Elite: Dangerous

[Shrinweck]

This is that first person space simulator that's actually coming out in the foreseeable future (slated for December, beta starts on the 29th) as compared to Star Citizen which honestly I'd be pleasantly surprised to be playing the beta in early 2016. This is the game that caught some flack for charging $150 if you wanted to play during the alpha, but the standard game is still just $50 if you want to wait. The beta that starts next week costs $75 (full game included at release).

In any case, a lot of the worries of Star Citizen is that even if it isn't pay to win microtransaction hell, they're still selling these ridiculously cool ships to the people who are willing to give them $200-$15000 (yes, there are ship bundles for people giving $15000) during this seemingly never ending pledge drive. Elite: Dangerous is doing basically the opposite of this. While $150 for alpha access was definitely a step in an uncomfortable direction (reason given: they didn't want the population to go out of control that early in development), Elite does not offer microtransactions in any way.

Even if you gave them $10000, you still start the same way everyone else does, in a clunky little sidewinder with a borrowed energy weapon and a small bounty on your head. Going the way of games of old, they plan on selling expansions for continued revenue.

Watching gameplay videos on youtube (not included, since they're 20-30 minutes) shows that a lot of the game is already available. Combat looks smooth. Trading is an established viable activity, as is piracy. With the population infusion coming next week, bounty hunting is probably going to be much more viable, as well. At the very least this is the most beautiful space game ever produced.

They make a mean trailer.


Nearly half of this trailer is docking/undocking and it's still engrossing.



More action oriented. The thing to notice in this video is that they were able to produce it nearly a year ago.

[Shrinweck]

Got around to giving this game a try since it has such a good reputation and for some reason I didn't play it all these months ago even though I bought it.... jesus almost a year ago.

Cool shit:

Docking/undock: Even this simple thing that you're constantly doing feels like an acheivement in the beginning. Maneuvering your way out of stations/onto landing pads is initially no easy feat, even now it can take me a good minute or so if I'm coming in at a bad angle.

Interdiction/piracy: I've only been pulled out of supercruise by NPCs since I'm still in the noob areas (they kinda trap you there until you get out of the starter ship), but evading pirates is a fun little mini game and I have no interest in even the chance of losing my shit this early. There's a cool little minigame where when they're trying to pull you out of supercruise, you can fight to keep the crosshair of your ship over a blue vortex. If you manage to fight the turbulence and mouseover the blue vortex long enough you can escape with nothing lost but the 20 or so seconds. It's a fun little frantic minigame that half the time seems to lead to me getting my ass pulled over any ways and having to run my ass off while my frame shift drive spins up.

Trading: This is what I spent most of my time doing. Once I figured out the maps, commodity markets, and the fact that you have to use websites to find decent routes I was able to grind into a new space ship that will eventually let me get enough money for another spaceship... which will hopefully enable me to do what I want in the first place which is explore. But lovely, lovely safe trading until then.

From what I can tell there are something like six starting sectors so you aren't just drowning in fellow noobs. And when I say you're trapped in these areas for a while, it's a pretty fucking big trap. I would guess the one I'm in has 20ish systems to explore. Lots of combat missions if you aren't a total wuss like me. Finding trade missions is quite a bit harder but kind of nice because it gives you cargo without you having to pay for it, which is handy if you think you're going to die (closest I've come is 77% hull while running my ass off).

Game is on Steam now, if complicated space sim simulations are up your alley you should check it out.

[bovine]

This game is cool as heck to look at. I saved up and changed to a few different ships, but the game didn't really get its hooks into me. It's super cool, but I haven't felt the pull to go back.

[Shrinweck]

It's definitely a make your own fun kind of game. If making credits to earn better ships through the handful of methods they've given you doesn't appeal then it's a pretty boring game. On the plus side, they're constantly updating and I look forward to them hashing out factions more. Since I bought this game last July I ended up giving them $15 so I could paint my Asp silly colors because I'm having a lot of fun and I'll likely be using the asp for a very, very long time.

I've gotten up to an Asp (I went Sidewinder -> Hauler -> Cobra -> Asp) mostly through trading. If you look up trading rare items getting up to a cobra becomes much easier and from that ship (or others of similar value) you can better explore various activities. I've spent almost all my time trading, but I've gone out 500-800LY away from the closest inhabited/explored star system two times now in order to explore and it's a blast going out there and scanning planets and shit if you're into that sort of thing. I even managed to find a few systems that I was the first to discover, earning a bonus reward when I got back to turn in my data (I'm particularly proud of finding Wredguia LE-Y B28-2 since it had 40+ astronomical objects, as opposed to the standard 1-8). The unfortunate thing about exploring is that it requires a couple million credits to do properly. You NEED a fuel scoop (100k+ credits for a decent one), the advanced discovery scanner (this is a big deal because the inexpensive ones limit the range to like 1000Ls, when stuff could be as far away as several hundred thousand units... oh and it costs like 1-1.5M credits), and a detailed surface scanner (250k). Ouch.

Finding and exploiting trade routes is also fun, but this game is SUPER grindy, the fun comes in the SUPER INTENSE rare moments - i.e. interdictions, docking and having some noob running into you/you being a noob and running into someone else and GTFOing pretty hard in embarrassment, and to a lesser extent fuel scooping. Actually I kinda fucking love fuel scooping. Since fuel runs out in a standard ship after 1-200LY of jumping you have to buy a fuel scoop when you're exploring. A fuel scoop takes the hydrogen from non-shitty suns and converts it to fuel. You have to scoop the sun by basically getting as close to it as you can without flying into the god damned thing. I love the idea of flying close to a sun to refuel (an idea that was really brought to life for me in Stargate Universe).

But mostly what I recommend to have fun with this game is a Netflix account and a second monitor :D

This is not a game that requires 100% of your attention very often.

[Julius Seeker]

Of these space based games. Which one can I get the most casual play experience from?

That means, a game I don't have to spend more than 10-30 minutes a day on to maintain progression... unless I want to, like weekend mornings, when I would love to get right into battles and exploration. I have heard Eve has some of these elements, but I don't know a lot about the game.

[Shrinweck]

EVE may be more what you're looking for if we're talking about that kind of time commitment. Leveling skills happens even when you aren't playing, a lot of what you do can be automated, and the game can potentially be played in a much more mission-based way.

Elite Dangerous has no leveling system - basically all you do is earn, spend, and lose money while you play. In order to keep the game from going to shit because of this, money does not change hands between players. In any case, progressing to new ships requires a decent amount of time, and while 30 minutes a day would see results... I'm not sure they would be particularly satisfying results (5-10 hours to get to a second ship, largely ramping up in time from there). A profitable exploration run will involve 3-10 hours... at least. Even going from one station to another and back again in an adjacent system - a standard method used in trading, takes about ten minutes. There are missions but finding what you want is largely luck and random, as opposed to the fixed points in EVE. You could definitely jump into a battle or explore a system in the populated area of space in about 30 minutes, though, but like I said in my last post earning good money through exploration is a pretty expensive proposition.

TBH I've earned like 35-40 million in Elite Dangerous at this point and that's all from trading other than 2.5 million from exploration, so I can't really talk about battles, but I know you can get into them super early, and that it may even be more profitable than trading as far as the beginner ship is concerned. From the training, the deeper AND more action-packed combat is definitely in Elite Dangerous. My experience with EVE is that the combat was kind of dreadful... and that was years ago. EVE Combat has you targeting enemies, taking time to lock onto them, and then pushing hotkeys to automatically fire on your locks. Basically other than some balancing for speed/accuracy, you're just watching target lock ons and weapon cooldowns. Elite Dangerous is a lot more about dogfighting and active gameplay.

While the Elite Dangerous game is a largely passive experience, if you aren't there when you need to be active things will go wrong FAST. When you jump to a new system, the frame shift gets you there by the heat of the sun in the system, meaning if you aren't there to steer, you're literally going to be flying into a star - you have a handful of seconds to correct trajectory or throttle down, depending on the mass and heat of the sun. Even supercruising to a station requires active controlled deceleration or you're just plain never going to get there. Docking is also a much more interactive experience, often making me feel a bit like an artist when I do it well enough. These are all things that you can completely automate in EVE.

tl;dr EVE for (mission/leveling progression) structure, economy, and ease of use and Elite Dangerous for active and freeform gameplay that you largely dictate yourself. EVE also probably has two to three times as many ships in one faction than Elite Dangerous has in the entire game, which is probably one of Elite Dangerous' biggest flaws. Elite Dangerous is much more complicated and really does next to no hand holding. A lot goes unsaid even in the tutorials.

[Julius Seeker]

Thanks for the rundown on each. I'll probably jump into Eve this summer when I have some time to blow a few dozen hours to get started.

[Oracle]

Beware of EVE, Seek. The curve to get to a somewhat respectable status so that you can participate in PvP/Mining/Mission/Etc events is quite a steep one. Also, leveling is completely time based, as Shin mentioned. I, personally, found that to be a turn off.

Oh, and you know those awesome videos/screen shots of massive space battles? Those occur around 0.01% of the time you are in game, and the time and resources required to prepare for such battles can be overwhelming.

Anyway, my 2cents. I found EVE to be more work than my job (the corporation's emails were more serious and deliverable-based than what I get paid for!). Truly earns its nickname "Spreadsheets in Space."

[Julius Seeker]

The logged out leveling is something I am fine with. This is a feature I really like in casual games. I am definitely looking for something that can be played casually 5-6 of the 7 days of the week, but still have meaningful advancement... Like a casual game.

Lots of work to maintain is a turn off. I don't want a game that forces constant play and attention. Definitely not a job's worth! =P

[Shrinweck]

So the direction this game was going and the overall grindiness of the activities got to me and I haven't been playing much of this until today. The first major expansion releases soon (I think Monday?) and the main attraction of it is that you can land some kind of rover (think original Mass Effect) onto suitable planets. I don't really have too much of an interest in this since my space fantasy doesn't involve landing on barren rocks, but, hey, Frontier gives good trailer so I ended up buying it in a moment of weakness and reinstalling it today.



The main thing that turned me off from the game was the Factions update that I was hoping would bring a certain amount of direction to the game ended up being more grinding AND an in game money sink. If you look at it as something to do on the side as you do the same things you do before then it kind of improves, though. And it does definitely succeed in making the galaxy a more dangerous/hostile place.

[Shrinweck]

Oh right and this game is $15 on Steam right now and you should get it. It also gets you $15 off the expansion (which I think may be released in December as opposed to this Monday) so it's kind of free if you look at it in completely the wrong kind of way.

As for as silly MTX goes.. and for the sake of the stark contrast to their amazing trailers - have a video for something silly they want to sell:



Presumably the lead dev/CEO

[Shrinweck]

For a very long time, maybe since launch, there have been hints at aliens in the game in the form of ruined spaceships and whatnot. Players have started getting torn out of the loading screens between jumps from star system to star system which previously never happened. This is what they saw: