentally empty,”

Not the point. (and slightly offensive)

"I have played single-player on a tethered connection on a train and various other places too, and we will continue to optimise to make the game as robust for 'spotty' connections as we can."

Still not the point. Looking on the wiki....

In 2012, Braben was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Yet he designs a game with one point critical failure built into it with zero redundancy and sells it as a feature? That's not engineering. Better keep that money burning server running boys! Else your sweet little game is going south! Blizzard had the right idea sure the Diablo2 battlenet servers when bang years ago but the code was fuzzy enough for hackservers to be set up. In any case it could still be played off-line for anyone having a nostalgia moment. Dangerous's fate will be a much more terminal and invisible affair.

" Your mission Jim, should you choose to accept it, is to pay the nostalgia pound for the rest of your natural life. As always, should the revenue drop below a certain thresh hold, the makers will disavow any knowledge of this game. Better start shovelling the green backs or this space sim will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim."