Elite Dangerous Catch-All

misplacedbravado wrote:

How long does it take to get past the "struggling to survive" phase in NMS?

I've been playing a lot of NMS lately and it's pretty much minutes if you know what you're doing. NMS is a pretty easy sandbox, don't let the survival aspects turn you off if you want to try it.

I love games like this in theory and in the beginning but once it starts to feel like a job, I bail.

Sorry, just really passionate about it.

misplacedbravado wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

Not for a long time. My recent hankering for a space sim led me to No Man’s Sky. I’ve sunk nearly 55 hours into it over the last 2 weeks, it’s a better game.

How long does it take to get past the "struggling to survive" phase in NMS?

I keep hearing about the cool things you can see and do, but I really do not enjoy survival games and my experience of NMS so far has been scrabbling for resources to keep my spacesuit heater on and hiding from blizzards.

This is a better question for the No Man's Sky thread I think - I followed a "normal game" up until I unlocked the freighter - that took me about 15 hours I think, although quite a few of them were me faffing about exploring and learning how it all works. If you follow the main "plot" - such as it is - to that point it'll get you started and you'll have earnt your first couple of million if you've been paying attention.

I then went and did the current expedition - Polestar - which is basically the game teaching you how to use freighters and handing you stuff on a plate while you do. I thoroughly enjoyed that part and it's taught me a hell of a lot for my normal playthrough. Taken me about 20 hours to complete - again, a fair amount of faffing - but I was never bored. Which brings me to this point:

Stengah wrote:

I've played both a lot (though neither recently), and I disagree. NMS is more exploration/discovery focused, while E:D is a more technical space combat & capitalism sim. Both are fun and enjoyable, but in pretty different ways; they scratch some very different itches. In the end though, they both suffer pretty equally from the "nothing means anything" problem, and it's easy to kind of burn out on either.

I think from what I have played of Elite Dangerous (about 200 hours across steam and the launcher, although not for a couple of years - is that since NMS disastrous launch the developers have kept a clear vision of what they have been wanting to achieve, while listening to their player base and adapting and incorporating what they needed to from that while doing so. I've always had the impression that Frontier never really gave a damn about their player base until fairly recently. Despite all the busywork in NMS - and lets be honest, it's a game built on busy work - it's always accessible and the game never puts barriers in the way of the player to achieve whatever it is they are doing at a specific point in time. and if they change their mind, they can do so at a moments notice.

I know E:D is a different style of game but when I last played it, getting through those barriers to do what I wanted in the game eventually defeated me. E:D's busy work is repetitively dull. Yes it's a different style, but really it's doing all the same things that NMS is. Just a lot more painfully with those barriers all still firmly in place. It just became an absolute chore to play, so I stopped.

I can see why the people that love it love don't get me wrong. I'm a little envious of them to be honest.

I agree with that. I think that each game would be better if they were a little bit more like the other. NMS could use a bit more in the way of barriers to work against, and E:D could use a bit less.

Elite's flight engine with No Man's Sky universe generation would be sublime.

I like Elite, a lot, in principle. I even like the on foot stuff. I just wish there was more to see and more places to go that weren't just baren ice rocks.

Current Elite with the NMS content generation would be great.

Veloxi, are you still king of the Wildcards?

In other news, Braben steps down as CEO.
https://www.pcgamer.com/after-nearly...

maverickz wrote:

Veloxi, are you still king of the Wildcards?

Probably. Did you want me to switch it to you?

Veloxi wrote:
maverickz wrote:

Veloxi, are you still king of the Wildcards?

Probably. Did you want me to switch it to you?

I want to say yes. But for full disclosure, I haven't loaded it in like 2 or 3 months. I'm not sure if there is a more current Wildcards member.

Veloxi wrote:

Sorry, just really passionate about it.

You keep saying this every time someone tells you you're out of line. It really sounds like an "I'm sorry you're offended" every time.

I am sorry, I didn't mean to upset anyone. I'll go away now.

You don't have to go away and you can still be passionate about a thing without having to tear down a thing with extremely negative hyperbole if you don't like it. It's fine to criticize a thing without having to go all Angry Video Game Nerd on it.

I haven't played since before Odyssey either. I'd like to get back into it, but there are a few factors keeping me away.
1 - VR still doesn't work when you're on foot.
2 - I'd have to re-setup:

  • My Warthog HOTAS and rudder pedal config
  • Voiceattack
  • Oculus
  • Other utilities I can't even remember at the moment (EDDB?)

That's the worst part of getting back into a sim after a hiatus. I launched E:D last week for the first time in a long while, just to fly around a little... but I'd lost both the config files and muscle memory for my HOTAS setup in the interim.

Landing in a space station using VR was, in my experience, one of the best "this could be iMax" experiences I've had. Unfortunately, the VR control system fell just a little short back then. All it really needed was something similar to DCS - a little dot in the center of the screen you could point at buttons in the cockpit to activate things.

If they added that I'd be back in. It's always been a low key game play activity for me. A bit of mining. Some trading. Maybe a little pew-pew. Lots of sight-seeing.

Maybe I'll revisit back in the fall...

I always tell myself to get back into Elite.. I stopped a while ago. The barriers everyone mentions are there for me as well.

Since I've stopped, I've added TrackIR to my setup, but I've also traded in my old HOTAS for an aircraft yoke + throttle quadrant + Pedals. I did get a T16000 joystick which should be more than enough, but yeah, having to map all of that over again and basically relearn how to fly does not sound fun.

You do not realize the scale of Elite until you play it in VR. The first time you experience your ship looming over you, or ducking as you pass through a mailslot while docking is an experience of its own

maverickz wrote:

In other news, Braben steps down as CEO.
https://www.pcgamer.com/after-nearly...

Oh wow! That's a big deal.

I half expect Elite to get shut down without Braben at the helm... I don't get the feeling that it performs as well as some of their licensed properties. They just killed all console platforms, so that's got to put a huge dent in the revenue for this title. In their 2021 financial report they called the Odyssey release "disappointing"