Official Elite Dangerous Thread

axon1988 · Sep 22, 2015

Wyzak said:
Have they fixed the quests yet, making questing a viable income source? The last time I played I was lucky if I could complete 1 of the quests in a station and then I'd probably get 10k credits for it (if I don't have to commit a crime). It was far more lucrative just hunting for bounties and the odd debris.

Or the quest would send me 20 jumps away and it takes me about 30 minutes to get there for a measly reward.

I'm also not a fan of this whole 10 year development cycle crap. Call me old school but I want to buy a finished game on day 1 and play finish it and move on. This 10 year development cycle thing just allows them to keep on saying "not yet, but coming soon".

They have increased the rewards for doing missions. But I haven't been focusing on missions. My main reasons for getting the game were more related to exploring and causing nonsense with friends.

The 10 year cycle makes sense to me if you think of the game as an MMO. Which is basically what it is, and most MMOs have a long development cycle. A lot of people have however complained about the game, with season one bing finished now, and to them it feels like the game is not finished. I'm not going to judge until after patch 1.5 gets released. As it will be the last patch for season one and only then can we really see if things got delivered as promised.

Wyzak · Sep 22, 2015

axon1988 said:
They have increased the rewards for doing missions. But I haven't been focusing on missions. My main reasons for getting the game were more related to exploring and causing nonsense with friends.

The 10 year cycle makes sense to me if you think of the game as an MMO. Which is basically what it is, and most MMOs have a long development cycle. A lot of people have however complained about the game, with season one bing finished now, and to them it feels like the game is not finished. I'm not going to judge until after patch 1.5 gets released. As it will be the last patch for season one and only then can we really see if things got delivered as promised.

I backed the game when they said that it would be playable offline. I bought a copy for my friend just before they announced that they could not do offline mode for creative reasons. Not technical reasons.

Could you give us an example of what nonsense you get up to with friends, or how you find the exploring satisfying? I would also like to do that with my friend, but since we can't share quests, we have to try and both get the same quest at the same time which is very rare. Then we need to find the rare item twice which involves many USSs.

A typical quest that I'd actually take, because it's one of the only ones I consider doable goes something like does:
1) Accept quest to collect this floating around, or kill somebody who's bounty is 20-30s. If the bounty is anything decent then he's got an army with him and I don't stand a chance.
2) Jump to the target system, takes about 1-2 minutes per jump, can be quite far away and then you just go through the same motions over and over.
3) Get to the correct system, fly around hoping to find a USS (unidentified signal source).
4) Find a USS, go in, just a bunch of ships with no bounty or a funeral procession.
5) Go supercruise
6) Look for another USS, all the previous USS that had just been right outside have magically vanished.
7) After flying around a few more minutes I get another USS, go in, oh it's somebody offering me an alternative place to drop off the cargo that I haven't found yet.
8) Go supercruise
9) Enter a few more USS, if I'm lucky I might find the right one, or some killable ships with good bounties on them. If I'm unlucky I might run into something so powerful that it just kills me costing me a bunch of money, a bunch of time, all of the bounties that I had collected at that stage but not handed in, all of my cargo, and 10% insurance to buy me ship back and repair it.

An example of exploring would be:
1) Jump into a new system
2) Press the d-scanner
3) It doesn't pick up anything, dud, jump to next system.
4) It picks up something or 15 somethings, fly close enough to each one to enable the scan. Wait 15-30 seconds for the scan to complete. Fly to next one and repeat. It can take about 15-20 minutes of just flying, stopping, scanning, waiting.
5) Then you need to fly more than 100 light years away before you can sell the exploration data.

Or what am I missing? It feels like a grind fest with a lot of hurry up and wait. Do all of this until you have enough money to buy a new ship, buy a new ship and rinse and repeat. The quests are randomly assigned, there isn't any progression (or wasn't any when I last played). The quests have a real life timer and expire even if you quit the game which was a big issue for me as I can't guarantee how much time I'll have to play or how soon I'll be able to play again. If you fail a mission you lose reputation, you don't just not gain any.

BeoTeK · Oct 7, 2015

axon1988 · Oct 27, 2015

So tonight I will be attempting to join the Kaushpoos community goal. Who wants to join me?

"Kaushpoos, Neville Horizons: Help construct a new station in the Pleiades Nebula, and earn rewards by selling metals to Neville Horizons in the Kaushpoos System."

Keepa34 · Oct 27, 2015

Who all has this on console?

axon1988 · Oct 27, 2015

Keepa34 said:
Who all has this on console?

I wish the xbox and pc players could play together. That would be amazing.

Wyzak · Oct 27, 2015

axon1988 said:
I wish the xbox and pc players could play together. That would be amazing.

Sigh, I hate it when games do that

axon1988 · Oct 27, 2015

Wyzak said:
Sigh, I hate it when games do that

Yeah that's for sure. It does suck. IIRC fdev were talking about possibly combining the 2 platforms in the future. I guess it depends on technology. I don't really know who limited they are to options and how it could be implemented.

Wyzak · Oct 27, 2015

axon1988 said:
Yeah that's for sure. It does suck. IIRC fdev were talking about possibly combining the 2 platforms in the future. I guess it depends on technology. I don't really know who limited they are to options and how it could be implemented.

I wouldn't count on it. Those types of splits tend to just be there because it's something that people have grown to accept. Similar things happen with PC / IOS / Android games. All playing the same game but glass-walled from each other.

axon1988 · Oct 27, 2015

Wyzak said:
I wouldn't count on it. Those types of splits tend to just be there because it's something that people have grown to accept. Similar things happen with PC / IOS / Android games. All playing the same game but glass-walled from each other.

Yeah that's true. You forgot windows mobile

I think in Elite's case there is a valid argument where there are so many controller schemes being used in Elite that nobody could claim that pc players will have an advantage to console players due to the use of keyboard and mouse. In fact, I think that using a keyboard and mouse gives you a disadvantage over controller and joystick players in this specific case.

Wyzak · Oct 27, 2015

axon1988 said:
Yeah that's true. You forgot windows mobile

I think in Elite's case there is a valid argument where there are so many controller schemes being used in Elite that nobody could claim that pc players will have an advantage to console players due to the use of keyboard and mouse. In fact, I think that using a keyboard and mouse gives you a disadvantage over controller and joystick players in this specific case.

I think that reason of keyboard and mouse vs controller is given more as an excuse than anything else. They don't want you to be able to play with friends on different platforms, they want you to go out and buy that platform instead if you want to play with your friends.

axon1988 · Oct 27, 2015

Wyzak said:
I think that reason of keyboard and mouse vs controller is given more as an excuse than anything else. They don't want you to be able to play with friends on different platforms, they want you to go out and buy that platform instead if you want to play with your friends.

Yeah absolutely agree on both points.

Keepa34 · Oct 27, 2015

this is why rocket league didn't come to the xbone.. it is too much of a hassle/mission/microsoft doesn't want it? i dunno the reason but it wasn't possible to cross-platform games

axon1988 · Oct 27, 2015

Keepa34 said:
this is why rocket league didn't come to the xbone.. it is too much of a hassle/mission/microsoft doesn't want it? i dunno the reason but it wasn't possible to cross-platform games

This is a prime example of something that could push the xbox forward. If it shared foundations with Computers then it would really propel it's sales and community force. Rocket League is a rather fantastic game and it really does seem like it's meant to be on console as well.

Keepa34 · Oct 27, 2015

Well with the xbox app on my PC (Windows 10) i am able to join parties (Voice group chat) with the guys on the xbox. so it shouldn't be very far off.. but all we can do is hope.

/end derailment

BeoTeK · Nov 5, 2015

Elite Dangerous Horizons Beta Landing On Nov 24th

The Elite Dangerous: Horizons expansion will introduce the ability to land on planets to the mining-trading-pirating cockpit sim. It has no fixed release date, but youâ€™ll be able to test it out later this month: a beta was announced last night during a livestreamed Q&A with David Braben and will begin on November 24th.

In the same Q&A, Braben also detailed plans for the next free game update, version 1.5, which will introduce new ships and will launch the week of November 8th. There were also a few extra glimpses of planetary surfaces in action, including the first look at bases and, at 27:40 into the video, an SRV buggy deploying from the undercarriage of a Cobra. Thatâ€™s pretty neat.

You might prefer to watch the video below instead, however. Itâ€™s from a previous livestream last month and gives a detailed look at planetary surfaces. Not â€œthe gameplay youâ€™re going to be doing on the surfaces,â€ mind you, but the SRV youâ€™re going to drive to explore them and how that feels to handle.

My romance with Elite: Dangerous [official site] was shortlived, but itâ€™s excellent at creating a sense of place and position within its universe, whether in a cockpit or adrift around an asteroid field. A lot of that seems to have carried across to planet surfaces, in the heft and sound effects of the buggy and the sense of scale as you drive around your landed ship or those planetary bases.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/05/elite-dangerous-horizons-beta/

axon1988 · Nov 5, 2015

Next week is the closed beta for 1.5 update. I cannot wait for that. With the closed beta for planetary landing coming around 23 November!

axon1988 · Nov 18, 2015

I come back bearing gifts in the form of screenshots of the closed beta for 1.5, Please note that some things have changed though, like they have improved the specs for SCBs and other things. Though I'm really just showing off the ships for now and the modules for planetary landings.

Below is the rear of the new Asp Scout