2.1 impressions

[Adept]

I wonder how many of you guys are active.

Now we have

-Ice mining. Sweet a reason to go back to the beautiful icy rings. If you don't mine you can still bounty hunt or pirate
-Traffic controllers. The chatter at stations is lovely and there are a lot of different voices.
-Improved combat AI. Holycrap is it good. Suddely if the AI is rated "Deadly" they really mean it.
-Engineers... er like most big additions this is extremely grindy and RNG heavy. I think the lead designer is not the right person for the job

[Andon]

I played for abour 20 minutes. I have had no desire to play it any further.

The entire game is designed around grimding but there's little reward for doing so. Take a mission. Fly from point A to point B. Shoot things, deliver things, whatever. Turn in for money. Repeat.

Engineers look even worse. Finding stuff on the surface of planets is really quite tedious, and it uses a bit of it.

Exploration, my favorite concept, is just bland and boring. Fly to a system. Blast it with scanners. Fly to the next one. Take about 5 seconds in a system. Unless you decide to scan individual things, and that's just pointing at the thing from far away. There's no encouragement to actually SEE the places you go.

Sadly, I don't see the game improving at all in the near or distant future. This is precisely how they want it.

[Andon]

Oh, and not to mention there's absolutely fuck all for interacting with people in the game. There's zero social aspect to it at all. No guilds (or equivalent), no player group encouragement at all. If I could easily chat with a bunch of my friends in a unified chat channel, the game would be so much better.

[Adept]

Oh, and not to mention there's absolutely fuck all for interacting with people in the game. There's zero social aspect to it at all. No guilds (or equivalent), no player group encouragement at all. If I could easily chat with a bunch of my friends in a unified chat channel, the game would be so much better.

I was just over in Caucuma fighting for the Katamari Group which started at the Star Citizen forum's Elite Dangerous Katamari Megathread. Frontier has been granting player groups custom factions in the background sim for a while, and they are enjoying trying to push theirs to expand into neighbouring systems.

There are quite a few guilds and such but they organise on Reddit and other out of game tools and wing up. I agree that the social tools are badly lacking but social play does happen a lot. I chat with players I encounter every time I log on to play.

As for Engineering and materials I'm just scooping stuff up after ship-to-ship battles and receiving some stuff as mission rewards. I have only rolled the dice for a single upgrade so far.

The shallow exploration is bizarre. Both Braben and Brookes play as explorers so how come the interaction is so poor? I don't get it.

[Andon]

I don't give half a shit about out-of-game tools. They shouldn't be required to get a multiplayer feel for a multiplayer game.

And picking up engineering stuff "naturally" really isn't much better, as you're still repeating the same stuff in hopes of getting what you want. You can't apply skill at all to it. It's completely random.

As far as shallowness goes - they don't play a lot, and it's fairly realistic, which they both like. It's precisely what they find fun and enjoyable.

I was hoping Horizons would give actual exploration bonuses for going close to planets, but it's still just stellar surveys that count.

[Adept]

Exploration should indeed reward you for going to take a closer look and allow you to be the first to discover geological features and wonders in an SRV.

[id3nt1ty]

I've found I'm quite interested in Elite:Dangerous these days, but don't actually have time to play. I'm enjoying following the Unkown Artifact/Probe and Jacques station mysteries.

Also following the Gamescon live streams to hear about what is coming up in 2.2, it all sounds pretty interesting and hopefully I'll get some time to play soon.

Oh, I did get a little time in and enjoyed playing with my xbox controller rather than hotas. It felt much more casual and less infuriating than my joystick.

[id3nt1ty]

Oh, so new tourism/passenger transport missions.

New geological features added for explorers.

[Adept]

I'm actually really happy to hear you enjoy flying with a controller. That means Mike Evans has done great work with the controls.

[id3nt1ty]

Yeah, I'm using the Advances Controls 2 mapping (or something like that). Takes a little time to do the memory switching in my head though.

Have you been keeping up with the new 2.2 features and mysteries? Looks like something interesting is starting on the 28th (of some month).

[Raveen]

I wish I had time to play but I've not been into E:D since 2.0.

[id3nt1ty]

I'm struggling to find time at the moment too. Looks like some good changes in it when I do get the chance. Haven't been able to try out the new missions yet either, want to give the planetary landings ones a shot.

[Adept]

The Engineers grind was toned down from insane to silly, and now I can put up with it enough to have started working on my Dropship. First goal is to give it more jump range.

Missiles are useful now. I carry medium beam turrets, twin dumbfire launchers and a large plasma accelerator under the nose. The big far dropship is hanging in there, even though it tends to take a kicking from pirates flying the FAS. USS are still silly, buy better now that you scan them first.

[Adept]

Oh, and I made ~136 million in an insane CG, so I technically have the money to buy a Corvette now. I need at least 50M more before it makes any sense to do it though.

[id3nt1ty]

Nice. I didn't see that CG until too late, and have been busy with Violet anyway. I'd like to get myself a diamond back explorer and head out into the unknown for a bit.