Don't buy Elite: Dangerous

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Jesus.

What about this part of the review instead?

Piracy is a legitimate method of making money, too. You can purchase an interdiction upgrade for your ship and snag other ships out of in-system faster-than-light travel and threaten them over comms, or even deploy "limpets" to sabotage their cargo hatches and yank canisters directly out of their cargo hold. Pirating is naturally a contentious topic, since piracy is a play choice that of necessity involves ruining someone else’s day; even the most polite and dashing pirates can have difficulty making a living, especially when dealing with stubborn players who would rather self-destruct than surrender. Still, the pirate’s life is a perfectly valid play style.

If there are no traders...

[Bereta_Eder]

In a way gratification is instant (sic) from the very beggining.
In the old elite (btw elite 2 frontier was buggy as hell that's why it didn't take off) you had a small ship. Armed with very little.
You scan the system you're in you find where the agricultural and the industrial worlds are. The first need machines, the others agricultural stuff.
You buy cheap from the one and sell expensive to the other.
So you start with 100 credits, do a trip to another planet sell the stuff, now you're with 120.

Scan the system for some more planets. You see there's a price difference that's greater if you deliver some goods to another agricultural planet. But it's unstable. So will you do the trip there?
You decide to do it. Each planet has a security perimeter inside which pirates are intercepted by police.
BUT when you exit the jump you have to do some em, km, untill you reach that safety sphere.

So exit the jump, your valuable cargo in the hold, your weapons very limited, the safety sphere approaches, you are near, you're going to make the sale!~
just as you're about to reach it, you see two small red dots in the radar. Then there's three then four.
Pirates.
You get into the battle, you don't yet have enough money to have gotten an escape pod so if they shoot you "down" you're done
You press the lazer buttons switch dive and turn, deploy the flank when the missile warning beap from the ship's system becomes like a flat line....


etc etc
thargoids, kills, money, better equipment, better ranking what's not to like

at least that was the old one

[Sava]

Erm, it kind of is generally.

No.

Only an idiot would think that.

Case in point, I find a wallet. Minimal effort. I return it. Guy gives me $20.

Good reward, low effort.

Conversely, I can think of any number of grueling tasks that come with zero or no reward.

Reward value is independent of effort.

The instant nature of instant gratification is also part of its charm.

[kentonio]

No.

Only an idiot would think that.

An idiot or every game designer ever.

2 games..

Game 1: You load the game and then are led on an adventure where you are carefully provided with a stream of gold and item rewards each balanced to the difficulty of each challenge.

Game 2: You load the game and are immediately given all the items in the game and 1000000000000 gold. You can now embark on the adventure if you wish, although you already have everything you could ever gain.

Which one is likely to prove the more enjoyable?

Instant gratification has it's place, but it also has a much reduced lifespan. If a game offers the player rewards, it basically has to keep scaling up those rewards because like a heroin addict the effect of a reward lessens over time and the player needs more and more to achieve the same satisfaction. Give rewards too easily and that ramp up effect has to be much steeper. It's not generally a problem with mobile games (Game of War is an incredibly interesting lesson in how you can make easy giving to the player work) but they also tend to have much lower engagement times and lifespan to PC titles. Unless you want PC gaming to end up predominantly F2P like mobile, it's probably not a great idea to go too far down the instant gratification route.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

You have to wait for 5 seconds to move to another instance.
All the systems are the same (despite of having 100's of different stars and planets, plus countless combinations, but if you don't like to pay attention - it is all the same to you)
Docking is hard, Flying is hard (too long to learn)
Ships and weapons are too expensive. (too long to get the next "level")
There is nothing to do. (have to figure out what to do on your own, without a guiding hand)

Those are criticisms related to game not being gratifying "instantaneously", ie a little effort for a cookie. It certainly is gratifying, for me even more so, given the game mechanics like - going out for a fight and getting the ship systems to shut down being blown up in process, to figure out that all your systems have shut down because you overloaded the ships power.

If that does not work for you - fine, I am sure you would rather be immediately out there in a FDL fighting Code (player pirate faction) in Lave.

On my end, I am glad that Cockney pointed out to this game here, I even managed to start in the last days of beta, still keeps me busy, and is my main game interest since then (I think it was October).

Not to mention that HC was typically bombastic in his OP.

[Jon Miller]

No.

Only an idiot would think that.

Case in point, I find a wallet. Minimal effort. I return it. Guy gives me $20.

Good reward, low effort.

Conversely, I can think of any number of grueling tasks that come with zero or no reward.

Reward value is independent of effort.

The instant nature of instant gratification is also part of its charm.

You are the only person on apolyton who I think your statement is actually true of. For HC it pretty clearly isn't (even if he doesn't like Elite, which is perfectly reasonable).

JM

[Hauldren Collider]

You are the only person on apolyton who I think your statement is actually true of. For HC it pretty clearly isn't (even if he doesn't like Elite, which is perfectly reasonable).

JM

No, I agree with Sava. The reward for me when playing Flight Sim was getting better at flying airplanes. If I could have gotten good at flying airplanes with half the effort, I would have gladly done so. It was not the effort of getting good at it that was rewarding to me, it was actually being good at it.

[Hauldren Collider]

There is also the concept of accomplishing a difficult task. If you open up a game and it tells you, "you win!", you know you haven't really accomplished something. It has no value. The game has to have some challenge or the knowledge that you beat it is unrewarding. However, the problem with elite is that it is not challenging, merely frustrating and tedious.

[kentonio]

There is also the concept of accomplishing a difficult task. If you open up a game and it tells you, "you win!", you know you haven't really accomplished something. It has no value. The game has to have some challenge or the knowledge that you beat it is unrewarding.

In other words the exact opposite of what you said in your previous post above. It's impressive that you managed to do a complete 360 in under 3 minutes.

[Hauldren Collider]

In other words the exact opposite of what you said in your previous post above. It's impressive that you managed to do a complete 360 in under 3 minutes.

No.

If I solve a difficult math problem in 10 minutes instead of 20 minutes, I feel the same sense of accomplishment. If you make me solve a 10 minute math problem twice so that it takes me 20 minutes, that's not increasing the reward.

Elite: Dangerous gives you the same problem 100 times. Good games gradually add new challenges to old challenges as you become good at them. Take Portal as an example. You start off without even having the portal gun, and get good at using the portals. Then they give you one portal to control, and eventually two, until at the climax you have an entire toolkit of techniques and it sets you free to apply them however you like. This is excellent game design. You don't get bored because there are continually new challenges, and you feel rewarded for solving previous puzzles because new puzzles build on what you've accomplished. A good Elite-style RPG will add things to do at the pace that you master old things, and the new things build on the old things.

[Jon Miller]

Elite: Dangerous gives you the same problem 100 times.

If you were good at it, maybe you would no longer find it a challenge?

JM

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Elite: Dangerous gives you the same problem 100 times.

E: D gives you the option to do the same problem 100 times, but it also gives you the option to do other stuff. No hand to point you in the direction where "other" is though, but you have to figure it out in a rather large universe.

While it is a legitimate complaint, it is part of the appeal for some, while it may be a deal breaker for others.

[MRT144]

HC is worse than I am sometimes in the department of "My taste should be everyone's taste so that this can be interpreted as objectively bad."

[Hauldren Collider]

HC is worse than I am sometimes in the department of "My taste should be everyone's taste so that this can be interpreted as objectively bad."

I actually do understand that some people find this stuff enjoyable, but the fact that they find it enjoyable is pretty much independent of its actual qualities. They could make it a good game in the manner I am describing without subtracting at all from the aspects that people like OneFoot find entertaining.

[Hauldren Collider]

Elite: Dangerous gives you the same problem 100 times.

E: D gives you the option to do the same problem 100 times, but it also gives you the option to do other stuff. No hand to point you in the direction where "other" is though, but you have to figure it out in a rather large universe.

While it is a legitimate complaint, it is part of the appeal for some, while it may be a deal breaker for others.

The problem with E: D isn't the number of different things to nominally do, it's that the process of doing them is full of pointless tedium like docking and struggling with the jump system. Have you ever played Axis and Allies? Those of you that have--would axis and allies be less fun if setting up the board didn't take so damn long?

There's also the fact that I get this strong feeling of "OK, I've done it once. Why would I want to do it again?" Getting a better ship doesn't fundamentally change much about how you can play the game, as far as I can tell--it just lets you move your score numbers faster.